Leave a Trail (11 page)

Also fruit. There was always an orange in the toe. Badger didn’t think either Jason or he had ever eaten their Christmas orange, but they always each got one. Usually, they ended up hitting each other with them. A stocking with an orange in the toe made a pretty good weapon.

It was a good memory, and Badger knew that movie by heart. He probably always would.

When Show walked into his room much later in the same day that Len had been there, Badger laughed a little. Like Ebenezer Scrooge, he, too, was being visited by three ghosts. Isaac, the ghost of his Horde past; Len, the ghost of his Horde present; and now Show, looking still furious and terrifying, the ghost of his Horde future.

Show came in, closed the door, and leaned back on it, his arms crossed over his chest. One look at his stony features told Badger that there was nothing he could say to gain this man’s trust. Nothing.

So he didn’t know what to say. Show didn’t say anything, either. For infinite seconds, the room was a vacuum, the silence sucking Badger dry of any will or strength. He had to say something.

“I’m sorry, Show.”

“I’m only here because they won’t let up about it. They’re stupid to send me back here, because what I want to do is rip your fucking hands off and shove ‘em up your pussy ass. So you got something to say to me, you say it, and I’ll get out before I do just that.”

But there was nothing he could say. Nothing he could do.

“I fucked up so bad. I don’t…I want to fix it, but I don’t know how.”

Show’s eyes narrowed dangerously, but he said nothing.

“Show…please.”

Show huffed. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about the drugs. We knew it could happen. I get it. You’re a junkie piece of shit for putting the club at risk with your damn lies. After all we’ve been through, to—” He gave his head a sharp shake. “But I can set that aside.”

He came off the door and stalked forward, his arms unfolding and his enormous hands curling into bricks of fist. “But you put hands on Shannon’s girl.
My
girl. You screamed in her face. Called her names. Bloodied her. You hurt an innocent girl. A girl who fuckin’ cares about you. That makes you dead to me.”

“I’m sorrier about that than anything. Anything. I don’t know how to make it right.”

“You want your kutte back, you promise me right now that you will never speak to her again. I mean not one fucking word. Ever. You don’t fucking look at her. Ever. You make me that promise, and I will not stand in the way if they want to give you back your kutte. I’d fuckin’ burn it if it were just up to me.”

He could have his kutte back if he made that one promise? Badger stared at Show’s ominous face. His kutte. His club. He needed that so bad. He
needed
it. He was nothing without the Horde. He was nothing.

But Adrienne was his best thought. He loved her. He thought about what Len had said.
You don’t walk away from someone you love. Ever
. But she was better off without him. Show was right about him, right in every way. He was a pussy. A liar. A junkie. And he’d hurt her.

You don’t walk away from someone you love. Ever
.

“I…Show, I love her.”

One of those massive fists burst forward, and Badge’s head snapped back, his nose feeling like it had utterly imploded.

“No, you don’t. That’s not how you treat somebody you love.”

You don’t walk away from someone you love. Ever
.

Blood ran down his throat and down his chin, and his voice sounded bizarre, plugged and garbled, but Badger persevered. “I do. I fucked up so bad. But I do. I love her. I won’t ever hurt her again.”

A fist to the side of his head. He fell to the mattress on which he’d been sitting, his head ringing like a church bell.

“I will beat you to death right now if you say that one more time, asshole. Try me.”

You don’t walk away from someone you love. Ever
.

Knowing what it meant, knowing that Show could and would do what he said, Badger closed his swelling eyes. “I love her. I love her, Show. I do.”

His eyes closed, he waited for the painful end he deserved.

There was nothing. Then he heard the door. When he opened his eyes, Show was walking through it.

He left it open behind him.

CHAPTER FIVE

“Hey, little one. Got a minute?”

Seated cross-legged on the bed in the little purple room, Adrienne looked up from her Mac. Her digital Nikon was still connected to it, so she dragged the camera icon to the trash. As she looked up and smiled at Show, who was leaning against the door frame, she pulled the linking cable free.

“Hi. Yeah, sure. Come in.” She set her camera aside and closed her Mac. Show didn’t need to see that she’d been looking at photos she’d taken of Badger.

