Crash (Brazen Bulls MC #1)(73)

Yet another grunting sigh. “The room was f*ckin’ mess. Blood, puke, shit everywhere. Smithers looked like a prop in a Friday the 13th movie. Slick said they found you passed out at his side. Your granddad’s knife was on the floor.”

Rad’s scowl deepened suddenly. “You okay? You need to stop?”

Willa realized she’d made a strangled shock of a noise—she could hear the memory of it—and she had her arms crossed over her chest, her hands on her shoulders.

“I’m okay,” she gasped. “Don’t stop.”

“The boys laid you on the bed. You had all your clothes on, baby. Belt was buckled, shoes were tied, everything. He didn’t get to you that way. You were covered in blood and puke, and you stank of beer, but the hurt on your face was all we found.”

Nothing he’d said sounded the least bit familiar. No memory stirred. Except that fragment from her dream—DRINK! DRINK! DRINK THE BEER!

It wasn’t a memory she had next, but a deduction. Parts falling into place. “He drugged me.”

Rad cocked an eyebrow. “You remember?”

“No. Just…connecting dots. In my dream, he was shouting at me to drink the beer.”

“Yeah. Gunner found a little empty bottle. He said it was…GH-somethin’.”

“GHB?”

“That’s it—you know it? Well, sure you do. You’re a nurse.”

“It’s been around for a few years as a party drug. It’s supposed to be like MDMA.”

Rad shook his head. “What’s that?”

Finally, Willa had something to laugh about. “For a big bad outlaw, you’re kind of square, you know that?”

He smiled a little. “Not into drugs. I like my head like it is, thanks. Booze is enough for me.”

“Well, MDMA and GHB create a sense of euphoria and calm. They heighten some kinds of awareness and dampen others. They bring down your inhibitions…” She let the sentence die off as she understood why Jesse would have given her GHB.

“Gunner said the high was like being wide open.” Rad swallowed. “He said too much would make a girl…compliant.” The last word pushed through his clenched teeth.

That word was so bitterly perfect for everything she’d gone through for years that Willa laughed again. The sound burned her ears, and its breath burned her throat. “That’s what Jesse always wanted from me. Compliance.”

Rad cupped her face in his palm. “He didn’t get it, baby. Here’s what we put together: you didn’t drink on your own. He forced it on you—that’s what happened to your face. There was an empty Busch can in the mess. Before it could f*ck you up, though, you killed the shit out of the son of a bitch. Then you puked out what you could and paged me.” He looked away. “Gun said if you’d gotten it all in you, you’d be dead.”

Meeting her eyes again, he made a bitter laugh of his own. “I swear, I’m so f*ckin’ pissed at you I don’t know what to do with myself. You put yourself in that trouble while I was hundreds of miles away. You did it on purpose. I saw your truck there, and that sheath on your arm, I saw the mess, saw you lying there dead to the world, and I thought my head was gonna blow. But I’m proud as hell, too, Wills. You shouldn’t’ve been there—that was so goddamn stupid—but you handled your shit when you were there.”

“What now? I mean…I killed somebody. There’s a crime scene. What’s going to happen to me?”

“Nothin’, baby.” He took another deep breath, this one fuller and calmer. “We got you covered. But Smithers was a Dirty Rat. You’re my old lady. You killin’ a patched member of an MC, even one as low as the Rats, pulls the Bulls into the mix.”

“Oh…God. I—I didn’t…” Jesse was her problem. He had always been her problem. It never occurred to her that it could be bigger than that.

“Don’t matter. It’s done, and I am glad he’s dead. But I did it, Willa. That’s the story. Club knows what really happened, but the story we tell has to be what we make true, and the truth can’t be that you killed him. It’s gotta be me. So outside this house, even with the Bulls, we tell the same story. I did it.”

“I don’t understand. Why is it better that you killed him? I’m not in the club. My history with Jesse is my own deal.”

Rad shook his head. “If we need a story, then it’s that he grabbed you, I found you, I killed him. That’s me protectin’ what’s mine. That’s the story that plays in my world, and it’s trouble enough. But it’s our way, to kill to protect. That story covers us both. An old lady killin’ a patch, actin’ out on her own while her man’s out of town—that’s way outside the bounds, no matter what.”

“So, I’m just your…possession in this? Your responsibility? A thing?”

“Don’t try to make this some political bullshit. If you’re lookin’ for my world to be someplace where women are equal, you’re gonna look a long time, Wills. You know that. In some clubs, old ladies wear ‘property’ patches.” He laughed. “Mo would’ve shoved that right down D’s throat, so the Bulls don’t do that. But it’s still a man’s world. Just how it is. I get shit from some of the guys that you ride your own.”