Honesty Hour

~The forgotten night of Savannah’s blackout.~

Savannah

“Where are you going, darlin’?” Daxon steps in front of me, blocking me from entering the doors of the bar.

I need in. I need to talk to Odin.

“I’m not in the mood, Daxon. I need to talk to Odin. Move.”

He sidesteps me and puts his arms up to cage me into the black brick walls behind me.

“Why don’t you wait until the morning? Let’s kill some time. Hey, how about the fights? Let’s get our drink on and have some fun, yeah?”

I click my tongue and cross my arms. I’m not in the mood for fun. I need answers.

I need the truth. I can’t live in this.

“Kid, what are you doing here?”

Grave comes out of the bar with his hands taped up, in dark blue fighting shorts and no shirt or shoes.

Just like when I fought him.

“I fight shoeless too. I’ve never found anyone to do that.”

He smiles for the first time. A soft one that I can recognize as genuine and real.

“I need to speak with Odin. I need to ask him something.” The letters in my hands, crinkling the old papers more than they were already.

“I told her we should go to fights and wait for morning, but she wouldn’t dare.”

Daxon folding his arms to his chest and shaking his head in a mocking manner.

My eyes snap to Daxon as I tap my foot.

“I wouldn’t dare? Bitch, please.”

More people file out from around Grave and Daxon, not second glancing at the three of us and what’s going on.

“What do you have in your hand?”

Daxon pushes me back one more time so I step out of the way.

“My mom’s letters. She said…I need to speak with Odin. I actually need Freyja but…she’s gone just like Hel. Just like Loki. I need Odin. I need the truth. I can’t live in the what if. I need to find Huns.”

I can’t clean my thoughts up. It’s like I have tunnel vision. I need to speak with Odin.

I need to speak with Odin.

Get to Odin.

Go to Odin.

Find Odin.

Find truth.

“Hey, Savannah?” Grave’s hand on my shoulder clicks me into the reality I’m now facing.

“Yes?”

His hazel eyes are deep and serious. They almost look like they are swirling with rampant emotions.

“What’s going on, kid?”

He looks at me, his head bent to the side so he can stare down at me. He isn’t much taller than me but I appreciate the gesture.

“I need Odin. I need answers. They lied. I’m not a honeymoon baby.”

I shake my head and start to pace. I can’t stand still and do nothing. I can’t keep waiting. I can’t keep doing this.

“What?” Grave asks, not understanding the battle between each side of my fucked-up brain. He can’t see I’m shorting out in here.

My left brain is duking it out with my right.

I start to shake and hit the side of my head to Fozzie myself back into working order.

Not enough.

Not right.

Not here.

Not good.

Broken.

Messed up.

“I bet Van here couldn’t last a night in the ring.”

I stop my pacing and look at Daxon.

“I kicked both of your asses and yet you still talk nonsense.”

Daxon holds out a matte, flat-black flask and encourages me with his dark eyes.

Almost identical to my Angel.

~Where is he?~

“I bet you couldn’t do it again,” Daxon adds in as I take a swig of the vodka he has the tin filled with.

I grimace and take another.

“You have the worst taste. Vodka? Gross. Also, fuck you.”

I take one more large swig and hand it back.

“I could use a teammate tonight.”

Daxon gawks at Grave but one look, shot from the older biker man to the young prince, sends him into a state of obedient silence.

I fidget with my hands and start in on the pacing.

I need to find Odin.

I need the truth.

I need Odin.

“I dare you, Savannah, to be Grave’s teammate tonight.” Daxon catches my attention from the avalanche I’m being caught under.

“Accepted.”

***

“What the fuck was that, kid? You can’t jump off the fucking ropes like a Hardy boy. You’re making me look bad.”

I laugh and spit the water out of my mouth to put my mouthguard back in.

“You look bad because you’re old and can’t hang with the cool kids anymore. If you ever did.” I snort at his jaw dropping and the hand to his chest in false offense.

“Hey fuck you, girly, I’m a boss.”

He spits into the bucket and flips me off.

“Yeah, so am I. You’re not special, old man.”

The bell rings to bring on the next round.

***

“Grave! Grave! Grave! Grave!” The crowd chants as we walk out the ring and into the back room. The same room that I happened to have gotten ready in when I was fighting Grave not so long ago.

I guess he has started coming around to the idea of me being a part of the club.

They all will. They don’t have a choice.

Walking in behind him, I take a seat at the black bar bench and pat my body down with the flat white towel.

“They will be screaming your name next, kid. Don’t worry. They’ll come around.”

I wipe my face with the towel and lean against the cold wall to chill me out.

I’m burning up.

“I don’t need them to. They can hate me all they want. They just can’t hate the people I love.” I start taking the tape off my hands and redo my ponytail.

One of the guys dumb enough to slip between the ropes was also dumb enough to grab it and try to bring me down to my knees.

Asshole got a donkey kick to the nuts that took the breath from his lungs and made him cry like a little bitch.

“Who is it that you love?” Grave pulls on a shirt and cleans the sweat on his face, taking a seat in the black chair as we both cool down.

