Finding Rhiannon

by Ker Dukey

  I know I will never get to him before the sheriff is on me.

  Can I kill someone? He’s not a person. He’s a monster.

  Before I can react, Sheriff Myers grabs my arm, shocking me. He hits my wrist against his knee. A sharp jolt of pain has my hand unclasping and the knife clatters to the floor. I’m being held against his chest my back to this front.

  Brenner begins to laugh, strained but contemptuous.

  “I hate you! He has to die!” I cry my body crumbling.

  Bang!

  A gunshot cracks the air, making my body startle.

  Have I been shot?

  Bang. Bang. Bang!

  The sheriff’s hands tighten around me. People are looking around to see where it’s coming from. My eyes drag up to see Brenner. He looks confused, and then he falls to his knees, bloody holes littering his chest. He’s staring just inside the hospital doors before he collapses forward, his arm pulled up right behind him.

  Police rush forward and tackle the gunman.

  Slade.

  Slade.

  Brenner’s eyes blink once over at me. Blood coats his lips and a smirk pulls at the corners of my mouth. Die bastard. Fucking die knowing that he killed you. He killed you, for me.

  27

  Slade/Frost

  The urge to seek out Avery is almost overwhelming, but I can’t leave Scorch in here alone. I need to be here when he wakes up, and he will wake up. I refuse to lose him.

  My cell phone chimes with a call from Prez.

  “Yeah?”

  “Got raided. Brenner’s been carted off in an ambulance. Our inside guy said a nine-one-one call came in with a tip that we had Brenner here,” he growls.

  My head swims. That motherfucker has nine lives. “Only brothers know that,” I snap.

  “Yeah, tell me something I don’t fucking know. He’s going to get me the number of the caller.”

  I end the call. My thoughts clog and I can’t think straight. Avery!

  If they’re bringing him here, I need to go to Avery.

  Leaving Scorch’s room, I grab a pen from the nurse station and jot down my cell number. “Call this if he wakes up,” I tell one of the on-duty nurses.

  Avery won’t want to see me and that’s fine, but she can’t stop me from sitting outside her room. Brenner could be half dead, but the sonofabitch would make one last attempt at a fuck you. That’s if he managed to shake the police. Nothing would surprise me with that slippery fuck.

  The walls close in around me when I stand in the corridor and see Avery walking towards me. She’s not looking up; her eyes are cast down. Her hair flows behind her; the bruises that once covered every inch of her beautiful face have faded to nothing. She’s so stunning and she’s so unaware of it.

  I slip behind a cart full of laundry and wait to see where she goes. I follow behind her, desperate to reach out and touch her, smell her scent.

  Her steps are slow and troubled, and I wish I could take everything from her. I’d take her pain, her sorrow and broken spirit if it could give her an ounce of peace.

  She looks fidgety and nervous, and I hate that she’s scared in her own skin.

  She goes outside but doesn’t leave; she walks around the building and stops at the emergency entrance.

  What the hell?

  She turns her head my way. I dart inside an open door as someone comes out of it, they shout at me that it’s a secure entrance but it’s too late. I’m inside. The doors shut behind me and they don’t re-open. Motherfucker.

  I race through the corridor and knock over a nurse who is carrying a tray. It clatters to the floor, gaining attention from other medical staff.

  Someone shouts at me, but I need to see what Avery is doing.

  When I round the corner to the exit, the doors open, and an ambulance is parked just outside. My muscles tense, compressing the bones beneath.

  Avery is standing there, a blade clasped in her hand.

  She’s here for Brenner.

  The doors to the ambulance open and there he is, like she summoned the devil and he appeared before her.

  I pull my piece from my ankle strap and will her to move.

  Police move in around her. They’re saying something to her but all I hear is the constant scream of Avery telling me to get out of her room. Her broken sobs, her pain, her heartbreak, her soul disintegrating.

  Sheriff Myers grabs her, knocking her weapon to the ground and wrapping her in his arms, taking her out the line of fire.

