Long Way Home

“Violet?” I’m slow asking because I’m not sure I can control my reaction if she gives an undesired answer. I’m already walking a tightrope, and I’m not the kind, at least when it comes to her, who can keep my balance. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah.”

Fear she’s lying whirls inside me. “You were screaming and then you stopped. I need to know if they hurt you.” I need to know if I’ll be able to sleep again.

Silence on her end. Each quiet second that passes causes my body temperature to rise with the growing rage.

“Violet,” I urge, barely able to keep the anger from leaking out in my voice.

“The guy in the backseat backhanded me,” she says in a small voice, as if that confession is something she should be ashamed of.

I’m going to kill them. I’m going to kill every single one. “How bad?”

“Are you okay?” She attempts to drag the conversation in another direction because she knows me. Knows I’m on the verge of losing my mind.

“Violet.”

“He hit me and we’ve been kidnapped,” she snaps. “Isn’t that bad enough?”

No. They hurt her. No part of me is okay with that.

“Are you okay?” she asks again. “They hit you. I saw it.”

And I hit them back. “Yeah, I’m good.”

Violet’s entire body quakes in a small fit and the stream of air being pushed through her lips as she tries to control herself is audible. She’s killing me, and she needs to know she’s not alone. Not physically. Not mentally. “I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault. The club’s maybe, but not yours. This is what the Terror is, Chevy. This is why I walked away.”

This is the Riot’s fault, not the Terror’s, but I’m not in the mood to argue. “I’m sorry I didn’t protect you better at the car.”

“You did exactly what I wanted you to do.”

She’s referring to protecting Stone. Violet shakes again, and I edge closer to her, wishing I could comfort her more. “I promise I’ll protect you now. I won’t let them touch you again.”

“I know you’ll try.”

I can do more than try. I lean forward, fish for the lock pick I’d stuck in my leather belt and begin the task of freeing myself from the cuffs. Can’t remember the first time I picked a lock. Cyrus said I was breaking out of baby gates and jimmying safety latches before I was two.

“Can you do it?” she whispers, so quietly I barely hear her. She’s probably frightened someone’s listening. Won’t lie, I’m itchy wondering the same. The rest of this dark room seems empty, but I won’t feel good until it’s fully explored.

“Give me a few.” I work at the handcuffs. There’s something about how my mind ticks and how my fingers move with the puzzle. The way I can hear the metal shifting. The gentle vibrations a lock gives right as it’s about to pop.

And it does pop and a much-needed adrenaline rush floods my veins. I slip off the cuffs, careful when setting them down not to create noise, then gently move my fingers until I find Violet. I make contact with her knee first, and she flinches as if that caused her pain.

Damn bastards. I skim up her leg, up her side, her arm, then to her face.

Material is wrapped around her head. I lift it off her eyes, then press on her shoulder for her to angle forward. She does, and with steady hands, I pick the lock, then set her handcuffs on the floor.

Violet’s hand catches mine and she squeezes. I thread our fingers together, lower my head and nuzzle her hair until I find her ear. Memories of doing this hundreds of times flash in my mind, but each of those times was a moment to be cherished. This—this is comfort, but it’s also survival.

“Stay here,” I whisper into her ear. “I’m going to move around the room, make sure we’re alone. See if I can feel a way to get out.”

Violet reaches up, her fingers caressing my cheek, and a pleasing shiver runs through me when her lips brush against my ear as she speaks. We haven’t been this close in months. Not even in the last few weeks of our relationship. “Let me help.”

“I want to make sure we’re alone. I need you to stay still and silent. Two of us moving around won’t help.”

She sags, resting her forehead against my temple. Can’t understand the chaos inside me. Can’t give names to the swirling emotions, but the one thing I do comprehend is the instinct to survive, the instinct to protect her. The need to gather Violet in my arms and carry her out. Yeah, I gave in earlier, but they’ll have to take me down before they reach her again.

I bunch her hair in my hand, kiss her forehead, then pull away.

There’s a buzzing under my skin as my fingertips slowly inch their way across the wall. A sense that I’m being watched. That the hourglass has been tipped and I’m running out of time. My fingers slide up and down the concrete, searching for a window, a tool, anything I can use to defend us or for a way out. With each centimeter searched, any hope I had of busting out evolves into desperation.

