Jem…Chapter 99

Chapter 99

 

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Author's Note: Picture used with permission from *lavonia on deviantart.

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Chapter 99
 

I wake up in this little state of bliss.

Nope not sex but in bed with Rayne and our scent’s intermingling and our body heat under the covers and skin touching and soft on soft as well as this awesome feeling of…

Sleeping in.

After last night, and with what’s coming.

Sleeping in is of the good.

My damned nose wakes me up.

Freshly brewing coffee and the smell of bacon drifting in even with our door closed. I move just enough to see the clock and it’s twenty after nine.

“Mmmm….Morning Angel”

Rayne says it and she moves kissing my stomach…just below my navel then slowly kisses her way up stopping to only do that hand thing and take my nipples in one at a time…frenching…twirling my brain is more like it.

She takes me right to a whine before coming up and kissing me.

Cupping my non-boobs but sorta boobs and sorta of this squeeze…oh god the whole girls only knowing girls thing…

Perfect pressure…perfect ow…and these little near zaps that want my wanting more of her thumbs…not feeling it enough…

I want more…I want her to touch me deep.

Even as much as it’s not enough it’s still too much and I pop with a shivering inhale of breath.

Rayne kisses me again sweetly and she smiles at me.

I have tears starting I can’t stop.

“Angel? Baby what? Did I do something wrong?”

(Sniffle.) “No…it’s just me…”

She shifts position to this amazing thing where she slips her arms under my back and the pillows sort of holding me while propping me up and at the same time she’s boob pressed to me in this sooo kitten like way.

And her hair all tumbled and she’s no-make-up fresh.

“Tell me?”

Just her asking that, it means so much.

“It’s…it’s the GID stuff…”

“Oh…c’mon tell me, I need to know hon.”

Oh…it’s good but it’s hard to start too. “It’s me okay…it’s nothing that you did.”

“Okay.” She’s moving her hands and sort of rubbing my back with one of her hands soothingly.

(Sniffle.) “It was good, us this…it was so good Rayne it’s just I was getting all caught up in it and I wanted more…I wanted you to touch me…but touch me deeper.”

“Oh…well that’s kind of good right?”

“Yeah….” (Sniffle.) “Only it’s not.”

“It’s going to happen Angel; it is we just have to take time.”

(Sniffle.) “I know…and I’m not always…gonna be like this it’s just.”

“The Jason thing?”

“Maybe…just thinking about it in the back of my head likely kicked me off but it’s also like I know now. I know what’s going on with me and I know that there’s a way for me to be me and why I feel like this and it’s like…it’s like I’ve put my time in hell with not knowing the real me and it’s like …enough already.”

She’s nodding and she looks at me. “I can’t get it enough but I know what it is sort of like…nothing in my life fit me either, no really not until I came out.”

I nod. “Yeah…it’s so like that, it’s already sick to death of not being you in your own skin even if you didn’t know.”

“Hugs help?”

“Yeah hugs will definitely help.”

Rayne leans in and she kisses me long and slow and really, really tenderly and she pulls me up to her pillows and all and she wraps me up in this really tight hug.

Strong arms feel nice no matter on a girl or a guy but from her it really helps.

She keeps me from losing it any more and flying apart with this.

She holds me tight until my eye’s stop and my throat’s not so tight and I can breathe again.

This is what I want.

She’s what I want.

There a few minutes we’re like that and that kind of support really, really helps and I get up with her and we head to the bathroom and we take a shower together and it’s not the erotic stuff but its Rayne actually taking some little extra care of me.

Mostly, I am returning the favor.

There is something so incredibly nice about just having someone there to wash away all the stress and the bad stuff away from you even if it’s just the stuff from the moments past and not all the stuff coming at you.

It does help carry the load. It’s like someone taking some of the bricks off you before someone or something else piles more on.

We head downstairs and Brooklyn’s there and Kim. They’re not in school? Well I almost figured that brook might not be…and it just figures that Kim would stick by her and stay home too.

“Morning.” I smile and give her a hug and she smiles back but it’s a recovering smile.

“Morning…” Soft voice and kind of quiet.

“You okay?”

“Getting there.”

“You want to talk about it.”

She shrugs and I look at Rayne and she looks at the girls. “Some one made breakfast?”

Kim nods. “Mike did but we were waiting for you two to get started.”

I smile. “Thanks you could’ve ate.”

Brook just shrugs.

Rayne says. “Well let’s get some food going and some coffee we all could do with some coffee.”

Kim helps Brook up with one hand off the couch and me taking the other and we just kind of lazy shuffle into the kitchen and it does smell like bacon in here.

