by Tia Lewis
“What?” I asked.
“It’s all my fault.” His face worked as he tried to hold back the emotion bubbling up. “I should’ve been the one to go in for what I did. I constructed that bomb; I threw it through the window of the warehouse. Gunner was just there as a lookout. I should’ve been the one the cops picked up, not him.”
“Don’t do this to yourself.” I was talking to the wall. He didn’t hear me. Still, I couldn’t just sit there and not try to get through to him.
“If he did what he had to do when he was on the inside, that’s my fault, too. I drove him to that.”
“You didn’t drive him to anything!” I jumped to my feet and took him by the shoulders. “Look at me, damn it. You didn’t do anything. This was all his choice. He’s a grown-up. You can’t take the blame for him.”
“Even if I’m the reason he went in?”
“He’s the reason he went in.” I shook him. “He told you to run so he could protect you.”
“Right. And now I don’t know if I can protect him.”
“You shouldn’t have to. He’s an adult.”
“He’s my brother. You don’t know what this is like.”
My hands fell to my sides. “You’re right. I don’t know what it’s like.” I suddenly felt very stupid, standing there with him, trying to help him when he didn’t want my help. Not really. He couldn’t accept it when he felt the way he did just then. “I’ll leave you alone.”
“I don’t want you to.” I couldn’t have been more surprised when his arms closed around me. “Please, don’t leave me right now.”
I settled against his chest, torn between joy at being held by him and sadness that it seemed like he only needed me when he needed somebody, anybody, and I was just the person nearby at the moment. I closed my eyes. “Okay. I’ll stay if you want me to.”
I pulled back to look up at him. He ran a hand down the side of my face and cupped my chin. I wanted him to always look at me the way he looked at me then. There was a warmth in his eyes, a fire. I only wished that fire was for me. I tried to tell myself it was as his mouth touched mine.
10
Diesel
“I’d better get up. Dinner won’t make itself.” Violet sat up and swung her legs over the side of the bed. I watched as she slid her arms through the straps of her bra and hooked it behind her back, then pulled the t-shirt over her head. I wanted to touch her, but I held back. She had things to do, and so did I.
“I don’t know if any of us will be in the mood for a family dinner after I talk with my brother,” I muttered
She looked at me over her shoulder. “I’ll make dinner anyway. Just in case everybody survives it.”
I rolled onto my side. “Do you always think about us? I mean, are you always doing things for us just so we’ll be happy and, you know, taken care of? Don’t you ever think about yourself?”
She frowned as she buttoned her jeans. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Yeah, you do. I’m asking if you ever think about you instead of the club. What about you?”
She shrugged, then smoothed her hair into a ponytail and used the elastic band on her wrist to hold it back. It hung down between her shoulder blades. “I like being part of the club. I like feeling like I’m part of something. And if that means collecting a paycheck because I keep this place clean and cook dinner every once in a while, so be it. It beats a regular job.”
“Where do you live? I mean, you do have a place of your own, don’t you?”
She snickered. “Yeah. I have a place of my own.”
“Where at?”
“In Jamaica Heights. My uncle’s old house. He left it to me when he moved to Florida after he retired. Just a little two-bedroom thing.”
“No shit.” Why had I never asked her that? I didn’t know a thing about her, and we had fucked twice already, plus all the time we knew each other before that. She was just…there. Just one of the girls. Part of the club without actually being part of the club. I never thought to ask her about herself until just then.
“Yeah, no shit.” She looked a little shy when she smiled. “You okay? Can I leave you alone without you tearing the place apart?”
“Yeah. I think you worked all the tension out of me.” I gave her a smirk, and her cheeks went red.
“Any little thing I can do.” She went to the door, then laughed. “Oops. I forgot about this.” There were two wrapped sandwiches on the floor.
“Oh. Right. We never got around to eating.”
“I’ll make a little extra for dinner, then.” She was still chuckling when she closed the door behind her. I heard her footsteps trail down the stairs. I couldn’t help but smile—and that was a miracle since I had gotten back to the clubhouse in a rage.
He still wasn’t back. I would’ve heard him, even when I was half-dozing in bed with her. He had the sort of voice that carried. Or maybe he raised it because he always wanted to be heard. I could raise my voice, too, and I would if he didn’t tell me what I wanted to hear.
The thought of going to Drake ate me alive. Even though he had a lot of faults, Gunner was still my brother, and I still loved him. I still felt like I owed him my life—my entire life. It could’ve been me inside, making deals to keep myself safe, paying up once I got out. It was like buying on credit. When you wanted or needed something, it was easy to forget the bill would eventually come in.
I got up and went to take a quick shower. She was still on me, all over me, the smell of her perfume. Not that I wanted to get rid of her, but I needed a clear head to deal with Gunner when the time came, and every time I caught a hint of her scent I got distracted. Why did it take so long for us to start hooking up? She was good, really good. We were good together.
