His to Protect: Midnight Riders MC

by April Lust

  I had never been so terrified in my life as I had while listening to the back and forth between Cole and Skull. I was constantly worried Cole would push Skull too far. I knew he would never hurt Sara—that was one thing I was certain of. He would protect her, even if meant stepping in between her and Skull.

  But I was afraid for him, too. I didn’t want to see Skull pushed too far, to where he shot Cole. I worried he would do it just to free Sara.

  Casey kept looking back at me. “Let me go!” I whispered, wriggling on the chair. “Please! I don’t know what he’s going to do! I can’t be tied down like this. Give me a chance to get away!”

  He looked uncertain. I pleaded with my eyes for him to let me go. Finally, he sighed and made a motion as though to come to me.

  Alan held him back. I whimpered. “No,” he said, looking at me. I realized he was just as frantic as I was. “If we let you go now, there’s no telling what he’ll do.” His eyes shifted to Skull. So he thought Skull was just as crazy as the rest of us did. He was trying to keep us all safe, too.

  I nodded, understanding even if I didn’t like it very much. “Cole will know what to do,” he said, looking levelly at me. “You have to trust him.”

  “Do you trust him?”

  “I do. He’ll think of something.” I nodded. I had to believe him. Otherwise, what did I have to go on?

  Meanwhile, Skull was still talking to Cole, having forgotten all about us. Why didn’t one of these two idiots shoot him while Cole was diverting his attention? I would have done it myself if I had a gun and my hand was free. No wonder they were so easily led. I wondered if they had an entire brain between the two of them.

  The tension crackled in the air. I hated feeling so helpless. If Skull decided to turn and fire at me out of nowhere, I had no way to defend myself. I couldn’t even duck.

  Please, please, let this work, I begged silently.

  “How does she look?” I asked, nodding to the window. Alan glanced out.

  “She looks fine,” he said. “Cole’s holding her, but he won’t hurt her.” I knew he was right about that. Cole would never hurt a woman.

  I realized, just then, that I loved him. I had wondered if I might. I knew I cared about him, almost as much as I cared about Sara’s safety. But…I loved him. Wasn’t that what my would-be final thought was? I love you, Cole.

  I heard him speaking, and I strained my ears to listen closer. What was he saying? He was telling Skull to let me go. But I could see from Skull’s body language that it wasn’t going to be so easy to convince him.

  “Casey! Get her for me!” Casey was frozen. I could tell he didn’t know what to do, and he had a good reason. Alan was right—Skull might lose it if either of them went against him right now. He was only holding on by a thread.

  Then it all happened at once. Skull cried out, then turned to grab Casey. A shot rang out. I screamed, more from surprise than anything else. Skull went down.

  “My God!” I cried out, shaking from head to toe. Was it over? Was he dead?

  No. He held his leg. Of course Cole couldn’t kill him. He’d tried to hide his heart for so long, but it was in there, and it was a good one. There was no way he would kill his best friend, no matter what the stakes were. Casey came to me, cutting the tape from my ankles while Alan freed my hands. I flexed them, shaking the blood back into them after having them bound so tightly for so long. It hurt, but I was happy to feel it.

  And there he was, standing in the doorway. Tears filled my eyes. He was safe.

  “You came for me…” I fell into his arms, weakly wrapping my arms around him as I sobbed. “You came for me. You saved me.” We fit perfectly together, just as we always did.

  “Of course I did.” He was shaking, too. I knew he had been as scared as I was. He did a good job of acting otherwise, for sure. Never would I have guessed from his tone of voice that he’d been afraid.

  I leaned back to look into his eyes. “I didn’t think I’d ever see you again,” I admitted.

  “Did you really think I would let anything happen to you?”

  “Honestly? I didn’t know. Especially after I got so mad at you and threw you out. I didn’t know if you cared about me anymore. I didn’t think I deserve for you to, when I doubted you.”

  He held me close and kissed me. I took his face in my hands, wishing I never had to let go.

  “He told me you didn’t have anything to do with it,” I said once the long kiss ended. “You were only trying to protect the club, and him. I know how much you care about them, and I’m sorry I doubted you.”

  “It’s all right. I don’t blame you.” He kissed me again, running his hands over my head. “Just do me a favor, okay?”

  “What’s that?”

  He grinned slightly. “Don’t ignore my texts.”

  I groaned, leaning my forehead against his chest. I knew what he meant. If I had stayed home, as he asked, this wouldn’t have happened.

  Then I remembered something. “Sara!” Skull nodded, leading me outside, to where my sister sat. We stepped over Skull, still sitting in the doorway. I couldn’t bear to look at him. He didn’t make a move or a sound.

  I only had eyes for Sara. When she saw us coming, she stood. She looked thinner, with dark circles under her eyes and sallow skin. She was wearing a cheap, shapeless t-shirt and leggings—a far cry from her usual colorful wardrobe.

