Page 15 of Biker's Hostage

“No, I’m fine,” I murmured. I was meant to be nothing more than a game token to him, a piece he could use to get what he wanted. No matter how much he tried to hide it, there was some part of him that cared.

The apartment he took me to was bare, just a few scattered pieces of furniture, none of which went together. I planted myself on an ancient couch, perching on the edge of the cushion and staring out of the window beyond. We were back in Atwood now, though I wasn’t sure exactly where. How near was I to my father right now...?

Guilt twisted in my guts when I thought about everything that he must have been going through right now. I should have done everything I could to get out of this mess and get back to him. I couldn’t imagine how much he was torturing himself for letting this happen, but he had no idea how complicit I was in still being a part of this.

I could vaguely hear Zane in the kitchen behind me, and I turned around to see what was going on there. He was standing over the sink, and I could see a flash of bright red blood against his skin. Almost on instinct, I got to my feet and made my way toward him. I took his arm and pulled it toward me.

“What are you doing?” he asked.

“Let me,” I murmured and reached for a towel that was sitting on the edge of the sink. It looked as though this kitchen had hardly been touched at all. Whoever had lived here, they clearly hadn’t been cooking much.

I ran the tap until it was warm and wiped off a little of the blood that had pooled in a small wound on his arm. It didn’t look bad, but I still didn’t want him bleeding all over the place. I didn’t know why I cared about him so much, but there was a part of me that insisted I look after him.

I could feel him watching me as I tended to him, and I didn’t dare make eye contact with him, fearful of what it might give away, fearful of what he might see in me if I didn’t conceal myself from him well enough.

“Why are you doing this?” he asked me finally as I wrapped the towel around his arm, pressing against it lightly. I’d done a first aid course when I was in high school, and it had come in handy when some of my college friends had been drinking too hard and hurt themselves falling over on the way back from the bar. I never thought I would be using it to tend to a knife wound like this.

“I don’t know,” I admitted, finally. There was no point in lying to him. My head was a mess, especially after what happened the night before. I wanted to run from him, but I was rooted to the spot, right here, by his side. And I didn’t know why.

“Where are we, anyway?” I asked him, glancing around, gesturing to the apartment.

“My brother’s place,” he replied, finally drawing his arm away from me. My heart skipped a beat in my chest. So I had heard that right. I knew his brother was dead, and I knew he was the reason all of this had started in the first place.

“What... what happened to your brother?” I asked him softly. He let out a sigh and opened the fridge. It was full of beer—and not much else. He grabbed himself a bottle and then handed one to me. God, if I had ever needed a drink, it was now...

I popped open the beer and followed him to the living room, where he flopped down on the couch, and planted myself beside him. The door was just a few feet away, and I got the feeling I could have bolted for it right then and there and he wouldn’t have tried to stop me. But a curiosity was getting the better of me, and I needed to know what was going on in his head.

“My brother’s dead,” he told me, his voice almost cold. I wanted to reach for his hand, give it a squeeze, let him know how sorry I was, but I got the feeling he wouldn’t have liked it. He lifted the beer to his lips, and I couldn’t help but notice how his mouth glided across the top of the bottle. I shivered as I remembered how his lips had felt against mine the night before but pushed the thought aside.

“Did the... did the Dogs have something to do with it?” I prompted him, my voice hitching at the back of my throat as I forced the words out. I did my best to live in denial of what my father and his colleagues did for a living, but there was no point denying it.

He grunted. I took that for a yes. I felt so bad for him, knowing what he had lost. His actions, to some extent, made more sense to me in the context I had now. If I had lost my father, I would have done anything it took to get revenge on the people who took him for me. I wouldn’t have given a damn what it had taken. I would have made them pay.

“He lived here alone?”

“Neither of us had anyone else,” he replied, picking at the label on his beer bottle. “It was always just the two of us.”

“Not even your parents?”

“Never. They were pretty shitty parents, to be honest. Never knew how to handle themselves. Drunks. Both of them.”

“I’m sorry, Zane,” I murmured, reaching over to take his hand without thinking. “I... nobody should have to deal with that.”

He stared down at my hand for a long moment, like he didn’t know what to do with my touch right now. I got the feeling he hadn’t had many moments like this over the course of his life, people showing him gentleness.

“Fuck it, it’s fine,” he replied, shaking his head. “Plenty of people deal with worse.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you should have had to deal with all of that,” I shot back. “You were a kid. You were meant to have parents looking out for you. My dad...”

I trailed off. He glanced up at me. I could see something in his eyes, anger, maybe, but more than that—hurt, too. Hurt. The little boy who had been forced to live his life without the support of his parents, without the care he deserved, was staring back at me, and my heart ached for him.

“I’m sorry about your brother,” I finished up. He took another swig of his beer and shook his head.

“Shit, I don’t even know if I am.”

I frowned. “What do you mean?”

“You should have seen some of the shit he was involved in,” he replied. “Lombardi, that was the fucker that he was working with when it happened...”

---