Red (Hell’s Jury MC #5)

3. Chapter 3

CHAPTER 3

Stella

I can’t stop jumping, wriggling or shrieking.

“For fuck’s sake, hold still.” One of Lachin’s big hands is wrapped around my bicep and the other is searching through my hair.

I’m crying now. Seriously. “I can’t! I can’t! I can’t!”

“What the hell are you doing to my daughter!” my mom shrieks behind us, making us both jump, me higher than I already was.

“There it is,” Lachlan says, then tries to move his hand, but the leather cuff he’s wearing gets caught in my curls.

“Get away from her, you thug!” Mom’s closer now, voice more shrieky.

“Ow! Ow! Ow,” I cry, gabbing his wrist as he pulls my hair to get the cuff free. It doesn’t help that mom is now punching at him, because, while he’s trying to get off me, he’s trying to get my mom off him.

“Mom!” I shriek, knowing I sound just like her. “This is not what you think!”

Mom isn’t listening. “You animal!” She continues her assault, clawing his face, pulling his hair and beard, kicking his shins.

He tries to duck out of the way, but yanks my hair hard when he does, which makes me stumble into him. Which makes my stomach leap, which confirms my suspicions that I’m an idiot.

“I’m not an animal!” Lachlan channels the Hunchback of Notre-Dame as he accidentally elbows mom, sending her sprawling to the pavement.

“You’re a fucking gang member!” she snarls as she leaps to her feet, her hands balled. “I’m calling the police.”

Language, mom, I think but get distracted as Lachlan says words I can’t repeat and gives my hair a hard yank.

I cry out sharply, but still have the good sense to yell at my mom. “Do not call the police!”

“The fuckin’ spider’s gone,” Lachlan growls. “Ran away in self-defense.” He lets go of my bicep as he tries to untangle his leather cuff.

In the background, I hear mom say, “Yes, it’s an emergency. A humongous criminal biker assaulted me and he’s still assaulting my baby in our driveway.”

This gets both me and Lachlan going. “You assaulted me first, you crazy bitch, and I’m not fuckin’ assaulting your fuckin’ baby!”

“Mom, hang up the phone! Right now!”

“He’s swearing at me now,” mom wails. Then, “Tall, long red hair. His vest says…” She angles herself so she can see the back of Lachlan better. “… Hell’s Jury and it’s made of leather.”

Which is kind of irrelevant. “Stop!” I shout. She’s so gonna die of embarrassment when she realizes some of the neighbors are outside watching.

Mom holds the phone towards me. “She’s telling him to stop and he won’t.”

Shit. “Mother! I’m talking to you!”

“You’re nuts!” Lachlan roars as he yanks at his cuff. “You’re all nuts.”

Mom hangs up. “Help is on the way.” She runs up to me, grabs me around the waist and starts pulling me toward her.

“Ow, ow, ow! I’m still attached!”

“I’m trying to help you!”

Distant sirens grow closer and then I see the blue strobe lights. A police car haphazardly screeches to a stop in front of the house and two cops jump out. One of them I recognize. Sergeant Kyle Levine. He came to my high school to lecture us on drinking and driving.

“I’m sorry,” I say to Lachlan as I meet his hostile eyes.

Mom runs over to the cops. “See what he’s doing and look.” She points a finger at us. “He won’t stop even with you here.”

“Jesus fucking christ,” Lachlan snarls. “Would you all shut the fuck up and listen.” He’s still focused on getting my hair out of his cuff, but the urgency of the situation is making him get it more tangled.

“Get down on the ground, you big fucker!” Out of the corner of my eye, I see both cops draw their guns.

I’m in full panic mode. “Don’t shoot him! He’s innocent!”

At the same time, Lachlan snarls, “How the fuck am I supposed to get down on the ground?”

“Please stop!” I yell. I’m crying now because the situation is out of control and I’m making it worse.

“Let the hostage go, you sonofabitch!” Sergeant Levine says.

“She’s not a fuckin’ hostage,” he growls as both cops yank Lachlan off me. I shriek as he takes a bracelet full of my hair with him, then I lose my balance.

Chaos breaks out. Well, more chaos, because Lachlan grabs me to prevent me from falling, which looks like he’s using me to shield him.

“Get away from her!” Sergeant Levine yells. “Or I’m gonna shoot your fucking head off.”

“No you’re not!” my mom screeches. “Not while my baby’s in the way.”

God, would she stop with the baby shit.

“She’s not fuckin’ in the way,” Lachlan snarls as he shoves me behind him so hard I fall on my ass.

“Ow!” I cry to no one.

Mom practically flattens me as she jumps on me and hugs me tightly against her chest. She’s sobbing and rocking me and stroking my hair. “It’s okay, honey. It’s okay.”

“Jesus, mom,” I snap, trying to struggle out of her grip. I watch in horror as the cops literally kick Lachlan’s feet out from under him.

He has no time to catch himself as he crashes to the cement. He’s rolled over on to his stomach, his arms yanked behind his back by the not-Sergeant-Levine cop who has his knee shoved between Lachlan’s shoulder blades. Then the cop handcuffs and searches him producing a gun from under his vest.

This is getting worse and worse. I try pleading. “Please, let him go! He didn’t do anything.”

