Renegade (Moonshine Task Force Book 1)

by Laramie Briscoe

  He’s quiet for a few minutes, his eyes un-focusing before he clears his throat. “I wasn’t sure I would either, but now that I am, nothing’s going to tear me away.”

  “So, I think Alabama is playing. Should I turn it on?” Ryan asks, breaking the silence.

  It’s agreed, and just like that, I’m taken back to my birthday weekend.

  * * *

  “Fuck this is painful,” I yell as I hold my legs back, pushing for the doctor.

  “C’mon Whitney, you got this,” Trevor encourages from where he sits to my side, as far away from my lower half as he can get. Blaze left a little while ago to give us some time as a family, and I’m pretty sure my screaming and yelling is keeping my parents as far away as possible.

  “I don’t have it,” I tell him. I’m losing my nerve and my energy.

  “You’re close, babe,” Ryan tells me. “I love you so much and I know you’ve got this, don’t you want to meet Stella?”

  I do, but God the pain and I’m so exhausted. I don’t know how to explain it to them. “I do,” I pant, holding my mouth open for more ice chips.

  “With the next contraction, I want you to push, Whitney. Push against the contraction and we’ll get this baby out,” the doctor says from where she sits.

  I’m still not sure I can do it, but I hear the clapping in the fourth quarter of the Alabama game start. Trevor starts clapping and I want to tell him to shut the fuck up, but something happens. I can feel my adrenaline start to race; it’s almost like I’m back at that game. It’s giving me energy I didn’t have before.

  I can feel the next contraction coming as the crowd starts to sing along to “Dixieland Delight” and I scream as I push. My eyes meet Ryan’s and I can feel him giving me his strength, I can feel him encouraging me. Looking into those brown depths, I know if he could take this job and do it for me he would – that’s the thing that gives me the last bit of courage and strength I need.

  Just as the crowd says “and Tennessee too,” Stella makes her screaming entrance into the world.

  “She would,” Ryan laughs as he leans in, giving me a kiss. “She would come into the world right as they said Tennessee, she loved that game.”

  Tears stream down my face and I can’t hold them back anymore. “Give her to me,” I beg them as I watch the medical staff clean her off before they lay her on my stomach.

  Through blurry eyes, I count ten fingers, ten toes, I see a dark helmet of hair, thanks to her daddy, and only then do I let myself lean back and relax. She’s screaming, upset that she’s had to leave her comfort, but she’s here and she’s perfect.

  “You did it, Mama,” Ryan mumbles in my ear, reaching out to touch her face. “She’s gorgeous,” he kisses my temple and I can tell by the tone of his voice, he’s as tired as I am.

  “No, we did it,” I close my eyes, letting the moment wash over me, letting the emotions seep out of me. When I’ve had my cry and I’m cradling my daughter, I look over at my brother.

  The ten years younger brother, who wasn’t planned, and has always been my protector. “Come meet your niece, Trevor. I want her to know what a badass uncle she has to go along with her badass dad.”

  Trevor stands with difficulty, but walks over on his own. Leaning down, he gives me a kiss on the cheek.

  “Ain’t nobody more badass than her mom, and I think we’ll all agree to that.”

  The tears that I thought I was holding back? They’re there again and this time I’m not sure they’re gonna stop.

  EPILOGUE

  Whitney

  “Should we put Santa gifts out for her?” I whisper as I reach over to lie Stella down in her crib.

  Ryan gives me a look, motioning us out of the nursery. When we close the door partway and walk down the hallway, he turns to me. “Whit, she’s ten days old. She’s not going to even wonder when she gets older if we did anything for her first Christmas.”

  “Logically I know that, but what if when she’s older, she asks for pictures?”

  “Then she’ll have them of all of us with her at her grandparents’ opening gifts. Babe, don’t overthink this. Let’s just go to the living room, make sure everything is turned off, and sleep while she does. You know as well as I do she’ll be up in a few hours and we’ll be dragging ass tomorrow.”

  He’s right. We’re still trying to get on a schedule and it’s been harder than I imagined it would be. “Sounds like a great plan to me.”

  I almost don’t want to go any further down the hall than our bedroom. There’s a part of me that wants to ask Ryan to make sure everything is shut down and put away, but I know that’s unfair to him. He goes back to work in a couple of days, and we definitely need to be on some sort of routine before he does. I don’t want him tired, out there trying to take care of the public.

  My foot hits the living room carpet and I glance at our tree. There’s a table sitting in front of it that wasn’t there earlier. “What’s that?” I give Ryan a look.

