Bear by Lily J. Adams
Chapter Eight: Threats and More Threats
Delphia
Bear was the first man I’d ever trusted since my brother. I believed what he told me on our ride. My lips still felt as if they were stinging from his kiss. His raw power was so attractive to me. The whole day had felt like a dream and I hadn’t laughed so hard in a long time. As we sat in the movies watching Star Trek and throwing popcorn at one another I knew we were forming a bond, and that bond made me feel safe.
Being at work didn’t feel like a drag. Secretly, I found myself hoping Bear would come in to visit. I would look up and out at the pumps to see if I heard what sounded like a bike coming.
I unpacked stock with more enthusiasm and greeted the customers like people, not numbers. Most of them were used to my sullen appearance and a few of them gave me strange looks because of my unhidden joy. In recent times, I hadn’t had that much to be joyful about, but Bear showing up in my life was a good reason.
Even Brendan noticed the change in me. “You’re bright and bouncy today. What is his name? You’re too much for me.” He looked me up and down with interest.
I broke out with a knowing giggle. “I’m feeling better, that’s all.”
Brendan narrowed his observant eyes into slits. “I don’t believe it for one minute, but I’ll let you keep your little Holbeck secrets to yourself.”
“Thank you, you’re the best,” I said with a deft smile as he finished his shift.
There was another reason for the lift in mood. My readiness to fight back. I wanted to talk to the reporter.
Bear told me at the end of the date when he dropped me home. “Leave it with me, and Angie will get in touch with you. Trust me, this is going to work out better than you think.”
This time, I believed what I was being told. Bear gave me a reason to put my trust into another human, and it was a relief to stop having to watch my own back all the time. I walked into the back of the office and opened the back door to look up at the cameras. Now there was one directly above the door and another one near the far dark corner of the building.
I closed the door and recoiled from the wind blowing through. I would wait for Angie to show her face. I felt a little nervous about the things she was going to ask me. The more people I told about the tapes, it would be one more person that would have the information in their hands. I wanted to be sure, but this was a situation where I would have to take a leap of faith.
As the night dragged on, I waited for Angie to show up, but she didn’t. I’d been expecting her to charge through the door to come and meet me, but no such luck. All that happened was I served a number of customers that wanted to pay for their gas-guzzling vehicles.
As the night wore on, my boss called in. He’d been doing a lot more of that since the incident with the cameras. “Hey, just checking in to make sure you’re okay. Nothing going on?” he asked.
“Nothing going on except people paying for their gas. All good from this end.”
“Great. That’s what we like. How are you?”
I frowned. My boss asking me if I was okay was a weird thing. Normally, he could care less. He just wanted someone reliable to do their shift. “Um, are you okay, boss?” I asked tentatively.
“Yeah, why?”
“You’re asking if I’m okay.”
“I care for my employees, why wouldn’t I check on you?” He seemed mildly offended at this.
“Okay… if you say so.” My reply was quick and sarcastic enough to let him know this was a moment of disbelief.
“Okay, great talk. Do you need me to come there at the end of your shift?”
“No, I have someone that will come and get me at the end of my shift. I think…”
“You do?” My boss sounded surprised at the admission.
“Yes. I think so, if I need to check in with you, I will.”
“Okay good.” He hung up.
I got back to the quiet of the night. I was reading a trashy mag from off the shelf when I heard a bike coming. As soon as I heard the noise, I got happy, thinking it was Bear coming in to see me. I raised my gaze up from the magazine to look out the window. My heart then started to thump hard, because I couldn’t see the bike. I just heard it.
Maybe I was hearing things and it rode past.
I squinted my eyes, peering out of the smoggy gas station window and into the dark of the night. Whoever was on the bike was clothed in all black, and the roar of the engine reminded me of the growl of a lion, not a purr. The bike skidded as a plume of grey smoke flew up in the air. I put my hand on the emergency buzzer, as there were no other cars in sight. Nobody else—just this person who I knew with everything inside me was Rocky. I saw the plume of smoke fly up in the air as he performed another lap in front of the gas station and sped off.
I’d stopped breathing then released my held breath unsteadily. I reached for my cell phone, found Bear’s number and called it.
“Hey, how’s your night? I was just thinking of you. Do you want me to come down there?”
“Yes, can you come now? I just saw Rocky. He was doing a burnout in front of the gas station,” I said, panicked.
“On the way. Call the cops if you see him again. Make sure.”
Bear’s urgent warning had me waiting on tenterhooks for the bike to come through again. It didn’t. I grabbed a water out of the fridge and swigged most of it down. “I can’t believe this is happening to me all over again. I’m going to be next,” I whispered with terror under my breath to myself.