“Do not release that mammoth!” my mom commands then turns to me. “He’s armed for god’s sake. He could’ve killed you.”

“I got a permit,” Lachlan grunts as the cop with the knee on his back applies more pressure.

“He’s got a permit!” I repeat to mom. “And I’m fine. Nothing happened.” Understatement of the year, Stella.

“It’s Stockholm syndrome,” mom says to the cops. “Stella is very susceptible to men who pay her the least little attention.”

“Oh my god.” I always thought tearing at hair and gnashing of teeth was just a saying, but I’m literally doing both.

The cop pulls Lachlan to his feet, straining and grunting. “Lachlan Faust, you’re under arrest for the alleged assault of…” He looks at me. “Who are you?”

“She’s Stella Leith-Proctor,” my mom replies primly as she puts pressure on my shoulders so I can’t get up.

“Stella Leith-Proctor,” he repeats to Lachlan.

Lachlan looks back at me as he’s shoved into the car. “Jesus fuckin’ Christ, when I get —”

The cops slams the door shut before he can finish his sentence.

“Once you’ve got yourself together, then come down to the police station and make a statement,” Sergeant Levine says to me. “You won’t have to worry about him bothering you again. With his record, we can put the bastard away for a few years.”

He gets in the police car and drives away as I struggle out of mom’s grip and scramble to my feet. “He’s innocent!” I shout at the retreating police car.

“Inside,” mom hisses. “The whole neighborhood is looking at us.”

Now she’s worried about the neighbors. “What difference does it make? The whole neighborhood’s been watching for the last ten minutes!”

“Hush!” She grabs my arm and hustles me towards the door.

“You have no idea what you’ve done, you… you…” I decide to stop at ‘you’. There’s no coming back from calling my mom a crazy bitch.

When we get inside, I twist around to face her. “What is wrong with you?”

“What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? Defending that monster. He was assaulting you.”

“As I repeatedly told you, he wasn’t assaulting me. I had a spider in my hair and he was getting it out.”

Mom looks confused. “You had a spider in your hair?”

“Yes!” I exclaim. “Which is why I was shrieking in the first place.”

“Why didn’t you just say so?”

“I did say, mom.”

She shakes her head. “You didn’t mention a spider.”

“It doesn’t matter if I said it.” I run my hands through my horribly tangled hair. “I told you very clearly that nothing was happening.”

“Then why didn’t he stop when I told him to?”

“ Because he got his leather cuff tangled in my hair because I was jumping around and shrieking because there was a spider in my hair. Then you started screeching and attacking him, which got the cuff more tangled in my hair.”

“That doesn’t make sense. You both could have settled down.” That’s my mom. She’d go down with a burning ship before admitting she was wrong.

“At what point should we have settled down? When you were kicking him, or clawing at his face, or when you were trying to pull me away?”

Mom takes a deep breath. “I did what any mother would do when someone is attacking her children. You know that I would run into a burning building to save you, honey.”

She’s trying to distract me by going for the mother-of-the-year spiel, but I’m not falling for it. “I told you to stop!” I hiss. “You didn’t listen. You never listen!”

“I thought you were telling him to stop.”

I pace into the kitchen, open the fridge door, then slam it shut. “God, this is a mess.”

“Look Stella. He was big and it looked like he was attacking you.”

“For god sake, think about it. Why the hell would he be attacking me in broad daylight in the middle of the neighborhood?”

“Language, honey,” mom says automatically.

“My language! What about your language?”

Mom compresses her lips. “I don’t swear.”

Oh my god, she lives in an alternate universe. “Sure you don’t. And you haven’t answered my question.”

“Okay. Because he’s a biker. They have no scruples.”

“Because he’s a biker?” I shake my head in disbelief. “How many bikers do you know?”

“I read the newspapers.”

“That just proves you can read. Why would he attack me under any circumstances?”

“Because you…” She stops, tries to think of a way to say what she wants to without sounding insulting.

“Because as your immature baby, I’m too stupid to understand how men work?”

She reddens. “Well, no. I didn’t mean that. It’s… well… you’re very polite, but …”

There’s always a ‘but’.

“You’re young and innocent and biker’s go for that. Because…” She shrugs. “Well you know.”

I take a deep breath. “Even if that were true of Lachlan, which it isn’t, he wouldn’t have attacked me in front of a street full of witnesses. He would’ve dragged me inside his house.”

Mom gets quiet, frowning. I’m pretty sure she’s about to capitulate.

Turns out I’m right. “Okay, I believe you,” she says.

“ Because that’s what happened .”

“But he’s in a gang. He’s dangerous.”

I huff. “Honestly, you should be ashamed of yourself, being so judgmental.”

“To protect you and your sister!” She reaches for her purse. “I’ll call the police and tell them I was wrong.”

“Oh no you won’t!” I snap as I yank the phone from her hand and slam it on the table. “You’ve done enough damage for one day. I’ll go down and sort out the mess.” I’m saying things that normally I wouldn’t dare say to mom or dad, but this situation calls for it.

“Okay. Fine. When you talk to him, tell him that I was perhaps a little overreactive.” Mom’s way of saying sorry.

I slam the door behind me, march over to Lachlan’s house, shut his garage and lock and close the front door, then march back to my car, get in and start it. All I can think is that I hope Lachlan is the forgiving type.