“My family. My Angel. I don’t give a shit about opinions. I do care about respect.”

The club can hate my family, hate Damon for choosing me, but they cannot voice it without me fighting back.

It’s my job to protect their memory.

Damon deserves the respect he has earned.

I do too.

He makes a knowing gruff sound when Daxon opens the door and comes in with Lawrence right behind him.

Daxon and Lawrence both smoking smelly fat cigars with shit-eating grins stretched from ear to ear. They look far too pleased to be Henleys. It worries me.

“You two were unstoppable! That was fucking awesome! Van, when you dropped off the top rope and landed on Nick’s face… I was like, oh shit no way!”

I laugh and nod along. I didn’t know what I was doing, I just did it.

He talked about Damon being pussy whipped.

When will these biker bitches learn not to speak out on my man?

“I call that move death by anal asphyxiation, or death by cake.”

They laugh and hand Grave and I shots of clear liquor. It smells like mangos but I know it’s rum. I don’t really like it but it’s fine. It will do the trick.

I toss it back and shudder when I taste the burn mixed with the fruity aftertaste.

“Don’t like rum?” Lawrence pours another round of shots, filling my own shot glass up for another go of it. Daxon taking the seat next to me.

“I’m a whiskey girl.” I shudder again.

“This is good rum though,” Daxon chirps as if that makes me like it.

“I would take bad whiskey over good rum any day of the week.”

I stretch my bad leg and rub down my thighs to massage the ache starting. I pushed myself a little bit too far, but I think I’ll be okay.

“You got any tattoos, Vannah?” Grave asks, looking at me from the seat pulled against the bench.

I didn’t have anything to change into so I took the T-shirt off and my sweatpants. The tank top and boy shorts worked just fine.

“No, but I will soon. I’ll have a moon somewhere on my body soon enough. I will end up covered in them, I’m sure. I have wanted one forever.”

Lawrence makes a throat noise that says he doesn’t think I will.

~I’ll show him, I will show them all.~

“Why haven’t you got any?” Grave distracts me from saying something back.

“I started in on my parents at like thirteen, begging them to let me get one, but they wanted me to wait until I was eighteen. My dad said I would regret something not done professionally.”

Odin.

I need to talk to Odin.

“Thanks, I need to go.”

My pile of clothes stuck in the corner, I fumble through to grab the yellowing paper still folded from my mom’s hand. With it back in my hands, I stand up and go for the door. I need to go.

My tunnel vision comes back in. I don’t bother changing back into my clothes or even my shoes. I need to find Odin and get to the truth.

“Woah, where are you going?”

Daxon blocks the door again with the same move he pulled on me in the bar.

“I need to speak to Odin. I need the truth. I need to know how to fix it. I need to give this to Huns. I need to find him.”

Lawrence takes the letter from me in a flash move that I didn’t see coming.

“Give that back! It’s for Huns.”

I stomp Daxon on the foot and send a kick to Lawrence’s stomach that makes him lurch forward and let go of the letter.

Grave puts his hands up in surrender, giving me space as I start to pace and hit the side of my head again.

I’m not working right.

The broken pieces aren’t in the right spot anymore.

“Hey Savannah, can I take you to the tattoo parlor next door and I’ll talk to you about Huns?”

I stop to look at him.

Daxon and Lawrence stand out of my way. Recovered from my one-hit jabs.

Watching us and what I’ll agree to.

“You know Huns?” Tunnel vision.

~Find Huns, find the truth.~

“Yes, I do. Will you come with me next door?”

I nod my head, clutching the long-lost love letter in my hand for dear life.

My bare feet on the sidewalk, I follow Grave into the tattoo parlor. Watching him type in a code to shut the alarm off and turn on a few lights. Grave leads me into a workstation with a bench and ink.

“Take a seat, girly.”

I do as he says, sitting on the bench, and start to swing my feet.

Grave turning on the overhead lamp like a spotlight before he twists the metal pole to get the blinding effect off us.

He takes a seat on a wheelie stool and scoots close to me. Even with his height, I have the upper ground.

“Can I read the letter first?”

His hands on his lap, he looks calm and collected. Grave looks ready to help me.

“It’s for Huns.”

“I know, and I will explain who that is. I want to read it first. You can have it back right after, is that okay?”

He doesn’t make a move for it or try to tell me he has to before he will take me to Huns.

He just wants to read it.

Slowly, I unfold the letter and look over the words again to feel a bittersweet nostalgia bloom in my heart at the sight before me.

My mom’s handwriting will always do this.

“It was supposed to be delivered eighteen years ago. My mom thought it was.”

I hand it to Grave with a numbness spreading through me as soon as the paper leaves my grasp.

What a relief it is that I don’t hurt.

I can’t feel the drying sweat that I know would make me cold or the ache in my bones from the impact of the fight settling into my bones, no heartbreak to twist and gut my hollow shell.

I feel nothing.

A grateful nothingness one can accept and be thankful for.

I look down to stare at the scars on the tops of my thighs and replay the sound of my mom’s voice. Even from the letter being in my possession for only a few hours, I know what it says by heart.

