A bubble of noise exploded behind me, but I didn’t jump because I knew who it was. I’d slowly grown accustomed to Katina and her effusive ways. She was so American in some things, yet had little traits that made me wonder how Mama had taught them to her when she’d died when Kati was so young.
Ukrainians weren’t the most effusive of people, not as boisterous as the Americans, moreover, among our families, we were close and affectionate. A man would think nothing of kissing his father, whereas here that was unheard of past boyhood. At least that was as far as I had seen among the MC.
Maybe they weren’t the best cross section of society to learn things from?
I twisted just in time for her to rush into my arms, and when she did, I realized she was sobbing. Her dramatic antics almost had me smiling, but I understood. I wished I could sob too. In fact, her tears made me feel both better and worse. Worse because I wanted to share her tears, wanted to break down and let my feelings out. But better because she felt this for me. She was hurting for me.
I wasn’t alone anymore.
“Whhhhyyy?” she wailed from a rat’s nest of hair that covered half her features. “Why did he have to go into the clubhouse?”
Her sniffles made it very difficult for me to understand her, especially with her face shoved into my stomach the way it was, her arms tight around me to the point of pain. The hugging was a new thing. She’d been wary around me since her arrival at the compound, but the bombing seemed to have had a positive effect on us.
Every time she’d seen me ever since, she hugged me.
Like she was scared to let go. Like she was scared I’d disappear. She wasn’t to know that only death would take me from her, but death was what I knew she feared the most—hadn’t she already lost both her parents?
I hugged her harder. “He’ll get better,” was all I could tell her, because I couldn’t tell her the truth.
Couldn’t explain that Maverick had gone into the structurally unsound building to get his hands on some tech stored in a safe in there to make sure the FBI couldn’t sic forensic hackers on them to learn more about the MC’s activities—legal or otherwise.
How could I express any of that to a child? Especially when I felt bitter about it too? I couldn’t, so I didn’t bother trying.
Lowering my head, I pressed a kiss to her crown. “All will be well,” I assured her, even though I had no way of knowing if that was the case.
By the time I’d left the hospital this evening, Maverick had endured so many tests that he’d been growling like a bear. I wasn’t sure what the MC had done or how they’d pulled so many strings, but before I’d come to Lily’s home, we’d had some results back.
The trauma was clear. Having seen the graphic imaging, there was no getting away from the fact that Maverick had been hurt in ways that no one could literally see. It was a wonder he was fully functioning. The doctors had spoken of the need to evaluate the level of tau deposition in his brain, but that was where my English had failed me.
All I’d known was that the brothers who gathered around Maverick’s bed had looked grim.
I bit my lip at the thought, wondering what was going to happen to the man I loved as Kati asked, “You’re staying here, aren’t you?”
“I am,” I confirmed.
“She’s going to be in the poolhouse with Maverick,” Lily said softly, reaching out to carefully stroke away some strands of messy hair that were glued to Kati’s tear sticky face.
“Why can’t she be in the main house with us? There are lots of bedrooms!”
“Because they need their privacy,” was Lily’s stalwart response, and I shot her a grateful look.
The smile she returned was wry, which told me Lodestar, who I knew was also staying here, had told her that I wasn’t capable of dealing with Kati full-time.
That made me feel useless, and shame filled me with the thought, but it was only the truth.
I could barely look after myself, never mind her too.
Being close by, knowing Lodestar was there, as well as the rest of the MC family who were living in for the moment, filled me with peace.
She could visit but she could leave, because pizda rula, she was noisy.
Wincing at the treacherous thought, I reached down and kissed the crown of her head again.
I loved her so fiercely that I’d crossed an ocean for her and endured torments I’d wish on no one just to be by her side. I’d never imagined that when I could finally be there for her, I’d be letting her down by taking a step back.
I released a shaky breath as I inquired, “Lily was just going to show me around the poolhouse. Want to see?”
