Twist (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 2)

by Susan Fanetti

  Despite her relief that he wasn’t cheating, Leah still felt sick, like she’d been spun too fast for too long. “I don’t understand.”

  “I know. Because you’re sweet and good. But I’m all twisted up.”

  “You didn’t have sex with her?”

  “We fucked. There was just other stuff first, usually.”

  “What—what kind of stuff?”

  He came the rest of the way to her and crouched before her. She hadn’t finished cleaning up his face, and the blood around his nose and mouth was beginning to clot and crust. “I don’t want to tell you this shit, Lee. I don’t want you to know this.” He set his hands on her knees; they were still wrapped in white tape, stained with blood.

  She didn’t want to know it, either. “I think I need to.”

  His eyes searched hers. That golf ball on his eyebrow was spreading; Leah wondered if his whole eye would eventually swell shut. He’d wanted Rad to do this to him? Had he wanted what Sheriff Lucas had done to him, too? Nearly killed him?

  “I don’t want to tell you. I love you, Leah. I need you. I don’t want this to fuck us up. The whole time we’ve been together, I haven’t needed anything but you.”

  “But not today. I wasn’t enough today.”

  “You’re always enough. But today was…different.”

  “Why?”

  He set his head on her lap for a second before he spoke. “Because Mav’s a mess, he’s just fuckin’ given up. He was supposed to be out by now. He trusted me and I let him down, and I don’t know…I just felt like shit, and you were at work, and I was too fucked up to go to you there, so I came here, and I was…I just…I needed to stop spinning.”

  Trying to get her own head under control, and her heart, too, Leah closed her eyes and let her thoughts riot until some of them started to make sense. She thought of how explosively he came when she squeezed his balls, and the way he always ratcheted up to the next level if she bit him anywhere. Pain gave him something. She thought of that hot hum that went through his body when he was especially upset.

  “Do you…do…you need me to do that stuff?”

  “No! No, no, no. Fuck, no. No, Lee. That’s not for you.”

  She didn’t know whether to be relieved or offended. “I don’t want you to do it somewhere else, though. I’d…if you need it, I think I could…” She stopped, because she didn’t know if that was true. She didn’t know what it was, exactly, he needed, but she was positive she didn’t want him going somewhere else for it. If she did E, she could probably do whatever he wanted. But she liked not needing drugs to have sex. She no longer had a life she needed to run away from.

  He shifted to his knees and pushed himself between her legs. His hands came up and framed her face; the tape felt odd on her cheeks. Leah thought his eyes were wet, and she tried to think if she’d seen him cry before.

  “Fuck,” he murmured, “you are amazing. I’m not gonna do it anywhere else. I don’t need that shit anymore. What we have is better. It keeps me calm most of the time. But every now and then, I might need somebody to kick my ass. Okay?”

  Frankly, she was just as glad not to know what he didn’t want to tell her. With her world settling back into its proper place, Leah took a long, calming breath. “Okay. As long as it’s not a sex thing with somebody else.”

  He grinned, then winced, and his mouth began to bleed again. “It won’t be. Unless Rad flips. I might have to think about that. He is a fine-looking beast, after all.”

  Leah laughed and shoved at his shoulder. “Not funny.”

  Gunner’s expression became serious. His fingers tightened in her hair and pulled her close. “Love you. Love you so much.” He kissed her as if he hadn’t been recently punched repeatedly on the mouth.

  But he had, and after a second, Leah pulled back with a little laugh. “You taste like blood. Also possibly snot.”

  “Damn,” he chuckled. “Guess I’m still a mess. Sorry. Will you take care of me?”

  “Always.” She smiled and said a thing she heard the Bulls say to each other all the time. “I got your back.”

  ~oOo~

  The wind picked up and nearly snatched the car door from Leah’s grip, but she held on, and Stevie’s mother got his seatbelt fastened in the back seat.

  “Thank you, Leah,” Mrs. Ellery said as she took the door from Leah and closed it carefully, her hair whipping loose of its ponytail.

  Leah smiled, holding her own ponytail out of her way. “You’re welcome. Drive safe. We’ll see you Saturday.” She waved at Stevie through the window, and he grinned and waved back.

  Mrs. Ellery gave her a tight smile, the kind that meant she was too good a person to be rude, even to the likes of Leah, and went around the car. Leah was getting used to the barely-concealed judgments of the women of the congregation and the avid, slanted stares of the men. She knew that the story of her wild ways had traveled and grown, until she’d been having orgies in the church sanctuary, and with it had gone the story of her abandoning her father, their beloved spiritual leader, leaving him to drown himself in grief and loss. Only because they loved her father, and he’d asked for their grace, were they allowing her near their children.

  Her side of the story didn’t matter, and she hadn’t bothered to share it. There was plenty of truth in the gossip, anyway.

  Stevie Ellery was the last of the kids, so Leah stood alone in the parking lot. Only her Cabriolet was parked. Her father had, of course, walked to the church, though she intended to offer him a ride home.

