“I know, and I caved. Tryin’ not to be an asshole. And here we are.” He grabbed her hands and held them together, tightly. “You’re not always right, Willa. Sometimes, even when it’s somethin’ you don’t like, it’s somethin’ you need. If you’re in my life like I want you to be, then you’re in my world. It’s not like it is out here. You gotta listen to me and do what I say. You gotta trust me to be doin’ what I need to do. You gotta trust me not to boss you around for the fuck of it. Trust that I’m not tryin’ to be a bully. I’m tryin’ to keep you safe in a dangerous life.”
He let her go. “If you can’t, then we gotta stop.”
For something like the third time in this conversation, Rad had shocked her. “What? You’re breaking up with me if I won’t let you run my life? Then how’re you any different from Jesse?”
She regretted the words as soon as they were out, but her mouth wouldn’t take them back.
His eyes went wide, and then his brow drew down over them like a thundercloud. “Fuck you, baby. That was low.” He stood up.
For a few seconds, he stood there, fists clenched, breath heaving in loud rasps, like the angry bull on his back and on the back of his kutte. Willa could see him shaking; she could see his complexion darkening to furious red.
Losing the battle he’d been so visibly fighting, he roared and threw her coffee table over, sending it across the room. Everything that had been on it went flying and scattered onto the floor.
With a snarling growl just as loud and angry, Ollie, who’d been lying attentive on the floor at Willa’s side, leapt at him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Ollie was on Rad before he could react, more than a hundred pounds of a pit bull as solid as granite, with a mouthful of angry, protective teeth. He hit him full-on in the chest, snarling and roaring like a hound straight up from hell, and only the impact when they crashed to the floor gave Rad the chance to get his arms over his face.
Just in the nick of time, too—Ollie’s jaws clamped down on his forearm, and Rad felt every sharp point sink deep. The growl, deep in his chest, became a steady tone.
“Ollie, no!” Willa screamed.
No, baby, don’t scream. He hears your panic.
Rad went perfectly still, not even reacting to the shrieking pain in his arm, knowing that trying to fight the dog would only make him more fierce.
One second, maybe two, no more than three, had elapsed from the moment he’d tossed the table until this moment, when he was set to lose an arm.
“Ollie!” Willa’s voice still shook, but it was firmer. It came from a higher place, too; she’d stood up. “Off! Release!”
The growling stopped, and Ollie blinked.
“Release.”
Massive jaws levered loose of Rad’s arm, and Ollie stepped back. He went to Willa and turned and sat before her, facing Rad. He licked his chops, and Rad saw his own blood on the dog’s snout and teeth.
“Ollie, stay,” Willa commanded and came to Rad, kneeling at his side. “Oh God, you’re hurt.” She lifted his arm in her hands, turning it this way and that, studying the deep wounds.
His arm looked like a big, angry dog had taken a bite out of it. “Yeah, guess so. My fault. Sorry about your table.”
“No, I’m sorry. It was shitty for me to say you were like Jesse.”
“Yeah, it was.”
But Rad himself had thought on a few occasions that there was too much familiar about Jesse Smithers, that the only thing separating himself from Willa’s crazy ex was the crazy. That wasn’t true, but he’d thought he understood the jealous need and possessiveness. He was even a little jealous of Willa’s dog.
Right now, as Willa led him to the bathroom to tend to his wounds, and Ollie followed, keeping a suspicious eye on him, he was jealous of that dog, who’d actually protected her, whereas Rad had let her get hurt.
Part of why he was so goddamn angry at her was that she didn’t see that she needed him. It felt like more than just stubborn self-reliance. It felt like a rejection. She’d gone out of her way not to have his help.
He’d been terrified for her, and then furious with her, and he’d been hurt. He was hurt. She needed him. He needed her to need him. Why was that so fucking hard for her to see?
For hours, for a whole day, he’d been stewing in that, forcing it down, into his gut, staying calm and taking care of her. Cleaning up after her at the motel. Tending to her here, helping her get well. Helping her work out what had happened. Telling her the real consequences of what she’d done.
He hadn’t slept in, now, nearly two days.
After all that, when she’d said he was like the guy who’d raped her, who’d beaten her, who’d drugged her so he could do it all again? That was too fucking much. All that rage and hurt he’d been pushing down had erupted.
If Ollie hadn’t attacked, he didn’t know what he would’ve done. No, he knew. He’d have left. Walked out. Maybe for good.
Willa washed the blood from his arm and then dabbed a cotton ball soaked in antiseptic over his wounds. He hissed as the sting sank in. She stopped and met his eyes.
“I’m so sorry, Rad.”
“This is on me.” He lifted his arm an inch and dropped it again. “Ollie did what he was supposed to do. Don’t call me a rapist again, though. That ain’t right.”
She gaped at him, and Rad couldn’t help but focus on the damage to her mouth. That fucker. He was nothing like that piece of shit. Nothing.