My heart stalls when my fingertips collide with cloth. I press and beneath it find something solid. It’s barely above my height and I run my hands along the length, then width. Excitement grows within me. It’s a window. It’s a way out.

I yank at the fabric and it tears as if nailed in, and the more I pull, the more of it gathers into my hands and falls to the floor. A tiny ray of light leaks from a crevice. Between me and freedom are wooden shutters.

A simple latch lock. I flip it, draw the shutters open, dim light floods the room and I curse as I lower my head. Bars. There’re fucking bars on the window. I grab hold of them and shake, but there’s no give. We’re stuck. Fucking stuck, and when I rise up on my toes, all I see are bushes.

I round and survey my surroundings. Hoping for another window. Hoping for another way, but all I see are two concrete walls, two walls made of drywall, the door and Violet still huddled in the corner.

She’s watching me, expectation and hope fighting on her face over the reality of our situation. Violet’s praying I have a solution, and when I meet her eyes, I mash my lips together and shake my head. My heart shreds as she lowers her head into her hands.

My fists tighten at my sides and the urge is to pound the wall, but that won’t help Violet. Won’t help me. I gotta stay smart, gotta fight the emotion. Logic is what’s going to keep us alive.

With a roll of my neck, I cross the room, slide my leather coat off my arms and offer it to her.

Violet glances up at me and my entire body seizes. Her lip is fat and blood is smeared across her cheek. Some of it from her mouth, some of it from her nose. If there was more light, I bet her cheek would be bruising. She told me she was backhanded and I was somehow able to compartmentalize that, but now...

“It’s cold in here,” Violet says, “and the jacket is yours.”

It is cold. The bitterness already biting at my arms, but I’ll be damned if I’m warm and she’s not. To avoid the argument, I drop beside her and toss the jacket like a blanket over her shoulders.

“Chevy,” she starts, but I cut her off.

“Just take it.”

Silence on her end and I feel like a dick for snapping at her. I raise my knees to rest my arms on them and stretch my fingers like doing so could release the anger, then tension. “I couldn’t stop them from taking you. I couldn’t stop them from hurting you, but I can keep you warm. Let me do this. It’s not much, but it’s all I got.”

Violet slowly turns her head in my direction, and it’s damn hard not to stare at her damaged lip. The light falling into the room is weak, but bright enough to highlight a strand or two of her red hair. I try to focus on that and how I used to lie with her and run my hand through her hair for hours. Better times. Happier times. What I sure as hell hope we can find again after we escape.

“I was going to say we could try to share your jacket.” She hesitates. “That I don’t mind being close to you.”

My brain freezes, and I hear more than what she’s saying. Hear her fear, hear there’s more to what happened in the backseat of that car, hear that she needs me.

I straighten my legs and Violet eases into me. Her shoulder, leg and arm pressed to me as she attempts to cover both of us with my jacket. I wrap my arm around her and briefly close my eyes at how soft she feels. It’s been a long time since I held her, and each night without her has been torture.

Violet rests her head on my shoulder, and she reaches up to try to make my jacket stay on my other shoulder, but it falls. “You’re not covered all the way.”

She’s covered and that’s all I care about. “I’m okay.”

“No, you aren’t,” she whispers. “You should be home. I should be home. We should be nowhere near here.”

She’s right, but instead of replying, I lean forward, slip my arm under Violet’s knees and gather her onto my lap. Violet stares at me, eyes blinking, a bit bewildered, and I shake my head slightly to let her know I’m not fighting with her. I’m not claiming some stake in our future. I just need her, maybe more than she needs me.

She exhales. It’s a long one and then she lifts her hand. I stop breathing when she brushes her fingers along my cheek. “They hit you. You’re bruising. Everywhere.”

And I’d go through each and every hit again to protect her. My only regret is that we ended up here.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t know how else to protect Brandon.”

“We did what we had to.”

Violet rests her head into the crook of my neck, and when she raises my jacket to my shoulder again, it stays. I weave my arms around her and rub my hands up and down her cold arms, almost like I’m trying to convince a dying fire to stay burning.

“Why is this happening?” Her breath tickles my neck, and I wish we were anywhere but this damp, cold prison.

