Chains (8 page)

FIVE

Danny finally stopped shaking. She lay on the bed on her side, knees bent, making a half circle around the balled-up snoozing puppy. She stroked its fur, her own eyes heavy and blinking slowly.

I didn’t know where to begin with her. She hadn’t spoken. I didn’t know if it was the drugs, or if she was always this quiet, or if maybe it was me. Maybe she didn’t want to be saved.

I couldn’t help wondering if I’d made a mistake. I didn’t know her anymore. This Danny wasn’t the one I left behind. This Danny was drawn in to herself, lost, nerveless. Her screams still echoed in my head—ricocheted off the walls—and I couldn’t tell the distinction between what I was remembering from the past hour and what unearthed itself from four years ago.

In the ring with Rollo I lost myself again. That hadn’t happened for a long, long time until Jose. It had to be her—Danny—she triggered something I buried deep. Triggered a defense mechanism or something.
Something
that made me go out of my head and the white noise come rushing in.

Jesus, I belonged in a psyche ward somewhere. White noise. What the fuck was wrong with me? And
I
was going to save
her?
Who was going to save her from me?

An adult cartoon danced across the T.V. screen with the volume down low. I closed my eyes for a minute and let the flicker of light and colors stutter across my eyelids. This would work out. It had to.

“I’m going to jump in the shower,” I said. “Then you can get in if you want.”

“I don’t have any other clothes,” she said, without looking from the dog.

Her filthy jeans and tank top needed washed, or burned. “You can borrow some of mine.” She had to have brought clothes with her or have some wherever she was staying. Chances were, it wasn’t somewhere I wanted to go to fetch her clothes. “We’ll figure everything out tomorrow.”

I waited for a couple minutes, watching her, wanting her to say something.
Talk to me, Danny.
But she laid there, tranquillized, ignoring me.

In the bathroom, I ran the shower as hot as I could stand it. Blood ran brown in the water pooling around my feet. The cuts and tape burns stung in the soapy water. Without Mike to wrap my ribs, I’d have to do it myself the best I could manage. I didn’t think Danny was up to helping me yet.

I wanted inside her head. What the hell was she thinking? Was she angry that I took her away from the drugs and dealers, all the low life thugs that didn’t give a shit about her? Did she even give a shit about herself?

She had to talk to me. Too much time had passed, and a lot had changed for both of us. The one thing that hadn’t changed is where we came from, and that bond couldn’t be broken. Danny and I were two pieces of one whole. We might come apart, but we fit right back together. She was still the person who knew more about me than anyone else ever would. She was there. She saw. She heard.

I saw. I heard.

We’re each other’s secret keepers. Safe keepers. It’s my job to save her.

I turned off the shower and wrapped a towel around my waist. Talking didn’t have to happen right away. We didn’t need to have some big word race getting out every detail of the time we weren’t together. I wouldn’t push her. Tonight it was probably best if I let her settle in and get used to me again. I needed to get used to being around her again, too. The thought of her so close—just behind the bathroom door—was jolting. To go from not having her in my life for four years to suddenly being here…it was too much to take in. I could only imagine how she felt. I hunted her down and found her. She had no idea I was coming. I’d give her the night to adjust and tomorrow we’d talk.

“It’s all yours,” I said, stepping out of the bathroom with a gust of steam to find her gone.

My chest constricted. Where the fuck was she?

I raced to the door and threw it open, looked left and right searching the sidewalk in front of the motel room doors. A man putting quarters in the vending machine stared at me. “Lose something?” he asked.

“Yeah,” I said, holding my towel tighter around my waist. “A girl and a puppy. Seen them?”

He jerked his head to his right indicating a small patch of grass to the side of the parking lot. “Over there.”

Outside the ring of light thrown by a light pole on the edge of the lot, I could barely make her out in the pitch black night, chasing the dog around in the grass. God, she looked young. Carefree. Like the girl I remembered from when we were young.

