Luna groans and covers her eyes with one hand, “Here we go again.”
Sage stares at me, whispers, “You had to know this would happen.”
As they manage to shove each other around Luna’s locked arms, Jett shouts, “If he loved my daughter that would be one thing, but having his fun under my roof, no fuckin’ way!”
“Just your roof, huh, Cocker? I’ve saved your ass more times out there on the road than you know how to count!”
“Oh, twice I’m being called stupid now? The other day when I said we wanted to go to Paris for our vacation, because Sunshine’s never been, you said Paris, Texas?! A place we’ve been so many times they named a park after Meg’s toenails!”
Dad roars back, “Now, that doesn’t make no sense!”
Luna shoves them both so hard and so fast, it successfully creates distance. “That’s three times you’ve been at each other’s throats in thirty minutes! I’ve had it! You’re best friends. Calm your shit down!” Locking onto me, she shouts, “This is why we keep things platonic!”
“I gotta get out of here.”
Mom flies up. “Luke! Please come down and talk to me once you’re packed, okay?”
“Yeah, sure,” I mutter, blinking hard.
CHAPTER 16
L UKE
G rabbing a bunch of clothes takes no time since I’ve done it so damn often. My toothbrush, toothpaste, deodorant, razor, they’re always ready in a small leather bag I carry on the road.
The porch is quiet when I walk out. Only Mom and Sage are waiting. They stand as I drop my saddlebags near the steps. Mom fiddles with her necklace as she walks to me, long red hair streaked with silver and straight as mine. “Your father is dying inside, he hates to have you go. He couldn’t wait here with us, he’s so upset.”
“I know, Mom. I saw him fighting for me. He’s just trying to keep the code.”
“He’d be here to say goodbye, but he has a problem softening.”
“He’s not supposed to be soft. He’s who he is.”
She gives this sad smile. “You know I love that about him. It’s just, this is tearing him up and I want you to know that. We both will miss you so much.”
If they knew Atlas had thrown me under the bus, I don’t know what they would do. But I won’t do to my brother what he did to me. If I don’t stand by my own integrity, I’m nothing. I decide the man I’m going to be, and nobody, not even my brother, can take that away.
Pulling Sage into a hug, I kiss her head, “Watch after Mom.”
“I will. And Atlas is here, too.”
“You need to do it, okay? Because I know you can. No matter how cute and short you are.”
She hits my chest, tears in her eyes. “Shut up.”
“You shut up,” I offer her the best smile I can, but it’s not much.
Have to pull Mom in for the next hug. Her arms fly around me and she squeezes like she won’t let go. “I love you, Luke, please call me every day.”
“I’m not going to do that.”
“Can’t you just pretend?”
“No, I can’t lie to you.” Letting her go I hoist my bags onto my shoulder, walk down the creaky old steps for my bike, still parked far up the drive where we left them.
Mom calls out, “Luke!” and I look back, slowing down. “I love you.”
Chewing on my lips I nod, “Love you, too.” My eyes catch movement upstairs as a curtain opens. Celia’s watching me from their bedroom window. She touches the glass and I throw my chin up to her in goodbye.
At our bikes I slow down because there sits my father, the darkness and my mood cloaking him until just now. “Dad?”
“Where you headed?”
“Don’t know. Don’t care.”
“You gassed up?”
“You took it out on a beer run.”
“Oh yeah.”
I check out the gauge. “Enough to get me out of Louisiana.”
“You got a credit card?”
“The club’s. You want me to use it?”
His eyes flash. “Yes, I want you to fuckin’ use it! You think I’m throwing you on the streets with no way to eat? Use the card. Let’s see how much you can piss off Jett by buying stupid shit.” We both awkwardly smile. “Use the card, Luke. Don’t starve. Stay in any hotel you need. Best they have. Get her out of your system.”
My mouth goes dry. “She’s not in my system. She’s just a friend.”
