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“I’m heading over to her place to help Abby move her stuff. I’ll talk to her if she’s there,” I promise. I need this extra worry like I need a fucking hernia.
“You okay? You seem… uptight?” Maddy asks with concern written all over her pretty little face.
“I’m just fuckin’ peachy,” I lie, heading toward the truck to get this move started early.
“This is really fucked up, he can’t have been this close for all this time and working with Hawker. How have we not seen this?” Troj slams his fist into the wall. We’ve turned the apartment upside down and found nothing. No one’s here, and judging by the stench of rotten milk in the fridge, no one’s been here for a while.
“Relax, brother,” I tell him, trying to find a calm myself. I’m sick to shit of being one step behind these fuckers.
“Two days ago he was here, Jess, he has to be coming back here, and he’ll know where Hawker is. I’ll wait here for as long as it takes.” My best friend cracks his knuckles and starts pacing the room like a stray fucking wolf.
“We’ll ask around; speak to the neighbors. This is a good thing, Troj. We’re getting closer. This way, we get to nail both those fuckers at the same time.”
Troj nods his head back at me, then pulling his hand through his long brown hair, he manages to get his shit together.
I feel his frustration. Especially since I learned that Shaniya’s my sister, I can’t think back on what she went through that night, it was bad enough to imagine before I knew who she was to me, but now I wanna tear heads off anyone who had anything to do with Hawker.
“How she holding up?” We rarely speak about what Hawker and his men did to her the night of Troj’s fight. It gets Troj too riled up, but since he’s angry anyway, I might as well take the opportunity.
“The therapy’s helping,” he lights himself up a cigarette, “but there’s still nights when that cunt crawls inside her head.” He taps the fingers holding his smoke against his temple. “No one’s gonna save her from that.” His jaw tightens as he shakes his head.
“No, but we can protect her from it ever happening again,” I assure him, starting to root through the drawers on the floor and picking up something that could come in really useful.
“I just wanna make the future perfect for her.” He sighs and takes a seat on the torn leather couch.
“You're already doing that. I may not know her all that well yet, but I do know that it’s the simple things that make her happy. Love, devotion, all the things you can give her, the cabins gonna be perfect when it’s finished, we’ll have the roof on it before the snow comes in.”
“You know what she really wants?” Troj chews at the arch of his hand like he’s trying to remove a splinter. My friend wants to talk something out, and despite the timing not being all that great, I'm here for it.
“She wants a kid, Jess, and we’ve been trying since she came back from Long Beach.”
“Oh…” I look up from what I’m looking at and move over to take a seat in the chair opposite him. It ain’t every day you hear that your best friend is trying to knock up your sister.
“It ain’t happening, and she’s getting more and more fucking hurt about it,” he confesses, staring down at the dirty carpet under his feet and rubbing his hands together.
“These things take time.” I try and make it sound like I know what I’m talking about. I don’t know jack. Mads will do anything to avoid talking about making a family with me these days, and I’m getting more and more frustrated about it.
“It’s not been long,” I assure him.
“The hospital wanted to run some tests after the incident.” Troj swallows thickly, his jaw tensing tight.
“What kinda tests?” I shift awkwardly in my seat. Shit’s suddenly getting concerning.
The fact I’ve only known Shaniya a few months doesn’t mean I don’t care about her. The little I know about her I love, she’s a good person, and I’m proud that she’s a part of my life now.
“I don’t know exactly, she won’t talk about it with me, but from what I’m gathering, those bastards fucked her up so bad that there could be some lasting damage. Damage that could make it difficult.”
“Shit.” I scrub my face and look up at the yellow-tinged ceiling. Hearing shit like this makes me want blood.
“She shuts me out whenever I try talking about it with her. I’ve offered to go with her to the appointment, I’ve even suggested she have Rogue go if she doesn’t want me there. But she won’t have it. She’s fucking scared, Jess. Scared that they’ve taken that away from her too.”
“Come on, man, you don’t know that. You need to talk to her.”
“She won’t talk about it because she knows how mad it gets me, and I’ve tried so fucking hard to hide it from her so she can speak up, but I can’t. There’s this switch inside of me that I can’t flick off.”
“It’s only been a few months, Troj, and I ain’t no doctor, but I know it takes some couples a while. Skid and Carly had been trying for almost a year…” I stop and close my eyes when I think about how that worked out for him. I’ll never unsee that video Mads discovered, neither will Skid, and it makes me want to find Chop all the more so he can serve him his justice.
“I can’t stand the thought of them still being able to hurt her. Of them taking away her chance to be a mother.”