  “Not sure,” he shrugs. “Why don’t you go check it out?”

  I shoot a look over my shoulder as I walk over to the small table. On it is a box that says “open me”. I do as it asks, seeing a piece of paper inside the box that instructs me to “turn around”.

  I do and immediately I gasp and my hand covers my mouth. Ryan is there, on one knee with a ring in his hand, extended towards me. I feel the emotion, the tears already at the surface. There is zero chance of me keeping my shit together.

  “I don’t have anything earth-shattering to say to you, babe. Nothing I haven’t already showed you with how I treat you, and nothing that can mean more than me telling you I love you,” he starts, before he takes a breath. “I just wanna spend the rest of my life sleeping next to you, sharing truths and lies, and hearing you laugh so hard you snort.”

  The laugh I let loose now is a watery one, and I’m overcome with emotion for this amazingly perfect man that chose me.

  “It’s not gonna matter when I’m forty-five and you’re thirty-five?”

  He grabs my hands, kissing the back of both of them before he looks at me, his eyes as dark as I’ve ever seen them. “I’m not going to give a fuck when you’re one hundred and five, and I’m ninety-five. It will never matter to me.”

  I believe him with everything I have. Somewhere in the middle of this ordinary life we’ve been sharing, our fairytale started. It wasn’t with a glass slipper, or some extremely monumental event in our lives.

  “Yes, I’ll marry you.”

  He leaps off the floor and folds me in his arms. Those arms are the strongest I’ve ever felt, my favorite place to be. As he slips the ring onto my finger. I realize our happily ever after started with too much wine and a drunken pew pew.

  THE END

  Sneak Peek of “Tank”

  CHAPTER ONE

  Blaze

  “This is thirty-two, thirty-two show us in route to the wreck at the bottoms,” I notify dispatch as my partner, Logan and I make our way to the call that came over the radio moments before. We’re not far away, five minutes if traffic cooperates. I hang on as Logan navigates us over a bump in the road.

  “Damn county needs to fix these potholes,” I put my hand above my head to keep from hitting the roof of the ambulance.

  The radio cackles as dispatch comes through with some more information about where we’re going. “Be advised we’re hearing now it’s an officer who’s been involved in the collision. They’ve requested the jaws of life.”

  Thank God, Trevor isn’t working today, he texted me earlier telling me he was going fishing, so the fear I feel isn’t as bad as it would be if I were wondering where he is. Going over the list of the guys I know in my head, I hope like hell it’s not Ryan because he and Trevor’s sister are having a baby. Whatever the officer is facing, it’ll be a tough road if they’re trying to raise a newborn while recovering.

  “The bottoms is a damn bad place to wreck,” Logan sighs as we go as fast as we can to the location we�
�ve been called to.

  “It’s always been an accident waiting to happen, no one pays attention to what they’re doing. That one curve has such a blind spot, even if you are paying attention, you could still have an awful wreck. Maybe this will make the county pay to have it fixed.”

  Every time we respond to a wreck down there, it’s my hope, but three fatals in the past three years, maybe a fourth today. They still haven’t done shit about it. My adrenaline kicks in as I see blue lights flashing in the distance. I’m checking the number on the patrol car, but that’s one I don’t recognize.

  There are two trucks sitting on opposite sides of the road from one another. “I thought they said it was two officers.”

  “Me too,” Logan grabs his go bag, like I grab mine, and we get out of the ambulance just as the fire truck comes to a stop beside us. It’s in our best interest to let the fire guys do what they need to do in order to save the person in the wreckage. As soon as we’re given then okay, we’ll move in.

  “I thought it was an officer,” I yell over at Ace, one of the guys from the Moonshine Task Force.

  He looks almost guilty as he sees my face. “It is,” he nods to the truck on the other side of the road. “Tank, he was off today.”

  Hearing the name makes me drop to my knees in the middle of the road. Tears prickle the backs of my eyes, and I do my best to keep my shit together. There’s no way that’s Trevor in there, no way he was enjoying a day off, and he’s ended up in this mess. Trevor can’t be in the mangled carnage that was once a truck, he surely can’t be alive if he is. I watch as Ryan shimmies his way out from under the truck. I’m hoping maybe he’ll tell me everybody’s wrong and it’s not Trevor. Maybe someone else was driving his truck.

  Our eyes meet, and I know by the white pallor of his skin, it’s true. There’s no way Ryan would look like death if it wasn’t his best friend.

  “Trevor?” My voice is weak, my hands shaking, and I’m doing my best to pick myself up off the pavement.

