He and Holly had gotten married when Iris was twelve and Rose fifteen. When they were dating, Ray had seemed nice enough. He was always bringing them presents and taking them to fun places. Neither Iris nor Rose had minded at all when he became their stepdad.
They had beautiful rooms in his beautiful house, with their own bathrooms, and all the newest, coolest toys and clothes. To their young minds, after years of their mom struggling to make ends meet, Ray had been like a prince in a fairy tale, taking them all to live in his castle.
He’d turned out not to be so much a prince as a czar. He had to have everything exactly his way, and he flew into rages when they weren’t. But it wasn’t the rages that were the scariest things. It was when he didn’t get his way and was calm about it.
He wouldn’t allow them to have any kind of pet in the house, which maybe wasn’t such a horrific or unusual rule, except that one time, a few months after the wedding, Iris had found a little stray puppy on the street near their house, an adorable little scrawny white chihua-mutt, and, being young and still new to the ways of her stepfather, she’d brought the little guy home to ask if they could keep him.
She’d figured the answer would be no, but she thought maybe if the pup and she both gave their sad eyes, maybe…or at least, the puppy was off the street, and they could take him to the shelter.
Her mom had gotten upset and said no right away, and insisted that they had to hurry and take him to the shelter before Ray got home.
They hadn’t made it. He came home early, saw the puppy sitting on the family room floor with Iris and Rose, asked, “What’s that?” and picked up the pup, whom Iris had named Falkor—just in case.
Iris had done the spiel she’d practiced. He’d listened to the whole thing, smiling kindly and snuggling the pup, scratching his ears.
Then he’d grabbed Falkor’s head and twisted until his little neck snapped.
He’d sighed as if in sorrow and said, “I told you that I will have no animals in this house. I thought I was very clear, but I guess I wasn’t. I hope I have been now.”
Yes, he had been clear.
Ray had never laid a hand on Rose or Iris. He micromanaged their lives and their friendships and would never allow any of their friends into his home, and when they crossed him, he shouted and ruined things they loved, but he was superficially loving with them. Anyone outside their home would say that he doted on them. Their mother said he doted on them.
They’d lived in that house for two years before they’d realized that he was not so hands-off with his wife.
But she didn’t want to do anything about it. It had taken a while for Rose and Iris to understand that it wasn’t simply that she was too afraid of him to do anything. It was that she didn’t want to. She had made a choice. She wanted the big house and the Lexus and the black Amex. She wanted the parties and the dinners with the governor. She wanted the jewelry and the clothes and the personal trainer that kept her from being too ‘womanly.’ She wanted all of that, it was the life she’d dreamed of, and she was willing to pay the price she needed to pay to be Raymond Carlson’s wife.
Since he didn’t hit the girls, she was adamant that he wasn’t abusing them, that he was an excellent provider, that he was just particular about his surroundings, and that the arrangement was good for everyone. She swore them to secrecy, insisting that if their father knew and tried to do anything about it, Ray would have him thrown in prison.
And that was likely true. So Rose and Iris both kept the secret.
It was easier for Rose. She couldn’t stand Ray, either, and she didn’t agree with their mom that what was going on in the house was okay, but she was better about toeing Ray’s line. And she was pretty and looked good on his arm at father-daughter events. Ray honestly liked her.
Iris was too energetic for Ray. As a kid, and into her teens, she’d been active and chatty and easily distracted by new things. She was also a little bit clumsy, and a lot more average looking than her sister. Ray called her hyper and lost his mind whenever she accidentally broke something, or talked or laughed too loudly, or simply came into the room too quickly.
Eventually, he’d shaped her into somebody calmer. She was still an extravert, still enjoyed new things, but she was more careful about showing it, and slower to decide to like someone.
Luckily, Ray traveled a lot for his job, and sometimes he was gone for weeks at a time. Those were the best times, when the big house was like a home. Now that Rose and Iris were out on their own, they tried to time their visits to coincide with his trips.
Iris was not looking forward to being in that house with Ray.
Her knees went weak with relief at the hospital, when her mother told her, first thing, in the same breath as ‘hello,’ that Ray had left the night before for an energy conference in Colorado.
Yet he was a ‘keep up appearances’ guy above all else, so she was surprised that he’d left his wife in the hospital. It didn’t jive with his family-man image.
“He left?” she asked as she kissed her mom’s cheek.
She’d stopped in at the nurse’s station before she’d come into the room, so she already knew that her mom had a broken ankle, two broken ribs, and a spiral fracture of her arm. She had ‘fallen’ down the stairs at home. The way the nurse said it—‘she insists that she fell down the stairs’—indicated to Iris that the hospital staff had other suspicions. So did she.
“The conference is important, and I told him I’d be well taken care of. Are you sorry he did?”
“No. I’m glad he’s not here. I’m just surprised.”
