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Bailey
I don’t think I’ve ever cried as much in my life as I have tonight. Chelsea and I keep pausing in our conversation to hug each other. She’s dressed like me, in borrowed sweats and pajamas. Now that I’ve got her in front of me, I can barely bring myself to even turn my back on her for fear she’ll vanish back into the hell of earlier tonight. Mimi is apparently asleep upstairs. Chelsea says they offered her a room, but she was too rattled to sleep. I understand; even with a couple of incredible orgasms under my belt, I feel like I’m going to come out of my skin. I feel like I’ll never sleep again.
I keep myself busy making us tea and refilling her water glass while Chelsea alternately talks and cries and falls silent for minutes at a time. We sit at the big kitchen island on barstools, in a domestic parody of the exact situation that got us into this mess. The kitchen is empty except for us, and the rest of the club has gone quiet after the flurry of Zeke’s return. After all the chaos of tonight, it’s just us girls. Chelsea keeps alternately talking and crying silently. I don’t think I’ve seen her cry this much in the entire time we’ve known each other.
“It was so scary, Bails.” She wipes at her eyes again. There are still faint traces of eyeliner around her eyes. Apparently, waterproof also means “able to last through a kidnapping.” Sephora should put that on their website.
“I can’t even imagine.” I don’t tell her about my earlier experience with the shootout. It’s not the time. That was scary, but it wasn’t personal. I didn’t have to wait tied up and helpless, wondering what strange men were going to do to me. “You’re okay now, I promise.” It’s not really my promise to make, but I make it anyway. I’m going to make it true. Chelsea’s my best friend, and I’d do anything for her.
I rest one hand lightly on her shoulder, and she leans into the touch, so I rub soothing circles over her back. She takes a deep breath and lets it out in a sigh.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” I ask gently. I’ve been trying not to press her and let her talk at her own pace, but Chelsea isn’t great with vulnerability. She parties hard and shows people what they want so that no one ever looks deeper to see what she’s really feeling. If I let her, she’ll try to be strong for me.
She’s silent for a long minute, staring down into her tea. Maybe she doesn’t want to talk. I just keep rubbing her back and try to give her space.
“It could have been worse, I guess,” she says eventually. “They didn’t—you know.”
A world of nightmares lives in that pause. I squeeze her tightly. “Doesn’t mean it wasn’t terrifying.”
She laughs hollowly. “No kidding. One minute me and Mimi are flirting with the bartender, and the next these guys are busting in and shouting in Spanish and waving guns around.”
Something twigs. I remember Zeke talking about another gang. I know I shouldn’t press Chelsea right now, but this could be important. “Spanish?”
“Yeah. I mean, I think. It could have been Chinese or Finnish; they were waving guns and shouting. I wasn’t super paying attention to what they were saying.”
“Of course,” I say. “Christ, that’s scary.” I wish I had something more effective to say, but Chelsea sniffs and nods, so it must be close enough to the right thing.
“They picked me and Mimi and a couple other girls for hostages. I don’t know why. Maybe they could tell we weren’t biker chicks.” Chelsea shrugs.
“It wasn’t your fault,” I remind her. It feels so inadequate right now, but it’s all I can do.
“But if we hadn’t been there, it wouldn’t have happened to us.” Tears well up again, and she wipes them away quickly. Her red nail polish is chipped, but somehow her nails are still intact. I don’t know how she came through her ordeal with barely a hair out of place, but I know she’s going to be okay. I just need her to know it too.
“Hey, don’t go down that road. It happened, and it shouldn’t have happened, and it is not your fault.”
Chelsea nods, but her eyes are still watery. “You know the craziest thing? When these guys were threatening us with guns and tying us up and shit, I couldn’t really understand what they were saying; my Spanish is shit. But all I could think about was when you were ranting the other day about your students saying yo too much. Weird, right?” She laughs shakily.
“You mean pronouns?” Overusing pronouns is a basic mistake that English speakers make when learning Spanish. I spend half our oral lessons trying to correct my students on it, and it always takes half a year to get anywhere. We’ve been working on it in the ninth and tenth grade classes, and it always drives me to distraction. They never listen.
“I don’t know what they’re called; you’re the teacher, not me. But I just kept thinking, ‘this would make Bailey crazy.’”
Hmm. That’s definitely odd. Maybe there’s a local dialect of Spanish that I don’t know? But now’s not the time to press Chelsea on this point. “I mean, yeah, that and the kidnapping.”
Chelsea chuckles at first, but it turns into a full-body laugh. Tears leak out of her eyes, and then it’s like her body realizes what’s happening, and her laughter turns to hiccupping sobs. I hug her while she shakes, rubbing her back and making soothing nonsense noises. She calms down pretty quickly, at least, and pulls away from me to dry her eyes again.
“We’re going to track down who did this,” I promise her.
Chelsea stops sniffing and narrows her eyes at me. “We?”
Even deep in shock, she’s still too observant. Chelsea’s always had a nose for gossip. I try to play it off with a shrug. “Zeke and his guys think they might have an idea of who’s behind it.”
Chelsea arches one perfect eyebrow. “Zeke? You’re on a first-name basis now?”
