by Ami Van
“Forget it,” he mumbles.
“How do you make someone your old lady but she doesn’t know it? You didn’t tell her or have the talk with her or something?” Tristan was facing him and watching now.
“No. We didn’t talk about it,” he answers.
“If you didn’t want her to go why didn’t you just tell her or tell Jenks she’s your girl? Why complicate shit just so you can sit here and mope?” Tristan asks him, shaking his head.
He had no clue. Actually, yeah, he did. Him and Minx? They were two stubborn ass people. She’d wanted him to be the one to tell Jenks to back off and he’d wanted her to be the one to say ‘no’ to Jenks and choose him.
Tucker walks over and takes a seat next to him, lighting another cigarette. He was thankful for it since it meant his conversation with Tristan wouldn’t go any further.
“Might be time to send Kendall on her way. She’s already stirring up unnecessary shit since we got back here,” Tucker says. “Christ Dakota, how good did you fuck her for her to be so dick-whipped.”
“I don’t think it matters how good he’s fucked her. The bitch has high hopes on being someone’s old lady and for some reason, she had her sight set on Dakota,” Tristan answers.
“I haven’t touched her even before I came out here,” he tells the two.
“I’m not trying to make this shit my business but Mercy’s got other shit she’s gotta deal with. She doesn’t need to be watching her back all the time in her own house. These sluts forget that this is HER house that’s roofing them. Fucking disrespectful,” Tucker says.
Tucker’s phone must have been buzzing because he pulls it out of his pocket. His brows furrow once he sees the caller.
“Sheriff, what can I do for you?” Tucker asks.
He couldn’t hear the conversation from the sheriff’s end but Tucker was standing up from his seat a moment later.
“I’ll be right there,” Tucker says before he hangs up.
“Shit,” he says looking at them. “We need to get down to the hospital. Austin’s been shot in a drive-by. Come on,” his club Prez says. “Tristan, find Jenks and Minx. Make sure they’re okay.”
They were already heading to the garage where Maddox was already hauling ass out.
“What’s going on?” Atticus asks as he hurries onto his bike.
“We need to get down to the hospital,” Tucker answers.
They were hauling ass trying to catch up to Maddox. The man was like a bat out of hell though and they were barely keeping up.
Once they get there, he sees the line of bikes parked in the lot that they pull in. Maddox had already disappeared through the Emergency Room entrance when they were running in. Kyle and a group of their brothers were standing in the waiting room, taking up all the available room with some having to stand.
“What happened?” Maddox asks Kyle just as they reach the group.
“We were gassing up at the station on 3rd and Svelte. Austin was first in, first out and waiting for the rest of us at the station exit. Shit happened so fast all I caught sight of was a black van and saw him go down off his bike. I got to him and a couple of the brothers took off after the van. I haven’t heard back from them yet. I followed the ambulance here and the doctors took him back,” Kyle answers.
“He was the only one hit?” Maddox asks. “Just him when there are about twenty of you guys riding.”
Didn’t take a genius to understand what Maddox was getting at. This was club related and Austin wasn’t part of their club. Hitting one of their own would mean immediate retaliation but this was a taunt. This had to be Diaz. This had to be Reaper.
“Maddox, the nurse says you need to stop at the counter.” Kyle points to the nurse he was referring to and Maddox immediately heads over.
Ten minutes later, Minx was running in. Jenks right behind her.
“Mad!” she yells and was rushing to Maddox. “What’s going on? Have you seen him? How is he?”
Tucker and Atticus walks over to where they were standing in the hallway. He follows with Tristan and Kyle behind him.
“I don’t know, Mercy. I just got here,” Maddox answers her, his arm wrapped around her, pulling her head onto his shoulder. “I haven’t seen the doctor yet but they’re working on him.”
“What happened?” she asks again. “How did he get shot?”
“Drive-by,” Tucker answers her.
“He’s gonna be okay,” she whispers. “Austin never hurt anyone. He’s so good. He’s gonna be okay. He’s gonna be okay, right Mad?”