“I don’t buy that. Out here Jett’s not listenin’, so I’m gonna tell you what I see. Sofia Sol has you by the balls, just like she has any single man who comes near her. She’s powerful, capable. When we’re on a job we never have to worry if she’ll carry her weight. And on top of that she looks how she looks. How could you not have done what you did? What I’m saying is, I understand how this went down. Between you and me, I’m surprised you showed as much restraint as you have. But I watched you, son, and I know you care for her more than you should.” He pokes my chest. “Get her out of here. Go find someone like your Mom, that’s what you need. Someone like my Meg. Life is more than I ever thought it could be because of her. You go out and find that kind of woman for yourself. One who’ll stick by you through all the bad shit and make you feel more like a man.”
He pulls me in for a quick, gruff hug, and releases me as quickly as he grabbed me. I give his shoulder a slap and throw my bags over the back of my Harley.
“Let us know where you end up.”
“I won’t stay in one place.”
“I thought the same about Nevada City.”
The strap on my helmet slides into position, and I start my engine. “What if I get the Ciphers out of my system instead? Ever thought of that?”
“Yeah, I thought about it.” He starts for the plantation, fog rolling in over the grass in both directions, the driveway cutting it down the middle.
“And?” I call after him.
He calls over his shoulder, “It’s not possible.”
CHAPTER 17
SOFIA
“T here you are,” Atlas calls out as he tromps through the shallow part of the marsh toward me. “The alligator left.”
Kicking the water, droplets glittering in the light of a half-moon before they land, I mutter, “It could have come back.”
He stands next to me, hooks his thumbs in his back pocket, but says nothing, eyes dull and troubled.
I’m just glad he’s not making a move on me again. Came out here to think, and let my outburst die down in the minds of the others before we all go to bed and forget about it.
“I was thinking about us getting married,” Atlas says through gritted teeth. “We should.”
“What the hell?” I lean over to see if he’s kidding. “Are you out of your mind?”
With his dead gaze locked on the marsh he mutters, “It just makes sense.”
I stare at him a few beats, start laughing, “Yeah, sure, we should do that. I can’t wait to walk down the aisle and fight with you for the rest of my life.”
“We don’t fight,” he argues, looking at me for the first time.
“We would!”
“How do you figure?!”
“When two people aren’t supposed to be married, they fight.”
“We’ve been friends our whole lives. We live the same lifestyle. We already live in the same house, our families know each other. Hell, they are family now! But what we gotta do is keep it quiet for a little while, don’t want to rock the boat just yet.” He stares off, frowning while he searches for more evidence I should be his wife. “And the sex we had was out of this world, and you know it!”
I can’t believe I have to explain, “That all makes sense, Atlas.” Dammit, I can’t hurt his feelings. Have to find a way to show him he doesn’t really want this. “There’s no way it’s a good idea, come on. Just listen to yourself!”
His head cocks away from me. “What?”
With all of my strength I give the murky water a kick, send it flying high, the splash loud befo
re I yell even louder, “God, I don’t know how to talk to you about this. It’s so far from reality, it’s nuts! Look, okay, I don’t know what’s gotten into you but us getting married is the craziest thing you’ve ever come up with. It’s even dumber than the time when you wanted us to steal patrol cars and drag race!” I start to head out, mumbling, “and I just wanted some time to myself out here,” when the sound of a motorcycle leaving our property turns my head. Curious about who it is, I stretch my neck to see through the thick trees. “Who’s leaving, any idea?”
He doesn’t answer, so I keep watching, figuring he has no clue, either. As it gets closer I recognize Luke’s helmet for the diamondback rattlesnake painted down the middle, the rest as black as his long hair flying in the wind.
“Where’s Luke going?” Assuming Atlas doesn’t know, I head for the house.
He follows me out, growing agitated. “We’re already like family, all this would do is make it so we could…”
“So we could what?” I spin around.
“Be official.”
“You mean have sex whenever we wanted, get our own room here? Have little Atlases and Sofias?”
He shrugs, “Sure.”
“You sound so excited about it!”
