“This isn’t my hourly—”
“Then let it be a down payment on a future session,” he said with a wink. “See you next week, Renee.”
He gently shut the door as he left. I had to say that for all that I had suspected, it hadn’t really turned out that bad.
But there was still something nagging about him that left me worried if Oliver was really who he said he was.
5
Zane
I had zero desire to do anything.
A day had passed since my therapy session, and with it came an all-nighter—but not because I had stayed up all night. Instead, I had fallen asleep at the far too early hour of eight p.m., woken up six hours later, and then been unable to fall back asleep. A creeping sense of depression had made it impossible for me to stay up late, but it had also made it so that I wouldn’t be able to get proper rest until sunrise.
Now, it was about five in the afternoon, the time when I would normally start taking drinks in anticipation of the evening to come. I’d hype myself up, maybe find myself a woman to go for, and show up to the club fully energized and ready to go. I would show up as Zane Williams, the man, the myth, the legend. Even if a club party had happened the night before, I would have made something of the evening.
But tonight, I was just Zane, a lone wolf, without a tribe, and without anything to do. I had left my club on a voluntary basis; Renee had decided to start treating me like a complete stranger; and life in general had seemed to take a giant shit on me. Even if I wanted to do something, as soon as I started to give myself some energy, a depressed mood took it away moments later, returning me to a grungy, miserable state of being.
There was a TV show on, but aside from seeing some explosions and loud voices, I couldn’t tell you what the hell it was. I just kept playing the events of the previous week on in my head; that was far more dramatic than anything on the television, and since it was unlikely to resolve itself anytime soon, it was like watching a TV show that you knew would never end.
It was a bit of a fucked up way of looking at it. But it’s not like I had anything better to do, no better way to examine it than that. The alternative was to face my mood head on, and that wasn’t something I really wanted to do.
I was this way for about another hour when I heard a knock at my door. In my gut, a part of me hoped that Renee would suddenly appear to surprise me, but I kept telling myself it wasn’t going to be her. Still, the hope strongly remained that I was wrong, even if I was 99.9 percent certain to be right.
Unfortunately, I should have shut that hope up, because as I opened the door, I could see I was one hundred percent right it wasn’t her.
Fortunately, it was perhaps the next best thing.
“Landon?” I said in surprise.
“Sup bud,” he said, bandages and wounds still apparent on his body. “Mind if I come in, share a drink with you?”
“Um, sure,” I said, forcing a laugh of surprise. “Forgive me for being so blunt, but what the hell are you doing over here?”
Landon barked a laugh, shut the door behind him, and pulled out a beer from his pocket, handing it to me.
“Because you’re on leave from the club, I’m supposed to just stop hanging out with you and pretend you don’t exist?”
I stood dumbfounded.
“I mean… Parker and them might—”
“Parker can kiss my ass for all I care, and if I ordered him to, as his vice president, he damn well better!” Landon said, even though we both knew full well he would never do such a thing. “You’re my friend first, Zane. You made a stupid choice. News flash. So has literally every other officer in this club. Brock started the trend if you want to be honest, and since then, it’s just been one big hot mess of guys chasing girls that are beyond the usual bimbos at the clubhouse. It’s like we’ve never had a decent women in our lives, and now that we have them, we chase and our desperate for them.”
“Yeah, but I don’t think Renee and I are going to be working out,” I said. “I saw Renee at our therapy session yesterday, and it was brutal. Fucking brutal.”
“And I think every dude here in the club can speak to a moment when they thought they and their lover would never work out,” Landon said as he pulled off the caps of our beers. “I’m not saying you will work out. We have to recognize that most relationships that fail stay that way. But, hey, you’re not one hundred percent dead.”
“I suppose,” I said, half-heartedly clinking drinks with Landon. “This doesn’t feel like me at all, man. Like, I’m supposed to be the loudmouth youth chasing after all the ass possible! And now this woman has me feeling like an emo teenager. What in the world!”
“If I knew, I’d be a rich matchmaker, but instead, I’m just a biker,” Landon said. “In any case, maybe you were the smart one. Maybe you, by staying away from the drama until you were the last one, saved yourself a lot of heartache and pain.”
“Or just delayed the inevitable,” I said with a snort as we sat on the couch, our eyes going back to the movie that was now in commercial. “What do you think I should do, man?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean what I have with Renee, what I’m having to go through… do you think it’s worth chasing back?”
Landon shrugged, taking a sip of his drink.
