We weren’t the normal guys.
Never were.
Never wanted to be.
Some of my brothers in the club were avid hunters. I’d even gone out with them on one occasion. But in my eighteen years I’d already shed enough blood of the human variety to not really give a shit about the pointless killing of a dirty animal that, when sliced open, the inside of it’s belly smelled worse than a fucking rotting corpse.
“Well, my friends, we’re out here because I’m a man now. And this is the kind of shit that real men do. So come on, little girls, pick up your panties and grab your balls because we are gonna kill us some fucking wild piggies,” Preppy said, before giving us his best nasally impression of a wild hog oink.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked, rubbing my eyes. I reached into my cut for my smokes. Unlike Preppy, who was dressed for the occasion with his cargo pants, bright orange vest, and a camo hat that read PUSSY HUNTER in neon green lettering, I opted for my usual uniform of my cut, no shirt, and dark jeans. I held my shotgun in the crook of my arm with my chin across the barrel while I fished a lighter out of my back pocket. I wasn’t exactly following proper gun holding etiquette. Hell, I didn’t care if I blew half my face off in the process, because nicotine was going to be the only thing able to keep me from jumping into the harbor and swimming back to Logan’s Beach.
“I’ve been practicing my feral hog mating call so that the biggest and baddest alpha motherfucker comes out to play ‘catch a bullet’ with us. And what the fuck are you doing smoking, Ralph? Put it out! They will smell it or see the smoke and they’ll spook and run the fuck off!” Preppy scolded. Turning back around, he crouched down and scanned the foliage around us for any sign of his feral fucking pigs.
I stayed upright and so did King. I rested my gun against my shoulder in a very not-ready-for-this-shit kind of way. I had no intentions of putting my smoke out, but out of the corner of my eye I caught a glimpse of the look King was flashing me, a reminder of the reason why we were there in the first place, and, reluctantly, I put out my smoke on my boot and flashed King an exaggerated “You happy now?” smile.
There was only one reason on fucking earth why either King or myself would be up before the sun and in the middle of the fucking woods, and thank fuck that reason only came around once a year.
Preppy’s birthday.
In the three years or so since I’d met King and Prep, I’d been roped into their unspoken tradition, where for one day, Preppy calls the shots. “I should have skipped town when I saw you looking up these beasts on my computer” I said, stepping over a downed pine tree.
“You were just shocked he wasn’t looking at porn for once,” King quipped, and he was right. It may have been the one time I would have preferred to open my screen to find some of the sick shit Preppy liked to occupy his time with, rather than what he had in store for us on his birthday.
“Actually, if you motherfuckers must know, I was looking up porn,” Preppy said with a shrug of his shoulders. There was a rustling in the brush up ahead. A huge brown hog with wiry hair and a broken tusk darted out from its hiding place and into the clearing, making a run for his life through the trees. Preppy lifted his gun and pulled the trigger. He missed the fast moving pig and the bullet blew a huge hole into a tree stump. “But you’d be surprised how one little misspelling of the word BEASTIALITY can change the entire fucking nature of a search.” King and I looked at one another and followed Preppy, who started reciting lines from Braveheart as he ran full speed after the hog there was no way he was ever going to catch.
After an hour of chasing Preppy through the trees and almost accidentally shooting one another a few times, Preppy finally gave up and we headed back out to the truck. “Fuck this. I’m just going to get one of those plastic pig heads they sell at the gas station and mount it in my room.”
“Could have decided that a lot fucking earlier,” King muttered.
Preppy cracked his knuckles. “And now for the business portion of the day,” he said, grabbing two shovels from the bed of the truck which were laying over a blue tarp. He tossed us each one and pulled off the tarp, revealing the tied up body of a man underneath.
“Who the fuck is this?” King asked.
“This was the motherfucker who pulled a gun on me last night when I was out running collection,” Preppy announced, poking the corpse with the handle of his shovel.
“Ugh, why are you guys dragging me into this. This is your shit,” I huffed.
“Bear you can’t fucking complain,” Preppy snapped, grabbing a hold of the man’s ankles.
“Why the fuck not?” I asked.
“’Cause, bitch,” he said, flashing me a big white-toothed grin as he slid the body from the truck bed until it was about halfway and then he let it fall to the ground with a dull thud. “It’s my motherfucking birthday.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Thia
I wrapped my arms around my legs and held them close to my chest, resting my chin on the tops of my knees. I closed my eyes and slowly inhaled through my nose, breathing in the wet air and the smell of Grace’s roses.
We’d finished with all the boxes just as the sun set. Ray was inside making a call to the babysitter to check on the kids while I sat outside on the deck in Grace’s backyard and wondered what the hell the future had in store.
For Bear. For me. For us.
Only time would tell, but the time I was most concerned about was the next few days, and whether Bear would come out of them alive.
I tried my best to steady my erratic beating heart, but I felt helpless—a feeling I hated more than anything.
Crickets chirped loudly from out beyond the fence. I rubbed the heels of my bare feet over the warmed fabric of the chair. There were so many questions in my head that I just wanted to do a hand stand and shake them out of my ear.
He could be hurt. He could die.
