Rivals ? - Chapter 77: Chapter 77

Juice pushed aside all thoughts of angry ex-friends. Raine woke up. His life was no longer in danger. Juice was not going to let the joy that had flooded over him until a few minutes ago be overshadowed by those assholes.
When he re-entered the room, Raine had fallen asleep again. Juice heaved a frustrated sigh. The fear that he would slip back into a coma was vicious and refused to leave his mind. He went back to his familiar spot at the hospital bed and let his fingers slip around Raine's arm.
And again he waited.
Yet, this time it was very different. The ventilator had been taken away. Raine moved more, muttering. There was still a bruised sheen over his face, but it was not as bad as the night they brought him here.
"You will be all right, baby," he whispered to his sleeping boyfriend. "We will be all right."
Although Juice thought his friend had slept enough for the next few weeks, he was awake only briefly. Every action seemed to take immense effort. There was not much left of the vital young man he had fallen in love with.
But that will come back. Of course it will come back.
They had short conversations in between—but only small talk. About how his family was doing. About the weather they glimpsed through the window, about the noise in the hallway or the hospital food. Juice promised he would cook him an elaborate dinner when he was allowed to go home.
The lack of any depth in their conversations caused a hollow feeling in his chest, but he understood that Raine lacked the energy for more. Maybe he would never be able to talk about what the Sons had done to him.
After three days, Raine was allowed to go outside. Given that Juice's former brothers thought he was dead, it was a considerable risk, but he hoped no one would recognize them and inform the Sons. After all, he could not deny his boyfriend the sun. The dry air-conditioning air had to drive him crazy.
Juice helped Raine into the wheelchair. His right leg was in a cast, the lower leg of his left was wrapped with bandages in several places. Nevertheless, even there he saw proof of how skinny the man looked.
A lump settled in his throat, which only got worse when he saw the empty look in Raine's eyes. Tears burned in his own.
According to the tests, everything was fine. Raine had not suffered any mental damage, he just needed to rehabilitate and recover slowly. But he had been tortured—and Juice knew how far Happy liked to go. To the extreme. It was a horrible trauma and Juice had no idea how to help him.
Although it was not cold outside, he still put a thin blanket over Raine's legs so that he didn't have to look at his battered body the whole time.
An unpleasant silence hung between them as Juice wheeled his friend outside. At the back of the hospital was a small park with a few benches. At first, he walked around, eventually putting the wheelchair next to one of the benches and sitting down. He tried to catch Raine's gaze, but he stared at his knees.
Should he ask something? He wanted to give him all the space he needed. In the past, he had been able to sense his friend's needs, but now? He took Raine's hand and caressed his fingers. The back and palm of his hand still had band-aids on them. Happy must have pierced it with something.
A chill went down his spine.
"It's nice, isn't it? To be out in the open air again."
Raine did not reply. He stared at their hands.
Finally, he looked up with a sigh. An unfathomable sadness swirled in his eyes. "Do you think they did it?"
It took Juice a moment to understand what he was referring to. "The raid on the warehouse?"
Raine clenched his jaw. "I keep wondering whether they just left me in the dark and willfully risked this happening to me."
Juice stroked along his thumb. "I've thought about it a lot too. I'm sure Phantom didn't know when I called him. But yeah, he's just a prospect, of course. But Alvarez... he was here... and he was genuinely concerned for you. And as much of an asshole as I think Esai is, the first night there was no way I could get him out of your room. He wanted to make sure the Sons didn't finish the job."
"That could also have been guilt," Raine hummed. "I've been back to the living for a few days now. I haven't heard from anyone."
Juice bit his lip. "The Sons think you're dead. That's what Skye told them the first night. So they wouldn't finish the job—or I don't know, went looking for me here after I shot Chibs."
Something changed in Raine's gaze. A hint of concern. "Did he survive?"
"Yeah." Juice's voice sounded cold. If it was up to him, he might as well have died. He deserved that. They all deserved that. "But they think I'm a traitor anyway. They're looking for me." He sighed. "Sorry, I didn't mean to burden you with that."
"Hey, don't say that." Raine's voice sounded more forceful than it had so far. He put his other hand around Juice's as well. "The past week must have been a complete hell for you. But I'm here now. We can bear the burden together."
Clumsy as it was with that wheelchair between them, Juice leaned against his boyfriend. Raine turned his head and their lips touched briefly. Juice closed his eyes and gave Raine a tentative kiss.
"I love you," he whispered, heavy emotions swirling inside him.
"I love you too." Raine's lips touched his for a moment longer, before he rested his head on his shoulder and sighed deeply. "But man, that does suck. Having a biker gang after us and not knowing if I can still trust my own brothers... They've betrayed me more than once too. Even the ones I trusted the most."
Juice gritted his teeth. He knew that pain all too well. "I honestly can't imagine your brothers would be so stupid. There was a tracker under my bike, that's why they believed that you and I had something to do with it."
Raine was silent for a while. "It sounds like someone wanted us to take the blame."
"Yeah." Juice sighed. And they succeeded. "I keep thinking about those people who kidnapped your father back then—and Opie's mother. Maybe this is their revenge for not wanting to cooperate. To turn our clubs against each other and force us to buy those sonic weapons anyway."
"Your brothers must be really dumb if they haven't ruled out that possibility themselves."
"Well..." Juice chewed on his cheek. "There was camera footage. And that tracker... They were blind with rage and panicking because the weapons of such a powerful ally were stolen." He tugged at the blanket to cover Raine's legs a little better and looked at his friend thoughtfully. "Do you want to clear your name? I don't care anymore. They can all go to hell."
"Don't you think they'll give up hunting you when we prove to them we had nothing to do with it? If I can get that camera footage, maybe we can expose the real thieves."
Juice closed his eyes for a moment. He didn't know. He just wanted to put this behind him. At the same time, he knew that was impossible and he didn't want to have to look over his shoulder for the rest of his life.
"I don't know. Right now, my head is almost bursting. All the stress... I just want a break. You need to rehab, and process shit. I just want to find a safe place where we can recover. And later... later we'll see." He bowed his head. "But yeah, where will we find a place where we're safe?"
"We can go to Santo Padre, the place where I spent the first few years as a Mayan. My uncle lives there and Angel too. Angel has known about our relationship for a long time, he's never been weird about it. As hard as I find it to trust people these days, I believe they can protect us from the Sons."
Protect.
The thought that they needed protection from people he once loved, left a sour taste in his mouth. But it was true; the two of them would probably never make it without help.
"Okay." With a small smile, he squeezed Raine's hand. "Then we'll go to Santo Padre."