“I’m not an addict!”
“I can’t do this right now, Brennen. Talk to me when you can decide.”
“Decide what?”
“Either me or this club.” With that parting sentence Kirra left the club and got into a taxi leaving Brennen standing on the doorstep.
****
“It’s really a good thing you broke up with her. She was finding out too much anyway,” one of the men in the room announced when he called the meeting for that night. He glared at the man before running his hands through his hair.
“He’s right. While she sure is a pretty thing she is a liability.” Richard rubbed his shoulder absently.
“Stop talking about her like that!” Brennen slammed his hand down on the table and the club members jumped in surprise. While he was the most aggressive in a fight, Brennen very rarely was angry outside of a fight. So it was a surprise to himself and the rest of the club when he got angry over Kirra.
“Brennen, the more you bring her here the worse it is going to get for all of us. The police will eventually pick up on who she is and start to follow her. Do you really want that?” someone murmured.
“You don’t think I’ve already thought of that? Kirra stays and whoever doesn’t like it can walk right out of that fucking door. You understand me?”
“She told you to choose between her and the club. She doesn’t really care about you that much if she is forcing you to choose.”
“Everyone out.”
“Brennen—”
“I said everyone out!” Brennen slammed his hand down on the table again and everyone left the room they were holed up in. He leant back in the chair and closed his eyes. He had to get Kirra back and if that meant somehow giving the club up then he would do his best to abide by her wishes.
It had taken him seven years to get to where he was and bring the club back from breaking point but he’d managed it. In the past seven years he’d only had one night stands and had managed to keep his love life out of his business. Then along came Kirra. She’d changed his view on everything.
She was amazing and everything Brennen could ever ask for. He remembered when he was a child and he saw how is mother and father acted around each other he knew that was the type of relationship that he would want when he got older and with Kirra he thought he’d found it. Then the club came around to bite him in the backside.
He was willing to do whatever it took to get Kirra back even if it meant giving up the club.
****
Kirra angrily wiped away the tears that were falling down her cheeks. She should have expected it. She was finally happy with her life for the first time in 10 years and she had to go and ruin it. She remembered back to the day when she left home, finally.
Kirra pulled her already packed suitcase out from under the bed as quietly as she could. She’d graduated a week ago and had managed to scrounge some money away from her peers in school so she could buy a bus ticket as far away from here as she could.
She looked at her watch. 12:15. The bus left at one. She put her jacket on and picked her suitcase up, hoping that if she wasn’t dragging it then it wouldn’t make enough noise that it woke her father up.
She managed to get out of the trailer and out of the park within 10 minutes and without anyone noticing. The walk to the bus station was 23 minutes exactly. She counted every time she had to catch it to school. This time though she was leaving. She was going to become someone. She was going to have a life.
She didn’t truly feel safe until she sat on the bus and it left the small town. Her heartbeat slowed down when the bus finally got onto the road. She’d made it. She was finally free. No more abuse. No more beatings. No more tending to her father. No more anything.
Kirra laid her head back onto the chair and closed her eyes. Maybe for once she would be able to get some decent rest. She hadn’t gotten a good night’s sleep since she was 10. She was soon fast asleep and dreaming about her life in the small town of Rexam.
Kirra frowned when her phone started ringing. Frank. She just held the phone to her ear and didn’t bother saying hello.
“He’s asking where you are.”
“I don’t want to talk to him.”
“Kirra, I warned you what he was like.”
“No need for the ‘I told you so’ speech, Frank.” Kirra lay down on her sofa, the phone wedged between her ear and the chair.
“He’s demanding to know where you are. He says he needs to talk to you.” She heard Frank sigh over the line and tears rolled down her cheeks again. Frank was trying to make sure that everything was okay in her life. He knew about her abusive father and why she’d left home.
“I don’t want to talk to him.” She repeated.
“He says it’s important. You need to tell him about your past, Kirra. It might sway his decision.”
“He’s made his choice.”
“Obviously it’s you! Kirra let him up to see you or so help me I will come and break the door down.”
Maybe it was her. Brennen wouldn’t be here to tell her that he’d chosen the club over her. Well, she didn’t think he would. She sat back up, wiped her face and pressed the end button on her phone. She would at least hear what Brennen had to say to her. That’s the least she could do.
She opened the door when Brennen knocked gently on it. The big man was frowning and it made the scar on his face more prominent. Kirra stepped to the side and allowed him inside her apartment for the first time in the five weeks they’d been dating.
“Brennen—”
“No, let me tell you everything before you say anything. I should have been honest at the beginning with you. I just didn’t want to jeopardize things with you.” Brennen sat on the sofa and waited until Kirra sat down too before he continued talking. “I got involved in the Red Hearts when I was 18. I didn’t mean to. That sounds so ridiculous, but I really didn’t mean to get involved. My father would always say to me to stay away from that area of town. That the Red Hearts were a bad group to mix with and boy was he right.
“I was walking home with one of my friends at the time and we took a shortcut through the Red Hearts area to get home. Adam, my friend, saw someone being beaten on the street and being the kind-hearted person that he was, headed that way. I tried to stop him. I tried so fucking hard to make him turn around and go home, but he wouldn’t listen to me.
“He managed to pull the two men off who were beating the other person, but they turned his anger onto Adam. I got the boy who was beaten out of the way before going back to Adam. I wasn’t sure what had happened in the few minutes I was gone, but there was blood everywhere. I’d never seen so much blood in my life.
