Perceive by K E Osborn

 

 

AXEL

 

“What the hell do you mean she doesn’t know who we are?”

Dad gets to his feet, his broad shoulders blocking the view of any of the club members sitting behind him. The Agency doctor swallows a hard lump, his hand shaking as he points to the MRI of Kenzi’s body.

“There are multiple breaks. Some have healed well, others are botched,” the doctor explains, using his hands to zoom in on the big screen beside him. Thankfully, Jack’s office is well equipped with all the fancy gadgets needed to explain what the hell is going on. The large space inside is a happy coincidence given it’s currently packed full of the SO7, Reid from the SO9, Jack, and twelve hulking bikers looking for any excuse to beat the crap out of someone after hearing what the doctor has to say. “And here…” he uses a long pointer to highlight what looks like a thin crack in her skull, “… this would be your culprit—”

“In layman’s terms, doc,” Kace cuts in with a deep frown.

“She’s had a very serious blow to the head,” he explains with a heavy sigh. “From this… I imagine it was one she was incredibly close to not surviving. But that has also impacted her memory.”

“By impacted, you mean erased,” I scoff out, bouncing back and forth on my feet and trying to keep from leaving this room right now, hunting down Hendrix, and just killing the motherfucker myself.

He did this.

I know he did.

He fucking hurt her, then he took advantage of the consequences.

My body is pulled toward the door, but my team is one step ahead. Before I can even lift my foot off the floor, I look up to find Eli and Blair blocking my path.

“Calm your hot-headed ass down,” Jack scolds, pointing to the wall I’d just vacated. “Relax.”

“You’re telling me to relax after finding out she’s probably been beaten so hard it knocked her memory of our life… her life from her?” I blurt out.

“Sit down, Axel,” Kace orders, his voice stern and hard, sounding a lot like his father’s.

I glare at him, grinding my teeth as I stomp to the nearest chair and slump into it, folding my arms across my chest like an errant child.

Hearing this shit is fucking killing me.

I want to go to her. I want to wrap my arms around her and tell her every story that was our childhood to remind her what we’ve been through.

But she doesn’t know who I am.

That hurts more than I thought it ever could.

But I need to keep my shit together in this. I need to let these people help me if I have any chance of getting Kenzi back. I can’t do it on my own. So, I’m sitting my ass in this damn chair, fighting the urge to go to her, even though my skin prickles at the thought of not being near her right now.

“Right, now that we all have our wits about us again, we need an action plan. Kenzi obviously isn’t the girl Axel grew up with. Something happened, a head trauma to cause amnesia of some kind. This may have happened when she was taken or a few years into her abduction. We need to find out all we can about her time with Hendrix,” Jack suggests.

“I’ll do it,” I reply sitting taller in my chair. Everyone looks at me scrunching their faces with raised eyebrows, unconvinced. “I know you all think I’m too close to this… hell, I am… but that’s exactly why I need to be the one to talk to her. I know her. If I’m going to be able to reach Kenzi, try and get any of her old memories to come back, it can only be me. I have to tap into that connection we had and try to build on it again…” My eyes shift to Kace, pleading. “She’ll trust me, I know she will.” 

I need this just as much as Kenzi does.

He rubs the back of his neck, glancing to Jack. “I think he’s right, Dad. If anyone is going to get through to Kenzi, we need to use that lifelong connection. Even if she doesn’t know Axel, there’s a part of her who will always feel drawn to him.”

My stomach knots hearing those words. I just hope like hell that’s true because my world without Kenzi was so fucking dark all I could see was endless night. And now with her in it but having her just out of reach—it’s even worse than not having her at all.

It’s not darkness I’m living in, it is fucking hell.

“Fine… Axel, you go in again, but we put her in an interview room.” Before I can open my mouth to object, he picks up the phone off his desk and speaks directly into it, sending orders downstairs to have her moved. When he hangs up, he narrows his eyes on me. “Kace and Luca, you will be watching from the other side of the two-way mirror. I need all eyes on this,” Jack demands.

Gritting my teeth, I nod and get to my feet. “Done. Let’s do this, now.”

“Always so fucking needy,” Luca quips, smirking at me.