I can hear her reading it out loud to me. She hasn’t faded, but it is at a distance.

Her voice is like the painful truth you need but don’t want.

~I’m here, Savvy.~

I can hear her through the looking glass to read every letter off the page and retell this story for one more set of ears.

I get lost in the sound of it and lose track of myself again.

“Where did you get this?”

Grave hits pause on the battle laying siege within me.

“My mom wrote Nina, Grams held on to some, and I went to see her after Darrion said a rumor was true and I didn’t look like my dad. I don’t. I never have.

“I didn’t act like them, but I thought it was just something about me. I’ve always been Savannah Madis. The definition has changed in the past year on who that is, but…I’ve always been a Madis. A proud one. I love my family.”

My fingertips trace the white scars that lace the tops of my thighs.

Grave folds the letter carefully to give it back to me.

“Savannah Gabriele.”

He says my name as he looks at me.

The swirling emotions in his hazy eyes look like they have brought the rain from the moisture, crippling the hardened fighter he has trained and performs to be.

“Savannah Gabriele, you…”

His voice cracks, but he hides it with a clearing of his throat as he stands and turns away from me.

“I need to find Huns. I have to give him this.”

Grave stiffens his body, messing with the colorful bottles of ink that line a dust-free shelf behind his work station.

“What happens after you find him and give him the letter? What do you expect is going to happen?”

I stop swinging my legs to think.

“I don’t know. My mom wanted him to know, and I should make sure he knows. But after that, I’m not sure. If he is here, in the club, I doubt he will want anyone else to know.

“I’m not well-liked, and I’m not going to hate the Madis family just because I’m not one. Percy and Uncle Jonah will always be mine. I will never let anyone talk about my dad or mom, no one will ever diminish my memories.

“Morgan will always be my brother. I have to protect them. It’s my job…I’m the only one left to do it now.”

It’s quiet, leaving us at a standstill.

“Will you tell me where to find Huns?”

Grave nods his head as he finds the way to turn back around and face me.

“Did Jeremiah treat you well?”

His question catches me off guard.

“Yes. He was great…I wasn’t an easy child, and they never made me think I was a burden. They faked it so well I can’t believe that they weren’t really in love.

“My dad was my biggest fan. He...he thought I was capable of everything and anything. He never doubted me.”

Feeling the intensity of Grave’s stare, I look up from my thighs.

“He was a good dad? He didn’t treat his son better than he did you?”

I shake my head ~no~ and manage to find a ghosting of a smile when the memory plays out in my mind.

“Morgan and I were different but I never felt less loved or less of his daughter. We had eight years of just the three of us before Morgan was born. I didn’t take a backseat once he was brought home. They never made me feel unwanted.”

I remember being told I was going to be a big sister.

Or the first time I saw him in the hospital.

“That’s great, kid. I don’t know a lot of men who could raise another man’s child with no separate between theirs and his. I can’t say I could.”

“In one of the letters I found, my mom told Nina my dad wanted to be my dad more than anything.”

Grave nods, turning in a circle before turning back to me and taking his seat and wheeling closer to me.

His chest rises with a hard and brittle breath that even showed his trembling hands resting on his knees.

The nothingness was lifting to show me the twisting gut feeling that was about to bring me to tears.

“Savannah, I’m Huns.”

His voice wavers like the words had a film of dust over them that hadn’t shaken off in years.

Eighteen, if I had to guess.

“You?”

Same hair color. Same hazel eyes.

We look alike.

Not by some random turn of events.

By the curse of DNA.

“Did you know this whole time?”

My fangs descend and venom drips from my sharpened points.

“Not eighteen years. I thought she ran off after fucking one of my best friends. I didn’t know about you. I heard the rumors and agreed to meeting you, seeing you, I thought maybe. It...I thought it was a fool’s hope.”

~Hope I wasn’t a Madis?~

“Hope?” My tone is cold. I could bring on the second ice age with my own squirrel to hide acorns in the wrong spot.

“I don’t know, kid. Hope is funny like that. You don’t know what you really want until you get it. I loved Ellie, I hated her fucking guts for leaving me. I’m...I have you. You’re part of her too.”

I don’t know why but his words pissed me off to levels I never knew existed in this ninth ring of hell I have stumbled into and had the unfortunate pleasure of finding.

The way he looked at me might have done it.

The look a father has for his daughter.

The sparkle in his eye at the shining pearl of his heart.

It’s the same one my dad gave me.

One I didn’t know I could ever see again.

My blood boiled with the newfound truth, and it turned me poisonous.

I saw red with the adoration he so proudly showed off.

I was the work of Ellis and Jeremiah Madis.

He didn’t get to marvel at their work.

Not like that.

My fist was already locked and loaded—the fatherly tear that broke his eyeliner as he looked at me was the last spark to detonate the bomb I had trapped inside me.

My hit landed hard, loud, and shattered the heartfelt moments he was trying to set up between the pair of us.

Before he landed on the hard floor, I was out the door and climbing on my bike.

I need to talk to my parents.

I need to know what I should do.

I need my mom and dad.