  I unload my gun into Brenner’s chest.

  For her.

  She needed this. She fucking deserved it.

  Something hits me from behind and crashes down on top of me.

  “Don’t fucking move.”

  My eyes track her. She’s looking back at me. I hold onto her eyes. I hold onto what we had. Even if it was brief, it was ours.

  She was mine.

  She will always be mine.

  28

  Scorch

  Opening my eyes, they sting like a bitch and my throat itches.

  Every part of me feels stiff. There’s this ache in my chest, and then Rhiannon flutters into my consciousness and the pain increases.

  She was fucking cozy, naked all over Buzz. After I was going out of my ever-loving mind trying to find her, save her from him? I must have been blind or stupid to think we had something, that she only saw me that way. Maybe she just has a thing for brothers. Fucking daddy issues.

  Gunfire. Brenner. Me pushing her out the way. Fuck. Fear that she’s hurt trickles over my awareness and I hate that I give a shit, but I do. I love that bitch.

  Machines beep around me, and the room comes into focus.

  Shit. I’m in the hospital? My eyes scan to a body folded up in a chair in the corner of the room.

  I open my mouth, but nothing comes out. My tongue is stuck to the roof of my mouth.

  I lift my arm, but it feels like a dead weight and there’s a wire going into my hand.

  The figure in the chair stirs and looks over at me. It’s Darby, her bright eyes expanding and a smile spreading across her lips.

  “Well damn!” she chimes, getting to her feet and coming to stand by the bed. She looks good considering. She has a faded bruise on her jaw and her arm’s in a cast.

  I open my mouth again but it’s like someone’s sucked all the moisture out.

  She picks up a jug and pours some water into a cup with a straw in and brings it to my lips. It’s like tasting heaven. The wet liquid filters into every inch of my mouth.

  “Thanks,” I croak.

  “You’ve been out for eight days.” She shakes her head, smiling.

  My eyes move across the room.

  “Your mom is getting some lunch, she’s been here waiting for you to wake up,” she informs me. I think she’s mistaken. I haven’t seen my mother in a decade; don’t even know where she is. I don’t tell her that though, I just ask what I want to know.

  “Rhi?” I murmur.

  “She’s okay,” she assures me, patting my leg with her good arm.

  There’s something in the way she can’t look at me when she says that though. She’s lying.

  “Darby?” I urge. “What is it?”

  She rests her hip against the bed and holds her arm. “Someone called in a tip that Brenner and Buzz were being held at the club.”

  “What? Why? Who?”

  “Your Prez got information that the call came from one of the barmaid’s cell phone. Someone with a fruit for a name.” She crinkles her nose.

  “Kiwi?” I ask in disbelief

  “Yes!” She points to me like I just got the answer to a quiz.

  “No way, Kiwi is as loyal as they come.” I shift in the bed, it feels like I’m lying on a lump of granite.

  “Yeah, well with Tank’s gun in her mouth she didn’t even cry, but Rhiannon did, she admitted it was her.”

  My heart races.

  Ba-dum. Ba-dum. Ba-dum.

  She called the police? She
betrayed her father, the club, her brother, me!

  “Slim said something about her not wanting Buzz to get murdered because of her. That he didn’t do anything to her or some shit.” She pauses and studies me. “Tank sent her away. Some school upstate.”

  She’s gone.

  “There’s something else.” She frowns.

  What fucking else can there be? My girl fell for her fucking captive. Maybe that’s why we couldn’t find her, because she didn’t want to be found. My heart cracks and I yearn for the ache to fuck off.

  “Slade.”

  “What about him?” There’s an edge to my tone, not towards her but for fear of what she’s going to tell me.

  “He’s been arrested. He killed Brenner in front of the cops.”

  Fuck.

  “It’s bad. Tank has him some posh lawyer but he’s still looking at a long stretch.”

  “And Buzz?” I grunt.