I flip him the bird as I turn walking for the door of Jack’s office. Kace and Luca follow me out, my boots stomp the floor heavier than necessary as I storm to get to her.

I need answers.

Kace and Luca move in, one either side of me. I glance at them as we walk, though Luca is still on his crutches.

“You have to keep your shit together in there, man,” Kace instructs.

“Yeah, don’t go confessing your love, you gotta woo her first,” Luca teases.

“Fuck off, Luca, this isn’t time for your damn jokes.” I have half a mind to kick out one of his crutches and make him fall flat on his face. He deserves it, the asshole.

“Whoa, ease up, princess, just trying to make you laugh. I know how tense you ge—”

“I swear if you say anything about tension release, I’m going to pull out my gun and shoot you in your hip… see how your recovery goes then, jackass.”

Luca raises his brow at Kace as he exhales. “Axel, man, you sure you’re okay to do this?” Kace asks as we reach Kenzi’s interrogation room.

“I’ve never been more sure of anything.”

Kace slaps my back as he and Luca head down to the viewing room. I watch them walk in and take in a deep, centering breath.

You can do this, Axel. I give myself a pep talk.

Swiping my key card, it beeps, and I open the door, preparing to see her. After stepping through, I close the door behind me and turn to see her sitting on a metal chair. Her hands are cuffed atop the small metal table, and I wince.

Fucking hell, that’s not necessary.

Her normally stunning green eyes meet mine, but today they’re dull like she’s broken. The sight hits me right in the chest as I walk over to her. She jerks away from me slightly as I put my hand in my pocket. The silence between us speaks volumes as I slow my movements. The tension in the air is rife, as my heart pounds dramatically. Her eyes widen as I pull out a set of small keys and lean over toward her hands on the table. She flinches them away, scared.

She’s scared of me? Just when I thought it couldn’t get worse.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Kenzi… I never would.” The fact she thinks that, hits me like a sucker punch straight to my gut.

She exhales, gnawing on her bottom lip and edges her hands out to me. I unlock her wrists from the cuffs, taking them off and placing them on the table beside her. She dips her chin in a gesture of thanks as I walk around and take a seat opposite her.

She looks me up and down, and I can tell her mind is running at a million miles an hour. “You look like shit,” she retorts.

I smirk. There’s my Kenzi. “Gotta keep up with you.”

Her lips turn up just the smallest amount. “Oh… burn. Is that how we work now? Pleasantries and pretend we’re friends?”

That stings.

“We are friends, Kenzi.”

She shakes her head. “That’s not what I’ve been told.”

What she’s been told.

Hendrix seems to have spun some shit about me to her. No wonder she has an attitude toward me.

“Rix, he told you something about me? About the club?”

She nods, her eyes starting to well with unshed tears. The sight is tearing at my chest like an axe to a log. “I want you to know that you were a valued member of the Malice MC. Everyone there loved you, Kenzi. We were all distraught when you went missing.”

She furrows her brows. “Valued? You all beat me, did vile things to me. I was nothing but your whore.”

My head snaps back in shock.

My stomach churns at her words.

How could she ever think that?

I wanted to kill Hendrix before, now I want him to suffer, painfully. My fists clench tightly, and my nostrils flare while I try to calm my breathing. “We never hurt you, Kenzi. And you weren’t, and never will be, a whore…” I breathe out slowly. “I don’t know what shit Hendrix has you thinking about the club… about me, but I can assure you none of it is true.”

Her eyes narrow as she shakes her head infinitesimally like she’s trying to process. She looks down to her wrist, her jagged scar so prominent. Her eyes flood with tears as she glares at me, thrusting her arm across the table so I can see her scar. “Explain this, then, huh? Explain all the other scars on my body that the club put there. Explain the burn mark on my leg. Why would I be covered in so many marks unless it was from abuse?”

Fucking Hendrix.

I reach out grabbing her arm on the table. She goes to pull it away, but I hold her firm as my fingers trace over the scar. “You want to know? Then I’ll tell you. I can tell you every single scar, every story, because I know you, Kenzi…” I point. “This one, this jagged tear on your wrist matches the one on your inner right, thigh.”