“I’m sorry to pull you away from your life as a biker bitch. I just didn’t have anybody else to call.”
Despite everything, she loved her mom, and they usually got along okay. But she had taken Iris’s decision to live in Signal Bend as a personal affront, and her relationship with Nolan as an absolute outrage, and they hadn’t talked much in the past few months.
“Mom, don’t be like that, okay? I love you, and I’m going to help you as much as you need. I’m here.”
Her mom nodded and started to cry.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Nolan, you have to understand.”
Nolan shifted on his bed, propping the pillows up to support his back better. He rested the tablet on his bent legs. “I know. I do understand. But it’s been three weeks. I need a date, babe.”
Three weeks since she’d shown up at his job site and dropped the bomb that she was going down to Little Rock right then, suitcase and teddy bear riding shotgun in her truck. Other than like this—her flat, sometimes broken, image on his tablet or phone screen—he hadn’t seen her since.
Every day that she was away, the fragile contentment and sense of security he’d been building with her lost a piece of its foundation. The part of him that still felt the sting of loss and broken promises from all the leaving in his life was ready to add Iris to the list.
It was insane. He was going insane. Every day, they talked. Every day, she told him she loved him and that she wanted to come home. Every day, she told him she was his. Yet every day, she didn’t come home, and he was less okay. And he’d lost the ability to pretend that he was.
On the screen before him, Iris sighed and dropped her chin into her hand. Nolan could see behind her some details of a girls’ bedroom: yellow and white flouncy curtains, matching framed prints of flowers, a white canopy bed with yellow and white linens. Iris’s room at her mother’s house.
“I can’t give you a date. My mom is still in a wheelchair. She can’t get around on crutches with her arm broken, too, and it’ll be three weeks at least before she’s out of her casts. Rose won’t be back in the country until next month, and she hasn’t said whether she can come and relieve me or not. I’m hoping I’ll be home in three weeks, but I just don’t know. I’ve told you all this more than once.” She crossed her arms on her desk and leaned in close to the camera. “Honey, please let me up for air about this. I’m stressed out enou
gh. I didn’t want to be here this long. Geoff might not be able to hold my job after all. It’s the summer, and he’s scrambling. Mom and I are fighting every day. Everything about this sucks. But I can’t leave her on her own.”
“What about your stepdad? Why isn’t he helping?”
She made a face like she’d tasted something awful. “He was home for three days and then he went off again to South America for business. Fuck Ray.”
It wasn’t fair that Iris was carrying all that responsibility on her own. But she wouldn’t let him come and help, either—a maddening fact that he couldn’t make right in his head. So what if her mother hated the Horde? It wasn’t like she could do anything to stop him being there.
But he’d given up that fight. Iris didn’t want him there, and Nolan knew that was the real truth.
“Well, aren’t they rich? Can’t she hire a nurse or something?”
She flew backward in her seat. “Nolan! Fuck! Please stop! Talking to you has been the only good thing in my day, and lately, all we do is fight about this. I’m starting to cringe when you call. I need you to help me out, and be patient. I am coming home as soon as I can.”
This crazy, jealous, needy asshole was not who he was. He’d never been like this before, and he hated it. But he was really at loose ends. He’d said he was addicted to her, and he was acting like it was literally true. Without her, all the crap that he’d lived his whole life holding down inside him had free rein in his head, and he didn’t remember how to get it under control.
“I’m sorry. Fuck. I’m sorry. I’m losing my shit.”
“Why? Is something going on at home?”
“No. Just…I told you—you make me okay. Since I’ve had you, it’s like I can’t figure out how to deal when I don’t have you.”
He could see her, there in her prissy little girl room, struggling for patience. “You still have me.”
“You know what I mean.”
“I do, and it’s starting to scare me. This isn’t healthy, Nolan. I can’t live my whole life around what you need. I won’t.”
Oh, the part of him that was waiting to be left again had a field day with that statement. Nolan’s pulse began to thump behind his eyes. “What are you saying?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know what I’m saying. But the past few days, I feel like shit when we talk. Something wrong is going on here. We need to fix it.”
“I told you I didn’t think I’d be good in a couple.”
“If that’s true, it’s definitely not because you don’t feel things enough.” Her eyes shifted to something elsewhere on her screen. “Shit. She’s texting me. I need to go.”
They could not end the call like this. He would implode. “Iris—Jesus. I’m sorry.”
“I know. But we need to figure some things out. Or you do, I’m not sure. I feel like I’m being pulled apart, and I need it to stop. I need us both to be okay on our own and together.” She sighed and looked away from the screen, off to the side. For several seconds, she stared off that way, and Nolan thought he’d jump out of his skin. When she looked back, her eyes were sad. “Don’t call again, okay? I’ll call you. I need to do some thinking.”
