Chapter Nine: A Blooming Rose in the Darkness
Hector skipped over to the sleazy 24-hour convenience store and picked up a pack of cigarettes and fifth of Jack before finding inebriated solace as night turned into day.
Night passed for everyone.
The morning sun found Gemma filling multiple thermos's with hot coffee, some heavily sweetened enough to rot your teeth and the others strong enough to put hair on your chest and be able to speak to wolves.
At the rundown hotel north of Charming, Salazar coughed up a wad of grey phlegm in the cracked sink before lighting his day's first cigarette.
He eventually woke up enough after taking a lukewarm shower, slogging down some shitty coffee that was murky with burned grounds and a few more nicotine hits. Hector shambled across the street and took several approaches talking to the clerk that was behind the counter, surrounded by lotto tickets, skin magazines and booze that ranged in size from a baby bottle to needing two hands to chug.
Hours north at Gemma's childhood home, Tig stirred awake first.
During the night, he'd slipped lower in the bed. He opened his eyes and found his cheek resting on the flat plain of her belly.
Tig looked up the line of Rosamund's body and found her peaceful, sleeping face.
He held his breath as he tugged the linen aside until he could press his lips to the scarred landscape of her bare belly. Tig traced the pads of his fingertips along the misshapen ridges of scar tissue.
Tig licked a wet path around her belly button, the soft skin unscathed by the razor's kiss before reaching out and grasping Rosamund's sleep slackened left hand. He moved her mother's wedding band in a circle around her fourth finger, his touch pulling her from the land of sleep.
"What are you doing?" Rosamund whispered as Tig's touch grew more insistent as he shifted in the bed and tugged her underneath his body.
Rosamund rubbed the grit from the corners of her eyes as she stared up at him. Her attention was suddenly overwhelming and Tig dropped his head to where her neck and shoulder met, mumbling incoherently against her warm skin.
She couldn't discern what he was saying. Rosamund didn't have to wait long for Tig to raise his face and find her eyes, raggedly repeating himself.
"Could you love me?"
"Love?" she managed.
Tig didn't trust the strength of his voice and could only nod.
Rosamund pressed her lips together, blinking hard a few times as her thoughts churned and roiled.
The space of time before she answered seemed to stretch to an immeasurable oblivion for Tig. He found a well of foreign worries and fears of rejection, unfilled wants, needs and unrequited affection.
As the polarity was flipped within Rosamund, becoming a hurricane in space, swirling with plasma instead of wind as she struggled to find her voice and give words to thought, back in Charming, Gemma left the Teller-Morrow shop with Clay and the other guys.
Gemma rooted around her oversized bag as Juice steered the large black van towards the highway on-ramp, the rest of the guys in front on their bikes.
She pulled the square box she'd retrieved from Tig's USMC issued footlocker. The hinge squeaked before Gemma could stare down at the glittering emerald and diamond ring resting on the bed of stiff cotton.
Gemma had known Tig a long time but never knew about the existence of the jewelry.
Tig had never shared the story about the ring acquisition with anyone. If Gemma had asked him where it came from, he would've been vague about the exact location and said he stumbled across it during his time in service to the country.
He'd been overseas, bored, and overheated. Him and his brothers-in-arms came up with a way to pass the time and would ambush drug mules, beat them until the little bags of heroin stuffed up their rectums burst and then fuck them while they died. Their death throes a spasmodic aphrodisiac.
Tig and his fellow brothers found the mules to be like crackerjack boxes with varying prizes inside when they'd truss them up in a crude postmortem. One of the last mules Tig had kicked around for a while had the exquisite ring tucked in the folds of their clothing, having stolen it from the finger of a wealthy, oblivious tourist.
Gemma smiled down at the ring once more before she closed the box and slid it back into her designer bag. As Juice kept the van moving with the swift flow of traffic, further north, Tig let out a slow breath as Rosamund raised a hand to press the tips of her fingers against his mouth.
Tig kept his expression neutral as Rosamund spoke. "You really want me to love you?" she asked with genuine confusion. The idea of being asked and not told how to act and feel for the first time in years made her dizzy.
Tig nodded, pursing his lips under the smooth pads of her fingertips as she tried to grasp and understand his words.
"Could you?" he whispered in the already quiet room in the empty house.