“Caroline was worth chasing, and you know why?” he said. “Because as soon as we started being a thing, I realized I couldn’t think of anyone else I’d rather have been with. No one in the world could get me smiling like her. No one still can. If Renee still makes you feel the same way? Then go for it. If not? Then you felt the early stages of love and just need to ride this out for a bit.”
I bit my lip and nodded. I didn’t know if I could quite say that for Renee—we hadn’t had sex yet. But what I could say was that in spite of us not having had sex yet, she still made me feel a very strong and particular way. The fact that I didn’t have a desire to have sex with anyone else probably said it all; there was just no genuine interest or curiosity in what else lay out there.
“Do you know the answer to that?”
“I don’t,” I admitted. “I guess time will tell.”
Landon held out his drink, and I clinked it. I took a sip of the beer, but as I let the bitter taste hit my lips, I realized that having Landon with me would make me prefer to do something else much more—the one thing that I would never, ever let go, no matter what.
The bike.
“You know,” I said. “There is one thing that will help clear my mind up quite a bit.”
“Yeah?” he said with a growing smile.
“Wanna go ride around town for a bit? Or will that get you in trouble with the club?”
“Pffft. Remember what I said earlier about Parker? Brock might say something, but otherwise, no one’s going to tell me what to do. Hell yeah, let’s go for a bike ride.”
Suddenly, it was like the veil of depression had been lifted. I lurched out of the couch, grabbed my keys, and headed for the door. Landon was laughing, making comments about how quickly I was getting up. I was laughing, too—perhaps nothing said that I was feeling better more than that.
We got out to our bikes, ignited the engines, and just drove out. We didn’t pick a particular direction, nor did we stay on the straightaway the whole time; we just drove.
And damn, let me tell you, it felt really fucking good. I wondered why I hadn’t thought to do it earlier; perhaps some sort of strange fear of riding solo would mean I would always ride solo was in my head. I didn’t know. But I did know that it felt mighty good to be on the bike right then and there.
We rode for about a dozen minutes before we noticed another biker.
But this biker did not have the clothes of the Savage Kings. Which meant it was only one possible person.
I looked to Landon, and he nodded back to me. We waited a few beats before we started trailing Owen—and with any luck, this would be the spot where we could finally stop him and put an end to the cha
os he brought Romara.
6
Renee
The sky was starting to turn dark on this Saturday evening, and I had a cup of warm hot chocolate in my hand to mark the occasion. It was a creature comfort of sorts, the kind of thing that, while it wouldn’t calm my mind per se, would at least go a long way toward preventing the seas from getting stirred more.
In theory, at least.
Behind me, I had on a TV news segment describing a recent peace that had come over some of the outlying towns to Romara. Romara itself was still dealing with gang warfare, according to the report, but the incidents had dropped significantly thanks to the arrival of outside police forces. But they aren’t done entirely.
I knew that as long as the Savage Kings were around, people would invariably want to cause trouble with them. It was practically in the male DNA to try and raise hell at the first sign of someone pumping their chest out, as if to say that they could take a swing at the king too. The Kings didn’t exactly help matters with their flaunting of their behavior.
But my opinion, in my time with Zane, had changed and cooled a bit on the Kings. Granted, I’m sure some of that was cognitive dissonance just to make me feel better about what had actually transpired with Zane, but in all sincerity, I really had come to view the Kings as something a little bit better than I had before.
The Kings were boisterous. They were bothersome at times. In short, they were boys.
But they were also men who could act like adults when they had to. They defended the town and had protected me in a moment of need. They rallied around each other like few other groups I had seen.
In short, they could easily be perceived as being something that they weren’t, but once I’d gotten past that, they had shown themselves to be much better.
I looked out on the road and saw a few motorcycles driving by, about six in total. They all bore the Savage Kings insignia on the back of their jackets, prideful in their group and unashamed of the display. I headed back to the couch, let out a deep breath, and told myself that things would get better—and so long as the Kings were around, it wouldn’t be as bad as I had thought it would be.
The TV show soon switched over to some other news programs on the national level, and I took the opportunity to switch over to a basketball game as background noise. I pulled out my phone and started to text my parents.
And then a knock came at the door.
Odd. I’m not expecting anyone.
But I wasn’t the type of person who pretended that I wasn’t home when strangers knocked; the therapist in me, I guess, just wanted to talk to different people. I put on my slippers, headed to the door, and lurched back in surprise at what I saw.
“Oliver?”
“Hey, sorry, I know—”
“If you had an emergency, you could have texted or called,” I said, putting my arms on the door frame to prevent entry. “And besides, I would have referred you to 911.”
