That was often a fatal mistake. Accuracy was never as good as people thought it was. Nerves were never as calm as people anticipated them being. There was no getting around the fact that in the heat of the moment, the ideal never happened. People never rose to the occasion; they only fell to the level of their training. And when they had no training to fall on, they just turned into a big pile of mush.
I shut the door behind me as quietly as I could. I scanned the area cautiously, checking to see if any creeps were waiting for me to leave to get Heather back. I walked by every single car in the parking lot to see if anyone was inside, spying on me. I was more paranoid than an alien-sighting reporter.
Only after I’d checked every car twice and every nearby hill and vantage point did I feel secure enough in getting on my bike and returning back to the shop. I hadn’t slept for more than maybe thirty minutes that night, but I was fired up. I was ready to kill.
I was ready to kill in that very moment.
I was the only one at the clubhouse at that hour. That wasn’t surprising, seeing as how everyone else was probably asleep. But as soon as people were rested…
“Get to the clubhouse as soon as you wake up,” I wrote in a group chat to literally every single member of the club. “We’re going to end Vulture and the Anarchists tonight.”
But before I sat down on the couch for a nap before everyone else went out, I sent one text to the prospect who was going to handle the morning shift for King’s Repairs.
“Go to Romara Elementary and provide security. You see anyone suspicious so much as driving by, you let me know.”
The prospect, a 23-year-old named Troy who had just gotten out of the Army, immediately wrote back that he was on his way.
Finally, feeling at ease that Heather would at least have a watchful eye on her for the day, I passed out, getting perhaps the last sleep I would ever have for the rest of my life.
Three hours later, the first officer arrived. Petey came in. I bolted up as soon as I heard the door open; I could go from sleeping to awake in a matter of seconds.
“Anyone else with you?” I said as Petey walked in.
“I’ve got the rest of the prospects on the way,” he said.
“Good. I told Troy to stay at the school. I want security there to make sure the Anarchists don’t strike there.”
Petey looked at me in surprise. Was I being paranoid?
I didn’t really give a fuck if the answer was yes. This was too unsettling a situation, rife with too much conflict, for me to take any chances. The Anarchists had gotten desperate and bloody; sadly, not even school grounds seemed off-limits to them.
“You really want to take them out, huh?”
“Abso-fucking-lutely,” I said. “Let’s face it, they almost killed a woman I love, they killed two of our club members, and they’re only going to get worse. We have to stop this madness now. We have to do whatever it takes, no matter the cost, to end this threat. That, right now, means launching an all out assault on them. Whatever it takes.”
A woman I love… you really love her, huh?
I mean, it wasn’t like I broke up with her ten years ago over love. I broke up with her to protect her. So I haven’t ever stopped loving her.
If anything, it’s gotten more mature and more serious as time has gone on. There’s nothing surprising about this.
“I like the attitude,” Petey said. “I’ll round up the rest of the officers. We’ll get everyone here in the next half hour.”
“Good. Let me know if you need me to make any calls.”
“Somehow, I doubt that’ll be needed.”
I looked at my own phone, thinking of if there was anyone I needed to call that I had not yet considered. I remembered how Heather had stated last night that she wanted to help, but I immediately dismissed that idea without a second thought. She’d suffered enough, and it had nothing to do with her being a girl or anything silly like that.
If Landon had been traumatized the night before, I wouldn’t have let him go out into battle. It was that simple.
Well…
It wasn’t. I loved Landon, but Heather was a different kind of love. It was a more everlasting, romantic love.
And I guess I just wasn’t willing to risk that yet. But I sure as fuck was willing to risk everything else to protect it.
“I’m not waiting a moment longer. We need to strike tonight, with full force, and put the fear of God in those fucking assholes.”
I stood at the head of the table, leaning forward, trying to emphasize the seriousness of my point. Landon, Parker, and Tyus looked a little worn out, but they also looked hungry for blood. The only one at the table who wanted to pump the brakes even a tiny bit was, of all people, Zane.
“Look, I get it, man, they took your girl, you want to hurt them, I’m all for that. I want to fucking kill them like you. But, man, do you really think tonight is the night to do it? After—”
“We’ve used that as an excuse much too long,” I said, cutting off that argument before it even got started. “I have said ‘well, the timing’s not right’ or ‘we shouldn’t strike while they’re expecting us.’ But Zane, there is no right time. We need to strike now and we need to strike quickly. If we wait for the right time, people are going to die. They tried to hurt Heather. Yes, I’m emotionally connected to her. But what happens when they start going for family members in here? I know you don’t have a girl, Zane, but you got parents. You got siblings. How would you feel if one of them got hurt by the Anarchists?”
“I’d want to break their necks with my bare hands.”
“Exactly. Now you know how I feel.”
But even he could not know exactly how I felt. Words couldn’t convey the true feelings in my mind. Words could not express the anger that even just thinking about last night produced.