  Ace comes over, grabbing me by the arm, lifting me up, holding me while I try to center myself. It’s a struggle to find my balance when every memory Trevor and I have ever shared is flowing through my mind like a highlight reel of a college football game.

  His full lips smiling at me, moving in for the kisses I always wanted to give him. His strong arms holding me when I tried to pull away. Relaxing in hot water, while I washed his hair and he told me his dreams. The way only he can make me ache and scream. What the fuck were we thinking to let it all go?

  That we had all the time in the world, like anyone else thinks.

  “Yeah,” he nods, devastation written all over his face. It’s hard for me to look at him, because I think what I’m seeing is reflected right back. “Keep our boy alive while I go get his mom and sister.”

  I can tell by the way he says it, it’s going to be hard to keep Trevor alive. He’s probably hanging by a thread right now. Just the thought of it breaks my heart. When the firefighter’s crack the door open and motion us over, I hesitate. For the first time in my career I hesitate and I don’t know if I can look at this man I love, but can’t make it work with. What if this is the last time I see him? What if the last memories he has of me, is not answering one of his texts.

  Right now, this instant, I say a promise. If he texts again, I’ll answer. If he calls, I’ll call him back. No more of this back and forth teenage bullshit we’ve been pulling on one another. It’s time to be adults and admit how we feel.

  “C’mon Blaze,” Logan grabs my arm, taking me to the smoking carcass of the vehicle. “He needs us. He needs you.”

  My feet move, but it’s like they’re being held down by a bunch of boulders and I’m drowning in a sea I can’t swim my way out of. When I finally get to the truck, I look in, unprepared for what I see. Trevor looks dead.

  “He’s breathing,” Logan is taking his vitals, putting a c-collar around his neck, and preparing to get him on a board. “But it’s not regular. Snap the fuck out of it, Blaze. Get it together and lets get him help.”

  It’s then that Trevor makes a pitiful noise in his throat. That noise spurs me on, makes me run back to the ambulance and get the board we’ll need to transport him. Once we get him on the board and in the back of the ambulance, Logan looks at me. “You want to drive or sit back here with him?”

  “With him, I wouldn’t be good driving.”

  Logan nods, and we race like hell for the tele pad where the air evac will meet us to take him to the nearest trauma center an hour away. I administer everything I can to make him more comfortable, watch his low blood pressure and heart rate with a critical eye, and gaze upon his broken and bloodied face with tears streaming down my own. I always joke about how pretty he is. With blood oozing from his eye, running down a now crooked nose, and stopping at his beard, he looks like an MMA fighter. One that’s gone four rounds with the baddest motherfucker out there. I want to take this pain away from him, to make him sit up in this bed and bitch me out for not answering his texts.

  The way Trevor and I left our relationship wasn’t good. We had unfinished business, and I swore we’d get around to it, but lately I’ve ignored his texts because I know he’ll never change. I’ve never wanted a man who insisted I stay at home, but fuck it, I would for Trevor. I truly think I would for him.

  It’s the biggest regret I’ve ever had right now. Giving my report to the air evac nurse over the radio, I see I have two minutes left with him. Two minutes to make him want to fight. Wiping the tears off my face, and clearing my throat, I lean down to his ear, hoping like hell he can hear me.

  “Trevor, you fight. You fight for me, your mom and dad, your sister, your niece and you fight for what we tried to throw away. I didn’t want to listen before, but I’m listening now. I love you, and I want a chance to make this work. Please don’t give up on me. Don’t give up on us.”

  The ambulance comes to a stop and it’s the worst feeling to hand his care over to someone else. I know her though and she assures me she’ll do the best she can to get him to the hospital with the best chance of survival.

  Standing as close as they’ll let me, I fight against the wind when the helicopter takes off, watching until I can no longer see it’s rotating blades in the dying sun.

  With startling clarity, I know I can’t sit here and wait for something to happen. There’s no way in hell I’ll be able to sit in our station and be updated when people remember to call us. I need to be with him, need to be there in case he doesn’t make it out of this alive. “Take me back to the station, back to my car, Logan. I’m heading to Birmingham.”

  “Fuck that,” he shakes his head. “You’re in no shape to be driving. I’ll take you. We’ll find out what’s going on with him together.”

  I nod my okay, because it’s all I can do. Either I go with him or I don’t, and if I don’t, I’m not positive I won’t jump out of my own skin trying to make it there.

  I have no idea how that trip to Birmingham will end up changing my life.

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