Don't Know If I Bleed

I should’ve known better than to think anything was sacred when it came to the club and Teller-Morrow. I was a quarter finished my beer when Opie came barreling into the clubhouse, all six-foot-four-inches and 200-some pounds of him absolutely furious and looking to take it out on me.

I knew that look, that strut, and I recoiled. I looked to my left to Piney but I wasn’t his problem.

“We need to talk.” I moved to protest. Ope’s eyes hardened. “Now.”

As if I was walking to my death, I followed behind him to his room. The sound of him slamming the door sounded like a gunshot, and for the millionth time in a matter of minutes, I felt like a pathetic child. There was only one person who instilled this level of fear into me and that was my mother’s worthless boyfriend.

“What’d you do, Jo? That piece of shit up in Stockton—was that you?” I couldn’t move. I wanted to tell Opie that I was sorry, that all kinds of fucked up shit would’ve happened to me if I hadn’t done it, but nothing came out. Every bone in my body rattled and trembled. I felt sick. “What the fuck did you do?” he yelled.

“Ope, please—”

He deflated. “Oh my god.”

Even worse than hurting him, I disappointed him. I’d always been the most wholesome, the one with a fraction of a chance, and I’d taken a life.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think—”

“No, you didn’t,” he snarled. “Do you even know how much trouble you could be in? What if they find out it was you, Jo?”

“Then I guess it’s off to prison.”

Ope, who’d been pacing around the room, stopped dead in his tracks. “No. I’m not going to let that happen to you.”

“But you’ll let me go to Stockton at three in the morning and almost get raped.”

My back slammed against the door before I could process what was going on. Opie Winston was intimidating on his own, but when it was his arm across my throat and I could feel the hatred pouring through his veins, I’d never been more terrified for my life.

“Don’t you ever fucking say something like that again,” he said, choosing his words carefully as to control his temper. All he had to do was press against my windpipe a little harder and I’d be dead. “For fuck’s sake, I care about you. I…”

A knock at the door sent him stumbling backwards. As soon as there was ten feet of space, my eyes squeezed shut as to stop the tears while my hand went to my throat. I’d have a bruise.

“It’s open,” came Opie’s raspy acknowledgement.

The door opened slowly to reveal Clay. He looked between us before his eyes—as foreboding and haunting as they’d always been—settled on Ope. I didn’t know if he, too, knew what I’d done. I didn’t know who’d told Opie, either, but my gut told me everyone knew. Would Clay understand? Would anyone? They knew how fragile the line between life and death was better than anyone, but I couldn’t expect them to understand how it was for someone like me. I was merely an accessory.

“Jax is lookin’ for you.” Ope took one look at me before nodding, side-stepping the president as he left the room.

I remained a figment of the architecture as Clay resumed Opie’s position. Having known Jackson before his father died, Clay Morrow was an anomaly to me. He came to equate both death and renaissance, tradition and starting fresh. He took over both the Sons and the paternal void in Jax’s life, but he was still a stranger to me. He hadn’t taken to me the way John and Gemma had.

“I know what you did. So does the club.” Moving closer, he put a hand on the wall to my left, blocking me from leaving. “I’m gonna ask you a question, and if you lie to me…well, I think you’ve been around long enough to know the consequences.

“Would he have killed Jax?”

My stomach turned. “No.”

The corners of Clay’s mouth twitched the way Jimmy’s would before he’d backhand my mother across the mouth. He pushed himself from the wall and dug a cigar from a pocket on the inside of his kutte.

It could’ve been a gun. He could’ve blasted my head off and left the prospect to pick my brain matter out of the carpet.

“Jax said you saved his life.”

“You can tell Jackson I don’t need his absolution.”

The end of the cigar burned orange as Clay put fire to it, exhaling a cloud of smoke. The door shut behind him. I made no movement until I heard him talking to Piney at the bar and then I fell apart.

Ope was sat on a barstool next to his father. There were a pair of recurring Crow Eaters serving drinks and eyeing up the members that were lingering. I’d never attempted to hide my disgust toward them. The lifestyle wasn’t glamorous, it was violent and consuming and no one with a well-functioning moral compass ever got out alive.

“Don’t you fucking slags have anything better to do?”

“Excuse me?” they said in unison.

“What do you hang around here for anyway? All you’re good for is sucking dick and—”

A hand gripped my upper arm and pulled me toward the chapel. “Come on, Jo.”

The clubhouse had gone completely silent. I could hear them shrieking insults behind the closed doors. My blood boiled. Visions of slitting their throats overthrew all rational thoughts and for the first time since it happened, the severity of what I’d done in Stockton overwhelmed me.

“You cool?”

Jax’s eyes were the first familiar sight as my vision came into focus and suddenly I was seeing red again. I shoved him as hard as I could, feeling nothing but rage as he cried out in disbelief.

“I should’ve left you there,” I seethed. “I should’ve let some piece of shit gangbanger cut your goddamn head off!”

The silence was traumatizing. Everyone knew what I’d done and now they knew how much it’d unraveled me. They could all hear my screaming. A few chairs scraped against the floor in a last-ditch effort to save the boy wonder.

“Wha—what are you talking about?”

I shook my head. “Ope loves you too much to say it, but he resents you just as much as I do. Your abandonment hurt him more than it hurt me.”

“My aban…? What the fuck are you—”

A trio of Sons came barreling through the doors, looking worse for the wear than they normally did. It wasn’t often they had to deal with someone like me. Their problems were rival gangs, the IRA and gunrunners. Their problems seldom had to do with their personal lives. Chibs picked Jax off the floor while Tig and Bobby watched me, waiting for me to make the first move. I’d taken a life. I was dangerous business now.

The reaper on the back of their kuttes seemed to taunt me as they left, and I was suddenly consumed by my new bloodlust once more. Only one thought formulated in my mind: I should’ve left Jackson to get a bullet between the eyes.