4. Arianne

My sister was murdered.

The words are on repeat in my head as I'm guided into the equivalent of a small doctor's office in the Iron Outlaws clubhouse.

Another small sob escapes me. Tears keep coming like I'm a biblical flood. It's almost like I needed to see Mercy's coffin before I believed it was real. Now I know that I'm never going to see my sister again. And worse, she died before I ever really got to know her.

I don't really remember getting here. Halo led and I followed. His truck, a ride, sitting in the front seat maybe. Or did I travel in the back next to my niece?

My niece.

She's beautiful and so like Mercy, I can't stand it. Her eyes fade gray like mine do. Her cheeks are full, with a dimple in just one cheek…like my sister.

The clubhouse was packed with people, all dressed like Halo, and I felt their eyes on me as we passed through. I paused for a moment, considering whether I should leave, but Halo felt my tug of resistance and squeezed my hand in reassurance.

He handed Lola to someone, and I had to fight the urge to go grab her and hold on to her.

"Up," Halo says as he steps into the room behind me, places his hands on my waist, and lifts me onto the medical bed.

There is something so calm and authoritative in his voice that I stay where he puts me. His eyes are more green than blue, framed with thick lashes, and he studies me carefully. Tall doesn't even begin to cut it. He towers over me. He's twice as wide.

"Why did you bring me here?"

"To patch you up. I'll be back in a moment. Just stay here."

I look around the room while I wait. It's organized, sterile almost. A stethoscope is the only thing out of place on the counter. There are jars of swabs and those wooden things used to press your tongue down. And one of those units that takes your pulse and oxygen levels.

When Halo reappears, he holds a stack of clothes in tattooed hands that could probably crack my skull if he tried.

He places them down on the medical bed, lifts me back down, turns me around before gently unzipping my dress. Warm fingers trail down my back.

"What are you doing?" I press my hand to my chest to stop the fabric from falling off my shoulders.

"You've had a shock, and I'm guessing that beating is less than twenty-four hours old. So, I'm getting you out of this dress and into something softer and warm before we treat your face."

He brushes my hands away as if my resistance were nothing. And yet instead of being outraged, I wish I'd thought to put on sexier underwear. They're the thin nude-colored undies I wear under my diner uniform so it doesn't show lines. More practical than frivolous.

"How old are the bruises back here?" he asks. His fingers gently touch my back, right where I hit the handle of the basement cupboard when Patrick shoved me last week.

"Seven, eight days maybe." I can barely focus with the feel of this man's hands on me. I breathe through my mouth in an attempt to hide the gasp as my dress hits the floor.

My husband would be appalled at the way I just shivered beneath another man's touch. Not that Halo seems to notice. He slips the T-shirt over my head first. The fabric slithers down over my skin like it's made from butter. It's light, and worn, and soft, and smells of laundry detergent. The hem hits my thighs, the sleeves, my elbows.

But he's right. It does feel better than the stiff dress I'd worn to the funeral.

He walks to stand in front of me and drops to his knees. It's a struggle to resist the urge to sink my hands into his thick dark hair. The need momentarily cuts through my grief as he slips my heels off, removes my dress, and pulls a pair of yoga pants up my legs. Fingers dip inside the waistband in a purely perfunctory manner to straighten it. But the jolt of this man's touch against my skin is almost more than my system can handle.

No one has ever taken such care of me.

Not even my parents.

It's shockingly arousing, to the point it confuses me.

The vulnerability leaves me raw.

When he stands again, I take in his shoulders and realize this must be one of his T-shirts. "I'm working on the footwear. Come here."

He takes my hand and leads me to the sink, where he rummages around in the cupboard until he finds what he needs. "You think you can stand to wash your makeup off?"

"It looks that bad, huh?"

"You look like roadkill," he says unhelpfully.

"At least you're honest."

He slides an elastic off his wrist and intimately scoops my hair up before tying it back off my face.

There's some liquid hand soap. Not great for my skin, but probably more effective at shifting the heavy-duty concealer I plastered on my face. I pray that the Band-Aid I applied earlier will stay put because it's going to sting like a bitch if it comes off. Gingerly, I wash and rinse my face before repeating it to make sure everything is gone.

When I'm done, I reach for something to dry my face, but Halo reaches for my chin, tips my face to his, and dabs it dry with a paper towel. "Who did this to you?"

I flinch as he removes my Band-Aid but see there is fresh blood on it that had seeped through. "I guess my cut is open again."

"Who?"