My stomach twisted as I forced myself away from that thought.
He could also succeed.
Then what?
I didn’t hear Ray approaching until she sat down next to me, her shoulder bumping mine. “In my life, everyone close to me has died,” Ray started with a sigh, looking out over the backyard as if she were wrestling with something in her head too. “My best friend from when I was a kid. Well, I guess my two best friends, although one was kind of my husband for a minute. A woman who was more like a mother to me than my actual mother, and someone I knew for only a short period of time, but was more connected to than anyone else, besides King.” Her eyes flickered from the house to the trees and finally back to me.
“Preppy,” I said, wishing I’d had a chance to meet the guy that King, Ray, and Bear had all cared for so deeply. Ray nodded and attempted a small smile that did nothing to mask her hurt.
“Yes, Preppy. I was in love with him you know,” she said with a sniffle.
“You were?” For a second I thought that Bear hadn’t told me the entire story.
“Yeah, not in the way I’m in love with King, but I was…or I am,” Ray corrected, “as in love with Preppy as I could be without it being a romantic kind of love. I loved him deep, and so it hurts deep. That’s just the way love works, I guess.”
“Aren’t you afraid something will happen to King?” I asked, needing to know if I was alone in the anguish I felt over them going to war against Chop. “If he goes to bat for Bear, he’s putting his life on the line. It’s not even his fight. Even Bear has tried to talk him out of it.” I was grateful that Bear had King in his life and that King was so willing to step up for Bear, but being no stranger to loss myself it was easy to put myself in her shoes.
If something happened to King, it would leave their three kids without their father, and she would lose yet another person she loved. “I know how it feels,” I added, reminding her that she wasn’t alone.
Ray shook her head. “No, I’m not afraid. If I’ve learned anything over the past year, it’s that going to bat for one another
is what family does, regardless of the cause. This is King’s battle because it’s Bear’s battle.” Ray absentmindedly picked at the threads of the fraying chair cushion. “I grew up in a house with two parents and it still took me coming here to learn that myself. Besides, it wasn’t like when I met King he was an accountant or something who suddenly decided to venture into another questionable and dangerous line of work. I knew what I was getting into from day one.” Ray let out a quick burst of laughter. “Did. I. Ever.”
I laughed with her as she disappeared for a moment into some memory she’d been recalling. When she came back she said, “King isn’t the kind of man you change, and I never went into this thinking I could change him. I went into this loving him. That’s all.”
“I know exactly how that feels,” I admitted.
Ray nudged my shoulder again. “The Bear I first met was a little bit different than the Bear you know now,” she said, looking out over the water. “I met him at a party, right before I met King. Such a smooth talker with his crazy deep voice. He was strong then. Confident. Then after Preppy died that all changed. He turned into a shell, then he just up and left.” The smile briefly left her face but returned when she added, “But he’s Bear 3.0, better than before…and it’s all because of you.”
“I can’t take all the credit. There was this guy who gave me a ring once,” I said, rubbing Bear’s ring between my fingers. “He made me better, too.”
I couldn’t help but think that even though Ray and I took very different paths to get to the same place, that our stories were a lot more similar than I’d initially realized. I too was learning more about family than I ever had before. “So you’re really not afraid? Because honestly,” I said, a lump forming in my throat. “I don’t know what I would do if something happened to B…” I stopped and squeezed my eyes shut, willing away the unwanted thought.
Ray put her hand on my shoulder and I opened my eyes, peering into her doll-like icy blue’s that projected nothing but sincerity and sympathy. “No,” Ray said. “I’m not.”
“You’re crazy,” I said. She’d lost so many people she’d loved, so why wasn’t she afraid of losing King too? “Why?” I asked again.
“King promised me he would be okay,” Ray said, “and he always keeps his promises.”
I wanted the same to be true for Bear, for him to promise me he’d be okay and swear to me that he’d come out of all this alive. As much as I loved the broken promise that had brought us together to begin with, it was one I really wanted him to keep.
“I just wish there was something I could do to help,” I admitted.
Ray nodded. “I feel exactly the same way, but aside from grabbing a gun and storming the compound we are S.O.L,” Ray said with a laugh, “or unless you have an army laying around they could borrow.”
I jolted upright as an idea went off in my head like I’d been struck by lightning. Circuits were connecting. An idea was taking shape. I turned to Ray. “What if I did have one?”
“One what?” Ray asked. Her lips turned to the side in confusion. I leapt to my feet.
“Stay here, I’m going to grab my phone. I’ll be right back!” I yelled.
“But one what?” she asked again. I turned around before going into the house and smiled wickedly.
“An army.”
I disappeared inside and ran to the kitchen table when I remembered that the phone was in the truck. I jogged out the front door and stuck my hand through the window, grabbing the phone off the seat. I dialed and waited but there was no answer. “Crap,” I said as I typed out a text and hoped to God he would get it and know what it meant.
I jogged back up to the house, still looking down at the phone, waiting for a reply, when I ran into something hard.
Someone.
I didn’t get a chance to see who that someone was before I was zapped by a bolt of blue lighting. Hovering somewhere between consciousness and unconsciousness, I could still hear the crickets chirping and Ray calling out for me as I was carried away, bombarded by the sensations of both familiarity, and dread.