She gasps, trying to pull her arm away again, but I hold tight, my thumb gliding over the raised skin. “I know because I was there. We were young… being stupid brats. We wanted to go out to Tommy Miller’s party, but he was the local sheriff’s son, and my dad wouldn’t let us go, so we snuck out.”

Her breathing becomes labored as she hangs on my every word.

And as I talk, I can see it so clear in my head.

 

“Do you want us to get caught?” I groaned quietly through the darkness after spending at least a minute watching Kenzi attempt to get her foot through one of the diamond-shaped holes of the wire fencing.

She snorted loudly and finally found her footing, throwing a triumphant grin up at me, where I waited, clinging to the fence. 

I was a little impressed.

With the amount of alcohol she’d consumed tonight at Tommy Miller’s party, it was a wonder Kenzi could even stand, let alone climb. And we would’ve still been there had Tommy’s dad—a local cop—not come home a couple of days early from his holiday and threatened a jail cell for the night for anyone found within ten miles of the house.

My dad told us not to go.

He ordered us not to go.

And given he was not just my father but the club president, we should’ve listened.

He hated us attending parties or gatherings with kids from school. Always scared if something happened, pointing the finger at club kids like us was the easy way out.

It’d happened before.

It’d happen again.

And yet, we went anyway because Kenzi hated being told no, and I knew the kind of trouble she’d get into if I didn’t go with her.

My fingers ached, the wire netting cutting into my skin as I watched her scale the fence to reach me. I could tell she was struggling, and we hadn’t even reached the difficult part yet. The fence had three rows of barbed wire across the top to stop idiots like us getting in.

Or out.

But we’d been doing it since we were twelve.

I put my leather jacket over the barbs and climbed over, holding it in place so Kenzi could do the same. “Stop giggling!” I hissed into the night, but I couldn’t even say it without smiling because every time she would start to laugh, it just filled something in me.

“I’m trying!” she argued a second later, the metal fence rattling as she got to the top. It was making me nervous. She’d done it a million times, but this was the first time I could see her a little wobbly, her eyes a little bit dazed. I chewed on my lip, wondering if I would have time to grab her before she fell from the top of the ten-foot wire fence.

That could kill her.

“Kenzi, you need to foc—”

Her scream was like a shot to the gut, forcing the air from my lungs as I watched her fall a foot or two before jerking to a stop. She’d missed the footing on the clubhouse side and slipped just as she was bringing her final leg over. She hung there, one hand clutching the barbed fence she’d just scaled while she hung almost vertically. She was struggling to find her footing while one leg was still in the air.

I scrambled down the fence and grabbed her foot, placing it inside one of the diamond-shaped holes. “Bring your other leg down.”

“It’s stuck,” she sobbed, my heart feeling like for a second it was being torn down the center as I watched her desperately try to yank it free without throwing herself the last seven or so feet onto the hard ground. Kenzi was the strongest woman I knew—bar my mom. She didn’t cry. Ever. She hated people seeing her as vulnerable or weak. That should have been my first sign of how bad things actually were. I clambered back up the fence and reached for her leg where it was still in the air, her jeans caught on a massive barb. I ran my hand in under her thigh, yanking it out and guiding her leg over. “There, keep climbing.”

Slowly she edged her way down, her feet hitting the ground only seconds before collapsing underneath her. I quickly grabbed my jacket and leaped down to the ground beside her, for the first time, noticing the wetness on my hand. “Um, did you pee yourself?” I asked, screwing up my nose and hold my hand out in front of me.

It was dark, just a little bit of light shining from a spotlight over at the edge of the clubhouse. It took a second to focus but it wasn’t long before my eyes adjusted to the darkness, and I saw the smear of red across my palm.

“Kenzi…” My eyes moved to where she was laying, her chest rising and falling but her body not moving. “Kenzi!” I dropped to my knees beside her and yanked my cell phone from my pocket before rolling her onto her back. I shone the light from my phone screen across her.

Searching for the source of the blood.

The inside of her jeans was torn, blood soaking through the denim, making it a dark purple color. “Fuck, fuck, fuck.” I quickly scanned her body, my light falling on her hand, blood filling her palm as the thick crimson liquid spilling from a deep cut across her wrist. My heart leaped into my throat, choking me as I stared down at her barely moving body.

