Stand (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 7)

by Susan Fanetti

  Maverick answered grimly. “They’re trying to work out what happened and get it straightened out. We got cops on this, too, state troopers, but we’re still in Oklahoma, so we’ve got some pull. They’re giving us space. But don’t worry. We’ll take care of everything and keep it quiet here. You got your family all around you. All you need to think about is D.”

  Cecily remembered that this wasn’t all of Caleb’s family. “I need to call Caleb’s grandfather. But I don’t know how.”

  “I got that, honey,” Apollo said. “Give me five minutes, okay?”

  She nodded and let her feet wander away from the group, to the entrance of the waiting room. Leaning on the wall, she watched the nurses and aides at the nearest nurses’ station go about their work.

  “Hey.” Her mother’s hand slid across her back. “Mav says he’s going to be fine.”

  “Yeah. How did you do this, Mom?”

  “Live with a Bull, you mean? Knowing your man could not come home someday because he got shot or…” Her sentence died on a sigh. “I don’t think I had a choice, cookie. I loved your dad. I wanted him in my life, and this was who he was. He was a soldier in his bones. I think you could ask the same question of a woman who loves a military man, or even a cop. Sometimes, you just don’t have a choice. You love the man and accept his life.”

  Her father had been shot twice: once in Vietnam, and once as a Bull. They’d both been old scars before she’d been old enough to make note of them. Most of her life, at least in her knowing, the Bulls had lived quietly. But then he’d been killed by a brother, and she’d learned he’d been fighting a war.

  “You love this boy, don’t you?” her mother murmured, holding her close.

  Still focused on the bustle of nurses, Cecily nodded. “I really do. Everything inside me settles down when I’m with him. That was true, I think, before I loved him. He makes me calm. I feel safe. It’s kind of like it was with Daddy. But it’s different, obviously. It’s just…he gets me. And I get him. I can trust him.”

  She could. Even after what he’d done, she could feel that trust refusing to die. Now, with the threat of losing him so fresh, she could forgive him anything.

  “Then you live this life because it’s the only life you have, Cissy. It’s where your heart is.”

  Cecily wanted to tell her mother she was forgiven, too, that she understood, but Apollo came up at that moment. “I got his grandpa’s number, honey. You want me to call?”

  “No. I will.” She was Caleb’s family, too.

  ~oOo~

  She’d been sitting at the side of his bed, holding his hand, for about an hour when his fingers twitched and his eyes fluttered reluctantly open. She stood at once and leaned close.

  “Hey! Hey there. Hi!”

  “Ciss?” His words were rough and dry, and she offered him a sip from the hospital cup and straw, which he took at once. “You’re here.”

  “I’m here, and I love you.”

  “I’m sorry. Please let me be sorry.”

  “I will, and I love you, and it’s forgiven. It’s okay. Just heal and we’ll be okay.”

  “I got shot.”

  “I know. Dummy. You’re supposed to duck.”

  “Oh, yeah. I’ll try to remember for next time. Is it bad?”

  He looked awful. His skin was a ghoulish grey from blood loss and trauma, his hair was still matted with blood and dirt, and his voice sounded like an echo coming from the tunnel on the way to the light, but the surgeon had assured her that his prognosis was good. “Not too bad. They took some of your liver, and they’re giving you transfusions. You’ll be fine.”

  “My blood is rare.” He made a pathetic attempt to sit up, which she thwarted with three fingers of one hand.

  “Yes, you’re very special,” she teased. “Lie down.”

  “No, they need to know.”

  “Baby, they do know. It’s okay. They’re doctors. They figured out your blood before they gave you a transfusion.”

  He grinned and settled, and his eyes finally opened all the way. “You called me baby.”

  “You like that?”

  “I do.” A weak, groaning sigh slid from his lips, and his eyes closed again. “I’m sorry I took your poem, Cissy. It was so sad and pretty. I just wanted it close. Like a piece of you with me.”

  It was a piece of her and that was the problem—but she didn’t want to talk about the poem. “Hush. It’s okay.”

  “I made it a song.”

  That didn’t make it better. If they were going to talk about it, they weren’t going to do it while he was doped up on morphine and making it worse. “Caleb, shut the fuck up. It’s okay.”

  He was fading fast, back into his opiate sleep, but he frowned on his way down. “Don’t be mad, Ciss. Let me have…some of you…to keep.”

  As he went under, Cecily sat again and held his hand. “You dummy,” she muttered to herself. “You don’t have to steal it—I will give you all of me. Just give me time.”

  ~oOo~

  Hospitals never seemed to enforce visiting hours with the Bulls, so nobody tried to roust Cecily from Caleb’s side. He slept most of the day and was dopey when he was awake. Bulls came in to check on her and him both and to update them on Delaney—who was out of surgery and in the ICU. He was in a coma, and they were debating the question of whether to airlift him to a better-equipped hospital or leave him where he was and not risk the trauma of travel. Nobody told her whether it would be Amarillo or someplace closer to home they’d move him if they did, and she didn’t ask. When it happened, someone would tell her.

