“I have to, Calla.” His voice was as raw as my emotions. He clicked the link and I closed my eyes. Turned away and tried not to be sick. Because I didn’t have to look to know what he was seeing.
It was enough that I could feel his rage, palpable and violently so, slam through me.
This was it. Knowing about what happened to me was bad enough, but the fact that he was actually seeing the aftermath made my stomach turn. He’d never touch me after this, or he might try but he’d never be able to rid himself of those images.
He closed the laptop and turned to me.
“Do you ever think about those pictures when I’m fucking you?” he demanded.
“No!”
“Is that the truth?”
I stilled, because it was. “Yes. Never.”
“Then why would I?”
“It’s different.”
“It’s not, Calla. Do you have any faith in me at all?”
“Yes.”
“If you did, you wouldn’t say things like that to me.” He pulled away. The pictures had driven a wedge between us—maybe not in quite the way I’d thought, but they were a wedge between us all the same—just as I’d feared. So I sat in Cage’s apartment in a high-security building guarded by MC members, and I’d never been more afraid in my entire life.
I hugged my arms around my legs, pulling them tight to my chest. “I need to be alone.”
“Babe . . .”
“Go. Just goddamn go.”
“I’m not leaving.”
“Get the fuck away from me, Cage. I don’t want you here. I don’t want to see you or talk to you. What don’t you understand? Get out.”
He stared at me hard, but he complied. He didn’t fight, just told me, “The guys are at the door. No one’s getting through them.”
And then he left me alone in his apartment.
Chapter 19
“Cage, you look like shit.”
Rocco came up the stairs—he never took the elevator. “What’s up?”
“I need you to make sure the building’s secure as fuck.”
“Threats?”
“Against Calla, yes.”
Rocco nodded. “Want me to stand guard here?”
“I’m not leaving the front of this door.”
He turned away, but not before Rocco said, “We do what we have to, brother.”
Brother. How easily Vipers had accepted him into the fold, once, twice, and back again. Each time, he’d expected anger, and each time, he got understanding.
But his anger—that could swallow him. Engulf him. It already choked him so hard he was like a mad dog straining on a leash.
He’d survived more than his fair share of accidents and not so accidental things. He’d been born into violence—it surrounded him, followed him when he tried to leave and sucked him back in.
The Heathens lived by the concept of an eye for an eye. Blood for blood. But the problem with vengeance was that it was a never-ending lineup of death and more death. Cage didn’t want to find himself simply surviving in between taking revenge on anyone who hurt the club or Calla.
Surviving in between trying to stop his family from ruining his life and the lives of everyone he cared about.
Christian Cage Owens had come to Skulls by way of the goddamned motherfucking Army, which had promised to make him a man but actually ended up making him a better criminal. He’d been a Viper for ten-plus years, bred to that MC life as surely as he’d been born to it.
Except he’d been born a Heathen, not a Viper. And while it had taken the Vipers a long time to believe him or trust him completely, once they had, they’d had his back completely.
Now the woman who’d kept him from dying, the one he swore pulled him back from the dead with her Don’t go into the light voice and her fucking sweetness—a sweetness he swore he didn’t deserve—was in front of him. And she was scared to death of him.
Which was, of course, the way it would go down for him. Why he’d expected it to be any different was beyond him.
He’d been born a Heathen, uncivilized in every sense of the word. But knowing what happened to Calla was something he could never, ever stand for. He figured that sometimes being uncivilized might be the best thing going for him in a time like this.
He didn’t know how he was going to get through to Calla, but he had to try. He had to get through to himself too. They were both in traps of their own making and he had to figure out a way they could free themselves.
* * *
I woke with a start. I’d fallen asleep, half slumped on the couch, and the sun was blaring through the open shades. I didn’t have to look in the mirror to know my face was swollen from crying, and my head throbbed from the stress and worry.
Cage wasn’t here. Because I’d kicked him out.
And what, you secretly wanted him to break back into his own apartment for you? I’d even put the chains and dead bolts on. I’d locked him out in so many ways.
And by doing that, I was the one letting Jeffrey Harris win.
I padded to the door and peered out. Rocco was sitting on a chair diagonally from the door, reading a magazine. I unlocked and opened the door and glanced at him, but he was looking down at my feet instead.
“Careful,” he mouthed, and I looked down to see Cage.
Cage, at my feet. He’d slept in the doorway. He’d slept in the hall, on the floor, against the door of his own apartment, because I’d asked him to leave. And then I’d felt betrayed that he hadn’t come back.
But he’d never left. I stared down at him. He was asleep, but the man across the hall put a finger against his lips, whispered, “He’s been up all night.”
“Me too.” I knelt down and curled around him in that small space. He woke with a start, then held me against him. When I nuzzled his neck and said, “Take me to bed,” we were up and I was in his arms, reveling in his strength.
He kicked the door closed behind us, hit the alarm, cradling me all the while.