“I didn’t! That’s not what I meant. Not at all.”
“Then tell me what you meant.” He thought he knew—and, now, in the calm Ollie had forced on him, he knew she hadn’t been calling him a rapist. But she needed to see the difference between him and Smithers. The difference in their possessiveness as well as in their violence.
Focused on cleaning his wounds, she didn’t look at him as she answered. “I just…I don’t know. It scares me to have somebody tell me what I can and can’t do in my own life.”
“That’s not what I’m doin’, Wills.”
“It is. You said I had to trust that your way was the right way. That’s just a nice way of saying ‘shut up and do what I say’.” She stepped back and indicated his arm. “These aren’t long, but they’re deep. They should each get a stitch or two.”
“Whatever you think is best.”
Her eyes shot up to his, and a pink glow lit up her cheeks. Good. She’d heard both things he was saying there. Medical was her area of expertise. Protection was his.
“Willa, I don’t want you to sit down and shut up. I like that you can take care of yourself. I like talkin’ things out with you. I just want you to see that it isn’t just your life. It’s our life. That’s what I want. I love you. I want you to keep my flame. But I ain’t no librarian. The life I lead, it’s got its own ways. If you’re with me, that life is yours life, too. What you do has consequences for me, and the other way around. That’s the way it is—and that’s why I said what I said. I don’t want to break up. But you need to decide if the life I bring is what you want.”
She tore open a package of suturing needles. “You know, I never kept these on hand before at home.”
Rad smiled. Since the night she’d tended to Gunner and Simon, she’d built up a decent medical kit of her own. Griffin had been replaced as the club medic.
“You want me to numb your arm before I start?”
He shook his head. “What do you want, baby?”
Holding a needle and suturing thread over his arm, she studied his face, her eyes narrowing. He smiled back and waited.
“I don’t want to get run over.”
“I don’t want to run you over.”
“I’m scared.”
She’d said that before. He thought they’d gotten past it, but Smithers had stirred a whole lot of shit back up. “I know. You gonna run from that?”
A deep breath before she answered. “No. I love you. I want what you want.”
~oOo~
Rad and Ollie
had some making up to do. While Willa stitched Rad up, Ollie had sat in the bathroom doorway, perfectly still and alert. He hadn’t growled, his fur was settled and his ears pricked up, but that dog was paying close attention.
Poor guy must have been confused. He might even have felt the canine equivalent of betrayal. After all the strangeness of the past couple of days, his buddy Rad had gone and gotten violent around his mom.
Around your mom, buddy. Not at. Huge difference.
As Willa packed up her medical supplies, Rad stood and eased around her, headed toward the dog. Ollie stood and backed up, wary.
“It’s okay, Ollie,” Willa said from just behind Rad. She brushed his arm. “It’s just our Rad.”
Ollie looked up at her. Rad could read his thoughts: Yeah, you said he was okay before, too. And look what he did.
Rad crouched in the hallway and held out his hand. His flying drop to the hardwood floor, with Ollie on top of him, hadn’t done his forty-year-old back any favors, but he ignored the pinch between his shoulders and waited for Ollie to come back to him.
“Hey, buddy. We’re still pals, yeah?”
The tiniest flick of his tail, the subtlest drop of his head.
“Come on, boy. I’m sorry. I won’t hurt your mom. That promise still holds.”
Ollie took a step forward, then another. He sniffed Rad’s hand. He looked at Willa, who stood right at Rad’s side.
“Good boy, Olliegollie. Everything’s okay.”
He came close enough for Rad to scratch the spot just behind his jaw that he liked best of all, and then Rad was forgiven.
Or on probation, at least.
~oOo~
A couple of hours later, after a light dinner and some calm quiet watching television, they went to bed. Willa was still shaky from the lingering effects of the overdose, and Rad was starting to feel loopy for lack of sleep. They were both exhausted, both injured, so they slid under the covers without any thought of playing around.
Willa lay at his side, within the hook of his arm, her head on his chest. Both active sleepers, they always fell asleep this way and then tangled themselves into various configurations through the night.
“What happens now?” she yawned.
Rad kissed her head. “Tomorrow, you come to the clubhouse with me. We’re meetin’ on this. D probably won’t want you in church, but he’ll want to talk to us. You be straight with him, and you hear him out. The club’ll make a plan, one we all have to follow. How much time can you take?”
“I never take all my vacation time or any sick leave, and it accrues, so I technically have a lot, but I don’t have a lot of seniority. I told them I got mugged, but the longer I’m out, the less secure my job is. I won’t get fired as long as I’m within my owed leave, but I could lose my position and get stuck somewhere else.”
He knew how much she loved working where she did. “How much before it’s a problem?”
“A week? Maybe two?” She rose up, propping herself on his chest. “Why? Are we going somewhere?”