  Rad came in late, after dark, looking like he hadn’t slept in a year or so. He walked over and set his hand on Cecily’s shoulder and watched Caleb sleep for a long time. “He’s a good man, Ciss.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s hard to live like he does, I think.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Tryin’ to find his place. Ox talked about it sometimes, when he had enough whiskey in him. How hard it is to live on the edges everywhere. I think all us Bulls feel that in some way, not fittin’ with family, or anywhere else. It’s what draws us to the club. But for Ox and Caleb, it’s more than just not fittin’. It’s gettin’ pushed out. Ox is a big, scary fucker, so he just pushes back. He made himself that big so assholes would get out of his way. Caleb, I don’t know. Seems like he’s got people pushin’ him every which way.”

  Cecily felt attacked in some way. “Not me.”

  “Not sayin’ that, darlin’. Just sayin’ he needs a place to stand steady. He’s got the club, but a man needs more than that to ground him. When it’s bloody like this, we need a place where we can be quiet and soft, or the decent parts of us die off. Past few days, I guess you haven’t been that place for him anymore.”

  Oh, she was actually being attacked. “Fuck off, Rad.”

  He chuckled, and she wanted to punch him. “Okay, missy. Didn’t mean to get you hissin’ at me. I’m glad you’re with him now. Just…I don’t know what he did, but give him some room. Don’t expect him to be perfect.”

  She glared up at him, wanting to say too many things at once—shout at him, defend herself, explain, apologize—to choose any one thing, so she said nothing.

  Rad gave her a brisk nod. “His people are here. Grandfather and brother. You want me to send ‘em in?”

  Now, she stood. “Yeah. Yes, please.”

  “Okay.” He went to the door. Before he opened it, he turned back. “They’re flyin’ Delaney to Oklahoma City in the mornin’. About half of us are ridin’ back with Mo and your mom. The rest are stayin’ here for Caleb and Slick. So you’re covered, okay?”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “I had them save the bullet. If he wants it.”

  “Why would he want that?”

  Rad shrugged. “So he doesn’t forget.” He opened the door and walked out.

  ~oOo~

  A few minutes later, the door opened again, and Caleb’s grandfat
her came in, followed by Levi. Wearing identical expressions of exhausted worry, they stood side by side at the foot of the bed. Levi glanced around, saw that the other bed in the room was empty, and seemed to relax slightly.

  “Is he sleeping, or…” Levi asked.

  “Sleeping. They’ve got him pretty doped up. But he’ll wake if we put some effort into it. You want—” she moved to pat Caleb’s shoulder.

  “No,” his grandfather said. “Let him rest.” He turned his eyes on her. “The doctor, he called you his wife.”

  “Um, yeah. That’s so they’d talk to me about him.” She offered a smile. “We didn’t elope or anything, I promise.”

  Neither man returned her smile. “I am his next of kin,” his grandfather said.

  It dawned on her suddenly that these men could throw her out. The Bulls would have something to say about that, Caleb would have something to say about it when he woke, but still, they could draw that line right now and push her to the side. She calmed herself and spoke as plainly as she could, without confrontation. “I know. I don’t mean to set you aside. But I love him, Mr. Mathews. I really do.”

  “We’re here now. You and your ‘club’ can go,” Levi said. “You’ve done enough.”

  Caleb’s hand tightened on hers; he’d woken. “She’s not going anywhere, bro. I want you all here.” He spoke with his eyes closed, as if still in his sleep, but his grip on her hand was wide awake.

  Levi scoffed violently and shook his head so hard his hair flew. “These people got you shot, Caleb. Why can’t you see where you belong?”

  Caleb opened his eyes and locked them on his brother. “I do.” His hand was hurting Cecily’s, but she was glad of his tight grip. “Why can’t you see it?”

  “Levi, enough,” their grandfather said. “Enough. I want peace among us.” He came around to the other side of the bed and wrapped his hands around his grandson’s arm. “You are my heart, you boys. You are all I have under all the sun, and I will not lose either one of you. If this world is what you want to go to, Caleb, I ask only that you remember where you came from. Find in yourself room for two homes.”

  “I do have room, Grampa. I need both. I need you to find room for all of me, and Cecily, too.”

  His grandfather looked at her across the bed. “You love her?”

  “Like I’ve never loved anything else.”

  “You love him?” he asked her.

  “Yes. I feel the same.”

  “You know nothing of us.”

  “But I can learn. I want to know everything you want me to know. And I know Caleb.”

  “Grampa,” Levi complained bitterly from the farthest reach of the room. “This isn’t what you taught us. It isn’t who we are.”

  “We are a family first, Levi. First, there is only us. We must be true to each other before anything else.” He looked at Caleb. “We will try, if you will stay close.”

  “That’s all I want, Grampa.”

