Nowhere but Here

by Katie McGarry

  Shit. I hooked up with Eli’s daughter.

  Fuck. I poured out my soul to her.

  Damn, I’m falling in love.

  Emily’s pressed tight into my body with her back to me. My arm is slung over her, my fingers splayed over her flat stomach. A man of my word, I kept her monsters away and Emily slept deep. When daylight hit the window, I drifted off...cradling her in my arms...and I don’t do that. I’ve never slept with a girl.

  I close my eyes and breathe deeply again. She smells so damn good and feels like heaven. There’s a shifting inside me. Emotions everywhere. Emily’s going to leave. She’s going to return home to Florida and leave me.

  Emily sucks in air then peeks at me from over her shoulder. Big dark eyes. The type a guy can easily get lost in and I did. I got lost and now I’m screwed.

  “Hi.” Emily’s eyes flicker between the bed and me. She’s awkward. Unsure. Possibly regretting what we did.

  “Hey,” I respond.

  “What time is it?”

  I reach over Emily and grab my cell off the windowsill. With a swipe of my finger, it springs to life. “Four.”

  The late-afternoon sunlight streams in from the cracks of the shade in my room and highlights the dust hanging in the air. We’ve slept the day away. Emily discreetly yanks at the blanket, covering one of my new favorite parts of her body I love to worship.

  There’s one text from Olivia:

  I want to see you and my granddaughter. Come back now. You can’t keep running from this. Life and death happen regardless of what you want.

  A ripple of anger through my system. I didn’t run and I don’t care for reminders of the death sentence I can’t control.

  Me: She’s waking up now. We’ll be there soon.

  “Olivia wants to see you. I told her I’ll bring you back.”

  “Okay.”

  “Want to take a shower?”

  Emily fingers the hem of the blanket that’s now tucked close to her neck. “I can wait.”

  I caress her face. Fuck me. Just fuck me. I can’t do it. I can’t treat her as a hook-up, but where the hell do we go from here? I knew this. I knew the aftermath, but I couldn’t resist her last night. Kissing her, holding her, it was like being called home.

  A squeak of hinges and my eyes snap to the living room through the cracked door of my bedroom. Adrenaline pushes into my veins as I grab for my knife on the floor.

  “Oz?” Mom calls out. “Emily?”

  “Shit.” I’m in motion, tossing another blanket over Emily as concerns for her modesty fly into my head. I roll to spring off the bed, but I’m not fast enough. Right as I plant a foot on the floor I glance up and meet the horrified expression of my mother.

  “Tell me you didn’t have sex with some girl with Emily down the hall,” she whispers furiously as if Emily couldn’t hear. “Tell me I raised you with some decency. Eli will gut you open if he finds out about this.”

  I sit up, aware of my movements so that I keep Emily’s face blocked. There’s no way out of this, but I can buy Emily a few minutes to compose herself. “Shut the door, Mom.”

  Fire rages out of her eyes. “Oz—”

  “Shut the door and I’ll be out in a second.”

  Mom’s nostrils flare and, with pissed-off zeal, she slams the door to my room and the entire trailer vibrates. Great. Fucking great.

  Emily eases up behind me while pinching the blankets to her body. Her mouth trembles and my heart is ripping into multiple pieces.

  “I am so sorry,” she says.

  I weigh my words carefully. “Mom’s not mad because a girl stayed overnight. She’s mad because she thinks I did it with you around. So if you feel bad about me being caught, don’t, but odds are she’s not going to be too happy when she finds out that you’re the one in my bed.”

  Considering there’s only one way out of this trailer and Mom’s bent on talking to me, she’s going to discover that I was in here with Emily very soon.

  Emily won’t look at me. “What’s going on between us?”

  We should have thought of that before we made out. “I don’t know.”

  She stares at the blanket as if maybe concentrating hard enough could help her disappear. “You care about me, right? I didn’t imagine that, because I know I told you that I care about you.”