Kati’s bottom lip popped out, but she nodded. “I wanted to stay here. It’s so cool. At night, Lessie, you can hear the ocean.”
My brows rose at that, as well as the nickname she’d given me—Lessie, that was a new one—but Lily snickered. “It’s not the ocean, Kati. It’s just the pool. There’s a wave machine.”
Eyes widening, I asked, “A wave machine?”
“Simulates the sounds of the sea. Father was nothing if not a poser.”
I surprised us both by laughing at that. Kati had no idea who Donavan or Luke Lancaster had been to me, and that was how it was going to stay.
Not for the first time, I tasted their names on my lips, names I’d only learned in the aftermath of my rescue, as I wandered into the place where I’d be living from now on. I had no way of knowing for how long, but it was to be my home and I knew I could be happy here.
Maybe being under the roof of the men who had tortured me sexually should break me out in a cold sweat, but there was a delicious kind of justice here. They were dead, having been slain at the hands of people who’d served them their ends and delivered my new beginning, and I was alive.
I’d survived.
The thought was strangely buoying. It added a spring to my step, and that spring was definitely needed because the next few days, maybe weeks, were going to be tough—I was nothing if not a realist.
As Kati and Lily tugged me around the place, showing me the bedrooms and the kitchen and my beautiful connecting bathroom that looked like it was made out of one piece of marble, I was enamored with it. Especially when Lily told me I was welcome to redecorate.
The place was absent of character, enough that I knew she’d had all of her brother’s possessions tossed out, and the blank space soothed me.
Filled me with satisfaction.
The best way to get back at those horrific human beings was to live my best life.
And to do that, I needed Maverick to be better.
For however long I had him, for however long I got to stay in this country, I wanted to be by his side. Even if he didn’t want me there.
“Lessie, want to come and play a game with Star and me? She’s grumpy. We need to cheer her up.”
I shot her a cautious look. “Isn’t Star always grumpy?” As far as I could tell, Lodestar’s general status was harried, calculating, and ready for the shit to hit the fan.
She’d been the only person in any way expecting the blast that had triggered this nightmare. Maverick and she had argued about it the morning he’d been hurt.
She was why he’d gone to the clubhouse.
I bit my lip, because the desire to blame her was strong, but in her defense, both of us had pleaded with him to stay away from the clubhouse.
He was the one who hadn’t listened.
“She is, but she’s worse than usual,” Kati grumbled with a sigh as she leaped onto the bed I’d told her I was going to use as my own and started jumping up and down.
I watched her, my head bopping with the movement, and had to rub my eyes at her enthusiasm.
Had I ever had that level of energy?
“A game will cheer her up.”
“Which game?” I questioned warily, certain Lodestar would want to see me as little as I wanted to see her.
“Clue.”
I frowned. “What is that?”
“You’ve never played?” Kati squealed, but finally stopped bouncing long enough to clap her hands, and then she did the damnedest thing… she somersaulted, in midair, off the bed.
“Whoa!” Lily burst out, her eyes wide at the display.
Mouth gaping, I managed to ask, “Kati, since when did you do gymnastics?”
Her eyes twinkled. “It was just something Cyan was showing me. Neat, huh?”
Neat?
That about summed it up.
Four
Maverick
“He isn’t dead.”
I glowered at Link who was sprawled beside me in one of the uncomfortable hospital armchairs, trying to register that he was old now.
I mean, not decrepit. When I looked in the mirror, I was the same. Just as old as him. Scarred too.
What the fuck was wrong with me?
I felt like I was twenty-seven. In my head, I was back in Afghanistan at Nic’s side as our A-team leaped from post to post, putting out fires before they had the chance to turn into infernos.
Instead, I was somehow approaching forty, had spent the past four years in a wheelchair when I was capable of walking, had married someone called Ghost—what kind of name was that anyway?—and the man I’d loved with all my fucking being was dead.
It wasn’t possible.
It. Just. Wasn’t. Possible.
