Patch
The Black Cobras MC #3
Savannah Rylan
Kasey Krane
Copyright © 2020 by Savannah Rylan & Kasey Krane
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
Prologue
1. Patch
2. Samantha
3. Patch
4. Samantha
5. Patch
6. Samantha
7. Patch
8. Samantha
9. Patch
10. Samantha
11. Patch
12. Samantha
13. Patch
14. Samantha
15. Patch
16. Samantha
17. Patch
18. Samantha
19. Patch
20. Samantha
21. Patch
22. Samantha
23. Patch
24. Samantha
25. Patch
26. Samantha
27. Patch
Sneak Peak at Bones
About Savannah Rylan
About Kasey Krane
More Books by Savannah Rylan
Prologue
Patch
At sixteen, there wasn’t much going in my life for me to excited about. Every day was pretty much an episode in my life of ‘making it happen’, getting-by, surviving. I didn’t know any better than that. I wasn’t aware that I deserved better.
I saw the other kids at school in their fancy cars. I heard about the vacations they went on with their folks. Receiving tons of gifts on Christmas from a list of requests that they themselves made. That sounded more like a myth than reality. Those things didn’t happen in real families, did they? It seemed crazy.
For my little sister, Nancy, and I; we were lucky if we were left alone. If our drunk father either decided to leave us alone for a night or got so drunk and passed out on the couch in the living room in front of the television, that he had no other choice. We watched out for that to happen, we hoped for that to happen so we wouldn’t have to deal with his thundering rage.
It was unthinkable for me to leave Nancy alone in the house with dad.
That was the reason why I always came home, no matter how late in the night. No matter what the rest of my crew had planned for the night. I’d joined a street gang pretty early on in my life, hanging out with them since I was thirteen.
The other guys in the gang were older than me but I was no trouble to them. I was easy to train. I was the one shop owners least suspected when I walked in and snuck beers out under my sweatshirt. That was on nights when the other guys didn’t feel like pulling out a gun.
Lil’ Richie had managed to source guns for all of us, including me. I kept it tucked in my sock and I liked the way the metal felt cold against my skin. We used it to scare the living fuck out of gas-station owners when we wanted to do a big proper raid of their cold storage. When just a couple of cans of beer were not going to be enough for us for the night.
Samba had a convertible he’d stolen, and we used to drive with the top down, crunching up the cans and throwing them on the side of the roads as we drove at top speed.
But I always returned to the house before it was too late. I couldn’t let Nancy stay alone there for the whole night. I knew she would need me, even if she didn’t say so. She would have spent the whole evening trying to do everything according to our father’s bidding.
She would have cooked him his dinner, served him his beers, washed up the dishes and cleaned the kitchen. I was sixteen and she was even younger. No older than thirteen, but he treated her like his slave. Ever since our mother died when we were just kids, our father assumed that it was going to be Nancy now who would take on all those responsibilities.
I tried to help her around the house as best as I could, but it was difficult for me to stay indoors. I needed to be outside, to be with my guys, feeling that gun in my sock under my pants. It made me feel good knowing that I could turn the gun on our asshole father anytime I wanted to.
Nancy didn’t know about the gun, although she knew about the gang. She reminded me every day to be safe. I knew why she was worried. If anything happened to me, she would be left all alone in the world with our father. With our drunk brute of a father who had a habit of slapping her if his beer went warmer than the perfect temperature, he liked it to be.
At thirteen, Nancy was not only going to school and finishing her homework, but she was also trying to keep the household running and looking after our father who treated her like shit.
I brought her some money to get us by and she knew where it came from. It wasn’t that she refused to use the money I stole; it was that she wished we had a different life. Dad was a Vet, he had a State pension, but it was usually all washed down by his addiction to alcohol. He barely contributed to the household expenses, other than giving money to Nancy so she could go buy him more beer and cigarettes.
How did we get by?
How did we pay our bills?
How did Nancy have clean clothes to wear?
At sixteen, my only answer to all those questions was by stealing. By forcibly taking from others that which was not mine. I was a petty thief, a child-crook. To the rest of society, I deserved to be in a prison somewhere. I knew how our neighbors looked at us. The pitiful glances they gave to Nancy’s clothes when she walked herself to school. The anger with which they looked away from me when I walked home late at night, my leather jacket pockets bulging with money I’d stolen from some cash register of a diner somewhere.
Everyone knew what our father was. Everyone knew how we were forced to live, and yet nobody was capable of giving us any help. We were going to have to make it on our own.
I returned home one night, it was definitely past midnight and the television was blaring in the living room. Thankfully, our father was passed out on the couch in front of it, which meant that he wasn’t being much of a bother to poor Nancy.