I was only wearing one of his old T-shirts, which landed on the floor when we hit the bedroom. But he didn’t try anything—he just held me. His skin was warm against mine. I just kept picturing how he’d guarded me all night.
“I hate seeing you suffer, Calla. I hate it. That’s why you need to let me fix it,” he murmured fiercely.
“I’m sorry I freaked out on you. It’s just . . . I’ve never told anyone this.”
He brushed my cheek with a knuckle. “I knew there was shit there after our first phone call, babe.”
“I was the golden child. I was going to make something of myself. Raise myself out of the working class. Why? So I could use money to shove things under the rug with money?”
Cage stroked my back. “I always had plenty of cash. Doesn’t do much good if you’re not happy.”
I never realized how between two worlds I was. The people involved were paid to shut their mouths and transfer to boarding schools out of the country. Of course, rumors lingered, but there was no denying my status, thanks to my father. Even if I refused to recognize it, the others couldn’t. Their parents wouldn’t let them. Jameson Bradley was too powerful a force in their lives. “I’m an imposter.”
Cage cupped my hip with his hand to drag our bodies closer. “Not to me.”
“I didn’t want a better life. I wanted my life, whatever that entailed.” I shrugged. “I spent a lot of time pretending and not a lot of time living.”
“How long were you working for Bernie?”
“A little over a year. I came home after Grams died and found out I had nothing left. Only the bit in my checking account. I was so angry. I’d been groomed to be this other persona and now I was left with that sham. Because even though my father’s name got me into those schools, and even though he insisted on paying the tuition, that’s all my mother accepted from him. She�
��d given me everything else, thanks to the bar, to what she and Grams had worked for. But hey, it’s not the first time a man had taken their life savings.”
I heard the anger in my voice. I’d thought I was over it. “I should’ve gotten to know my father. Not for the money, because that’s been there the whole time. But we missed a lot.”
“It’s not too late, Calla. Last I saw, he was waiting for you. Sounds like he’d do anything for you.”
“Just like you,” I whispered.
“Believe that.”
“Some battles I have to fight on my own.”
“Not this one,” he told me. “Your walls are back up, but I’m already inside. Don’t you get that? You walled us in together.”
Chapter 20
The next night, Cage waited until Calla fell asleep and then he grabbed the keys to the door at the end of the far hallway. Behind the door was an entire world he’d tried to ignore, but finally, that night, it became clear to him that in this space he might find the answers he sought.
He hadn’t been here in years. The last time was the week before he’d shipped out for the first time, and when the familiar pull tugged at him, he almost didn’t recognize it.
He made sure to alarm the door behind him so Calla would remain safe in the apartment alone—and the Vipers guys continued to guard the front door to the apartment. Then he took the freight elevator down to the private space on the basement level, but separate from the garage. He was the only one who had access to this space, from above and below.
His hand shook as he unlocked the door and he cursed a string of familiar favorites as he finally got the damned thing to open. And he stood in the doorway, surveying a place where time really had stood still.
Had he moved on? He’d thought so. Thought he’d lost his passion for this. Frankly, it’d been so long since he’d picked up a brush or a pencil to simply sketch, beyond a map of a potential battlefield or LZ that he’d thought maybe he’d imagined his talent.
Fixing bikes or cars was something he’d done most recently for survival, not for joy.
He closed the door behind him, because the thought of anyone walking in right now was unbearable.
He looked at the sketchbook, sitting exactly where he’d left it. He recalled picking it up several times and almost carrying it out the door with him, but in the end he’d left it behind. He ran a finger through the light dust on the cover. Not enough to have collected over the past years. Which meant Preacher had been having the place cleaned.
Scratch that. It meant that Preacher had been cleaning this place himself, because he knew how Cage guarded his privacy fiercely.
And Preacher still believed he’d come back to this room. That he’d come back here, no matter how he’d tried to stay away for a myriad of reasons. He’d tried to escape his Heathen MC past with the Army and then, postenlistment, when he’d realized how bad things had gotten in Heathen territory.
How Eli was no longer unaffected. How he’d known the boy wouldn’t be, because Cage had been ten goddamned years old when he’d left, already irreparably scarred. But Eli’s mom lived off-compound and had promised to keep him safe. Cage even gave her money and a phone number to call if things got bad, and she’d taken it, because she’d realized how deep she was in. Up to her goddamned neck.
You left him in hell.
And maybe Cage didn’t deserve this kind of beauty in his life, not Calla or the art, didn’t deserve the way both made him feel.
Maybe he didn’t, but he wasn’t stupid enough to throw away gifts, not the one in his bed or the one that had been with him since as long as he could remember.
He opened the sketchbook gingerly, like he was afraid to see the past, that maybe it would remind him of the anger and revenge he’d harbored. But it wouldn’t matter, because it certainly wasn’t dead or buried.
And neither are you.