It was the fear that forced me to move, like someone placing shock pads against my chest and lit them up, my muscles suddenly jerked forward on their own. I hefted her off the ground, gritting my teeth as I carried her bridal style toward the clubhouse, her body completely limp and floppy.

One foot after another, almost at a run.

My arms burning.

My legs screaming as I forced them to move faster and faster.

“Open the door,” I screamed at the prospect manning the front of the building. I couldn’t even tell who it was, the world around me moving in a blur, my body on autopilot as I fought back the images that kept flashing into my head.

Kenzi dead.

My best friend in this entire fucked-up world surrounded by blood.

Her eyes staring up at me, looking straight through me.

Lifeless.

Just the thought of going through this life without her made me want to grab the nearest sharp object and drag it across my throat. I just couldn’t do it.

She was the other half of me.

The better fucking half.

The half that held my heart.

That I could not live without.

That I wouldn’t live without.

The prospect barely had the door open before I pushed through and began screaming. “Help! Someone fucking help!” The pool table was the closest surface, and I knew Dad was going to kill me later for covering it in Kenzi’s blood, but I deserved it.

And I’d fucking take it if she came out of this alive.

“Someone, help!” I screamed again, placing her limp body onto the hard surface and reaching for her face. “Kenzi, wake up. Kenzi!”

Don’t leave me.

I need you.

She didn’t move.

Not as I pinched her face in my hands and shook it just slightly.

Had she been awake, she would have slapped me. I wanted her to fucking wake up and slap me. To punch me in the face.

“Help!”

Thumping footsteps allowed me to take a deep breath. Ruin appeared first. My big brother’s worried face turning up into a smirk. “Where have you been?” The room suddenly filled with light, and his gaze fell to the pool table, his grin falling with it. “Fuck.” Ruin’s feet slipped on the wooden floor as he made a beeline into the kitchen, disappearing just as Mom and Dad rushed down the hallway and burst into the room. Dad’s eyes were wide and alert, searching the room with his gun gripped tightly in his hand and my mom just behind his protective stance.

More club members appeared behind him, their response much the same, but it only took seconds before the attention fell to me.

Then to the blood smeared all over my arms and body.

Before settling on Kenzi.

“What the fuck is going on?” Dad demanded, he and Mom sprinting across the room. Dad tucked his gun away while Mom leaned over Kenzi, her hands moving frantically across Kenzi’s face and body. “Towels, Mack, grab me towels.”

Mack, one of the patched brothers, dashed back down the hall.

“And someone fucking get Curtains and his kit!” Dad hollered, his eyes focused on me, darkened and narrowed. “Explain.”

“Dad—”

“Now, Axel!”

“We went to that party…” Ruin shoved through the kitchen doors, one of the many clubhouse first- aid kits in his hands, “… and we were climbing back over the fence. She got caught.” I wasn’t even sure of the words coming out of my mouth. All I could do was see my father’s face grow more and more disappointed.

I’d ignored his orders.

I’d disrespected him.

And I’d possibly got my best friend in the entire world, killed.

Mom dug through the first-aid kit, frantically pulling out shit and laying it across the table. She used to be a nurse, now she assisted Curtains when he needed help patching up the boys. She would line up everything he needed, handing him things one at a time to make it quicker, easier, and hopefully fix them before the worst happened.

Each breath was getting harder to take, my heart racing, the room beginning to spin.

Mom cut along the inside of Kenzi’s jeans, stripping them off and tossing the shreds on the floor before she reached for Kenzi’s wrist, turning it over and allowing us all to see the damage.

I wanted to be sick.

It was jagged.

Not a perfect line.

Blood still trickling out even though you could see it was trying its hardest to clot.

“You better hope this isn’t as bad as it looks,” my dad growled, thrusting his fingers through his short salt and pepper hair before storming out of the room, leaving an air of disappointment and anger floating around me like a dark cloud.

My brother stepped in beside me, both of us watching as Curtains and my mom went to work.

I watched every single stitch.

Every single painful stitch.

And I felt them all.

“She makes it out of this, that’s gonna leave a scar.” My brother snorted shaking his head. “A really horrible Frankenstein-like scar.”

It was.

And she’d probably hate it.

And honestly, so would I.