I found her in the kitchen, sitting at the small rickety kitchen table with her schoolbooks spread all around her. It was amazing how she still managed to get everything done for school, despite the life we led. Despite the truth we lived in every day.
The first thing I did was empty out my pockets, filling up the cookie jar on the top shelf with money I made that day. Nancy put down her pen to look up at me and I turned to face her. I could see she looked too grown-up for her age. She was barely even a teenager, but her life’s experiences showed on her face.
“I think he’s dying,” she said, and it seemed like air was stuck in her lungs. Like she was having trouble getting the words out.
“Who? What are you talking about?” I asked her.
Nancy gulped and then her voice dropped down to a mere whisper. She looked in the direction of the living room and then back at me again.
“He is. I think he’s sick and he needs help. Professional medical help.”
I stared at her. I couldn’t tell if this was something she wanted us to take care of, or if it was just information she was giving me. From the way she was whispering, it seemed like she didn’t want our father to hear.
“What do you mean he’s sick? He’s been sick for years,” I said, whispering too.
“Yeah, but it’s getting worse. Way worse than it used to be, I think. He can barely sit up these days. He barely even moves. He’s asleep all the time and can’t keep his food down. There�
��s something wrong with him.”
I was expecting Nancy to sound concerned. That was just the kind of person she was. Despite the way our father treated her, she considered it her duty to look after him, to do his bidding. But right now, she sounded a little bit relieved. Like this was good news. There was a sparkle in her eyes I hadn’t noticed before.
“Are you suggesting…”
She looked up at me sharply.
“That we do nothing!”
I sat down beside her at the table and she leaned towards me. She looked excited!
“He’s not going to ask for a doctor because he doesn’t trust them. Do you think that’s wrong?”
My sister was staring up at me with her large eyes, waiting for my answer and I covered her hands with mine. I shook my head. From the other room, we could hear the television blaring and the sound of our father snoring loudly.
“You’ve done everything you could for him, and more. There is nothing more you can do for him if he doesn’t want our help. There is nothing wrong with that,” I told her. A smile formed on Nancy’s face and she nodded her head.
“There’s some chicken in the fridge. Heat it up before you eat it. I have to get through this essay tonight,” she said, returning quickly to her homework.
This was good news. This was great news! If Nancy was right, we would just have a few more months to deal with this life and then we could go out there and get ourselves a new one.
Apart from the fact that our father’s body was, in most likelihood, slowly giving up on him—there wasn’t much else in my life to be excited about. Sure, hanging out with the gang gave me an occasional thrill when we robbed a place or pulled out our guns and saw the look of fear on people’s faces.
I hadn’t killed anybody yet. I hadn’t thought about that either. Rumor was that Lil’ Richie had, but he didn’t like to talk about it.
The only thing that got me going back in those days, though, was the sight of Samantha Denton walking down the street on her way to school. That was usually the only time I actually got to see her, given that I’d dropped out of high school a long time ago. Besides, we weren’t exactly friends, even though we had been neighbors since I could remember.
We’d lived on the same street all our lives. Our parents might even have been cordial with each other decades ago, before my family fell apart. And hers never did.
They were a model family that lived in a model home. Samantha was their only child and the apple of her parents’ eye. I never had the chance to get to know her or her family personally, but it wasn’t hard to tell that she led a pretty sheltered life. That she had all her paths and goals set out for her. Samantha was going to be a star someday.
She was the only reason I even got out of bed as early as I did, since I never had anywhere to be that early in the morning. I used to get dressed by the window, watching as she stepped out of her front door across the street.
Her mother and father would be at the door, usually one of their hands would be on the other’s shoulder—the picture of a happy suburban life. They’d wave at Samantha and she’d wave back. Her red curls bouncing in that high ponytail she tied at the top of her head. From this distance I could never see the light dusting of freckles on her cheeks, but I knew they were there. And those forest-green bright eyes that seemed to see everything.
I was usually out the door of my own run-down house before she reached the end of the street. It was good timing because it meant her parents would be safely inside.
I usually walked, but sometimes I took my bike. I knew she secretly admired it; it maybe gave her a secret thrill that she was not willing to admit to. But she always knew I was there, following her all the way to school. Sometimes she turned to look at me, rolled her eyes, and then looked away, but usually she ignored my presence. Like I didn’t even exist in her world. Like I wasn’t worthy of her. And I knew I wasn’t. I knew there was no chance for me and her in this world, but still I followed her to school every day. Making sure she got there safely.
The first time that Samantha actually spoke to me was when she hadn’t seen me for three days.