She was young. Nineteen wasn’t exactly old. She was a woman now, but she was fragile. Hell, she was broken. It was my job to put her back together. I took that role a long time ago, and I wasn’t going to abandon it now that I had her back. I just hoped I had all the pieces to fix her.

The puppy let out a high-pitched yelp and Danny laughed.

She laughed.

Jesus, the sound almost made me weep. It meant I did the right thing. It meant she could be happy again. It meant she was still my Danny somewhere down deep inside.

I watched for a few more minutes, then backed inside the room and shut the door. A sense of relief settled over me. Maybe I wasn’t such a fuck-up after all. I did the right thing. For once, that was a certainty.

After pulling on basketball shorts, I laid a pair of boxers and a t-shirt on the vanity for Danny to wear, grabbed the T.V. remote and sprawled out on the bed.

I was surfing the guide to find something to watch when Danny opened the door and came in with the puppy squirming in her arms. She froze in the doorway, staring at me.

“What?” I asked. “Why do you look so shy or afraid of me? You’re not, are you? You’re not afraid of me?”

She shook her head and closed the door. “No,” she said, but kept her eyes down as she crossed the room and let the puppy go to roam around on the floor.

“I put some clothes by the sink for you if you want to get a shower.”

She nodded and disappeared into the bathroom. The lock on the door clicked and the puppy whined trying to get inside. I whistled for him and wiggled my fingers over the side of the bed. He came loping up to me, awkward on his big puppy paws. “Come here, buddy.” I picked him up and set him on the bed beside me.

The shower started and the dog licked my hand. “You make her happy,” I told the pup. “You have to teach me how to do that. I used to know, but now she won’t even look at me.”

He bounded up my chest and nipped my chin. I tucked him in the crook of my arm and scratched his head while continuing to flip through channels on the T.V. Somehow, I had to break through the barrier between Danny and I. Why was she acting like we were strangers? I mean, sure, we hadn’t seen each other for four years and we’d gone from being kids—teens—to being adults, but we were still us. Weren’t we?

Maybe she wasn’t still the Danny she used to be. A lot could happen in four years.

My jaw clenched. I left her with
Striker
. A lot
did
happen, and I wasn’t there to help her. She had to hate me. It wasn’t shyness or fear. The girl hated me—she had to. I did. I’d never forgive myself for leaving her there and not going back as soon as I was out of jail. I didn’t deserve her forgiveness or a second chance.

The dog licked my hand again. I looked down at him and he looked up at me with his big, blue eyes. Danny’s eyes. The same striking light blue. I let my eyelids fall shut. I couldn’t look into those eyes without guilt crushing in on me.

The bathroom door opened, but Danny didn’t come out. It took me a minute to realize she didn’t have her clothes in there and was hesitant to walk out and get them. I was just about to tell her I’d close my eyes when she stepped forward and emerged, glancing over at me.

The sight of her thin body wrapped in the white towel, blond hair dripping down her back and wide-set eyes locked on mine was enough to knock my ass back all the years that I’d missed. Back to when I saw her with wet hair from the shower every day. But this was different. She wasn’t fifteen. We didn’t live together. We weren’t in danger here. We were two adults in a motel room and seeing her slick, wet skin and the way she studied my bare chest made me all too aware that the love I felt for her could easily turn a in a new direction if I let it.

I wouldn’t let it.

Danny already suffered the betrayal of a man abusing his power over her. I was someone she trusted, someone who said he’d protect her. I’d be that man and only that man.

“When did you get the tat?” she asked, grabbing the boxers and t-shirt off the vanity.

I glanced down at my right arm and chest where the black ink—a Chinese dragon with a skull in its mouth—curved around my shoulder. “Couple years ago.”

She inched closer and tilted her head to make it out. I lifted my arm and turned my body to give her a better view. Her eyes trailed up my arm where the snakes tail looped around, to the thick body and wings that sprawled across the right side of my chest and over my back to the massive head and open jaws holding the human skull. Then she looked me in the eye. “I get it,” she said, and stepped back into the bathroom.

