Last chapter of this series! Will be back in July for the second part! The original SOA characters and likenesses belong to Kurt Sutter, and the characters I have created belong to me! Please, leave me a little review? It would be very nice of you.
What had made her come back was word that Law had found a scapegoat for the arson and murder of the lawyer and his family.
On her way to the hospital, she had managed to feign being sick, and when the cop pulled over her mother's SUV, she had sprinted out of there like a bat out of hell. She had managed to slip out of the city before they could decide to cut off her retreat, and she had spent ten days in Arcachon, anxiously awaiting word. From anyone. She would probably do some soft time for evading police custody, ninety days at most, her dad had said. Then Joker had called. Someone was going to step up and surrender for it. He didn't know who. So he picked her up in Bordeaux, hugged her for a long time and brought her back to Marseilles.
Joker smelled of cigarettes and soap, curious mix, but she took it in, riding back. She would have to do the same with Randy and her dad, if she was to go to jail for three months. She had a pang in her stomach, the road was a blur; she wasn't scared of prison, she was just scared of being away from her family. Better three months than thirty years for arson and murder.
Joker dropped her off at Rain's apartment building. As if he knew. She had just spent ten excruciating days alone, Everett wasn't built and wired to be alone. She had been alone and lonely in her childhood, even with a mother and fake father and fake step brother and aunt Kary. Then from her tenth birthday up to now, she'd been raised by the wolves. She needed human contact.
-Thanks, Phil.
-Ey, ey, don't start the sentimental bullshit with me, kiddo. Just get up there and get dicked.
Everett chuckled, shoved him playfully before heading upstairs, to Rain's penthouse. At this hour, he would be at the gym, still, it was mid-afternoon. In the elevator, her phone rang, it was her mother, pretty much ordering her home as soon as she would be done with Rain. She had slaved all afternoon on Everett's favorites, and she would be damned if she had to sit alone with Happy and eat it all. Damned, you hear me, Everett? Damned!
-What's wrong with eating alone with dad?
"Oh, really? How much time do you have? In what order do you want me to start? Order of priority, or alphabetical?"
-Keep it warm, mom. I'm gonna wait for Randy, we'll probably have late lunch, I'll be there around eight. Maybe nine. With enough luck, Florence will be back, King, too, and we can all eat together. And pressing buttons on the phone to order Chinese isn't considered slaving all afternoon.
"Yeah? Well... Y-y-y... You're adopted."
The click of the phone hanging up, Everett laughs. The classic adopted card. It was usually Happy that played it on Maddie. Not the other way around. The elevator's doors opened, there was three guys on the other side, two Spaniards and an Italian waiting for the elevator, no colors, nothing suspicious about them, really, there were three penthouses at the top of this building. And honestly, they looked like furniture movers. They smiled at one another, as Everett stepped out of the elevator, one of the Spaniards, the tallest one, cat called her as the elevator doors closed, it just made her roll her eyes as she pushed her key in Randy's front door.
She could hear him, he was talking on the phone, possibly in German, a language she had very little notions of, she could count to three, and it may have been Dutch she was counting in, she was never sure. She wasn't expecting him to be here already, she had hoped she could try her hand at cooking something half decent, and surprise him when he got back. German sounded like such an angry language, Randy sounded like he was arguing. But when he hung up, he had a small smile for her.
-Well, I pissed off my entire family.
-How?
-Hm...
He shrugs, pulls Everett close and into a lingering kiss, it makes her giggle uncontrollably, he's pushing her towards the bed. After ten days, it's going to be the best lay ever.
Unless Randy had something completely different in mind. He fed her big ego with a few touches and kisses, but there's something else going on, and he doesn't seem to want to talk about it, but looks hopeful maybe that she would open up the conversation.
-Ok, Randy, what?
-What?
-Oh don't bullshit me! By this time you're usually forty inches deep into me and pulling my hair and spanking my ass. Among other weird things we do when we fuck. What? You're clothes are still on. Let alone mines.
He has another of his pale smiles, topples her with a kiss, but still isn't getting anything on, she knows it's something big. Something huge. Something he doesn't want to tell her because he knows she's going to oppose with everything she has.
-What did you do, Randy?
He tries to quiet her with a kiss, only to get struck on the shoulder, he had better answer her quickly, before she decided to beat the shit out of him.
-Fuck off. What did you do?
-If I surrender, I get half the time.
-Surrender for what?
-Arson. And murder.
-Are you out of your fucking mind? No! No way! Not fucking happening.
-I have twenty-four hours. I just told my mother.
Everett feels the crazy crawling up from where it usually quietly sits and waits for it's time. She will fight him with everything she has, should she shackle him in the basement of her father's apartment building. They have plans! For in three years. Travels and wedding and all that bullshit. Everett becoming a Son. On about a year after that, coming forward for being together. Moving in and all that bullshit. How does he expect to do all that crap if he's in jail?