Rosamund licked her dry lips and felt herself nodding in a biocentric manner before speaking, feeling a trill in her nervous system at the very notion of being able to make a decision of her volition, make a choice without fear of painful ramifications.
"You think you could love me?" she asked.
Tig chuckled lowly, a gravelly sound that teased her to the core, all of her became very aware of the press of his body against hers, their naked flesh kissing. "I already love you," he murmured in a heavy rasp and shifted as his cock began to thicken and grow near-painfully uncomfortable.
Rosamund caught her lower lip with her top teeth and felt herself grow warm in the wake of his words; his exhale was hot against her fingertips as he continued. "I love you Rose."
Rosamund felt herself flush and stumble over her words. "Oh, you do," she flatly managed.
Tig licked his lips before smiling, his eyes intensifying in their smoldering cerulean orbs.
He nodded as he trailed his fingertips down the front of her body, pausing to splay his large hand on her scarred belly. "I wanna keep this from happening again baby," Tig murmured as he dropped his face and pressed his lips to hers, saving her from needing to scavenge for her words.
Rosamund moaned into Tig's mouth as he danced his fingertips lower and traced over her silken, soft pink intimate folds.
"How do you plan on doing that?" she managed on a series of breathless pants as he began tracing his fingertips over her slowly swelling clit, hardening with sensitivity.
"I'll kill whatever scares ya baby," Tig promised on a dangerous growl as he shifted his hips until he could slide closer to her intimate center, pushing her thighs further apart.
"Anything," Tig groaned as he gripped his rigid cock and guided himself towards her tight center.
"Anyone," he growled as he thrust his thick length into her wetness.
As they lost each other in their combined gasps, pants, and breathless moans, back at the rundown hotel where Tig and Rosamund had violently met, Hector Salazar pushed the 'play' button on the antiquated VCR to the grainy footage from the security camera in the convenience store across the parking lot.
He hit pause and squinted at the still frame screen with part of the van's license plate Tig had steered from the parking lot.
Salazar kept replaying the footage and captured as much of the retreating license plate as the camera had recorded.
As Salazar dialed Hale and relayed the majority of the license plate to him to reach out to his close family in the Charming PD, hours, and hours north at the recently off-the-market house, Tig settled on his side next to Rosamund, molding himself behind her.
Tig reveled in the press of their naked skin, their hearts were a steady drumbeat in their ears as they both waited for their feet to come back to earth.
Rosamund squinted at the bedside clock. "What time is everyone getting here?"
Tig pulled her closer, "later this afternoon," he answered as he pressed his face to the base of her neck.
He groaned as his bladder overrode his desire to stay glued to her. "I'll be right back," he murmured as he pressed his lips to her shoulder blade.
Rosamund thought about the cold sodas in the fridge and pulled the top sheet around herself and padded quietly to the kitchen, leaving the lights off.
She popped open the aluminum top of an artificially flavored orange soda and had half of it drank before Tig's abrupt footsteps startled her as he pounded into the kitchen.
"What? What's wrong?!" she shouted as he skidded to a half in front of her, pulling her into his arms and against his heaving chest.
"I thought, I thought you were gone," Tig groaned as he rhythmically squeezed his arms around her.
"No, just thirsty," Rosamund gasped against the side of Tig's neck.
An approving grumble spilled through Tig's chest as she giggled before she asked. "Where would I have gone?"
"Canada?" he asked and let her feet come back to the ground so he could lean back and see her face.
Rosamund chuckled as she sipped another quarter of the can before speaking. "I'm not going anywhere."
"Say that again," Tig demanded on a throaty growl.
Rosamund pressed her lips together and set down the soda can before meeting his eyes.
"I'm not going anywhere," she murmured.
As Tig wrapped his arms around her, becoming a living, breathing chrysalis, bathing in her words, finding nourishment, on the way to encroach on their privacy, Juice passed a slow-moving semi, about an hour from a needed stop at a gas station with a bathroom and Styrofoam cups for coffee to-go.
For a while time passed and everyone moved through the state of California at different speeds for varying reasons and motivations.
As the sun moved across the cloudless sky, Salazar stayed at the shitty motel chain and nursed a bottle of scotch as he waited for Hale to tell him where to head next, hating to be a paid dog so Hale didn't have to get his hands dirty. Gemma and the SAMCRO guys continued to head north, stopping for fuel and lunch, making good time with not much traffic or visible CHP presence.
