Twenty Eight

Twenty-Eight

Ana

M ama always used to tell me that, at times, I’d engage my mouth before I put my brain into gear: speak before I’d had time to think. Not often, but sometimes. Everything I’d said to Joel the other day, was that one of those times? Maybe. Maybe not. But it needed saying. I’m tired of pretending shit isn’t happening when it’s almost constant now. He touches me and I shiver. One kiss from him and my head spins. When we fucked it was like nothing I’ve ever felt before, he’s changing me. And I like that that’s happening. I like that this new me is out and living this life I didn’t choose but am slowly getting used to. But I do have choices. They told me I had none, once upon a time, but they were wrong. Nobody has come for me. Nobody has, to my knowledge, tried to kill me. But, at the same time, nobody here has sought to seek any kind of retribution for what happened to my mama. And the old me, she didn’t fight hard enough to make sure that retribution happened, because the old me was confused and scared: she didn’t have a loud enough voice. The new me is a very different woman.

“Where’s Skip?” I ask Kit, who’s leaning against the doorpost of the open clubhouse door, smoking a joint.

“Chapel, I think. Why?” He takes a drag on the joint and offers it to me. I decline. “You okay?”

“I’m fine, thanks.”

I walk past him, into the clubhouse. The air is thick with the smell of smoke and stale beer: rock music playing at way too loud a level for this time in the morning.

“Ana?” Kit shouts after me, but I ignore him. I make my way to the back of the clubhouse, down the dimly-lit corridor to the chapel at the far end of the building, going straight inside, not bothering to knock.

“Jesus Christ, Ana, what the fuck are you doing?” Skip jumps up from his chair at the head of the table. A huge, slightly ridiculously ornate chair that’s very different from all the others that sit around this over-sized, elaborate piece of wooden furniture. “You can’t just walk in here.”

“I think I just did, though.”

He leans back against the table and crosses his arms, his eyes slightly narrowed. He’s actually a handsome guy, Skip Larsen. Older than Joel by a good few years, his salt n’ pepper, just-a-little-too-long hair and neat beard giving him a hard edge, but his dark eyes are, behind the coldness they often display, kind. The man he portrays himself as, and the man he really is, I think they may be two very different people.

“What do you want, Ana?”

“I believe you loved my mama.”

He narrows his eyes a little further. “Well, that’s good to hear. I’m sorry you ever doubted it.”

“But she would’ve wanted me to live my own life.”

“Okay. What exactly are you getting at here?”

“Joel told me, about you wanting to leave the club.”

His face clouds over slightly, his eyes darkening. “It wasn’t Joel’s place to tell anyone anything.”

“It is, when decisions involving me are being made behind my back.”

He’s trying hard to keep his expression stoic, but there are flashes of anger in those dark eyes of his. I don’t care. Joel was right to tell me. Nobody gets to decide what happens to me, not anymore.

“And what the fuck did Joel say, exactly?”

“You want to take me with you, when you leave. Is that right?”

He drops his gaze, keeps his arms crossed, but I see his shoulders tense. “Sofia wouldn’t want you to stay here, Ana. She wouldn’t want that.”

He looks at me, and I shake my head. “She isn’t here, though. Is she?”

“She’d want me to look after you.”

“And that’s a very noble thing you’re offering to do, but in reality you don’t know what she would’ve wanted.”

“She wouldn’t have wanted this for you, Ana!” He pulls himself away from the table, uncrossing his arms, and the anger is more evident now. But he doesn’t scare me. He’d never hurt me, I know that. I believe that.

“Maybe not.” I keep my voice steady. Calm. I keep my gaze fixed on his. “But I want to be here, now.”

“Why?” he asks, even though he already knows the answer. “Why do you suddenly want to stay when you’ve spent months threatening to walk away from this? Threatening to run?”

“You know why.”

He turns his head away for a second, running a hand along the back of his neck. “Fuck!”

“I want to be with him, Skip. He wants to be with me, and you have no right telling him to back off. I’m not a child. Don’t treat me like one.”

“I’m trying to keep you fucking safe, don’t you get that?”

“I can look after myself.”

“You don’t know this life, Ana.”

“I’m a fast learner.”

“Jesus…”

I walk around the room, running my fingertips over the cold, dark, wooden table. “So, this is where you make all those important decisions, huh?”

When he looks at me this time there’s a hint of confusion on his face. But he doesn’t say anything.

“Why haven’t you gone after the people who killed my mama?”

“Because it’s complicated.”

I stare at him: let a couple of beats pass. “Is that some kind of stock answer you men give to people like me to try and make us shut up?”

“What the fuck are you talking about, Ana?”

“I want retribution, Skip. For my mama’s death. For the death of her unborn baby. Your unborn baby. My brother or sister.”

I see a flicker of something cross his face, an emotion I’m not sure this man lets himself feel too often, but he’s feeling it now.

“You want it too, right? You want them to pay for what they did? What they took from me. What they took from you.”

I don’t need him to say the words, I can see it all in his face. “Of course I do,” he says quietly. “But it isn’t that simple.”

“Why not?”

He turns his head away again, his hand back rubbing the nape of his neck. It’s almost a nervous reaction, is there something he isn’t telling me?

“Why did you change your hair, Ana? The way you dress, your makeup, it’s all changed. Why did you do that?”

“I needed to put my old life behind me. I needed to lay the old me to rest before I could finally move on.”

“And you’ve done that now, have you? You’ve moved on?”

“I’m still here, aren’t I?” I take a breath. “No more babysitters, Skip. No more shadowing me everywhere I go, no getting people to keep an eye on me, that’s finished.”

“Hey, missy, you don’t get to make the fucking rules around here.”

