Ozzy (Wayward Kings MC Book 2)

by Zahra Girard

  “What’re you guys doing here, brother?” I say.

  “I talked to Gunney last night,” Preacher says. “He called me, wanted to know how things were going.”

  “You spent half an hour briefing me on that damn show,” Gunney says, laughing. “How the hell can you put up with that?”

  “It’s not wrong to want some fucking entertainment. Especially when you’ve been through the shit I have,” Preacher says, his voice perfectly serious.

  “Preacher told us you were pretty torn up about this situation. Didn’t tell us much more than that, or why, but Gunney and I figured we should come out here, show you some support. Drove all night to get here,” Rog says, getting off his bike to pat me on the back. “You’re family, brother. And we’re here for you, whatever you need.”

  “We heard about the shootout on the way in,” Gunney says. “That rat’s dead. Good work. Did you get to him before he talked?”

  “We did,” I say, but there’s a note in my voice that even I can hear. Echoes of doubt and worry.

  Gunney squeezes my shoulder. “What about it was causing you problems? What’s wrong, brother?”

  I pause, looking at him. The things I’ve read about in David’s testimony going through my mind, things that even I didn’t know about. “Maria was one of the guy’s lawyers.”

  “Shit,” Rog and Gunney say at the same time.

  “Is she ok?” Gunney says, brow furrowed in concern. “Why didn’t you call me? We could’ve come up with some other plan. She’s family.”

  I forget about my doubts. These are men are my brothers, and the only thing I hear in their voices is caring and love. “I don’t know.”

  Rog looks at me, square in the eyes. “When this is all over, you need to go to her. Being a leader isn’t just about making tough decisions, brother. It’s about taking care of the people you love. And if she’s given herself to you, man, that’s important.”

  “This is where you really prove yourself,” Gunney says. “Anyone can pull a fucking trigger. But taking care of your old lady during tough times? Taking care of your own? That takes a real man.”

  I feel myself stand up straighter. Hearing praise from these two — men who’ve taken me in, made me a part of their family — fills me with pride. I know what I need to do. “You’re right.”

  “You ready to ride, brother?” Preacher says to me. “We got a long trip back home.”

  I shake my head. I’ve made up my mind. “I’m heading east, bro.”

  My voice shakes a bit at just the thought of Maria. I need to be with her. Even if it’s letting her scream at me, hit me, curse me for even being born — whatever it takes to help her feel better. My heart is pounding more thinking about her being in pain and needing someone — needing me — to help her through it.

  Rog grins. “Good man.”

  “You sure? Do you know if she’ll even want to see you?” Preacher says.

  “I don’t care. The woman who might be the one for me — might be my old lady — needs me. Even if it’s just to take her pain and let her take it all out on me, I gotta be there. She shouldn’t go through this kind of pain alone.”

  “I’m proud of you, brother,” Gunney says, taking my hand and shaking it. “Now get the fuck out of here.”

  Preacher and I share a hug. It’s awkward, hugging him while Phil’s still tied to his back, but we manage. I even give Phil a little pat so he doesn’t feel left out.

  “Take care,” Preacher says.

  I nod and watch them all them drive off.

  Once they’re out of sight, I get on my own bike, fire it up, and head for the open road.

  My old lady needs me.

  Chapter Twenty

  Maria

  I’m in Missoula for less than a day.

  Just long enough to lie to the US Attorney. Just long enough to muddy the waters on the investigation. Just long enough to do my part to make sure that Ozzy and Preacher get away. Just long enough to further betray the principles I built my life and career on.

  I’m the only witness to the crime. Ozzy and Preacher got away without anyone seeing them, and by the time the police realized there were other shooters on the loose, the two of them were long gone.

  I fly back to Chicago the next morning, David’s final statement still securely in my bag. I don’t bother calling in to the office to tell them I wont be in for a day or two. If they can’t figure that shit out on their own, then it’s not a place I want to work for any longer.

  I shut the door to my apartment.

  The solid wood of my door against my back is the most comforting bit of reality I’ve felt in too long. I stay there for a while, pulling air into shaky lungs and thinking about the enormous distance that I’ve fallen.

  Days ago, I was confident. Days ago, life seemed so simple. Days ago, I had a career path and a solid idea of who the fuck I was.

  What the hell do I have now?

  I make lunch out of a bottle of Jack Daniels.

  Halfway through the bottle, I realize how damn quiet my apartment is. No amount of television or spotify does enough to quell the fact that my thoughts are screaming at me in my head.

  I killed someone. I compromised myself for a killer. And now I’m alone with the pieces.

  I call Roxanna.

  More than anything right now, I need a friendly voice. Someone to talk to, someone to tell the truth to, someone to hear the truth from.

  I get one ring in and hang up.

  What can I tell her? That I thought about selling her out? That I’m that fucking selfish that I’d even consider putting a paycheck and a promotion over my family?

  I don’t have the guts to tell her the truth. I don’t have the guts to own up to my shame.

  I stare at my phone, insides a fucked-up, scrabbled rubix cube of a mess.

