Jessie Ch. 02

"Elites? Seriously?"

"That's one thing he gave me that you never could." She blew her nose in her napkin, scrubbed for a long time. "I got to meet more celebrities on his arm than... Than..." She thought for a while. "We got out of North Dakota pretty fast. I think I got pregnant there or shortly thereafter. He liked showing me off, at least until I really started showing. I was a status symbol for him. The hot, poor waitress on the arm of the revolutionary warrior. He'd get invited to parties and I'd go and look pretty and all the actors and singers and politicians would pay him attention cuz they thought they might have a chance at me. I was a distraction so they'd give him more support, more money, more cover when something exploded. They said I looked like one of them."

I gave her a reassuring smile. "You always have been one of the prettiest girls in the room."

"He made me lose the baby weight really fast after Jane was born. Drugs helped. I don't know if she was born addicted or not, but she was really small, cried a lot. He gave her to some doctors he knew, I didn't see her for a couple of days."

"I'm going to kill him," I muttered.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just talking to myself." I smiled sweetly.

Sienna gave me a weird look. "He was killing people, killing TARGETS for them long before bombs started going off in July. He likes to throw a rally or visit one he knows will get violent, hang out in the background with his knife or a big piece of oven pipe... Follow people back to their homes. He started getting violent with me after the doctor cleared us to start having sex again. I watched his behavior around the...the RIOTS...he threw, and I knew if I didn't get out soon, he'd kill me. Day after the Denver riot we were in California so he could talk to some politicians. I roofied his beer, stole his little rifles and started driving."

"You... you were in Denver?"

"Yeah, I was there. Why?"

I thought back to the Brotherhood assholes winging batteries at me that first day. Getting kicked in the face. McKenna pointing that revolver as Jessie dented heads with her baton. "I nearly got beat to death on Sixteenth."

She looked up sharply. "Fuck, Gary, I'm sorry, are you OK?"

"Still a little sore sometimes. Did you... Participate?" My mind flashed back to the violence I'd seen, the car bomb going off in the traffic jam. "Did you hit people, plant bombs?"

That got me an emphatic shake of the head, and she looked ill for it. "No, I was in the camp handing out water, getting the 'Peaceful Protest!' chants going when police tailed somebody back."

"Shit, we were...a couple hundred yards apart. You were just across the street from Jessie's conference. I walked her and McKenna there and back cuz they didn't feel safe." A thought struck me. "Was Morgan there too?"

"Yeah."

"What did he look like then?"

"He shaved his head after the riot. Before that, he was wearing it long, dyed dark with his beard."

Dammit.

I'd been a dozen yards away from him. Less maybe. I'd eaten in the same restaurant, watched him and a columnist named Matt Goldstein have dinner together. I'd later threatened Matt to keep Jessie and her crew safe, and while he hadn't used Morgan's name, he'd said he wasn't someone I wanted in my life. "Motherfucker... I... We were sitting in the same restaurant."

"What?"

I told her, and she laughed, coughed, choked, ran to the sink to gag up slimy liquid. I followed her, wet the washcloth and wiped her face clean. I'd been this close to her before, touching her face gently, intimately. Fuck. I remembered her. Remembered her body, the ways we'd pleasured each other.

What had happened? Why had the universe conspired to break this young, pretty girl?

Her eyes roamed across my face as I stroked the wet rag over her skin. I remembered those green eyes. The way they'd open wide at the first sensual touch, squint shut against pain, or look up expectantly at me... Like she was doing now.

"You ok?" I asked, stepping away.

"Hopefully the rest of it stays down long enough to digest. Thank you."

"So tell me what Morgan wanted the rifles for. That's some specialized hardware."

She sighed and moved back to the table, sat again, pulling her knees up to her chin and shrinking even further into the mound of blankets. "I don't know. We met with some actor in Wyoming, had a grudge against this political action group, wanted to make them look bad. Maybe he was gonna give them to the Brotherhood to use in a crime? Got me."

"Ok." I looked at her for a long while. "You know you probably saved a lot of lives by stealing those, right. A bunch of assholes who use car bombs armed with Em Sixteens? They could do a lot of damage."

"Yay," she said glumly. "I'm glad someone got some benefit from my suffering." She sneezed, coughed, covered her mouth and gave me a sick look, then ran for the bathroom.

I sighed and sat at the table. It hurt to see someone I care - someone I'd cared about in pain like this. My mind wandered back to an Irish restaurant in Denver, a handsome guy with long dark hair and beard. I imagined what his face would look like through the window of the red dot on my Sig.

Imagined what it would look like before and after I applied three and a half pounds of pressure with my index finger.

Guys like that though, Force Recon, they could probably dodge bullets Matrix-style.

I hoped I would never find out.

I knocked on the bathroom door a couple of minutes later. "See, you ok?"

"Yeah," she croaked.

She was sitting on the floor again, looking miserable. "Waste of soup."

"I'm sorry. Is there anything you think would stay down better?"

"Not a chance." Sienna laughed, then choked and coughed.

"Anything I can do for you?"

She looked up at me for a long time, breathing hard, eyes wide and piercing. Finally, she looked away. "Hold me?"

Dammit.

I didn't want to be close to her. I didn't want to be reminded of the time we'd spent together, the fun we'd had, how much I'd care for her. I didn't want to feel her body against mine.

Her chin quivered and she tilted her head to the side, blinked back tears. "It's ok, I understand."

"No...I..." I sat down against the tile wall next to her, and she practically fell over against my side, head pressed to my chest. "I've got you." I stroked her hair, tentatively at first. "I've got you."

#####

I stepped into the second-floor shower, wrapping my arms around Jessie's slim waist. She leaned back into me, reaching across her chest to pull my arms even tighter around her. "Hey you. How's the patient?"

"McKenna's watching her now. She brought Jane up and they're making breakfast."

"That's good." Jessie snuggled back into my arms. "How are you doing?"

I was silent a while. "She fell asleep on me," I said finally.

I could tell the pale woman in my arms was constantly fighting not to stiffen. "Ok..."

"We sat together. She put her head on my chest and... She fell asleep."

"Did you sleep with her?"

"I think I might've dozed for an hour or two."

Jessie whacked my bicep, laughed. "Dummy. No. Did you stick your dick in her?"

"Obviously not."

She turned in my arms. "Then I've got no problem. She needs us. I want to be there for her."

"Ok. I just... This makes me uncomfortable, and it makes me even more uncomfortable thinking you're uncomfortable."

Jessie leaned in and kissed me. "Here's how uncomfortable I am."

Her lips trailed from mine to my collarbone, her tongue swirling electrically over my nipple and down over the hard cuts of my muscled torso, then lower still. "Oh."

###

It's not your whole life, it's only one day

You haven't thrown everything away

- Accidents Can Happen, Sixx A.M.