Reprise
Authors: C.D. Breadner
REPRISE
-A Red Rebels MC Novel-
C.D. Breadner
Copyright 2016 C.D. Breadner
Kindle Direct Publishing Edition
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Thank you for your support.
Thank you once again to my family and friends for their support, and to all readers of this series for keeping me motivated. Thank you to my husband who remains supportive, even when he keeps suggesting I write non-fiction.
Really? Non-fiction?
And I cannot thank the talented ladies of the Freak Circle Press enough. For their words of encouragement, their virtual kicks in the butt to keep me going, and their patience when I vent and want to delete the whole thing and sell Tupperware instead. Thank you so much Susan, Sarah, Catherine, Shannon and Lina. Even though we’re spread out all over the globe, you ladies are the kind of squad a girl can spend her whole life hoping to meet.
-Two Months Ago-
Harlon “Tiny” Gray rolled his shoulders, uncomfortable to be sitting on the edge of this vinyl bench with just a paper hospital gown covering his vital bits. If he’d been thinking he would have put on underwear that morning, but heading into a fight didn’t afford him the foresight of possibly visiting the hospital later on.
Although, maybe it should.
Either way, it had been the insistence of his MC president that brought him to that moment. He’d already done the X-Ray thing and the lab was processing a very special portrait just for little ‘ole him. Now he was back to waiting. And that stuck in the ass something horrible. He had shit to do; he couldn’t just cool his heels. Especially over bullshit like a couple cracked ribs—if they
were
that damaged. He doubted it. Having trouble breathing could be bruised ribs, or pulled rib muscles. And it’s not like they put you in a cast for any of that shit anyway.
But whatever.
The door opened on a muted
swish
sound, and Doctor Tracy Webber entered the exam room, eyes on the folded-open folder in her hand. Her teeth were dug into her plump lower lip and her brow was furrowed behind those thick-rimmed glasses she wore.
Sexy librarian, sexy doctor. One and the same.
She moved with efficiency, no effort wasted. Without looking at him or a reassuring smile she crossed to a panel on the wall, flipped a switch, and the thing lit up with white light. She shoved a sheet of black plastic into the clamp at the top, and he realized it was his X-Ray.
“Any fractures, Doc?” he asked wryly, seeing already that everything was in place.
“Your ribs are fine. Are you having trouble finding air to breathe?”
He frowned. “What do you mean? It hurts when I inhale, like I said.”
She shoved her glasses up on top of her head, holding that lush, chocolate-brown cascade back. The kind of hair you wanted to wrap up in your hand and give a hard pull. Shit, now he was painfully aware of how naked he was.
“Mister Gray,” she began, and he liked her calling him that. So much so his erection throbbed again, painfully. “Come closer and take a look at this.”
“Ahh,” he chuckled, wiping at his chin with one hand. “I’m good here. I can see just fine.”
She used a pen to point out shapes on the image. “Can you make out these shadows here? And then a cluster here?”
He squinted, but fuck no. He couldn’t see what she was pointing out. So, reminding himself she was a doctor—a pretty young doctor who probably treated every male patient she had while he was sporting a stiff cock for her—he hauled his ass off the bed and crossed the room, his erection leading the way. She didn’t look back at him, thank God.
He stood slightly to the right behind her, squinting still. “You mean that shit that looks like mist or whatever?”
“Yes.” She huffed out a sigh. “This isn’t normal. Do find you grow short of breath easier?”
He frowned. “I don’t know. No more than usual.” Again he chuckled. “I do smoke a half-pack a day, Doc.”
She turned to him, her eyes on his. Good thing, too. She had a take-no-shit kind of face, her gray-blue eyes steely and determined. “I want to run blood work on you.”
Now he was confused. “It’s just bruised ribs, Doc. I know that. I’m just here for Jayce’s peace of mind.”
She blinked exactly once. “Not for that. I want to check your white blood cell count. I think this is cancer, Mister Gray.”
His weight shifted back to his heels. He had to clear his throat.
Shit.
“Why bother?” he asked hollowly.
Now the Doc was frowning. “What do you mean?”
He cleared his throat again, willing something to register through this thick veil of numb that came out of fucking nowhere. “My dad went through it. He fought it twice.”
“Has he passed?”
Tiny shook his head. “Nah, the tough bastard’s still around. He had to stick around for my mom.”
The Doc pulled her glasses down and he took the opportunity to turn away and climb back on the table. Flashing ass was better than waving his dick around, even if it had suddenly returned to its usual size and posture.
“Mister Gray—”
“Tiny,” he cut in, irate.
She sighed. “Tiny. I won’t sugar-coat this. By the time nodules show up on an X-Ray at that size ...”
She let that trail off. He knew what it meant. They were big, mean, life-sucking tumors and they were going to kill him. By the time an X-Ray showed what was going on it was too late. They were part of him, they had an artery system all their own, and that parasitic disease wouldn’t stop until they were both dead.
It was a nice chat his Dad had with his doctor on the second round of cancer. The old man went through insane amounts of chemo, enough that it probably should have killed him, but the tumors had been beaten into submission. He’d been so sickly the whole time. Thin and pale and shaky, and Tiny’s mom used to call him at night terrified that her husband wasn’t going to make it.
