Stand (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 7)

by Susan Fanetti

  “Yeah, okay.”

  The guard pressed a button that unlocked the door, and they went back into the world.

  The rain had stopped before they’d left the house, and the sun had come out while they were in the clinic. It looked like it might be a pretty Sunday after all. The kind of spring day that people spent with their families, enjoying the new warm weather.

  Caleb hooked his arm around her shoulders and all but dragged her past the sign-wavers, toward the Delaney Sinclair wrecker, which was their chariot for this wonderful day. Cecily recited poetry in her head and closed out their shouts.

  Once they were safely in the cab and Caleb had pulled away and put the fracas behind them, Cecily leaned her head against the door window. “I don’t know why Willa couldn’t have done that for me. Why’d she make me go there? Why’d she leave you at the house?”

  Not getting an answer, she turned to Caleb, who stared at her, dashing occasional looks to the street before him. “You don’t remember.”

  “I think we’ve established that I don’t.”

  “You were a total cunt to her. You hit her in the face and told her to get the fuck out.”

  “I did not.” Her heart stumbled. Oh shit. Willa was good people. And her old man was hardcore. Jesus, if Rad found out she’d hurt his old lady…

  “Yeah, you did. So she got the fuck out and asked me to get you to the clinic instead.”

  “You all should’ve just left me.”

  He didn’t answer, and she didn’t want to talk anymore, so she stared out the window. After a minute or two, she realized he wasn’t taking her back to the house. “Where’re you going?”

  “To find your car. I thought we’d start at Tempest. If it’s not there, we’ll go on a hunt.” He turned his attention from the road again. “Unless you don’t think you can drive yet.”

  She could drive. Whatever crap had been in her last night, it was through her, and enough time had passed since she’d woken that the hangover was gone. “I can drive. I don’t know where my bag is.”

  “Apollo’s on that. If it’s where your phone was, he’ll get them. Do you have a spare key for the car?”

  “Yeah.” She had one of those magnetic keepers inside the front wheel well. Her dad had hated that; he’d thought the danger of getting her car stolen with the spare key was greater than the inconvenience of locking herself out of her car. But she locked herself out of her car like four times a year, so she’d ignored him.

  Turned out, there were lots of stupid things she could do to make that keeper useful.

  When Caleb pulled up alongside the lot across the street from the club, her white Trans Am was the only car parked there. It hadn’t moved since she’d parked and gone into Tempest. But the lot was closed now, with a chain stretched across the driveway.

  “Fuck.”

  “Not to worry.” Caleb jumped out of the cab. Cecily did, too, and saw him pull a bolt cutter from the wrecker tool box. He looked up and around, and then trotted over and cut the chain. With a grin, he let it drop to the concrete. “There ya go!”

  Thank god. She was free. Muttering thanks, she headed toward her car, but he grabbed her arm—not the bruised one. “Hey, wait.”

  She turned back to him, but her need to get quit of this whole sordid scene had grown into a desperation. “What?”

  Her tone made him frown, but he didn’t let her go. “You were raped, Cecily. Are you sure you want to be alone?”

  “I was not fucking raped!” She yanked on her arm, but he held on.

  “You called for help. Said it was an emergency, that you were in a bad place. And we found you like that…yeah, sugar, you were raped.”

  All the air around her was full of that whining, echoing noise. She had to get away from it. She struck out with her free hand, slamming her fist into his chest. “FUCK YOU!” His grip loosened, and she got free. Then she full-out ran to her car. Her hands shook so much she could barely get the spare key from the keeper.

  Caleb stood on the sidewalk and watched until she burned rubber out of the lot and away from him.

  ~oOo~

  You were raped.

  You were raped.

  You were raped.

  No. Nope, no way, uh-uh. Did not happen. Didn’t. No.

  Halfway home, with his last words discoing around the dance floor of her head, Cecily knew Caleb was right. She’d lose her shit if she spent the day alone.

  Before she talked herself out of it, she made a U-turn and went where she could get what she needed. Rescue.

  ~oOo~

  She almost lost her nerve again, as she neared the house and saw the garage door up. Little Duncan rode his Big Wheel around the driveway, and Kelsey was drawing on the sidewalk with a bucket of pastel chalk. Maverick had the hood up on the 1952 Chevy pickup he’d been restoring. It was the kind of Sunday you spent with family, enjoying the spring day.

  Maverick was the only Bull she could tolerate. When she was younger, like in middle school, she’d had a fierce, heartrending crush on him. He was handsome and muscular, but it had been more than his looks. He’d talked to her like a person. He’d been unfailingly kind, and he was the only patch besides her father and Uncle Brian who’d ever noticed she was around.

  Then he’d gone to prison, and when he’d gotten out, she’d been off at college. The few times in that first year they’d seen each other, he’d been different. Still kind, but distant.

  And then the Bulls had killed her father.

