***
Day 32
Kraken (5:15): Or else what?
Ruthie (5:22): Really? You’re going to finish a conversation from twenty days ago?
Kraken (5:23): Shit happens.
Ruthie (5:25): You catch your bad guy yet?
Kraken (5:26): Working on it.
Ruthie (5:27): That’s helpful.
Kraken (5:28): I try.
Kraken (5:29): Going again. Love you too.
***
Day 44
“Hello?” I answered tiredly.
I’d worked a double shift today at Dane’s, then a single shift at Halligans and Handcuffs.
I’d literally worked myself into the ground in hopes that I wouldn’t have to be at home long before I fell asleep once again.
It was easier that way.
And I’d been asleep for nearly two hours when my phone rang.
It was now eleven fifty-three at night, and if it wasn’t someone important on the phone, I’d start losing my shit.
“This Ruthie?” A gruff man’s voice asked.
He sounded like he was a chain smoker his voice was so rough.
“Yeah, this is Ruthie,” I answered.
“This is Parker, I’m here with Sterling,” he said.
I blinked. “Then why isn’t Sterling calling me?”
“Because he’s running a fever like a little fuckin’ girl, and he won’t take the fuckin’ meds I’m trying to give him because he’s hallucinating. So I’m calling you to talk to him in hopes that he’ll unclench his fuckin’ teeth and take his fuckin’ meds,” Parker explained tightly.
I blinked. “Why is he running a fever?”
The Parker guy sighed.
“I’m not at liberty to tell you,” he answered stiffly.
“Was he shot? Is he hurt? Tell me!” I demanded.
“My God, you’re as bad as him, blowing stuff way out of proportion,” Parker grumbled.
“Ruthie?” A seriously sluggish sounding Sterling called.
“Sterling? Hey baby, are you okay?” I asked.
“’m fine. Whatchoo doin’ right now?” He asked.
I laughed softly under my breath.
“I was sleeping.” I told him.
“Good. At least one of us should be sleepin.’ ‘m so freakin’ tired I could sleep for a month,” he whispered. “’s it okay?”
“Is what okay, honey?” I asked.
“To take the medicine,” he groaned.
“Yeah, baby. It’s okay,” I answered.
“Good,” he said. “’Cause I didn’t want to be killed by taking some terrorists medicine.”
With that he said, “‘Luh you.” And hung up.
I started to freak the fuck out, because the moment I said that, I started to think of ‘what if.’
What if that guy wasn’t on Sterling’s team?
What if that was a terrorist?
What if he wasn’t really sick?
I tried to call the number back, but it immediately went to voicemail.
The next number I called was immediately sent to voicemail.
“Fuck you, too, Silas,” I growled, flicking to the next name on the list.
Loki.
“Hello?” Loki asked, sounding tired.
“Do you know a guy named Parker?”
“Yeah, fucker slit my throat.”
I gasped, my stomach dropping in dismay.
“Oh, no,” I moaned. “Oh, God. I told Sterling to take the medicine that Parker was offering him.”
I hadn’t realized I was hyperventilating until Loki started yelling at me.
“Ruthie!” Loki bellowed.
I put the phone back to my ear.
“Yeah?” I whispered forlornly.
“He’s on Sterling’s team.”
I closed my eyes and let my head drop to my hands.
“Thank God.”
“What was the call about?” Loki asked once I’d calmed down somewhat.
“He was running a fever and the man, Parker, wanted to give him meds but he wouldn’t take it without talking to me,” I answered.
“Got it. Don’t freak out. He’s fine.”
It wasn’t until much later that I realized I’d never gotten around to asking Loki what he meant by Parker slitting his throat.
Was that how he’d gotten that scar?
Needless to say, I didn’t sleep so well that night, worrying about Sterling and whether or not I’d have to kick this Parker guy’s ass for slitting Loki’s throat.
***
Day 54
Kraken (10:22): I’m fine.
Ruthie (10:24): You better be.
Kraken (10:25): I am, promise.
Ruthie (10:26): What happened?
Kraken (10:27): Don’t drink a foreign country’s water without boiling it first.
Ruthie (10:28): That’s not funny.
Kraken (10:28): Trust me, I’m not being funny.
Ruthie (10:30): When are you coming home?
Ruthie (10:42): Sterling?
Ruthie (12:22): Shit hell piss.
***
Day 63
It’d been sixty-three days since I’d seen Sterling.
And in that sixty-three days, a lot had happened.
I’d rented the house across the street from Garrison and moved what minimal things I had into it.
I’d started school.
Sawyer had had her baby.
I’d worked.
Mostly, though, I’d listened.
Which was a good thing, because I’d learned all kinds of things.
Such as the fact that Sterling was on another dangerous mission that involved the same senator’s wife that he’d been on months before.
I’d also learned that Cormac’s death wasn’t an accident.
That somebody had cut the brake lines on my car expertly, which had contributed to why he hadn’t been able to stop.
