Ridge Creek (5 page)

It is then that I feel a soft touch on the side of my face
below my good eye.  Startled, I snap my eye open again to see Jake is standing
right in front of me, his hand resting on my cheek.  To my shock he is
smiling.  Cutting my rant off, I freeze solid.

Stroking my face softly he murmurs, “We’ll get you a big
dog.  And we’ll get you a gun.  But sweetheart, you’re never gunna get to shove
that gun up his arse because he’ll never get that close to you
ever
again.  
I’ll fuckin’ kill him before he does.”

All the air leaves my lungs in a
whoosh
and I feel my
mouth dropping open as I gape at Jake.

Did he just say that?  Why would he say that?

He doesn’t even know me.

“And then I’ll kill him again,” I hear a soft, lilting voice
coming from the doorway and turn to see Ellen standing with tears shimmering in
her eyes.

Jake’s hand drops from my face and he softly takes my hand
in his.  “Let’s get you back to bed sweetheart.  I’m coming with you this time,
I’m fuckin’ tired.”

“I’m safe here?  I can stay?  You’ll be
close.
” I
mumble softly, the questions echoing through my head as I realize I kinda like
the idea of a hulking great biker being close by.  A hulking great biker who
could probably do as good a job as a Hooch dog, if not better.

“You are, you can,” he murmurs as he leads me back to the
bed, stripping his shirt off as we go.

“Okay, but you need to do some serious housework man.  This
joints a sty.”

“Sure sweetheart, I’ll get right on that,” he murmurs again
as he stops by the bed to drop his pants to the floor.  Staring openly, I take
in the site of him standing only in his boxers.  Tattoos snaking up both arms
and up his neck, he has muscles on his muscles,
all
over his body.

Hot damn.

It looks like my self-appointed bodyguard is the hottest guy
I have ever laid eyes.

Pointing to the bed, he watches as I climb in gingerly and
settle to one side.  Then, being careful not to bump me as he climbs in, he
rolls over onto his face, wraps his arms around his pillow and settles with a
sigh.

“Sleep woman, I’m wiped,” his voice muffles from his pillow.

“Okay,” I say as I roll to my side, facing him.  Leaving my
back and ass well out of range of any unwanted physical contact, I drift off to
sleep within minutes.

*****

Jake…

I hear her breathing level out next to my shoulder and know
she is asleep.  Turning my head slightly, I look to see her facing me.  She is
resting on her left side, the only side of her body not ravaged by that mother
fucking asshole.

From the small piece of her face that is not swollen beyond
recognition, I can see with clarity the clear beauty that she normally is. 
Even with her long golden blonde hair currently all matted with blood and
plastered against her head, I can see that she is normally a woman who takes
care of herself.  I can also see that any man who manages to gaze into those
eyes is going to struggle not to lose themselves in them.

As sheer exhaustion from over twenty four hours spent
without sleep slides in, I vow to hunt that mother fucker down.  I vow to make
him regret every mark, bruise and scar he left on her tiny little body.

*****

Arianna…

The next time I wake up it is late afternoon.  My entire
body is aflame with pain and I find myself groaning as I float to
consciousness.

Somebody
please
kill me.

Opening my good eye, I find that my bad one makes the
slightest attempt at movement.  An improvement.   Focusing my eye, I find
myself staring straight into the wide-awake eyes of Jake.

“You need pills,” he says.

“I need pills,” I agree.

“You were groaning in your sleep,” he adds as he rolls away
from my face and swings his legs over the edge of the bed.  Standing quickly,
he strides to the door and disappears through it.

Returning a short time later, I see he his carrying a glass
of water and big handful of pills.

Holy shit.

 “I see you’ve decided it’s easier to finish me off.” 

He grins slightly at my humor but shakes his head no.

“Anti-inflammatories, pain killers and antibiotics.  I think
Ma might have shoved a multivitamin in there too.  She made me take one while I
was out there as well.”

Grimacing, I slowly roll to my back and slide to a sitting
position.

Nasty.