  “Hey.” I slide my arms underneath her legs to bring her onto my lap, blankets and all. “I care about you. You got that? This wasn’t a hook-up. I swear it. But what’s happening between us...you have to admit it’s complicated.”

  “Like how I live in Florida and you live in Kentucky and how my mom used to be in love with Eli and for some reason she left, pissing off everyone you love?”

  Evidently, I’m not the only one who has thought about this. “Yeah.”

  “It doesn’t mean we can’t be together.” But the defeat’s clear in her tone.

  “Are you going to call your parents and inform them you’re living here next year? You’re seventeen and have one more year of school and even if you didn’t, would you call Kentucky your home? Because, this—Snowflake—this is my home.”

  Emily draws in a quavering breath. Jesus, she’s killing me. I position my fingers under her chin, forcing her to face me. “Forget what I just said, all right? We’ll figure it out. I promise.”

  “No one will be happy about this. I mean, Eli and Cyrus won’t let you into the club if they find out we did this, will they?”

  I shake my head no. I’ll be lucky if I walk out of this alive. If I do emerge still breathing, I can’t guarantee I’ll be mobile. “I’m going to talk to Mom. Ask her to keep this quiet. Take your time. Get dressed. And then come out when you’re comfortable.”

  She lowers her face into her hands when I release her chin. “Then I don’t think I’ll ever be able to leave this room.”

  I can’t help but chuckle as I pull her into my body. “You’re not the first person to be busted half-naked.”

  “Well, it’s my first time.” My world rights itself when she lays her head on my shoulder.

  I kiss the top of Emily’s head before easing her onto the bed. I stand then shrug on my jeans. “Welcome to Snowflake.”

  Emily

  IZZY’S PENSIVE AS she shuts the door to her car. After hearing Oz explain it was me in his bed and after she faded into ghost white when I walked out of his room, Izzy grabbed her car keys and declared she was driving me home. I’m still attempting to figure out if she meant Florida or Olivia’s. She found me half-naked with her son in his bed. I’m betting she’s sending me to Florida.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, because I can’t stand the silence any longer.

  Izzy’s dressed in blue scrubs. She’s worked third shift this week and when she left the hospital last night she went to Olivia’s, so I’m officially the worst person ever for piling stress on the sleep-deprived. She starts the Ford Focus and the wheel whines as she turns it. The motor doesn’t sound much better. A single crystal hangs from the rearview mirror and it creates small beams of rainbows on my lap.

  Izzy flips her long black hair over her shoulder and peeks at me out of the corner of her eye. “Are you in love with my son?”

  Yes. My entire body convulses with the truth. I was falling for Oz before and after what happened last night...it changed me. It changed him. It changed us.

  “Shit,” Izzy whispers. “Just shit.”

  We hit a pothole and the car dips. Izzy peers in the rearview mirror and I glance at the passenger-side mirror when a motorcycle rumbles behind us. Oz has a folded black-and-white Reign of Terror bandanna across his forehead and his black hair blows wildly in the wind. I tear my eyes away and focus on the rainbows.

  “Did you know that if Eli or Cyrus or my husband or any man from the club walked in on the two of you, O
z would be ostracized?”

  I sink lower in my seat. God, I’m in love with him. I’ve fallen in love with Oz and I’m costing him his dream.

  “Did you know that you’re my goddaughter?” Izzy asks without waiting for my answer.

  Like so many other times during the past month, the sensation of running face-first into a wall stuns me. “No.”

  “You are.” She concentrates on the road and through the limbs arching over the road, the sunlight bounces on and off her face. “I wasn’t the best godmother at the time, but I loved you. Oz told me about the picture you found and your talk with Olivia, otherwise I wouldn’t bring it up. I need you to hear what I’m saying because I love you and my son.”

  She commands my attention like a dropped nuclear bomb. “Okay.”

  “Your mother ran from Snowflake for a good reason. She ran to keep you safe and she did an excellent job. Thinking that Olivia died must have completely floored your mom for her to make the mistake of allowing you to return, but it happened and I’m praying that neither you nor my son pay the price.”