  She shrugs, her dark hair slipping over her shoulders. “Cops have him too.”

  Well isn’t this just perfect!

  Her hand slips into mine and she gives it a squeeze. It’s affectionate and not something I expect from her, but right now I take the comfort and close my eyes. I may have been asleep for eight days, but I suddenly feel tired.

  A nurse chooses this moment to come in. “Mr. Jameson, you’re awake. It’s good to see those brown eyes of yours,” she tells me. That’s not even my real name, it’s one my mother gave me because she liked the drink.

  “Yeah, it’s been just perfect waking up to all the happy news,” I grumble.

  The door opens behind her and my mouth drops open.

  A blonde woman with eyes matching mine walks in.

  “Mom?”

  My mother was a Madam my entire life. She owned a ‘gentlemen’s club’.

  Most of my youth was spent around strippers and harlots. They were my family until one night bikers filled her place. She told me that’s who my daddy was, a badass biker called Snake. These guys were here to let us know that he got clipped in a shootout between rival clubs and died. They wanted his son at the funeral. I was fourteen. I met Tank, and as soon as I hit sixteen, I left my life behind and patched in. When I went back to visit my mother, the club had been sold, and she had taken the money and moved on. No one knew where. It fucking hurt that she didn’t let me know where she was. So, a year turned into two and then three and so on until here we fucking are.

  “Eddy.” She beams at me. She’s always been a beautiful woman and time hasn’t changed that.

  There’s someone who followed her in, a boy around ten or eleven.

  “Go give your brother a hug,” she tells the boy, pushing him towards my bed.

  What the fuck!

  29

  Slade/Frost

  Prez looks at me through the glass separating us. He’s not here as my old man, he is here as my Prez, and he looks pissed.

  “The club is going down the gutter. We’re taking too many hits and lost a lot of respect from the other chapters. It’s going to take a lot of work to pull us out of this. And now I learn you gave territory to fucking Brig of all people!” he growls.

  “We needed Rhiannon home.” I shrug.

  Running his hand through his beard, he sighs and sits back against the small metal chair that hardly holds up his giant frame.

  “A lot of fucking good that got us.” He shakes his head.

  “I won’t be in here forever,” I state, and he narrows his eyes on me.

  “It won’t be a fucking walk in the park either. I’m an old man Slade. I wanted you taking the gavel and instead you’re going to be spending the next ten years in here, if you’re lucky.”

  I think about that for a second but then shake my head. “It was worth it.”

  “I hope so, son.”

  He gets up and slaps at the patch on his chest that reads Prez. “This will be waiting for you when you get out.”

  I watch him leave, and stand, but the guard shakes his head at me and points to the door. My eyes drag to where he’s gesturing and my mouth curls at the corners. My girl walks through, looking fucking beautiful. She takes attentive steps towards the chair and wrings her hands together.

  She slips into the seat and doesn’t look up at me.

  “Princess,” I say her name and she flinches.

  “Avery.” I try again.

  She looks up through her lashes. “I wanted to come and see you and…” she sighs and trails off.

  “I’m so sorry, Avery. For everything. For making you marry me. For leaving you vulnerable. I’m sorry for loving you, it was selfish of me. I should have let you go. So, I’m going to do that now. I want you to live your life, forget my fucked-up family and me.”

  She looks up at me now, really fucking looks at me. Her striking eyes blaze into mine. “You think I could forget you?” She snorts. “I’ve tried. I want to because it hurts to think of you. Because with the memories of you come the ones of him.”

  “I’m so fucking sorry, baby.” I bow my head to her because I am sorry and saying the words feel weak and not enough.

  She holds her hand up and slams it against the glass, her head lowering. “I just want you to make it stop!” she chokes.

  “Make what stop, baby?”

  “The pain in my chest. It feels like I’m dying. I think I need you,” she sobs.

  God, she still loves me. It’s right there in her words. In her eyes.

