Heads up, this one is a little intense.
There was nothing like waking up on a Saturday morning, the breeze flowing through the open window, the covers pulled tight around me, and Jax at my side. It was just the little things that suddenly, made me smile. Maybe I had been bitter, or maybe, just maybe, I had never been truly happy the past two years without Jax. It wasn't like it hadn't crossed my minds, especially on nights when Teddy and Juice would go out and I'd be home wishing in the deepest part of my mind that I had still Jax to call mine. I told myself those were my moments of weakness. He hurt you, I would tell myself. But he didn't actually hurt you the other voice in my mind would counter. The Nords got you. They hurt you. They raped you. They put you through the pain. Not Jax, never Jax. But…There had always been a, but. But, it was my involvement with the club, it was my status as Jax's old lady, it was everything I had done for them, for him, for myself that had placed me at the Nords disposal.
It wasn't like I didn't see it coming. The Nords had been threatening the club for months, selling meth in Charming, a major no-no for SAMCRO, as they went forward in protecting Charming and ending the distribution of the drug. It went back and forth for what felt like forever. Then they had the rift with the Mayans, only adding fuel to the fire, which lead the Mayans to ally with the Nords in attempt to end the Sons control in Charming. However, after the Mayans and SAMCRO came to a mutual agreement, the Nords had been furious and after several disturbing messages left on my phone, all of which I hastily ignored, I was taken.
I still remembered the sixty-three hours like a reoccurring dream.
At first, it had felt like a dream. My head hurt my vision blurry, my body and mind coming together in one as to realize that I was not where I should be. I was far from home. I had panicked only to realize that I was chained, a cuff wrapped around my right wrist, secured tightly around a bed post. The room was dark, smelled like cigarette smoke, and was so hot. So hot that in the time that I had woken up all I could think about was water. And then they came in.
I had been so scared, so out of it, that when the first one ripped off my clothes I could barely muster up a fight. They were strong, stronger than what I could handle, and one by one, they came and went. No man stayed longer than a few minutes, doing what they wished, before they zipped up their pants and walked on out. That had been the first twenty-four hours.
The only solace I had found in the room was the window, too far up for me to see, but enough for the sun to peak through. And when it had gone down the first night I feared that I wouldn't have much luck. I wasn't going to make it. Not with the way things were going for me. I was too weak, something Jax had always pointed out to me when we would argue, and then I knew it was true. I was too weak. I would never last and when SAMCRO found me, which I knew they would, I would be dead. I would just be a limp body with scars, and marks, and they would have been too late.
But my eyes opened again and then sun came through.
The second day had been worse. Darby had come into my room, bringing me a water bottle and some food, leaving it next to me on the bed before he left, where I received only a glimpse of the world outside the room I was being locked in. I could see so many of them, standing at stations, creating what I knew they were known for. About an hour or so later another man had come in. However, with the food inside of me I felt stronger than I did yesterday and I was prepared to defend myself. But I wasn't quick enough. Something I had concluded, after he had grabbed my wrist, pushing it against the mattress as he pulled out the needle from his pocket. One stick to my forearm and I was a goner.
I had never taken drugs before. I had smoked about three packs of cigarettes all together in my lifetime and I had only smoked weed on rare occasions. But drugs…I knew how fucked up that made you. My parents had taught me a lot of things in life and drugs were one of them. They will ruin your life my mom would say when Teddy and I were much younger. Just don't do them. And I hadn't done them…Until then.
The effects hadn't been prominent at first, and then it all came at once. I felt such pleasure, and as all the men came stumbling back in the room, their pants coming off, I wasn't bothered. It was just a rush. A constant rush and several hours later, when I started to get drowsy, they injected me again. The process repeated.
It was that night, when Darby had come in again to stroke the hair out of my face that I had known that I wasn't going to die because of being weak. I was going to die because they were making me weak. I would overdose, surely, and that would be how Jax found me. Ripped to shreds, track marks in my skin, so disgusting, not the girl he should see me as. That was my death. That was my ending. And when night came I accepted it. I said a prayer, spoke aloud to everyone I loved, and accepted it. That had been my forty-eight hours.
The sun shone again, this time brighter, and the same man who had first injected me the day before came into the room early. Instead of injecting me, like I had assumed, he took the cuffs off, extended his hand, and led me out of the room. I could barely walk and I stumbled repeatedly before I reached my new destination. It was a single chair, located in the middle of the room, and it was surrounded by every face that had been on top of me. The last few hours were the worse to remember because perhaps, they were the most painful.
