As everyone grabbed a cup, with only Tiffany keeping her saucer, I wasn’t surprised when Nyx muttered, “Where is the fucker?”
Giulia elbowed him in the side, then winced with discomfort—she kept forgetting about her dislocated shoulder. “It’s early. I told you we shouldn’t have come.”
He jerked his thumb in Sin’s direction. “We met them on the way.”
Sin grimaced. “Just wanted to check in. It’s been crazy for him, felt like I had to make sure he had everything he needed.”
Tiffany’s hand moved to cover his. “Padraig, we talked about this.”
He pulled a face. “I know we did. It’s just fucking hard, Tiff, to see him laid low. To head to that fucking section in the cemetery.” His jaw tensed. “We could so easily be buried there.”
My brows rose. “Of course, you were a soldier too, weren’t you?”
“Nothing like Mav,” he said gruffly, ducking his head. “I was just a grunt. Mav was special.” His chin tipped up. “Was so fucking proud when he got that Green Beret.”
“What is this?” I queried, peering around the table, looking for answers.
“Just a part of the Special Forces uniform,” Maverick murmured as he slipped into the room.
Everyone tensed, but only the guys jerked to their feet. Tiffany and Giulia, not unsurprisingly, were gaping at the sight of a man they’d only ever seen in a wheelchair walking to the fridge.
“Christ, why’s there no milk?” he grumbled under his breath.
Leaping to my feet, I told him, “I used it for coffee. I’ll go get some more from Lily’s place.”
Giulia snorted, and before I could dash off, she grabbed my hand and pulled me back. “You ain’t his slave, Ghost.” She shot me a pointed look when she used that horrible word, and my cheeks flushed.
“He wants milk and I just used the last of it.”
“Yeah, he does, so he can go and fucking get it. The bastard’s legs work now, don’t they?”
Maverick twisted around to scowl at her, and when he did, his gaze glanced over her face and—
Oh, God.
Was that recognition?
His chin tilted down and back, and in his eyes, those doubts and questions and the fog of uncertainty was still there, but I knew it like I knew my own damn face in the mirror, the face he apparently didn’t.
But Maverick recognized her.
Jealousy speared me in the gut. Sliced through the tendons at the back of my knees.
The pain…
Pizda.
I started fiddling with the cuff on my wrist, which drew his attention a second before it immediately flashed back to Giulia.
“Where do I know you from?” he burst out like he couldn’t contain himself.
The tension around the table soared as Nyx cleared his throat. “She’s Lizzie Fontaine’s kid, Mav. Giulia’s my Old Lady.”
He snapped his fingers. “That’s it. You sound just like her!”
Relief hit me—of course he recognized her. He’d grown up around her mom and he’d known her when she was a kid.
“Great, I sound just like my harpy of a mother,” Giulia grumbled, hiding behind her coffee cup.
“Harpy fits,” Nyx teased, laughing when she pouted and he curved an arm around her, pretty much hauling her out of her seat and onto his lap as he sat them both down again.
Mav, seeing this, shook his head, then he returned his focus to the fridge like milk had made an appearance while his back was turned, before he peeked another glance at them.
“He’s affectionate now, Mav,” Sin said dryly, evidently understanding why Mav was taking a second glance at what was a pretty normal occurrence where Nyx and Giulia were concerned. “It takes some getting used to.”
Nyx flipped him the bird even as he pressed a kiss to the side of Giulia’s neck.
“Yeah, I can see that,” was all he said by way of a response. He grabbed a cup of yogurt, finally settling on that, before he went through the drawers to find the cutlery.
It was hard, so hard, not to get to my feet and help him, but it was like she knew my nervous system better than I did, because every time I tensed, Giulia’s hand would snap out and she’d pinch me.
Glaring at her didn’t stop her, nor did it stop her from commenting, “Pretty shitty thing to do, Maverick, to pretend to be in a wheelchair for years on end. Were you ever disabled?”