Tiny was beckoned home four times to say goodbye, but that ending hadn’t come. A medical miracle, or just cancer deciding the stubborn fucker wasn’t worth it. Hard to say.
“—if that’s okay.”
“What?” he muttered, blinking himself back from his father’s hospital room to the here and now. Still a room in the hospital, just not his.
“I’d like to listen to your breathing,” the doctor repeated patiently, plugging the stethoscope into both ears. “Can you strip to the waist for me?”
His hands worked surprisingly well as he undid the tie at the neck of the paper garment, letting it fall off his arms. He sat up straight, and as she pressed that cold fucking thing to his chest the goose bumps broke out. Her hand went to his back, and he sat up straighter by reflex.
“Breathe in,” she said in her musical doctor tone, eyes fixed on the wall across from her. “And out.”
He took instruction well so he tried to put all this into perspective while sucking air back and letting it go again. He was fifty-eight. Not old in the grand scheme of the world, but old for the life he’d led. He should be dead three times over but he was still kicking. The question was if he wanted that chemical shit storm running through him, taking away all strength and dignity and courage until not much else was left other than the disease—the sickness.
The stethoscope was shifted to his back, and after a moment of hesitation her hand flattened on his abdomen, right under the pad of muscle that made up his right pec. As he inhaled, then exhaled, her hand started ... moving.
Not really moving. Her thumb started stroking back and forth softly, over his skin. It brushed the underside of his pec and his next inhale hitched a bit.
“Are you okay?” she asked, the same all-business tone, and he wondered what kind of fucking game got her off. He caught her eye, then looked down where her thumb was still tracing over him. An inch or two higher and she’d be right into nipple territory.
“Oh God.” Her hand pulled away, and that creamy complexion flooded with pink. She pulled the stethoscope out of her ears and looped it around her neck again, snatched her folder off the bed and turned away from him with the twitchy movements of a startled bird. “I-I ... I’m sorry.”
He chuckled, watching her back as it straightened. “It’s all right, Doc. I’m flattered.”
She spun around, eyes wide. “No, I didn’t ... that is ... I don’t want—”
He put a hand up to pause her. “Book the blood shit, run the tests you want. I won’t speak of it again.”
She pulled in air, and it sounded like relief. “I’m sorry, Mister Gray.”
“Anyone who touches me like that can call me Tiny.”
She got pinker and looked at her feet.
“You got anything else you want to check? Prostate?” He cocked an eyebrow up when her head came up in surprise.
“Excuse me?” she whispered, getting indignant as she blushed deeper. “Don’t talk to me like that.”
He got to his feet, letting the paper gown fall off. She spun around, hand going to her neck but not before her eyes did a quick scan. Yeah, he caught the up and down, and when he reached for his jeans he was chuckling again. “You’re shy, it’s okay. I get it. But anytime you want another look at me, Doc, you got it.”
“Fuck you,” she sputtered and stalked out of the room. He’d just gotten his fly done up when the door opened, and even the nurse on the other side, behind the check-in desk, was startled by the sudden motion.
“Anytime Doc, just call,” he shouted after her, grinning. He scooped up his shirt and was tugging it on as he left the examining room. He caught the way the nurse’s eyes ran over him as he tugged the white cotton into place. “How you doin,’ Trixie?”
She smiled. “Good, thanks. Everything okay?”
Trixie had been to a few clubhouse parties. And he was pretty sure she’d been in his room at least once, but who could remember
everything
that took place under the haze of so much booze and pot?
“Everything’s great. I’m due for some blood work. You wanna show me which room?”
She smiled and stood, tugging down on her scrubs top to push her chest up a little further. “Of course. Right this way.”
Chapter One
The bronze nameplate was one of dozens on the face of a mausoleum wall, and for Tiny it was the loudest, more blaring detail of the whole cold, ugly thing.
Heidi Mickayla Downey-Horton
.
He blinked against the uncomfortable burn in his eyes. As small as the nameplate was, there was no way the ash it marked weighed half as much as the metal that made it. He didn’t know if there were even remains in this situation. Once a stillborn baby was out, did they cremate? Was it considered medical waste? It couldn’t be. It had to be treated the same as if it had at least drawn a dozen breaths or so.
He had no fucking clue.
Next to him Fritter had his arm around his woman, and she was frail and weak-looking, tucked into his side. He’d never seen Sheriff Downey look like this. Her skin was almost waxy, her hair in a lank ponytail like she was going to work, and even he could tell her shoes didn’t
really
go with the navy skirt and blazer she’d put on. Her kid was standing behind her other shoulder, looking somber, every now and then reaching out to squeeze his mom’s arms. And in front of Brayden was an undersized ten year old kid named Adeel. He was holding the hem of Sharon’s blazer, chewing his thumb, his wide dark eyes staring up at all the people around him. He was so close to Sharon it looked like he was hoping she’d absorb him, but she didn’t mind. Her hands were on the kid’s shoulders, holding on just as tight.
Tiny yanked his gaze from her. Shit, he was going to start crying. This was all too fucking vivid and familiar.