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Bear
The only thing my old man ever gave me was the promise of the gavel and his fucking temper.
Cocksucker.
With Preppy’s death, I reached an entirely new level of anger, a feeling so far beyond anything I’d ever experienced before, I never thought I’d be able to unclench my fists or take a deep breath again.
For a while I let it destroy me from the inside, like the cancer that took Grace, tearing apart the very foundation of who I thought I was, and leaving a fraction of the old me in its place.
By comparison, the anger I felt when Prep died was a mere blip on the fucking radar compared to the out of body rage I experienced when Ray called to say my girl had been taken.
Ray hadn’t seen who it was, neither did Wolf or Munch who were in the back yard watching the girls. When Munch saw Ti duck inside he didn’t know she was going out the front of the house. They ran out just in time to see a van driving away.
They may not have seen who took her, but they didn’t have to see it for me to know who was behind it. If he thought for even one fucking second that taking my girl would in any way give him the upper hand that fucker was dead wrong. All it did was move up the war, his imminent death, and the probability of torture unlike he’d ever known before.
Go get her, Bear.
Preppy’s ghost voice was the most serious I’d ever heard him, and that filled me with even more rage, and something else I wasn’t familiar with ever feeling.
Terror.
The plan had always been to storm the MC. Take back what Chop had taken from us. Take back the club. Not once while making those plans had I feared for my own life, but now that Ti’s life was in the hands of the man who’d already caused her so much damage, and was capable of inflicting so much more, the fear within me was damn near overwhelming.
Life and death had always been very factual for me. We all lived, and we all died, and I was fully prepared to take a bullet when my time was up. I was okay with my death, regardless of when it came.
I wasn’t okay with the death of Preppy.
In thirty years, if I’m still walking the earth, I still won’t be.
If something happened to Ti, the pain I would inflict would be endless because my pain would be endless.
Hurry. Ghost Preppy said.
I throttled my engine and forced my bike to breakneck speeds. I ran every red light, stop sign, and dodged every stopped car. I lead our group, which consisted of Wolf, Stone, and Munch, with King taking up the rear. Gus was meeting us there. We weren’t the largest group, but we had a lot of talent between us, and it was that talent that I was relying on to get my girl back. Then and only then, when I knew she was safe, would I take my time to dispose of my old man for good.
I wasn’t stupid. I knew it was all a trap to lure me in—no fucking doubt about it. I even think Gus was fed false intel on purpose about the club being out on a ride, but trap or not, Chop had brought the war to his doorstep and I was about to reign down a hell on him like he’d never imagined possible. If there was any part of my old man left who thought I might be incapable of laying him out because he was blood, he was about to learn just how wrong he was.
Dead fucking wrong.
I frantically flew into the night and used the thoughts of my girl to fuel my hatred and push me forward.
The war we had been preparing for had officially been moved up, to right fucking now.
Hang on, Ti. I’m coming.
I was going to get my girl back and I was going to bathe in the blood of any motherfucker who stood between us.
I wasn’t just after revenge.
I was on a fucking hunt.
I kind of missed the psychotic part of me that had been lying dormant since Preppy died and welcomed the thought of mounting Chop’s severed head on the fucking roof of the MC as a warning to any other piece of shit who thinks they can cro
ss me and somehow get away with it.
The Beach Bastards wasn’t Chop’s club anymore.
He wasn’t their Prez.
They didn’t exist.
Or at least, they wouldn’t after I was through with them.
Ti may have taught me how to be a man again, but I shoved the man to the side, because right then I needed the biker, the devil, the fucking demon who would shoot without question or hesitation. Cut without feeling. Hurt without hurting.
On my bike, with Logan’s Beach blurring around me, I became the soulless monster who was willing to spill rivers full of blood for my girl.
There were a lot of motherfuckers heading to hell tonight.
After I made sure Ti was safe, I didn’t care if I was one of them.
I laid down on the throttle and pushed my bike to her limits. I barreled down the road toward the compound, unsure of how the fuck I was able to see the road, because in my vision all I could see was red.
Blood. Fucking. Red.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Thia
“No! Don’t put that in my arm! I don’t need it. I swear. I’ll be good. I’ll be calm. Just please. Don’t! I promise. I’ll be calm. I promise!” I screamed, and struggled against several men and women dressed in grey scrubs as they held my arms and legs down on a gurney. A petite woman with short black hair held up a syringe to the light and flicked it a few times before inserting it into the IV drip already in my arm. She looked down at me unapologetically before pushing down on the plunger.
Then it all went out of focus.
Everything.
Including the room.
Suddenly, I was alone. I sat up on the gurney with ease. My wrists and ankles no longer tethered down. I was in the same room as moments before, same pale green walls, but this time it was empty.
At least I thought it was empty.
“And I used to think Bear was the smartest of us three fuckateers,” a male voice said, followed by a short burst of laughter. “Actually, that’s not true. I’ve always been the smartest one, it’s a scientific fact. Also, my cock’s the biggest. It’s important you know that.”
Soulless (Lawless #2) Page 16