by A Parker
Susan pushed to her feet. “And what do you know about Bates? What do you know about our brother?”
“I know Bates is alive and your brother isn’t.”
Muttering broke out around the fire. Jackson squeezed my hip as if to say please stop talking.
Susan blinked slowly at me. “Wow. I’m sure glad my living brother put his neck on the line tonight for your ass.”
“Susan,” Jackson warned.
“What?” she snapped at him. The other men held their tongues and watched her glare fiercely at me. “I don’t know you who you think you are, princess, walking in here and talking like you know what we’ve all been through. You have no fucking clue what it’s been like to have Bates in our rearview mirror for the last five years.”
“I don’t?” I asked, cocking my head to the side. “Last I checked, he’s been sending goons and his sociopath daughter into my business to try to get me to roll over.”
Susan rolled her eyes at me.
I had half a mind to stand up and slap her silly.
This life was not the life I’d chosen. I wanted Jackson, but maybe when all was said and done, I didn’t want all the bullshit that went along with wanting him. My dad’s cautionary voice rang in my ears, telling me warnings about the harm and hurt I was setting myself up for just by being here.
I stood up. The blanket Mason had draped over my shoulders fell across Jackson’s lap and I turned to him. “I’d like to leave.”
He stared up at me.
Susan chuckled. “That was easy. All I had to do to clear you out of here was give you a little bit of a hard time. It’s amazing Bates hasn’t gotten you to fold if your resolve is this flimsy.”
Jackson glared at his sister as he rose slowly to his feet. He put his hands on my arms and spoke calmly to me. “I don’t want you to go anywhere, Sam. I want you here, close to me, so that if anything else happens I can protect you.”
“I don’t belong here.”
“You could say that again,” Susan muttered before collapsing lazily back into her chair. She kicked her boots up onto the edge of the fire table and crossed her ankles. The way she stared at me made me want to disappear.
Why couldn’t I have kept my big fat mouth closed?
Jackson’s hands fell from my arms when I pulled away, retreated from the fire, and hurried down the porch steps to leave out the side gate of the yard. None of the men said a word as I fled, but Jackson was hot on my heels calling my name.
“Just wait a second,” he growled.
I unlatched the hook on the gate and pushed it open. It creaked on old hinges that needed to be oiled and I slipped out as soon as I had room. Jackson came out behind me and jogged across the driveway to catch up with me. When I refused to stop walking, he caught me around my upper arm and turned me fiercely to him.
“Ouch!” I hissed, breaking my arm away.
Jackson rolled his eyes at my dramatics. “Don’t be like that.”
I rolled up the sleeve of my T-shirt to show him the bruises already beginning to form from Jim’s giant sausage fingers. “I just had a night from Hell, Jackson. I thought they were going to kill me. Did you know that? Yeah. I spent eight hours locked up in a room thinking that at any minute, Bates was going to come in there and murder me. What would stop him? He killed your brother in cold blood in the middle of the street! Why wouldn’t he take advantage of having me locked up in a room in his own mansion?”
Jackson’s face paled, and his eyes never left the bruises on my arm.
I rolled up my other sleeve. “Look, a matching set!”
Jackson looked down. “I’m sorry, Sam.”
I sighed heavily and massaged my temples. “Don’t be. This wasn’t your fault. It was mine. Please call me a cab.”
“I can’t let you leave.”
“Let me leave?” I asked sharply. “Are you fucking kidding me? I was just held against my will by a murderer, and you think you have the right to hold me, too?”
“That’s not what I meant and you know it.”
“I want to go home,” I said desperately. “I don’t belong here, Jackson. The men look at me like I’m your whore, and your sister looks at me like I’m a spy sent in by the enemy. All I did tonight was ruffle feathers and put all of you in harm’s way because I couldn’t handle my own shit.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What if he killed you tonight, Jackson?” I practically screamed the words at him. “What if Bates decided to hell with it all, and he used me to draw you out into the open just so he could be rid of you once and for all? What if he figured he’d save himself the headache and just eliminate you all before you had a chance to disrupt his business? That would be on me.”
Jackson pinched the bridge of his nose. “Sam, please, you’re exhausted. You’ve had a really rough day. Come back inside with me. You can have the spare room.”
“I don’t want to stay here.”
Why the hell wasn’t he listening to me? Didn’t he understand that I felt more unsafe here than I did at home? All I wanted was to cuddle my cat on my sofa—after I showered and washed away the lingering feeling of Jim’s nose pressed against my neck and cheek as he inhaled the smell of my hair and skin.
I shuddered just thinking about it.
Jackson reached out to me. “Please, Samantha. Come back inside with me. Let me take care of you.”
I stepped back. “You can take care of me by calling a cab. I can’t stay here.”
“You can’t stay alone, either.”
“You might be the boss of those men back there but you are not the boss of me.”
“Woman,” he growled.
“No!” I screamed. “No! Right now, I am not yours. I am not a thing to bark orders at. I am not a damsel. I just want to go home. So please, before I start to hate you, call me a cab and let me go.”