  Izzy slows the car as we near Olivia’s cabin. “You’re in danger here and I see how my son looks at you, even before I caught the two of you today. He’s falling for you and Oz doesn’t fall. Even if Eli told him that his assignment was over, I doubt Oz would leave your side.”

  There’s a buzz filling my ears as I try to comprehend what she’s saying. Stuff about my mom, about how I’m still in danger and about how she sees how Oz looks at me. “My dad says I’m safe.”

  She places the car in Park and Oz flies past us for the clubhouse. Izzy regards him in the same way my mother used to watch me when I would climb to the highest diving board at the swimming pool. “I wish you weren’t in danger, but you are. And as long as you stay in Kentucky you’re putting a target on my son.”

  With a sigh, she faces me. “There has been a gaping hole in this family since you left and I’ve prayed for years for your return, but now that you’re here, I fully understand why your mother had to go. When you go home, tell her that for me and also tell her to never make the mistake of bringing you to Snowflake again. For all of our sakes. You need to go home, Emily. I love you, but I love my son more and I am begging you to not drag him into this mess.”

  Oz swings off his bike and he’s immediately on the move toward us, but his dad steps in front of him. A slow dull throb pulses in my head. I rub my temples, and the anger that’s been simmering at my mother for lying to me over this entire fiasco begins to evaporate.

  Everyone’s so paranoid, so terrified, that I’m starting to get swept up in the mania. I’ve been here for over a month and the most dangerous thing I’ve experienced is me jumping in water the wrong way.

  A loud growl of engines and I suck in a breath when bike after bike, too many to count, race past the car. I press into the seat as a sea of black vests leave the clubhouse and swarm Oz and his father. The newcomers park their bikes and create another layer around them. I can’t spot Oz anymore. Instead, what glares at me are half skulls with fire blazing out of the eye sockets.

  “They’re patching Oz in tonight,” Izzy says quietly.

  I jolt as if electrocuted. “But he’s not a prospect yet. Oz said that he has to go through that period before he can officially join the club.”

  “If it weren’t for me and Olivia insisting that Oz not be allowed to be a prospect until he graduated, Oz would already be through his prospect period and patched in. They took a special vote because of Olivia’s declining health and everyone agreed that she should see him as a member before she passes. They also felt that thanks to the past month Oz has spent watching you, he’s served his time.”

  Served his time...with me. I sound like a prison sentence.

  “Against anything I’ve wanted,” she says, “Oz has been a prospect of this club for eighteen years. Some things are so inevitable that they don’t need to be made formal.”

  Izzy departs the car and I follow her as she goes up the steps of the porch. I blink as Olivia exits the house. The screen door shuts and the yard plummets into silence. Every man honors Olivia as they turn to acknowledge her.

  She nods to me as if the last time I saw her she wasn’t in the midst of a seizure and I wasn’t screaming for Oz to help. Her blue scarf covers her head. Her jeans as tight as normal. She has gold dangling earrings that almost touch her shoulder. She wears that black top again that resembles a corset. As always, she’s striking and radiates kick-ass.

  But as I step closer to her, there’s a slow deliberateness to her movements. A tiny quiver of her hand and that tremor slowly progresses up her arm. I slide up beside her and ease my fingers underneath hers and she grasps on to me. The slight shake of her body would only have been noticed by someone standing near. She knows this and so do I.

  Olivia inclines her head and we walk together on the porch, past my window and the seat Oz has used as a bed for too many weeks. The lone sound in the yard is our footsteps against the wood. Hand in hand we reach the corner of the porch and there’s a part of me that feels self-conscious that everyone stares.

  A breeze rushes through the trees. The leaves clap against each other and a few maple helicopters drift to the ground. There are so many men in the yard. Seventy. Eighty. A hundred. So many. Too many. And Olivia and I have their undivided attention.

