J. Salsbury - Fighting to Forget

She hands me a file folder. “Open it.” Standing, she curls into her husband.

What the hell is in this file that has her so freaked out?

I flip to the first page. My breath catches in my throat when I’m met with the familiar face of my past. Goose bumps race across the back of my neck. My heart bangs in my chest.

My Gia, the little girl with flaming orange hair and big gray eyes. Her full lips are a miniature size of what they’ve become, and her pale cheeks are flushed pink in her youth.

“How do you . . .?” I look up to Raven who is now folded into Jonah’s arms, her face pressed against his chest. “I don’t understand.”

“After he died, I got all his stuff. There were so many names: women and a few children. I assumed he kept tabs on the women who worked for him. I kept it for Raven’s Nest, just in case someone needed information. I don’t know. It sounds stupid, but all those names were attached to a life. It felt wrong throwing it out. You said red hair.” She shakes her head. “I recognized the name.”

“Ridley Mental Institution.” I flip through the pages and see a few hand-scribbled notes. “Delusional. Hallucinations. Psychotic?”

My chin drops to my chest as a wave of shame crashes over me. I called her all those things the night I realized who she was. I was so wrong. She’s no different from me, traumatized by a life she didn’t get to choose, the product of someone’s fucked-up idea of parenting.

But a mental institution? I struggle to connect the dots. In the picture, she doesn’t look much older than she did when I knew her. She had to have been committed by a guardian. But why? There are so many other ways to abandon a kid. Why lock them up?

At the back of the file, I find her information page. Georgia McIntyre. Age eight. Parents deceased. I rake my eyes down to the bottom of the page.

Committed by legal guardian.

Signature.

Dominick Morretti.

“What the fuck!” I drop the file and jump up from my seat. My hand darts out, pointing at the offending pages. “How . . .?” I shake my head.

Jonah grabs the file off the floor, and I watch in horror as his eyes follow the path mine just did. His face falls slack. Eyes wide. “Holy motherfucking shit.”

“Jonah?” Raven pulls the file from his hand, reads it, and within seconds, she’s folded deep into her husband’s arms. “How is that possible?”

“Don’t know, baby.” His eyes find mine and hatred for is wife’s birth father flames behind his eyes.

I’m stunned. Fucking floored. Dominick and Mac connected? And how in the hell did a scumbag dick like him become her legal guardian? From her evil-as-shit parents, into the disgusting world of an egomaniac pimp, off to a mental institution, and then into my arms? And Hatch? Damn. Here I thought I had it bad. I can’t even begin to imagine the things Gia has seen, how she’s suffered.

Probably suffers still.

“We need to find her.” If it’s not too late. Why didn’t I let her explain? She begged me to listen. I swallow the boulder of emotion that clogs my throat. “I have to bring her home.”

Raven pulls free of Jonah’s arms and resumes her place at the computer. She swipes at the rogue tears that slide down her cheeks. “Do you have any idea where we should be looking? Did Hatch ever mention a town, restaurant, highway number?”

I pull up the closest chair to look over her shoulder. “Trix mentioned Colorado, but she wasn’t sure. She also said she heard the guys mention a place called The Devils Hog.”

She clicks on something, rips out a disc, and pops in a new one. “Good enough, at least it’s a start.”

My shoulders ache with tension. What would I do had Trix not confided in me? If Raven and Jonah weren’t willing to help? I’d never find her. “Thanks for this, Rave, I—”

“I kept all this stuff, hoping that I might be able to use it to fix some of the damage that Dominick caused.” She shoots me a quick look from over her shoulder, the usual light of her unique blue-green eyes now cold and determined. “We’re going to find her, and then we’re going to turn in everyone responsible so they can’t hurt anyone else.”

Hurt? Is she hurt?

My knee bounces with the urgency to get to her.

I don’t know what Gia’s gotten herself into or why she’d end up hanging around a guy who split her cheek. The same biker dick and former henchman for the man who locked her up in a mental institution. My head spins with information. Too many questions, but all that I’ll make sure to get answers for when I find her.

After I hold her.

And kiss her.

And tell her I love her.

Mac

Friday night and still no Hatch. He took off on MC business a week ago and never came back. He said it would be an overnight.

The other guys that come in and out of the compound have been whispering. Something about a job going wrong. Was Hatch involved? Is he dead?

My muscles twitch; every jump sends pain through my bones. Cross-legged on the bed, I rock back and forth. I grab the corners of the blanket and pull it tight around my shoulders. If he never comes back, what will happen to me? I’m tired, but can’t sleep without the nightmares. Worse than ever, they crash over me and I wake up in a pool of sweat.

Can’t. Stop. Shaking.

I need to move. Walk. Run. Sleep. Fuck, I don’t know what to do.

I’ve never gone this long without a hit. Nausea roils my belly, and I swallow back the vomit that threatens. The sweat-soaked sheets rub against my naked skin like razor blades. Everything hurts. How long can I go on like this? My teeth chatter with cold. I hear the raucous voices of some guys filter through the door. Maybe they’ll have something. Anything.

I have no money, but that hasn’t stopped me from getting what I need in other ways. My spine feels like knifed jackhammers are dancing up and down it. I’m in hell.

My eyelids drop closed. I imagine that I’m in Rex’s arms, that he’s kissing my head and telling me everything’s going to be okay. I pretend he loves me. My muscles relax a tiny bit, and I absorb the comfort of my imagined Rex.