  But it was her. I thought my heart might explode from happiness. There she was, alive. My arms ached for her, and I held them out as I rushed toward her. She whimpered as we threw our arms around each other.

  “Oh, baby,” I cried, holding her tight. “I thought you were gone. I didn’t think we’d ever be together again. I missed you so much!”

  “I’m so sorry,” she wept. “I should have listened to you. I should have.”

  “It’s okay. You’re safe now.” I would never, ever let her go.

  ###

  I sat with her against the wall of the room. We were just outside the door, and I’d heard the questions police were asking Casey and Alan. It didn’t sound like they had any awareness of Skull’s plans for me.

  By this time, we had attracted a lot of attention from others around the hotel, but I only cared about Sara and Cole. Onlookers stared at us, whispering to one another. “Just ignore them,” I murmured, my arm around her shoulders. “Tell me what happened.”

  “I woke up in my car, in the woods. I didn’t know how I got there.” She wiped tears away with the back of her hand. “My head hurt. I thought I must have banged it.”

  “Why didn’t you to go the hospital?”

  She shrugged. “I wasn’t thinking straight, you know? And I was scared that he would find me. Skull, I mean.”

  “You were afraid of him? What had he done to you?”

  “Nothing, before that last fight. He had never laid a hand on me. Only that fight, and the one we had before it…they were brutal. He was screaming, like a different person. I knew it was because he had started doing drugs. He wasn’t himself. We were fighting about that.”

  The police arrived, and I watched as they swarmed on the room. “Yeah. He told me about that.”

  “I don’t know why I didn’t let it go. I should have left him then and there. No questions, not another word. I knew that was what you would have done. It was stupid of me to hang around as long as I did.”

  “Not stupid. You wanted to help him. It’s who you are,” I said.

  She shrugged. “It almost got me killed.”

  “Why did you come here? Why didn’t you come to me?”

  She cried a little. “I remembered this place. Skull had been here before. I knew it was cheap—I needed something cheap, something I could afford. I thought he might come back, so I hid my car at the far end of the parking lot, under some trees. I’ve been here ever since.”

  “But didn’t you want to come home? Why didn’t you call me? I thought you were dead!”

  “I knew you would want to go to the police, an
d I was too scared to do that.” She looked up at me, her big hazel eyes full of tears. “I thought the rest of the club might come after me. You know. To get even. And then they might have come after you, too. I thought I was protecting you.”

  I watched Cole. He was talking with three of the cops on the scene. I saw him gesture toward the room, toward Skull—now being loaded into an ambulance—and toward Alan and Casey, now in the backs of two police cars. I nodded grimly. “Yeah. I guess I would have been worried about that, too.”

  “Do you think they will now?”

  I smiled down at her. “No, honey. I don’t think so. I think we’re okay.”

  She leaned against me, her head on my shoulder, and I closed my eyes. I was so full of joy. She was sitting with me again, right here. She wasn’t dead. I had found her.

  Well, with a little help.

  She cleared her throat, which she always did when she was about to ask an uncomfortable question. “Can I ask you something?”

  I looked down at the top of her blonde head. It didn’t matter what she said. I just wanted to hear her voice. “Of course.”

  “Are you and Cole…you know…”

  I laughed. “Why would you even think that?”

  “Because of the way he came here to save you. And the way he told Skull to let you go. I heard it in his voice. How much he cares about you, I mean.”

  I didn’t answer for a long time. I only watched Cole as he managed the situation. He had taken charge right away. A born leader.

  “Would it make me a hypocrite if I said yes?” I asked Sara.

  “No. You’re not a hypocrite. You were right about Skull being wrong for me. He’s no good for anybody. Not even himself. Believe me, I’ve had a lot of time to think about it.” Then she looked up at me. “But Cole could be right for you. You’re very much alike.”

  “Oh? How so?”

  “I don’t know. It’s just a feeling I have. You’re both smart. You understand people. You’re good leaders. You take care of the people around you, too. You don’t just hang around in the background, I mean. You step up and do what you need to do. Usually, what other people are afraid to do.”

  I thought this over. She had a point. Hadn’t I put myself in danger by looking for her? Everyone had told me it was a bad idea—the police, the entire club. Even when Skull threatened me, I was coming up with new ways to find out the truth about my sister.

  “I guess you’re right,” I admitted. “But I don’t know about Cole. There are too many differences. Like, do I want to be part of his club?”

  “You don’t have to be.”

  I laughed sarcastically. “Sure I don’t. It’s only the biggest part of his life.”

  “But you don’t have to have anything to do with it. Besides, I know he wants to make them more legit. That’s why Skull’s plan wouldn’t have worked—about the drugs, I mean. Cole doesn’t want to have anything to do with them. He wants the club to be above board, all the way.”