  She’d hated every last one of them, and she’d steered far away from them all, even Maverick. Until that time she’d gotten drunk and shown up at the clubhouse, looking for what, she still didn’t know. What she’d found was Caleb. And mortification the next morning.

  After that, Maverick had made a pest of himself, like he’d decided that she needed a father and he’d fill the role.

  He’d been right. She needed her father. But she couldn’t have him, so Maverick would have to do. The rest of the Bulls could all die bloody deaths, as far as she was concerned.

  Parking at the curb, she got out and stepped onto the driveway. Kelsey looked up from her sidewalk art and grinned. “Hi, Cissy!”

  Cecily found a grin for her. “Hey, Kelse. That’s pretty.” It looked like a pink snake in a blue tutu. No—a pink lizard. It had yellow feet.

  “Yeah! It’s a horse-arina!”

  Duncan crashed his Big Wheel into her legs. “BEEP BEEP!”

  “Sorry, Dunc.”

  “BEEP BEEP!” He turned and rolled back up the driveway. “ROOOM ROOOM!”

  “Hey, girl! What’s up?”

  Maverick was walking down the driveway, grinning, wiping his hands with a faded red shop towel, and the sight was so totally familiar to her it stopped her breath. How many times in her life had her father walked to her just that way, in a grease-streaked t-shirt and jeans, happy to see her, wiping his engine-blacked hands on a shop towel just like that so he could hug her? Hundreds? Thousands? Maverick looked nothing like her father—he was big and dark-haired, and her father had been slight and fair—but right now, she couldn’t tell them apart.

  She was going to lose her shit anyway.

  As the cracks in her head widened into fissures, and then chasms, Maverick’s grin faded out, and he frowned. “Cissy? You okay?”

  All she could do was shake her head. When he reached her, she sagged forward and let her forehead hit his chest. His arms went around her, and his touch pulled the weeping that had been lurking all day out of its dark corner. She stood there, leaning on him, with his kids playing right there, and sobbed.

  “Hey, hey. What happened? What’s wrong?”

  Everything. Everything was wrong.

  ~oOo~

  Jenny, his wife, was out running errands and getting a few hours to herself, so Maverick set the kids up with a Disney movie and led Cecily to sit with him at his kitchen table. It was set in a nook with a bay window that looked out on their big, toy-strewn yard. While he got coffee
, she sat and studied the tire swing, and the huge redwood swing set, and Kelsey’s pink playhouse, and the little toys scattered everywhere like big plastic chunks of brightly hued confetti.

  This was a happy home. She’d had that, too, when she was little.

  He set a cup before her and took a seat at her side. “What’s going on?”

  “You ever think what it’ll be like for Kelsey and Duncan if you get killed?”

  Air rushed from his mouth like she’d punched him in the gut. “Jesus, Ciss.”

  Why had she said that? That wasn’t why she’d come. Why had she come? To talk about the night before?

  No. No way. There wasn’t anything to talk about. Nothing had happened. Nothing she hadn’t wanted. It had all been her choice. What she wanted. Her call. All of it. She dragged on the sleeve of her hoodie, pulling it down over her hand, covering her arm completely. Her call. All of it.

  That echo thing started again. She gave her brain a good hard shake and tapped the rim of her coffee mug. “Can you make this Irish?”

  Frowning, he nodded and got up. She watched him as he went to a cabinet over the refrigerator and pulled down a bottle of whiskey. He brought it to the table and set it before her, and she helped herself, filling the mug to the brim. Then she took a good, long drink.

  “What the hell is going on with you, honey?”

  As the whiskey swirled in her stomach, Cecily closed her eyes and finally took a decent breath. “Duncan was born on the day my dad died.”

  His big, rough hand covered hers. “I know.”

  Of course he knew. He’d been at the clubhouse that day, and Duncan was his own kid. “He’s going to be three in July. It’s been almost three years.”

  “Cissy…”

  “It shouldn’t hurt anymore. It should have stopped by now. I can’t even remember the sound of his voice. If that can go away, why won’t this?” She punched her chest. “Why won’t it stop?” She punched again; it felt good, a pain like that, with a source and a location she could identify. “Stop. I want it to stop.”

  Maverick was off the chair, grabbing her fist, pulling her close, and she was crying, shit, she was crying again. Why was all this coming up like yesterday’s salad and spewing all over Maverick’s kitchen?

  He didn’t try to talk; he simply held her until the tear-vomit ran its course, and she lifted her head from his soggy shoulder. “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be.” He wiped her cheeks. “You can always cry on these shoulders.”

  She sniffed and wiped her nose with the edge of her sleeve. “I should go. I didn’t mean to fuck up your Sunday.”

  “Stay. Hang out today. We’re gonna break out the grill for the season.”

  Sitting at the edge of this happy, intact family while they had a happy, intact day was the very last thing she wanted to do. So she finished her coffee and offered Maverick a smile—a fairly good one, she thought. “Thanks, but I can’t. I have some shit to take care of. Thanks for letting me dump all that, though.”

  He grinned and patted his shoulder. “Plenty more room up here.”