Maddox takes her over to a small bench close to the double doors and sits her down. The two of them holding onto each other.
“We need to get a hold of the boys that took off after the van,” Tucker says quietly. “We should have heard back by now. Send a couple more out that way just in case something happened to them,” Tucker orders.
Atticus takes the order and was already heading towards the group waiting. He sees four leave and Atticus walks back to them.
He looks back at Minx who was still curled up into Maddox’s side. She was pale. He could tell her mind was churning. He walks over to her side and kneels down next to her.
“He’ll be okay,” he tries to reassure her, holding one of her hands.
She turns and looks at him, nodding her head. Her eyes were wide, huge. Tears were on the brim but a few had already left a trail down her face.
“Yeah. He’s such a good person. He wouldn’t leave me. He wouldn’t leave Maddox,” she says as if she were telling herself more than she was talking to him.
The sound of doors opening had her and Maddox up on their feet, her hand slipping out of his hold. He stands and sees a burly doctor approaching them.
“Are you Austin Ryans’s family?” the doctor asks. For a burly man, he had a tender voice.
“Yes,” Maddox answers. Minx was still glued to his side, under his arm. “How bad is it?” Maddox asks.
“The slug hit him in the upper right quadrant and ricocheted off his clavicle. In doing so, it severed an artery,” the doctor replies.
“What are you saying?” Maddox asks.
“I’m sorry, sir. We did what we could but we weren’t able to save him. His injuries were too extensive and we didn’t have enough time to operate to try and repair the damages.”
“Oh god,” Maddox whispers.
“I’m so sorry but he’s gone. There’s nothing more we can do,” the doctor says softly.
It took a second before the hallway fills with Minx’s wailing and hysterical screaming.
“NO! NO!! He’s okay! He’s fine! NO!”
He wasn’t sure where she got the strength from but she’d ripped out of Maddox’s arms and had shoved the doctor out of the way, running down the hall. Both Maddox and Tucker caught up to her right before she gets to the door and she was fighting them off. Crying, wailing...screaming the whole time. Fighting to get through the doors. Fighting the reality of the news.
It gutted him. He stood there gutted seeing her lose it like that. There was nothing he could do to take what pain was overwhelming her.
“Mercy. Shh...” Maddox was holding on to her, in his lap, right there on the floor. Tucker sitting right next to them looking completely defeated.
“It’s not true! Austin wouldn’t leave us! He wouldn’t leave!” she screams. She had a grip of Maddox’s jacket and was shaking him. “Mad! Go back there! Make them help him! Do something! Fucking do something!” she’s screaming.
Maddox shakes his head at her, pulling her closer until her head was buried in his chest, her body visibly racking with her sobs. “I can’t, Mercy. He’s gone. There’s nothing we can do.”
Knights were coming into the hallway after hearing the commotion, he assumes. Seeing the scene before them must have told them what happened. He sees some of them walking away, head hanging low. Some even shed tears.
He watches Maddox rocking her slowly in his arms. He can see how tightly the man was holding her
with his eyes red and his jaw set as if he was holding himself together just as much.
Tucker reaches for her and Maddox reluctantly let’s go of her.
“Take her home,” he tells Tucker. “She shouldn’t be here right now.”
“I drove,” Penny whispers from behind him. He hadn’t notice her walk up. “I can drive her back.”
Once Minx was in Tucker’s arm, limp as if all life had been drained out of her, Maddox was on his feet walking over to where he stood with Tristan and Atticus. He wasn’t sure where Kyle had gone off to. Pinching his eyes before he speaks, Maddox looks up at them.
“I’m gonna have to stay here and do what they need me to do for him. Can I get you all to go through the house? Check every single room, every single cabinet and remove every gun you find. I don’t want those in the house with her like this. You can stash them in the clubhouse but make sure they’re locked up,” he says.
“I’m sorry,” Atticus says to him. “He was a good kid.”
