Page 104 of Straight to Me

He looks off to the distance.

“What do bad men do?” He doesn’t reply and I instantly regret asking. “Sorry, Jack. Ignore me.”

“Don’t apologise. It’s just... hard to talk about, that’s all.”

The same line that creased VP’s brow when he tried opening up to me appears on Jack now.

“The dead body, that you and Dean found?” I ask, hazarding a guess.

Jack looks directly at me, eyes wider than they were. “He told you?”

The way he asks that makes me scrunch my face.

VP hadn’t really told me anything when I asked what happened. I watched him replaying something over in his mind and when I asked if he was okay, he said he was fine. I knew he was lying, but judging by Jack’s similar reaction, it’s clear that whatever happened, whatever they saw, it still haunts them both now.

“He only said that the two of you found a body.”

Jack nods slowly before sipping his beer. “I don’t think he’s told anyone outside of the club that.”

I look at him, understanding what he’s saying.

He places his beer back on the table and I take a sip from my bottle, waiting for him to continue. “It was evil, what the killers had done. Pure, fucking, evil Mads. We couldn’t move. We were in shock at what we were looking at.”

Jack looks past me as if picturing it right in front of him. “Some Sodom Saviour prick jumped out on us, pointed a gun straight at Deano’s head. It was kill first or let him be killed.”

My heart starts wildly beating in my chest.Kill first or let VP be killed.A heavy knot tightens in my stomach as Jack’s words sink in.

“Sodom Saviours, they killed the person you found? What did you do? Were you okay?”

The questions come thick and fast. I pinch my lips, aware that I’m becoming anxious as I hear what they faced all those years ago.

“Not really. Took us a long time to learn to live with what we saw that day. Changed us both. Deano moved back to England not long after. Broke me watching him leave, but it was for the best.”

There are a million questions I want to ask but as I look at Jack, he shifts in his seat uncomfortable.

“You saved him.”

“He’d have done the same for me.”

I don’t doubt that for a second.

I sip my beer looking towards the outside area without a word. I can’t help but picture seeing Jack killing the Saviour before the man could shoot VP. It seems so far away from any reality I knew before I met him.

If I hadn’t witnessed how they tried to run us off the road yesterday with my own eyes, I would say it was too farfetched; that men couldn’t hate each other as much as these men do.

"There he is,” Jack says. I focus my eyes as VP appears in view, his feet now firmly back on the ground.

By one edge of the patio, smoke rises from a grill being lit. At the same time, roughly six to ten women arrive through the main door, all dressed in various skimpy clothes.

They look very different to how me and the women behind the bar are dressed. They’re here for, entertainment purposes, I should imagine.

As if reading my mind, Jack speaks up, “Looks like the party’s about to crank up a notch.” His face lights up as a woman in just a bra, thong and heels struts past where we sit.

Like the true people-watcher that I am, I can’t help but stare as these ladies canvas the floor, spying men showing any interest in them.

A loud cackle of laughs has me turn towards the patio area. As I look up, VP sees me sat with Jack. His face lights up as our eyes meet. Jack catches me smiling back at VP, his attention flitting between the two of us.

VP excuses himself from outside and then walks straight up to me, our eyes never leaving each other. He places his beer on the table and takes my hand, pulling me slowly to my feet.

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