Page 54 of Jazz

“What’s wrong?” I asked, not fully sure I wanted the answer.

“Just thinking.”

“What about?”

“What to do with you.”

My stomach tensed, a dryness prickling in my throat, and for a while both of us said nothing.

Chapter Twenty Nine

Jazz slept for hours. I lay there for a while, listening to her. She sobbed to sleep eventually, her breath coming in little hiccups. There had been something about her when she let her guard down. Became vulnerable. Part of it had kicked me hard in the stomach knowing I’d put her through that. That if I’d just let her go the first moment that it crossed my mind, she wouldn’t have been tortured by my club, and she wouldn’t be wearing my patch on her skin.

She smelt incredible. Just warm soap and something that I’d never smelt on anyone before. Whatever it was, it was just her. Her skin was smooth. Her body a little too thin. My doing. I could have fucking fed her better. I would now, though. I’d take care of her. Keep her warm. Keep her belly full. And her pussy if that’s what she wanted.

The throb started in my fucking groin again. A deep pulsing and my dick swelled for the fucking third time. I wanted to roll her over, sink into her, nut in her tight cunt so she would wake up with it dripping down her legs. I closed my eyes. Stilling those thoughts. Fuck. I was going to have to get up and take care of myself again in Baz’s shower. There’d been no hot water left at all the last time. But the chill of the cold had been needed, not before I shot my load all over the flowery fucking monstrosity of the tiles.

I sighed heavily, my breath moving her hair, the top of the tattoo peeking out underneath. Her skin was unblemished apart from that tattoo, and a smaller one on the inside of her left wrist. A phoenix consumed in fire. Fucking ironic. In other circumstances, I would have laid there all night looking at it. At the claim on her skin. But I wasn’t proud of this one, and the red-eyed rat stared back at me tauntingly.

Day came, sunlight streaming in through the chintzy curtains, highlighting the frills down the side. The room was similarly decorated. Besides the woodchip wallpaper, flowers covered the rest of it. Floral and frill bedding set, floral pelmets curling around the top of the bay window, floral border on top of the dado rail. It was everywhere. I felt like I was being suffocated by a bastard tea cosy.

And still Jazz slept, barely stirring. She probably hadn’t slept in days. Snatching it where she could, every slightmovement of her body on that hook waking her. Every footstep and every voice sent her back to high alert.

I’d done all that. Every piece of suffering. Guilt stabbed me again from the inside out, twisting in my gut, and when it cleared, nausea took its place.

I’d defied my club. An MC I’d pledged my life to. There were only two ways out of a club like the Rats, and ignoring orders, beating up brothers and running off with club assets was not going to get me a pass out on good standing.

I was fucked. Well. And. Truly.

My brain whirred, thinking over scenarios and then discarding them as dead ends. I couldn’t run home to my parents. That would be the first place they’d look. And outside of the club, I had no friends. Nowhere to lie low. And I still had to get her home. Then what? Face the consequences from the Northern Kings? If I thought the Rats wanted me dead right now, the Kings would want something worse. My club had taken the sister of their Vice President, but I’d strung her up onto the hook in my warehouse. I’d suggested branding her with the Rats’ back patch. And then I’d fucked her. I was a goner. That was the only fucking thing I was sure about right now.

*****

I lay awake most of the day. Staring up at the ceiling that Baz had covered in fucking woodchip wallpaper. I’d heard him most of the day. He’d been up and down the stairs, carrying what I took to be plates and cups, as it chinked noisily with each heavy footfall on the creaking steps.

My phone was off. No way to track me, not that I was sure that the Rats would even think about that or had the basic skills between them to even consider it. We were all a bunch ofmechanics, labourers and general blue-collar workers, or drug runners. The only skills I had were on a racetrack, enforcing Rats’ rule, or building motorbikes. And those were now fucking redundant.

I closed my eyes again, the memories raw in my mind.

For a moment, I was back there. The smell of petrol and hot rubber thick in the air, the kind of smell that crawled into your skin and stayed there for days. I could hear it too. Engines growling lined up shoulder to shoulder, the pop and crack of throttles testing their nerves. My gloves were slick with sweat, my pulse hammering in my throat. Nothing came close to that feeling. That heartbeat before the lights hit green. The world balanced on a knife-edge.

Crowds, noise, a blur of faces pressed against wire fencing as I passed them too fast to make anything out other than smears of skin and the scattering of colour. Anticipation hummed like static in the air, everyone waiting for the first corner, for that mad rush that sorted the men from the idiots. I could almost smell the heat of the track, that sharp tang of scorched oil and hot tarmac. I used to live for it. The speed, the freedom, the control. Every cell in my body tuned to that single moment. The bike and me, one thing, moving faster than fear, faster than thought.

And then… nothing.

Just the silence that came after. The kind that eats the edges of a memory. One second the world roaring, the next, gone. Like someone hit mute. My hands twitched, remembering the loss of grip, the ghost of vibration through the bars. I swallowed hard, the weight of it dragging me back to the flowery monstrosity that surrounded me. The boiler hummed and gargled away down the hall, slowly warming water and notquite warming the damp terraced house. Further away a cough, hacking and tormented, relentless. Yet Jazz’s breathing never changed, steady beside me, calming me in a way it shouldn’t.

I’d lost more than I realised that day. And I’d never found that again. But something else had found me, filling a hole. And now I’d walked away from that too. My brothers. Their noise had replaced those engines in a different way. Metal, loyalty, and the lie that all things were freedom. Loyalty. It had been a beautiful thing. Until it wasn’t.

I turned my head. Jazz shifted in her sleep, her hand curled close to her face. Even now, with the bruises, she looked more alive than I’d felt in years. And here I was, just another man who’d fucked everything he touched.

I lay there listening to her breathe. Counting each one. Thinking about what came next. There was no going home. No calling in favours. The Rats would already be spreading the word. I’d be a dead man the second I crossed paths with anyone flying their patch. But it didn’t matter. Not really.

All that mattered was getting her clear.

And maybe, just maybe, outrunning the silence for a little longer.

The stairs creaked again, the clock on the yellowing bedside table clicking 4pm. My stomach rumbled loudly, filling the room, yet Jazz still slept. The air was cool on my flesh as I rolled out from under the heavy duvet, tucking it back in around her. The thin carpet offered little comfort, heavily worn in the middle of the room, and I could feel the slats of the floorboards underneath.