Even Nyx tensed at that.
“Fuck you,” Mav retorted, but there was no heat to the curse.
“My man does that very well,” she countered smugly, a wry twist to her lips as she studied him.
“Don’t push him, Giulia,” Tiffany warned.
I bit my lip, feeling nervous when I didn’t know why. This wasn’t my Maverick, it wasn’t like I had to excuse him. These people were his family, but I still felt on edge. Giulia, for all she was a walking nightmare sometimes, seemed to recognize my unease though, because she reached for my hand and squeezed my fingers, not to punish this time but to soothe. To comfort.
Gratitude spilled through me because I knew, at that moment, she had a reason for doing this. She was making waves on purpose.
“Who’s pushing who?” was her retort as she cast a glance at Tiff. “I’m just saying it how it is. We came to visit him, and what do we find? Ghost looking like a walking punching bag—”
“I don’t want to talk about it,” Maverick snarled.
“It was an accident,” I whispered.
“Sounds like it.”
His mouth tightened at our comments before, with eyes like fire, he snapped, “I don’t want this going outside of this room. For whatever reason, I kept my mobility a secret. Do I seem like the kind of prick who’d put his loved ones through shit to make them worry?”
“No,” was Sin’s immediate response, and he shot Giulia a look that had her sniffing.
“Well, just because you don’t remember Ghost doesn’t mean you can treat her like a fucking slave.”
There was that word again.
I knew Giulia too well now to recognize that she was a smart little cat who managed to choose her words wisely when she looked like she hurled whatever at whomever just to get a rise out of them.
“I never asked for shit from her,” Maverick snarled, finally whipping around to declare his outrage at her statement. “I don’t even fucking know why she’s here. Like what’s she doing here? How the fuck am I supposed to even think about getting better with her here haunting me like I’m supposed to remember who she is?”
Just as my heart was shattering, Giulia snapped, “Thought you weren’t the kind of prick who put his loved ones through shit, Mav? Just because your head’s fucked up—which is entirely your fault because who the hell goes into an unstable building that’d just been bombed in a wheelchair?—doesn’t mean you don’t have a lot more people who are your family now.
“You don’t remember Tiffany either, but she’s sitting opposite me, remembers you, and she wasn’t fucking you neither. Ghost has been the only bright spark on your horizon since she arrived at the compound. You’ve got no right at all to dismiss her when she was the reason for you waking up in the morning. So pull your head out of your ass.”
Nyx smoothed a hand over his bristling mate’s arm. “She’s right, Maverick.”
“Of course I am,” Giulia said with a sniff and a toss of her ponytail.
Nyx’s lips twisted a little, pride sparking with desire in his eyes before he focused on Maverick. “You were miserable before Ghost came. You barely ate, you never slept, and all you did was work. You wouldn’t touch any of the clubwhores, never drank, and we couldn’t get you off the goddamn compound. We were fucking terrified we were gonna lose you to the PTSD, man.
“Then Ghost comes, and all of a sudden, shit changes. You’re going off the compound to marry her, and you’re leaving to visit her in the bunkhouse, and you’re eating and caring about the future instead of just the MC’s profit margins.” Nyx shrugged. “Your mind might
have erased that, but we remember, and we’re telling you, with love in our hearts because you’re our fucking brother, that you can’t fuck this up.
“When the Maverick we know comes back, when your memory returns to you, you’re gonna be in a world of shit if you don’t treat Ghost right.”
A few pieces of my shattered heart came together at that, and my bottom lip quivered in the face of Nyx’s defense. He meant it. And Giulia, when she looked at him like the cat who got the cream, agreed with him. A glance at Sin and Tiffany revealed the same thing.
“She was your reason for living,” Sin concurred softly. “In such a short space of time, she became your world. It’s a sick twist of fucking fate that you don’t remember the one salvation you’ve ever had, Maverick. Nyx’s right—you mess this up, you push her away, when shit does return to normal for you, you’re screwed.”