Not more than three minutes later, I heard a bike pull in, but this bike was one that I recognized. Bear’s Harley had a distinctive sound, a deep, rumbling depth to it that the other bike didn’t possess.
As Bear walked in, I felt my heart calming its rapid rhythm. “Thanks for coming.” My eyes widened as all the memories of my brother and his death came flooding back to my mind.
“Hey. I’m going to stay with you until the end of your shift. How long have you got?”
“Another hour.” I didn’t even try to be humble. I wanted him to stay with me and not leave my side. I was that terrified.
“Okay, then I’ll keep you company with all my bad jokes for the next hour. No biggie.” He smiled warmly, making me feel safe.
He watched me check all the bathrooms and toilets then pack up the earnings along with the float for the next day.
As soon as it was all done, it was time to go. As we walked out into the cool of the night, I felt the protectiveness of Bear. The attraction between us was like a sweet breeze on a summer’s day and he was the first man in a long time I’d been around that I felt I could relax with.
As we got to his bike, I could see his dark pupils shining in the dark.
“If there weren’t so many cameras in the place, I would kiss you,” he stated.
The deep throaty timbre of his voice made my core start to ache. “You can save it for when you drop me off.” I looked back at him.
He briefly touched my cheek. “I sure will.”
As we arrived at my place from the gas station, Bear walked me to my door. “You have a great night and call me. I don’t live far from you. I will be right back here if you need me.”
My lips parted involuntarily as he leaned in for a kiss, and all my fears about Rocky melted away.
He then pulled back. “Okay, sleep well and I will talk to you tomorrow,” he whispered.
The way he said the words so softly made me like him even more. The man was so gentle yet so damned hot at the same time. I closed the door and went inside. It was exhausting living like this when all I wanted to do was live a normal life and be a regular girl in her twenties.
The next day at the gas station, Angie showed up. “Hi, I’m back and I heard that you are ready to talk to me.” She had such a confident sass to her.
I wished I could be as bold as her. She was so dazzling with all her long cascading blonde hair that I found it hard to concentrate. “I’m ready to talk. I want justice for my brother,” I said firmly.
“If I have anything to do with it, you’ll have it. I wanted to come in and find out when you have a day off, so I can really talk to you.”
“I have the weekend off if you want to come around and talk then?”
“Great. If you write your address down for me, I will be there.”
“Thanks, probably best. What I have to show you is there too.” I scribbled my address in a scrawl, hoping she could read it.
She took the piece of paper, slid it into her pocket then nodded her head at me. “Ahh, okay. I understand. Is this evidence?”
“Yes, it is. Please don’t tell anyone about it.”
“I won’t tell anyone. I want justice for you Delphia. I want all of this to stop. Rocky came after me as well and I don’t want him to come after you either. We are going to make sure that it ends here and ends now.”
From the force with which she spoke, I felt like she was telling me the truth. “Good, because I don’t know how much more I can take.”
“I’m not saying that it won’t be rough. I don’t want you to get the wrong idea, but you will have me and the Saints behind you, and that’s a hell of a team to be running with.”
“I just want my brother back. I would give anything if I could see his face again. He knew he was going to die.” I floated off for a moment. I wondered what that would feel like to know that you were about to die.
“I can understand that and it’s tragic, which is why you have to tell me as much as you can remember because I want to pin Rocky to the wall. He’s gotten so cocky now. He needs to know that he’s not above the law.”
“Thanks Angie. I feel better now that I’ve spoken to you about it.”
The golden-haired woman smiled back at me. “You’re welcome. We can do this, Delphia, trust me. I’ve been in worse predicaments than this.”
“You have?” Personally, this was the worst pain I’d ever felt in my life and nothing could come close to it.
“Yes. So we are going to need a lotta girl power.” She winked and her hair bounced as she gave me a dazzling smile. She looked like a summer’s breeze, like nothing could shake her.
I was gobsmacked by her in a way. “Thank you Angie, again.”
She winked with the click of her tongue and turned to breeze right out through the double doors.
In the days that followed, Bear checked in on me on a regular basis, and that gave me more confidence. In a way, with Angie and Bear both aware of Rocky and his taunting, I began to cling to a false sense of hope.
Holbeck’s weather had been interchangeable as the seasons gradually morphed into the middle of fall. Through all of it, the gas station kept its clockwork pace.