“Adam was holding his hands over his stomach. Blood was pouring from him and we both knew he was going to die. I sat on the ground with him and waited. We knew there wasn’t any point in calling an ambulance that the knife had gone through a major artery. Adam died in my arms.”
“I’m so sorry, Brennen.” Kirra inched closer to him and slid her hand into his. He wrapped both of his hands around hers and took a stuttering breath before continuing; obviously the story was hard to tell.
“The men had run off so I called the police when Adam died. They were there within minutes. They took me into the station for questioning and didn’t bother using me as a suspect when I told them which area of town we were in. Everything was okay for the first few weeks after his death, we had his funeral and everything went back to normal, just without Adam.
“It was exactly a month after he’d died and I came home to find the police surrounding my home. A policewoman came up to me and asked me who I was and if I knew the people who lived in the house. I explained that it was my home and I was their son. She told me that unfortunately that there had been an accident.
“A fucking accident. There were bullets in both of my parent’s heads. I had to identify them. In the past month I had lost my best friend and my family. I knew who had done it. It was the Red Hearts. I don’t k
now why though, I still don’t know why they did it.”
“You don’t have to carry on if you don’t want to.” Kirra rested her head on Brennen’s shoulder when he didn’t carry on for a while. Brennen rubbed his cheek against the top of her head and sighed quietly.
“About a week after it happened I headed down towards the Red Hearts part of town. I just started throwing shit. I saw a brick so I tossed it through a window; I saw a bicycle so I threw it at a car. I kept it up until someone came out and saw me. That was how I met Phil. He was the president of the Red Hearts at the time.
“He took me inside and sat me down. He told me that Adam had managed to kill one of his members when they were fighting. Apparently he’d hit the guy around the head with a brick and caused brain damage. When they found out Adam had died and that his parents had moved away they targeted me. Instead of killing me they decided to hit me right where it hurt and killed my parents.
“They somehow knew that I had no other family and that I was now completely alone so he offered me a deal. He said to me that because one of his members had died that he would take me in and look after me. All I had to do was go with them on their run.
“I thought why not? I’d lost my parents and my best friend, I had nothing left. So I left school and went on the run with them and that’s how I got the scar. I was there for seven years and just been put in charge of the club for good. That’s about it.”
“So you’ve been there for seven years unwillingly?”
“At the beginning it was unwillingly, but over the past seven years they turned into my family so I stayed for them. When Phil got sick he let me take over.”
“What’s your decision then? I’m glad that you’ve told me everything about it and how you got involved, but do you really want to give your family up for someone like me?” Kirra looked down at their hands and sighed.
“Kirra, they’ll always be my family. I just won’t be working with them. I could see them whenever I wanted to. I could give it up in a heartbeat if it meant being with you.”
“What happened to the cocky Brennen?” Kirra asked with a smile on her face.
“He’s still there, but you make the loving side of me come out. It’s something I’ve not seen in nearly seven years.”
“Since you’ve told me your past I guess I need to tell you mine.”
“Kirra, I don’t need to know about your past if you don’t want to tell me.” Brennen turned and pulled her into his arms. Kirra snuggled her head in the crook of Brennen’s shoulder and took a deep breath.
“No, I need to do this.”
“It’s entirely up to you, love.”
“I left home when I was 18. My father was an abusive alcoholic. It started when I was about 10, right after my mother left. He blamed me for it. He said that she left because I wasn’t good enough, that I wasn’t pretty enough. He said that my mother blamed me because she lost all of her good looks when she gave birth to me.
“I was only 10 at the time so I wasn’t completely sure what was happening. My mother said she was going out to get some milk but she never returned. I thought she would come back after a week, but after about a month I realized that she wasn’t coming back.
“My father would drink and drink until he was paralytic. He wouldn’t be able to walk straight and he would keep falling over. That wasn’t so bad. The worse time would be when he was starting to get drunk. He would get angry and throw bottles at me when I was doing my homework.
“I remember it was my 11th birthday and he hadn’t gotten me anything and I wasn’t really that surprised. I was just getting in bed for the night when the door to my bedroom slammed open. He was almost paralytic, but not enough. He could still walk. He grabbed me by the hair and dragged me out of bed.
“I screamed, but he kicked me in the jaw. I bit my tongue and blood just streamed down my face. That’s when it all started. It would happen at least once a week and I saved every penny I ever earned to escape after graduation. I ran and came here. I got a job at Denny’s and here I am now.”
“We’re both just two people who get the shit end of life,” Brennen whispered and ran his hand down Kirra’s back.
“I don’t want you to have to give something up for me. I’m not that sort of person.”
“To be honest I’m glad you made me choose. I was getting angrier and bitter as the years went on. I needed you to come into my life and wake me up. The club was making me depressed. I never wanted to be there and it’s just caused me too much pain. When I found you everything suddenly got brighter.”
“You do realize how cheesy that sounds right?” Kirra giggled and Brennen couldn’t help the smile that spread across his face. He held onto Kirra’s hip and flipped them so she was below him.
“Do you forgive me?” Brennen kissed Kirra’s nose.
“Of course. We’re just two broken people who found each other.” Kirra smiled and leaned up to kiss Brennen. This was good. It felt better to get everything off her chest. It was good to know Brennen’s past and for him to know hers. Life was perfect now.
Angels Die Hard: A Motorcycle Club Erotic Romance Page 4