"You have got to be fuckin' kidding me." Gemma glared at V. across the desk. V. had more or less taken over the business end of Teller-Morrow, leaving Gemma to concentrate on other things, but Gemma was still the boss when she needed to be. And this morning, with V. crawling in clearly on the tail end of a very bad drunk, she needed to be.
V. scowled as she pushed her sunglasses up into her hair. Her eyes were bloodshot, her skin paler than usual. A grisly looking bruise surrounded a deepish gash on one cheek, and her lip was split and swollen. As she tossed her bag onto the chair, Gemma noticed her knuckles were in worse shape than usual—it looked like she'd been boxing pavement.
"You smell like a goddamn beer garden. Where the fuck have you been?" Gemma followed V., firing questions after her, as she walked towards the garage. "Gone three goddamn days and you think you can just waltz back in here all fucked up?" By the last question, Gemma's voice had become a shout, and the mechanics and Sons standing around the garage had all stopped what they were doing to watch the show.
V. put a palm to her forehead in what had to be the universal gesture for "I have a hangover headache," but didn't turn to face Gemma. "Ope," she said, barely looking up, "you got paperwork for me?"
Before Opie could respond, Gemma started again. "You answer me when I'm talkin' to you, you little bitch. You got responsibilities here. You don't just go and come back with your face all fucked up like a man! You have got to learn to act like an Old La-"
Finally, V. spun around, feeling vaguely dizzy when she did. She raised a hand, making a "stop" gesture. "No." Her voice was loud, but calm, cold. "I don't have to act like an Old Lady." The garage was silent, no one even pretending to work. It didn't happen often that someone stood up to Gemma. V. continued. "You're right—I'm your employee and I blew off work. You wanna fire me, go ahead. But the rest?" V. shrugged, the bright garage lights showing her face for the mess it was. "I don't answer to you."
Gemma was uncharacteristically quiet for a moment, staring hard at V. In the silence, the men in the garage looked at her too, taking in her bruised and cut face. They'd all seen V. after a fight before, but she hadn't looked this bad since the Russians had kidnapped her. It was, for a few of them, a little bit disconcerting. "You're not fired," Gemma said. "But you're on my fuckin' list. I had to sit in that office the whole time you were gone."
"I'm sorry about that, Gemma." V. sounded sincere now.
Gemma just shook her head and turned back towards the office. After grabbing the papers Opie was holding out to her, V. followed. As she was leaving the garage, Chibs stopped her briefly, nodding towards her hands. "Anything broken?" It was clear she'd been fighting, and it looked as if she maybe hadn't gotten the best of it.
V. shook her head. "Looks worse than it is," she said.
"Leave any bodies behind?" Tig's voice was low and clear as he approached, looking wary.
V. smiled, shaking her head again. "No. This was nothing serious. Just needed a brawl." She flashed another smile at both men over her shoulder as she headed towards the office.
V. was barely out of earshot when Clay started questioning Jax. "This is how it's gonna be this time? She gets pissed at you, disappears for three days, my Old Lady can't fucking sleep she's so worried about her, and then she shows up lookin' like a goddamn punching bag and says it's all fine?" He shook his head. "This Club has enough shit goin' on without her off her leash again."
Jax shrugged, attempting to look more indifferent than he felt. "She's not my problem anymore," he said. He didn't add that Tara had all but moved in since V. left, had been in his bed every night and made him coffee every morning. There would be time enough to drop that bomb.
"We've heard that before." Clay didn't look sympathetic.
"Different this time, man," Jax responded.
The room was quiet, all of them wondering if Jax knew what he was saying, or had any hope of sticking to it. They'd seen the pull she had with him for years. It would take a lot for him to give up on her. Tig broke the silence. "Don't think it's anything we need to worry about," he said. "If it was more than her blowin' off some steam, she'd tell us." He couldn't help but be a bit jealous, honestly—a three-day bender of booze and fighting sounded pretty good to him right about now, too.
"Who the fuck does that?" Clay growled. "Disappears and drinks and gets in fights to blow off steam?"
