– Jax –
We begin to walk up the stairs, neither of us has spoken a word since we left the pit, I can hear her softly talking to herself but I can’t make out what he is saying. I’ve never seen her like that before, it was eye-opening, but I know why she did it, and I don’t blame her for any of it. Everyone close to her has hurt her or left her, I was supposed to keep her safe and make her feel loved and I failed, I’m no better than her piece of shit ex, her fuckwit of a stepfather or her pathetic brother.
We get to the top of the stairs and Ricci steps out from his office smirking, “I see she didn’t kill you” He says with a shit-eating grin, “Get in the office” He orders both of us. We walk in and sit down in the chairs across from his desk, “Knew it would work” He says smugly to himself, “Really? This was fucking planned?” Harley growls.
“Oh Mija, I couldn’t stand watching you mope around the house and cry every half an hour because of him. I could see you fighting yourself every day on whether to go back to him or not, so I brought him here and made you choose. Shit’s going to hit the fan, more often than it should but that’s just what you get when you work in the area we work in, it’s high stress and high risks. As a father, I understand why he did it, but he should have gone about it a different way. Now next time he does it call me and I’ll come down there and personally deal with him” He says looking over to me.
“There won’t be a next time” I reply, he looks over to me and smiles, “You would want to pray theres no next time,” He says before looking back over to Harley. “Now you didn’t need to shoot the fucking man or beat him half senseless,” He says leaning back in his chair, I watch as her jaw clenches and she digs her nails into the palms of her hands, “YOU MADE ME THIS WAY, THIS IS THE WAY YOU BUILT ME” She screams at him.
He slams his hands down on the table and stands up straight, “You were taught to kill, I didn’t tell you to do any of this, you did it to yourself Mija. You made the decision to send him down to the pit, not me” He grits through his teeth, “YOU TAUGHT ME TO TORTURE AND HURT PEOPLE TO GET ANSWERS YOU SON OF A BITCH, YOU CAME INTO MY ROOM BEFOREHAND AND DID’NT TRY TO CHANGE MY MIND” She screams again standing up.
“YOU BUILT ME NOT TO FEEL WHEN I’M IN THAT MINDSET, YOU BUILT ME TO HURT WHEN I GO TO THAT DARK SPACE, YOU KNOW I HAVE NO CONTROL OVER ANYTHING WHEN I’M LIKE THAT, YOU KNOW I’M NOT ME WHEN I’M LIKE THAT, do you really think I wanted to hurt him that bad, you think I was happy to beat my fucking husband? You should have done something, you should have stopped me, you should have killed me!” I look over to her and see she’s shaking and trembling, I stand up and look over to Ricci, “Thanks for the talk man, what room is she staying in?” He looks at us still slightly amused as I throw her over my shoulder “The only room with a black door” I slide my hand down her back and take her gun out of her waistband I nod to him as she screams and hits my back.
I walk out of the office and look for the room with the black door, once I find it I open it and walk-in. I put her on the floor and turn around and lock the door behind me. I turn around and lean against the door smiling at her “What?!” She yells clearly frustrated that I find this slightly amusing.
“You’re sexy when you’re angry,” I say chuckling, she rolls her eyes and walks over to bed sitting down on the edge of it, she rests her feet on the bed frame and tucks her head into her knees pulling at her hair. I slowly walk over and kneel down on the ground infront of her, I can hear her mumbling to herself again softly.
“Kitten” I speak softly, “Go away” Her voice is quiet but it breaks as she speaks, “Nah I’m good right here actually” I stand up and remove her hands from the side of her head and she slowly lifts her face up to look at me, her nose and eyes are bright red from crying, a mixture of tears and sweat drip down her skin, “Just go, Jax, please, just go” She sobs.
I don’t blame her for what happened down there, I know all too well that you can’t control yourself when you get into that mindset. She could have tortured me, she could have broken every bone in my body, fuck she could have killed me, but I’d still come running back to her, every fucking time. Because believe it or not she did it out of love, if she didn’t love me anymore she would have killed me as soon as she saw me, if she didn’t love me she wouldn’t have felt guilty, if she didn’t love me she wouldn’t still call me her husband.
“I’m not going anywhere, the only way you will get me to leave you alone is if you kill me, and even then I’ll come back and haunt you every day and keep all the other dickheads away from you. I don’t blame you Harley, and I won’t blame you, ever. Because I know you can’t get yourself out of that dark space until your demons are satisfied” I say as I wipe her tears away.