Shannon and Lilli had taken Lilli’s kids and gone to Springfield for the day. They’d invited Adrienne along, but she hadn’t been feeling it. She’d been distracted and vaguely ill all week, worried about Badger. The thought of pretending to be bright and chipper during a day of shopping for baby stuff and wandering around the town’s little zoo with two kids was too exhausting to entertain. So she’d begged off.

Shannon didn’t know anything about what had happened, because everybody had decided that her wacked-out hormones had her too emotionally fragile to deal with what Badger had done. She thought he was away from the B&B recovering from a beating he’d taken at Tuck’s, and she thought Adrienne had been hit in the mouth when her car door blew closed on her. She’d believed those stories completely. Adrienne supposed they were a lot more believable than the reality that sweet Badger was a violent junkie and had hurt her.

Instead of going with Shannon and Lilli, and with the whole day to herself, Adrienne had wandered around Signal Bend and the surrounding countryside, exploring and taking pictures. And then she’d come back and uploaded them to her Mac. She’d ended up going through all the photos she’d taken during the years she’d been coming to Signal Bend. Thousands of them.

A lot of pictures of Badger. He was—he was beautiful to her. It wasn’t just his looks, which were great. It was the way you could look at him and just feel like you knew him. When he didn’t know he was being observed, when he was simply at rest with himself, his natural expression was serious but still kind and intent. She’d always thought of it as the way somebody would look who was, like, writing poetry in his head or something. Like his mind was always working, like he was always seeing more than other people could see.

She had a lot of pictures of him not looking at the camera, pictures he didn’t know had been taken until after the fact, if then. In her favorite shot, he was leaning against the railing on Isaac and Lilli’s porch, a flowered coffee mug in his hand. He was looking down and to the side, exactly as if he were exploring a thought. His long hair was loose, which was rare, and a gentle breeze blew it lightly around his shoulders. His beard was full and lush.

Adrienne could look at the photo and see through her camera’s eye that she’d loved Badger long before she’d internalized that truth. Not half-love. Real love.

But she didn’t know what to do with that. He’d always brushed her off, and now, even if he wouldn’t brush her off, he was not in a good place. She felt like she got more confused with every day.

Show came in and sat down on the bed with her. She was about to ask him how he was doing when she noticed that his hand was bruised and scraped. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen evidence that he’d been fighting, but she hadn’t gotten used to it.

“Are you okay?”

“Hmm? Yeah, sure.” He followed the trail of her eyes. “Ah. Yeah. I’m fine. Want to talk to you, though.”

That sounded dire. “Okay…”

“I love you, Adrienne. You know that, right?”

She did. There was something safe about being loved by somebody like Show. Big, strong, steady, kind. She’d seen another side of him, too, but it hadn’t changed that sense of safety and comfort.

“Yeah. I love you, too.”

He smiled and picked up her hand, engulfing it in his palm. “I want you to go home, Adrienne. I want you to leave in the morning.”

All that safe comfort was just gone, knocked out of her with a two-by-four of shock. “What? No! Why? What did I do?”

“Easy, sweetheart.” With his free hand, the one with the raw knuckles, he reached out and brushed his fingers down her face, a gentle sweep from her temple to her jaw. Then he lifted her chin, his thumb moving over the thin cut that remained on her bottom lip. “You didn’t do anything wrong—that’s the farthest thing from true. I love having you with us. Shannon loves having you here. You’ve been a big help to her this week, and it makes her happy just to spend time with you. Me, too. But it’s not good for you here. There’s too much going on. You’re better off in New York.”

“This is about Badger, isn’t it?” She pulled her head out of his hold, and he let his hand drop to his leg. But he held on to her hand and gave it a squeeze.

“I told you—you need to stay away from him. Things with him are not good. He’s not good for you. He hurt you once, and he doesn’t get a second shot at you. I will not let that happen.”

“It’s not your call, Show.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, little one. It is my call. I make it my call. You’re going home, where you’re safe. I’m not negotiating with you.”