A reminder of the first time I realized how much it would hurt to lose her.

And the first time I realized just how much I fucking loved her.

 

Kenzi sucks in a sharp breath and tears her arm from my grasp. Her eyes stay glued to the scar, narrowed just slightly as if it holds the key to everything, and she’s trying so damn hard to remember.

But when tears begin to well, I know it’s not going to be that easy.

“We had Curtains, our medic, and my mom, Jinx, patch you up,” I continue, my foot tapping nervously. “But fuck, you lost some blood that night, and I got my ass handed to me for taking you out and getting us both drunk.”

She sits back in her chair gnawing on her bottom lip, unsure. She inhales, wrapping her arms around herself. “That’s one hell of a story.”

“Not a story, Kenzi, it’s our life.”

She shakes her head. “It’s a lie.”

I huff in frustration as I stand  and walk around to her. Her eyes widen as I approach, and she leans away from me as I hook my hands under her arms and hoist her up.

“Get your hands off me!”

“Lift up your pant leg.”

“What?” she shrieks, wrenching her body from my hands and stumbling back into the glass window Kace and Luca are watching through. She shakes her head furiously. “No!”

“Kenzi,” I plead, holding my hands up in surrender. “I know you want to remember just as badly as I want you to. I bet it’s killing you, not knowing where these marks on your body have come from, not understanding how I can know so fucking much about you that you don’t know about yourself. Let me prove I’m not lying. Let me try and show you your past.”

Our eyes meet, and for the first time, she allows me to hold her gaze. She doesn’t look away or make an excuse. A moment passes between us. An understanding. She’s fighting me, but I think deep down, she knows I won’t hurt her. She swallows what seems like a hard lump caught in her throat as she bends down lifting her gray sweatpants’ leg up over her knee.

I inch forward, still not putting my hands down until I squat in front of her and reach out, running my hand up her calf.

She closes her eyes, reveling in my touch.

Fuck, I have to try and keep my shit together right now. Touching her sends goosebumps prickling all over my skin and my heart skidding to a stop as I run my fingers over her burn mark.

“This… the burn on your leg…” Her eyes slowly open, her eyelashes flutter and, fuck, if it’s not the sexiest thing I’ve seen. Concentrate, Axel. “It’s from my bike’s exhaust. The first time I took you for a ride, you were so damn excited, you didn’t change out of those little denim shorts you used to wear even though I told you to. You always were stubborn as hell.” Her lips press together tightly. Like she’s fighting something. “And when I took a corner too fast, you pulled your leg in to the turn and bam just like that… burned leg. You were mad at me for days… though technically, it was your fault.”

The twitch in the corner of her mouth tells me I may have managed to shave a layer off the thick shell she’s created to protect herself.

It’s a start.

“This doesn’t make any sense.” Her eyes stare across the room, flickering just a little as they focus on the wall behind me. Like she can see an image in her head, like she’s going through the thick piles of lies she has been told, trying to sort what could be true or false. “It doesn’t make sense. None of it makes sense.”

Slowly, I stand, my hand sliding up her body as I go, resting on her hip and drawing her gaze back to meet mine. She lets me touch her. She doesn’t push me away. She doesn’t make any attempt to move. But it’s not awkward.

It never has been with her.

Even when we would fight, things were never strange or uncomfortable.

The energy that wound around us was far too easy.

Our relationship was just that.

Easy.

My heart rapid fires in my chest as her green eyes light a little more, the darkness dimming them  fading. My girl is coming back to life.

“I can’t even imagine the lies that Hendrix has told you, Kenzi, or the trauma he’s put you through. But the life you had, the one you lost, was amazing. You were happy, you were full of spirit and sass, and fucking stubbornness, but you were loved. You are loved, Kenzi.”

Her eyes flood with tears, her bottom lip trembling as she wipes away a stray tear from her face. “I-I don’t know what to believe anymore.”

I nod, gesturing to her seat, needing to put some distance between us, otherwise I don’t know if I’m going to be able to keep this up. “I have something to show you.”

Her face crinkles in curiosity as she moves back to her seat, her clearly exhausted body falling into it. I take a deep breath and move over to the filing cabinet, pulling out a folder before making my way back to the table and taking a seat. “Kenzi, I need to ask you some things.”

