The gasp was audible and the shock drained her face of all color, but Rusty couldn’t stop now that he’d started. All the frustration and rage against his brother came rushing out at the one person who’d dared to stand up for him. “He’s smart, I’ll give him that. Getting the Illinois Reapers to do the job was a stroke of genius. They’ve got connections down here, but the LA chapter have got plausible deniability so they’re not going to start a turf war with the Hell’s boys. Twenty bikes. Fuck. Twenty of the best bikes we’ve had in here since we opened.” He rubbed his face again with his good hand, but he wasn’t done. “Everyone knows my past with them so it’s easy to write it off to bad blood. But I tell you, we were square. There’s no reason for them to be up here unless this is a paid job.”
He pointed at the insurance papers again. “His name is on these. No one was going to give me insurance, not with my background, so he signed for it. Fuck. Don’t you see? He sends a check back to Illinois, the Reapers are in and out, and he takes half the insurance payout. His debt is paid, he fucks me over all in one go. I’ll never get work here again. Not when people think their bikes might get taken by an out-of-town MC. And you can bet your pretty little ass he’s selling me out with the TV pilot too. He shops it around like you say, and our producer will walk. No point in him busting a gut for us if he thinks we’re not all-in with him.”
“But that can’t be right. Grim got me this last audition. And he’s genuinely interested in my career. In making sure I do well in this town. He’s done more for me in a couple of weeks than anyone else has done the whole time I’ve been here.”
The breath felt ragged going in and worse coming out, but the words were flowing now and Rusty couldn’t have stopped them if he’d wanted to. “You know, you say you’re all about making it here on your own. About how you’re going to show your folks that you can be a big star and make something bigger of your life. Fuck me, you want to cure polio. But you still want someone to hold your hand. You want Grim because he makes you feel safe. Because if he’s by your side you don’t have to make it on your own. But all he really wants is to get into your pants.”
She slapped him. Hard. Harder than he’d have given her tiny frame credit for.
“Come on. Smart girl like you, you know what he wants. Hell, you even tried to give it to him if I recall correctly. Sorry I got in the way of that.”
If she could have breathed fire he figured she would have given it a go right then and there. She drew herself up to her full five-foot-nothing height and put her hands on her hips. “I was desperate. You know that. But you also know that’s not who I am. I thought you were one of the good guys. A man who stood up for what he believed in. All that talk about loyalty, it was just a line. Why would your precious club rip off your shop if they were all about loyalty? You don’t have any proof that Grim was involved; you don’t have anything on him at all.” She paused, as if trying to consider whether Grim could really be behind the break-in like Rusty knew he was, but then couldn’t bring herself to give it credence.
Rusty was matter-of-fact. “It was him.”
“I just can’t believe that. Seems to me more likely that there’s something else going on here.” She looked at him hard. “I wouldn’t have believed it, but you’re jealous, aren’t you?”
“Jealous? Of my brother?” He laughed but it was a bitter, cold sound, even to his own ears. “He’ll never be happy. Always chasing the next role, the flashier car, the bigger paycheck. I didn’t think you were like him, but if you can’t see him for who he really is when I’m standing right in front of you with the evidence, then you’re more like him than I thought.”
“Screw you, Rusty McKinley.”
“Oh you already did, little bird. It was fun while it lasted.” He turned away and heard, rather than saw her leave. His heart paused for a beat, but he was so full of adrenaline and hurt, fear and rage, that he ignored it, focusing instead on what to do next.
Rocco came up the stairs after she’d left.
“You did a good job on that broad. She definitely wasn’t in on it?”
“No. Leave her be. She and Grim deserve each other.”
“Fair enough.” Rocco paused. “You’re going to have to call the cops on this one. We get involved and there’s a good chance you’ll lose everything. You need to report it to collect insurance.”
“I get the cops involved and I lose everything anyway. No one is going to come back here if they think the Reapers will come over from Illinois anytime they like and steal their bikes. Those motors were custom. It’s not like they’re going to be able to sell them.”
“They’re already stripped down for parts.” Rocco’s face showed that the idea of such beautiful bikes being reduced to parts hurt him as much as it hurt Rusty.
“Fuck.”
“Pretty much.” Rocco paused. “Want me to go and visit your brother?”
Rusty shook his head. “No, it’s time I pulled his head out of his ass myself.”
“Well, if you need someone to put it back up there once you’re done, you give us a shout. He’s no family to you.”
Rusty felt the words like hard chunks of concrete. “He’s no family to you.” It was true. Grim had finally managed to sever the one thing that Rusty had thought held them together. But if this clusterfuck trail really did lead back to his brother, it looked like their blood connection wasn’t going to be strong enough to hold anything.
“Boys will drop you at the hospital gate. Come on. Get your arm fixed. You can see your brother after. I’ll make sure he doesn’t go anywhere.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
“Someone beat me to it, huh?” Rusty looked at his brother’s puffy eye and broken nose and the satisfaction at seeing his brother in a bloody mess wasn’t as great as he’d thought it would’ve been. Looking around the apartment it was clear that whoever had done this, had done a thorough job. All the furniture was gone, and there was a gap with just wires hanging out of a hole where the giant TV screen had once hung above the mantel.