Lewis, from the gang, was in the hospital with a few broken ribs because of some bar fight he got into. As I was the youngest member of the gang, it was my responsibility to go to hospital every day to visit him. It was an hour trip and I left the house early every day to get there in time for visiting hours. It was a brotherhood and we were pledged to look after each other. I even took some chicken soup with me when I went to visit him because he said he wanted it for his lunches.
Three days later, he was back in his house with bandages around his torso and a couple of stitches on his forehead. Nothing serious, he insisted, and I was off the hook again.
I hadn’t walked Samantha to school for three days. That was the first time I’d missed walking her in over a year, since I first decided to start doing it. I figured she’d be relieved to get me off her back, but when I turned up the next morning on my bike, she looked pissed.
I was on the other side of the road as always, riding it slowly along with her. I liked to keep some distance from her, just so that she never got the feeling that I wanted to have an actual conversation with her. That was never my intention. I believed I was there just for protection. Just watching out for her and making sure she never got bothered by nobody on her way to school.
Today, she kept looking at me over her shoulders, scrunching up her thick eyebrows in my direction. She seemed upset, and I figured she was just annoyed that I’d made an appearance again. After disappearing for a few days and giving her the peace she wanted.
Was it time that I gave this up? Following her to school every day? I had to admit, this wasn’t going anywhere. Maybe she thought I was nothing more than a creepy jerk. Maybe her folks talked about me and my family over dinner every night. Maybe she was even afraid of me.
But Samantha stopped in her tracks that day, right there in the middle of the pavement, and she whipped around to me. I managed to stop the bike right in time. She plonked her hands on her narrow hips. Her long slender legs stretched out underneath the short plaid skirt she was wearing.
“Where were you?” She shouted those words from across the street, taking me completely by surprise.
“What?”
“Where were you for the last three days? You weren’t here. You weren’t following me to school. Where were you?”
Her brows were crossed, the tops of her cheeks were red, and she was glaring at me like she deserved an answer.
“My friend. He was in the hospital. I had to go see him,” I replied. A smile was spreading on my face. I couldn’t believe she was actually speaking to me. That she was actually pissed off because I hadn’t been there the past three days. She was counting!
“In the hospital? Really? And what happened to him?” She rolled her eyes like she didn’t believe me.
“He got in a fight. Someone smashed a chair on him and broke his ribs.”
The color seemed to drain from her face when she heard that. How did I even manage to convince her that easily? She dropped her hands down from her hips and thrust her chin up in the air.
“For real?”
“Yeah,” I said. She rolled her eyes again, like she was trying to denote that she still didn’t care. But now I knew that she did. She wasn’t going to hide it from me anymore!
I looked on either side of the street and then rode my bike over to her side, parking it there before I jumped off. Samantha backed away from me and I realized then how much taller and bigger than her I was. She was staring up at me, with those big green eyes I had only admired from a distance so far.
“Did you miss me?” I asked her with a grin. She brushed a lock of her red curl away from her eyes and blinked rapidly. Then she shrugged and looked away.
“Can I make it up to you?” I carried on. The tops of her cheeks were apple red by now and she glared back at me like she couldn’t believe I’d even suggested such a thing.
> “How?” she asked, and I knew the answer was yes.
“I could take you out. We could go somewhere. A movie maybe? To a diner?” I was listing out all the possibilities I could think of in a hurry. She was watching me curiously and now a smile started spreading on her face.
“Or we could just sit somewhere and talk. I don’t think I know anything about you,” she said. Her voice had changed. It was softer now and a little happier. I wanted to pump my fist in the air. I couldn’t believe she’d actually suggested such a thing!
I nodded.
“Yeah, we could do that.”
“Tonight?” she asked, her eyes shining brightly.
“Tonight.”
“Come to my house at ten. My parents go to bed by then. Stand underneath my bedroom window and if I look out and see you there, I’ll come out,” she said.
I nodded again. Was this how the other kids felt when they got all those gifts for Christmas? Fuck! This felt good. Samantha was making a plan with me for a date. Was this even a date?
She smiled at me before she walked away again. This was actually going to happen!
Of course, I arrived early at her house. I climbed over the hedges around their front yard in the dark and then stationed myself underneath her window fifteen minutes before ten.
One by one I watched as all the lights in her house were being turned off. Her parents were going to bed. I knew her bedroom window and I stood underneath it at exactly ten, looking up.
Her face appeared there just a few moments later and I thought I saw a smile. Then she disappeared. I was counting down the seconds till the minute she finally stepped out of the back kitchen door and walked around to me.
Patch (The Black Cobras MC Book 3) Page 1