  “He never told me that,” I said, marveling at her words. I hoped she was right. If that were true, I would move heaven and earth to be with him. Even if it wasn’t, I wanted to find a way for us. He meant too much to me. He’d saved my life and had brought my sister and me back together. And I loved him. How could I not want to be with him?

  “I don’t know, sweetheart,” I finally said, after thinking about it. “I care about him very much. Too much, maybe. But there’s a lot going on, too. I want to make sure we’re both safe—you and me. You’re what matters most, and I won’t let you go or put you in any danger. Even if that means saying goodbye to Cole.”

  As I said the words, my heart ached a little. But I had to be strong. For her sake, as well as mine.

  “Even if he cares for you? Because it’s so obvious that he does,” Sara pointed out.

  “Yeah, well…he cares about his club, too. Sometimes I think he cares about them more. I don’t want to be second to any MC. I would need to know that I came first.”

  He turned to me, and I saw a little smile on his face. My heart ached even more.

  Chapter 26

  Cole

  It was a long day. It took hours for the police to finish questioning me in the parking lot of the hotel. I knew there would be more questions to come, especially when it came time to sign a formal statement. I’d been down this road before.

  I kept looking back at Alena. She wouldn’t let Sara out of her sight, and for that matter, Sara didn’t want to be without Alena. I knew the two of them would be inseparable for a long time.

  Cops led Alan and Casey to separate cars, placing them in the back. I wasn’t sure how I felt about them. They were stupid kids. Skull had probably told them they would be big men in the club if they helped him make the peace with Pablo and his crew. Could I blame them for being a little dazzled by that? Probably not. But it didn’t mean I forgave them. They had their own shit to deal with outside of the club, though. They’d held Alena hostage, for one thing. It all depended on whether she wanted to press charges.

  Skull was on a gurney, wheeled from the room to an ambulance. “Can I talk to him for a minute?” I asked. The cop let me go, and I walked over to where the paramedics were about to load him in. They waited when they saw me come up to them.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “Hey.” He looked gray, but I guessed it was from the loss of blood.

  “I’m sorry I shot you,” I said. “Wow, that sounded really stupid.”

  He laughed a little. “It did. But it’s okay. That’s nothing compared to what I did.”

  I shrugged. It would take me a long time to get over everything that had happened, but I knew one thing for sure. “I forgive you.”

  His eyes went wide. It took a lot for me to say it, but his reaction made it worthwhile. “Really?”

  “Really. You’re my brother, man. I know why you did everything. I’ll stand by you.” And I meant it. I had to accept the decisions he had made, like the drugs and the lying. But at heart, he was still the same person. Other things got in the way, was all. Once that shit was taken care of, we could be on the same footing again. Granted, I didn’t know if he’d be going to jail or what. But I’d stand by him then, too.

  “Tell her I’m sorry,” he said. “Tell them both how sorry I am. You know I didn’t mean any of it.”

  “I know you didn’t. That’s why I aimed as low as I did.”

  He laughed again, nodding. “Fair enough.”

  We shook hands, and I watched as paramedics placed him inside the ambulance. I didn’t know where he was going after the hospital, or how long it would be before he was free. But he was my brother for life, no matter what.

  I turned back to Alena, who was still sitting with Sara. She smiled, nodding a little. She understood.

  There were more questions. This time, the cops took Sara into the room, and then Alena. I waited until it was all finished. I knew I should technically have gone back to the clubhouse, but I called over there to explain what was going down and had a long talk with Ryan, who was sergeant at arms. He was third in line, or second considering the way Skull had left the picture. I would do my best to be sure he wasn’t removed permanently, but I didn’t know if the rest of the guys would be as forgiving as I was. They didn’t owe him what I did, didn’t know him like I did. I would have to do a lot of convincing to keep him in good standing.

  In the end, it was my decision who stayed and who went. I wouldn’t patch in Alan or Casey after this—they were too stupid to be valuable club members. If they didn’t know enough to take big deals like the one Skull had gotten them involved in to their president, they didn’t deserve to wear our patch. I would vote for Skull to stay in, but there was a good chance the rest of the guys would overrule me. I couldn’t be a dictator. I would have to bend somehow. If they insisted Skull had to leave, I would make sure he stayed safe. That would be my only condition.

  “Heavy is the head that wears the crown,” Ryan said when our conversation came to
a close. I laughed a little.

  “Yeah. Something like that.”

  “You okay?” he asked.

  “I’ll be okay. It’s a lot of shit to handle.”

  “Well,” he said, “if there’s anyone who can handle it, you can. Nails thought so, too, or else he wouldn’t have put you in his place.”

  I laughed again. “He had no idea I’d be taking over so soon, though.”

  “Eh, I think he had an idea. He knew something big was gonna happen. He wasn’t in the dark. Pablo and company had been quiet for too long. He used to talk to me about the chance of them attacking us. And he had faith in you.”