“Go on. You can have this arm, I think the other one is broken.” Grim held out his left arm from where he sat on the floor and Rusty tipped his head. It was true, the right arm was at a funny angle like his had been.
“Shit, bro. What happened? Those bikes are worth a fortune. How much did you borrow?”
Grim’s face fell and he tried to stand but the pain wracked his body and the anger eked out of Rusty. No matter what his shit of a brother had done, he couldn’t hurt him more than he was already hurting.
“Come on. Let’s get you some ice. And if you want to work in movies anymore you’re going to have to get that nose looked at.”
The trip to the hospital was uneventful. Six hours later with painkillers on board, his nose reset, and his arm in a plaster cast, and sitting on the sofa in Rusty’s apartment, Grim was slightly more comfortable. “Seriously, if you need to have a go, this is the time. I can’t even feel my face.”
Rusty sat at the other end and opened a beer with his good arm. He said nothing and waited for his brother to start talking. His anger still boiled below the surface of his skin, a living surge of lava that he knew would erupt if Grim tried to wiggle his way out of his responsibility.
Grim knew it and he took a deep ragged breath before he started talking. “It wasn’t supposed to go like this. They were supposed to come up, take five bikes, and leave.” He held up his good hand as Rusty opened his mouth to interrupt. “Let me get this out and then you can yell at me for being an idiot. Can I have one of those?” He nodded at Rusty’s beer.
“No.” It was difficult, but Rusty held back the rest of what he wanted to say like Grim had asked.
“Fair enough.” Grim shook his head at himself. “You always were the smart one, you know that, right? Mom knew it, Dad loved you for it, the only one who didn’t know it was you.”
Rusty sat back and took another slug of his beer to distract himself. This was not what he had been expecting Grim to say
. But he didn’t have time to dwell on it as Grim continued. “I figured the insurance payout was a better way to get the money I owed than making you sell your precious garage, so we could both get what we wanted. My guy would leave you alone, you could keep doing whatever you do after a bit of a reconfigure. No harm done. I just didn’t think that the Reapers would screw you over so thoroughly. And I didn’t expect them to come visit me.”
“Well, then you’re an idiot.”
“I know. They came to my place first. I guess it wasn’t that hard to find me. I haven’t made a secret of where I live—you can’t, you know, in this town. You want the media on your doorstep if you’re going to be front-page material. But I should have stayed at Wilde’s last night.” He took a breath and Rusty could tell his ribs were hurting, three of them were broken but he didn’t move, not while Grim was talking. “You’ll be pleased to know that there are still plenty of guys back in Illinois who thought your paying my debt was a shit move too.” He pointed at his nose.
Rusty nodded. “It was. But that’s history. My shop though, why would they—”
“They didn’t know it was yours.”
The deep knot that all the people he’d counted on as family had turned against him loosened and Rusty let out the breath he hadn’t known he was holding.
“I doubt they would have done it if they had. They had plenty to say about you. Plenty to say about loyalty. In between breaking my nose and my arm.”
“But the guys who were there. They threw a bandana in my face. One of them ran me down.”
“New guys,” Grim said. “Up for adventure. Hendrix said as much as he was breaking my arm.”
Rusty drained the rest of his beer, stood, and went to the fridge. He brought two beers back and sat on the couch. Opening them both, he handed one to Grim. That was all he needed to know really. Not how much Grim owed. Not why he did it. Just that there were still people in the world who had his back.
“You’re a better man than me. And I’m sorry,” Grim said.
“I know.”
The two men drank their beers for a long minute. “How are you going to make it right?”
Grim nodded as if he’d expected nothing less. “I’ll make sure people know it’s not your fault. And that the Reapers aren’t about to come back up here and rip you off. Call them if you like. Tell them what a shit I am.”
“They’ll already know. Rocco’s been on the phone to Mack.”
Grim’s face paled and he took another swig of beer. The silence deepened and Grim fidgeted, the painkillers probably starting to wear off.
“I’ll talk to them. Otherwise they’ll destroy you.” Rusty said the words blandly but he knew the truth in them. Loyalty above all. It was the mantra the MCs lived by. The only one that really mattered.
The bikes were gone. Across the state, a ride all night to get here. It was probably just the added attraction of taking Grim down that had brought them up here in the first place.
“At least you got the girl.” Grim’s comment came out of the uneasy silence and made Rusty straighten.
“Beth?” He almost laughed. “She wanted you. Wanted everything you had, you know that, right?”
Grim shrugged. “She’s something, that girl. If I hadn’t been so up my own ass I might have done something about it. But she’s yours, that much is obvious. I watched the pilot.”
Beth. Her name echoed around his head. “I’m not the right guy for her.”
Grim raised an arm to rub at his face and then groaned when the pain of moving hit him. “You’re really going to pull the I’m-not-good-enough card? Of course you’re not good enough. Neither of us are. But you’re the one she wants.”
“I told her I only wanted her to get back at you. And that she was too scared to make it on her own.”