She sits a little taller but nods. “Okay.”

Cautious but willing to work with me. Progress.

“I think we’ve established you have a lapse in memory. You’ve lost your past. I need to know how far back you remember.”

She cracks her neck to the side. “Hendrix saved me four years ago.”

I jerk my head back a little confused. If she only remembers four years, what happened to the other two she was gone before that? I slide the folder across the table in front of her. Her eyes fall to it. “You say Hendrix saved you four years ago, but Kenzi, you were abducted six years ago.”

Her head snaps back, her forehead crinkling with disdain. “Abducted? Six years? I… I don’t understand?”

Flicking open the folder, I show her a missing person’s report and point to the date stamp. It shows six years ago and her photo sitting ominously on top. She grunts, pushing the folder back across to me and sits back in the chair. And just like that, her walls are back up. “That has to be a fake. Hendrix found me on the side of the road. He saved me.”

Fuck, she really thinks he did.

This is going to be harder than I thought.

“Kenzi, Hendrix abducted you six years ago. Held you for two years and then something happened to make your memory fade.”

“Lies!”

Swallowing hard, I turn the page over to show her the doctor’s report of her skull fracture. “This is an MRI of your head. We did it when you arrived here. As you can see, there’s a significant injury to your skull that we believe caused your memory to disappear...” I hesitate, then continue, “We think Hendrix didn’t get what he wanted from you, so he beat you almost to death… then when your memory was gone, he saw an opportunity—”

“You think he’s playing me?”

I have to tread carefully here.

“He’s a master manipulator. He isn’t a good guy, Kenzi.”

“He’s helping me protect all these people who might get hurt, and me being here is stopping that.”

I furrow my brows. “Protect people? How?”

“I was helping create an antidote for a biochemical warfare drug. I was doing important work and now if that drug gets released without the antidote, Hendrix and I won’t be able to help everyone.”

Jesus fucking Christ.

I can only imagine with Hendrix being a part of the Sinclair Syndicate that he’s the one making the biochemical warfare, and he has Kenzi creating the antidote for some reason.

“I know you were doing important work creating the antidote, Kenzi, but I tell you with nothing but honesty that the Hendrix you know is not the man he says he is. Surely, you’ve seen a side to him that doesn’t add up?”

Her eyes go vacant like she’s living a memory. She squeezes them, her hand moving up and pinching the bridge of her nose. “This is too much, my head hurts.”

I close the folder, my Adam’s apple bobbing up and down. “I’m sorry. I hate telling you that the life you’ve been living the past six years is a lie, when you believe it so much. He’s the one who has lied to you, Kenzi. Not me.”

“I need to go lay down, Axel. I’m tired.”

I nod. “Okay. I’ll have the guards take you to your room.” I stand, watching her, her eyes still closed as she rests her elbows on the table, her head in her hands. She’s had enough for the day. It’s a lot to take in. There’s so much I want to say to her, I just don’t know what the right words are to use right now. So, I turn and head for the door.

“Axel,” her soft voice calls out. I turn to look at her. Her eyes still hold that small shining light that seems to have returned. “Will you come back to visit me?”

I can’t help the smile that forms on my face. “Always.”

Kenzi smiles, and I turn back to walk out the door with a newfound pep in my step. As I close the door, I look down the hall to see Kace and Luca coming out of the viewing room. I wait for them to meet me, the look on Luca’s face instantly lets me know what mood he’s going to be in.

“So, copped a little feel there, bro. How was that?” Luca quips.

Normally, I would punch him, but after hearing Kenzi wants me to go back to see her, I honestly don’t care right now.

“You’re a dick,” I reply as Kace slaps Luca over the back of the head for me.

“You really have no filter, do you?” Kace snaps.

Luca shrugs. “I’m just happy they’re making progress. She’s turning a corner. I’m happy for you. That’s all.”

“Shit! Did you just say something nice that wasn’t laced with sarcasm or innuendo?” I retort as we walk down the hall back toward the main building.

Luca shrugs. “It can happen, it’s a rarity, like a needle in a haystack or gold at the end of a rainbow, but once you find it, you better treasure it.”

I shake my head. “I stand by my comment, you’re a dick.”