Smirking, Tig and Happy exchanged a glance. Chibs, too, was smiling. Eventually, even Clay had to admit the joke. They did. There wasn't a man in the garage who hadn't gone on the occasional long, aimless ride, ending up in a dive bar with a bottle of whiskey and eventually a fight. It was how they cleared their heads. They'd all come back looking just as bad, if not worse, than V. did this morning. Slowly, Clay nodded. "Gotta stop thinkin' she's gonna turn into a girl," he muttered, going back to work.
-0-
It was late afternoon before V. broke free of her pile of paperwork. Wanting to get away from Gemma's glare, she went outside to smoke. She'd just taken her first drag, sitting on a picnic table with her boots on the seat, when Chibs came out of the garage and sat beside her.
"If you're gonna lecture me, skip it."
Chibs smiled. "No lecture from me." He lit his own cigarette. "I know about needin' a brawl."
She nodded shortly, hoping that would be the end of the discussion.
It wasn't. Chibs was quiet only a moment, then reached down to grab V.'s hand. Ignoring the jolt touching her sparked, he examined her battered knuckles. "Looks like more than a brawl though, luv."
When V. didn't answer, he continued. "I've seen you fight. You don't come back lookin' like this unless you got jumped. Or you did it on purpose."
V. shook her head, looking irritated. "Out of practice," she said shortly. "I've gotten soft."
Chibs snorted, amused at the idea of a "soft" V. "Bit off more than you could chew, did ya?"
"Something like that."
Though he knew she'd hate the question, Chibs asked it. "You tryin' to hurt yourself again?"
Had they not both been wearing sunglasses, V. would have seen the concern in his eyes, and he'd have seen the anger in her's. "No. Fuck. I just thought I could handle somebody I couldn't and got my ass beat. It fucking happens. Don't make it a thing."
Chibs nodded and decided to drop the subject. No way to know if she was telling the truth, but he wasn't likely to do anything but piss her off more if he kept pushing. The two sat in silence for a few minutes, smoking. Finally, V. spoke, asking a question Chibs never would have expected of her. "You told me once that you were in love with me," she said. "Do you still believe that?"
Chibs stared at her from behind his shades, trying to read her expression, figure out what she was looking for. Her face gave nothing away. "Can't possibly be a right way for me to answer that," he said.
V. smiled. "It's not a trick question. I just want to know."
Not quite believing he wasn't walking into a trap, but not sure how to get around it, Chibs thought a minute, then responded. "No," he said. "I still want to fuck you. Don't expect that's gonna go away. But I'm not in love with you."
V. smiled again, more widely this time. "Good," she said. "That's smart." Her brow was furrowed, as if she was trying to puzzle something out, or figure out what to say.
"Why the fuck did you ask?"
She shrugged. "Takin' stock of my damages, I guess."
He shook his head. "You didn't damage me, princess." He lit another cigarette off the butt of the first. "You worried about Jackie?"
"Nah. My conscience is clear. He'll be back with his doctor soon enough."
"You think?"
"Yep."
They fell into silence again. Suddenly, V. turned to Chibs and grinned. "Still want to fuck me, huh?"
He laughed. "Expect that's the case with anybody who ever has."
"Why don't you, then?" Her arched eyebrow was barely visible over the top of her sunglasses.
He shook his head and smiled wryly. "We both know no good comes of that."
"Way I remember it, there was definitely some good."
"You're shameless."
"Yeah, but you were thinkin' the same thing."
That I was, he thought. Been thinkin' it all along. But it's never gonna happen again, princess. And talkin' about it don't change that.
As if she'd read his thoughts, she turned towards him, kissing his cheek lightly as she rose from the table. Standing in front of him, she spoke again, the words tumbling out quickly, as if she was afraid if she didn't hurry, she wouldn't get them out at all. "I wasn't gonna come back," she said. "Got all the way to Oregon."
He nodded, unsurprised. "Why'd you turn around?"
She didn't know, really. She'd thought the whole way up the coast about all the reasons it was past time to leave, to find another place and make another start. She'd put herself in Jax's hands the morning after her kidnapping by the Russians, and she didn't know how she could fit into the Club without him now. She'd known, though, from the minute she saw Tara in Abel's room, that the charade of being his Old Lady had to end. Still, unsure as she was that they were ever going to allow her to be what she really was, she couldn't leave Sam Crow. "Family," she said, finally. "Happy told me when he gave me the Charger that this was my family now. I didn't believe him them, and I still don't, really. But it's the closest thing I'm ever gonna have."