She didn’t just get it, she was part of it. She was witness to my victory over Him, my flying off into the great unknown with a piece of Him left dead on the battlefield. I only wished I could’ve had the fair maiden tatted on my chest, riding the dragon off into the safety of a faraway castle. But our life wasn’t a fucking fairytale and nobody ever accused me of being a knight in shining armor.

I relaxed against a couple pillows on the side of the bed nearest the door, wincing as I settled in and my ribs shifted. I didn’t wrap myself and was starting to regret it, but I was too tired to get up again. Luckily, I wasn’t bleeding and the wounds Rollo gave me weren’t deep. If they still looked bad in the morning, I’d tape them with gauze and ask Danny to help me with the ACE bandage.

If Mike knew I was neglecting injuries, he’d kick my ass. I was surprised he hadn’t called to check in, but he knew I was on a mission that I had to do alone. Making amends with my conscience and Danny.

The puppy stretched out on his back beside me with his eyes closed. He made little wheezing noises in his sleep while I scratched his white chest. I had no idea what I’d do with a puppy—I was supposed to be in Austin tomorrow—but I couldn’t leave him to be mutilated by another dog. His snout was longer than a pit and his light brown body wasn’t as boxy. My best guess was he was a lab mix. We both turned to the bathroom door when it opened, and Danny came back out.

She stopped at the end of the bed, looking at us with a faint smile touching her lips. That’s when I realized there was only one bed—when I really realized, because it had been in my mind all along, but Danny and I always shared a bed when we were young. She got scared and sneaked into my room at night. But now… Now it felt different anticipating her body lying next to mine in the dark. “I can sleep on the floor,” I said, sitting up. A pain shot through my side and I groaned, bracing my ribcage with my hand.

“Lay down,” she said, rushing onto the bed on her knees and helping me back onto the pillows. “Why isn’t that cut bandaged?” she asked leaning over me to see the gash in my left side. “And that one?” she said, noticing the one on my shoulder.

“No reason,” I said, through gritted teeth, trying to breathe through the pain.

“Do you have Band-Aids at least?” She shook her hands in front of her and bounced on her knees like she was about to get hysterical.

“Over there,” I said, pointing to my carry-on bag. “In the inside pocket. Band-Aids, tape, gauze, everything.”

She darted off the bed. “Really, I’m okay,” I said, trying to keep her calm. She’d never seen me after a fight. Well, after a fight with an opponent who didn’t go down after one punch to the side of the head—Striker didn’t count. “I’ve been much worse before.”

“I don’t like it,” she said, digging through my bag. “I don’t want you to fight anymore.”

My insides froze to solid ice. “I have to fight. It’s what I do for money now. Not like the fight tonight. Organized fights where there are rules and a referee and opponents that train like I do. I’m a fight away from going pro in mixed martial arts, Danny. MMA. You’ve heard of it?”

She stood up with handfuls of first aid supplies and came back to the bed. “I’ve heard of it. I don’t like you fighting. I don’t want you doing it anymore.”

I watched her hands as she bandaged the cut on my side. Then I watched her face—the way the tip of her tongue poked out from the corner of her mouth while she worked—while she dressed the wound on my shoulder. Her eyes were ringed with dark circles and her cheeks were sunken. Her hip bones stuck out in points through the boxer shorts. “I’ll make you a deal,” I said, knowing what I had to lose, but wanting more than anything for Danny to be better—to be the way she would’ve been had I stayed with her and made sure she was okay. “I’ll stop fighting if you stop doing drugs.”

“I don’t do drugs,” she said and skittered away from me to the other side of the bed. She ran her hand over the puppy’s belly and scooted under the covers.

“I know that’s not the truth. I’ve seen you blown out of your head twice already. Why would you lie to me, Danny?” I scooted down beside her and faced her with the dog between us. “Look at me, please,” I said, lifting her chin. “This is me. We tell each other all our secrets, don’t we?”