“He was a better man,” Maddox replies.
“We’ll get it done,” he tells Maddox. “I’m sorry, man.”
CHAPTER 18
Minx
Warm. Austin was always so warm. So gentle.
In all the bullshit that they’ve gone through, he’d never once faltered in being that person. All the shit they’ve gone through together. The fun they had. The hair-pulling pranks they’ve concocted to torture Maddox. All of that ends...now.
She should have stayed to see him. To make sure it was true because her mind wasn’t wrapping around it. It wasn’t bending to accept. And her chest was so tight and so...heavy. Whoever said that death leaves a hole inside was a liar. She didn’t feel a hole. She felt filled to overflowing with sadness. Despair. Then there was pain...so much of it. It weighed so heavy she could barely breathe.
She never even got to say goodbye. Never got the chance to beg him not to leave her. It should have been her. Not someone as good as Austin. It wasn’t fair.
She sits up in her bed. Alone in the dark. Of course, Dakota wouldn’t be there. Hadn’t he told her what they had would be done if she went with Jenks earlier?
Wasn’t it just earlier in the day that they were all riding to Austin’s Lake? Austin’s Lake. He’d called dibs on it the first time they’d found it on one of their rides.
She climbs out of bed and leaves her room. Making a left, walking towards the end of the hall, pausing with her hand on the doorknob at Austin’s room. She opens it and can immediately smell him...with a hint of Tristan. Tris must have been staying in the room while Austin slept in one of the apartments at the clubhouse. He’d always preferred to sleep there like the bachelor that he is but both he and Maddox gave that up and stayed in the house so she wouldn’t be alone. She’d known that they had girls over when they spent the night in the clubhouse though. Austin and Maddox. Her brothers. Not by blood but by choice.
She walks over to the bed and climbs under the sheet, curling into herself. She can just imagine Austin walking in here, seeing her like this and then telling her something stupidly gross. Like how long it’s been since he’s washed his sheets or something.
She looks around his room. The different motorcycle models that he’d put together were lined up on shelves along his wall. One whole wall was covered with posters of girls on bikes. Another whole wall had posters of some of his favorite movies. For a tall black guy, Austin absolutely loved western movies. He was the biggest Clint Eastwood fan she’d ever known.
The house seems so quiet and she wondered if anyone was even here. As if he sensed her question, Maddox pops his head through the doorway. He walks in, leaving the door cracked for the stream of light illuminating from the hallway.
“It’s quiet,” she whispers to Maddox. “Like the world is already mourning him.”
Maddox sits down on the other side of the bed, bringing his legs up and leaning his back against the headboard.
“If he saw us in here, he’d say he hadn’t washed these sheets in two weeks,” Maddox tells her.
She actually cracks a smile, remembering she’d just thought the same exact thing.
“Then he’d say ‘let’s watch Dirty Harry’,” she says. She can feel Maddox’s chuckle shaking the bed. “I’ve watched it with him a thousand times and still have no clue what the movie’s about.”
“Because he’s speaking the lines and you’re too annoyed to focus on anything else,” Maddox says.
“His 30th birthday is in two months. He told me he was gonna find a mail order bride from Russia as a gift to himself,” she tells Maddox.
“Like he needed to do that if he really wanted to settle down. He never had any problems with the ladies,” Maddox says.
“Yeah. No problem with the ladies. It’s the bitches he had trouble with.”
Maddox actually laughs.
“Now that he’s gone, are you leaving too?” she blurts out without thinking.
“Why the fuck would you think that?”
“Because Tucker’s here and Austin...he’s gone,” she whispers and then hated herself immediately for saying the words.
“We’re still a family, Mercy. This is still our home. I’m not going anywhere. Neither are you. We stick together, like we always have.”
“Can we leave his room the way it is for a while? A long while?” she asks.
“We don’t have to do anything to it. We won’t even wash the sheets or his dirty clothes in the laundry basket. I sure as hell ain’t folding his underwear.”