A stream of moisture falls from the corner of my eye, followed by another. I pinch my eyes closed tighter, trying to block out the sadness.

“I miss you so much.” My dry lips form the words, but my voice sounds as dead as I feel.

All I wanted to do was love him. Even loving him from a distance is better than being without him at all. I don’t know how long it’s been since I’ve seen him. Drugs have fogged my sense of time and my will to care.

It’s pointless to continue to deny what’s happening to me.

What I’m doing to myself.

Ever since I left Rex’s condo, I’ve been on the slow path to suicide. Just because I don’t pull out a gun and end it doesn’t make it any less of what it is, the slow death of a weak woman.

Admitting it releases a long, relieving breath. Yeah, I’ve known it all along. Hooking up with Hatch, pretending it was because he cared, took care of me . . . what a joke. I knew on some level this lifestyle would end up killing me.

With a sudden clarity, my eyes pop open. This is it, the end of my pain, my longing for a person who hates me, my lifelong quest for redemption that ended in the ultimate persecution. A death sentence.

And I don’t want to go on another day without him.

I hurt from the core of my being, and my soul claws against my flesh. My stomach lurches, and I hang my head off the side of the bed. A dirty pair of Hatch’s jeans is bunched at the base of the rickety side table. I focus on the pocket where a small vial pokes out just above the seam.

I push with my toes and stretch my arm over to fish it out. I grip the cold glass in my fevered, quaking hand and curl into a ball around. A war rages in my body, part hunger and need destroying what’s left of my fight to survive. But the battle is short-lived as the chemical dependency roars its unwavering demand.

Grabbing the mirrored plate from the side table, I roll to my stomach and pour out a short line. It looks a little different, darker, but I’m too desperate to care. I lick my lips and bring the powder to my nose. It takes all the strength I have left to steady my hand.

The addiction takes over and I’m helpless. Like watching myself from across the room, I stare in horror as the drug is sucked into my body. My head arches back, a moan of ecstasy pours from my lips. Relief, instant and aggressive. This is different and so much better, not the usual high, but rather a soothing low that makes me drop my forehead to the bed.

More.

Another line, then one more. Peace blankets me in warmth. This is all I’ve ever wanted. Serenity.

I lose the ability to hold up my head. Thoughts fizzle away until it’s just me and the high. I lie down, wondering what I was so upset about before. Suddenly nothing matters except the tiny vial that I have clasped between my hands.

Making amends with my past, my eyes drift closed. I pull up his face.

He’s smiling down at me with acceptance, forgiveness. “It’s okay, Gia. I forgive you.”

My heart swells and slows, unable to take the full weight of his mercy.

“I love you, Rex.” Hot tears trail from my eyes to the bed. “I never stopped loving you.”

“You can let go now, baby.”

Breathing shallow . . . pulse slower . . . the world goes black.

Peace.

~*~

Rex

“Continue on Interstate 285 toward Leadville.” The computer-generated voice from the GPS is the only person talking in the rented SUV.

Jonah, Blake, and Caleb have been silent for most of the trip. The plane ride from Vegas to Denver seems as if it were ages ago as we trek through the Colorado mountains. Adrenaline drums through my veins, ratcheting up along with our altitude. Every motorcycle that passes ignites a fire in my gut. She better be okay. Fuck! She better be better than okay. If not, I don’t know what I’ll do.

“Rex, man, you’re going almost one hundred miles an hour.” Caleb’s voice comes from the backseat, reminding me that there are more lives at stake than the one I’m racing toward.

The second Raven found the old farmhouse in Colorado among Dominick’s list of properties, I was on the phone, booking my flight. Jonah insisted on coming and calling reinforcements. I didn’t want to take him away from his family to clean up the shit-mess I made, but he grinned, grabbed my phone and booked four tickets. We took the first flight out the next morning.

I let up on the gas and try to relax. No point walking in on a motorcycle gang’s compound half lit and ready to kill. “We get there, you guys wait in the car and I’ll—”

“No fuckin’ way. We go in together,” Blake says in his no-negotiating way.

Jonah’s in the passenger seat, texting. “Agreed.”

“If we go in together, they might see us as a threat. Let me go first, see if she’s even there, if we have the right place.”

“See us as a threat?” Blake shoves the back of my seat. “Motherfucker, we are a threat.”

“Agree with that too.” Jonah tosses his phone into the center console. “Dominick’s shit is wet. It trickles all over the damn place even after the dick face is buried in the dirt. My girl’s on a mission to erase the lasting effects of that ass. I take this as an opportunity to assist in that.” He turns toward me. “Translation? Threat.”

Can’t argue with that.

“Layla’s been crying over Mac for so long I’m happy to fuck anyone up if it means drying my woman’s tears,” Blake says. “Plus, Mac’s a good girl. She deserves better than this.”

She deserves better. Could I be the better she deserves? My hands grip the steering wheel and I lie heavy on the gas. I don’t know if I can be, but fuck I want to be.

“Threat it is.” It’s not as if I have anything to lose. If I don’t get Gia back, make up for the way I treated her, then I’ll be stuck, half-way to a cure, part sick, never healed.

“Don’t worry, bro. We’ll let you walk in first if that makes you feel better,” Caleb says with a smile in his voice.

Pine trees fly by in a blur as we leave the heavier populated mountain towns and enter the barren areas. According to the GPS, we’re less than ten miles from the farmhouse.