Grim shook his head. “Man, I really did a number on you. Fuck, I’m sorry, bro. But now you have to fix it. You can’t add missing out on the girl to the list of things I’m responsible for in your life. I know I was a shit when Dad died, and when Mom went, I just couldn’t . . .” He took a deep shuddering breath. “You went off the rails, sure, but you stayed true to who you were. Who Dad would have wanted you to be. I was supposed to be making a name for myself and all I’ve done is make life shit for you. I really am sorry, bro.”
“Thanks. I needed to hear you say that.”
“I know. I’m sorry it took me so long. I won’t ever take you for granted again.”
Rusty hesitated, and Grim rolled his eyes at him. “Call her. Now.”
* * *
In the kitchen, Rusty waited for what felt like an eternity for Beth to pick up. But the phone just rang out and her voice message, perky and bright, filled his ear instead. He grabbed the office landline and tried her number again. She picked up.
“Beth. Don’t hang up. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said all that stuff. The baggage with my brother and me, sometimes it takes over.”
“No shit.” Her voice was hard. He could hear the hurt in it and it killed him that he had put it there.
“Can I see you?”
“No. You can go to hell.”
“But what about the show?”
She laughed, bitterly. “That’s what this is about? Your precious show? There is no show. Not with me in it. You might think all your misfortunes are because of your brother, but you forget that you make your own choices. You could have chosen not to take on his shit. You could have chosen to love me. But you didn’t. You wanted me because I wanted your brother. You’re wrong about me, you’re wrong about everything. Good-bye, Rusty.”
The dial tone was the loneliest sound Rusty could remember hearing. He held the phone to his ear until it changed into the busy signal and then finally set it back in the holder.
You could have chosen to love me . . . He already had, he realized. Having her in his apartment, watching her with his guys, lavishing attention over her body in his bed. He loved her. Had since the moment she’d started talking. And she was right. He’d been so eaten up about the rivalry with his brother that he’d forgotten to live his own life properly.
Rusty stalked into the living room where his brother had laid back on the sofa, trying to get comfortable. “Get up. Thousands wouldn’t, but I forgive you. You want to make up for being a shit, now’s the time.”
Grim struggled to his feet. “How?”
“We make this TV show happen. We make sure Beth is the star. And then we show her that I do believe in her. That I know her.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Beth counted to one hundred as she stared at her suitcase, trying to decide whether to pack or not, trying to stay calm and focused. When she’d stormed out of Rusty’s she’d gone back to Wilde’s and thrown herself on Briony’s mercy. There had been a space in the bunkhouse, but no jobs available. She was back to living on her savings, and they weren’t going to last long.
The film role had dissolved as soon as Grim had been out of action. With a broken nose, he couldn’t shoot anything for a couple of months and it turned out he wasn’t so big of a star that anyone would wait. It seemed like he’d sold them as a package. A package that was now out of cash and out of chances. Without him on her arm she was just another actress looking for a break. One with a black eye still fading.
With hardly any money, no job, and no permanent place to stay, giving up and flying back to the other side of the world seemed like a good option. She looked at the suitcase again and pictured her parent’s faces when she arrived home. But she couldn’t do it. She wasn’t ready. And she wasn’t a quitter.
She sat up straighter. Mae West wouldn’t have done it. She would have pulled up her boots and gotten back to work. Beth shook her head at herself. You almost lost sight of who you are, girl. Focusing on Grim, then Rusty, had been where her trouble started and ended. She wasn’t just another actress. She was Beth Ravens, and it was time she told the world.
There were other waitressing jobs. Other dumps to stay in. Her bank account h
ad enough money for two more weeks to make something happen and this time it would be completely on her own. The image of Rusty spewing his vitriol over her came back to her and she shook her head to rid herself of the memory. She would make it alone. All on her own.
Beth looked around the room. This she had not missed. She’d settled in at Rusty’s more than she’d realized and being back here was a short, sharp kick in the reality-guts. But the thrill of auditioning, of walking through the film lots, and the glimmer of hope that this time, this time, she was going to get lucky—she would miss that if she gave it up too soon. Anything else? Okay. So, she was going to miss him. She pulled out her phone and scrolled through the missed calls. Twenty of them. All from Rusty. But Rusty McKinley was as big an ass as his brother. He might have gotten under her skin but only because he was toxic, like a virus.
That was the problem, that was why it was so hard to shake the memory of him, she decided. He’d gotten into her body when her immunity was low, when she was desperate and hopeful and was willing to see good in anyone. Not now. Now she was going to fight the memories of him and push them out. So what if the way he held her had made her feel whole? So what if what he did to her body was like riding a comet to the moon? So what if he told her how incredible she was and when she looked up into his deep dark eyes, she thought she saw that he believed it, that he believed in her 100 hundred percent? It was all an act. Him and his brother, they deserved each other and one day they’d both probably be big stars. But right now, after Rusty had admitted he only cared about her being in his life to finish his TV show, after he’d told her she couldn’t do it alone, she was going to shove any memory, any sensation or thought or flicker of Rusty McKinley out of her body. And she wasn’t going to let him back in.
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