by Jordan Marie
“I’ve got to go. My men are waiting on me. You call me if there’s trouble. Keep your family safe.”
“Always, asshole. You know that,” Dragon grumbles.
We might be friends, but he doesn’t take it well when anyone tries to tell him how to take care of what is his. I’d be the same way if I had any claim over Beth.
I throw up my hand to say bye, then walk away without looking back. I feel like a fucking intruder in my own damn club. Just one more thing Beth seems to have taken from me.
“Skull?”
Beth. Her voice stops me. I can’t bring myself to turn around.
“What?” My voice is cold, but it’s nowhere near as cold as my heart.
“When will you be back?” she asks like she has a right to know. She doesn’t. She doesn’t deserve anything from me.
“After I kill your stepbrother,” I tell her before walking out the door.
I move my hand over my chest in the vicinity of my heart. There’s pain there. At this point, I can’t tell if it’s physical or in my head; I just know I am completely fucked up.
I walk out to the bikes where the men are waiting. I sit there for a bit after I climb on.
“Skull?” I look over at Briar. I can see the worry in his eyes. I don’t know what the fuck to tell him. “You got your head in the game?” he asks.
I don’t. I absolutely fucking don’t. It doesn’t make a damn bit of difference. I start my bike and give the signal to pull out. The air vibrates with the sound of the pipes revving. As we pull out onto the main road, I concentrate on that sound and the feel of the wind. Fuck everything else.
My club. That’s all I need.
I just wish I believed that.
The silence left behind as Skull slams the door is deafening. My face reddens. The babies are even silent, as if they too can sense the blackness and pain in the air. I bite my lip and look at the two strangers that Skull has basically left me with.
“He’s upset,” says Nicole.
Hello, understatement of the year. Nice to meet you.
“Don’t you think he has a right?”
“Dragon, don’t.”
“What, Mama?” he exclaims. “I’m not saying anything but the fucking truth.”
Gone is his easygoing attitude. Skull leaving was like a light switch going off.
“If you don’t watch your mouth around Dom…”
“Damn it, Nicole.”
“So you want to sleep alone tonight,” she says, daring him to say anything else.
“You couldn’t make it through the night without me either, Mama, so don’t go tripping.”
“Don’t make me prove you wrong. I might miss you, but I’m stubborn…” She says it so sweetly that I hardly believe she’s threatening Dragon with not sleeping with him. It’s obviously a threat too, because the look on his face becomes deadly serious.
“You try keeping me out of our bed, Mama, and I’ll turn your ass so red you won’t sit for a week.” I know my eyes go round as I listen to them. It has less to do with what they’re saying than the vibrating connection they seem to have. It’s so powerful it lights up the room.
“You say that like it’s a threat, Dragon,” she whispers with a soft smile.
Dragon grabs Nicole by the back of her neck and pulls her into him. The baby in his arms acts like nothing is happening. I get the feeling he probably sees this a lot. His hold on her is almost violent as she grips his sides to steady herself and looks at him.
His face goes soft. “Woman, you’re going to be the death of me.”
“Dragon,” she whispers, straining up towards his lips.
“I’m gonna go and make sure the men have the perimeter secure. You try to behave, Mama.”
“I love you,” she whispers, and my heart clenches.
“I love you, Mama. Forever,” he whispers against her lips before taking them in the hottest kiss I’ve ever seen. It’s the emotion you can hear in his words, though, that makes me feel like I’ve been gut punched.
I’m jealous of this Nicole. I can admit it freely. This is what I should have had with Skull. Would it have been that way if I had ignored my father’s summons and threats? Would I have this kind of love now if I had confessed everything to Skull? Maybe… but then, if I had done that, my sister would be dead. That is truth. That is real. If I had ignored my father and alerted Skull, Katie would be dead.
I did the only thing I could have done.
I squash the little voice in my head that I should have tried harder when I had Gabby. I don’t need to hear it again. I never seem to stop hearing it these days.