He stared at the first sketch for a long moment before leaving it for the actual bike, the one he’d just gotten a start on when he and Tals decided it was time to follow in the Vipers founding fathers’ footsteps. Enlist, boot camp and deployment. Hoorah Rangers. He had the scars, the ink, the mentality to prove he was enmeshed in two brotherhoods so fully that he’d never fully escape either. And he didn’t want to, but the Army was the only bridge back here.
He bent down on one knee as he uncovered the bike, like he was begging forgiveness, proposing to work on it again at the same time.
The bike was built from scratch. He hadn’t acquired all he’d needed for it, so he’d have to hunt down the hard-to-find parts. With Tals’s help, because Tals could procure just about anything. He was the juvenile delinquent and criminal of the bunch, and based on the company he kept, that was saying a hell of a lot.
He touched the cool metal, ran his fingertips along the pattern he hadn’t been able to shove from his mind.
He’d promised Preacher that he could restore this. Preacher had never stopped believing in him.
So when had he stopped believing in himself?
He guessed that it didn’t matter, since right now he believed in everything again. He knew he’d have to walk through hell to get there, but he was willing, because he saw his paradise on the other side.
Two hours later, he’d sanded and painted the bumper. At first, he was hesitant, and then the right music, the smell of grease and oil, made his hands take over from his head. He blinked, stepped back as he stared at what he’d accomplished, then stared down at his hands.
“Still here,” he murmured. And then he locked up, showered to get the paint and turpentine off him so he could slip back into bed, one step closer to healing himself . . . and hopefully, by extension, healing Calla.
Chapter 21
I’d first called Tenn the night I’d told Cage.
“Do you need me there?” he’d asked, and just hearing him say that was a huge relief. But it was easy with Tenn, because I didn’t need him the way I needed Cage.
“I might.”
“I’m a phone call away,” he’d promised, and when I’d heard Cage leave me after he’d thought I was asleep for a third night in a row, I did call.
Tom was at the door in two hours. Bypassing the alarms. Knocking on the door at the same time he was texting me.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just fell into his hug. He carried me over to the bed and curled around me, asking, “When the hell did you sleep last?”
“I feel like that’s all I’ve been doing.”
I’d sent him the pictures, because I’d wanted him to see what Cage had. I needed his help and I told him that. “How could he see these and ever think about me the way he did before?”
“He can. He will, hon. You’ve got to give him credit. He’s lived through ugly things. We all have.”
“I want to believe you. But I don’t know how to bring him back to me.”
“You don’t need my help, Calla. You know what to do.” He paused. “He wants to make sure you’re okay. That’s what’s holding him back. He doesn’t think of you any differently. You do.”
“Stop being so smart,” I told him. And then I changed the subject slightly, to the other worry weighing on me. “The promise he made to me . . . Now that he knows, what’s he going to do?”
“You know the answer to that, baby girl.”
“Stop him.”
He gave a short laugh with absolutely zero humor behind it. “Yeah, that’d work.”
“You could try, for me.”
“If I thought I could, I’d already have stopped the man from doing other dangerous things, Calla. But the truth is, if he can’t do this for you, he’ll never be able to live with himself.”
“After what he’s found out, he’ll never be able to live with me either. Never be able to look at me again.”
“That’s bullshit.”
“He hasn�
��t tried to sleep with me, or really touched me since I told him—and that’s a new record for us. I’m not an idiot.” God, I sounded like a miserable fool. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”
“Do I look bothered?”
“He left me tonight. Snuck out while he thought I was sleeping. That’s three nights in a row.”
“Could be club business,” Tenn offered. “He’s not going to go far.”
“It doesn’t matter—he might as well be a million miles away.”
“When you first met him, he promised he was going to make whoever hurt you pay.”
“He did.”
“And you believed that.”
I had.
“Let him.”
“Would you?”
“I took care of my own shit, Calla, because I could. If I couldn’t have, damned straight I would’ve let Cage do it.”
Tenn was so calm most of the time—so seemingly easygoing that I knew how deeply his pain had to run. It was always the easygoing ones who held the most pain. “I’m sorry, Tenn.”
“You did nothing wrong.” He paused. “You can rewrite your script, you know. Take control of it. Nothing’s bad if it makes you feel good.”
I stared at Tenn. “How are you so wise?”
His eyes crinkled at the corners as he laughed. “Christ, woman, you’re making me feel old. I’m not wise. Just crammed a lot of life into a small time frame.”
“I think you’re a miracle worker.” I only wished Cage was there to take me the rest of the way.
I must’ve fallen asleep, because the next thing I knew, I heard semiangry men’s voices. I blinked to see Cage standing over me and Tenn practically underneath me. Tenn was lying there, and I was half on his chest. He’d been watching a movie.
Well, porn. A porn movie.
“You’re lucky I know which way you swing,” Cage muttered to him.
“Maybe I’m bi and never told you,” Tenn shot back as he remained curled around me.
“I will fucking kill you.”
“Try it, old man,” Tenn said, and instead of upsetting me, their interaction made me laugh. Tenn turned to me. “Are you laughing at us?”
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