“You know we wouldn’t lie to you,” Link grumbled, folding his arms across his chest, a peevish glower crossing his features as he huffed at my refusal to accept the truth.
“You would. You’re pulling some kind of joke on me—”
He shook his head. “You know that isn’t true. We wouldn’t joke about shit like that.”
That was the kicker.
I knew they wouldn’t.
But I wanted to think they would.
Link, alongside Rex, Nyx, Storm, and Steel, were like family to me. They weren’t blood, but they might as well have been. We pulled shit on each other all the time, but nothing like this.
Nothing about someone being dead when they were really alive.
“I can’t handle him being dead,” I said rawly, staring at my feet that were bare, exposed to the air because I refused to lie in this bed like I was sick.
The doctors weren’t letting me out of here until they finished running their tests. I had a feeling, from that gleam in Dr. Beau’s eye, that they were going to try to use me as a human fucking guinea pig, but they could back the fuck off.
“You have to handle it, Mav,” Link murmured softly. “I’m sorry. I wish I could tell you otherwise, that he was happily married with two point four kids in Wyoming, but he ain’t, brother. He passed a long time ago.”
Steel, standing in the other corner of the room, grumbled, “There’s a lot that makes no sense right now, Mav.”
“Where’s Rex?” I demanded, knowing he wouldn’t lie to me.
“He’s with Bear. He won’t leave his side, and if you saw the state of him,” Nyx replied grimly, “you’d get it.”
Flinching, because if Nyx said it was bad, then it was fucking bad, I stared at my feet some more before I wiggled my toes.
Toes that, according to these guys, I’d claimed were paralyzed.
“Was I ever really paralyzed?”
Steel blinked. “Yeah. You were. For a while. You stopped doing rehab or things like that. Wouldn’t come here, refused to do anything that would get you back on track. You’ve always been a stubborn fuck. Not surprised your brain shut down and restarted messed up to get some things out in the open.”
The rancor in his voice had me shooting him a glare. “You obviously know nothing about computers if you think that analogy works.”
He rolled his eyes, but Link was the one who said, “I can’t believe you don’t remember Ghost. Do you think if I hit you on the head again, you’ll wake up and remember her? Damn, it killed me to see her the other day, Mav. You fucking annihilated her.”
“Link,” Nyx grumbled. “The idea isn’t to make him feel like an even bigger pile of shit.”
The gloomy shadow standing by the window was some men’s idea of a walking, living nightmare. He brought death, and it wasn’t the government sanctioned variety either. Not like with me.
I’d say the years hadn’t been kind to him, because there was hell in his eyes, but the prick was as handsome as ever. The craziest shit of all was that, today, I’d learned he had a firecracker for an Old Lady.
A pregnant one.
Somehow, and I had no fucking clue how it was possible, Nyx was going to be a father.
Talk about mind-blowing. Shit, if that wasn’t enough to make my mind force quit before restarting as normal then nothing would.
Certainly no little mouse called Ghost.
Okay, little mouse wasn’t exactly being fair.
She was beautiful.
Stunning, actually, even if she was on the thin side. Frail too.
I’d never been the kind of guy who got off on the damsel in distress shit, but maybe what drew me to her was the fact she wasn’t that. All day, she’d been sitting with me even though I’d thought about asking her to go because she didn’t talk to me, and I had nothing to say to her. But it didn’t stop her from coming in for a visit. She’d only left because my brothers had made an appearance, and Link, for whatever fucking reason, had pulled her into a hug before she went.
I mean, she was supposed to be my wife, but she didn’t even talk to me. Sure as fuck didn’t try to hug me.
Not that I’d have let her.
But wasn’t that what a wife should do?
I’d watched so many fucking telenovelas with my mom that I knew how this shit worked. My wife should be sobbing at the foot of my bed, pleading with me to remember her, for God’s sake.
Instead, she was the little mouse I’d just likened her to. Scuttling in, sitting in silence as she read a book, then scuttling out again.