Dragon hands Nicole the baby and then leaves. I shift Gabby to my other side, nervously. Will Nicole turn as surly as Dragon did? Will she take Skull’s side immediately too? Am I doomed to be the enemy as long as I’m here?
Nicole watches every step Dragon makes until he goes outside and the door closes shut behind him. Then, she takes a deep breath that sounds more like a sigh. She turns around to look at me. She has a guarded smile on her face as she takes me in. “I’m Nicole, Dragon’s wife.”
When she turns her smile directly on me and I get a good look at her face, that’s when it hits me. I know exactly where I’ve seen her before. She was the woman standing outside the movie theater the night I went into labor with Gabby.
“You dated Skull,” I whisper, and I wish I could’ve stopped my stupid mouth, but I didn’t hold it back—not even a little.
Nicole looks a little shocked. “Good Lord, no. Why would you say that?”
“I saw you at the movie theater the night I went into labor. You came outside of the theater with Skull. He was—”
“Flirting. Being Skull. I can assure you, we’ve never dated.”
“But…”
“Never, Beth. Can I call you Beth?”
“Yeah, I guess. Though, I think I’m public enemy number one, so I’m not sure why you want to talk to me.”
“Do you love Skull?” she asks, and wow, I guess that’s a way to cut through the bullshit and get right to the point. How on earth do I answer that?
“I don’t think I know who this Skull is,” I tell her, which is the truth in a way. I still love the Skull I knew. I always will, but no one needs to know how stupid I am.
“Fair enough. But what you’ll need to figure out, Beth—and in a hurry—is whether or not you want this Skull, because he’s the one who’s here now. He’s the father of your child, and you need to—”
“I don’t think there’s any way to work this out, Nicole. In complete honesty, Skull hates me, and I’m not exactly sure how I feel about him.”
“There’s a thin line between love and hate, Beth.”
“I’d really rather not talk about this with you. I think I’ll take Gabby back to our…”
“Disappointing,” Nicole says, studying my face.
The word irritates me and I jerk up to give her a look. “Disappointing?”
“How easy you give up. You think you would have learned that’s not the way to handle things by now.”
Her words are like a slap to my face. She doesn’t know me. She doesn’t know anything about me. And yet …
She’s right. I’m really getting tired of that damn voice.
“Listen, I don’t think you have the right—”
“Maybe I’m wrong? Dragon said Skull told him that you saw some pictures and took that as total proof that Skull would send not only you away, but also his daughter—”
“He did! I got a note…”
“A note from the man you love saying he wanted nothing to do with his daughter? Do you think so little of yourself?”
“I… what are you talking about?” I’m definitely annoyed and defensive now.
“Well, I mean you allowed yourself to get pregnant by a man who you obviously thought would be a horrible father,” she says, as if it was completely simple.
My heart stalls in my chest. “I didn’t,” I stutter. “I mean, I didn’
t think I did. I got the note and it seemed…”
“With everything you had been through with your father and with Colin and Matthew—not to mention your grandfather—it didn’t occur you to even question the letter? It didn’t occur to your sister?”
My breath stops. It’s not like I haven’t asked the same questions Nicole’s asking. I have. Katie did. It’s just that I’ve never had a third party hit me with the questions. I’ve never had someone ask me pointblank before about my choices.
I find a chair and sit down, looking at this woman. I should hate her, but instead I am swamped with this horrible feeling that I fucked up. It’s one thing to feel it, but another to acknowledge it completely.
“I was scared,” I whisper, my feeble reason.
Nicole’s face changes and she sits down across from me now. “Do you know what you were afraid of?”
I do, but saying it out loud will just sound lame. Because it is.
“I think if there was even the faintest possibility that Dragon had moved on without me, that he was in love with another woman, I would want to run away from ever seeing it.”
I swallow, because that’s it in a nutshell. “You would?”