“No I hurt you, I’m toxic, I’m a monster, I’m pathetic. I don’t deserve you, and you don’t deserve to be treated like this, you deserve someone who’s not going to hurt you” She whispers as she hangs her head low again, “You’re right you did hurt me, but I hurt you too. Your dad told me I left bruises on you” I begin, she scoffs and rolls her eyes, “Bruises are different to broken noses and bullet holes in your ears”.
“That may be, but I hurt you with my words. What I said hurt more than a bullet or a broken bone, it hurt your heart, it broke your heart. It would have hurt less if I had of shot you in the chest. Tell me im wrong” She looks up to me again, “It’s no excuse,” She says before looking down at her lap again. I lift her chin and look into her eyes.
“Look this is the last time I’m going to say this, I deserved it, I know I did, I hurt you when I promised you I wouldn’t, I blamed you for things you had no control over, I said and called you things I knew would hurt you, I lied and kept secrets, I fucked up. I knew that you would flip out if you found out and I still did it. I knew the consequences, I knew. But I still did it, I don’t blame you for the way you reacted, I don’t blame you for how you handled it. I know you never wanted it to get this far and I know if Ricci had of stopped you you wouldn’t have done it. What’s happened has happened and there’s nothing we can do to go back and change the past.”
“I want to spend the rest of my life with you, even if you shoot me every second day. You’re the only person I want, you’re the only one that understands me and my fucked up mind. You’re the one that knows what to do and say when I’m out of control. This hasn’t changed the way I look and feel about you, and maybe I’m fucking crazy for thinking that but it’s the truth. I came here to win you back, I came without any backup, no guns or knives, when Ricci called me I ran out of the clubhouse and went straight to the car.”
“If I had of known what I was walking into I still would have come, without a second thought. Because I knew it was the only way to attempt to fix the wrongs I made into rights, I love you, Harley, you’re my crazy, sexy, psychotic wife and I wouldn’t change a fucking thing about it. When we get older we can tell our kids about all the shit that life has thrown at us, we can teach them rights from our wrongs. This is all apart of growing up and experiencing life, and I don’t want to do life with anyone but you by my side.”
Her eyes fill with more tears, “I’m so fucking sorry Jax, I fucked up so bad” She cries even harder, watching the strong woman before me crumble and break is one of the hardest things I’ve ever witnessed, it fucking hurts, more than the bruises or the broken bones. It hurts my heart, I can physically feel it in pain, the pain she felt that day.
I pull her into my chest and sit us both down on the floor wrapping my arms around her trembling body, “Shhhh, it’s okay, I promise it’s okay” I say as I try to calm her down a few tears of my own roll down my cheeks, she cries even harder “No it’s not” she croaks out, I take her hair tie out and left her hair fall down her back, I run my fingers through her hair and leave kisses on her forehead, “It is kitten, I promise it is” We sit there on the floor as she cries her eyes out, the whole time I reassure her and comfort her.
Sure enough over time the tears stop falling and her sobs turn into hiccups, she hasn’t moved an inch she still curled into a ball resting her head on my chest. There’s a soft knock at the door, “Come in” I call out, Harley hasn’t moved or spoken she’s just staring blankly at the wall on the other side of the room. An older lady walks in with a soft smile on her face, “Mr Riccardo asked if I would bring you a change of clothes” she says holding the pile in her hand, I smile and thank her. She looks at Harley in my arms and she frowns.
She places the clothes on the end of the bed and bends down to meet Harley’s eye level, she says something in Spanish that I can’t make out Harley stays quiet for a while still staring at the wall, she says the word yes, the lady speaks again one more time and places her hand on Harley’s arm, “Remember what I said baby” She says softly before smiling at me, she stands up and walks out the door closing it behind her.
“What did she say?” I asked quietly, “She told me about a time that her husband had eaten the last of her favourite icecream so she shot him in the foot, she asked if I loved you and I said yes. She said things will get better over time and it was partly Ricci’s fault for not stopping me but I need to learn how to control my anger better and not get myself worked up to the point that I can’t back out, then she said that she was going to beat Ricci with a wooden spoon”.
A loud slap and a yelp comes from down the hall, Ricci’s voice screams in Spanish and I can hear the older woman yelling back at him again before another loud snap is heard, “Wouldn’t want to be Ricci right now” I joked earning a soft laugh from Harley. “That’s the sound I like to hear,” I say running my hand over her hair, “I mean it Jax, I’m so fucking sorry, I never wanted to hurt you that bad, I just wanted you to feel the pain I was feeling”.
“I know kitten, but it’s over, in the past. So lets pick ourselves up and work on us. Now let’s have a shower because we both need one” I say picking her up off the floor and carrying her into the bathroom, I missed having her in my arms, I missed the smell of her, what her skins feels like against mine, fuck, I’ve just missed her.