North at the house Gemma called home as a child, Tig eventually forced himself to give Rosamund some breathing room as he took a couple steps back, anxious for the soothing balm of bottled grain alcohol.
Rosamund opened her mouth to speak but quickly looked down and away and pressed her fingertips to her lips, stopping her words.
"What is it baby?" Tig asked as he opened a new bottle of rum, seeing Rosamund's eyes widen with words not spoken.
"I need a minute," Rosamund murmured as she pinched the bridge of her nose. "Please," she added in a low whisper.
Tig carefully nodded and watched with the utmost control as Rosamund briskly left the room. He listened as the sound of the bathroom door closing followed her retreating footsteps.
Tig crept quietly to the closed door and pressed his ear to the cool, smooth wood to absorb the faint sounds of Rosamund's muffled sobs.
He briskly rubbed feeling into his face and set his hand on the doorknob before having a foreign thought, an idea that he hoped would be a soothing balm to Rosamund's frazzled nervous system.
Inside the bathroom, Rosamund hovered over the toilet, the clean porcelain staring up at her as she was overwhelmed with the weight of her current reality and the unknown future before her, she clenched the sides of the recently bleached toilet as her skin itched to be sliced open to relieve the tension. She blew out a deep breath, telling herself for the billionth and one time that it wasn't a good place to misdirect her pain. She knew she was dehydrated, needed actual food that wasn't prepackaged with a fifty-year shelf life and certainty in regard to the murky path into her future.
Rosamund closed her eyes as she desperately craved clarity. Tig's soft knocking on the closed door shook her to reality.
"Come in," Rosamund said as she sniffed hard and sat back on the smooth tiled floor.
"Are you okay?" Tig asked as soon as his eyes fell upon her, still ethereal despite her wan features.
Rosamund nodded and settled a hand on her lower belly. "I just need real food, lots of water and some sunshine. I'm nervous about tonight," she added in a tone nearly too low for him to detect.
Tig crossed the bathroom and settled in front of her. Her lips couldn't help but pulled into a pleased smile at the handful of roses he'd roughly cut from the lush garden.
"Not store bought," Tig said as Rosamund look the sloppy bouquet from him, their fingertips creating near visible sparks as they brushed against each other.
Rosamund buried her face in the velvet petals as his words washed over her. "Tell me what's wrong."
She looked up, clearing her throat when their eyes met. "There's just a lot to process right now, it's overwhelming. How can you keep me safe from my uncle? Do I just keep staying at your friend's houses? We don't know what's even on that memory card," she started to babble before Tig caught her hands and pulled her forward and wildly off balance.
Tig caught her up in his strong embrace, crushing her to his chest as he buried his face in the warm curve of her neck, the silken strands of her hair teasing his nose.
"What can I do baby?" Tig whispered his exhale hot against her skin.
Rosamund giggled and flushed with embarrassment before trying to explain.
"I wouldn't mind ordering some more stuff from the store, I'd like to make dinner."
"That's a lot of work, there's going to be a houseful."
"I'd really like to," she practically pleaded, "cooking was always a place to channel my anxiety."
Tig pushed an errant lock of hair behind her ear, the silken strands snagging in his ragged cuticles. "Anything you want doll."
As Tig led Rosamund to the kitchen and let her dictate a shopping list to him, including adding obscenely priced sauté pans, thin metal spatulas and sturdy disposable utensils and serving vessels, Gemma, and a good handful of the SAMCRO guys continued to head their way.
Further south in the row of shitty hotel rooms, Salazar was passed out with the television still playing the rented skin flick, "Naughty Nurses Part 69." His cock lay spent and flaccid against his inner thigh as Betty Boob sucked a whole ICU floor of comatose cocks.
Back in Charming, Hale waited for one of his contacts to get back to him with possible matches for the partial license plate that Salazar had found in the camera's surveillance footage.
Hale clenched his teeth so hard that his jaw popped as he thought of that near-priceless memory card that Rosamund had inadvertently stolen. He clenched his manicured nailed hand into a fist and pounded the top of his desk's gleaming surface as every minute was potentially another minute that the card's contents were exposed and everything he'd worked, sweated, and directed others killed for, would come tumbling down like the Walls of Jericho and his quest for political power and the quenching of his corruption would end.