  The wind dies and this moment is too intense with silent expectation. I search the crowd for Oz and when my eyes meet his, he imperceptibly nods at me. The world fades away and, suddenly, I can breathe again.

  I wait for Olivia to do whatever it is everyone is expecting her to do, but nothing happens.

  “Are you supposed to wave or something?” I whisper. When Olivia raises an eyebrow, I curl my hand and tilt it side to side. “Like the queen does on TV?”

  She laughs. The loud one. The one from when we first met that scared the hell out of me and, this time, I can’t help but giggle along with her. She squeezes my fingers, releases them, then cups my face as she leans over and kisses one cheek and then another.

  “If I’m the queen, then you’re the princess, and this is your kingdom.”

  When she lets go of me, Cyrus calls out, “Reign of Terror!”

  “Hoo-ra!” is the answering rumble.

  “Reign of Terror!”

  “Hoo-ra!”

  “Reign of Terror!”

  “Hoo-ra, Reign of Terror!”

  Someone applauds and the entire yard bursts into noise. Both Eli and Oz are grinning at me. I can’t help the silly and shy smile forming back.

  “This is your family,” Olivia says to me. “If you learn to love us then you will forever have our love in return.”

  I think I am falling in love and that love would belong to Oz. I search for Oz again and I spot him just as Eli slings an arm around his neck and leads him away from me and into the clubhouse.

  “Come on,” Olivia adds. “We have a ton of work to do and not enough time to do it.”

  Oz

  I TOOK A quick shower in the clubhouse’s bathroom, changed clothes and now I’m bounding up the stairs to Church. Hook’s at the door and opens it the moment he sees me. This is nothing like the last time I was invited in here. Each man at the table peers at me as I walk in and it’s not with the look they had last time, as if I were a man strapped in the electric chair.

  I don’t know what the hell just happened outside with me in the middle of it, but whatever it is, it’s good and I’m walking on air. There’s no doubt I’m becoming a prospect today and odds are I’ll be working for the business, as well.

  Cyrus owns the seat at the head of the table and my eyes flicker to Eli, who sits on his right, and then Dad, who sits on his left. Neither of them gives anything away with their blank expressions. I’ve never seen a guy receive his cut before. It’s a private ceremony duri
ng Church.

  “We’re having a party tonight,” announces Cyrus.

  My muscles go stiff. “Where do you want me to take Emily?”

  “She’s going to be here for it,” says Eli. “At least until we send the families home.”

  It’s club rules: no kid at the clubhouse after eight at night. This brotherhood is family-oriented, but it’s still a motorcycle club and the partying can get fucked up and crazy.

  I pop my neck to the side to release some of the tension. I’ll overstep my welcome by speaking out of turn, but this involves Emily and it’s already hard not to lash out like a pissed-off bear. “What about her safety? You said that the Riot was thirty miles north of here last night. And if that’s not an issue anymore, then remember how pissed you were at the funeral home at the idea of people knowing she was around? We bring in strangers and news will spread that your daughter is here.”

  That the girl I love is staying here.

  The girl I love.

  My heart beats hard as the realization plows into me. Last night, I said I was falling, but I was dead wrong. The falling did happen, but it happened over time. Happened without my knowledge. I love Emily. I am in love.

  And the girl I love is in danger.

  The gun in the holster at the middle of my back grows heavier. Cyrus asked me weeks ago if I had the balls to do what needed to be done. When it comes to protecting Emily, hell yeah, I own a pair.

  Cyrus eyes the board and after a few nods from several guys he casts his gaze to Eli.

  “The Riot either knows she’s here or they don’t.” Eli shrugs as if he doesn’t care, but there’s something off about his movements. A rigidness that tells me he’s hiding something. “They haven’t made a grab for her since the motel and because of that I think she’s safe. While I love Emily being here, her dad called this week and he wants her back in Florida.”

  His words slam into me. “She’s heading home?”

  “It’s been over a month. She has a life and it’s time for her to return to it.”