“Why do you care so much anyway, if you’re not going to be President for much longer?”

He looks genuinely thrown. He’s not used to people talking back to him, and especially not women, I get that, but it’s time I found my voice.

“You’re just like your mama, do you know that?”

This time, when our eyes lock, the darkness has gone in his. The kindness is back. For a moment or two. And it’s all I can do not to let the tears that are threatening fall, but I don’t. I blink them back and hope he didn’t see that split second of weakness.

“I want to be able to go and visit her grave without having to ask permission. I want to be able to go for a walk without Kit or Cady or Jep having to accompany me. I want Freja to be able to leave me alone in the house safe in the knowledge that I’ll still be there when she gets back. I’m not going anywhere, Skip.”

“Come on, Ana…” he sighs, and I know I’m pushing him. But I need to do this. I need to be strong.

“I want you to get that revenge: retribution, whatever you want to call it. I want you to get that, Skip. For mama.”

“I’m going to get it, Ana, don’t you worry. It’s happening.”

He means that. Whatever he said about it being complicated, I know he’ll do whatever is necessary, that’s one thing I can be sure of.

“But I want you to think about coming with me, when I leave.”

“Is that a condition?”

“No. But staying here, it isn’t safe. It isn’t where you should be–”

“It’s where I want to be.”

“It isn’t safe. Ana, you need to listen to me. There are things going down that could mean shit gets a whole lot more dangerous around here, so when I say it isn’t safe, I’m not doing that just for effect. I mean it.”

“And you can say it a thousand times, I still won’t change my mind.”

He walks over to the window: looks out of it. “He isn’t good for you, Ana. That’s why I told him to back off.”

“And you had no right to do that.”

He turns back around. “I love you like a daughter, you know that, right? You’re my fucking family. I’m trying to protect you, that’s all.”

“I get that, I do, but it still doesn’t give you the right to decide who I get to spend time with. And I know you care, and I love that you do, I’m grateful for everything you’ve done for me. You kept me safe when I needed to be looked after, but I don’t need that anymore. I just need to be able to live this new life I’ve been forced to live, the way I want to live it.”

“There was a time when you would’ve done anything to escape.”

“And that time’s gone. It’s passed.”

“Because you and Joel fucked?”

I don’t respond to that. It doesn’t warrant a response. And he gets that, and sighs, and the look on the face tells me everything. He can’t argue anymore. Can’t fight this.

“Are you really leaving?”

He nods, resignation taking over every inch of him, his body language is loud and real. “I can’t do it anymore, Ana. I just thought you and I… I thought we could go do something better. Start a life somewhere new, maybe Norway or Sweden, I don’t know. Anywhere you want to, really.”

“You’ll still be my family, Skip. You leaving, that doesn’t mean I’m saying goodbye, I don’t want that.”

“You don’t?”

I shake my head, and he smiles, and it’s obvious now that this man really is nice and kind beneath this hard exterior he’s created.

“I still want you to come with me. Joel taking over as President, it puts a bigger target on his back, and if you two…” He stops talking: turns away again. “He’s older than you, Ana.”

“Yeah, I know, I can count. And it’s fourteen years, Skip. It’s nothing.”

He faces me. Comes toward me. “You know some of the things he’s done…”

“Don’t do that, Skip. Please. I get that there are things going on that I don’t need to see. Don’t need to know about. But doing this, it really won’t change my mind.”

“Do you love him?”

“No, I don’t love him, it’s too soon for anything like that.”

“So, you’re making these decisions on the fact you’ve slept together a couple of times, and you’re hedging your bets on some kind of happy-ever-after?”

“Don’t be fucking patronizing.”

“You need to watch your mouth, kiddo.”

I take a step back. He’s gone from kind and understanding to angry and cold in the blink of an eye. But it’s frustration, that’s all it is. He doesn’t like being challenged, because people have spent too much time being scared to do that. Scared to challenge him. My mama tried. I’m trying, too.

“I’m sorry.” He sighs, heavily, leaning back against the table, his fingers gripping the edge. “I’m sorry, I’m just… I feel defeated.” He shrugs, and I lean back against the wall and look at him. Watch him. “I’ve handled this all wrong. I should’ve gone for those assholes sooner: wiped their sorry asses from the face of the earth, but I hesitated. I waited.”

“Why?”

“Because a part of me had already checked out, of this. This fucked up world. Your mama, she made me want something else. Something different. She made me want a life worth living, and if that meant looking the other way…”

“Hindsight is great, you know? But dwelling on what we should’ve done, and didn’t do, it doesn’t help anything. It’s what we do now that matters.”

He smiles at me. “Yeah. Just like your mama.”

I take another look around the room. “This is really where it all happens, then? All those decisions… Where to sell the drugs: dole out the weapons–”

“Don’t make light of what we do here, Ana.” His eyes are once more cold. Dark. “We make money out of doing bad shit, yeah, I get that, but this life is all about control, and the men who come here: the people who join us, that’s what they need in their life. They need some control.”

“At the expense of what, though?”

“You know, for somebody who, not a few minutes ago, was telling me she’d chosen to stay here, you’re sure sounding like someone who’d rather we weren’t here at all.”

Maybe he’s right. I don’t like this life, I’m choosing to stay purely because this is where Joel is. Where he wants to be. And Skip knows that.

He shakes his head and lets out a low, humorless laugh. “I hope he’s fucking worth it, Ana. I really do.”

“You know him better than anyone, Skip. Is he worth it?” Our eyes lock. But he doesn’t answer my question. “Make sure they pay, for what they did to my mama,” I say, before I leave. Walk out. I’ve said what I came here to say, and now it’s time to start living this life the way I want to live it. With the man I want to live it with…