  “Think about the future and take it one day at a time. You’re stronger than you think. You’re more than what he made of you. Live your life, don’t let him keep you in that room.”

  She hiccups, and I want to hold her so fucking bad it’s painful.

  “I love you,” she murmurs.

  It’s music, healing fucking music to my battered heart.

  “I love you too,” I breathe.

  She gets to her feet and swipes the tears from her eyes, boring them into me. “Stay safe, Slade.”

  “Stay strong, Avery.”

  She turns and leaves, but I can’t let her go without asking.

  “Avery,” I call out.

  She stops moving but doesn’t turn around.

  “If I asked you, would you wait for me?”

  Her head drops, and then slowly she raises her eyes to mine as she says. “Only Forever.”

  30

  Rhiannon

  This is what I always thought I’d want, to be able to go away to college. But that was before Scorch changed me. Before I knew that he loved me back.

  Him lying there almost dying, he changed something inside of me. I didn’t want to pretend anymore, hide anymore. But then I fucked everything up and got banished. My dad was so pissed. Everyone knows it was me and now see me as a traitor. It didn’t save Brenner anyway.

  Tears spring to my eyes and sickness stirs in my stomach. I didn’t know what he had done to Avery. He was always different. Darkness resided inside him, but he loved me, and no matter how evil you know someone is, you can’t help how your heart feels.

  I try to hate him. Not mourn him. But I don’t have the control. I’ve never had any power over my heart, and that’s why I fell hook, line and sinker for my brother’s best friend.

  I keep trying Scorch’s cell number, but it’s been off since he was taken to the hospital. I should be there with him, helping him recover.

  It’s been three weeks, and I’ve not heard anything from him. My heart deflates with every passing day. I know he will be pissed at me for what happened. It’s my fault that Slade is in prison. If I just let club deal with their business and stay out of it, everything would be different. Except that’s not how I’m made.

  I may be a Lilith’s Army Princess, but I can’t condone the murder of a man who was grieving. He didn’t hurt me, not really.

  I sigh and try Scorch’s home number. It rings for a few beats and then a woman answers. “Hello?”

  Sitting upright, my nerves race through my body. I didn’t expect anyone to answer.
Especially a woman.

  I fall silent and then ask, “Is Scorch there?”

  “He’s in bed, let me check to see if he’s awake.”

  Silence.

  Then his gruff. “Hello?”

  “Scorch?” I almost whisper, relieved to hear his voice.

  “Who’s this?” He barks.

  I wilt like a dying flower, weeds strangling the life from me. “It’s Rhiannon.”

  “What the fuck do you want?”

  I can’t breathe. My lungs restrict, and I’m suffocating. “I just thought…” I trail off.

  “Thought what? I’d give a shit about you after I found you naked, fucking the enemy? I took a bullet for you and you then fucked over my club, your fucking club. Your brother is doing a ten-year sentence because of you.”

  Tears rush from my eyes and I bat them away with the back of my hand. I open my mouth to correct him about Buzz, but my heart shatters when he says to the woman in the background. “Did I say you could get dressed?”

  I hang up the phone and try to calm myself, but it feels like I’m dying inside.

  My hand clutches my stomach, and the other one picks up the test I’d taken minutes before.

  Positive.

  31

  Slade/Frost

  Ten Years Later

  The clanking of the gates is music to my ears.

  I breathe clean air and march out of there a free man.

  Time moves real fucking slow when all you have is four walls to stare at for eighteen hours of every day. I had something to keep me going though. I grin over at my everything leaning her sweet ass against my bike.

  “You ride that here?” I ask, cocking a brow.

  “Sure did,” she drawls and my dick twitches.

  She told me that time stopped when I shot Brenner and she knew in that moment that she could never live without me. He may have tainted her soul with darkness for a brief moment in time, but I’d be there to refill it with light. I’d replace all the scars and reminders with love and memories of us. I’ll fill her up with all the parts of me until that’s all there is left. Me. Her. Us.