Was that really the kind of woman the thirty-seven-year-old Maverick would marry?
Sure, she was a looker, but the stoic and silent type?
“I’m not trying to make him feel like a pile of shit,” Link countered, forcing me to tune back into the conversation.
“No? Well, it sounds like it to me,” Steel argued.
“You can’t hurt me where she’s concerned because I don’t know her.”
My words were harsh, but they were the truth. I had no reason to tell these guys anything other than that.
Their response gutted me though.
Even Nyx winced.
Fuck.
What was it about her that had these guys trying to shelter her?
Had they changed so much or was she just that good a wife?
I cleared my throat. “Where’s Nic?”
“We told you already, he’s dead, Maverick,” Nyx muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose.
“I mean, where’s he buried? Arlington?” I asked, the words feeling too thick to utter.
He couldn’t be dead.
He just couldn’t be.
“Yeah, he’s there.” Link sighed. “I can’t believe we didn’t know—”
My mouth tightened. “You knew I liked guys.”
He flipped me the bird. “I’m not shocked about that, I’m shocked about you fucking falling for a man in your unit and us not knowing shit.”
“You remember what he was like back then,” Steel commented, folding his arms across his chest. “All stoic and silent.”
Eyes flaring at the words I’d just used to describe the woman who was somehow my wife, I rumbled, “I wasn’t supposed to say shit about us. I was his subordinate. We weren’t supposed to be together.”
Nyx snorted out a laugh. “Ever the rebel.”
My lips twitched. “That’s me.”
“That was you,” Steel pointed out softly, cutting Nyx a disapproving look. “You ain’t been a rebel for a long time, Mav.”
Nyx pshawed. “Just because he wasn’t pulling crazy stunts anymore does
n’t mean he hasn’t been doing…” His voice waned, and I knew that was because he’d remembered where we were and that the walls had ears.
My curiosity was pricked though. “What have I been doing for the club?”
Link cleared his throat. “You were the treasurer.”
It was my turn to snort out a laugh. “Now I know this is BS. Me? Treasurer?”
Nyx shrugged. “You were damn good at it.”
Shooting each of them scowls, I rumbled, “This can’t be real.”
“It is, man. Wish it wasn’t,” Steel said with a grunt, even as he straightened up some as a knock sounded at the door and he pulled it open. When he did, in walked Barry.
This was why they were here.
Because they were family.
Because they stuck around for bad news.
When Barry glanced around the room, eying each of the kids who he’d treated like shit when we were in school, the audience of bitchin’ badass bikers that’d fuck him over in an instant, I couldn’t stop my mouth from running off. “Always thought you were a prick, Barry. Did you know that?”
The supercilious fucker’s shoulders straightened and his smile, loaded with a smugness that made me want to smack him, grew a tad more shaken.
Back in the day, we’d been the outcasts. I mean, we still were. But we were a lot deadlier now.
Even with amnesia and ten years older than I was mentally, I knew of six ways to kill the bastard without hauling my ass out of bed.
That made my smile smug, and it only widened when Link started chuckling.
“Probably not wise to piss off the guy holding the clipboard, Mav,” Nyx said wryly, but I knew he was fighting laughter too.
I shrugged. “I figure Barry knows I can break his leg without bothering to put on pants…”
The good doctor glowered at me, but he pulled on his professionalism like it was an uncomfortable shirt.
“Must be hard treating us with decency,” I pointed out, “after all those years of treating us like shit when we were back in school. Gotta say, Barry, the years haven’t been kind to you.”
Barry Beau—what a fucking name. How the hell had it been him who’d picked on us?
His eyes flared wide as his spare hand automatically went to the place where his hairline was starting to recede. As my brothers snickered all around me, I raised my legs, grateful for the boxer briefs Link had sneaked in for me—kinky fucking nurses, wanting my balls hanging out—and topped my knees with my arms as I sat up.
Maverick: A Dark MC Romance (A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Series Book 6) Page 3