“I don’t know.” Yeah, Cyrus had warned us off the road, but I don’t know why they would target Violet. Why they would target me. Odds are it’s me. My grandfather’s the president of the Terror and my uncle is the man the Riot hates the most. The Riot feels Eli stole their daughter and their granddaughter even though Meg and Emily left Eli, too.

Maybe the Riot decided to play out an eye for an eye, and I’m the closest Eli has to a blood child in the state. “Guess it was me they were after and you were caught up in it.”

“The Riot hasn’t kidnapped anyone before.”

Beat the hell out of members of our club? Yeah. Killed people belonging to our club? That, too. But I agree, at least from my limited knowledge, kidnapping wasn’t their style. “If they wanted us dead, we would be.”

She snorts. “You need to work on your comforting skills.”

My lips slightly turn up. “Noted.”

She settles further into me, her arm curving around my body. “What do we do now?”

Not much. We stay alive and... “We wait.”

“For?”

She’s not going to like my answer. “The club will figure this out. Eli and Cyrus will get us.”

The way her body tenses under mine is a confirmation of her disbelief that the club will make the situation better. I want her to have faith in them. I want Violet to be part of our family again.

“Waiting is its own form of torture, isn’t it?” she says. “I’m not sure if waiting and thinking of all the horrible things that can happen is worse than what will actually be done.”

I cling tighter to her as my own demons and nightmares awaken. The what-if’s messing with my mind are the torture she speaks of. Anything happening to me isn’t the problem. I’m plagued with thoughts of what will happen to her.

Fear.

I’ve never been scared by much. Never believed in bogeymen living under the bed. Magic and sorcery belong to people like me who have fast hands and can deceive the human eye. It’s hard to believe in evil locked in closets when you realize at an early age it’s all made-up stories to explain what people think is unexplainable.

It’s not unexplainable—only mere men manipulating shadows and mirrors.

But there’s a bitterness in my mouth now. A metallic taste I don’t like much. A coldness in my blood and a freezing in my bones at the thought of what the men outside that door could do to Violet.

“I’m scared,” she whispers.

Me, too.

I strain to hear anything beyond her breaths and my heartbeat in my ears. Occasionally there are footsteps overhead. Muffled voices. The sound of the ascending and descending of the old wooden staircase. Violet curls closer into me whenever there is movement outside the door, and I keep up a steady caress up and down her arm.

My gut tells me we’re in here for a while. Tells me that they want us to be tormented by our own thoughts before the next round.

“Do you think Brandon’s okay?” she eventually asks.

I pray he is. I pray harder he kept his courage and called Eli for help. Faster the club gets involved, the faster we’ll be out of this mess. “Yeah. Your brother is a fighter.”

“No, he’s not. He’s scared of the world and most everything in it.”

I know, and Violet loves him more than she loves anyone or anything else in the world. Family first is a priority I understand. “He’s all right. You saved him tonight.”

“We saved him.”

We. It’s not a word Violet has used in a long time for us. It’s a soft kiss and a ripping of a Band-Aid at the same time.

“They took my bracelets and my necklaces. They also took Dad’s watch.”

I hug her tighter. The bracelets and necklaces—it’s not their worth that means something to her, it’s who gave them to her, the sentiment behind the gift. Some from me, some from Cyrus, most of them from her father. Losing them and her father’s watch would be like losing a part of her soul.

“We’ll get them back.”

She doesn’t argue, but doesn’t agree either. “You think it’s after midnight?”

After midnight. Damn. This isn’t right. None of this is right. “Happy birthday, Violet.”

“Eighteen,” she whispers.

We had so many plans. “Eighteen.”

“I want to go home.”

“We will.” I’ll walk through hell to make sure it happens. “Why don’t you try to get some sleep?”

“I’m not sure I can.”

“Try anyhow. At least doze. We both know you can be awake and asleep at the same time. Do that. There’s no telling how long we’re in this for and we have to keep sharp.”

Violet nestles into me like she might try to sleep and I move my hand from caressing her arm to rubbing her head. That always made her sleepy, always made her fall asleep in my arms.

“Thank you for sacrificing yourself for Brandon,” she murmurs. “He loves you.”

“I know.” A lot like he loves her. A lot like I love her, too.