“Wait—are we breaking up?” The tablet shook in his hands, but it wasn’t only panic and desperation he felt now.
“No.” Her hand moved, and he thought she’d put it on the screen, on his face. “No. I love you. I miss you so much. I just need a minute to think. I’ll call. I’ve got to get back downstairs now. Okay?”
What did she need to think about? It could only be one thing.
“Yeah. Fine.” He ended the call.
His old rage swirled up through his marrow and charged his muscles. The screen of the tablet cracked in his hands.
~oOo~
After riding most of the night, Nolan knew what he needed to do. Iris was right; he had to get straight in his head. He was leaning way too hard on her to keep his world level. It wasn’t fair to her, and it was ruining them.
That would not stand. He knew what he wanted in his future, and Iris was most of it.
So he needed to handle his business and make his own world level.
Back at the clubhouse, he slept a few hours and woke up for a scalding hot shower. Once he was dressed, he went out to the Hall and drank three quick cups of strong black coffee. It was a weekday morning, so the clubhouse was operating at a low rumble, everybody either getting ready to work or coming off a late shift on patrol. A couple of the club girls were cleaning the kitchen.
Nolan was due on the Signal Bend Station build site, but instead, he stopped at St. John’s Methodist Church, just across from Marie’s.
There was no service at this time of day—in fact, Nolan would lay odds that Reverend Mortensen was still at Marie’s, lingering over his post-breakfast coffee. Everybody knew that they’d get a minute or two with him if they caught him at Marie’s on weekday mornings. But Nolan wasn’t there to get religion. Not the Methodist kind, anyway. He put his Ironhead on its stand and strode along the side of the building to the cemetery in back.
He never came out here. His mom did, in the way that Nolan went up to Ani’s hill. She came and sat at Havoc’s headstone on his birthday, and Loki’s birthday, and their anniversary—they hadn’t celebrated even one together—and the date of his death. She’d wanted Nolan to join her the first few times, but he couldn’t deal, and she hadn’t pushed him.
Since the day they’d put Havoc in this hole, Nolan had been here twice: on the day he got his Prospect kutte, and on the day he got his top rocker.
It seemed right to him that he would come again on the day when he meant to put all that on the line. When he meant to do what he knew for a certainty Havoc would have done long ago.
The headstone was large but not ostentatious. Just a heavy grey square, nearly identical in design to every other Horde stone in this ground. The Flaming Mane was carved in the center. Across the top, Havoc’s birth name: Joseph Daniel Mariano. Centered under that, in larger letters: HAVOC. In a line beneath his road name: Beloved Brother, Husband, Father, Son.
Below the Mane, the words Brother, Ride Swiftly Home and his dates. In the bottom right-hand corner, small and unassuming: the three interlocking triangles that Nolan now wore on his forearm. The valknut. A Viking symbol, a sign of a warrior.
He remembered every second of the day Havoc had been buried: the Horde’s ritual in the clubhouse, and Isaac pulling him into the circle. His blinding, furious despair, and his rage—the rage he still carried, only at full blaze then—at Havoc for dying, for breaking all his promises, for leaving them behind.
He remembered Isaac pinning a valknut onto Havoc’s kutte in his casket and reciting a Viking prayer.
He remembered Havoc’s father standing in front of the casket at St. John’s and spewing hate.
He remembered his mother slashing her wrists that night. She’d almost left him, too.
Nolan crouched before the stone. He didn’t speak to the grey granite. Havoc wasn’t here, and rocks didn’t listen. What was here for Nolan was the power of memory. The truth behind all those memories of that awful time was that he, his mom, and his brother had been carried by the family Havoc had given them. He hadn’t seen it then, he hadn’t believed it, but they’d been there, holding them up.
And now he was Horde, just like Havoc.
But this Horde wasn’t Havoc’s Horde. His father’s club would have understood what he needed to do. This club was afraid to do what needed to be done.
Seeing Havoc’s name over that carved Flaming Mane, he was reminded that he was his father’s legacy, and it gave him the will to do this next thing.
He took his phone from his pocket, found the right contact, and opened a call.
“Nolan,” Sherlock answered. “You good?”
“Calling for an update.”
Silence on the line. Nolan hadn’t asked for an update before. After that first call, back in the winter, he’d called once more, to tell She
rlock that he wasn’t moving on the intel, but he wanted to keep an eye on Vega and make sure he wasn’t causing trouble. Sherlock had called twice more in the intervening months just to say that all was quiet.
“Brother? You there?”
“Something change?” Sherlock asked.
Nolan took a deep breath. “Yeah. I’m moving on this.”
“Why?”
Because he would not be right in his head or his heart until he’d avenged his father’s murder. Because he had to take charge of this shit and get it done, or he was going to lose Iris and his future. Because he had waited more than ten years, and he was still an open fucking wound.
Nolan: Return to Signal Bend Page 20