I look around and the bacon smell’s coming from the oven and there’s tomatoes cut really thickly and dusted with a little flour and steak spices. Red ripe ones and not green tomatoes and there’s eggs beaten in the fridge for whatever we want.

I take the bacon out of the oven and it’s in our cast iron frying pan and it’s…?

Brooklyn says looking over my shoulder. “It’s super bacon.”

“Super bacon?”

Kim snerk. “Look it the flying pig.”

I snerk too at The Kid’s in the Hall quote/joke.

Brook nods.

“Mike takes regular bacon and pork belly bacon and shoves it together in a Ziploc bag with a little salt and sugar to like make the juices come out and stuff and it gets into the pork belly then he takes it out the next morning and the pork belly bacon has like sort of cured some but picked up like all the bacon flavors and then he cooks the regular bacon up in the microwave until it’s really crispy and then he grinds it up in the food zipper thingy and powders the pork belly with it.”

Rayne’s like. “Bacon on bacon…that’s not healthy.”

I smell it. Yeah he did a cure which is smart and I’m going to steal and he made the other bacon like a salt and then he cooked it down really slowly. It’s actually been slowly cooking instead of warming.

Bacon salted and cured braised pork belly.

And as bad for you as it sounds there’s not a lot of it like a biggish full slice each or two decent rashers if we cut them in half. The thing is I can smell the brown sugar he added just a little to the cure and there’s black pepper too.

I’m drooling actually.

I take them off the pan and to rest on a rack in the oven over a plate in case of extra grease and I don’t want the belly fat to get cold and congeal on us. I heat the fry pan up though and I put the tomatoes on to cook.

I use the non-stick pan and just make a bunch of scrambled eggs and Rayne’s making toast.

It’s sort of a fry up minus the mushrooms and the beans and sausages but it’s still enough for the four of us and it’s comfort food.

We eat and take our time and I do toast and then some fried tomato and smear it on and then some of my pork belly and it’s all savory and sweetish yet so melty bacony.

Kim’s doing that bouncing in her chair happy dance as she’s eating which has the rest of us looking at each other and smiling. Even Brooklyn’s smiling a little and we don’t push…and she doesn’t say much not until she finishes and puts her plate in the sink and gets another cup of coffee and leans on the counter with a sigh.

She takes a sip. “………………..I had an abortion.”

We look at her.

I look at the others and there’s…there’s not a lot of shock or judging.

This is a woman thing, it’s…It’s one of those deeply personal things that everyone has an opinion on but really, really no one should judge someone on unless they’re in that specific person’s shoes.

Rayne nods. “What happen?”

Brooklyn does the hold her mug with two hands thing. “It was why I ran away from home.”

She closes her eyes. “His name was Derek, the guy that I had sex with…I was only like fourteen at the time and he was older…he was sort of friends with my brothers he grew up with them and he was one of those bad guys but he wasn’t as bad as they were.”

She opens her eyes but she’s somewhere else right now. “Strike that he was as bad as they were but he wasn’t them so it was what I thought at the time okay…he didn’t treat me as bad as they did or Henry. And yeah…I know it’s because he wanted me for sex.”

She makes this face, hurt and then some. “I thought that any way out was going to be a way out. Derek wasn’t enthused about him being a dad and he ranted and raved when I told him about me trapping him and how he wasn’t going to pay child support and how it wasn’t on him and that I was as he put it just trash like the rest of my damned family.”

She coughs and comes back over and sits down and folds her arms on the table holding herself and looking into her coffee.

“That’s when he left town and I’ve never seen him since. Now my folks they were all excited because that meant that they were going to put me out in the garage after sort of making it into a shitty apartment and stuff so I’d get welfare and the baby bonus and they could take that cash…..then dad’s telling me all of that and saying that he wasn’t or mom wasn’t going to look after the little shit so I’d have to do it which meant quitting school.”

Rayne rubs her back. “And that’s when they wanted you there cooking for them?”

Brooklyn nods and there’s some tears. “I was trapped, to schooling a kid on the way, no guy, and the only way I could make any money was to help Henry make drugs.” (Sniffle.) “I could just see it, I’d be just as burnt as mom and drunk and high and then likely falling for one piece of shit guy after another like she did and popping out kid after kid…just like all the other girls down there.”

Kim scooches her chair over and leans on Brook in one of those side hugs.

She lifts her head to look at us. “So I left…I grabbed a bag of stuff and stole some money from them and I left and hitched to Toronto. I waited tables and slept in a shelter and just…just did what I had to, to survive until I could get into a clinic.”

Kim asks. “How long was that before we met?”