Handing me the glass of water, he holds his hand out flat
with the mighty handful of pills.  Watching as I slowly put one in my mouth,
sip water and then repeat until they are all gone.

“Twenty minutes.  Ma’s coming in to help you clean up. 
She’s going to wash your hair too.”

“I need a mirror…” I find my words floating off as I realize
I haven’t even seen myself yet.  I know I look bad, but…

“No mirrors.”

“No mirrors?” I ask confused and a bit high-pitched.

“You’ve been through enough.”

I’m not so sure I agree with his theory but looking at the
set of his face I don’t think I’ll be getting much choice on the matter.  And
who cares anyway?  I’m still kinda wishing I were dead anyway.  I’m sure no one
looks good when they’re dead.   Feeling like I do, I probably look like a
‘Walker’ off the
Walking Dead
anyway.  Who wants to see that when they
look in the mirror?

Handing the glass back to him, I slide back down the bed,
roll to my side, close my eye and zone out.  Lost in re-reruns of last night
again.

After a few minutes of my own mental torture, I hear the
sound of him pulling his jeans on and then the door opens and closes.  Opening
my eyes to peek, he is gone.

*****

The rest of the afternoon and evening flies by in a blur. 
Partially because it is busy and partially because the pain killers are
good
and keep me relaxed and a bit out of it.

Here’s how it played out:

Shortly after Jake leaves, I hear a small knock on the door
and then silence.  Unsure if I heard it or not, I call out a small, “Yeah?”

The door pushes open and Zane pokes his head around.  I give
him a small grin and he steps through the door.  He is carrying two big Target
bags.

Huh?

“Girl clothes,” he rumbles as he walks across the room and
puts them on the chair next to the bed.  “I don’t shop.  Don’t get excited.”

He stands looking at me and I watch his blue eyes taking in
my swollen face for a few beats before he orders, “Heal.”  Then he heads back
to the door and leaves.

The rest of my day is spent with Ellen fussing over me as
she helps me out of bed to find the toilet and bathroom.  She also feeds me. 
She is calming and gentle.  She also takes great efforts to meet all my
requests.  Except one.  She refuses to let me anywhere near the bathroom
mirror.  Even insisting I brush my teeth in the bath and not go near the
bathroom sink.

It would appear she and her son are on the same page for
that one.  With steely grace she steers me away from the mirror each time I try
to approach, shaking her head solemnly.

Back in bed, I get a visit from Pops later in the evening. 
He arrives quietly and sits in the chair next to the bed.  Staring at me
thoughtfully for a while, he leaves about ten minutes later.  Not a word is
spoken the entire time he is there.  Lost inside my head, reliving my own
torture, I stare blankly at him during his visit and am silently thankful he
doesn’t talk.  I don’t see Jake again that day.

When I finally gain the courage to ask about his whereabouts
late in the evening, Ellen explains he has gone home for a while.  Confused,
thinking this was his bedroom and therefore his home, I send her a questioning
look but she says no more.

*****

I don’t see Jake again until nearly a week later.

A week of my own living hell that I spend alternating
between sleeping knocked out with pain killers, or pacing the room going
quietly mad.  Ellen comes and goes often, feeding me, nursing me and chatting
quietly to me.  She tells me stories about her life and tells me about the
township of Ridge Creek.  A place she has lived all of her life.  A place she
clearly loves.

Unable to talk back, I listen absentmindedly to her chatter
but offer nothing back of myself.  I don’t see the point.  I am a dead person
walking.  Tony is coming for me.  I
know
it.  No matter how many times
Ellen assures me I am safe here, I
know
I am not.  He
will
find
me.

So as my body heals, my mind falls apart.

Every waking hour I continue to relive the events leading up
to the present and I find myself spiraling further into a mental torture
chamber where all I can feel is pain and fear.  As the days pass, I become
obsessed with a fear that Tony isn’t far away and that he will soon come
storming into the room, gun pointed at my head to finish what he started.

All through my spiral downwards, Ellen stays close.  Calm,
gentle, soothing, she watches me cautiously as I begin to overreact to every
sound I hear in the rooms around me.  Like an animal caught in a trap, I sense
impending doom. 