Which I’d found out only moments before during a party celebrating the birth of Silas and Sawyer’s child.
Apparently bikers tended to have chatty, loose lips when they were three sheets to the wind.
Which had a lot to do with why I had heard in the first place.
Silas and the rest of The Dixie Wardens were pretty tight lipped about things when they didn’t want their women to know.
And since Sterling wasn’t here to tell me, the bunch of badass bikers, and one really annoying baseball coach, had taken it upon themselves to hide it from me as they discussed whether it was a good idea to tell Sterling.
I’d stood listening outside the door that Baylee, Sebastian’s wife, had told me was ‘church.’
A place where the members went to discuss important matters that involved other people’s lives, apparently.
“Debated on whether to tell him anything…” Silas muttered darkly.
My mouth dropped open as I listened to Silas tell the group about how the brake lines on Cormac’s car were purposefully cut.
“You can’t tell him. If he finds out, he’ll be focusing on what’s going on at home instead of what’s going on there,” I declared, bursting through the door.
“He deserves to know,” Garrison defended, surprising me.
“And do you remember the last freakin’ mission he went on? Do you really want to add to the burden right now by telling him that Cormac’s death wasn’t an accident, but murder?” I hissed.
“I think that you should let him decide that,” Sterling said angrily from behind me.
I winced.
Maybe I should’ve scanned the room before I went bursting into rooms.
Then again…one would think that the man that loved her would’ve told her he was home instead of hiding out in a room!
“What are you doing here?” I yelled somewhat irately.
His brows lifted at my tone.
“Where else would I be?” He aske
d.
I stomped my foot. “In Iraq?” I asked snottily.
“I got home,” he explained.
“And what…” I asked. “You weren’t planning on telling me?”
“I would’ve told you…had you arrived on time,” he growled.
I narrowed my eyes at him.
“I had to work! What’d you want me to do? Leave early just because there was a party going on…one in which I didn’t know you were going to be at?” I asked. “Why would I want to be around here when every single one of them,” I said, pointing my fingers at the men on either side of him. “Remind me of you. Do you know how torturous that is?”
The nerve!
Then he smiled!
Smiled!
“I missed you too, Ruthie,” he said. “Now come here and give me a freakin’ hug.”
I ran and threw myself into his arms.
My body hit his so hard that he bumped backwards against the wall, but he held me tightly throughout.
“I hate that you’re gone so much,” I whispered to him.
He kissed my forehead.
“It’s my job, baby,” he whispered.
“I know,” I told him. “It still sucks, though. Don’t do anything stupid, either,” I continued.
He leaned back from me.
“Whatever I do won’t be stupid, honey. What I do will be justice. For Cormac,” he insisted.
“Yeah, but he wouldn’t want you to be going to jail, a place I know you won’t like. Nor would he want you to be dishonorably discharged from the SEALS, when Lord knows he was so proud of you for accomplishing that honor,” I informed him.
He leaned forward and kissed my forehead.
“We’ll see,” he said. “Looks like they’ve got the guy anyway.”
I scowled. “Who was it?”
He looked at me warily before turning me to look at a picture I’d not noticed sitting on the table.
And my whole world dropped, and I fainted.
Fucking fainted.
Chapter 19
If you don’t want to be with me because I’m loud and speak my mind, fine. Go be with that boring bitch who’ll probably only give you missionary and never suck you off. You deserve the bitch and her Hamburger Helper.
-Ruthie’s secret thoughts
Ruthie
My eyes were wide as saucers as they stared at the man that had been partially responsible for me marrying Bender.
“What…why…how?” I asked Bender’s father, aghast that he was even standing in front of me.
Well…sitting. He was currently being held in a sort of cell type thing that was at the Dixie Warden clubhouse.
His hands were in cuffs on the table in front of him, and he was really not happy to see me.
I hadn’t seen him in years upon years, and he was all of a sudden here? Why?
John, Bender’s father, glared at me.
“Why should you be happy when my boy is dead and in the cold ground? I never should’ve listened to Reena,” he growled.
“What are you talking about?” I asked, startled.
“But no, I did, because I loved her. Then look where it got us. Bender dead. Our grandkid dead. All because you couldn’t keep your fucking legs closed,” he hissed.
My spine straightened. “What are you talking about?”
“I couldn’t believe it when I got the letter saying you were let out,” he hissed. “You were supposed to be in there for another year before I had to worry about you getting out. Then there was the letter, and Reena started to freak out about it all. She wouldn’t leave well enough alone. Things would have worked out. I would have had you taken care of but she just had to get me involved right now. So I had to come take care of it…of you…before you could make this world even worse than it already is. But those stupid neighbors of yours…fucked everything up. Bunch of imbeciles. So here I am, sitting in a jail cell when I should’ve been at home with my wife.”
I looked over to the man that was to become my husband and raised a questioning brow at him.
He gestured to the other room, and I turned on my heel and left, leaving John where he sat in his chair, fuming at being manhandled by a bunch of ‘biker scum.’