Images came flooding back again, ones he tried to tamp down every time they reared their stinking head but this time he couldn’t. A tiny white coffin, lowering into a square hole. The spray of flowers on top too big for the box. His little girl inside. Cold and gone forever.
Fuck
.
Angrily, he swiped at his eyes. On this opposite side Knuckles saw it, and frowned at him as if sending him the telepathic question of what was wrong. Like crying at a baby’s funeral was somehow odd.
Jaw clenching, Tiny shook his head and looked elsewhere, eyes following the tidy rows of plaques that marked the deceased. Like passages of time, but it wasn’t neat and orderly. It never was. Sometimes parents outlived their children and grandchildren. Sometimes time didn’t know what fucking order this was all supposed to go in.
“We’re gonna head back to Fritter’s now,” a deep voice said behind him as a shovel-sized hand closed on his shoulder.
Over his shoulder, Tiny met Tank’s eye and nodded. “Okay,” he agreed, turning back to the name on the wall.
“You all right, Tiny?”
He nodded, wiping at his eyes again. Shit. This was not a story he felt like sharing, not at all. But there would be questions. He supposed he could put them off for a while, though. At least long enough to put his ghosts back in their box.
“I’m fine. Let’s roll out.”
-oOo-
Alone at the clubhouse, following an awkward backyard gathering where Tank and Buck manned a grill, while Fritter stuck close to his old lady and everyone tried to act like life could go on just fine, Tiny fell onto his bed and stared at the ceiling, not seeing the magazine spreads with naked women draped over motorcycles.
He had one ghost, just the one, but it was a doozy. A little girl with bright blue eyes, the first dusting of reddish hair, and a laugh that still made his chest tight.
It had been years since he thought of her. Everyone having kids around him—Jayce and Trinny, then Buck and Gertie, soon Rose and Tank—had caused a stirring of the memory to come back, but Sharon Downey losing her baby blew the doors off it. Seeing her grief, despair, and even guilt, he went careening back in time twenty-nine years.
Shit. Twenty-nine years? Could it have been so long? Hell, he could have been a grandfather by now.
That was half his life ago. Five years before finding himself in the Red Rebels. That all happened to a totally different person, come to think of it.
Too bad he took all the bad memories with him.
He scrubbed a hand down his face roughly, trying to distract himself from the pain in the middle of his chest. It wasn’t the fucking cancer, either. Unless the damn disease managed to work itself into his heart, this was his grief coming back on him.
Age brings wisdom. He had never come to terms with what happened all those years ago. His grief had never been acknowledged, nor had his guilt over his own behavior in the months that followed.
Hell, his behavior the last twenty-nine years was under the microscope of guilt and he felt flayed by the bright light.
Don’t think of her, don’t think her name.
She was gone; she’d never want anything to do with him. Especially now, especially after how he’d treated her.
Mallory
.
Fuck, that made his heart kick painfully, too. Maybe even more than the memory of little Angelina did. Angelina was dead; he couldn’t make anything up to her. No hope of making good on these twenty-nine years. But for the same amount of time he’d bet Mallory had hurt even more than he did, because he added to her pain. He hadn’t even tried to make it better.
He was an asshole. Of the highest order.
With a wince Tiny pressed the first two fingers of his right hand into the center of his chest, over his heart. The pressure behind his breastbone was crushing down on him. So much regret. So much he should atone for.
But he couldn’t. There was no taking all that shit back.
Mallory Beck. A bombshell brunette, all of twenty when he met her. Eight years his junior. He should have left her alone, but she just had to flirt. Give him a smirk plenty full of attitude. Too young to even be in the bar. But instead of leaving children to themselves, he bought her a beer. The rest was his painful history.
He’d wanted to scare the attitude out of her, likely. Even though it was what he liked best about her—even more than her tits, which were out-fucking-
standing
. It was like her vibrancy made him feel dull, and he had to teach her how life really was. It hurt to see her potential, knowing his was only going to get him so much out of life.
Here he was, all mopey and moon-faced about past ills. No doubt brought about by the phone call he’d got that morning, on top of the somber memorial service, of course. His father, asking him to come home and help move his mother into the home.
The time had come.
She’d been slipping by the year, deep into dementia. And his father was no spring chicken. He just couldn’t take care of her the way he honestly wanted to.
And then he’d said the words. “The cancer is back, son.”
Tiny hadn’t told anyone about what his own body was currently harboring. Not his father, not Jayce, no one. He couldn’t stand their worry or hovering concern. He’d rather just ... fade out.
But his father didn’t want to fade out in the house with his mom around. He didn’t want her to find him and have to deal with all that shit. So she had to go where people were better able to care for her.
This was how time went. Your parents took care of you, you begrudgingly took care of them as much as they’d let you, and then they were as weak and feeble as you were as a babe. The circle of fucking life. You came in surrounded by people who adored you, then you went out resented and pitied.
He took a deep breath through an open mouth, trying to calm the racing of his heart. Closing his eyes, he tried to envision the good parts of his life. And instead his guilt buried him in the assurance he was a piece of shit.
He knew where he was headed when this life was over. Fluffy clouds and harps were not waiting for him.