I had been with Jax for a while, four years, before I had been taken and not once, not ever, had Jax laid a hand on me. We had numerous arguments, ranging on a large scale, but no matter how heated, how worked up we both got, he never struck me. And I never had a reason to believe that he would. But in those last few hours I had come to realize how easy it was for other men to hit a woman…And in my case, beat a woman.
It happened gradually, there main focus on my knees, as now I would have no way of leaving, before they would stub out their cigarettes on my thigh, or give a quick blow to my face. I remember thinking that the raping had been better, at least then I could block it out. But this…I couldn't block it out. As hard as I tried I just couldn't. The pain had been so excruciating, so life changing, that I wanted every next blow to kill me. I wanted my death to come sooner than later. I wanted it to happen so badly. I had said my goodbyes, said my prayers, I wanted to go. But that didn't happen because then SAMCRO showed up.
It had been a quiet time. The men were standing off, finishing up the rest of their new batch, talking amongst themselves when I heard the first sounds of gunshots. My head had bobbed forward, assuming that it was only my imagination but then I heard footsteps, heavy, and loud, and then the gunshots were so close.
But I couldn't open my eyes. I was so afraid of what I would see, even more afraid than what I had already seen, but then Jax had spoken to me. "Lincoln, it's me. I'm here. I've got you." I could feel his hands un-wrapping the rope around my wrists, the hushed whispers of the other members of SAMCRO, the smell of copper as how quickly I had been sitting I was now being held and taken away. And those had been my sixty-three hours.
I woke up three days later. It was a Saturday. A slight chill in the air, the sun shining through the room, my parents sitting at the table across from me, both of them crying when they saw I had woken. I had gotten surgery on both my knees, went through withdrawals without the drugs, and needed a rigorous recovery plan. Jax had been with me for the first few weeks before he came over, on a Monday, and said it would be better that we separate. "You need to focus on getting better," he had told me, "and you can't do that with me. You'll never get better with me. And I can't do that to you. This just can't go on any longer."
I didn't fight him. I nodded my head, watched him grab the few things he kept at the apartment, and heard his motorcycle pull out of the parking lot. That was when I cried. That was when I wished I had died all over again. Heartache, I knew, was never fun. And it especially wasn't fun when you had just been beaten to a pulp by a bunch of grown man because of your affiliation with a certain man that you loved. I had been destroyed and Jax deciding to end our relationship was just the icing on the cake. Yet even with my recovery, I failed to make progress in my mind. Everything brought me back to Jax. He had become the drug and no matter what I did I couldn't move on. As much as I begged myself to move forward, to find someone knew, even after I had moved out from my wheelchair and could walk normal again, I still found myself sitting home on Friday and Saturday nights, just hoping and praying that maybe Jax would come back to me.
I had felt lousy, like a lost puppy, and after eight months without Jax I went out. The guy I had hooked up with wasn't any good, just some random guy I met at the Lave Lounge, and when we went through with it later that night at his apartment I tried to tell myself that I was ready. But it all felt the same and suddenly that guy, a twenty-five year old in medical school, wasn't any different than the guys who had taken me eight months prior. So when he called me a few days later I met up with him again.
That went on for a while, about three months, before he insisted that I meet his parents and I ended things. I wasn't in for the commitment and so I met other guys, all of whom I hung out casually with for a few months, before I moved on. It had been the twenty-five year old in medical school that had gotten me again. We dated exclusively for another five months, in which I did meet his parents, and he met mine, and everything was looking up. That was until he proposed. And I freaked.
I immediately said no, and then immediately felt embarrassed, insisting that I just wasn't ready and he needed to give me time. So bashfully he did, waiting another month, before he questioned the idea again. That was when I knew I would never be ready. So that night, after we had argued for what felt like hours, I grabbed my purse and car keys and left. Then, just three months later, I went to the Lave Lounge for the first time in ages with Hayley and I saw Jax. And that was when everything came back to me. All the old feelings, all the mixed emotions, all the memories, the good and the bad, and I knew, on that very day, that I had never would have committed to anyone because I already had, a long time ago, when I was eighteen years old, and that was where my happiness stayed. That was where I had always belonged.
Right now, on this Saturday, the slight chill, with Jax. This was where I belonged.