And how fucked up was it that Vulture was willing to let his own niece get raped just to bring me out in the open? If that wasn’t a monster, then there were no such things as monsters. Even Satan probably found what Vulture had done repulsive.
“We leave one member behind,” I said. “Petey, you gotta come. You stayed behind last night.”
“I understand.”
“Landon,” I said. “The name of the club is the Savage Kings. We need a King behind in case something goes down. You’re not going to like it, but we need you here in case things go to shit so that the club can keep going.”
I knew Landon wasn’t going to like it, especially since it was putting a burden on him he didn’t necessarily want.
But to my surprise, Landon not only accepted the request, he did so with an intensity in his eyes that I hadn’t seen before. Maybe yesterday had galvanized him in unexpected ways. Or maybe I’d just underestimated him for all this time.
Either way, it was a done deal. He was going to stay behind as the backup in case the nuclear scenario of everyone else perishing happened.
“To the rest of you,” I said. “We’re going to gather everyone, and I mean everyone, and we are going to hunt down the Anarchists. There’s only so many warehouses that they could have gone to, and—”
“Save it,” Parker said.
“Sorry?”
Parker chuckled.
“I did my own ‘research’ as y’all slept last night, see where those assholes went. I know where they are. They’re hidin’ in an old cabin just on the outskirts of town. There’s about twenty of ‘em assholes there. I’m sure they won’t all be there, but—”
“If Vulture is, we cut off the head, and we can take care of the rest from there,” I said. “You’re sure of it, Parker?”
“Sure as I am of you standin’ before me right now,” he said. “Trust me. I did a hell of a lotta recon in my time in the Marines. I know a thing or two.”
“Goddamn. I knew you were a good SOA.”
“Ya can thank me when we kick their asses.”
Good enough.
“Then it’s settled,” I said. “At seven p.m. sharp, we
roll out of here. We arm ourselves to the teeth. We were body armor. We wear helmets. We’re setting up a full-scale raid of the place. We’re going to kill these motherfuckers no matter what it takes. Go home. Make any phone calls you have to make. Say ‘I love you’ to whoever you need to. And…”
I thought of how those words applied to me. Did they? Was it weird to say to Heather?
I knew what I was going to do next. But I didn’t know what would happen once I did it.
“I’ll see you tonight.”
I slammed my palm on the table, walked out, and headed straight for my bike.
Fifteen minutes later, I was knocking on Heather’s door, just in case she had chosen not to go to school.
The door opened.
4
Heather
“Brock?”
It wasn’t even noon yet. Shouldn’t he have been sleeping a little bit more? I swore I’d heard him leave around sunrise. I’d tried to say something to get him to stay, to let him know that I was going to tell the school that I couldn’t make it in, but he’d left in such a hurry that I wondered if I’d done something to hurt him.
But seeing him now, with the concern in his eyes and a weary smile on his face, there wasn’t anything about him that seemed saddened to see me. In fact, he seemed uplifted by the sight of me.
“Hey, beautiful,” he said.
He leaned forward, put his hands on my cheek, and gave me a gentle kiss on the lips. It was not the passionate, erotic kiss that we’d traded earlier, but it was somehow even sweeter that way. It felt like a protective kiss, a loving kiss, a kiss of kindness and support, not a kiss to get in my pants.
“I guess you chose to say the dog ate all the kids’ homework, huh?”
“Do I look like I can go to school?” I said with a laugh. “Besides, it’s Friday. You can’t tell me that you’ve never had a rough Thursday and decided to sleep in on a Friday.”
“I would never try to,” he said. “In fact, I believe it was just last week or so that this all blew up.”
I chuckled, opened the door more fully, and let him enter. I shut the door quickly behind him, and he locked it for me.
“How are you feeling?”
“Fine,” I said, which was true only in the relative sense—but I think Brock knew that. “Tired, but fine.”
“You and me both,” Brock said, taking a seat on the couch and rubbing his hands on his face.
“What brings you back here?” I said as I sat next to him and rubbed his back.
Brock let out a long sigh, placing his hand on my knee and squeezing it.
“We’re going to try and take out the Anarchists tonight,” he said. “That includes your uncle. He goes by the name Vulture. It’s going to be one of the most dangerous things I’ve ever led as president. People are probably going to die. I have no choice but to fully acknowledge that, because it would be dishonest of me to do anything but. And…”
He cleared his throat.
“I told everyone to go to the person that they care about the most and spend their afternoon with them, because I didn’t know if they would get that opportunity again later on. And so… that’s why I’m here with you.”
The first thing that came to mind honestly seemed silly when I said it, and Brock’s laughter even made me laugh after I’d spoken.
“Not Landon?”
“Landon?” Brock said as he stopped laughing. “That fucker? I see him every day! I welcome the chance to have some space from him! But no. Heather. It’s you.”
“Brock… I dumped you. And now you’re saying I’m the one?”
