by Lane Hart
Nolan just stares down at me for a long silent moment before he nods and sits back on his heels, rubbing his hands roughly over his head. “I figured as much.”
“Please don’t be upset with me,” I beg him as moisture blurs my vision of him.
“I’m not,” he replies, but I know it’s a lie when he climbs off of me and the bed to stand up. “I’ll find a car and have one of the prospects bring it over. There will be cash locked in the glove compartment. Where’s your phone?” he asks.
I point to my purse on the dresser, unable to speak because I know he’s about to leave and not come back. I may never see him again. Which isn’t fair after losing five years that we could’ve been together if not for my selfish brother. Cory may have only been sixteen back then, but he was old enough to take responsibility for his own actions. Instead, he kept it all a secret, even knowing it would hurt me and Nolan.
“I’m putting my number in your phone. Call it if you need anything,” he says with his back to me.
“What if I need you?” I blurt out.
He glances over his shoulder and flashes me a smile without answering before his eyes drop to the device as his finger moves over the keys.
Right, because if I want him, I’ll be shit out of luck.
“There,” he says.
“Nolan, don’t go just yet,” I beg him. I climb out of bed and go to him, knowing it’s unfair to use my nakedness to tempt him into staying, but not below using it to my advantage.
As I had hoped, the biker lowers his mouth to mine, kissing me unlike before. This kiss isn’t hurried. It’s slow and sweet before he eventually pulls away.
Then, Nolan says the last thing I expected. “Forgive your brother. He may be a selfish idiot, but you’re family, and all you have left is each other. I wish I had that.”
I blink in surprise since I thought he would’ve liked the chance to kick Cory’s ass for not telling me the truth after all this time.
“You’re a good man, Nolan. One of the best I’ve ever met,” I tell him as I run my palms down the front of his leather cut. “I’m really glad I got to see you again.”
“Me too, Cherry Pie,” he says with a short-lived grin before he walks out the door, out of my life for the second time.
And just like before, I’m almost certain that losing him will be one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do.
Chapter Twenty
Nolan
Sitting at the bar of the clubhouse, I nurse one glass of beer for hours, wanting to make sure I’m ready to fight if and when the Rebel Henchmen show up. God knows they will eventually, and we’ll be ready.
In fact, I’m looking forward to whooping some ass, anything to distract me from what I know it means when Jake and Lucas come strolling into the clubhouse that night.
They come over, and unnecessarily, Jake tells me, “She’s gone.”
I nod since I know she would’ve had to have left since they’re here. Abel and Hugo come in right behind them, giving me a nod of their chins. The four of them wouldn’t be here unless Rita had hit the road after I dropped off her new SUV.
“Any sign of the Henchmen?” Lucas asks when he takes a seat on the empty stool next to me.
“Not yet,” Leo says from the other side of the bar, jerking his head toward the screen on the wall with four boxes on it, a security camera on every side of the building. The system has been in place for years just for occasions like this. Every Savage Kings chapter has the same one, a requirement for clubhouses after the original Kings’ hangout was ambushed. At least they had a heads-up that shit was going down, but it still ended up with good men from the Charlotte chapter dead.
“Maybe he’s too stupid to realize she left with you,” Lucas says, making me snort.
“No one is that stupid.”
Roman’s office door swings open as our president comes storming through it. “They’re coming,” he says in warning to the room.
Around the room, guns are brandished, clips checked, and safeties are clicked off.
“You got some kind of early detection monitor?” I ask Roman.
“Yeah,” he answers. “Marcus has been sitting under the overpass, watching the highway juncture where every major road from Cape Cartwright leads into town.”
“Smart,” I tell him. “How many?”
“Eight,” he answers, which is a relief. It means they don’t have any other chapters or at least haven’t called them in if they do.
“They’re coming here?” Jake says, his young face looking terrified as he glances between me and Roman just as Winston comes out of the chapel with an arm full of vests – not leather ones but bulletproof ones.
“Yep,” I answer for Roman since we knew this was the obvious place they would start looking for Rita since it’s where Leroy found me the other day.
“Should we call the cops?” Lucas asks. “They probably all have warrants and shit.”
“Nah, we don’t need the police,” Roman answers as he pulls on his vest. “We’ve got backup on the way.”
Abel and Hugo come over once they’re suited up, offering me a vest as I chug my last sip of beer.
Hopefully it won’t literally be the last sip of my life.
“I still don’t get why you don’t let the redheaded bitch fight her own battles,” Hugo mutters. I consider ramming my fist into his face, but know we need shooters more than unconscious men. And then I remember that I haven’t had a chance to tell my boys the whole story.
“She never knew I went to prison,” I tell them after putting on my vest and checking my own gun. “Her dipshit brother hid the search warrant and never told her what happened.”
“You’re fucking kidding,” Abel says.
“She’s lying,” Hugo huffs.
“She wasn’t lying! I heard her chew her brother out on the phone after I told her. The woman thought I just up and left town, left her and never came back.”