  The old man bent down and kissed Caleb’s cheek. “Sleep, son. We will be here when you’re rested.” He nodded at the chair beside Cecily, inviting her to sit.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Caleb eased himself into his seat at the table. At his side, Slick’s empty chair was draped in black cloth. At the head of the table, where the wood was scuffed from Delaney’s gavel and burned from more than a quarter century of dropped ashes from their president’s unfiltered Camels, the seat was empty.

  Becker stood between that seat and his own, shifting awkwardly, clearly unsure where he belonged. He’d been their VP for less than a year. But their president was in Oklahoma City, at the OU Medical Center, out of a coma for only a few days. Though his prognosis had improved markedly, he wouldn’t be taking his seat at this table anytime soon. Maybe not before the new year.

  Inexperienced or not, Becker was their leader until Delaney could take his seat.

  What the Bulls had taken to simply calling ‘the Panhandle,’ an event that would no doubt get its own chapter in club lore, had gone down three weeks earlier. This was Caleb’s first time back at the table himself. And he was a ways from being able to ride.

  What Caleb knew, what he thought the whole club knew, about that day didn’t wholly add up. The Volkovs had wanted the Bone Wolves out of the picture. They’d get no protest from him on that score; he’d hated those racist cocksuckers. But why the fuck had they done it like that? That rain of bullets had killed a Bull, wounded two others, including their president, wounded three Tezcat Kings, and lost the Russians two of their Abrego 13 attack dogs. All seven Bone Wolves were dead, sure. But so was Slick. And five allies were hurt. Not counting the dead Abregos.

  Delaney had nearly died. Caleb, too, for that matter. He’d lost more than thirty percent of his blood volume.

  Caleb didn’t remember anything after seeing Slick shot, but his brothers had told a story of a scene flooded with blood and bullets. Even out in the middle of nowhere, the Volkovs had made a bloody mess too big to conceal.

  Yet it had barely made a blip in the world, even in this new, hypervigilant version of the world.

  By the time Caleb had been discharged, two weeks later, the Volkovs had an Abrego 13 crew from Los Angeles installed in Amarillo to manage what had been the Bone Wolves’ meth cooking operation. There had been a single story that had gone around regionally about internal trouble taking down an outlaw ‘motorcycle gang,’ and everyone seemed content to believe that the Bone Wolves had gone seventy miles out of their way and crossed into Oklahoma just to kill each other.

  If Caleb had heard that story as an outside observer, he’d never believe it. The parts didn’t add up. But Volkov money spread wide and deep, he guessed.

  Though the real story had rattled the outlaw underworld, no one saw it up above, in the light. Almost no press coverage. Not a single charge brought. One day of questioning by the Oklahoma State Police—a day Caleb had slept through—and everyone was in the clear.

  The whole goddamn world was outlaw, once you started to really look. Everybody had a price; some people were just more open about it. And the people who could pay ruled.

  And now, Irina Volkov had full control of a major meth operation in the southwest and fearsomely violent allies installed as northern conduits for her southern expansion, allies who shared affiliation with contractors for her supposed allies down south.

  Trying to sort out all those moves gave Caleb a headache; his brain had no setting for ‘scheming.’ But he figured this mess was meant to position Madame Volkov to claim all sides of the business.

  Becker finally decided to sit in his usual seat. He pulled the gavel over and tapped it halfheartedly on the oak. “We gotta come to order.”

  The table went quickly quiet. The men had been subdued anyway, pulled into the pall of loss around them. Slick’s ghost seemed to hover over the black draping of his seat, and the empty space at the head of the table loomed larger than Delaney himself.

  “How’re you doin’, Caleb?” Rad asked.

  For the week since he’d been discharged, he’d been staying with Cecily at Ox’s place, since it was closer to everything he needed. His grandfather had actually come into Tulsa once for a visit. Levi, however, was a holdout to the idea of accepting Caleb’s life as it was.

  “I’m here. I’m good. I can get back on shift next week. Got a checkup in three weeks, and I’ll be riding then.”

  “Don’t push it, bro. Take my word for it.”

  Caleb shrugged. Too much more time on his ass, even with Cecily’s diligent and tender attention, and he’d lose his marbles. But his back was still pretty sore. “I’ll be careful.”

  “Okay,” Becker said, clearing his throat. “We need to talk about Slick’s arrangements.”

  “Hold up, Beck,” Maverick said. “This is our first time holding church since the Panhandle. We need to talk about the Volkovs and what the fuck’s going on. They would have sent us into that mess blind. We were still mostly blind, and it got us hurt for the first tim
e in more than three years. I want us to talk about this business. I want to know what the hell that was about, and what the hell it means for us.”

  Rad crossed his arms on the table and leaned in. “We can talk, but just talk. We’re not makin’ any calls until D’s in his seat.”

  “And if he doesn’t make it back to his seat?” Gargoyle asked. “I think we need to talk about that.”

  “He’s awake and getting stronger,” Becker countered, finding some leadership to stand on. “We’re not vultures waiting to feed on his carcass. He’ll be back, and it’s him with the close tie to Irina and Alexei. We need him before we put anything on the table.”