He got up and tried to walk away, prompting Everett to follow him. She could hear herself starting to nag him, as much as she wished she wouldn't, she just couldn't help it. Next would be threats. Any threats she could think of to hopefully change him mind. Then crazy would probably take over, and she'd knock him over the head with something heavy, drag him to the basement and lock him up.
Perhaps they could leave? It worked for her parents. They had been gone from California for eighteen years, he'd even went back once, and they had gotten on just fine. They could leave. Go in Germany. She could learn German. Sailor had learned French, why could Everett not learn German? Or they could go to Charming? Yes, yes, Charming was a brilliant idea. Her father still had his Russian contacts, they could get smuggled back. She could...
She wished she could just shut up for a minute, stop following Rain around the apartment. He was trying to defuse the situation by just walking away for a moment, and she really wasn't helping.
After about the fifth time going around the penthouse, he turns around and bellows for her to fuck off. She freezes, he's never spoken to her that way before, nor the tone or the words, it's really impressive. And she knows she had better back off, right now. Walk away and leave him alone. So she does, she doesn't even take anything, her shoes, bag, jacket, anything, she just walks out of the apartment, takes the elevator downstairs, and hidden in a corner of the parking lot, near storage, she smokes and cries.
Everett understands, she really does. Rain doesn't want to see her in jail for twenty, thirty years. She had managed for this long to keep her police file down to misdemeanors. Domestics and things. She had committed plenty of felonies but never had gotten caught. Rain had a police file ticker than his arms. And he would probably do a lot better than her in prison. He's fare really well. Structured environments were his thing. Not hers.
Still. Fifteen years. He knew he could do it, but she wouldn't. Not alone, not without him. It was like asking her to stop smoking, or setting shit on fire. Or fucking.
But going to jail over this shit meant she wouldn't become a Son. Randy was giving up his own vote for her. He'd just do the Son's dirty work from inside the Baumettes correctional facility. Even if it meant eventually never getting out of there alive. She would murder anyone who came up with that stupid ass plan.
What if she surrendered first? She had to decide, right now, what was more important. What was more important to her? Becoming a Sons, or having Randy.
If she went to jail, and was really behaved, she could get out in twenty years. She could still become a Son? Forty-seven seemed like a good age to become a Son.
Getting back up to Randy's penthouse, she was thinking of everything she would miss, in the next twenty years. her own wedding, Maddie's. Flo's and King's. Her parents' twenty-fifth anniversary. Her siblings' graduations. Rain's fiftieth birthday. Possibly his sixtieth, too. Her mom's retirement. Nephews and nieces. Kids. Not that she wanted them, but she'd still been curious as to what kids looking like her and Randy would look like.
And her dad. Her dad was sixty-six years old. He may very well be dead in twenty years. Eighty-six was old.
She was crying, by the time she reached the door, but she was determined. She would take her keys, go kiss her parents and her family, and she would surrender before Randy could. She would have to be quick with these goodbyes to her family, the asshole may very well race her there.
-Randy?
No answer, maybe it was just as well. Just as well that he'd gone for a walk, or looking for her. She could just leave him a note, grab her keys and leave. Oh, and she had to bring Mittens downstairs to her parents' when she got home. Sailor would take care of him. God, her life wasn't even stable enough to take care of a cat from birth to death...
-Oh my god, Randy!
He was laying on the living room floor, holding his stomach, there was blood, maybe not everywhere, but on a lot of the furniture. And on his face and hands. She dropped to her knees near him, panicked, he had been shot, point blank. She ripped her shirt off, balled it up on his wound and reached with her foot to knock the landline phone to the floor, she dialed 911, and just started screaming the address, and hurry, he's bleeding out.
-Hold on, baby. Please, hold on, ok? I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry, I didn't want to argue with you now!
He garbled something, his eyes were rolling, she wished she knew how long he'd been alone up here, bleeding out, he was so pale. She tried to get him to quiet, he closed his eyes for a moment, it made her very scared. She screamed his name, and he snapped his eyes open, grabbed her arm, and spoke with a lot of difficulty.
-Don't... trust...
Whoever he named, was so garbled and lost in a fit of cough and blood that she didn't made it out. Could have been anyone or anything. Don't trust Vince from Shamwow. Don't trust the mailman. Don't trust your accountant. He closed his eyes again, he was trying to breathe. All she could do aside from keep the pressure is repeat how sorry she was.
-Bug... Love. I love. you.
-Don't say that. The ambulance is coming. They're gonna fix you. They're gonna fix you, baby.
He had a smile, a small nod. They would fix him up. As long as she kept the pressure. As long as she kept the pressure.