Abel shakes his head. “That is seriously fucked up.”
“It is. For both of us. I was pissed at her for not coming to see me or writing me when I was locked up, and she was left hating me, thinking I ghosted her. If not for the giant motherfucker pressing up on her, I might not have ever learned the truth, so at least there’s that…”
“Damn,” Hugo says as he stares at me. “You weren’t angry-fucking her. That racket you two made was both of you working off five years of frustration after being fucked over.”
“Something like that,” I tell him with a grin.
Hugo’s never thought about a woman for longer than he’s inside of her, so he wouldn’t understand loving one, being apart for years and never being able to forget her no matter how pissed I may have been before learning the truth. I’m starting to think he’s better off for it since it fucking hurts, worse than a bullet or a beating. There’s nothing the Rebel Henchman can do that will come close to causing me as much pain as letting Rita go.
Rita
I drive south for three hours in the Honda Pilot Nolan gave me before stopping to grab some dinner.
He went too far. Not only did he give me new identification using my actual picture so no one will ever question it, he left twenty thousand in cash in the glovebox of a car that looks and smells brand new.
And what did I leave him? A huge bloody mess to clean up.
“Could I get another cup of coffee?” I ask the waitress the next time she walks past me.
“Sure thing, hon,” the middle-aged woman says with a smile.
It just doesn’t seem fair – not leaving Nolan behind to deal with my enormous problem or walking away from him after finally finding out that he never left me like I thought he did.
He gave up his freedom to keep me and Cory out of prison.
He loved me. Loves me in the present tense maybe? I don’t think any man would go to so much trouble for a woman if he didn’t have some feelings involved.
“You okay, honey?” the waitress asks, snapping me out of my thoughts w
hen I glance up and see her standing with a worried expression on her face, the coffee pot in her hand. I look down and realize my mug is full again and didn’t even remember seeing her fill it.
“Ah, yeah. Just sort of feels like I’m at a crossroads in my life, but I don’t want to go in either direction,” I admit as I pick up the mug to take a sip.
“Sometimes when there’s no good option, all you can do is make a U-turn and go back home.”
A bark of laughter escapes me as a tear spills free from my eye. “I don’t have a home. I’m not sure I’ve had a real one in eleven years, not since my childhood home burned down with my parents in it. Everything I own worth keeping is packed out there in one vehicle.”
“Well, that’s just the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” the waitress says as she slides into the booth across from me. “Go on, you can’t leave me hanging here.”
“I gave up my life to raise my little brother when our parents died, and then I recently find out, or admitted to myself that he’s turned out to be a selfish little shit. Man, I really want to smack him for everything I sacrificed for him, working two jobs to keep a roof over our heads and then to pay for him to go to college. And how does he repay me? He let the one man I’ve ever loved go to prison for him and didn’t tell me! He just let me think he up and left me without a word, never to be heard from again.”
The waitress gasps. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope.” I take another sip from my mug as more tears fall. “This is great coffee, by the way, so at least I have that going for me.”
“You know, I’ve never had a man give up his jacket for me, much less his freedom,” she says. “He sounds like a real keeper.”
A sob escapes before I can smack my palm over my mouth. “I can’t keep him! That’s the problem.”
“Well, why ever not?” she asks in that slow southern accent.
“People would’ve died if I didn’t leave him. They still might...”
“Die?” she asks with a shocked gasp, and I nod my head to confirm. “But why should you have to sacrifice anything else if it all might end the same?”
“Because if I’m not there, the crazy man after me might give up and go away.”
“Well, that’s just a real shame that other people keep coming between you and a good man,” she says.
“You’re preaching to the choir.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Nolan
“Get out here, you pussy!”
“I think he’s talking to you,” Abel snickers as I flip him off right before I open the front door of the clubhouse.
Outside, there are eight men sitting on now silent Harleys parked in a semi-circle facing the door, all of their guns pointed right at me.
“Rita’s not here. She’s gone, and you’ll never see her again.” I hold my ground in the doorway of the clubhouse, ten men at my back, the two prospects and eight patches since Marcus is still on his way back. Any minute the rest of our reinforcements will be here, if I can just keep him talking a little longer.
The bald giant climbs off his bike to get a better shot. “Tell me where Rita is now, or we’ll blow your brains out.”
I glance around at the other men, their helmets still on their heads to protect them when the shooting starts.
“I honestly don’t know where she is. She didn’t tell me where she’s going. All she said was that she was going to get out of town because she didn’t want to touch your big, ugly ass!”
Behind me I don’t have to look to know it’s Roman who made the aggravated noise at the unnecessary insult as the giant man’s face turns ruby red. A cell phone dings behind me with a new message, then Roman says, “They’re here,” right before I hear the loud rumble of the bikes coming in from two different directions.
“You hear that, boys?” I ask the assholes sitting in the parking lot just before a swarm of bikes roll up all around them. I step out of the doorway as the rest of the crew files out, facing the other bikers down.