“Definitely. It would kill me to confront that.”
“But you would. Confront it, I mean.”
I know I’m right. She’s too confident, too self-assured. She’s everything I’ve never been.
“Probably. But then again, I wasn’t pregnant and alone at the age of nineteen. Betrayed by my father, who I thought was dead, then confronted by a sister that, again, I thought was dead.”
“You know everything?”
“I know everything Skull told Dragon. It’s just that I’m not a man, so I see things they miss, or they don’t understand.”
“You’re on my side?”
She studies me carefully. “Skull is my friend. I want to see him happy.”
“I see, so you don’t—”
“I happen to think having his family together would achieve that.”
My heart speeds up. But then, why? There’s no way that’s going to happen and I don’t know if I want it to, now. This Skull is not the man I remember. Plus, he has moved on…
“It doesn’t matter. It’s too late,” I tell Nicole, occupying myself with playing with my daughter’s beautiful hair. She’s smiling and playing with her little set of plastic keys. She looks so much like her father that it physically hurts sometimes.
“I guess it is. Especially if you’re not willing to fight for your family. Like I said, disappointing.”
“You would fight to be with someone who hates you?” I question her, disbelieving.
“I think any woman would, if she cares about her daughter.”
“It’s not good for my child to be around people who hate each other,” I tell her, getting pissed. She may have some valid points, but she doesn’t get to tell me I don’t know what is best for my daughter.
“True. But if there’s a chance those parents could find their way back…”
“There’s not. I respect what you’re trying to do,” I tell her, even though I’m lying, “but this is not your business, and since you haven’t walked in my shoes, you can’t really tell me what you would do.”
“Point made,” Nicole says, standing up with her baby. “But I’ll tell you what I do know, Beth. I know that I would fight like hell to keep my man. It wouldn’t matter how long we were apart, or what was between us. I’d fight.”
“How nice for you,” I tell her, getting up to leave. I definitely need to take Gabby and go back to my room.
“I just have one more thing to leave with you, Beth, then I’m done.”
I sigh hearing her say that, but resign myself to listen. “Please just say it and get it over with, because I’m kind of done here.”
“Will you be able to live with the fact that you didn’t even try? Will it ever bother you to know that you basically just handed the man you love over to another woman?”
I swallow hard and turn away from her. I don’t want her to see my face when I lie.
“I … don’t love Skull.”
“Then I guess it won’t bother you at all when he finds someone else.”
“No, it … it won’t bother me,” I whisper brokenly, walking towards my room and ignoring the tears that again threaten to fall. It won’t bother me at all.
It will kill me.
I hold my fist up in the air to tell my men to hold tight. I’m not about to ruin shit when I’m so close to getting Colin Donahue in my hands. He’s the first step to my revenge. Pistol is a barely-breathing dead man. When I have Colin chained up beside him, maybe I’ll be able to finish Pistol off. I’ll center my rage on Colin, the fucker who truly deserves it.
When I got the intel that Colin was hiding out in this remote cabin in the backwoods of Georgia, I wanted to scream. The fucker thought he could hide from me? He wants to try and take what is mine? I’m going to make him regret the day he was born. All he fucking did was make things easier for me. I still would have stormed the gates of his pretty house on the hill. It doesn’t matter. I don’t give a fuck about anything at this point except revenge; it’s the only thing that’s keeping me going.
My men are tired. I’m driving them hard. We’ve been on the road for two days straight and, besides a quick nap in a fucking pig sty, we’ve barely taken a break. I can’t help it. Being away from Beth is making me nervous.
No. Gabby. Being away from Gabby, not Beth…
I grab my binoculars and zoom in on the window that’s closest to me. There’s three heads in there. I can’t tell that any of them are Colin. I need to just go in and make my move. There’s something feeling off, though. I’m trying to ignore it because I’m so fucking raw about things right now. It’s probably nothing. Still… the lives of my men are at stake here.