"It's not what it looks like." But even as I say the words, I know how pathetic they sound.

"Let me try and guess," Halo says. "Could be one of three things. You got a kink that takes pain to cut through. Not judging if you do, but I'm not sensing masochist vibes from you and even if that was your thing, it rarely causes this kind of damage to someone's face. Second, you got into a fight out in the street. Some bitch in a bar thinks you're eyeing up her man and throws down. But given you're probably a hundred pounds soaking wet, I figure you know you're gonna be on the losing end of shit like that and don't start it. And third, I'm figuring there's a guy in your life who thinks his problems are all your fault and therefore, rather than sign up for a gym membership, he treats you like his punching bag."

Without meaning to, I spin my wedding ring. There's no engagement ring. He proposed without one with a promise that we'd go shopping for it together. It never happened.

Halo follows my hands, then looks up at me, one eyebrow raised.

"My husband has a temper," I say.

"Like I said, you need to leave him."

I'm about to tell him that's what I'm attempting to do when the door bursts open and another biker walks in. He's wearing a baseball cap backwards and a leather cut that matches Halo's, but his says Switch on it. "What's so urgent?" he asks.

"Need you to check her face and fix it up as best you can."

Switch looks at Halo, then me, then Halo again. "Her face?"

Halo nods. "Her face. Fix any broken bones, eye damage, that cut on her face. Whatever."

"No, it's fine," I say. "I can?—"

Halo cuts me off by lifting me and placing me back on the medical bed like I weigh nothing more than a surplus throw cushion. "Just sit and let Switch do his job; he's a medic. Switch, this is Arianne, Mercy's sister. Came for the funeral."

Switch turns back to me and smiles. "Well, hello, Arianne." There's a hint of flirtation to his tone.

"She's Lola's aunt. Married. And not to be fucked with."

Switch studies Halo for a minute and grins before mock saluting. "Yes, sir."

In a heartbeat, the humorous way in which he entered the room shifts. He presses and prods, apologizing when I hiss in pain. "I don't think anything is broken, but we should get you an X-ray to be sure," he says.

I huff a laugh. "I don't have insurance, so there are no X-rays in my future. I'll take your word. They usually heal quickly enough."

"Usually?" Switch asks, his tone murderous. "Like this is more than a one-time thing?"

I think about Patrick, the man I met at nineteen and married at twenty, trying to see him through the lens of these men. "It's complicated."

We had good moments. More than the bad. Especially in the beginning. But nothing is ever perfect. The last year has been the worst.

"There's nothing complicated when it comes to a guy's fists hitting a woman's face," Halo says. "That's lack of self-control and self-regulation at best. And being a sadistic cunt at worst. And as we discussed, you aren't a masochist."

"I'm just going to put a bit of numbing in your cheek so I can clean this out properly without it hurting, yeah?" Switch says.

The world starts to spin. I don't know why. Adrenaline. Grief. Pain. The thought of a needle. "I feel a bit?—"

Before I can finish the sentence, Halo has pushed my head between my legs. "Breathe, Ari."

I do as he says while his hands squeeze and release the back of my neck. I focus on the warmth of his touch. This stranger is showing me more kindness than Patrick has in the last twelve months of our three-year marriage.

My stomach rumbles loudly. It dawns on me that I haven't eaten since before Penny's call.

"Keep breathing," he encourages.

When the spaciness passes, I sit, but Halo immediately lowers me down to the bed, his hand beneath my head as I touch the firm surface. "Switch can fix you up as easily here as he can with you sitting up."

And with that, he leaves the room.

"Ready?" Switch asks.

"As I'll ever be." There is a slight prick, then another, but almost immediately, the worst of the ache in the side of my face begins to dissipate.

I close my eyes, partially to avoid the awkwardness of Switch's face and fingers so close to mine, but also because I'm tired. I hadn't thought past getting here. I haven't considered the reality of where I'll go or what I'll do.

Switch is putting a dressing over my cheek when Halo enters the room holding a tall cup.

"Drink this," he says as I sit up.

"What is it?"

"A smoothie. Just drink it."

"I'm allergic to pineapple. There's no pineapple in it, is there?"

Halo shakes his head. "Blueberries. Bananas. Chocolate protein powder. Vanilla ice cream. You were hungry and needed some food in your stomach to help handle today."

He noticed that I hadn't eaten. That my stomach rumbled.

"Thank you."

"Thank me by taking better care of yourself," he grumbles, and with that he turns and marches out of the room, letting the door close behind him with a slam.