Page 69 of That Girl is Trouble

“No. Guess he doesn’t. So what do you want? Why are you suddenly back? Last time we had words, you were throwing a set of keys at my face and telling me to fuck off.”

Kat steps into me, her crossed arms bumping my chest, and for the second time today, I’m having a fucking showdown with a Danforth woman.

“What’s it to you?” she asks.

I sigh. “Why you talking to me like I’m your enemy, Kat? You wanna compete for biggest asshole, I’d say the shit you pulled at the Slam makes you the winner. Your sister practically had a fucking heart attack, and I almost got my ass beat because of you.”

She arches an eyebrow. “Almost?”

“I won, didn’t I? What was that? A test? See if someone would put themselves in front of a fist to protect you?”

She doesn’t answer. Doesn’t move.

“Well, did I pass?”

“You think that was about you?”

“Wasn’t it? Or was that little visit you paid me in my shower a couple days ago about someone else?”

Kat finally drops her eyes and takes a step back, putting some distance between us. “I just wanted…”

“Wanted what?”

“I don’t know. To feel something other than this… nothingness.” Her eyes meet mine, and she wraps her arms around her torso. “Do you ever get that? Like you can’t feel? It’s like I’m… numb, I guess. To everything.”

I’m all too familiar with it, yeah. In lockup, I lived the same day over and over again. The same walls, the same sounds pounding at my ears, the same faces and iron bars. It’s enough to make a man lose his mind. So I learned to turn it off, detach, disassociate. It’s how I survived. It was only four years, but it felt like ten. But maybe it would have felt longer if I hadn’t been so good at shutting off my brain.

“Yeah,” I admit. “Yeah, I’ve felt that.”

“What do you do? How do you fix it?”

Locked up, there wasn’t much I could do but welcome the numbness. But out here, it’s rare that feeling creeps in. Living this life, leading my men, knowing that at any moment, I’m one bullet away from being put into the ground, that’s what drives me. Out here, I survive on violence and adrenaline. And as wrong as it sounds, it’s how I keep my head on straight. How I remind myself I’m still breathing.

And Kat? She’s the same. I could smell it on her the day I met her. It’s how I knew she’d be trouble, that whatever shit I pulled Jesse into, she’d be trotting right behind, ready to jump into the thick of it with the rest of us. Except Kat isn’t supposed to want this, and I sure as hell won’t be the one who drags her into it.

“Never anything good.”

Kat likes doing shit that gets her blood moving. Dangerous shit. Shit that’s only going to push her farther in the direction I should be pulling her back from. “It’s late. Come on. You can sleep in your old room.”

Sleep in her old room. I know she won’t. The girl can barely say Jesse’s name, and there’s no damn way she’ll be passing out in a bed they used to share.

Despite that though, the lie between us, she nods. So I hand her my helmet and throw a leg over my bike. She loops her arms around my stomach, and I kick into gear, then rip down the road and back through town to the clubhouse.

I park my bike and then trail behind her through the door, across the bar, and up the stairs towards that room—Jesse’s old room. Neither of us says another word.

When I’m in my bed, I make a game studying my ceiling. Waiting. Staring. I count the blades on my fan. Watch the lights flash across the walls as cars go by on the dark street below. My ears pick up every squeak and shift of the building. And then I hear it. The creak of a door. A shuffle across my living room. And I feel it. The presence of another person. My mattress dips, and there’s a pull on my sheets, a warm body sliding in next to mine.

I sigh. “No touching, Kat.”

“I know.”

“Can’t sleep?”

“He’s… everywhere up there.” She moves closer, and then her head is on my chest, hand on my stomach, hair in my face.

Time ticks by, but she doesn’t fall asleep, and neither do I.

We lie here.

---