“You’re sure you checked the perimeter carefully?” I ask Beast.
He’s back to doing things for me, but he’s not adjusting great. He’s letting his hair and beard grow out again. It’s slowly covering the wicked scars that twist the skin on his neck and up the side of his face. He doesn’t talk a lot anymore. His voice is hoarse and quiet. I haven’t asked, but I’m sure that’s beyond his control too. Just one more thing the explosion has taken from him… one more thing Beth’s family has taken from him.
“It’s clear.” His voice is animalistic, like a growl.
I hold my hand back up using a series of numbers to signal the beginning of our plan. I’ve ordered radio silence. I can’t take the chance that they have technology that might monitor that shit. Colin might not be fucking smart, but he has money, and money makes even the dumbest of men at least look more intelligent.
I’ve split the men up in teams of two. I’ll charge in front with Briar at my side. Beast and Sabre will follow guarding our backs, then Shaft and Latch will follow and so forth. Hopefully by the time Roadkill, our newest recruit and last in the formation, follows in, there won’t be a need for anyone to be watching his back. Hopefully by then I have Colin’s neck in my hands and I’m choking the life out of the son of a bitch.
We start moving forward, staying in the brushy cover of the woods surrounding the cabin. When we reach the edge, I take a breath to move forward. I’m at the base of the steps along the small wooden porch when I see it. The small pinpoint red light flashing on my pants leg. It’s connected to something that’s mounted underneath the step. It’s way too small of an area for a gun, but I’ve been in the military and I’ve dealt with this shit way too long. I also know what the Donahue’s calling card is.
One word registers in my brain before I call out. Bomb.
“Fall back!” I scream. “Fall back! It’s a—”
I’m still calling out while running backwards and pulling Briar with me when the bomb ignites. The force of the blast is a heated inferno at my back. It pushes us off our legs and up in the air as we’re thrown a good ten feet. I slam hard against the rocky ground, fe
eling debris hit me and all around. I lay there, the wind knocked out of my body. Disappointment fills me. Colin set this up. Whoever was in this cabin, it wasn’t him. Not this time.
But I will get him.
One Week Later
It’s been one week. One week since I’ve had Beth back under my roof. One full week and I’ve barely spoken to her. One full week of having her close. That should make me feel better. Instead, I feel dead. So cold and empty, I wonder sometimes how I’m breathing. How I’m existing. I’m pulled to her, even as I never want to see her again. My head is so fucked up, it may never be right again. I can’t figure out how I can be so fucking mad at a woman and yet want her at the same time.
And I do want her. Sometimes I wake up at night in a cold sweat after dreaming of having her. It’s ridiculous. I can’t stand to look at her, but yet every night I sneak in her fucking room after I’m sure she’s sleeping and I watch her like some fucking stalker.
Tonight is no exception. She’s lying in the bed. The sheet has fallen down around her stomach exposing the soft, white, cotton gown she’s wearing. The V of the neck has been pulled while she tossed and turned and it exposes the soft swell of her right breast. I fist my hands at my side to prevent myself from reaching out and ripping the gown away from her body. A body I remember like the back of my hand. A body I fucking yearn for.
A body that haunts me.
How could she have done this to us? To me? How can you say you love someone when you nearly destroy them with your lies—with not trusting them? I’ve told her I hated her, and she thinks I truly do. It would be so much easier if I could. I want to. I’m spending my time fucking pounding the life out of Pistol because if I don’t, I wouldn’t be able to contain my anger. I’m barely doing it now. What would Beth think if she knew just how much of an animal her coming back has turned me into?
And if I’m honest, that’s why I’m so mad at her. I was starting to put my life back together. Pick up the pieces I was left in when she… died. Seeing Dragon and Nicole together, watching how they are both willing to give up their lives for each other… it reminded me that love is real. It reminded me what it was like to share a connection with someone above all others. I miss it. I was actively searching for it. I was starting to live again.