The shotgun in my hand.
My mother’s blood against the white of the side of the house.
I gasped as the photos began to stack up higher and higher, filling my brain with images I never wanted to see again. This couldn’t be real. I had to be dead. Mama was right. I was going to hell. Because that’s exactly where it felt like I was.
My stomach rolled. Acid and bile rose in my throat. I covered my mouth with my hand.
“Hey! You still in there? Come back,” Bear asked, sounding like a far away echo as the pictures kept flashing in my brain.
A river of blood.
So much blood.
Bear grabbed hold of my shoulders and began shaking me. “Whose blood? What the fuck are you talking about?”
“I killed my mother!” I blurted, leaning over the side of the tub just in time to heave the little I had left in my stomach into the porcelain toilet. “That’s why…that’s why I came to see you.” I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand, opening the scab on my lip, fresh blood and vomit streaked my skin. “I…I killed her.”
Bear turned the shower off and leaned over me, grabbing his phone off the top of the toilet tank. “Where?” he asked, pressing a button on the phone. The screen lit up and he held it to his ear. “Damn it girl. Where?”
“Where what?” I asked into the toilet.
“Where? As in where is your mom’s body? Where is she right fucking now?” he asked angrily, sliding me forward so he could stand up.
My mother’s body.
“Uh. Um she’s…” I said, trying to catch my breath long enough to not be sick again. “Home. She’s home. In Jessep.” Without the hot water against my skin I started to shake violently. The skin on my fingers ached they were so pruned.
“Ray, is King up there?” he barked into the phone. “Tell him to get his ass down here.” He pressed a button on the phone and tossed it onto the counter. He stood, lifting me up under my shoulders as he stepped over the rim of the tub and onto the tile. He closed the lid on the toilet and set me down on it. Tearing a towel from the wall rack he tossed it to me and I immediately wrapped it around my shoulders.
“Your jeans are all wet,” I said flatly, staring at the soaked through dark denim sitting low on Bear’s hips, probably lower than they usually did with the weight of the water pulling them down further. There wasn’t a spot on his chest or arms that hadn’t been touched by the needle of a tattoo gun. Colorful and vibrant against his smooth muscular skin.
“Nurse said to put you under warm water if you freaked the fuck out, so I made a run for the shower,” he said. “Didn’t think much about what I was wearing.” He leaned over to pick me up off the toilet and I waved him off, freeing my arm from the towel I rewrapped it under my arms to cover my breasts.
“I can walk,” I assured him.
I stood up, shaky at first, holding onto the counter for stability. “I got it,” I said again, this time saying it more to convince myself when my knees buckled. “Just need a sec is all.” Bear growled and bent down, slinging my right arm over the back of his shoulder. “I said I got it!” I yelled, although clearly I hadn’t got anything.
“Fucking stubborn, bitch,” Bear muttered, walking me out of the bathroom and into a small bedroom. He sat me on the edge of the mattress and went back into the bathroom.
The door opened and a man appeared, his eyebrows knitted together, I could only assume this was the King person Bear had called. Short dark hair, a dark tight v-neck t-shirt stretched against his muscular chest. He was a huge wall of man. At least six feet tall, although Bear was about his height or even taller. He reached overhead and grabbed onto the molding of the door, his biceps and shoulders rippled as he leaned into the room. He was also covered in tattoos but whereas Bear was covered, this guy still had a few spots of bare skin visible amongst the ink. Leather studded thick bracelets wrapped around his forearms. He released the molding and folded his arms over his chest, his new position revealing the buckles, it was then I realized they weren’t bracelets or cuffs at all, but belts. His skin was dark and tanned, his eyes a unique fluorescent green.
He didn’t look at me. Not once.
“What do you need?” The man asked Bear as he came out of the bathroom, still shirtless but buttoning up a dry pair of jeans. He slicked back his wet hair with his hand.
“Gotta go to Jessep. I need you to help me stock up. I’m taking the bread truck. Too risky to ride,” Bear said, slinking past King he walked out of the room then reappeared a moment later.
“Cleanup?” King asked. “That why she’s here?” The slight chin tip in my direction, the only acknowledgement of my presence.
Cleanup? What’s a cleanup?
Every instinct in my body had told to me seek him out, but I didn’t think about what it was I was really asking of him.