  Instinctively, I start to dial Ozzy. It’s habit. He’s always been someone I can talk to before this. Someone I can count on. Someone I care about. Someone that can bring a smile to my face at the end of a long day when I’m feeling like shit, when I’m wondering if this long, lonely climb up the career ladder is worth it. I’m nearly to pressing the ‘Call’ button when I realize the futility of it.

  Every single person in my life I’ve either betrayed or come close to betraying. The people I need the most, the people I’d call in this situation — my friends, my family, Roxanna, Ozzy, Bear — I can’t talk to.

  I’m alone.

  * * * * *

  I get up the next morning, hung over, and decide I need to go in to work.

  I can’t stay at home anymore and hope to stay sane. I need something to occupy myself other than drinking. I need people around me, even if they’re not the people that I exactly want to have around me.

  My morning routine takes over — some light exercising followed by a long, hot shower, breakfast, and a cup of coffee. It feels good to just let my body go through the mindless motions. To do these things that feel normal and grounded in a time when things made sense.

  I’m still shaken, still broken, but there is something wholly therapeutic about putting myself together for work. Something welcome about looking myself in the mirror, dressed, confident, self-assured.

  When I step through the doors of my firm’s office building and it seems like it’s going to be just a normal day, where few people acknowledge my existence, and the ones that do acknowledge me keep their expressions of sympathy and concern to a professional level — because this is a professional firm — it’s comforting.

  I might not be ok, and normalcy might be a long way away, but it doesn’t feel unattainable.

  I sit at my desk. Work is all around me. Calling me to focus on something other than my life. These are things that I can lose myself in and, not a single one of these papers and files and reports mentions the wrenching calamity of what went down in Missoula.

  With the door to my office shut, I get to work.

  It’s calming.

  Peace lasts for an
hour. It’s interrupted by a knock at my door and the welcome banshee-like voice of Janet. I even manage to smile at her when she comes inside.

  “Hey, sorry to just come in like this,” she says. There’s some cellophane-wrapped basket in her hands. “Something came for you just after you left. I’ve been holding on to it, but thought that now might be a good time to give it to you, what with, well, you know…”

  She sets it down on my desk.

  “Thank you, Janet” I say.

  She smiles at me and pauses in the doorway. “If you want to get coffee or something later, just let me know. I’m here for you.”

  I nod, murmur ‘thanks’ again, knowing that I will never take her up on her offer because there really isn’t anyone I can talk to. I wait until she leaves before I look at the basket. The door shuts and I open up the cellophane, tossing the crinkly sheets to the floor.

  It’s filled with candy and snacks, treats that I’ve never heard of and, frankly, am surprised even exist because they just seem so damn strange: peanut slabs, chocolate fish, jaffas, hokey pokey squiggles, and something with the very unappealing name of ‘pineapple lumps’. There’s a bottle of wine from some vineyard in a town that has too many vowels in its name. And a pair of rugby tickets for a game tomorrow night. A game here, in Chicago.

  There’s a note, too. Short, simple, sweet, written in Ozzy’s unmistakable scrawl. I hardly get through the first word ‘dear’ before I have to put it away.

  I throw the note in a desk drawer and slam it shut.

  Before I can talk myself out of it, I pull my phone out and try calling him. I need to hear his voice. If I’ve really lost him because of the secrets I kept and the way I spoke to him, at the very least I want to tell him I’m sorry for how it all ended.

  There’s no answer; it’s all the answer I need.

  My heart sinks in my chest.

  I get up from my chair, leaving Ozzy’s gifts on my desk. I can’t be here right now. I can’t do my job with everything I’ve done weighing on my conscience. I’ve killed someone, I’ve lied to everyone I know, and I’ve broken every principle I believed in.

  Without saying a word to Janet, I leave. I hail the first taxi I see, give him my address, and settle silently into the back seat.

  The only thing on my mind is leaving.

  I need to leave this all behind. I need to find somewhere I can start over new, without the reminders of everything and everyone I’ve failed.

  * * * * *

  By the time I get out of the cab, I have this half-formed plan in my head. I have the kind of resume that I should be able to walk into most any firm in the country and get offered some sort of job, even though odds are good it’ll probably be near entry level.

  It’ll hurt being on the bottom rung again — hell, it stings just thinking about it — but I have to start over somewhere. I can’t do my job effectively at Meagher, Thatcher & Watkins anymore. I can’t look my coworkers in the eye and lie to them about everything that happened in Missoula.

  They’re good people. They’ll understand me resigning and wanting to get a fresh start. I’m sure that more than a couple of them will even write me a recommendation.

  My feet pound their way up the stairs to my third-floor apartment, my heels ringing out against the tile floor, my stride growing more resolute with each step.

  I can do this.

  I’m starting to feel normal again. I have a plan, a way to regain some purpose and to get on a track where I can rebuild the pride I’m so used to having in my career. I’ll serve my penance at the bottom of the ladder in some other firm — in some city other than Chicago — and find a new normal.

  I’m so wrapped up in my head that I don’t see him until I nearly crash into him.

  He’s there, right in front of my front door, pacing back and forth, hands clenched behind his back, cut on his shoulders.

  He’s waiting for me.

