Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(50)

oOo



“Fuck, I need a shower.” Rad shed his kutte and hung it on the back of the shit-brown vinyl chair near the window of this room in a budget motel. He dropped his pack and Willa’s on the seat, one on top of the other.

At about midnight, after talking with an EMS official, Delaney had called the Bulls together and said it was time to get some rest. No survivor had been found for hours, and the crews on the scene had shifted fully into recovery mode. In the dark night hours, they’d pushed volunteers back.

Delaney’s sister and brother-in-law ran this motel on the edge of the city, and they’d cleared a bank of rooms for the Bulls to bed down for the night. The club had done a lot of business in these threadbare rooms over the years.

“You shouldn’t get your sutures wet yet. It increases the chance of infection.” Willa walked into the room as she spoke and turned to stare into the mirror over the bolted-down dresser.

Stepping behind her, he pulled her into his arms and kissed her shoulder. She was still wearing the blue scrubs he’d watched her put on that morning, though now they weren’t so blue. To her reflection he said, “I am covered head to toe in filth and blood. You think stayin’ that way is gonna keep the stitches clean?”

She smiled wearily and leaned back on his chest. “I guess not. Be careful not to rough them up, though.”

“You’re not gettin’ in with me?”

“I…can’t. I need…” Her sigh filled the room, and Rad felt her body slump in his arms. “I need a minute. Okay?”

Something in her posture or expression, or her presence itself, made Rad reluctant to leave her alone, even to go into the next room. “I’m worried about you.”

The weary smile again. “I’m okay. Just tired.”

“Okay. You know where I am if you need me.”

“Yeah. In the shower, ten feet away. I’m okay, Rad.”

Unconvinced, he left the bathroom door open, just in case.

The shower was best of his life, excepting any in which Willa had gotten him off. The water stung his scalp, and washing his hair hurt more than he’d have cared to admit, but the piercing shock of the day sluiced from his brain as the grime sluiced from his body. He made the water hot—not as hot as Willa liked it, but hotter than he normally did—and washed again and again until the water pooling on the floor of the shower faded from thick, near black, to foggy grey, to clear. Then he leaned against the wall and let the spray run over his back.

When he felt able, he turned off the faucet and dried off. The images of the day were still in his head, still vivid, but he could face them now. Leaving the scene, stopping at an all-night diner with Willa and his brothers, all of them still coated in evidence of what they’d been doing, refusing to allow the manager to comp their meal, then coming here to this plain-Jane old motel he knew so well—all of that had given him the bit of distance he’d needed to confront the reality of this day. Washing the last traces of it from his skin had made it something that had happened, past tense, and he could get his mind around that.

The awfulness wasn’t diminished, but Rad’s ability to acknowledge it had increased.

That was his way. He could act in the moment, always, and usually rightly. But he couldn’t think in the moment. Not clearly. He needed distance in order to really see.

Hanging the towel over the rod, he went back out into the room.

Willa hadn’t moved. She stood almost exactly as he’d left her, in front of the mirror. She was staring down at something she held in her hands.

“Willa.” She didn’t answer or move. Wishing he’d wrapped the towel around his waist, Rad walked naked to her and put his hand over hers. “Baby, where are you?”

It was a bit of cloth she held; Rad took it from her, prying her hands away with force when she resisted him.

A sock. A little cotton sock that fit completely on his palm. It was filthy, the kind of muck Rad had just washed from his body, the kind that happened when blood met soil and dust. A torn bit of lace trimmed the edge.

A baby girl’s sock. “Jesus,” he muttered. “Baby, where’d you get this?”

As he asked, he knew—triage. What had she seen today? He’d been processing his own shock, his own memories, his own new reality. What was hers?

He remembered something she’d said that night he’d brought fried chicken over for dinner: that she’d hated working emergency medicine because it was so sad, that so many people were having their worst day there. She preferred to help mothers bring their babies into the world. Babies who wore little socks like this.

“Ah, Willa.” He set the sock on the dresser and wrapped his hand around her arm, meaning to embrace her. But she woke from her fugue then and shoved him away with a gasp.

He was not so easily discouraged. She needed comfort, and he was there to provide it. He grabbed her again, not roughly, but not gently either, and pulled her into his arms. She tried to push away, both of her hands flat on his chest, but he simply changed his grip and forced her to come close.

“Let me hold you, baby. I got your back, remember?”

She froze and stared at him like she couldn’t remember who he was or why he was there, and then her face…it shattered. She collapsed against him and began to weep—great heaving sobs.