Violet begins to sing. Not loudly, softly, under her breath. She has a beautiful voice. When I was a kid, I used to think that’s what angels would sound like. Violet used to sing all the time when we were younger, but less and less as we got older.

Last time I heard her sing was the night her dad died. I held her that night, too. We lay in her bed, her head on my chest, and she sang in a soft tone until she fell asleep.

Broke my heart then. Breaks my heart now. But like then, I’m helpless and do only what I can, hold her and pray.

Violet

THE BEAMS OF sun warm my skin and I stretch lazily on the blanket. I’m at my favorite place on earth—the back field of my house. Walk long enough and eventually I’d wander onto Cyrus’s property. Dad would let the grass grow high here and he’d have it cut several times throughout the summer and sell the hay, but he would leave this small portion untouched for me.

I loved the wildness of free-growing grass, trees with long limbs and branches heavy with leaves. Beside me, Chevy’s propped up on one elbow and he’s watching me. Chevy always watches me.

“I’m dreaming,” I say.

He smiles, shifting from fourteen to seventeen, then back to fourteen. Can’t decide which one I like better. He’s handsome either way, but at fourteen, Chevy couldn’t make up his mind on whether to hold my hand. Confused about how he felt, since we had been raised to love each other as siblings, but we were more than brother and sister, more than friends. The two of us always shared a special connection.

At seventeen, he broke my heart. I blink and Chevy is sixteen and I loved sixteen. He did way more than hold my hand then and we were light-years away from him shattering my soul.

I’ve always been able to do this. Be aware when I’m dreaming, but there’s a cost to it. Sometimes I become paralyzed. Powerless to move my body. My mind awake, my muscles asleep and I’ll panic at the thought of never being in control again. To never speak or walk or run.

I hope this isn’t one of those dreams. To be sure it isn’t, I focus hard and I’m able to twitch a finger—not in the dream, but in reality. Coldness rushes into the heat of the day and I pull back from my conscious mind and return to the dream, but a sense of dread washes through me.

“We aren’t safe,” I say to Chevy. “I shouldn’t be asleep.”

“I first kissed you here,” he replies like that’s an appropriate response, but it’s a dream and I go with it.

“We did a lot more than just kiss here.” Happiness swirls within me at the memories of stolen moments I thought would last forever. We did a lot of firsts in this back field. Too many to count. None of it rushed. All of it slow. Teeny, tiny baby steps because I was never ready for too much too fast and Chevy was patient, always patient as if he was just as scared as I was to go any further than we had before.

Chevy’s smile widens and it’s that mischievous dimpled one that continuously dared me to go along with one of his crazy schemes. Smuggling hot cookies out of Olivia’s kitchen when we were seven. Lifting Cyrus’s Reign of Terror cut when we were ten. Pickpocketing Eli’s keys so we could go joyriding in his truck before we had our licenses.

Can’t take much credit. Chevy was the mastermind with the fast hands. I was the lovely assistant who helped with the distraction, but I loved being part of the action.

I reach out, stretching because I miss touching him so much, but his smile fades and his expression darkens. “Violet, wake up.”

Fear seizes my lungs as storm clouds gather in the sky. Chevy grabs ahold of my arms and yells, “Wake up!”

My eyes snap open, a haze of morning light barely lightens the basement room and the air is knocked out of me as I’m being shoved to the concrete corner. Scuffed black boots in front of me, and when I look up, Chevy has his back to me, arms out, the handcuffs dangling from his fingers.

Nausea races up my throat. They’re returning and this is all Chevy has for weapons.

I push off the floor, and as I stand, Chevy presses back so I’m flush against the wall. “Stay behind me.”

I rub my eyes to wake myself as four men enter the room. All of them from last night. Fiend marches in behind them like a victorious general. Two men fan to the left, the other two to the right. Fiend stays near the door in the middle and sizes Chevy up. “I heard you were wily, but I had bet you couldn’t bust out of cuffs. Guess I was wrong.”

Chevy says nothing and Fiend makes a show of leaning as he looks at me. “Have a nice sleep?”

I don’t break eye contact as I follow Chevy’s lead on staying silent.