“I had it done a couple of months before we met. I got work and was trying to find a way to get a place to live better than the flophouse I was in…I was…going through that, and the shock just further drove home what the life I grew up in was like for me and that I HAD to do anything I could to not go back into that kind of life.”

I nod. “I’d have done the same thing maybe…you’re out Brook, it’s not going to be like that anymore.”

She nods. (Sniffle.) “Yeah…but I still…I still think about that and the baby and what if y’know? I mean what if I was able to tough it out in Toronto some how? What would they have been like, what would he have been like?”

“He?” Rayne asks.

Brooklyn just shrugs. “I don’t know, just always a feeling I’ve had.”

Rayne and Kim hug her from either side and I lean over and hug her too and we’re there like that for a good little while. Brook moves and that sort of breaks it up and stuff and she wipes her face and we’re doing the same and she smiles at us. “Sorry girls, It’s just more drama than we need.”

I step over and hug her really tight and kiss her cheek. “We’re family, real family okay. This is what we do. We’re there for each other.”

I hook her pinky with mine.

The smile she gives me is just so bright. After everything it’s like seeing sun coming out from the clouds and stuff.

She hugs me tightly back. “Yeah…and I love my real family…I love you girls.”

I smile. “And the guys.”

(Sniffle.) “Yeah…and the guys.”

We break the hugging and I start the dishes and she and Kim go into the living room with Rayne staying with me and we clean up and I hear the drums sort of lightly start and then guitar and then Brooklyn singing and she’s doing *Tears in Heaven.* By Eric Clapton but with her voice it sounds a lot like K.D. Lang is singing it.

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would you feel the same
If I saw you in heaven?
I must be strong and carry on
Cause I know I don't belong here in heaven...

Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven?
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven?
Ill find my way through night and day
Cause I know I just can't stay here in heaven...

Time can bring you down, time can bend your knees
Time can break your heart, have you begging please...begging please

Beyond the door there's peace I’m sure
And I know there’ll be no more tears in heaven...

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would you feel the same
If I saw you in heaven?
I must be strong and carry on
Cause I know I don't belong here in heaven...
It’s just the song really for everything that we’re feeling and I so totally get that need too. There are just sometimes when you need to play out all the hurt and pain and anger sometimes and there are times that you just need to soothe that pain.

We’re just getting done when Molly shows up in a cab and Rayne goes out and get’s a receipt for it since she’s coming here to work and stuff and we let her inside and we sit down and start going over things for the website.

She’s drinking an extra large extra strong smelling coffee and she looks. I think she was up really late doing stuff for us.

It’s actually great getting the input from Kim and Brooklyn there too. And she actually makes it look easy and stuff putting in the links and stuff and the commercials…yeah commercials one is our Lucky’s thing, another is for her school and the other one if stuff from The Amsterdam with our cheer-toast thing we did mixed up with footage we have and Mike had some really good stuff too from the after show stuff and some for The Pine Tree too.

We make both of those with some of the footage of the foods and stuff from our other accounts like Facebook and YouTube and we show the food, the crowds, people having a good time at each place and we actually film these little band snippets for each place with us each saying just a minute or so from each of us why each of us like the place and we do the same and add it into the current stuff for Lucky’s and we send off the initial look of the mini commercials that will be playing on our page in a window.

From what Molly says you hover the cursor over the window on our page a few seconds and the commercial will play and if you click the window it’ll take you to each of their home pages.

I really don’t know the technical stuff behind it but that’s really cool and stuff and pretty much exactly what I was thinking of.

There’ll be a lot more to do too since I want there to be a lot of these on our page and to have them cycle through so everyone gets some time for people to click onto the stuff. I have plans for charities and the Chamber of commerce and other businesses as well as some of the provincial and national music stuff.

I honestly know there are a lot of small bands that don’t know the ins and outs like leasing song rights and all the other stuff too.

I want that in there and I want SLB to be members in good standing in the official music scene.

We’re right into that when Mike comes back and he’s looking at me and he does the head nod thing and slips into the kitchen.

I look at Mike. “How’d it go?”

“Mixed.”

“Mixed?”

“I got the recordings and stuff fine but I really couldn’t get a chance to talk to Carmen.”

“Damn, I might have to do it myself.”

“No, you’ll blow your cover if she talks.”

“I said might; it all depends on what we have here really and besides she thinks I’m Jase’s cousin.”

“Okay just Angel this is dangerous stuff with dangerous people.”

“I know Mike, trust me I know and I don’t really want to be part of this but with Adam’s family involved along with him there’s only so many people we can trust to do anything. If I do end up talking to Carmen it’ll just be either to just get enough to confirm some of the things that we already know…enough for maybe the C.P. to take a serious look at things here.”

