Page 22 of Ink

He squints his bright blue eyes at me and spits onto the floor. “You should teach that brown bitch how to keep her legs closed because that kid of hers doesn’t look anything like you.”

I don’t even think. I lose all thought. My fist meets his nose and I hear and feel the bone crunch under my fingers. I don’t even wait before I hit him again in the mouth. Blood instantly fills his mouth. I hit him a third time and his lip splits open. I poise my fist to strike again but before I go to his body, Griz steps up beside me and lays a hand on my shoulder. “I have to ask him some questions.” He stresses his importance. “He needs to be able to talk to me and Prez.” He pauses and I can see he’s annoyed. “Doesn’t want us killing him. We’re to leave him as a final message in the hope that they back off before it turns into a full-out war between the clubs.”

I give him an incredulous eye. “Clearly, I think we’ve passed the final message stage. They shot one of our members and beat up on our women but we’re to only beat up this mother fucker?”

Griz grimaces. “We are to do what Prez says. We might not always agree but we must always comply.” Griz eats, breathes, and shits for the club. That sentence is the most he will ever say about how he might have other opinions about what we should be doing. That’s one reason why he’s our enforcer. Prez trusts him completely and he’s as big as a fuckin’ bear.

I take a deep breath and try to calm down. I close my eyes and nod. It’s the best that I can do. I won’t voice my opinions anymore because they’ll fall on deaf ears. I look around the room and I can see the torn expressions on my brothers’ faces. Rider has his hands shoved in his pockets and leaning against a shelf. He’s uncomfortable but I think he feels like he caused all of this due to his incident with their club friend back in December. Artemis could care less because he doesn’t have any skin in the game. He’s been single forever and most of the time I think he’s in the club just to attract a wider audience because I ain’t ever seen him trying to get pussy at club events. He has no family and his only friends are his brothers in the club.

I look down at my hand and I see I’ve split a knuckle. I can’t tell how bad it’s bleeding considering my fist is also covered in their enforcer's blood. I look back to Griz as I start to walk toward the door. “I’m done with him then. If it was up to me I’d flay his skin off with a rusty knife but I’ll tow the fucking line. Next time don’t get me worked up thinking I can beat the shit out of him to only let me give him a few taps.”

With that I grab my cut off the stool and stride past Artemis at the door, slamming it behind me. Hammer, who's standing near the front door, turns and looks at me. “They put a leash on you already?”

“Yep.”

“Yeah, I figured. Prez likes to talk a big game when he’s in front of the club but he doesn’t want this blowing up. He’s got too much on the line. He doesn’t want it all going to shit.”

Not in the mood to chit-chat, I walk by him and pause at the front door. “Yeah, well some of us have different perspectives on what it means to be a member of the MC.” With that, I walk out the door and get on my motorcycle to go back to Carmen and Lucia, the two most important people in my life, and the reason why I’m grateful I didn’t do something that would land me right back in prison.

Carmen

I glance at the clock: four minutes past five in the morning. I can’t sleep—tossing and turning as endless scenarios play through my head of what happened when Ink walked out that door. Would he do something reckless? Something he can’t take back? Something he can’t come back from? What an idiot I would be to turn my entire life upside down for a person who went to jail mere weeks later, not to mention how my parents would react. I stare at the ceiling until specks of light start to appear across the white surface, mocking me.

I know it’s early but I reach for my phone and shoot Rayleighn a text message.

I hit the send button and truly don’t expect to get a reply. I’m about to set the phone back down but then I see those three familiar dots letting me know she’s awake and typing. I sit up and rest my back on the headboard.

I breathe a sigh of relief, feeling better knowing they are together. It shouldn’t help—it’s not as if Rider isn’t just as capable of getting into trouble, but maybe cooler heads will prevail if they are in a group. I want to keep texting for my sound of mind, but Ray has to be just as tired as I am, and she has Colton and work. I chew on my lip and then my phone buzzes in my hand.

I have nothing encouraging to say in response, so I lay in bed playing on my phone until I give up the ruse that I’ll be sleeping at all. I have two hours before I need to get Lucia up for school and go to work, so I get dressed and go downstairs to start breakfast. I love Ink’s kitchen. It’s spacious, has good lighting, there’s a breakfast bar for Lucia to sit at while I cook. She even helped make cookies over the weekend.