I hear some swearing, and then one of the Rebel Henchmen gets off his bike with both of his hands raised in the air to hurry over to Leroy, hopefully trying to talk some sense into him.
“This is the last warning we’re going to give you,” I shout at the crew so they can hear me over the still revving bikes around them. “If any member of the Savage Kings sees the big boy or a single Rebel Henchmen patch again in this city or even this fucking state, we’ll take you out. Now get your fat ass on your Fat Boy and leave before our friends hop off their bikes. There are hundreds of Savage Kings. You don’t want to fuck with us.” So what if I exaggerated a little? It’s not like they know the actual count or look smart enough to count higher than twenty. It is more than a hundred members, of that I’m certain. “How many Rebel Henchman are there? Just you eight sacks of shit?”
“We’re leaving,” the one who spoke to the big fucker says through his helmet as he goes back to climb on his bike. “Leroy won’t bother you again. Ain’t no bitch worth dying over, especially that one.” All eight bikes crank up as they leave one by one through the small hole the Emerald Isle Kings left at the entrance. Leroy leaves last and reluctantly behind them.
“Fuck,” someone mutters in relief.
“You can say that again,” I say with a sigh as everyone slowly makes their way back inside the clubhouse. The Kings on bikes pull into the lot and start backing them into a long row. “Sorry, brothers. I hope that’s really the last we’ll see of them.”
“She really left town?” Roman asks when he comes up to me, shoving his gun into the back of his pants.
“Yeah. She really left.”
“And you’re okay with that?”
“I gave her the choice. She didn’t want us to have to kill the sons of bitches.”
Roman glances out at street and then says, “Maybe we wouldn’t have to kill them all, just the big one.”
“Yeah, well, too late now.”
“Sorry man,” he says with a slap of his hand to my shoulder.
“It is what it is,” I mutter.
“Yeah,” he agrees. “And I think it goes without saying that you’re buying the rounds tonight.”
“No shit,” I reply. “It’s the least I can do for our friends from out of town.”
“The Emerald Isle Kings have a reputation,” Roman says before any of the men approach. “Everyone knows they’ve taken out the cartel and Russians, pretty much anyone who pisses them off. But what most probably don’t know is that they’re all wifed up now with kids and families. That doesn’t make them soft, though. It’s the opposite. Having someone worth losing is the one thing guaranteed to turn a man into an actual savage.”
I think about what Roman said while having a round of beers with our guys and the other group of Kings.
He was right. All those men talk about are their women and kids with a fierce glint in their eye that I know means they would easily kill to keep them safe.
Maybe I shouldn’t have even given Rita a choice.
I could’ve just killed Leroy and then Rita wouldn’t have had to leave.
It hasn’t been but a few hours since I left her this morning, and I already miss her.
But it’s too fucking late now. I put my number in her phone, but I purposely didn’t get hers. I didn’t want the temptation to be there, able to call her with a thought and beg her to come back to me.
Fuck, the walls of the clubhouse feel like they’re closing in on me, making me more claustrophobic than the two years in prison.
“I’m gonna head out,” I go over and tell Hugo and Abel.
“Yeah?” Abel asks.
“You don’t think they’ll come back, do you?” I ask, referring to the Rebel Henchman.
“Nah, man,” Hugo says. “Those boys had to go home and change their pants after Torin and his guys scared the piss out of them.”
“Yeah, we won’t see them again,” Abel agrees.
And I won’t see Rita again either.
&nbs
p; Goddammit.
“Call me if anything comes up,” I tell them.
“Sure thing, man,” they agree as they each get up to give me a one-armed, back slapping embrace.
When I climb on my bike to leave, I don’t ride home.
Instead, I circle around the city a few times before going back to the safehouse.
At first, I think the prospects must have left some lights on since it’s glowing. But then I see a car in the driveway, a familiar SUV.
“What the fuck?” I mutter aloud before I throw my leg over the bike to jog up the porch steps, my pulse racing, thinking something must be wrong. I turn the front doorknob, and it opens. Just inside, I find her.
Rita, who was sitting on the stairs, stands up when I come inside. Thankfully, she looks okay, unharmed, and as tall and sexy as ever in her thin, little, floral dress with buttons down the front. “Hi,” she says.
“Are you out of your mind?” I ask her, and she winces. “You shouldn’t be here alone! Alone with the goddamn door unlocked!”
She blinks her light blue eyes at me for several long seconds as I try and keep my heart from jumping out of my chest. “So, are you mad that I came back or that I came back here and left the door unlocked?”
“I’m not mad…” I start as I rub the back of my neck. “I thought something was wrong. What are you doing back here?”
“I drove for a few hours and stopped to eat dinner,” she explains. “But then, when I got back in the car, I don’t know, I just had to come back. I’m sorry!”
I start pacing the floor as she stands stock still, trying to figure out what to do now.
“What are you doing here?” Rita asks, making me pause momentarily in wearing out the carpet.
“I, ah, I don’t know,” I admit. “I guess I hoped you would still be here even though the guys said you left.”