Page 63 of Justice for Radar

I nodded, feeling it’d just needed to be said. We’d high fived over many a girl acting like a pair of finger cuffs for our dicks but yeah, now was definitely not the time for that. A cuddle pile might be just what the doctor ordered, though.

I opened doors until I came to hers and found her curled in a miserable ball on her side in the middle of her bed.

She looked haggard, her eyes closed, her face drawn even in sleep. Dark circles etched under her eyes and a paleness to her that her fresh Florida tan just sort of floated on top of like an oil slick on the water.

I kneeled down, and touched the side of her face, moving some of her glossy dark hair behind her ear and she flinched, shuddering as she drew in a long breath and her eyes opened. She looked at me, and blinked several times as though she was waiting for the illusion to disappear and I smiled at her. Sad for her. Wanting nothing more than to make this shit stop and for her to be safe and have the opportunity to learn to be happy again. To heal.

“Oh,” she murmured and crumbled into tears, reaching for me. I got up on the bed with her and clutched her close, as she put her face into my chest and just fucking wept with relief.

Atlas went around the bed to the other side and sandwiched her between us; cuddling up to her back and holding her close. He looked over her shoulder at me and I could see the heat in his strange eyes – not of desire, hell no, but for vengeance. He wanted to make some motherfuckers hurt as bad as I did... and we would. Maybe not by our own hand but it would be done.

I held her tight and we lay there huddled in a pile of exhaustion, mental and emotional on her part, probably more than a little mental and physical on mine and Atlas’s part. I don’t know who dropped into unconsciousness first but when I woke up in the king-sized bed, it was still with a firm grasp around my sleeping woman and my buddy looking over me at the door. I turned my head, La Croix in the doorway.

“Yer President’s been trying to reach you,” he said, and I frowned slightly and went to edge out from Jussy’s grasp.

She moaned in her sleep and held onto me tighter.

“I got it,” Atlas said softly and untangled himself from us and edged off of the bed. He went around and followed La Croix out and it was just me and Justice.

“Hey,” I murmured, pressing a kiss to her forehead. She shuddered slightly in my grasp and stretched, sucking in a deep breath and yawning.

“Hey,” she murmured, cuddling close and refusing to open her eyes. I chuckled and breathed her in and she sighed out reluctantly and asked, “What time is it?”

“Who fuckin’ knows?” I asked. “Don’t much care right now.” I held her just that little bit tighter.

“I want to be mad that you went after him, but… but I’m not,” she said and she sounded a little forlorn and definitely conflicted. I smiled above her head and shifted so I was more on my back. She laid her head on my chest.

“You’re a good person,” I said. “I understand it. Good people don’t want to hurt other people – I mean, I don’t but by the same token, I understand that sometimes that’s what it takes and I don’t feel bad for that motherfucker. Not in the slightest, and you shouldn’t either.”

“I don’t,” she said and she sounded cold which put a smile on my face. I kissed her hair and breathed out.

“Good,” I told her.

I would be lying if I said I wasn’t low-key worried about how she would fit into club life, but I think she’d reached the point of no return… law enforcement hadn’t done shit for her leading up to the big break and her subsequent attack that’d nearly killed her. The justice system had clearly fuckin’ let her down both before and after the fact and what did you do when that happened?

If you were me, it never got to that point because I, and people like me, handled shit our damn self… but for citizens like Jussy? Who didn’t see beyond the narrow margins they’d been written into; educated in, indoctrinated through, what was there?

Nothing but big, bad, scary men like her husband with no accountability. People like her, they’d been taught to fear men like me just as much – to trust in the authorities which they knew was laughable butfuck, where did you go? Where did you turn? If she took matters into her own hands and killed the motherfucker herself, she’d have the book thrown at her no matter the heinous shit he’d done to her.

She was bound by chains of silence and rules made for rich white men – or in her case, just a white man and it was bullshit. It was always bullshit, but the rules weren’t written for us, it was written to keep the old, rich, white men that had always been in power in that power. Nothing more and nothing less, and it was in conformity they kept the yoke on the masses to keep on keeping on to earn them that money and allow them to live high on the hog while they kept the rest of us fighting for scraps from their table.

The American dream was broken, the American dream was a lie, and it was good people, genuine people, like my girl who suffered for it… but she had a pack now and we were unabashed wolves in this land of fucking sheep. Fierce and hungry, and ready to rend flesh as much to eat as in defense of one of our own and as sure as I was laying here, Justice in my arms, I had claimed this woman as my own even after so short a time. That made herone of us,and when you knew, you knew, and I knew that this was meant to be.

That meant there were some motherfuckers out here that needed to answer for their shit and I would make them answer.

I had power too, and my power was a far more dangerous variety. My power lay in that I just didn’t give a fuck about the rules.

Atlas came back in the room and Justice jumped in my arms. I held her tighter and looked over.

“What’s up?” I asked.

“Some of the local chapter of the SHMC are gonna roll up,” Atlas declared. “Cutter put in the call and the local boys requested a meet.”

I nodded. “Fair,” I said.

“Ah yup.”

Atlas focused on Justice and smiled warmly. “How you doin’ baby?” he asked her.

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