They were quiet for a moment. She’d actually thought he might have fallen asleep until she sees him picking up the stuffed Pluto from the window sill.
“Dakota called it quits with me earlier today, you know. Even though we weren’t even in what people would call a relationship.”
“What? Over that shit with that blonde bitch?”
“Yeah...I mean, no. It just started from there.”
“What did she say to you to get you pissed anyway?” he asks.
“Just the truth. That Dakota’s fucked her.”
“A long with all his brothers, most likely. She’s a club slut, Mercy. That’s kinda what they do.”
“Not just that...she reminded me that he’ll be leaving. That she’ll be going too and that I can’t think I’m any better than her because...at least she hadn’t been fucked by Reapers,” she whispers out.
“That fucking cunt,” Maddox hisses. He never used that word around her before.
“It got me mad and when Jenks asked me out, I accepted. Dakota said if I went, we were done and I did it anyway. Am I wrong? Because what does it matter when it ends when it’s eventually ending anyway?”
“The guys in love with you, Mercy. You had a jealous fit and so did he. He probably didn’t even mean what he said.”
“In love with me? Maddox, have you not seen him? He’s freaking swoony hot. He can have any girl he wants and he probably has too. He sure as hell isn’t going to settle for someone with baggage like mine. He’s deep into his cut and I’m...damaged. Reaper damaged.”
“Don’t ever let me fucking hear you say that shit again, Mercy. Just don’t. You women are ridiculously blind sometimes. And swoony hot? Jesus. You’re reading too many of those romance novels. Just...trust me on this. I have a dick but sometimes I know what I’m talking about. I see the way he watches you and I know what that means.”
“Wait...romance novels?” she asks.
“Austin didn’t tell you? We have a family account. Every one of those lame ass biker romance novels you buy, we see the receipt, dummy. We can even download it onto our devices. Why do you even like those? Their bikes are generic and why do they have to all be swoony sexy? Like every MC is full of muscular, sexy men. Shit’s so far from the truth, a ten-mile pole couldn’t reach it.”
“Ohmygod,” she says before pulling the covers over her face. “I hate you guys.”
Maddox actually laughs out loud. It was a great sound to hear in the room. It made
her feel a speck better. Then instantly, it made her wish Austin was laughing with him too.
“What happened, Mad? I want to believe this is random but...”
“I don’t know. But I’ll have my pound of flesh when I find out. I promise you that.”
“I’m going to the clubhouse. I want to lock up his room there. I don’t want anyone in there, touching his things, taking what’s left of him away from us,” she blurts out. “I just...I just want to keep everything the way they were.”
“As long as we don’t stay long. I don’t want you around all the noise. You have enough noise in your head as it is.” He was already getting off of the bed.
“Sometimes I wonder if you’re an undercover therapist or something.”
He laughs at her like there was some joke he wasn’t telling.
The night was cooler than she had expected for a summer night. But of course, Maddox would know. He’d grabbed her hoodie on the way down the stairs and threw it at her back when she was walking down.
They walk together quietly to the clubhouse which was quiet tonight. Midnight and there weren’t music loudly blasting into the still air. Lights were dim and there wasn’t anyone hanging outside. Somber. Though appreciated, she wonders how much of it was sincere. Austin wasn’t a part of their MC. Neither was she or Maddox. Yet, they’d allowed these guys to basically take over their home just so she can have her brother close.
Her mind wanders to Dakota. She hadn’t seen him or talked to him since the hospital. And even before that, things didn’t end well. A part of her hoped to see him. What she would give to be close to him right now. To hide away in between his arms, disappear in him. Maybe then this nightmare won’t be so real...so raw.
They walk inside. Music was softly playing. Some of the girls were coupled up with their guys for the night on the couch, watching tv. Every stool at the bar was full but it wasn’t rowdy just soft chattering. A few of them nod at her and Maddox as they walk by. She was grateful they didn’t want to talk. She didn’t really want to say anything to anyone right now.