“I understand that, but I felt it was rather urgent I come to you,” he said. “You see, the Kings are out tonight in full force, and they’re scaring me, and—”
“Oliver, I am not the person you need to come to about this,” I said. “The police are. Call the police—”
Oliver made a brief flicking motion with his right hand, which was down by his hip. My eyes naturally followed and went wide when I was absolutely certain of what I saw—a gun.
And he had not called attention to it by accident.
“The police are not going to get involved,” he said. “You are going to give me shelter right now. Because the Kings are causing trouble. Understand?”
I bit my lip, feeling stupid for not trusting my gut that Oliver was actually Owen. It was so obvious and so fabricated on the spot, and I had known better. I had fucking known better.
I sure seemed to be making an awful lot of stupid decisions these days.
I turned to the side, and Owen entered. I didn’t shut the door immediately, but Owen didn’t take long to notice, brushing past me.
“Now,” he said. “This by no means has to end in any way other than me walking out of here and you getting to keep watching your basketball game. Unlike some of the other… people, let’s say, in this town, I’m not someone who is hell-bent on causing violence to get my way.”
As a therapist, I did my best to practice non-judgment.
As a woman under threat, though, that was about the exact opposite of what I felt right now. I wanted to fight back, cuss him out, or just do something to show how pissed I was.
But, well, I also didn’t want to die.
“And the easiest way to ensure that things don’t come to a violent spot,” he said. “Is for you to directly answer the question that I asked you yesterday morning. Do you think you can do that?”
“What question?”
Owen dropped his head and started chuckling sarcastically at me. I knew full well what he was referring to. I just didn’t want to give him anything as easily as he was hoping for.
“Which of the Savage Kings are your patients?” he said. “I know there’s at least one. I saw them riding out when I arrived yesterday, but I couldn’t get the particulars of who they were.”
“I’m not going to tell you that,” I said, drawing an exasperated sigh from Owen. “If you want me to tell you that, then you’re out of luck, because I don’t—”
“Look, I have some patience, Renee, but I’m not the fucking Buddha. At some point, I will just shoot you.”
I shut up real fast at that.
“So I will ask you one more time, Renee. Which of the Kings are your clients? And which one was from Saturday morning?”
I stared at the gun, terrified that he was going to pull the trigger anyways. I had to admit, being scared shitless was a nice cover for not answering the question, but it wasn’t a deliberate misdirection.
“Five seconds, Renee. Five…”
I kept my mouth shut.
“Four…”
He raised the gun. He didn’t need to finish the countdown. My life was on the line. I could get fired and lose my license, but I had other options. I wouldn’t have such a thing if I died.
“Zane,” I said, crossing perhaps the final ethical line of my job that I hadn’t already. “Zane Williams. He was the one this morning.”
“Ah,” Owen said. “The young asshole who took my place in the club.”
I looked at Owen in surprise, but he didn’t seem to elaborate.
And then, off in the distance, I heard two motorcycles approaching. I thought at first that they might have been coming past us, but when they rolled up and stopped outside the building, both Owen and I knew they’d come for us.
“Did you tell them any of this shit?!” Owen said, all appearances of calm demeanor evaporating.
“No!”
“Stupid whore!”
Owen pistol-whipped me then, knocking me to the ground. I put my hands on my head and looked up at him cocking the gun at me.
But he did not fire.
“I’m not going to reveal myself yet,” he said with a wicked smile. “But if those two should be so stupid as to enter…”
The door got knocked down. I rolled to the side.
And bullets rang out across my apartment.
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Final Absolution
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It’s her life or mine.
Owen has Renee pinned down in her apartment.
With one wrong squeeze of the trigger, I could lose everything.
I’d rather lose my life before I lose her.
So, along with my brother Landon, I’m going to storm in there and do whatever it takes to save her.
Even if I have to sacrifice myself.
And should we both survive, I am not letting her go again.
No matter what it takes, no matter what I have to sacrifice, no matter what I have to give up, I will have her.
Because if there’s one thing I’ve l
earned from my brothers in the Savage Kings, it’s that she means everything.
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Savage Redemption
“My life was all about revenge until I met her.”
I want them destroyed.
The Anarchists killed my father, haunt me and my brother, and seek to destroy my club, the Savage Kings.
For years, I have stopped at nothing to annihilate them.
But for years, I also never forgot her.
She was everything to me.
She brought joy to my life.
And I had to leave her without explanation.
But a chance encounter has brought her back to me.
And now, everything has changed.
My life is now all about having her—and nothing can stop me.
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Reaper's Promise: An MC Romance (Savage Kings MC Book 19) Page 3