“Smithers knew where you live and work. We don’t know what the Rats know about you. We have to assume that they know the same things he did. It may be that you can’t be the places he knew you would be until we can make sure they’re not a threat. That’s somethin’ we have to decide.”
“But—”
He stopped her with a kiss. “Baby, don’t argue.”
She frowned. “I’m not. I just want to talk it out. You’re saying I have to hide. For how long? I can’t lose my job, Rad. Don’t ask that of me.”
“I won’t. We won’t let it go on that long. But it’s easier to work out a big picture when the little picture is safe. You understand?”
“If I’m in hiding, you don’t have to worry about me as much and you can put your resources to solving the problem that makes me have to hide.”
“Exactly.” He grinned. “That’s it exactly.”
“Okay. Okay.” She lay back on his chest. “I need to work, Rad. Not just for money. For me.”
“I get it. It’s not a problem. All the old ladies work, and only Maddie works in any part of our world. Mo teaches eight-year-olds, for fuck’s sake. It all plays out fine in the long run. And remember—this ain’t the club bringin’ trouble to you. This is the other way around.”
“I know. I’m sorry. I didn’t think I…”
Her sentence died out. Rad waited, but she didn’t pick it up again. “Didn’t think you what?”
“I don’t know how to say it.” She was quiet again, and Rad closed his eyes as her fingers began to stroke his belly, tracing his scars. “It sounds self-pitying, and that’s not how I mean it at all.”
“Say it, baby.”
“Trying to keep Jesse out of my life, I pushed everybody out. I see my folks once a year, far away from home. I wasn’t there for my little sister’s graduation, or my brother’s wedding. I wasn’t there when my grandma died. It’s been years since I had a friend that I’d see away from work. Ollie’s never met any man but you. I didn’t realize how I’d cut myself off, how many barriers I’d put up between me and everybody else in the world, until you crashed through them. On the very first night I met you. It didn’t occur to me that my life had any impact on anything but me. I guess I didn’t realize that I mattered again.”
“Jesus, Wills.” He didn’t know what else to say.
“No, I didn’t mean you should feel sorry for me.” She came up again and met his eyes. “Just—I’m glad I killed him. I’m glad it was me. I don’t know how to feel about that, that I killed somebody and I’m glad about it. I need to work through that. But I’m sorry it caused you trouble—and I’m glad you’re here to get caught up in my shit.”
Surprised at how she’d turned that sad story around, he laughed. “Me too. Nobody I’m happier to clean up after than you.”
~oOo~
After Rad and Willa sat down in the office with Delaney and talked it out, Rad left her at the bar with Mo and Joanna and a full coffeepot.
The clubhouse was quiet, and not only because it was a weekday afternoon. The surface of the bar was covered with catalogues and papers, and Rad knew that the patches would be doing their level best to be scarce during sunlight hours for the next few days.
Mo had just finished with her school year, and she always turned the full wattage of her considerable attention on the clubhouse in the summer. By mid-June, she’d have the summer’s project mapped out and organized. Last year, she’d redone Delaney’s office. The year before that had been the patio. A few years back, she’d redone the crash pads upstairs. By the looks of the catalogues Rad had given the slightest, most surreptitious glance at, the party room had come up in the rotation.
And that meant a shit ton of work for the patches. In addition to the service station and their club work.
He kissed Willa and headed to the chapel. Behind him, he could hear his old lady being lured into Mo’s web.
Delaney must have heard it, too, because he chuckled as he opened the chapel door.
The rest of the Bulls were already at the table, shooting the shit. Best place in the clubhouse to hide from a woman was the chapel. It wasn’t a place to hang around in for the shit of it—it was the place that held all their secrets and was sacred for it—but if you were a little early for church and looking to maybe not get noticed by a clingy sweetbutt or an old lady with a job list, then you weren’t hanging out or hiding. You were just early for church.
When Delaney sat down, the loose talk settled, and the men sat up straighter in their chairs. After Rad fielded a couple of questions about his bandaged arm, and took some shit for getting mauled by his woman’s dog, Delaney gaveled the meeting open.
“Okay. We got lots to talk about today. I’ll get the easy stuff out of the way first—Horde’s run went smooth, and I think Little Ike’s gonna be good on point here on out. Eight, Beck, Griff, Apollo, and Dane—thank you for hauling ass to keep our schedule tight and get our leg of the run done and ge
t back here. Kirill is pleased. So pleased he wants to bump up the start of the second route, get that going in two weeks.”
Becker spoke up at that. “He know about this new bullshit with Rad’s chick?”
Not liking the way Becker had phrased that, Rad turned on him. “You want to be careful how you talk, kid. That’s my old lady.”
“You mark her yet?”
“Boy…” Rad stood up. Becker stood, too. “Watch your mouth or I will hand it to you so you can see it.”
Crash (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 1) Page 25