Fiend hikes up the waist of his pants. He has a belt on, but his gut is overbearing. “This is how it’s going to play out. McKinley, you’re coming with us. We need to talk about your club.”

“I’m not a member, and even if I were, I don’t speak for the Terror.”

“Your grandfather is the president of the Terror. I have faith you can handle this negotiation.”

“Nothing I do or say holds any weight in the club.”

“I disagree. President’s grandson does hold weight. Especially when it’s his life on the line.”

“You got something to say, say it,” Chevy spits out. “But I’m not leaving her.”

Fiend’s eyebrows rise. “You mean Violet? We know who she is and who her father was to your club. Just like we know who you are and what she means to you.”

My gaze snaps to Fiend’s and he catches it, then winks. Chevy shifts, obviously uncomfortable with the exchange. Uneasiness gathers in my stomach in rolling waves. In the car, Fiend kept reaching over like he was going to pull down my shirt. Twice he almost succeeded. He stole my bracelets. Stole my necklaces. Stole Dad’s watch. Touching parts of me I wished he hadn’t in the process. I suck in a breath in order to contain the dry heave.

I went full-on crazy when he touched me and I kicked the hell out of him. Then Fiend hit me. Several times. I tried to fight back, but he was bigger than me and I thought he was going to keep going until I died, but the man in the front seat barked an order at Fiend to back off, for me to shut up, and the asshole retreated to his side of the backseat and went silent.

It’s funny how my body throbbed, but I felt no pain. How blood trickled against my skin, but there wasn’t an ache. I don’t know what any of that was about, but I do know both men scared me, I’m still scared and I want more than anything to go home.

I didn’t tell Chevy all that really happened. He’s already sacrificed enough to save my brother. I’m not sure if I’ll ever tell Chevy. Not sure if I make it out of this I’ll ever tell anyone. I just want to leave here and pretend none of this happened.

“This can be easy,” Fiend says. “You come with us and she stays here. If it becomes hard, it’s because you made it hard. Anything that happens to you is by your choice.”

Such a bullshit answer. “My choice is to leave.”

Fiend offers me a fake sympathetic shrug. “Not my call to make. But I’ll tell you what, if it makes you feel better, I’ll stay behind to keep you company. Finish what we started last night.”

Heat rushes to my face, dizziness overwhelms me and, this time, I bend over when I can’t contain the dry heave. An arm around my waist, and when I glance up, dark concerned eyes meet mine. It’s Chevy, and as he takes in my reaction, stone-cold anger replaces the concern. He quickly returns his attention to the men who stepped closer at the lowering of his defense.

“I’m okay,” I whisper and shove him away from me. To protect him. To protect us.

“Let’s go, McKinley,” Fiend demands.

Chevy stretches out his arm again. “No.”

Fiend nods, the men are in motion and Chevy backs up, pinning me to the wall again. Fiend reaches to his back and all the air rushes out of my body. There’s a gun in his hand and he’s pointing it at us—at Chevy.

“Move or I’ll shoot you,” Fiends says like he’s bored. “That leaves her alone with us. Your choice.”

My pulse pounds violently in my veins. Chevy promised to protect me, but I don’t want him dead. “Go with them.”

“No.”

“Go with them, Chevy,” I say through gritted teeth.

“I’m not leaving you alone.”

And I need him alive. If he cooperates, they’ll let him live. It’s obvious they have a message for Chevy to give and I’m just the person they’re using to control him.

The guy to the left lunges at Chevy. He raises his arm to fight, leaving an opening, and I watch as Fiend keeps the gun trained on Chevy, but aims it lower, to Chevy’s leg. Maybe Fiend’s going to injure Chevy, ruining his chances of walking, playing football, and if that doesn’t bring him to submission, Fiend will then torture me to make Chevy break.

I’m stronger than this. Bigger than this. If this is how it’s going to be, I’ll go down fighting. I’ll be the wild and crazy girl my father loved. My throat burns at the thought of him. At the thought of leaving behind my mother, my brother. Not sure how the two of them will exist without me there to push them along.

The club will take care of them. The club might never let them learn how to survive on their own, how to be their own person, so my mother and brother will never thrive, but they’ll eat, they’ll sleep and I hope to God the club will learn their lesson from what happens to me and Chevy and they’ll protect the people I love the most.