Her heart pounding, she yanked on her hand, but he didn’t let it go. But when she yanked again, harder, he did. “I’m not a kid, Show. I’m not
your
kid. You don’t have a say. You don’t. I’m not ready to leave.”

“My house, Adrienne.”

“Are you—are you throwing me out?” She jumped up, not sure where she was going, but the adrenaline that was surging into her muscles made her need to move. Had she thought just a minute ago that Show made her feel safe?

He grabbed her wrist and held on. “No.
No
, Adrienne. You always have a place here. Always. But, for right now, I’m asking you to do the smart thing for you and choose to leave.” He pulled lightly on her arm. “Sit, sweetheart. Let’s talk it out.”

She sat.

“Let’s put Badger aside for a minute. You’ve been here more than a week. That’s the longest you’ve ever stayed. Shannon’s talking like you’re staying awhile. I’m
not
throwing you out. I like having you here. But is something else goin’ on?”

She didn’t know how to answer that question. Spending the week worrying about Badger and wondering what was going on there, and helping Shannon at the B&B, and spending time with Lilli and Cory and their kids, she hadn’t had to think much about what she’d left in New York. She was glad to be able to forget that for a while.

“I don’t know.”

“Let me ask you something easier, then. When did you
intend
to go home?”

That wasn’t an easier question. “I don’t know.”

He laughed. It was a very fatherly laugh, full of tender care. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know.” He laughed again, and this time she joined him. “I keep saying that, but it’s true. It’s like…it’s like I want more than what’s at home. But I don’t know what.”

“Adrienne, you live in New York. You went to
college
—and you did it in New York City. You’ve been all over the world. Fuck, sweetheart, you went to Asia all by yourself. I see you want a big life. It makes me proud to see it in a way I don’t think I could make you understand. A way that makes my heart hurt a little. You should go and find the biggest life you can. But it’s not here. If you want more, you won’t find it here. Here, you’ll only find less. A small life. Small people.”

“I know it looks big. But Show, I was lonely in the city. I was so lonely at Columbia I made myself sick. New York made me feel claustrophobic. Being on my own in Asia was okay, but I’ve done that. I don’t want that again. And at home, I’m just regressing to the little girl who sleeps in the same bed she’s had since she was six. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I love my father and my brothers so much. I have a great family, and I will never take that for granted. Now I have another great family. I know I’m lucky. But I can’t find a way to feel right at home. It’s like I’m changing somehow, but my life isn’t. It’s like…”

She stopped and searched for a way to describe how she’d been feeling since before she’d graduated Columbia, a feeling she’d been oppressed by since she’d come back from Asia. “It’s like my old life is wearing a blister on my mind. Or on my soul.” She laughed sheepishly. “That sounds really lame, I know.”

“No, little one. It’s not lame at all. I know that feeling. What doesn’t fit?”

With a shrug, she turned and looked out the window next to the bed. It was dark. Shannon would be home soon. “Me. I don’t fit.” She paused again and tried to think how to explain. “From the time I was little, I wanted to be an artist. When I was in high school, I landed on photography, and I told everybody that I wanted to be like Alfred Stieglitz. You know him?”

Show shook his head.

“I’ll show you his work sometime. He did these amazing images. They’re all mood and rebellion, and they’re just breathtaking. He was married to Georgia O’Keeffe—you have a print of hers in your bedroom.”

“That rainbow vagina thing Shannon likes so much?”

Adrienne laughed. “Well, it’s called ‘Grey Line with Black, Blue, and Yellow,’ but yes. Lots of people see sexual imagery in her work.”

“Yeah, that’s a multicolored pussy. No question.” He grinned. “’Scuse my language.”

With a wry nod, she went on. It felt good to try to tell Show what was going on. She was putting into words things she hadn’t been able to sort out well enough to think through. “Anyway, I had a plan. I was going to Columbia, I was going to get a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, I was going to get my foot in at a gallery or museum in the city, and I was going to live in a crappy walk-up studio garret, where all my neighbors would be starving artists like me, and then one day I’d get discovered and get my own gallery show, and be famous. Basically, I’d need a time machine to back to the Sixties and hang out with Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe.”