  She looked sidelong at the swollen sky. October’s weather had been bizarre—the whole autumn had been weird. Here it was, less than a week before Halloween, and the temperature had topped off in the high eighties. Now, twilight had arrived early, and that was a bad sign. With all this wind? Oklahomans knew what kind of mischief weather like this meant. Lightning flashed on the horizon and a faint rumble of thunder followed.

  And then the wind just stopped. Like God had flipped a switch. Leah’s ears closed up.

  She shuddered and hurried up the sidewalk and through the back door of the church. She wanted to collect her father, get him home, and get back to Tulsa and Gunner.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Gunner chased after the last of the plastic chairs bouncing across the station lot. They’d stacked them all by the door, as a protection against the wind, but it hadn’t been enough. This wind was wild and gusty enough to grab the heavy stack of a dozen chairs from against the wall and heave it into the air.

  He lunged and caught the last stray before it flew into the street. Before he ran back to the station, he looked up at the sky—dark and heavy, with a strange, greenish glow. Fuck, he hated weather like this. Most people born and raised in Tornado Alley got used to it, he supposed. They respected the wind, but they didn’t freak out. Watches and warnings were a fact of life, every year, especially in the late spring and early fall, the times of year when hot and cold air battled it out in the sky and sent occasional bombs to the ground.

  But Gunner didn’t think anybody who’d really suffered a tornado ever got used to them. If you’d actually been picked up and thrown through the air by one, if your life had been torn apart by one, then the chance it might happen again blew to the front with every sharp gust. He tried to keep it bottled up, but even a tornado watch, signifying that the conditions were right, made him skittish and sick to his stomach.

  Tulsa County had been under a tornado watch all fucking day. So had Osage County, where Leah was. It was hardly the first time that had happened, but this day felt more foreboding, for some reason. Gunner wasn’t the only one who felt it, either. Apollo was checking the Weather Service on his computer, and they had the news on in the clubhouse, keeping track. Delaney was closing up the station an hour early, dropping the steel gates behind the windows at the station as Gunner, Apollo, and Simon chased down the damn chairs.

  Gunner had checked in with Leah three times, at work and at church, and she was okay so far. He wa
nted to go and bring her home, but that was stupid. If a twister did pop up, being on the road was among the worst places to be, as he well knew. She was safer where she was.

  As he hurried back into the wind, thunder crashed over his head, and sheets of rain poured suddenly down. Fuck.

  ~oOo~

  There was no clearer sign that this day felt more dangerous than normal than the crowd in the clubhouse. Before any warning siren had sounded, people from all around the neighborhood sought shelter with the Bulls, and they had a full house of families and kids, oldsters and young thugs. Several dogs, too. Only twice before had Gunner known people to flock to the clubhouse like this, and on one of those occasions an F5 tornado—the highest possible rating, an apocalyptic monster—had dropped about ten miles west of Tulsa and taken out a whole town before it had dissipated.

  The tornado that had twisted Gunner up hadn’t been much of a twister at all. Just enough to break his family. If it caught you just right, any tornado could fuck you up.

  For a while, the atmosphere in the party room was like a low-key party. Wally was behind the bar, serving up beer for the grownups and soda for the kids; Maddie, the only old lady present, had the sweetbutts scrounging up some eats, and the juke was playing Delaney’s Top Forty country favorites. Gunner called the church again and got Leah’s father, who told him, in icy tones, that Leah was fine and busy sending the kids home from practice.

  He sat in a recliner, a full beer going warm in his hand, and tried to be cool. He stared at the front window, glowering at that fucking shitty green tint in the sky, and considered Delaney’s silhouette. The president had been standing at the window for a good fifteen minutes, like he was watching for the air to start spinning. The glass rattled with every angry gust of wind, but Delaney stood where he was and watched.

  The wind and rain died all at once, and that green light became ghostly. Every hair on Gunner’s body stood straight up.

  When the siren that everyone was expecting finally sounded, Gunner shot to his feet, and Delaney turned from the window with a scowl. “I hate this fuckery,” he grumbled.

  Most everyone in the room who wasn’t already watching one of the two televisions in the room—the big one by the sofas or the little one behind the bar—turned to one of them now. Apollo had them both tuned to the Weather Channel. The kinda-hot chick in the pink suit wasn’t talking about Oklahoma just then, but an alert came up on the screen.

  It was far too much text for Gunner to deal with, but Apollo read it out loud for the whole room.

  “The National Weather Service has issued a tornado warning for Osage, Pawnee, Payne, Creek, Washington, Tulsa, and Okmulgee Counties in North Central Oklahoma. In effect until 7pm. Sightings throughout area. A debris signature indicated by Doppler radar has confirmed a category F5 tornado 5 miles southwest of Grant, OK, moving northeast at 60-65 miles an hour. Wind speeds estimated at 280 miles per hour.”

  Gunner stood and stared at the erratic words on the screen. Around him, he could sense movement; people were heading to the basement. But he couldn’t budge; Apollo’s voice banged around in his head. 5 miles southwest of Grant, OK, moving northeast at 60-65 miles per hour. Wind speeds estimated at 280 miles per hour.