  Ozzy.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Ozzy

  “What the fuck are you doing here?” she blurts out. The edge in her voice is enough to put me back on my heels.

  “I came here for you.”

  “I can see that,” she says, her voice rippling with confusion and anger. “Why are you waiting here?”

  “Because you weren’t home when I got here,” I say. “I would’ve called, but I still just got my burner phone, which doesn’t have your number in it. I couldn’t just leave things the way they were between us. I couldn’t let you go through everything alone. Where’ve you been?”

  “I was at work,” she says.

  I can’t help it. I frown. “You went right back to work? After everything you’ve been through? You should’ve taken some time off.”

  She steps in suddenly, and with all the emotions swirling in her beautiful brown eyes, I’m not sure if she’s going to slap me or hug me or what, so I take out from behind my back what I’ve been holding for her: a dozen roses.

  “What the holy fuck is this?” she says.

  The sight of them shatters whatever calm remained on her face. Tears form and fall from the corners of her eyes, her lips curl, and a ragged sob bursts from her. Even when she’s broken and angry, she’s beautiful enough to scatter my thoughts and take my breath away.

  “I thought you liked roses.”

  “I do. But, what are you doing? What is this about? What the fuck is wrong with you?”

  I say what I reckon I should’ve said to her yesterday, what I should’ve reminded her of when her world was falling to pieces on that highway. I failed her then, I let her think she was alone. I’m not going to make that mistake again. “I love you.”

  She lets out this exasperated, confused, anguished noise, opens the door to her apartment and starts to slam it shut.

  I jam my foot int he doorway and push myself in.

  She whirls on me, still holding the flowers, and looks at me with sad, wide eyes. “Why?”

  I put my words together carefully. I’m pretty sure she knows why I care about her — she’s interesting, smart as hell, and hot as anyone I’ve ever seen — which means she’s probably asking a different kind of why, a why that isn’t so simple. It’s one of those confusing things women do sometimes.

  “You mean why am I here?” I start, and, when she doesn’t interrupt, I keep going. “I don’t know everything that happened in Missoula. I don’t know the full story of what was in those papers, or why you shot David Ardoin. But I do know that I care about you enough that I need to find out why. You’re too important to me to just walk away from. Hell, I don’t think I could ever just walk away from you. No matter what happens, I don’t think I’ll ever feel about someone the same as I feel about you.”

  She sits down on her living room couch, rests her face in her hands, and pulls in a shuddering, slow breath. There’s so much pain in her that I can’t keep my distance even though she’s obviously feeling conflicted and confused. I come closer and gently put my hand on her back.

  “Ozzy…” she starts, and then her voice fades.

  It’s a long time before she talks. But I don’t mind. I know in my heart that she’ll speak when she’s ready and, until then, I’m happy enough just touching her.

  “I didn’t tell you about those papers because I was afraid and ashamed. I was afraid that if I told you, people would die. And I was ashamed because you trusted me, and I was failing that trust despite everything I was trying to do to keep the club out of it.”

  I kiss her softly on the top of her head.

  There’s so much more I want to know. So many pieces I feel like have to be put together before I can understand. But I know I can’t push her. I keep my voice as soft and gentle as I can. “What were you really doing in that van? Why were you there, Maria?”

  There’s a quiver in her shoulders — a gentle, suppressed sob. I sit down beside her and put my arm around her shoulders. She leans into my chest and rests her head against me.

  “I went to see him at the pris
on. I offered him everything I had, all of my savings, my retirement, whatever I knew I could borrow from my parents, just to keep you guys out of it. He said he needed more convincing. I knew he wanted to see me beg. I rode with them because I had to. I had to give him what he wanted.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ,” I whisper without even realizing it. The courage this woman has — it’s enough to make my chest swell just for the fact of knowing her. And rips me to pieces seeing the pain that she’s in, the way she’s suffering. That she’s felt she’s had to be alone. “Have you told anyone?”

  She turns and looks at me, surprised. “Who can I tell? My co-workers, who will see me as some completely unprofessional psychopath who slept with some outlaw biker and tried to cover up a whole bunch of crimes? Or the club, who will see me as someone who tried to betray them to advance her own career?”

  “That’s not true,” I start. “I can’t speak for your co-workers, I don’t know them, but I can tell you that from where I’m standing, you are brave. You risked everything for me, for the club, and you don’t deserve to suffer like this. We’re here for you. I’m here for you.”

  She shakes her head. “If I’d been better at my job, we wouldn’t be in this mess. If I hadn’t fucked everything —”

  I can’t stand her talking about herself like that. I can’t stand seeing her shovel blame on herself. I press my finger to her lips, quieting her.

  “Don’t talk that way about the woman I love. Shit goes sideways sometimes, no matter what we do. But what matters is your intentions — you tried to do what you thought was best, because you care. That’s what fucking matters.”

  She kisses me, once, soft and quick, and brown eyes shine at me.

  “Thank you,” she says.

  A little smile tugs at her mouth. It’s faint, a bare glimmer of light in her dark mood, but it gives me hope. I know she’s hurting inside, but in this moment, she’s so radiant that I can’t resist giving her a gentle kiss.