by Zahra Girard
But that doesn’t matter right now.
Because, even if I can’t say it out loud, I can’t deny it any longer — I’m in love.
Chapter Seventeen
Violet
He’s callous, cold, dangerous, and all kinds of wrong.
But I just might be in love with him.
No man has ever held me like he has. No man has ever been as steadfast and supportive, as willing to selflessly risk everything to spare me pain.
I hate that I love him. But I love him all the same.
I cry against his chest until the pain in my heart eases. Then, sniffling and feeling more than a little embarrassed by the snotty trail I leave on his coat, I turn around abruptly and start back toward the rendezvous point where we’re supposed to meet Blaze.
We’re almost there when a voice comes out to us from the cover of the trees.
“You guys are late.”
I nearly jump in surprise, but Crash hardly seems phased by the sudden appearance of his friend.
“Yeah, we found a beautiful little cabin,” he says. “Decided to check it out. I might book it for us on Airbnb after this is all over. It smelled like ass and looked like Rusty after a bender. You’d love it.”
“Is that why you guys look so happy this morning?” Blaze says, grinning. Then he holds out a thermos. “Coffee?”
“You made coffee?” He says. “How?”
“I made a smokeless fire, just to keep off the radar. Found a little sheltered outcropping that protected some kindling from the snow. Found some bear dung. Built a fire. Made coffee. Made bacon, too, but that didn’t make it. I was hungry. But, here, have some coffee.”
“Thanks, brother,” Crash says as he takes it. He takes a drink and then passes it to me. It tastes like burnt wood, but it’s the best coffee I’ve ever had in my life.
“So, you two look like shit. What the fuck happened?”
“I slept beneath a blanket of moldy upholstery, how the fuck do you think I should feel?” Crash says.
“Serves you right for completely ignoring my instructions,” he says.
“We found Kendra,” I say.
Blaze’s smile drops. “You saw her too, huh?”
I’m not surprised Blaze found her. The man has serious wilderness skills, and he hardly looks phased despite spending a night in the same miserable conditions that we did. He probably found her within thirty minutes of us splitting up.
“How many did you spot?” Crash says.
“Four. Excluding Kendra. All of them are carrying some serious firepower and they’re stocked for a lengthy trip up here. I think Switchblade wants to break her. Like, serious psychological shit. Keep her prisoner, twist her all up until she thinks she loves him. Which is good, considering.”
I stare. “Good? How the hell is that good?”
Crash puts a hand on my shoulder. I can’t tell if he’s trying to comfort me or restrain me. “It means he will keep her alive for a long time. We have time to plan this out.”
It comes out so casually, like a woman being tortured worse than I could ever imagine is a positive. Like I should be grateful that my best friend is going through hell right now because it makes things more convenient for me.
Crash and Blaze both take my stunned silence as acquiescence. They’re both so inured to this lifestyle that these atrocities hardly phase them.
Can I really love this man? That he can see a positive in what’s happening to my best friend?
In one moment, he goes from being a man I can cry my heart out to, to a man that I can’t get far enough away from.
Our hike back to the bottom of the trail takes hours and I don’t speak the whole way. My mind and heart both sink into a pit of despair, a dark morass full of sickening thoughts about what’s happening to my friend and other thoughts about what I plan to do to get revenge — thoughts that shock and surprise me.
Blaze and Crash both talk, though.
They talk, they plan, they even joke.
How can they be joking right now? It’s like this is just another day for them.
But then, just when I feel at my darkest, he takes me by the hand; he slows me down a second so we fall back from Blaze and, when I look to him in curiosity, he smiles. It’s a different kind of smile, warm, comforting, and it touches his eyes. I can tell it’s one he’s not used much before.
“Hey,” he says. Simple, a statement, but with a lot of question behind it.
Yet it’s one that, if I disregarded, he’d let it go without pushing me.
Was he giving me space because he cares?
“Hey,” I answer. Even manage a smile.
“I know this is hard for you right now. Hell, it’s hard for me, too. Seeing what your friend is going through, well, that’s shocking and scary shit for anybody.”
“It is,” I say. I squeeze his hand again.
“When it hurts like that, it helps to focus on the job. Use that to keep control.”
I don’t answer.
He’s trying to care for me, but hearing that everything is still about the job for him is enough to shock me back into silence.
It’s not until we’re at the base of the trial and ready to leave that I speak again. Though Crash speaks first.
“Where to now?” He says.
He and Blaze are both looking at me expectantly.
Now I have a say.
And I don’t give a shit about putting my emotions aside, don’t give a shit about professionalism, about ‘the job’. All I care about is getting my best friend free of that monster, Switchblade, no matter what the cost.
“We’re going back to my bar. We’re going to plan. And then, tonight, we will come back here and get my friend free.”
“Tonight?” Crash says.
“Tonight. And you can either come with me, or I’ll do it myself.”
Chapter Eighteen
Crash
An ultimatum.
Not only is she holding over my head the truck repair, but now she’s giving us a do-or-die ultimatum. One where, unless I put myself and my brothers at risk because of some hasty deadline, I have to deal with the fact that she will go charging off half-cocked on her own. And I can’t let that happen because I care about her. There’s no way in hell she’d manage to rescue her friend. She’d die or, even worse, be taken by Switchblade and used for something so sick I can’t even wrap my head around it.