  It couldn’t happen twice in his life. It wouldn’t happen twice in his life. It wouldn’t happen to Leah. It wouldn’t. Not Leah.

  He felt a hand on his arm. “Hold tight, son,” Delaney said, low and calm, at his ear. “We gotta get to cover, which is where your girl is right now, too, I’m sure.”

  “I…can’t…” His eyes went to the phone on the bar, and he lunged for it, breaking that terrified paralysis. He dialed the church again…and this time, instead of ringing, he heard the awful tone of an incomplete call. Then, We’re sorry. We cannot complete your call at this time.

  “Fuck, oh…fuck, no.”

  Delaney took the phone from him, listened, and hung it up. “She’s fine, Gun. She’s fine. Nothing we can do right now, but we’ll check as soon as we can, and she’ll be fine. Right now, we gotta get downstairs.”

  As if to agree with him, the air filled with a sound like a freight train bearing down on them, and the building began to shake. Delaney grabbed Gunner by the kutte and yanked him toward the basement door.

  ~oOo~

  The twister spotted outside of Grant wasn’t the only one to hit. They’d had at least one in Tulsa, which shook the Bulls’ building to its foundation. Trapped in the basement, they heard a symphony of crashes and thumps, but the structure, made of sturdy brick like the smart pig’s house, stood.

  They lost power while they were underground, and the racket and roar above them kept any of the Bulls from getting to the generator, so they made do with flashlights and battery-operated lanterns. Wally had forgotten the big old transistor radio/television combo on the bar, so they were left in the virtual dark as well, with no way to get updates about the weather except what they could hear with their own ears.

  Gunner prowled the basement, unable to be still, doing everything he could to stay in control. Leah was hurt—he knew it. He could feel it. He told himself that was crazy. Knowing his twin had been one thing, but he couldn’t have the same connection with anyone else, not even with Leah.

  And yet, he knew.

  When it had been quiet for a goodly while, Delaney and Dane climbed the stairs and ran recon. A few minutes later, they called everyone up.

  They came up to a cold, damp first floor; lots of windows had broken out, and rain and wind had partied without them.

  As often happened, when the storm finished, the skies cleared up completely, as if the world had needed a good temper tantrum to get right with itself again. Gunner understood that need intimately. On this day, when the storm had finally exploded so late in the day, the Bulls and their neighbors came back up as the last rays of sun painted the edges of the sky.

  Tentatively, people filed through the clubhouse and out into the world. Gunner held back. He didn’t give a shit about the neighborhood. He needed to find out if Leah was okay.

  Both televisions in the party room were broken. The tube of the big one had been smashed by debris, and the little one had been toppled off the back of the bar, and its casing had broken open, spilling electronic guts on the floor.

  But the transistor set was right where they’d left it, unharmed. As Becker picked it up and turned it on, Gunner tried the phone on the bar, picking it up in shaking hands, but the cordless handset had no power.

  “My office—that old desk phone is plugged into the wall,” Delaney said, standing at his side. Gunner ran back without a word and dialed the church. He got that alarming tone again. The call couldn’t connect.

  He tried his family home and got the same terrible noise.

  He was fucking panicking. Every nerve in his body was at DEFCON 1. He had to get out of the fucking clubhouse and to Grant.

  When he got back out to the party room, Becker had the transistor going and the television tuned to a local station. The news had broken into whatever game show was programmed and was updating Tulsa on the weather situation. The reception on the tiny set was shit, and the sound was mostly static, but the picture was clear enough. The six-inch screen showed devastation—a vast chasm carved through farmland, like God had decided Oklahoma needed a new river and had dug it out all at once.

  Then an image of the twister that had made it. F5. A mile wide, plowing through fields and farms. Another video of the same twister—even bigger now, it seemed—approaching a town. The scroll at the bottom of the screen spun out words in all caps. Gunner had no hope of reading moving words, and he nearly went mad until somebody, one of the neighbors, read it out loud: F5 TORNADO DEVASTATES SMALL TOWN * GRANT OKLAHOMA * CASUALTIES UNKNOWN * EMERGENCY CREWS ARRIVING ON SCENE

  His mind went blank, and he opened his mouth and simply bellowed.

  ~oOo~

  They wouldn’t let him ride. Rad nearly tackled him to keep him from running off alone, and he dragged him to the club
van and shoved him in the passenger side. The skies had cleared and the wind had settled, but the tornado warnings were still in effect. That didn’t matter; Gunner had to get to Grant, and his brothers were there to help him.

  He sat in the van, staring out the side window as Rad drove, digging his fingers into his thighs, trying to keep himself together. Inside him, the vortex howled.

  Delaney, Simon, Eight Ball, Griffin, and Apollo rode along with the van. The bikes had been secured as well as possible in the lot. The whole group of them had dropped over, but none had taken serious damage. The twister that had come through Tulsa had been an F1: lots of minor and moderate damage—broken windows and shredded awnings and the like—but nothing catastrophic.