Jackson looked for a moment like he might drag me back into the house, but when his shoulders fell I knew he’d conceded. He pulled out his phone, called me a cab, and didn’t speak a word to me as we both sat on the curb and waited fifteen minutes for my ride to arrive. Before I got in the back seat I looked at Jackson, who’d moved a few feet down the driveway, and said thank you. The words were hollow and I didn’t know if I meant them anymore or if I was saying them out of obligation.
Maybe it was a mix of both.
Thank you for saving me. Thank you for making me feel safe. Thank you for listening to me.
But damn you, too.
Chapter 24
Jackson
Susan followed me into Grant’s Chop Shop out back. “Where are you going, Jackson?”
I tugged the shop doors open. They rolled up and back, sitting against the ceiling over our heads. Out on the porch several of the boys leaned on the railings and watched while my sister scolded me.
“We still have shit to talk about,” she said.
“We?”
“Yes, we,” she said sharply. “I’m entitled to an opinion on the decisions you guys make. I’m caught up in this mess too whether you like it or not.”
“Well, I don’t.”
“He was my brother too.”
She had me there.
Sighing, I swung a leg over the seat of my bike and walked it off the pavement and onto the gravel. Toke made his way down from the porch to open the gate for me, and Susan continued walking alongside me as I rolled out onto the driveway.
“She said she wanted to be left alone,” Susan said.
“No, she said she wanted to go home. And I can’t sit back and leave her in that place alone after what Bates did. She was scared, Suzie. She thought the bastard might kill her. How do you think you’d feel if you’d been held for ransom by Bates? Or Jim? Or any of those assholes?”
Susan didn’t have any retort for that one, so she crossed her arms. “What if Bates decides to make a move on you because he knows you’re alone, too?”
“Then I’ll kill him.”
She blew a s
trand of loose blonde hair out of her eyes with exasperation. “Your confidence is infuriating.”
“And so is your stubbornness.”
Susan stuck her tongue out at me.
Chuckling, I reached for the ignition.
My sister stopped me with her hand over mine. “Just be careful, okay? And don’t do anything stupid just because you have a crush on a doe-eyed girl. She’s not worth it. We need you here. And in one piece. Got it?”
Telling Susan that I thought Samantha was indeed worth it seemed like a bad idea right then and she probably wouldn’t understand, so I patted her hand and told her I would be careful and that she could count on me coming home. She stepped back and let me open the throttle. I peeled away from Grant’s place and checked my mirrors. Susan stood in the driveway with her arms wrapped around herself and grew smaller and smaller in my mirrors until eventually, Mason came out of the back, wrapped an arm around her shoulders, and led her back to the yard.
Both of them disappeared when I took the first right and headed toward the Well.
It was damn near two in the morning and the streets were eerily quiet. Reno felt like a ghost town at this time of night nowadays. It had felt so much more alive before I left. People would still be out on the sidewalks hopping from bar to bar back then—back when being out on the street didn’t feel so dangerous. Cars full of teenagers would roll lazily down side streets stinking of weed. Cops would lean against their cruisers pulled over on the side of the road watching for speeders but half the time wouldn’t bother chasing an offender down because they were too busy working on their sundae to care.
Reno wasn’t the same town it used to be. Hell, I wasn’t the same man I’d used to be, either.
Change had seeped into both of our bones and turned us into something darker, something more sinister.
The Well had all its interior lights off when I arrived, but the porch lights and motion sensors were on, and I praised Samantha’s wit for lighting the parking lot up before she went up to her apartment. I parked at the edge of the lot so I could see almost the entire building. Nobody would be able to get to the back door without cutting across the side lot first, and I’d certainly see them if they tried.
I killed my engine. The headlight winked out and I leaned forward to rest my elbows on the gas tank. It would be a long morning sitting out here, but it would be worth it. Even if I’d tried to head home to catch some sleep, I knew it wouldn’t come. My thoughts would be about Sam, and until I knew she was safe, sleep would not come.
This was better.
Sighing, I put my kickstand down so I didn’t have to hold the bike up. I left my feet down and ran my fingers through my hair to massage my scalp. I needed a fucking shower. The heat and the rain had left my skin feeling sticky, like I’d swum in the ocean recently.
Or like I was back in Syria and the heat and the smog had painted a layer of grime and sweat all over my body.
I shuddered at the familiar feeling and closed my eyes to breathe in the smell of my hometown.
Syria was in the past. The only war on my plate now was the one with Bates. I’d survived worse battles than this one. In the end, Bates would die belly up like a fish out of water, and the Devil’s Luck would take Reno back. All we needed to do was get from point A to point B without making any reckless mistakes that got any of us killed.
I couldn’t bear to lose another man. The MC was the only family I had. If I lost one of them their death would be on my head, even if Bates or one of his men were the ones to pull the trigger.
I opened my eyes and peered up at the apartment window on the second level of the bar. I ached to be inside with the girl who stilled the storm of thoughts in my head. When things got too loud in my own head Samantha was the only one who could make things quiet again.
It was going to be a long morning.
The front door of the bar swung open around eight in the morning. I adjusted myself on the leather seat of my bike as Samantha came to the top of the porch stairs and stared at me with her fists planted on her hips.
