Chapter 21: Nice Guys Ride

So I think the Hallelujah is a really appropriate song for the conversation Mac and Adam have at the end of the chapter. They are really struggling to find some honesty and truth and the right way forward. Like the song says, "Love is not a victory march. It's a cold and it's a broken Hallelujah."

Adam

As Leed walks out, there a million things running through my mind.

The overriding thing is this:

I never saw what happened last year to Mac in the green room for what is was.

Since Mac and I have been back together, I've thought of what happened to her  a lot. I'm careful not to touch her throat. I'm sorry she got "hurt." But I still wasn't seeing it right.

Now, I see it plainly. What happened to Mac—it wasn't a "betrayal", or an "incident", or an "accident" or a stupid thing that Mac did that went too far.

It was an assault. A terrible brutalization. She might have consented to rough sex, but she didn't consent to have the life nearly choked out of her. She must have been terrified she was dying. That guy violated her, as surely as if he had raped her, beaten her, whatever.

The woman I love was hurt in a way that I can never fully understand, and in a way she will never forget. She might possibly be carrying my child, but what she carries with her everyday—the anger and hurt from that sense of violation—is the thing that drives her.

And I have no idea what to do about it.

And right this second, as we are staring at each other across the room of this trashed hotel suite, I'm looking at her like she's a hollow shell of glass filled with nitroglycerin, and she's looking at me like she wants to run.

Fuck. If she wants to run, there's only one thing to do.

Run with her.

I gesture around this rubble. "So let's get out of here."

She blinks. "What?"

I rub my beard. "Do you really want to talk about it right now?"

"Fuck no," she whispers.

"I didn't think so. Can you sleep on it?"

"Not if my life depended on it," she assures me.

I don't even consider sex. Leed is usually eerily wise, but he's wrong this time. The way she's reacted every time I've tried to touch her tonight tells me that.

"So let's ride," I say.

She blinks. "What?"

"Let's just go. Now. We'll beat the crew to Jacksonville."

I know I've made the right move when a look of relief spreads across her face. "Ok," she pushes the word out eagerly. She's already on her way to the bedroom to get dressed. "Put on some jeans...and boots?" I suggest.

I pace the suite grabbing the essentials. My favorite leather jacket is hanging on a chair. When Mac returns a minute later, I pick it up and hold it out for her.

She asks no questions, she just slips into the jacket and to my surprise, slips her hand in mine. I thread my fingers lightly in hers and we ride the elevator down. I lead her out the back of the lobby to the large back parking area, where several large trailer-trucks and three touring buses are parked.

We're doing so many shows in Florida, the Carolina's, Virginia and Tennessee, that we will be bussing for the next month instead of flying. All the transport is here in preparation for this leg of the tour.

Including the trailer with our bikes.

One of the very best parts of being a rock star is that you can waste a lot of money on fun shit. When we planned this Southern Leg of the tour, us Soundcrush guys decided it would be a blast to bring our street bikes along for kicks. Most of the shows are only a couple of hours apart, so we plan to ride bikes between some stops. We thought it would give us a break from the long bus rides where Dawes drones on about the business and brands and expectations from the label and the next album and blah-blah-bullshit. We can only take business in measured doses.

Dawes and the label fought us tooth and nail over the bikes. They wouldn't pay for the transport because they are a liability to the tour.

Of course they are—that's the fucking point. What is life without risk? We wouldn't be rock stars if we played it safe. I'd be working for my dad, getting ready to take over the farm one day, maybe running a music program at a church somewhere. Mac would be a studio musician. Trace would be a damn engineer, if you can believe that shit. Bodie would have probably taken over his dad's bar, eventually. Leed would be—hell I don't know what the fuck Leed would be. A kindergarten teacher? A Buddhist monk?

Anyway, we told the label to fuck off and made the bike transport arrangement ourselves. Right now, I'm damn glad, because it's letting Mac and I escape into the night. I unlock the trailer and roll up the door and Mac sighs in relief. "Shit, I totally forgot about the bikes. Yes. Please."

Mac doesn't have her own bike, but she's an experienced back-of-the-biker. She's ridden mostly with Leed, of course. A few times with me.

While I work the bike free of its transport stand, Mac texts Leed, letting him know so he won't worry, and Tamara, asking her to pack our shit in the morning. I hand her my phone to text Dawes. I don't want our midnight flight blowing back on her from management. She gratefully lets me take that one for Team Madam.

Mac connects her phone to the bluetooth helmets as I kick the bike over and it roars to life. She climbs on and wraps her arms tight around me as Linkin Park blares in our ears.