“Okay…I just don’t want you to get in too deep.”

I nod, it’s sweet it really is but it’s sort of too late for that or it’s too late for that as Jason is concerned.

I’m not planning on going and revealing myself to Carmen…just enough to like I said get confirmation.

I get us both a coffee and take a seat at the table and he takes out his recordings of stuff from the school and a stack of pictures and memory cards. Those look like they’re the stuff I think he was talking about with Billy and Davey. I sit down and plug in the ear phones and start to listen to stuff.

I take out a note pad and every time that I hear something interesting I jot down the time on the file recording.

There’s a lot of nothing but there are things that I am hearing.

The audio from the cool senior girl’s bathroom is the most damning stuff as some of the girls are talking. Mostly it’s bitching about “The cardies” it is what the others call Adam’s girls in the entourage and most of that bitching is about clothes or jewelry and how it makes so and so sick that a little c–t like so and so can just wave her card and afford that stuff.

But they also are saying stuff…like how they can’t or don’t get some of the match ups going on. I write names down and what I know of them. The girls are all cardies and the guys…honestly at least three quarters of then in my opinion are date material and certainly not in a few cases.

Some of the guys are ugly and some are just kind of assholes but are all like kind of upper-middle class or better types that usually can’t get dates and then there’s some of the hotties in Adam’s clique that are seeing guys that they should have no interest in seeing.

Okay, I’m a romantic and stuff and yes people do get together in defiance of everything that’s going on around them socially but that happens really like once or maybe twice in a year and some of that I’m sure are pity dates.

But this…this is seven or eight of the hottest girls in the cardies going out with guys that are frankly not in their league and would more than likely get beat up for trying to level up socially.

I leave question marks but I don’t like leaving them on the page.

The comments from the actual “Cardie girls.” That’s different. They talk shopping…ad nauseum and they are talking about sex…there’s first names only and nick names like ape-ass and crooked cock that almost has me giggle but at the same time they’re pretty blunt about sucking cock and anal sex and other freaky stuff.

Apparently there’s a few people that like to be spanked and all of that stuff and another one into latex and….fisting…both them and them on whoever Wobbles McChins is.

Eeeew just ewww…..

But a couple of gems…ha-ha!

Lory Betts said that Robert Danson’s dad cock tastes like something between vinegar and a used sock.

Gross but that’s a name…and Lory’s only sixteen. While she’s sort of underage she’s also not. Legal consent in Canada is sixteen but only with the parent’s approval. Bobby Danson’s kind of an idiot but he’s an average one…one of the one’s that wouldn’t hurt you himself but he’d laugh with the other sheep.

And his dad’s married.

And the same with Samantha Clarke and Erik Patriquin it’s pretty much a conversation between those two about these older guys that they’re fucking and it’s pretty sick stuff and it sounds like…it doesn’t sound unwilling but just the way that they’re talking doesn’t sound consensual either.

But I jot down everything I know and Mike looks at me. “That sound in between them talking and the changes in their voices it’s a lighter and them talking like their holding their breath in.”

“Pipe?”

He nods. “You don’t relight a joint or a cigarette over and over.”

“I didn’t know that they were really the druggie type. I mean they were never friends of mine by any means and they’re part of his crowd and stuff but…that’s a new low.”

Mike makes a face. “Drugs might be to just cope…if he’s got them doing this and we know they’re doing this stuff and these places. They might be hooked, meth hooks people fast and “My contacts” said that there was this there in a fair quantity.”

He holds up a baggy and I’m seen meth on TV and stuff but this looks like shiny black candy in small chunks the size of like a square of gum.

“Is that?”

“Yeah on of them took this from that motel during an incident. I’ve never ever heard of it looking like this.”

“So how does that get tracked back to Adam?”

“Likely doesn’t but this will give the CP a base to one investigate more into the drugs and two it puts in the affirmation that this came from the bikers.”

“So…?”

“So if possible the stuff with the motel and the house and the girls will lead to prostitution being investigated and then add the drugs and we sort of suspect the girls are using so they might be carrying or Justin and company might be carrying.”

“So the biker’s?”

“If what I think Adam’s doing he’s giving them a drug trade monopoly here.”

“In exchange for?”

“Me…but also muscle, if it turns out that working with Adam is going to make them money it’ll change the rules and if he’s got juice enough to spring them then more the better.”

“All for you and Jason.”

“No, not likely he’s playing a bigger thing and we’re still trouble. I’m in his face and I’m a Mounties kid. He doesn’t want me around at all. And Jason broke his nose, you…he defied Adam’s crap all the time and got beat for it but you…Jason was that person that didn’t do what the sheep did and that gave him fits because you were the local boy that didn’t give in and you should have. You challenged his social order and his rules and got away with it the same as your dad.”

