Burn Down the Night by M. O'Keefe Read Free Book Online Page B

tired, and I didn’t know where to find the will to fight him. Convince him.
    “Stop!” Fern said in the commanding voice I remembered all too well. “You need medical attention and you need it now. Whatever problem you have with this location will have to wait.”
    Surprisingly, that shut Max up.
    The freight elevator doors opened and we stepped out into a coral hallway. A long tunnel of pink.
    The hallway was hot and close and endless and my stomach was turning. My head spinning.
    I can’t…I thought. I can’t keep going.
    When the going gets tough, we get tougher.
    That’s what I used to say to Jennifer until it stopped working. Until the tough got so tough I gave up.
    I can’t lie, I really wanted to give up right then. Just lie down on the concrete and vanish from the earth.
    “Olivia?” It was Fern. Max swore between us. “You all right?”
    “Fine. Just tired.”
    Finally we stopped in front of a door, and Fern pulled a substantial key ring out of the pocket of her robe. She got the door open and we stumbled inside. At this point Max was roughly the weight of a white rhino.
    “Is this yours?” I asked. “Did you move?”
    The condo was totally empty. There was a love seat and an easy chair. A few marks in the cream carpet where there had clearly been tables. The walls were bare, spotted with darker squares where I imagined there had been family pictures. Plaques that said “It’s always five o’clock at the beach.”
    There was an empty TV stand with a statue of some kind on it.
    “No. It’s Mary Gensler’s. Her kids moved her into one of those retirement places a few weeks ago, and they are going to put the condo on the market in the new year. Until then, it’s just sitting here empty.”
    Fern led, half-pulling, half-carrying Max into the dark bedroom. All the blinds were closed, but the bright morning sun found its way through the cracks. Max flopped down on the bed with a moan.
    “The fuck,” he muttered.
    “What have you given him?” Fern asked, she lifted his eyelids and he reached forward and grabbed her wrist. She swatted him away like he was nothing.
    I told her about the antibiotic. The QuikClot.
    She nodded once in approval and I could not stop the small bloom of pleasure that nod gave me. I wondered in some dark, small part of my heart what would have been different if she’d nodded at me like that before.
    When I needed it.
    “Do you know what happened to you?” she asked Max.
    The groggy MC president was awake and—for the moment—fully with it. I wouldn’t say he was sharp, but he knew what was happening.
    “Shot,” he finally said. “Once in the leg. Another bullet grazed my head.” He turned his head as if to show her the wound and I took a deep breath, sagging against the doorframe. “I think I’ve got a cracked rib,” he said. “Maybe a concussion.”
    “Those brothers of yours really tuned you up.”
    In his gory face his lips twisted and it was almost breathlessly eerie. A terrible reminder that he might be laid low for the time being but he was still the devil.
    “Family,” he said with terrible irony. “What can you do?”
    Fern glanced over her shoulder at me.
    “I understand the sentiment,” she said.
    I took the stone she threw at me as my due. She could insult me all she wanted. As long as she got Max back up on his feet.
    “Go lay down before you fall down,” Fern said, watching me over her glasses.
    I saluted her, an old mocking gesture from our lives before. The second I did it I regretted it. I owed her a debt of gratitude. There was no room for my shitty teenage behavior.
    She turned away, face hard.
    “Fern?” I said.
    “What?” She was helping Max take off his vest.
    “Thank you.”
    She didn’t say anything and I could feel Max watching me, his blue gaze sharp. Always too sharp, cutting away little pieces of me that I needed. Pieces of armor that kept me safe. Protected.
    I went back into the living room and collapsed onto the love