“How’d he get here?” I asked in confusion. “And why’s he here instead of at the police station?”
Sterling turned and gestured to the far side of the room, and my eyebrows probably lined up with my hairline as I saw who was leaning against the wall.
“What are you doing here?” I asked Able.
“That was an apology,” Able said sincerely to Sterling.
Sterling’s face was once again blank.
“What do you mean, it was an apology?” I asked in confusion.
“Came home, saw my wife looking at a baby picture of Sterling again, and realized that I’d fucked up. Knew that I should’ve fixed it years ago, but it was seeing you with my girl that made me realize that I would’ve given anything for time with her, and I’d purposefully kept you from her all these years,” he said sincerely.
My eyes watered.
So much time was lost, for both Sterling and me, with our respective parent.
How would our life be had we known each other from the moment we were younger?
Definitely not about to be married, that’s what.
“So you what…just found the guy that The Dixie Wardens MC couldn’t find? How is that possible? I thought you were an oil man. What kind of skills does an oil man have that can find a man who even trained professionals can’t find?” I asked.
Able’s face continued to stay blank, but his eyes were saying something completely different.
“That’s because he’s not just an oil tycoon. He’s a fucking hit man,” Silas said from behind us.
I turned in surprise.
“What?” I gasped.
Silas nodded. “Took me a while. Had my hands full or we would’ve found out about John Wait before…but my resources were split trying to find out about you, too. So it took longer than I would’ve liked. Ended up that we found him at the same time, but I wanted to see Able’s skills, just what he was capable of, so we let him bring John in.”
“You’re a freakin’ hit man?” I asked, spinning around to stare at my ‘father.’
He winced. “Was, yes.”
“What…how…why?” I asked. “And why come back? What are you hoping to accomplish?”
“I was hoping to accomplish a relationship with my daughter that I’ve done nothing but think about for the last fifteen years. I was hoping that, one day, I’d be able to see her smile again like I had when she was just a girl. And I’m not a ‘hit man’ per se. I was a contract agent for the United States Government. Bit of a difference,” he said defensively.
I shook my head, the beginnings of a headache forming at the base of my neck.
“This is all so fucked up. So completely fucked up,” I said, shaking my head, rubbing my neck with my hand as I closed my eyes.
Firm, warm hands captured my head, and I was pulled firmly into Sterling’s arms.
“You wanna go home?” He asked softly.
“Yeah,” I answered. “I do.”
“Then let’s do it.”
So we left everyone behind.
Things were far from over with both John and Able.
But I really, really just wanted to lay in Sterling’s arms right then, and forget the world around us.
Tomorrow we’d deal with the rest.
Tomorrow we’d face what I didn’t want to face today.
***
“Does it make us dirty?” I asked softly as Sterling got into the bed next to me.
“Does what make us dirty?” He asked, groaning when his back finally found purchase on the bed.
It was a nice bed.
I’d gotten a little help from Sterling’s hefty bank account to furnish the house.
I’d gotten a new fridge, washe
r and dryer, dishwasher and bed.
The rest was thrift store finest, but it would do for now.
I knew he’d want a nice bed, and I wanted to make sure that he had it.
I wanted him to have everything that he ever wanted.
“That we’re step brother and step sister,” I whispered, rolling over until I could look into his tired face.
He was tanner than when he’d left.
And he had a new scar on his hand that I’d never seen before…one that I assumed was the reason for his fever.
I didn’t bother to ask how he’d gotten such an ugly scar.
The less I knew, the better.
His eyes opened when I said ‘step sister.’
“It’s not dirty since we didn’t even know our parents were married. It’d only be dirty if we’d known each other since we were five and used to take baths together,” he answered sincerely.
I grinned.
“I don’t know,” I said, letting my hands roam up his sides as I sat up and straddled his hips.
His cock instantly started to harden as he took me in, looking me up and down.
I was wearing one of his t-shirts, a black one with the Punisher Skull on it.
My ass was bare, seeing as he seemed to make my panties disintegrate, and since I was somewhat fond of my panties, I decided to circumvent the inevitable and just gone without.
My breasts were free under my shirt, not just because Sterling was just as rough with my bras as he was with my panties, but because bras were just plain uncomfortable all the way around.
His hands went up to my hips, holding me tightly as he ground his erection up into me.
“I missed you,” I said softly, looking down into his eyes.
He’d shaved his beard to a more manageable length than what he’d come home with, and I found that I missed the scruffiness.
Although I liked him clean cut, too, I also liked him a little bit wild.
“I missed you too. Scared shitless about what I’d come home to, but I knew that my brothers would take care of you,” he murmured, running his hand up over the flat expanse of my belly, to come to a rest in between my breasts.
“What did Silas have to say?” I asked.
Silas had followed us home, and had spoken to Sterling while I’d taken a quick shower and started dinner.
Right To My Wrong (The Heroes of The Dixie Wardens MC Book 8) Page 18