  Unable to stop herself, Cecily let her head fall forward and rest on his shoulder once more. Just for another minute.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Caleb had three jobs—he worked at Delaney’s Sinclair, he was a Bull, and he worked on his brother’s cattle ranch. They all paid, in one way or another, though one of them didn’t make his tax forms.

  Both he and Levi had inherited the ranch when their mother was killed, but Caleb had been only seven then, and Levi only thirteen. It had been empty since their maternal grandfather had died a few years before that, so they’d left it empty until Levi was eighteen. Then, right out of high school, he’d moved in and, with their paternal grandfather’s help, started making it work again. He’d begun with a tiny herd of ten Black Angus.

  Sixteen years had passed since Levi had started the ranch back up. Caleb had also moved to the ranch after high school and had lived there since. It was still a small holding, and Levi and Caleb did most of the work themselves. It would never be more than barely profitable, but they’d grown the herd to forty head and added acreage to support them, and most years the ledger made it to the black.

  On paper, they both owned the place, but Caleb had never thought of it as his. Levi had done the work to get it going; it was his dream. Everything he wanted was on that land. Caleb’s dreams were elsewhere, so far out he hadn’t found them yet. So Caleb helped his brother out, and banked his share of the proceeds. Someday, when he found his own dreams, he’d move away.

  In the meantime, most of his mornings started early, on horseback, before he rode his Dyna from Hominy south to Tulsa to do an afternoon shift at the Sinclair station.

  On the morning after his adventure in babysitting Cecily Nielsen, Caleb and Levi moved the herd to the south pasture and rode back to the house and barn. They’d gotten hung up when, after they’d moved the herd, they’d found part of the fence down. That emergency repair had taken another couple of hours. Caleb barely had time to unsaddle his horse before he had to shower and head to Tulsa.

  “I got it,” Levi said, taking the reins out of Caleb’s hands. “You go on. But you’ll be back tonight, right?” There was an open tribal council meeting to discuss the progress of negotiations to build casinos on tribal land. They already had bingo and poker, and a bunch of other games. Seemed like every month or two, the tribe came up with a new gaming idea that pushed at the limits of gambling laws.

  For his part, Caleb didn’t care one way or the other about casinos. But other tribes across the country had gotten legalized gambling on their land, and they’d mostly benefitted from the infusion of cash. Most tribes were poor as dirt, and reservations were like third-world countries—even the Osage, though they had a reputation as one of the richest tribes in the country, were a lot poorer than they’d once been—so if casinos could put food in Native bellies and solid roofs over Native heads, Caleb didn’t see why not.

  Levi, on the other hand, hated the idea. He was a traditionalist, like their grandfather, and he saw casinos as just another con the white man was playing on indigenous people. The newest empty, shiny bauble for whites to dangle before the naïve Natives while they stole the land out from under their feet.

  After the disappearance of their father and the death of all their family women, Caleb’s older brother had grown up angry and scrappy as hell. The general sentiment of the tribe leaned toward casinos, and Levi had gotten into more than a few bar fights over it. At tribal meetings on the matter, he always started some kind of shouting match. Usually, their grandfather and Caleb double-teamed him. Though he agreed with Levi, Grampa never shouted. He did what he could to keep Levi calm as long as possible, and when that failed, it was on Caleb to get his brother clear before chaos broke out and shouting became punching.

  So Caleb’s answer now was, had to be, “Yeah, I’ll be back. We can ride in together.”

  ~oOo~

  He made it to the station with no time to spare and got right to work, taking over for Rad on a simple oil and lube job. Seeing Rad made Caleb think of Willa, and Cecily, and he wanted to ask if Willa was okay, but he thought better of it. He didn’t know what Willa had said to her old man. Cecily had popped her pretty good, but maybe she hadn’t left a bruise. Maybe Rad didn’t know. Maybe Willa had told him a story about why she’d had to leave in the middle of a Saturday night. She was a nurse, after all; there were probably lots of handy excuses she could use.

  It felt a little weird to have this secret with so many moving parts, and not even to know how secret it was. But Cecily’s business wasn’t club business, not really. There was no betrayal in keeping her shit private. She didn’t want anything to do with the Bulls. She hated them all.

  But she’d called on one when she’d needed a rescue.

  Caleb knew why she was so anti-Bull. She’d blurted it all messily out at him a couple of years ago, when she’d shown up at a nearly empty clubhouse,
dressed for a night at the clubs, her long hair kind of stringy and damp, and her makeup a little worn out, like she’d had her night at the clubs and danced her ass off. She’d been drunk and melancholy—even belligerent at first. He’d been the only one there—it had been his prospect days, and he’d gotten stuck cleaning the taps after a full shift at the station.

  The Bulls had murdered her father. That was how she’d put it. She’d had a lot more to say on the subject, but it came to that. The club had killed her father. And Caleb hadn’t had a good counter. A Bull had killed her father. In the clubhouse. Right in front of the whole club.