I let the water run scalding hot before I got in. I always liked hot showers, the hotter, the better. Maybe because of all the cold showers I took when I was a kid when we didn’t have money for oil to heat the house or the water tank. The water from the shower head used to feel like knives hitting my skin, so cold I would cry and shiver. Gunner would get in with me to help distract me from it, even though I was six, seven years old and too big to be taking showers with my brother. He would make jokes and pretend we were racing to see who could wash up the fastest when really he was trying to help me get through it. Just another thing I owed him for.
I crossed my forearms on the shower wall and leaned my head on them. He was in the middle of something bad, and I wasn’t sure I could help him get through it.
By the time I finished and got dried off and dressed, I heard his voice downstairs. Violet wouldn’t have told him I was looking for him—she knew how to keep shit to herself. So he wouldn’t expect it. Good. It meant he didn’t have time to come up with an excuse. I padded down in my bare feet and found him sitting at the bar, nursing a beer, talking shit with Tam. She was smiling at whatever story he was telling, but when she saw the look on my face, her smile disappeared.
“I’ve gotta go down and do an inventory of what we have left,” she said as she reached for her clipboard. “That party just about cleaned us out the other night.”
“It was worth it, though, right?” He was half-tanked and didn’t notice she was leaving because I needed to see him in private. He turned and grinned at me. “Oh, my baby brother’s here.”
“Three years doesn’t make me your baby brother,” I muttered. When we were alone, I sat down facing him. “We need to talk. Now. And you need to tell me the truth.”
“Ooh, so serious.”
I didn’t smile back. “Do you wanna do this in here, or do you wanna go outside?”
“Wait—you really mean this. You think there’s something we really need to talk about.”
“No. I know there’s something we need to talk about. Something important.”
“Well? What is it?”
“Fine. We’ll do it here.” I leaned in. “What are you doing with the Devil’s Den?”
His face went white, and his eyes shifte
d back and forth. “Who told you about that? How did you find out?”
“Don’t worry about how I found out. Let’s just say I heard today that you made some deals when you were on the inside. What the hell did you do?”
His hands shook. “You don’t know what it’s like in there, brother. The things you have to do to survive.”
“What did you do? You don’t have to explain that shit to me. I just wanna know what you did. What did you promise for protection?”
“Hey, it’ll be good for the club. I made a deal for the club!”
It was worse than I thought. “What the fuck are you talking about? You made a deal? You don’t make deals. You’re not in that position.”
“No, but I would’ve been if I didn’t go away. You know that. Jack would’ve made me President.”
“I don’t know that. It was always between you and Drake.”
He laughed. “Drake. Don’t fucking kid yourself. He doesn’t have the balls to lead the way this club needs to be lead. I mean, I get out after eight years, and we’re dealing in whores now. What the hell’s that all about?”
I took him by the collar and pulled him to me. “Speaking of which, why the hell did you run to Bobby about those girls? You’re talking about people with no balls, why don’t we talk about you? It takes a guy without balls to bitch to a pimp about his girls.”
“Oh. So it was Bobby who told you.” He tried to jerk away, but I held him close.
“He beat the shit out of those girls because of you,” I spat. “They didn’t do anything except hurt your pride, and you got their asses kicked.”
He pulled himself out of my hands. “Who cares? They’re just whores.” He laughed and lifted the beer bottle to his mouth.
“I know they’re just whores, but you didn’t have to do that. Who the hell are you? Some whiny bitch?”
He glared at me. “Don’t you ever call me a bitch. I’m nobody’s bitch.” Then, he laughed. “I made sure I wasn’t. And I scored a deal for us, too. That takes skill, brother. You remember that.”
“What did you tell them we would do? And why didn’t you tell Drake about it yet?”
“Because Drake doesn’t need to know yet. I’m putting the finishing touches on my deal.”
“You make me sick.” I couldn’t look at him anymore. I went behind the bar to pour myself a drink to calm my nerves.
“I make you sick? How can you say that to me? Look at me.” He slammed his bottle down so hard, it shattered. I jumped out of the way, still barefoot.
“Asshole,” I snarled.
“You don’t get to look away from me and tell me I make you sick. Not when I was only inside because of…”
“Go on. Don’t stop yourself. You were gonna say you were only inside because of me. And it’s my fault you did what you had to do. Right? Isn’t that what you were about to say?”
His eyes went hard. “Yeah. It is.”
“Well, good for you. You said it.” I downed a shot of whiskey, then poured another. “But I wouldn’t have gone against the club. I wouldn’t have gone behind anybody’s back to make a filthy deal with a bunch of fucking animals. You know who they are and how they operate.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“So? What are you doing? What did you tell them?”
He looked me up and down. “Can I trust you?”
“Jesus Christ, Gunner.” I leaned in from behind the bar. “If you couldn’t trust me, you wouldn’t be talking to me right now. You’d be talking to our President. I wanted to ask you first, to find out what was happening. What’s that tell you?”
We were face-to-face, inches from each other. It was like looking into a mirror; only he looked so much older than me. More than three years, for sure. Prison did that to him. Just another thing for me to feel guilty for. He nodded. “Okay. I trust you.”
“Thanks.” I leaned back. “So? What’s the deal?”
“They’re back into guns,” he whispered. “They took over our gun trade when we pulled out.”