I blush. I can’t help it. We’re on a hell of a lot more than a first-name basis, but now is not the time for that story. “I know it sounds crazy, but he might just be the best bet for tracking these guys down.”
Chelsea opens her mouth to reply, but there’s a knock on the door. And speak of the devil, Zeke opens it and slips in to the kitchen. He leans on the end of the kitchen island, looking as unassuming as his frame possibly can. Our eyes meet for one searing second, and my heart jumps, but we both look away quickly. We both know this is a bad idea.
“I’m sorry to interrupt. Chelsea, are you comfortable? Can I get you anything?”
She shakes her head. I’m touched by his tenderness towards my friend. I would have expected him to barge in and get right down to business questioning her, but his concern seems genuine. There’s no hint of impatience to him.
“If you need anything at all, ask anyone, or you can ask me directly,” he says.
“Thanks,” Chelsea says. “I kind of just want to go home.”
“Of course,” Zeke says. He looks to me in a silent question, and I nod.
“I’ll take her home.”
Zeke nods and pulls his phone out to call a cab. It’s so weirdly normal after this crazy night. To think what would have happened if I’d done that earlier.
Chelsea squeezes my hand. “I’m just going to go check on Mims and leave a note if she’s asleep.”
“Good call.” Last thing that Mimi needs after tonight is to wake up alone in an unfamiliar building full of bikers with no warning as to where we went. “If she’s up, she can come with. You guys can sleep on my bed, and I’ll take the couch.”
“Sure,” she says, and gives me a look I can’t read.
The door swings shut behind Chelsea, leaving just me and Zeke alone in the kitchen. It’s ridiculous how much I am still drawn towards him. I would have thought scratching that itch would have gotten him out of my system, but now that I know what his hands feel like on me, it’s all I want. It’s all I can think about.
Focus, Bailey. Jesus.
Zeke hangs up. The silence in the kitchen looms large around us.
“Thanks,” I say quietly. “She’s had a hell of a night.” So has he. So have I.
“It’s nothing,” he says, leaving all of that unspoken. He puts his phone down and pivots towards me. Without noticing, we’ve drifted closer together. I could reach out and brush my hand over his thick forearm.
Instead, I straighten my spine and fold my hands primly together. No matter how incredible being with him is, it’s a terrible idea. I’ve slipped enough tonight, and look where it’s gotten me. It can’t happen again, and even the most casual touch is full of potential danger. So as much as it goes against my every instinct, I twist my fingers together and keep my hands in my lap.
“Bailey,” Zeke says, his voice a low rumble.
I lunge for the nearest distraction I can find because if he keeps talking to me in that voice, I’m going to forget my good intentions. “Chelsea had some information that might be relevant. I don’t know.”
He straightens up, immediately all business, and waits for me to continue.
“The Red Bandidos are Mexican, right? Meaning they’d speak Spanish. But Chelsea said she heard them using yo a lot. As in, they were using a lot of pronouns. It’s a common beginner Spanish mistake. I spend a lot of time correcting it with my students.”
Zeke rubs a hand over the stubble on his chin. “What are you saying? Spell it out for me.”
I shrug. “Either there’s a weirdly emphatic dialect in this area, or your guys aren’t actually Spanish speakers. It’s not really a mistake you make if you know the language at all.”
Zeke is silent, chewing over my words.
“I know this sounds crazy, but I think the Bandidos might not be your guys here.”
He scrubs a hand over his face. His stony façade cracks, and for the first time tonight he looks tired and uncertain. “It doesn’t sound crazy. I think you’re right. Chuy can be brutal, but never without cause. This kind of messy, unprovoked attack just isn’t his style.”
He digs his thumbs into his eyes. “Fuck. Okay. Well, this is something to go on. Thanks for bringing it to me.”
“You’re welcome.”
Zeke makes a strange aborted gesture, as if he wanted to reach out to me but pulled himself up short. I feel an answering pull to reach out. I cross my arms instead. He all but admitted they’re on the edge of a gang war with an unknown quantity. I don’t know much about the motorcycle club, but I know this isn’t good. Whatever I feel with him, whatever might be possible to feel with him, is overshadowed by that.
Zeke straightens up. We’ve drifted together again, and he leans away deliberately, giving me space.
“Let me know if anything else comes up.”
“Sure,” I say.
He looks like he wants to say something. His eyes drop to my lips. I want him to kiss me again. No matter how stupid it is, how many bad things have already happened, I want him to close this stupid artificial distance between us and kiss me. I want him to kiss me so that he doesn’t say whatever he’s about to say.
Neither is an option. Tonight has been a technicolor living nightmare illustration of why this is a bad idea, why I need to get the hell out of here and never, ever look back. No matter what I want.
“I should get Chelsea home,” I say softly. As much to myself as to him. It’s well past time for me to be out of here, out of this world that’s so different from my own.
His expression shutters, and he’s back to being the coldly competent president of his MC. “Of course,” he says. “Your cab should be here by now.”
He walks us to the door and helps Chelsea into the car. He’s not touching me, but his eyes burn into me, full of things we can’t want and things we can’t say to each other.
“Goodbye,” I whisper. The door shuts, and we pull away. I turn back in my seat to watch the clubhouse disappear. Zeke stands in the doorway, silhouetted against the light. This will be the last I see of him. It has to be.