“Morning,” I called.
She shook her head, but I could see the telltale sign of a smile lingering in the corners of her lips. “How long have you been here?”
I looked aimlessly around and shrugged. “I don’t know. Since two thirty?”
She looked down as she descended the stairs and I suspected she was trying to hide her smile. It didn’t work. She crossed the gravel lot and stopped in front of my bike. “Were you that worried about me?”
“Yes,” I said simply.
“So you camped out all night long sitting on your motorcycle?”
“Yes.”
“You could have called me. I would have let you inside.”
“Something told me you wanted some space.”
She nudged loose gravel with the toe of her white sneaker. “By something do you mean my attitude last night?”
“What attitude?” I asked innocently.
She looked up at me through strands of messy dark hair hanging in front of her eyes. Now hardly seemed like the right time to tell her that her bedhead was sexy, so I swallowed the compliment.
Sam sighed and shook her head at me. “You’re impossible, Jackson Black. Impossible. How can I stay mad at you when you do a thing like this?” She gestured at all of me sitting on my bike.
“So you forgive me?”
“As long as you forgive me.”
“For what?”
“For giving you hell last night,” she said. “For thinking it was my place to have an opinion when we were sitting around the fire. For letting Bates take me. For…” She trailed off and shook her head. “For all of it, Jack. I was a mess.”
“We all were.”
“Yeah, well you wouldn’t have been if I’d kept my head on a swivel like I was supposed to and saw Jim and Hitch coming before they had a chance to get the jump on me.”
“You can’t blame yourself.”
Samantha put both hands on the handlebars of my bike and leaned over to kiss me. Her lips were warm and soft. When she pulled back, a smile pressed dimples into her cheeks. “Lastly, I’m sorry for running out on you.”
“And I’m sorry for making you feel like you had to. I know you’re not the kind of woman I can boss around.”
Her cheeks blazed pink. “Sometimes I like when you boss me around. Under the right circumstances, naturally.”
“Naturally,” I mused.
Her smile faded and she released the handlebars. “So what are you going to do about Bates?”
“I’m not sure.” Those words were the truth. Everything felt like it was happening in rapid fire, and I hadn’t had a chance to get my head on straight and really think this mess through. This man had killed my brother, and William was a capable and strong young man. If Bates could take him down, he could take any one of us down, too. We had to play this thing smart. “I’m beginning to think the club might need more help than what we’ve got. More manpower.”
“And where would you get that? The police will be no help. They’ve known about Bates since he first rolled into town and they don’t even bat an eye.”
“No cops.” Cops were bad news in this town even before Bates and his entourage of dickless hicks showed up. “I spoke to an ex-member the other day and he pointed me in Caroline’s direction. His intel was good and reliable, and if not for him we never would have got our hands on her. Then again, Bates might never have got his hands on you, either. It was retaliation.”
Sam bit her bottom lip. “Who is this ex-member?”
“Hogey Hughes.”
She balked. “The disgusting storage owner guy? Jackson, what are you thinking? He’s a weasel!”
“He used to be one of mine.”
“Still a weasel.”
She wasn’t wrong.
I shrugged. “I’m beginning to think we’ll need all the help we can get.”
“He’s bad news, Jack. He went to prison while you were gone, and not
for petty crimes either. He assaulted the staff at the pharmacy because they wouldn’t renew his prescription. He beat one of the pharmacists senseless. He’s dangerous and unpredictable, and I don’t think you should be relying on him for anything.”
Her looking out for me made it impossible not to smile at her.
“What’s funny about this?” she asked.
“Nothing. Nothing’s funny.”
“Then why are you smiling?”
I chuckled and rubbed the back of my neck. “If I tell you, you’re going to get mad at me again.”
Her nose and lips pinched in frustration, but she relented, cracking a smile and shaking her head. “You’re impossible.”
I used the heel of my boot to put my kickstand back up. “And you’re so sexy when you’re all fired up and trying to look out for me.”
The redness in her cheeks returned in full force. “Are you leaving?”
“I’ll come back tonight to check on you. And I’ll stay the night, if you’d like.”
Sam came around the side of my bike and ran her hand over my shoulder. “Can’t you spare another hour?”
Chapter 25
Samantha
Jackson abandoned his bike in the parking lot and took the porch steps two at a time. I hurried up ahead of him to get the doors open, and he followed me inside, the heels of his boots scuffing against the wood. The door sealed behind him and he twisted the deadbolt with a flourish before turning to me, a sheepish and crooked smile lingering on his lips.
I backed away from him and he followed, his steps predatory and slow, mimicking mine as I inched all the way to the stone fireplace in the middle of the bar. When my calves hit the hearth I stopped, and so did Jackson.
“Playing games?” he asked.
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”
“People don’t usually escape punishment for lying to me.”
Playing coy, I shrugged one shoulder. “I like to be punished.”
A deep, rumbling growl left his throat. My legs trembled against the hearth and I slipped away to the side, letting the stone give way behind me so I could continue inching toward the stairs—the very stairs on which he’d fucked me senseless on that lonely night he came back from Syria.