“You had every right to dump me, Heather,” he said. “For what you knew at the time and what you thought was right, of course it made sense to dump me. But here’s what I know. Even in the moments where I wasn’t thinking about you for the last ten years, you weren’t far removed from my mind. It would only take something small for me to remember who you were and how good you were to me. The reason I fought like hell to get you back when you came into my life was because, well, honestly…”
He laughed.
“Fuck, it’s weird to say, but you know what? I have to tell you the truth. I love you, Heather. I really do. I loved you as a kid, and I never stopped loving you. It took me some time to realize it since you came back to me, because I’m a goddamn idiot, but it’s true. You are the person I most care about.”
I beamed, my cheeks glowing red. This was what I had been looking for in other people for the last ten years but had never found. This was what I’d hoped to have happen, only for me to assume it would never happen again. This, this moment… this was it.
“Brock…” I said breathlessly, leaning forward to kiss him.
He took me into his arms, and we fell into the couch. I reached for his shirt and started to lift it off. For a few moments, he seemed to go along with it.
But then he stopped.
“I can’t, not right now,” he said. “I can’t… not this close to the mission. I have to keep all my energy stored up.”
“You’re sure?” I said.
Admittedly, it was more of what just felt right in the moment than something premeditated. It wasn’t like we planned to have sex when he came back.
“I’m sure,” he said. “I just wanted to come by and tell you this so you’d know the truth. So you’d know how I feel about you and how I’ve felt about you all these years. If I stick around, if I let us get to that, then I’m never going to leave here. And while in the short term that might feel great, I need to make the right decision for the sake of the club. I need to go on this run tonight and kill Vulture.”
My uncle.
But it has to be done. And yeah, I want it done.
“I understand,” I said.
I want it done and I want to partake.
“I want to go with you.”
Brock’s eyes went wide. He shook his head. He leaned forward and pushed me off of him.
“That’s not going to happen, Heather,” he said. “I’m not going to allow you to do it.”
I bit my lip and stood up. I needed to stand above Brock for this one.
“You know why I like you so much?” I said. “It’s because you’re bold and you’re decisive. When you want to see something happen, you make it happen. You don’t let anything get in the way of you accomplishing your goals. Well, guess what? Neither will I. My uncle almost fed me to the wolves. At this point, he’s not my uncle. He’s just a creepy old man. And I’m just not a teacher. I’m someone who wants to fight.”
“And how are you going to do that?” Brock said. “Two of my men have been killed in the last few weeks by the Anarchists. They were trained. One of them was in the military. You think that you are going to be able to help in that regard?”
He shook his head.
“I’m sorry, Heather.”
“I can be useful—”
“And in doing so, sacrifice yourself and get killed. No way.”
This was just going to be a repeat of all of the arguments that we had ever had. The more I pushed Brock to let me get into the fight, the more he would take action to make sure it wouldn’t happen. It was not out of the question for him to somehow trap me in the apartment or place a club member by my door to make sure I wouldn’t get out.
“OK,” I said.
“Good. I’d have to knock some sense into you otherwise.”
But this was far from me accepting what he was telling me. I was not yet so easily persuaded. I just needed to play a little game to make sure I could help. I just needed to figure out the details.
“I’m going to go,” he said, standing up and putting his hands on his shoulders. “I am going to succeed. I am going to kill Vulture. And I’m going to come back to you and I am going to make the sweet, sweet love that you thought we were going to have here.”
“Promise?”
Brock leaned forward and kissed me.
“I promise.”
He pulled away abruptly, as if
knowing that once he got started with me, it would be that much harder to pull away.
“Stay here and keep your gun near you,” he said. He opened the door. “I love you, Heather.”
“I—”
But he shut the door before I could finish my sentence. He wasn’t kidding when he said he needed to focus fully on his mission and not have any other distractions.
Little did he know that I wasn’t kidding, either, about wanting to help him.
5
Brock
I heard Heather start to say “I love you” when I left her apartment.
It was the one thing I really did not want to hear as I exited her place. I needed my mind to be on the Anarchists and the Anarchists only. I did not want it, under any circumstances, on anything but those assholes on the east side of Romara. A distracted mind was a dead mind in the middle of combat.
In the hours between that and our ride out, I just went back to the clubhouse and closed my eyes. I never fell asleep, but I relaxed all the same. I thought about how I was going to kill Uncle, how I was going to take Heather on vacation afterward, and how we were going to enjoy each other for a long, long time—maybe even forever. Yeah, thinking about her was probably not helping my “don’t be distracted” mantra, but I figured if I got it out of the way now, I wouldn’t think about her when the time came.
And sure enough, as the sound of motorcycles started to pull up about half an hour before the time came for us to drive out, my mind shifted from the happy thoughts of life after Vulture to the tactical, strategic mindset required for the hours ahead.
There was little doubt that this mission would lead to the deaths of some of my men. This was a sacrifice I had to ask of them, but it was one that they all were prepared and willing to make. I think all of us accepted that if we did not put ourselves at risk, we were actually giving ourselves the worst chances of survival in the long run.
Forbidden Romance: An MC Romance (Savage Kings MC Book 4) Page 2