“Soph!”
“No, Atlas, I’m done with this.”
“Oh I get it, marrying me is weird to you?!”
“Oh my God,” I shout, spinning around and getting in his face. “I need you to wake the fuck up because this isn’t you right now. You’re stuck in some kind of ego-battle that I can’t understand. I love you, Atlas, as a brother or a friend. Both! But I won’t marry you. There’s no way I would, or should.”
Outraged, he barks, “Why not?!”
“Because when I mentioned us getting our own room here and making babies, what did you say? You said, sure.” I touch his chest to calm him. “And when you gave all the reasons for why we would work, you know what was missing? How you felt about me. Why I’m the woman you can’t live without! Atlas, you don’t love me like that. Be honest. Nobody should get married for a sure or a makes sense.” I push off from his chest and head up the trail we all made when we were kids. “You should get married for a hell yeah, I can’t fuckin’ wait.”
I glance toward the two-lane, beaten-up road, a phantom of Luke’s bike speeding past. Where did he go? I don’t think he’s got a girl in town. Wait, does he? Is he going to work out some of that sexual tension we had in the garage, on someone else?
Wincing at the twist in my stomach, I run a hand through my hair. “Where did Luke go, did he say?”
Atlas trudges five feet or so behind me. “Soph, I’ve gotta tell you something.”
“You’re pregnant,” I joke.
“I’m serious. I’ve gotta talk to you.”
I walk backwards, but that’s the best I’ll give him. “No more heart-to-hearts tonight. This day sucks enough, okay?”
He stops walking, which makes me groan and stop, too.
“I did a shitty thing.”
“Don’t feel bad about the marriage idea. Drop it! Let’s just go back home.”
“They found out.”
The wind knocks out of me and I choke, “How?” I cut a pained glance to our home, groan, feeling dizzy, “No no no! What were we thinking? We never should have done it. This is all wrong! Maybe they just suspect! They can’t really know. No wonder you’re trying to marry me, you’re freaking out. Just get a hold of yourself, we’ve gotten out of worse things. You know what, we’ll deny it!” He shakes his head so I try, “We’ll tell them it was just once, we’re over it!”
“Soph—”
“No, wait, we’ll go in there, you and I, say we talked it out and nothing is weird between us! Nothing’s changed, right? We’re both in agreement, just friends, Cipher family, and it’s all good from here on out, right?!”
“Sofia Sol, listen—”
“They’ll tease us, make our lives hell for a couple months, but then it’ll blow over like everything else does!”
“I told them it was Luke and you who did it.”
Dumbfounded, I stare at Atlas. I cock my head and ask a blank, “What?”
“I told them it was Luke. Not me.”
I start slapping him, not trained punches, but emotional, girly, losing-my-shit slaps as he covers his head. “Why would you do that? How could you do that to him? What kind of brother are you?” Gasping for air I careen away to stare at the road. “Is he leaving because you betrayed him?”
Atlas’s voice rises, defensive, “Hey now, that’s a harsh word!”
“Because it’s true? Why do people always call it harsh when you hit the nail on the fucking head?”
I break into a run for the house.
He comes after me, and he’s quick, too. Racing next to me he shouts, “I didn’t mean to do it!”
“Luke and Sofia fucked just slipped off your tongue?”
“That’s not what I said!” He grabs my arm and I punch him. This time the right kind. He grabs that arm, too, and I do my damnedest to wrestle out of his trained grip. “I wanted a chance with you, Soph!”
“You never had one!”
His eyes harden. “I knew it.”
“Of course you did, you idiot! What have you done?”