What she needs to do is get a handle on her emotions, stop letting her desperation dictate how she reacts, and plan this shit out like a logical person.
But she won’t.
She won’t back down, she won’t cave, and she won’t change her mind. That much becomes obvious the second we get back to her bar, and she announces that she will be closed for the day.
Instead, she clears off a table, spreads out the maps and other information we got from Bowen Dale, and then pours hefty glasses of top-shelf bourbon for me and my crew. Every single one of my brothers is here and the only absence is Josie, who is off visiting Teddy in the hospital. The wounded man is on daycare duty, and the little Speed Demon is more than happy to be spending time in his company.
“So, how are we going to do this?” Violet says.
“How many of these fecking arseholes are we up against?” Mack says, pulling up a seat at the table and sipping away at his bourbon. “And how soon can we get to killing them?”
“Just like that, Mack, you’re in?” I say.
I expected him to put up some kind of common sense argument against Violet’s insistence that everything happens tonight. It’s his fucking job as Sergeant at Arms to make sure we do a job like this right. Just like it’s my job to show my loyalty to the club by getting our cargo to its destination without any entanglements.
Looks like we’re both fucking up our jobs today.
And enjoying it.
“Fucking right I am,” he replies. “I just spent the last sixteen hours sitting in an auto shop guarding our truck. Sixteen fucking ho
urs alone with that Max Paisley arsehole. He likes to listen to soft rock, and he talks to his tools. I felt like I was in the fucking loony bin. I’m ready to do anything except go back to fucking guard duty.”
Bitter and surprised, I sip my bourbon and try to come up with the right words that will bring a halt to this meeting and talk some sense into my brothers.
“You know I’m fucking on board,” Snake says. “We have to get Josie’s mom back to her. Speed Demon was looking real sad when I brought her home from school today. I don’t think that kid can take much more of this.”
“Serious, Snake?” Blaze says.
“Yeah, man, she cried a little,” Snake replies. “These tiny little tears and her nose got all snotty. It rips me up, man.”
“Fuck it, I’ll go right now. Kill every single one of those bastards for making Speed Demon cry,” Blaze snarls. And he gets up out of his chair and I have to get up out of mine and put a hand on his shoulder to get him to sit back down.
“I want to do this tonight,” Violet says. “I want to bring my friend by the hospital tomorrow, so she can spend some time with the guy who cares about her so much that he got stabbed protecting her, and I want her to be there to pick her daughter up from school. How do we make that happen?”
“Well, we got guns, lass. Plenty of guns and plenty of ammo. Enough to fill hell up with every single one of those rat bastard Death’s Disciples,” Mack rumbles.
“Oh fuck yeah,” Snake says, pumping his fist. “We will turn that snow red. It will be a fucking beautiful sight. I can’t wait to stab some of those bitches.”
“Hold on,” Blaze interjects. “Thinking about it, I’m all for sending these bastards to hell as soon as possible, but we can’t do this tonight.”
Violet leans forward. She’s nowhere near the size of Blaze, it’s like a mouse confronting a lion, but somehow she looks intimidating. There’s a fire in her eyes that’s as sexy as hell. She’s pushing us to recklessly race into a shootout with a bunch of heavily armed men, but all I can think about is how fucking hot she is and how I want nothing more than to have my brothers clear the room so I can bend this fiery-eyed woman over the table and fuck her senseless.
This is out of control. This is the kind of fucked-up love that I know leads straight to all kinds of trouble. But I don’t think I can stop.
Don’t know if I want to, either.
“Why the fuck not, Blaze?” She says.
“Because that hike will take all our fucking energy, and if we wear our asses out going through that biting cold, those Death’s Disciples will have no problem blowing us to hell and back.”
“We have to do something,” Violet says. “You saw what they were doing to her. I can’t wait around while my best friend suffers.”
“So we do the hike at night. We leave as soon as it gets dark, I’ll make sure we’ve got the right equipment, and I’ll guide us back to that valley. Shouldn’t take more than five hours. We’ll camp in that spot I found the night before — unless you and Crash want to return to that little love nest of a cabin you found — and then we’ll hit them just before dawn. I can even make a distraction, start a minor fire that will have them shitting their pants and flush them out of that cabin they’re hiding in.”
“You could do that?” Violet asks.
“Spent years of my life fighting fires. I know a thing or two about starting them, too.”
Satisfied, she pounds her bourbon and slams the empty glass down on the table.
“Great. We have our plan. Tonight, we hike that trail and then tomorrow morning we free my best friend.”
Chapter Nineteen
Violet
When the meeting breaks and Blaze, Mack, and Snake disperse to go take care of business in preparing for the hike and rescuing my best friend, I slump into my seat and stare into my bourbon in disbelief.
What the hell am I doing?
What are those things I was saying?
An ambush? Guns? Killing? Who am I?
Seconds ago, I was taking part in a meeting where I was urging on these men to commit multiple murders. And I was excited by that. Excited about the thought of them — and me — catching those Death’s Disciples unaware and shooting them. Killing them.