“Dad?”

“The thing at Lucky’s and hell even Charlie for banning him form there. Adam’s not going to forgive it and who better than a bunch of bikers, criminals to hurt those that don’t do what he says.”

“Asshole.”

“Definitely.”

“So we can’t connect him to any of this.”

“Not yet, we need to get where arrests happen and people start to roll.”

“The girls.”

Mike nods. “But we have to go really carefully too I mean if there’s that many girls you’d think that someone would’ve rolled by now.”

I breathe out. “He’s got stuff on them.”

“Something, something that’ll ruin them if they turn on him.”

“What do we do Mike?”

“What we’re doing. Honestly Angel we don’t know the rest of the evidence. But if they can get just one person in the thick of this to roll then it all might unravel for Adam. The bikers, the drugs, the hookers that’s organized crime stuff and that could go as big as provincial or nationally or even internationally if stuff’s crossing the border.”

“God Mike it just makes me feel hopeless and overwhelmed at the same time.”

He nods. “This, this makes me really miss me busting druggies for pot and steroids.”

I smile at him. “You’re good at this though.”

“Yeah well not really a career choice and there’s friends I’ve had hurt by that stuff before and when I got into it I was right in the middle of it because the guys in my Mixed martial arts gym were juicing and it was getting into my school and I was the one that went to Dad.”

“Oh…Oh I thought Uncle Mitch recruited you?”

“No, one of my friends was caught up in it. She had a boyfriend that was juicing on the wrestling team and he flipped out one night in a roid rage and he beat her really badly when she wouldn’t put out at a party and broke up with him.”

“She okay?”

“No, tons of scars inside and out and a permanent limp.”

“Oh…shit…he got off right because of the drugs making him do it?”

“Yeah that and he was a start player on the football team as well as a wrestler, a guy like a more muscled version of Adam with just as much douche just not as rich or as smart.”

“As smart?”

“When I busted Guff and Zee-zee he went down too, I caught him actually bragging to Zee-Zee on tape during a steroid buy when he got off.”

“So…you wanted to do something and asked your dad for help.”

“Well I mentioned it to him a few times but he wasn’t going there so I did some on my own and went with it to his Sergeant then and dad was basically told to go with it and to keep an eye on me.”

“You get in trouble?”

“Hell yeah, and lot’s of fights too with Dad but in the end he was doing the exact same thing as his job and if he couldn’t take it as a cop what was going on out there then why should it be any different than that for me as a teenager.”

I nod. “Exactly…which is why I’m doing this stuff now as Angel. Mike I can’t go back to being Jason and not just the medical stuff or the transgendered stuff but I’m finally goddamned free after so long that honestly if I had to and Adam got in my face like he used to in three day’s I’d snap and…..”

I shiver after saying that and he gives me a hug. “I know…I know we just do what we can and face it when it comes at us.”

I hug him back. “Yeah…I’m so done running I want my life.”

Mike kisses my forehead and he leaves me with all the stuff in the kitchen for me to get ready. I get my Same-Day courier stuff and I type up my report and conclusions and save that stuff on my flash drive. The stuff from the guys I take pictures of with my/our camera and I transfer that stuff to the flash drive too and stuff and hide it away with the copies of the last stuff I sent.

Yes I’m keeping copied of all the evidence I send in…just in case…and who knows right?

I bag everything up and I put it in my large shoulder bag and then I go upstairs. I get some sweats and my jacket and try to dress down for now and be sort of less noticeable?

No not passing as a guy.

Yet.

Money, I take money and cash mostly and then I head downstairs and go in the kitchen and call Jimmy to come and pick me up.

Rayne come’s in and she looks at me and she comes over and she hugs me and we kiss and keep kissing making our way outside to the stoop and just make out together. I mean it’s still two girls making out and we’d likely been yelled at for it by the neighbors if we were in another part of town but down here by the tracks most people really don’t care.

Jimmy pulls in.

Rayne kisses me and we nuzzle and Eskimo kiss. “See you in a couple of hours?”

I nod she’s going to come and meet me but only after dark. “In a couple of hours.”

I kiss her really hard and passionately and a little desperate.

I walk backwards with this knot in my stomach to Jimmy’s van and get in.

I wave goodbye to Rayne and she does the same.

Jimmy looks at me. “Where to Angel?”

“Down to Same-Day courier first and then can you drive me to Red Pines.”

“Not a problem Angel….Are you okay?”

“Yeah…It’s just I’m going to be meeting with a guy I haven’t seen for awhile and I don’t know how that’s going to turn out.”