He releases me, drags his hands through his long hair. A million emotions wash over him. Regret, pain, loss, confusion, and a wish for redemption. Staring at the house where he betrayed his brother, his voice is distant, quiet, as he tries to figure out why. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Luke gave me a hard time about us. I told him I was gonna marry you. Never wanted to, but he acted like…I’d done a dishonor to you, to the club. Like it was just a fuck, so I just blurted it out that we were gonna get married, and then I couldn’t take it back. That’s why I’ve been trying to spend time alone with you, needed to see if I could picture you as my wife. I’ve been trying to make myself want to, but I don’t. I’d get so sick of your shit I’d claw my eyes out.” This admittance is the first sign of his sanity, and it gets through to me, like truth always will. “It was my ego. He challenged me. I wanted to prove we could. I don’t admit defeat easily, you know that. He knows that!”
“This wasn’t defeat—who gets married when, isn’t a competition!”
“Tell that to the rest of the world.”
“We aren’t them, Atlas!” I cry out. “We’ve never been like the ‘normal’ people. We live by our rules. That’s what makes us so great! Where did Luke go?”
“They sent him away.”
I rasp, barely able to breathe, “What? Why? To make us get over each other, huh, that why they did this? And you let it happen!”
“Soph!”
“Get away from me, Atlas! I need some space from you before I hate you for the rest of your life.” He stays behind.
I break into a run, abandon our old path, the wind rushing through my hair, overgrown grass breaking under my boots as fog makes way for me.
CHAPTER 18
SOFIA SOL
T he front door slams behind me. “Mom! Dad!” I shout. “Where are you?”
Their bedroom door opens and shuts upstairs as I pace in the foyer. Someone else is coming out, too—more doors. Could be a curious Cipher, but no, it’s Meg and Honey Badger coming down the stairs.
Sage appears in the parlor’s doorframe to my left. “You found out he’s gone, huh,” she whispers before our parents get here. I hate the sad look in her eyes.
“Yeah, just now.” To both sets of parents as they arrive, I announce, “Let’s talk in here,” doing an about-face and marching into the parlor. I’m going to include Sage in this bullshit, she’s not a kid anymore. I have to tell them all it was Atlas, not Luke.
In silence we lower ourselves into worn velvet chairs that circle a coffee table stained with more than a century’s worth of wear. The front door opens and closes. I know who it is so I don’t look over as his boots heavily clomp into the room. Our parents glance to him, and
back to me.
Dad speaks first. “This isn’t Atlas’s fault.”
My eyebrows shoot up. “Oh no?”
Sage mutters, “He’s not supposed to snitch,” throwing a look at her brother. “That’s his fault.”
Our parents don’t argue this valid point. Nobody likes a snitch in this house, of all places. But Honey Badger defends his son to his daughter after the pause, “No secrets between us. He knows, and so do you.”
“This is ridiculous,” I mutter.
Mom interrupts before I have a chance to explain what really happened. “Sofia Sol, we have rules and they are few. You have more freedom in a day than most women have in their entire lives.”
“Except to love who I want!” I bark.
Our parents react, and it’s Dad who asks, “Sofia, do you love Luke?”
“What? No! I’m just saying, there are some things you can’t control. You can’t jail love!” They stare at me, thinking all the wrong things. “I’m making a point, stop looking at me like that—I don’t love Luke!”
“Sofia, we have eyes,” Meg says, “And you and Luke watch each other. We’ve all seen it.”
Shocked and angry I bark at Atlas, “Tell them they’re crazy!”
He’s about to come clean, I see it in in his face when Sage interrupts him, “Sofia’s right, you can’t jail love! And you’re punishing the wrong person! You should be mad at Atlas for telling their secret.” She leans forward, cheeks enflamed and freckles standing out even more, “You should have seen his face, Atlas, when they told him he needed to go away for awhile. What if that had been you? How would you have felt?”
“That’s enough, Sage,” Dad says.
Honey Badger turns in his chair and growls, “Don’t tell my daughter when to speak and when not to.”
Mom covers her eyes, “Fucking hell.”
The men, usually best friends, start insulting each other, and I stare at them, can feel tears ripping in the fabric of our home.
My spine straightens as I realize Luke’s sacrifice, and why he didn’t dispute his brother’s lie.
This house. The missions.
Sofia Sol Cocker (Cocker Brothers Book 13) Page 8