Days ago, all I wanted was a simple life, one where I run a bar with my best friend, spend time with her lovely daughter, enjoy the abundant wilderness around Carbon Ridge, and now, now I want to aim a gun at any of the men who hurt my friend and pull the trigger until I’m sure that he’s dead.
I’ve changed so much, so drastically, and it’s scary.
But just as scary as it is, there’s a part of me that loves how Crash looks at me during that meeting — the surprise and the lust that he can’t hide behind his icy blue eyes.
It’s Crash that has brought out this ferocious side of me. It’s his fierceness, his loyalty to his family, his willingness to sacrifice anything — even that woman, Rosa, he talked about — out of dedication to his MC.
I am so conflicted. So torn. I know that rescuing my friend — the ‘job’ as Crash would so coldly say — requires sacrifices, but what is life going to be like after? Will Kendra look at me differently, knowing everything that’s happened? Will she still be comfortable letting me spend time around Josie, knowing I’m a murderer? Will I even be able to stay in Carbon Ridge? I feel like I’m trapped — no matter what I do, whether or not I save my friend, my life here that I’ve worked so hard to build could be over.
“You want to get out of here?”
Crash’s voice makes me start. He’s sitting beside me, watching me, a worried look on his face.
“How long have you been there?”
“A while. You look like you have a lot on your mind. Come on, let’s go for a ride.”
Still lost in my head, I follow him outside and we get on his bike. Even as dazed as I am, a thrill still runs through me as he starts his bike and I feel the steel machine rumble between my legs. Putting my arms around his waist, I hold tight, pressing myself to him as he takes us out of the parking lot and down the innumerable winding roads around Carbon Ridge.
I lose track of time in the most blissful way as we speed through the mountains, driving aimlessly while the wintry wind whips my face with the scent of pine and that perfectly indescribable fresh smell of melting snow. Even my dark thoughts get left behind as we soar on two wheels, exploring every bit of pavement between Carbon Ridge and Aspen.
It’s perfect. It soothes my heart and quiets my mind.
And, after a while, we return to Carbon Ridge and he parks us on the street in front of a small cafe called the Dairy Freeze.
“Why here?” I say as he hops off, and holds out his hand to help me dismount.
“Ice cream,” he answers.
“It’s forty degrees out.”
“Doesn’t matter. Ice cream always helps.”
In a minute, we’re in and out of the Dairy Freeze, with cones in hand — chocolate for me, mint chip for him — and walking down the cobbled sidewalks of downtown Carbon Ridge.
There’s no one out but us, because it’s late in the afternoon, the hour when most people in this small town are sitting down to dinner with their families, and it also is growing colder by the minute.
“You want to talk?” He says.
There’s a small dot of mint chip on his nose. Even with a heart heavy with dark thoughts, I can’t help but smile at the sight.
Then I sigh.
“I realized a few things today.”
“Yeah?”
I take a lick of my ice cream. It’s cold out, but Crash is right: ice cream is still ice cream, and there are few problems it can’t help with, including how to tell the biker who has upended your whole life exactly how you feel about him.
“I realized that I might be in love with you.”
He nods. For a long time he’s quiet, and I don’t speak up, because the last thing I want to do is push him for a response after dropping an emotional bomb on him like
that. Who knows how a guy like him might react to hearing those words? Especially someone like him, someone who makes it a point to always emphasize how important this business is to him.
But he’s quiet so long that I get jittery. Maybe I already was jittery, I am planning on going on some crazy attack mission to rescue my best friend; I am loaded up on sugar from this ice cream, and I did just spend a couple hours riding a motorcycle at breakneck speeds.
So I open my mouth again.
“I know it’s scary to hear that. There’s a lot about it that doesn’t make sense. I mean, you’re not my usual type, there’s so much craziness going on in my life right now, and I came to Carbon Ridge and started this bar because I wanted a quiet life where I could build something to be proud of with my friend — so why would I be falling for a biker from out of town who lives a life that is anything but safe and quiet? But I am. When I see the side of you that you keep hidden — the side that’s so good with Josie, the side of you that makes me feel warm and comforted when I need to talk — I can’t help fall in love with that part of you; and the other side of you — the scary, cold side of you that you keep on the outside — that side makes me feel safe. It is frightening as hell, it doesn’t make any sense to me, but I do love you, Crash.”
More quiet. My cheeks feel red, and it has nothing to do with the cold.
I should’ve known better than to open up to a man like him. He’s fought so hard against feeling love for so long, what makes me think he’ll suddenly change this very moment? How foolish do I have to be? How naïve?
“I love you, too,” he says. I look at him and smile. A smile so bright it chases away all the cold and all the dark thoughts.
“You do?”
“I do,” he says. “I shouldn’t. I know I shouldn’t. This is a dangerous life, Vi. More dangerous than you know, and I know you think you’ve seen a lot, but you don’t know the half of it. But there is something about you that keeps pulling me in. You’ve got heart, you’re giving everything you got to protect your friend and, when I saw you back there at the bar and the way you were so full of fucking fire as you were laying out your plan, I knew that you were someone special.”