Over sensitized as I am, I soon become aware that outside
this room, life is busy.  There are constant sounds of doors banging and Harley
pipes roaring their arrival and departure.  There are muffled voices both loud
and soft at all hours of the day. 

Sometimes my mind decides all the activity is a good thing. 
There’s a whole world out there and people nearby to help when Tony finds me. 
Others, it panics as I vision Tony and a band of gun wielding men storming
through the building shooting everyone in their way as they search each room
methodically to find me.

It is during one of these latter episodes that I hear a loud
bang somewhere in the building and I
lose
it.   With a shriek, I realize
he’s here.  Launching upright from my position lying on the bed, I fly into
action.  My eyes quickly scan the now tidied room (compliments of Ellen). 
Frantically assessing my hiding and defense choices, my eyes settle on a pen on
the bedside table.  Snatching it up, I haul myself from the bed and without a
moment’s hesitation, throw myself under the bed. 

A serious of pains explode through my body but I ignore them
as I curl into a tight ball, clutching my pen closely to my body.  My mind and
heart racing, I listen.

There are no more bangs.  I can hear quiet laughter off in
the distance somewhere.  I can also hear what are now ingrained as ‘normal’
sounds such as doors opening and closing and people moving about.

I lay in my tight ball for a few more minutes listening,
working my hardest to convince myself it is all okay and that I should crawl
out from under the bed.  But my mind won’t allow it.  I am frozen in fear,
unable to move.

Hearing the bedroom door open, I gasp and hold my breath. 
No matter how hard I try to convince myself nothing is wrong, I cannot lift the
feeling of impending doom as I freeze, breathless.   Realizing too late that I
have balled myself in the wrong direction to see the door, I listen as soft
footfalls enter the room and then leave.

Shit.

Who was it and why did they leave?  My mind decides that if
it was someone I knew they would have called out and started looking for me.

This is bad.

As cold shivers of fear start to wrack my tightly curled
body, I feel the hot prickling of tears forming in my eyes. 

He’s going to find me.

Jamming my eyes closed, tears leak from between my eyelids
and drip silently to the floor.  Why didn’t I just die jumping out of that
truck and have done with it?  I should have dived straight onto my head and not
tried the stunt roll thing.  Perhaps I should even have just waited and
accepted my bullet to the head.   At least it would have been instant. 

Living in constant fear is
far
worse than dying. 

The sound of heavy boots crossing the room drags me from my
thoughts again.  Tilting my head back slowly from my protective ball, I open my
eyes.  My vision is blurred with tears as I try to focus.  I can’t see
anything. 

Blinking rapidly to clear my tears I receive the shock of my
life as suddenly with a loud scraping noise, I am no longer under the bed.  It
has been dragged sideways with force, leaving me open and exposed.

“I don’t crawl under beds.” I hear the deep, gravelly sound
of Jake’s voice behind me.

Uncurling my body from its protective ball, I let out a huge
slow breath as relief floods through me that it is Jake.  Sitting up, I throw most
of my weight to my good ass cheek.

A huge hand appears in front of me and I take it.  Rising to
stand gingerly, I find myself staring directly at a huge, wide muscly chest. 
Tipping my head back to look up the
long
distance to his face, I see
bright green eyes watching me with interest.

“You look better,” he tells me.

“Do I?”  I wouldn’t know.  No one will let me look in a
fucking mirror.  The one in the bathroom was covered over with a piece of board
by day two that had been
screwed
to the wall either side.

Who does that?

He nods.

Taking my hand, he gently turns and pulls me towards the
door.  Feeling safe and secure with my hand in his huge hulking one, I follow
without a word.  If Jake’s here, I’m
okay.

Leading me down a long hallway past the bathroom and toilet
(the only other two rooms I know), we turn at the end.  Zig zagging through a
maze of smaller rooms, we enter a huge, open plan type room with
three
timber dining settings in it.  There is also a pool table to one side and a bar
on the other.  Looking around the room, I baulk.