Her music choice lets me know how much she needs this.

We ride. The I-10 is dead at this time at night. It's just us screaming past an occasional car, our tension bleeding away into the wind and into the music. We ride the entire two and half hours listening to one of  Mac's harder playlists. It's built around a mix of classic Linkin Park, Metallica, Skillet, Evanescence and The Offspring. She updates it with occasional new music and the name changes, too. It's usually called: "Trace is a Bastard." She listens to it when they are song-writing, to keep her tough edge and meet him where he lives, musically.

Sometimes it's called, "My Brother Is A Dumb-Ass." or  "Fuck the Man and the Label, Too."

"Burn In Hell, Preacher" has been another rendition of the play-list name in the past, too.

Occasionally, I reach back and pat her leg. She keeps her arms wrapped around me. Even though we could speak to one another through the helmet intercom, we don't. Eventually, she relaxes her grip and begins to play percussion on my chest. I smile into the night.

It takes a little less than two hours to get to Jacksonville. We stop at a Waffle House for breakfast. I order a full breakfast—eggs, bacon, biscuits and gravy, the works— and to my surprise, Mac does not order her god-awful omelette. She orders a patty melt and fries.

I frown into my coffee and say nothing. Yesterday, it would have amused me. Now...the idea of a maybe-baby, it's scary on an entirely different level. I don't know anything about PTSD, but I took from what Leed said, that stress exacerbates the condition. What could be possibly be more stressful to Mac than an unplanned pregnancy?

When the food arrives and I know we won't be interrupted again quickly, I try to start the conversation we need to have. "Feelin' better? Read to talk, now?"

"Oh my god, I forgot how good this shit is," Mac says, ignoring my question and sweeping a triangle of patty melt through a puddle of ketchup. "Adam, will you still love me if I get fat?" she asks, shoving a pointy end of the patty melt triangle in her mouth and ripping it with her teeth, shaking her head slightly in satisfaction as she chews. Like she's a goddamn mountain lion ripping out soft parts of some poor creature. It makes me a little horrified and a little horny to watch her chew.

She meets my eyes. Oh, shit. She's actually expecting an answer.

"Yes," I say simply. That's one of those questions that girls ask that should be answered with as few words as possible. Elaborating only gives the girl rope to hang you with.

She smirks at me. "Don't worry. If I get fat, it will only be temporary."

I take a gulp of coffee. "I'm sure you would be beautiful. But Mac, about that—"

She sighs. "I know we have to talk, Adam." She gnaws on a french fry nervously and looks around. "Not here. Because it's going to be a long conversation, and...just...not here, okay? I think those people over there know who we are...let's just eat and get out of here."

We eat in relative silence, and then I ride us out to the beach. I take a small, thin blanket from the boot of the motorcycle and we find a spot on the deserted sand to meet the dawn and our uncertain future.

She doesn't start, so I just say the first thing that comes to my mind. "I need to know the small things, Sweetheart. I knew enough, not to touch your throat. But I realize now, you don't like it when I touch the back of your neck, do you? I've done it twice, without realizing..." Last night, after the show, when she knocked my hand away...but also the night condom broke. I rubbed the back of her neck and she got upset. I thought it was something I said. I had no idea it was the way I was touching her.

"He used both hands. One around the back to hold me up," she whispers, and she puts her hands around my neck in illustration. Even with her small hands, she can use enough force to make it alarmingly restrictive. I nod a quick understanding and she lets go at once. I fight the urge to tell her I'm sorry. If I say I'm sorry every time she shares a detail this conversation will be twice as long and painful.

"I'll never touch you like that again, okay? I promise." She nods. "What else? What else is there that I might do...that could be a..."

"A trigger," she supplies. She shrugs. "Honestly Adam, I can't give you a complete list. The neck thing for sure—you're right, you've touched me twice like that at it freaked me out both times. The lip piercings took me by surprise, but that's probably not going to be a problem with you," she smiles.

"Yeah, not planning any piercings," I agree. "What else?" I say softly.

"Coke," she says looking into the distance. "He tasted like coke and my mouth was all numb...and more than that, it was the look in his eyes. He was coked out of mind. He didn't act like it though, that was the weird part. I couldn't see how crazed he was out in the venue. Not until we were...face to face, up against the wall in the green room..."

I'm not going to lie. This is fucking hard to take. I do not want to hear about this. But I have to.

1 Corinthians 13:7 Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

I may not believe every bible verse I was ever taught, but I believe in that one.

"So...don't ever expect me to party like that...I can't be with you if you do that," she says. "I mean, not on a night you want to do that."

