He'd done it all because he wanted to be rom baro, the leader. Now, he couldn't even take a piss without asking someone first.
But he did have one thing. One little thing that kept him tethered to sanity. It lay under his pillow, and when he felt particularly frustrated or hopeless, he would reach beneath it and hold it in his hands.
He'd taken a huge risk in getting it. One night, a young recruit had stumbled into a bathroom while Jenner was cleaning it, drunk as a lord and sick to his stomach. The kid had barely made it to the toilet before he started throwing up, mumbling incoherently all the while. Rock, who'd been supervising Jenner that day, cursed in frustration.
"Fuckin' wimpy ass little shit," he said. "This kid's supposed to be on fuckin' watch right now. Goddammit … "
Rock glared at Jenner.
"Don't fuckin' move, punk," he warned. "I'll be back in two fuckin' seconds, and if you've moved a single muscle, I'll make you lick that toilet bowl clean."
Jenner nodded, putting his hands up to show he'd obey. Rock glared at him for one long moment, then stepped out of the bathroom. His voice echoed back through the door as he went down the hall, calling for anyone in charge.
Jenner looked at the kid, who was glassy-eyed and staring into the dirty bowl, breathing heavy. A phone, a little grey flip-phone, was sticking out of his back pocket. Jenner's heart skipped a beat. If he took it and someone found it, he'd be screwed. It'd be more of the first month. More beatings. More hunger. More thirst.
But if he didn't take it, he'd never get out of there alive.
Quick as he could, he grabbed the phone and shoved it down the front of his pants, into his briefs. Thinking quickly, palms sweating, one eye on the door, he pulled it out again and turned it off; if it went off before he could get back to the safety of his room, he didn't know what would happen to him. Just as he was shoving it back down where the sun don't shine, the bathroom door began to open. Jenner's skin went cold, his heart racing like a sprinter.
"Ah, fuck," Four-Story scowled, walking into the room with Rock at his heels. Both men gave Jenner a quick glance, but he wasn't their priority. "These stupid kids. I swear, we would never have let a little shit like this try out before we got screwed. Roper's so damn desperate for numbers, boots on the ground … "
"Well, someone's gotta take his shift," Rock said. "I'm on shitstain duty."
"Shitstain duty can wait," Four-Story said, giving Jenner a dirty look. "Take him back to the room and get on watch. We'll have to live with dirty bathrooms for another day."
"Lucky you," Rock grumbled as he grabbed hold of Jenner's arm and started walking him back to his private suite. "You get a day off."
Jenner had hid the phone under his pillow and never turned it on. That day he got it, he had held it in his hands, staring at it for a long time, trying to figure out what to do with it. He didn't have any friends left. He had no idea what had happened at the kumpania after he'd left, but he knew he wouldn't be welcome back. The kid who'd squealed on the club would have squealed on him, too. Even his own mother wouldn't want him back, knowing that he'd intentionally put the kumpania in harm's way.
Of course, he could always try. But he wasn't dumb; the sort of phone he'd lifted was a burner, the sort of thing that only had a certain number of minutes on it. He didn't know how many, but if he wasted the last of them on a call to the kumpania, his one chance to escape would be null.
He could call the police – but that was just as bad. For one thing, it would be embarrassing as hell to admit that he, a grown-ass man, was being held captive by a biker gang. For another, he'd be looking at jail time for his involvement with the club before they'd taken him in as their own personal slave. He'd killed a dog for them, had acted as an informant, had been intimately involved in getting the girl kidnapped. He'd be trading one jail cell for another. And at least the Steel Dragons weren't interested in taking his man-on-man virginity.
So the phone stayed in its place under his pillow until he could figure something out. If he could think up something to tell his cousins that would give him some leverage … if he could find out something that he could use against Kennick … if he could figure out some other way to escape the Steel Dragons, some other club that would help him in return for his services as an inside man …
Until then, he would keep playing his part. He'd do his chores, feeling like Cinderella. But he wouldn't be waiting for a fairy godmother. He'd be his own damn hero. No matter what it took.
9
Damon had wanted to get a little further that first night, but waiting for Tricia to get her things together delayed them. Once they were on the road, the tires spinning miles between them and everyone they cared about, a comfortable discomfort settled between them. Tricia put on a Townes Van Zandt album she'd scrounged, with a full-to-bursting case of other CDs, from her storage unit. Damon approved. They drove in, mostly, silence, both letting their minds adjust to the situation, their bodies adjust to each other.
Tricia half-wished that they'd been able to leave in the daytime. At night, the highway was amorphous, the trees creating a mockery of landscape against a blue-black sky. She would have liked to see Kingdom receding. She would have liked to see the land pass by, to confirm what her mind knew but her heart hadn't yet totally accepted. She was leaving home behind to spend an unknown amount of time with a basically unknown man. She was doing the craziest thing she'd done since college. And she was okay with it. She was excited about it. She felt … ready for it.
Damon, in the driver's seat, focused on the zig-zag ballet of the highway, and thought about his future. It seemed to stretch out before him as dark and unknown as the road his headlights didn't reach. But there was something there, looming and beckoning, pulling him forward. When he glanced over at Tricia, her profile angled towards the window, he felt a satisfied humming inside him. He was probably doing the wrong thing, bringing her along. But it couldn't be so wrong, when she smiled back at him, her eyes calm and open wide; it couldn't be the worst decision he'd ever made.
"Hey, don't you, like, have a shop to run? That cheese place with the pun for a name?" Tricia asked an hour into the drive.
"Let it Brie," Damon clarified with a smile. "I closed up, just until we get back. I don't really trust anyone else to run it."
"Won't the cheese go bad?" Tricia asked.
"I heard a rumor once that cheese gets better with age," he answered with a wink.
"You know, you're not exactly the sort of guy that I'd imagine being a connoisseur of cheeses," Tricia mused, looking out the window again.
"There's an art to it," he said. "Subtlety. It takes concentration, being able to pick out different notes and flavors … "
Tricia turned to him with an eyebrow cocked.
"I'm serious," he said, amused by her disbelief. "The difference between a Fontina and a Berner Alpkäse is a matter of molecules, and time, and diet. All little things that make a big difference. And one Fontina is different than another. You can tell what the cows ate, and when, and at what elevation. It's a science, an artful science."
Tricia smiled at him then, but didn't respond.
"What?" he asked, laughing lightly. "Think that's not very manly?"
"No," she said. "It's just not something I ever thought about. All I know about cheese is that if you hand me a block of it, there's a good chance you won't get it back."
"Well, cheese also has opioid properties," he said. "I guess that could contribute to my interest in it."
Tricia hummed, looking away. Damon noticed how her hands shifted slightly, moving against each other, in her lap.
"Fighting's a science too, isn't it? An artful science," Tricia said, voice low. Damon's knuckles tightened around the steering wheel, which only made the old scars and new wounds stand out more. She sighed. "Sorry. I don't know why I said that. I guess I just...it's hard to imagine you discussing flavor notes one day and entering a ring the next."
He didn't need to ask how she knew about his fighting career. Even if she wasn't best friends with Ricky and Kim, who probably mentioned it, his body contained the story for anyone who wanted to read it.
"Yes," he finally said. "It's another art. A more physical one. Fighting's about attention, focus. You have to see everything in a few moments. Where his hips are, which hand he favors, whether he shifts on his left or his right foot. And you have to train your body to react in kind, no matter what his strength is, no matter what your weakness is."