My daily stock count of the candy bars was complete, the bathroom cleanliness check done and ticked off the list. My boss was a real stickler about that stuff. It felt purposeful to me now though. The time on my computer read seven-thirty, and I had several hours to go. The phone ringing stopped me dreading the time rolling. Every now and then, I received a call from someone who left their card on a pump, or they were ringing to check daily fuel prices. It just depended on what the day decided to bring.
“Hello, Delphia speaking, Holbeck Gas.”
“Holbeck Gas huh? I need some fuel in my tank.”
My blood ran cold because as soon as the filthy words caveated through the phone line I knew it was him. “R-r-rocky?” I squeaked as the handle of the phone jittered in my hand.
“It’s me, baby doll,” he drawled in a chilly tone.
His words were like shards of ice running down my back.
“Like the little show I put on for you?” he quipped.
To string a sentence together in the moment was too hard, and as I tried to speak, words stuck in my throat. “I-I…”
“You lost your voice, baby? That’s okay. I plan on taking your voice box out for you when I slice my knife clean across your neck.”
Screaming loudly, I dropped the phone as if it had burned me. All the pathways in my brain were crossed and flashes of white flashed behind my eyes. A sick feeling ran through my stomach and I prayed I wouldn’t throw up on the floor of the gas station. I left the phone hanging down as I started sobbing hard.
Rocky wanted to drive me crazy before he killed me.
I’d never been involved with such danger and mayhem before, but here I was knee deep in it. Shock and pressure kept me from calling Bear. My nervous gaze shifted from the phone to the emergency button.
What should I do? What?
My mouth dried up and with the pace my nervous system was running, my capacity to even put a sentence together was limited. I longed desperately to call Bear, but at the same time I wanted nothing to do with another phone in my life. I chose the lower road. Instead, I forced my trembling fingers to crank the radio, wiped my face with multiple tissues from the crumpled tissue box under the counter, and served the timely customers that saved me from being a shriveled mess on the ground of the cold tiled floor of Holbeck Gas.
My robotic smile hid the facts from the oblivious customers who just wanted to pay for their fuel. Numbness kicked in as I handed them back their cash. I couldn’t even see their faces. Just bodies in front of me wanting to pay for an item. All of it seemed so insignificant. Rocky owned my ass. He took my brother’s life, and now he was gunning for mine, step by step.
Who would care if Rocky got to me? My parents? I would be with my brother. What would it matter? Every time I tried to move forward in my life, Rocky slammed into my path, reminding me that he was the puppet master.
The next day rolled over and sleep evaded me as I wallowed in a pool of sweat. I knew it was stupid. I knew I should have called my boss. Bear. My parents. Anyone. But panic gripped me, and I wanted nothing more than to forget the call ever happened.
The trauma from the prior night dogged me to the next, as the phone rang again. Every nerve in my body shot missed signals through me as my nose started to run.
Pick up. Pick up. It’s not him. You can’t avoid the phone.
My shaky hand hovered over the phone. “Holbeck Gas, Delphia speaking. How can I help you?” I closed my eyes, gulping down my irrational fears that it might be Rocky calling for a repeat show.
“Your grave is waiting. I’m digging it,” Rocky spoke of my death with a sense of glee in his heart.
The horror continued. I couldn’t escape my death. “Go away!” I screamed and slammed the phone down, leaving myself breathless.
Just then, a customer walked timidly towards the counter. “I can’t leave, I have gas to pay for.”
I looked right through the man in front of me as if he was speaking another language. “Sorry, sorry. I’m so sorry. What pump were you on?” I said, almost hyperventilating from Rocky’s call.
“Uh, pump three. Are you okay, lady?”
Embarrassment covered my face as the line got a little longer and people poked their head around the side of the elderly man to be nosey. “I’m fine,” I said as I pressed my hair back against my skull and put a hand on the counter to steady the dizziness that had taken over.
“You don’t look fine. You look kind of like you’re going to pass out. Maybe you need water or something,” the man said in his elderly voice.
My head kept spinning and the phone started ringing again. I let it ring and ring.
A man in a paisley sweater waved his finger like a magic wand in front of my face. “You might want to answer the phone next time. It could have been important.” He scolded me.
“Thanks. Next,” I snapped at him.
He huffed then shuffled out of the gas station.
I felt like the foundation of my life was shifting like sand under my feet.
I’d like to see him handle a call from a murderer.
I bit the bullet and decided to call Bear from my cell phone. Not the gas phone. It felt tainted, and I didn’t want that feeling on me any more than it had been. I had to call someone, my insides were being chewed up. As the customers dissipated, I made the long overdue call to Bear.