I snort, no pun intended. I can't say I haven't ever done a little—we all tried it when we got to LA—but nobody wins at life with a coke habit. If Mac wants to strike coke off the date-night activity list indefinitely, that's a good thing in my view.

"No coke. No problem." I say. After a pause, I ask. "What did he smell like?"

"Garlic and Chanel." Her response is automatic.

"Okay, I don't know what Chanel smells like exactly," I frown.

She smiles and leans against me. "Nothing like you. You smell like soap and man." She pulls my hand into both of hers and leans on my shoulder. I'm a little surprised that she can speak about this so calmly, considering how freaked out she was earlier. But then again, she's had a year of therapy. I guess maybe the flashbacks are very isolated. Leed did say she hadn't had one in six months. There's so much I need to understand about PTSD that I don't know yet.

I really don't want to ask this question, but I have to know. "What about sex?"

She snickers. "What, right now? We might get arrested for public nudity," she gestures at a lone, early morning beachcomber.

I'm glad she can make jokes, but we have to talk about this. "I meant, are there things we need to take off the table?"

She shakes her head, then reconsiders, "Well, maybe up against the wall sex is not my biggest fantasy anymore. But there's no kind of sex that you and I could have that is anything like...that night. That was not...normal sex."

I'm not sure what she means by that. "I'm not sure I understand, Sweetheart. Are you saying...I mean...you told the police the sex was consensual..."

"I did initiate it," she says slowly, "But I didn't want him, I didn't even want to get off," she whispers. "It was just a means to an end. To drive you away," she starts to cry.

"I needed you to see how...bad for you I was. Karma's a bitch, huh? I wanted to push you away, hurt you in the worst way, because I was scared I couldn't be what you needed. I never even told you how sorry I am. I can't believe what a horrible human being I was for intentionally trying to hurt you like that."

"I only realized how much I love you, when he was choking me to the point that I really thought he might kill me. The last thing I remember was seeing Leed come through the door. I was so glad it was him and not you, because I didn't want you see that and never be able to forget it."

She lowers her gaze, "I deserved what that guy did to me. It was my lesson—being treated like I was nothing—a disposable, insignificant life that didn't matter at all. It showed me what a selfish piece of shit I was for treating you like you didn't matter to me. Then when I woke up, and you never came to the hospital, and I knew that I had succeeded in driving you away, I regretted it, at the same time I was glad. Because if I wasn't good for you before, now I am only...more messed up. Which is why I have done the same thing all over again--try to push you away. Even after the condom breaking, and with the maybe-baby, I was still trying to push you away.

"Then you stopped that damn Lucky Shot game. That's when I knew for sure...you aren't going to give up on me. Because that's what love is. And I want to learn how to do that too--not give up on you. Or us."

It's still dark. I turn the flashlight on my phone and lay it on the blanket between us, so she can see my face. I take her head in my hands, but she's crying, her eyes lowered. "MacKenna, please look at me when I tell you this, because I'm only ever going to say it once."

Her eyes slowly raise to mine, glittering in the dark with overflowing tears.

"You did not deserve what happened to you. God, or karma, or fate, or the universe—nobody reigned down a punishment on you. Some sociopathic motherfucker tried to kill you, to have the pleasure of watching you die as he came inside you. He was evil and sick and for whatever reason—whether he was already crazy or so coked up he lost control his goddamn evil, sick impulses-- you did not cause that fucker to what he did, do you understand me? Nobody can be compelled to choke someone to near death unless they want to do it. He did that. Not you."

"It doesn't matter if you had sex with him to hurt me, or what you said to him, or how you behaved toward him, you did not deserve that. I have always known you, MacKenna Lawson. From that first night I met you I have known you inside and out, every part of your body and your soul. You are not a bad person. You are tough as hell on the outside, but inside...you are pure. Your instinct is loving."

"You are just afraid of what we have, because it's...powerful and scary, and nobody ever taught you how to love. That's why you did what you did. You told me you loved me that day, and you were scared. I get it."

"But you did hurt me, and you did push me away. It took me a long time to forgive you. I wish I could have done it sooner. I wish I could have been there for you, in the hospital, and this past year. So you see, I failed you, too. But I'm here now, learning to do better, and I'm telling you I forgive you for the hurt you caused me. I'm asking you to forgive me for not being there for you."

"Of course, I do. I already have," she says.

