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“I’ll try, Hunter. I’ll try.”
Yet even as I say it, I worry I might be too broken to love.
Chapter Fifty-Six
Hunter
Through a series of phone calls with Maggie, Emily convinces her to take her back on the schedule the very next day. In a way, I admire her commitment to leap right back to work the day after being kidnapped and imprisoned, but I worry, too.
The Emily that I kiss before she goes to work is not the same Emily as before her kidnapping. Which isn’t a surprise, because she was fucking kidnapped and tortured for days by a sick psychopath named Jay Thompson, a pathetic excuse for a man who got lucky enough to at one time find himself with Emily as a partner, and just couldn’t get his shit together enough to be worthy of her.
But the wound I see inside her that first morning is one that could fester until ever part about Emily that I love — her enthusiasm, her kindness, her intelligence, her sense of loving responsibility to practically everyone she meets, regardless of whether those people deserve it — could wither and die until the person who’s left is just a shell of the fucking beautiful and brilliant woman that I first met.
I can’t let that happen. I can’t let her live rudderless, without the dream that she’s worked so hard for, taken away from her.
I stew that first day, nearly crash several times on my motorcycle because I’m so lost in my damn thoughts, my mind circling around one thing: Emily, and how to get that light back in her eyes.
When I see her that night, and see that an entire day working at what used to bring her fulfillment has instead left her looking more drained and hollow than when she was rescued from Jay’s prison, I know I have to act.
That next morning, after Emily leaves for work, I text Diesel to meet me in the pharmacy parking lot, and then I text Maggie to do the same. Diesel meets me there first, and Maggie keeps me waiting for nearly ten minutes before she exits the front doors of Ironwood Falls Meds & More.
“What’s this about?” Maggie says. “I’m in the middle of running a Shingles vaccine clinic for senior citizens. I have no time for any biker criminality.”
“I need the name of Emily’s professor.”
She crosses her arms. “What for?”
“What for? You’ve seen her. She’s broken inside, Maggie. She’s hurting.”
“She was just rescued from being kidnapped. Give her time, Hunter,” Maggie says.
“Not everyone gets over these things right away,” Diesel says. “But time heals all wounds, right?”
I look from my friend to my Emily’s mentor and shake my head. “Not this one. That motherfucker Jay stripped her future away from her, and she knows it. It’s only a matter of time until she believes she has no path forward with this pharmacy shit—”
“Don’t call what I do ‘shit,’” Maggie says, taking a fierce step forward. “Show some respect or you and I will have an enormous problem.”
“You’re right. It’s important to her, so it’s important to me. I need you to tell me where I can find her professor and so I can talk to him and fix things for her.”
Maggie nods and strokes her chin. “Fine. She studies under Professor Barrigan. We have lunch together sometimes, but he is a bit of a hardass and a stickler for the rules. I don’t think he’ll be open to discussion. Assuming I give you his information and he is not open to changing things, what then?”
“Better you not know.”
* * * * *
Professor Barrigan is not an intimidating-looking man. He’s paunchy, bald, wearing glasses with lenses so wonky that they make his eyes seem preternaturally large, a mustache that’s in dire need of a trim, and he’s wearing a sweater and khaki pants when I first see him.
“Maggie called this guy a hardass?” Diesel says as we watch him leave the faculty parking lot and walk toward one of the university buildings. “Really?”
“You were there. And, since Maggie’s a fucking hardass herself, that must mean this guy’s fucking John Wick,” I reply, not quite believing my own words. The guy’s sweater looks like it was rescued from a third-hand store.
“I think all we need to do is say ‘boo’ and he’ll start pissing himself and begging to do whatever we want,” Diesel replies. “Blowjobs included.”
“Not really interested in a blowjob from this guy, Diesel.” I shrug, then start toward the entrance to the same university building that Barrigan entered. “Now, promise me this: if there’s even a chance that this is John Wick in disguise as a dumpy college professor, don’t even bring up the subject of dogs, OK?”
“But I like dogs, though,” Diesel says. “They’re cute.”
“Everybody likes dogs. But let’s not set this guy off. We just got into the MC. The last thing we need is to bring the wrath of some unstoppable killing machine down on them.” Inside the building, I stop in front of the room number that Maggie gave us. Atop the door is a small plaque — Prof. Curtis Barrigan. “This is it. Ready?”