“Yeah. I heard about that. And they use the money they make to fund their fucking white power bullshit.”
“Well, they want a partner who knows the ropes the way we do. Some of our old connections wouldn’t do business with them. They only wanna do business with us. You know, the boys from Mexico.”
“Yeah, I know who you mean. Why the hell would they want to do business with a bunch of skinheads who don’t want them around?”
“That’s just it. If we went back to being the middlemen and brokered the deals, we could get a big cut of the profit. So it’s still less stress on us—we wouldn’t get our hands as dirty as we used to—but we’d still make money.” He sat back with a satisfied smile on his face. “See? Easy.”
I shook my head. “We don’t want any part of the gun trade anymore, Gunner. Especially not with them. There’s gotta be more to it than that, too.”
“There isn’t.”
“I think you’re wrong about that. We can’t trust them.”
“Listen, believe what you want. I was in there with them, man. I know what they’re all about. They’re not bad guys.”
I snickered. “What’s it called when a person who gets kidnapped starts identifying with their kidnappers?”
“I mean it!” He pounded his fists on the bar and cut off my laughter. “I made a deal that’ll help put us back where we belong. At the top. And it was me.” He pounded his chest. “I did it. Because I’m the leader this club deserves.”
We faced off, eyes locked. I wasn’t sure who I was looking at anymore. It was like he had gone crazy when he was inside. He sounded like a different person.
“I don’t know that I can back you in this, brother.” My voice was low, almost a whisper. I hated myself for even saying the words, but they were the truth.
He nodded slowly. “Yeah. That’s what I thought you’d say. You forgot what’s really important.”
“Bullshit.”
“Oh, it’s not bullshit. Come on. Look around.” He spread his arms. “You sit here; you’re all comfortable and satisfied with yourselves because you’re the good guys now. You forgot why we got into this club in the first place. The excitement. The freedom. Never having to answer to anybody, especially not the cops.”
“That’s not why I got into it,” I muttered.
“Why did you, then?”
“You. I followed you.”
His eyes went wide. “Then why the hell won’t you back me now?” He got up from the stool without waiting for an answer and walked upstairs to the room he chose to stay in until he got a place of his own. I was stuck standing there with nothing to say and still no idea how to handle him.
11
Diesel
“You don’t know how hard it is for me to stand here and tell you this.”
Drake looked at me from his chair, behind his desk. He had just gotten back from meeting with Creed and Bobby while they went over the books and talked about possible expansion. Things were going that well. Better than ever. And I had news that could end it. “What’s up? You look like you’re gonna throw up. You need a minute?”
I shook my head. “No. I can do this.”
“What is it?”
I gritted my teeth. It was like ripping off a Band-Aid—just do it all at once. “Gunner made a deal with the skinheads while he was inside. I found out today and went to him with it, and he said it was true. His protection for our getting back into guns when he got out.”
I never saw him look so surprised before. It was like everything just dropped out from under him, and he didn’t know what to do. His mouth opened, but no sound came out.
“I didn’t know. I swear,” I whispered. “I only just heard about it—he didn’t say a word to me when I visited. I’ve been fighting myself all fucking day over it, but I couldn’t keep it a secret from you. Not when they’re gonna come around any day now, probably. They’re gonna want us to start working with them.”
His hands were on the d
esk, and I watched as they tightened into fists. “Where is he?” he snarled.
“Upstairs, I think.”
“Motherfucker.” He jumped up from the desk and pushed past me, then flung the door open so hard it bounced off the wall. “Gunner!”
“Drake, come on—”
He ignored me. “Gunner! Get down here!” His voice echoed through the clubhouse, and everyone came out to see what was happening, from everywhere. Including Violet. She looked like she was going to cry.
Nicole walked in just in time with her books in her arms. She looked around and saw her husband. “What’s going on?”
He ignored her and went to the stairs. I followed him up, and Ace ran behind me. “Gunner!” Drake shouted. He kicked in the door to Gunner’s room. My brother was just putting on a pair of jeans, and he turned and held up his hands.
“Drake, I can explain—” Anything else he wanted to say was cut off when Drake’s right cross caught him on the jaw. He sprawled back onto the bed.
“What the fuck is happening?” Ace shouted. He tried to get past me, but I held him back.
“Let him do this,” I muttered.
“Are you serious? He’s gonna kill your brother!” But I still held him back as Drake pulled Gunner off the bed by his collar and hit him with another hard right that split his lip. He turned his head and spat blood across the bedspread.
“What the fuck is wrong with you? Huh?” Drake put his face close to Gunner’s and screamed into it. “Are you trying to get us all killed? Are you fucking crazy?”
“I was only trying to—”
“I don’t give a fuck what you were trying to do!” This time, he hit Gunner with a left and caught his eye, then another right that knocked him back to the bed. He didn’t get up. His face was cut, bruised, bleeding. And Drake stood over him, panting like an animal. He wanted to kill him. I couldn’t have stopped him if I wanted to.
“My God, I need to get away from him before I murder him.” He pushed his way past us and went to the bathroom. I heard the water running in the sink as he washed his hands.