"I know," I smile at her. "I knew you'd forgiven me when you told me you loved me in the limo. But here's the thing. MacKenna. You have to forgive yourself for choosing that guy, for taking him to have sex in that green room to hurt me. I can't do that for you. You have to...find your own forgiveness...through god, or through your own god power or whatever. You have to believe that you are a good person. Cause we'll never really work unless you do. You can't love someone else unless you love yourself."

She leans her forehead onto my shoulder and whispers into my neck. "I'm trying. I want to be a good person. I want to be...loving. So much. For you...and for..." she doesn't finish her sentence.

I realize what she's saying. I lift her head, search her face. "You...you're that sure, huh? That you're pregnant? Like some kind of...soul-knowing?"

"Soul-knowing..." she repeats with a faraway quality to her voice. "Adam, you say the most wonderful things. Yeah, it feels like a soul-knowing."

She pushes away from me then, and she looks me straight in the eye. "We need to talk about what happens if I don't take that pill, and I'm right."

I smile at her and take both her hands in mine. "Well, if you don't want to take that pill...that's pretty obvious, isn't it? If you're right about being pregnant, then we'll have a kid. We'll...figure it out."

Her gaze is steady. "It's maybe not so simple as you make it sound. Adam, right now, I feel pretty strongly that if I'm pregnant, I would want to keep the pregnancy.You say wonderful, loving things about forgiving myself and I can try. I want to love myself, and you and a baby if we are having one, but there's no getting around the fact that I have ...some issues. I've been managing my PTSD, but you saw what happened tonight. My doctor says if I'm pregnant, I will have to back off my meds. I guess, in a way I was already trying to that, and make sure I was...good, you know? Except I'm not. I'm still having flashbacks. And now I'm...I'm scared, Adam. You saw what I did. I flipped out. I threw all kinds of shit all over the room. I had no control. What if I did that...to a baby? What if I picked up my baby and..." she can't say the words. She makes a flinging gesture with her hand and puts her face in her hands, trying hard not to cry.

I curl around Mac as much as I can, trying to offer the the comfort and protection of my form. She's being so brave, so open, so honest, and I'm amazed by her strength. "Mac, you would never hurt your own baby. I just don't believe that. You've been under an unbelievable amount of stress these last few days, and stopping your meds like you did without support is not the same as backing off under medical supervision. What happened tonight, it was a one-time incident in the last six months, right?"

She nods. "Yeah, I haven't lost it like that in a long time. But lots of times, I feel...unreasonably irritated. Or overly sensitive, like when I was crying yesterday about Kat and Trace. Or sometimes even...just detached. Like I don't care about anything. And I can't sleep. They are all symptoms of the PTSD I have to live with every day."

I nod. "Okay, I can understand that's really tough to deal with. It also sounds a lot like depression, right? A lot of women have depression when they have a baby. One of my sisters struggles with that. But she's still a good mother."

"Yeah, but she doesn't have flashbacks that cause her to trash hotel rooms."

"So if you hadn't had that one flashback tonight, would still be so scared?"

"Maybe not, but I'm scared now." She whispers. "You need to understand...if I'm pregnant, I want to try... I really really do. I think I'll be okay. But if I'm wrong...if I should start to feel really unbalanced early on in the pregnancy...I'm not sure I could keep it. I don't want to...get lost. I don't want to resent a child or feel...crazy. I don't want to be that kind of mother, Adam. Not like my mother was." She looks at me "I need to ask you something really important, and I need you to be totally honest. Not PC, not LA, not the rock star," she says slowly. "But honest. True to your core, okay?"

"Okay," I think I know what's coming, and I'm honestly not sure what my answer is.

"If I don't take the morning after pill...and it turns out that I'm pregnant...and things go bad with my PTSD, how is it going to be if I have to make the hard choice?"

"You're asking me how I'll feel about you if you change your mind and have an abortion?" I say the words slowly.

"Yeah."

I take a long moment.

I always thought as a parent, I would do things the right way, in the right order. Build a solid foundation with a seriously long courtship of the woman I love. Get married. Build a house. Build a life together. Build a love so unshakable that there's no doubt it can withstand the stresses of whatever might come with a family.

Even though I know Mac is the love of my life, and we've said the I-love-you's and we've made love and we are officially dating...this is not unshakeable. Not yet. This is still throwing half million dollar rings off balconies and trashing hotel rooms. This would be coping with a medical condition I know nothing about. She's asking me to give an life-altering opinion without all the information.

I don't know how this pregnancy will affect Mac's health, and to be honest, I never want to risk her. Ever.

And yet, a baby and a maybe-baby are entirely different things to me.

Fuck.

"Honesty is hard," I say.

"I know," she whispers. "But I need it."