Since I have no idea when Ink will be back, I decide to bake a breakfast casserole. I’d found the recipe online weeks ago before everything got crazy and never got around to trying it. I pull it up on my phone and start searching his refrigerator for the necessary ingredients. I don’t know how long it takes me to locate everything I need but soon enough all the ingredients were laid out on the counter. He doesn’t have any sausage so I have to substitute for bacon but that’s okay with me. Beggars can’t be choosers.

It occurs to me while I’m stirring everything together that I am doing exactly what my mother would do. If she is worried or stressed out—she cooks or cleans. There’s a pang in my chest as I think about all the cakes she’s made when she’s fretted over my brother and me. We’re so similar—I wish she could see that before she sees how we’re different.

I shake my head and look for a pan and cover it with foil. I have no idea if Ink is big on cooking but he has everything necessary to be a good cook. Maybe he has secret ambitions of being a chef. As I clean up I create a whole alternate life where this huge guy meticulously powders pastries and whips meringue. The oven beeps to signal that it is ready for the casserole to go in. I place it on the top shelf and as I close the oven door, I hear footsteps coming up the front porch.

A quick glance at my phone tells me it is six fifteen a.m. Ink has an app on his phone that allows him to see who is at his front door on his security camera but he hasn’t shown me how to access that yet. As quiet as a mouse, I step to the front door to get a look out the peephole. When I see Ink lumbering up to the front door, I punch the security code into the alarm, unlock the deadbolt and swing open the door.

The first thing I notice is his hand covered in blood. His t-shirt has a smattering of blood on it and it’s impossible to know if it’s his or someone else’s. I want to know what happened, but I don’t want to ask. If he wants to tell me, he will. He said before he left it was club business and I knew enough from being around Rayleighn that you didn’t ask more than you should. So while I assess his appearance, I keep my mouth shut and usher him into the house. I run back to the kitchen and get a clean washcloth with soap and water.

When I turn back around, Ink has taken off his motorcycle boots and is sitting at the breakfast bar watching my movements. I walk towards him and stretch my hand out to take his in mine. “Let me see your hand.”

Without question, he lays his hand on the countertop for me to see. I take his hand lightly into mine and proceed to gently wash away the blood while looking to find the source of the cut. His knuckles are split and while the gashes didn’t look too deep, I’m no doctor. He sits there in silence watching me and only winces once when the soap hit the open cut. I rinse off the soap and rest his hand back on the counter. “We need to close up that cut. I’ll get the first aid kit from the bathroom. I don’t think you need stitches but if it doesn’t stop bleeding you might.” I go around the breakfast bar over to the bathroom where I had seen the first aid kit.

He snakes his arm out with the good hand and wraps it around my waist, pulling me towards him. I bury my face in the crook of his neck, inhaling his natural scent. He smelled like sweat, musky earth from riding his motorcycle, and a hint of mint. I want to be upset with him for scaring and worrying me but I’m too relieved that he’s home. I wrap my arms around his waist and squeeze.

“Sweetheart, I’m okay. My hand is nothing. You should see the other guy.” He laughs but with little enthusiasm.

I tense waiting to see if he will continue. I can feel his warm breath on me as he lets out a deep sigh and rests his chin lightly on my head. “Took care of the man who held you down that night. One down, one to go.”

I’m not going to lie. It’s hot as hell that my man went and found one of the men who wronged me. I’m not one of those wilting flower types of people that were like Oh they’ll learn their lesson or some shit. I believe in karma and now karma has a name: Ink. The thought of that big, burly man getting the shit beat out of him for scaring me and threatening my child well—that’s what he gets. I’m just happy to know that Ink hadn’t killed him because while I am very much an eye for an eye I don’t want Ink to end up in any kind of trouble. I’m sure beating a man probably constituted enough to get in trouble with the cops but these weren’t the type of men to take their problems to the law. They handled it amongst themselves.

“Don’t you worry. That other fucker’s days are numbered. The club is working on it.”

I raise my head to look at him. “Ink, please. I love the fact that you want to rip these men apart with your bare hands but please, I need you. Lucia has loved every minute that you’ve spent with her and she’s becoming attached and frankly, so am I. I don’t want you to get ripped away from us because you felt you needed to avenge the wrongs that were done to me. I’d be ok if you stopped. If you didn’t keep searching for him.”

His arms around me squeeze a little harder. “Sweetheart, listen to me. You and that little girl upstairs are my life now. Anyone who hurts you or Lucia will have to answer to me and I’ll be damned if they don’t pay for what they did.”

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