"Well, as a far as the abortion question, there would come a point where I think it would be hard for me. I don't know how long, in your mind, you are comfortable with delaying a decision like that. But I feel like...if we start hearing a heartbeat and seeing a recognizable little being on ultrasounds...I would have a real hard time not thinking of that as a baby. My honest opinion is...it would be much better to take the pill now, than have an abortion later. And there's another really important thing to me: I don't want you to risk your health, not like this. Later, when our life is slower and more stable and you've had more time to learn to cope with your PTSD, I'll give you all the babies you want. But right now, I think...my opinion is......probably...the thing that makes sense is...to take the pill."

Mac's face loses expression, but then she smiles tightly.  "Ok."

We sit in silence for awhile. Mac rubs her face and smoothes back her hair.

"Yeah, I think you're right," she says, like we haven't been sitting in silence for twenty minutes. "We're just...not ready."

She pulls a pill bottle out of the pocket of my jacket and shakes it. I hear a lone little unhappy ending tumbling inside.

Fuck, I had no idea she brought it.

"So, I should just take it. It's just swallowing a pill, and all this worry goes away," she says.

"Yeah. And nothing changes between us," I add.

"No, nothing changes," she repeats dully.

Suddenly, I just want it done. It's a bitch of a thing we need to do, and it's not going to get any easier by drawing it out any longer. "Listen...I've got a bottle of water and a bottle of tequila in the boot. Let's go back to the bike, you'll take the pill, we'll take a shot or two, and...we'll...be alright." I tell her.

She takes a fortifying breath. "Ok," she says with determination, but her voice sounds flat, and I know...she's conflicted about doing this.

I'm conflicted too, but it's the best thing. It's the only thing that makes sense, right now.

"I just need...I need a minute," she says. " Go get the water, and the tequila. Let's do it here."

I kiss her forehead, "Be right back."

I walk over the dune-the quickest way back to the bike. I get the bottle of tequila and the water, and I climb the dune and when I get to the top...I can't make my feet move down the other side.

I just stand there, with the bottles in my hand, trying to get clear. Because sometimes what makes sense, makes no sense at all.

And I don't know how long I stand there but all at once the sky lightens, and that's when I realize, that Mac isn't sitting where I left her. She's taken her boots and my jacket off and she's standing in the surf. Her back is to me, her face turned toward the new day.

Peace and relief flood through me. A soul-knowing.

I drop the bottles and stumble down the dune, pulling off my boots at the bottom, walking out into the water to meet her. I stand beside her.

She hands me the empty pill bottle. "It's your fault, you know," she says quietly.

I'm grinning as I shove the empty bottle in my pocket. "How's that?"

"You taught me how to pray. So I did."

"And God told you to throw that fucking pill in the ocean?"

"Not exactly. I just... felt like it."

I laugh. "I'm glad. Fuck all that shit I said. That was the head talking, not the heart. The heart says, let's give the maybe-baby a fighting chance. We'll take it one day at a time, ok?"

"There you go again, saying those wonderful things."

I put a arm around her shoulder, careful not to pressure the back of her neck.

"So I guess we'll find out for sure in about...nine-ten days?"

"Yeah."

"You know, you weren't the only one that grabbed a small but important item from the suite before we left..."

"Adam, I swear to god if you pull that damn ring out, it's following the pill into the ocean."

"I really don't get it, Mac. How come you maybe wanna have my baby, but you won't even think about marrying me?"

"Because I know you, Preacher. You need a big ole Tennessee country church wedding, and I'm not doing that shit.  Saying archaic and unrealistic vows to you in front of people...and meeting your ten thousand relatives who would probably think we are just getting married because I'm knocked up...and giving Leed the opportunity to make a crazy wedding speech about our sex life...and anyway, I look terrible in white..."

I snort. "Shortcake, nobody would expect you to wear white."

She catches me off guard with a shove just as a wave breaks at our knees. I tumble down in the surf.  She's smart enough to know she needs to run, but that's hard to do with the undertow pulling against her. I grab one ankle and the next wave brings her down.

She screeches like a goddamn howler monkey. We drown a little, laugh a little, and kiss a little as the new day breaks brightly.

Awww....Adam thinks he knows nothing about Mac's PTSD, but it seems like he has an instinct for supporting her in the ways she needs. What do you think? Did he do well, initiating a first talk about her assault? I'm sure they will talk more about her PTSD, later on...

Well in terms of the potential pregnancy, the dye is cast. They are all out of time for Plan B...Is Mac right in her "soul-knowing?" What do you think is going to happen in ten days?