An explosive sound escaped Maverick, and in surprise, maybe a little fear and a dash of awe, I watched as he grabbed a few of the breakables from the table, an empty cup, the empty pot of milk, the dish with sugar in, and he hurled them to the floor.
Before he stormed out.
“That handed his ass to him,” Giulia said smugly, as she calmly picked up her coffee like nothing had happened at all and took a deep sip.
The urge to go to him was strong. The urge to fix things was stronger. But I wasn’t his Band-Aid right now. He was all alone, and that hurt me more than anything else could.
Yet as I stared around the table at the men and women who’d just defended me, who’d just gone to battle for me, I realized something important.
Mav’s people weren’t just his.
They were mine too, and even though Mav’s loss was a gnawing ache in my stomach, that eased it some.
I wasn’t alone.
Maverick, even in this, even now, had figured out a way to look after me—through the family who loved him, and because of his love for me, they had welcomed me into the fold. It was time I started remembering I wasn’t a slave anymore.
I wasn’t something someone could piss on.
Wasn’t an object to be used and abused.
I had a voice.
I could act.
So even though, internally, I quivered with nerves, I found myself with no alternative. I got to my feet, ignoring the sudden silence as I left the kitchen, and headed toward Maverick’s door.
It was closed. Everything about him was closed off right now, and though it made me nervous, I sucked in a breath, curled my hand into a fist, and knocked.
He didn’t answer for the longest time, and though everything in me wanted to turn around, to head back to the kitchen and the people who cared for me, I didn’t.
I stayed put.
I knocked again.
This time, he deigned to holler, “Go away!”
I gritted my teeth. “If you need me, I’ll be in the kitchen.”
It wasn’t much of a stance, wasn’t much of anything, all told, but to me, it was more than I’d have been capable of before.
Being passive was something that had been bred into me, so changing that wasn’t going to be easy, but nothing about this situation was.
If, by the end of it, I had more guts than before, I didn’t think that was a bad thing.
I’d never be like Giulia, which was fortunate, I thought wryly, because New Jersey could only handle one Giulia Fontaine, but they’d never met Alessa Shevchenko either. The real Alessa. The one who’d had a voice, who’d had guts, who hadn’t been scared of her own shadow.
So when Maverick growled, “Why the fuck would I need you?” I didn’t let hurt fill me, just tipped my chin up and retorted.
“You’re the one with the degenerative brain condition. If you can’t figure out why you might need me when you could suddenly fall ill, then maybe you’re in a worse state than we thought.”
I braced myself for a barrage of angry words, for rage and wrath to spill forth and to lash me like it was acid. I stood there, quivering like a flower in a strong breeze, but I didn’t leave. I didn’t run.
I stayed. Despite the fear, I stayed.
And the acid never spilled. The ire never came.
Instead, a click sounded, the handle lowered, and the door pulled inward. He didn’t let me inside, just peered through the gap he made and rasped, “You’re right. I might need you. I’m sorry I was rude.”
I nodded. “Apology accepted.” Then I twisted on my heel and headed back to the kitchen.
It might not be much of an accomplishment to some people, namely Giulia, but to me, it felt like I’d managed to climb Everest.
Nine
Lodestar
The only place in the house I seemed to get comfortable was the kitchen. Which was inconvenient because it was the place most people congregated and I rarely got any peace. Ordinarily, that would be enough to have me running for the hills, holing up in a basement, but as much as the noise pissed me off, being around people was what I needed right now.
Not that I’d ever admit it out loud.
I was still dealing with concussion headaches, the pain in my leg was excruciating, and it hurt every time I breathed, but I had stuff to do. Not just the usual either.
It wasn’t often Nyx came to me, but come he had, and with a couple tasks in mind. Tasks he’d usually give to Maverick, I knew.
I also knew from what everyone had told me, from what the brothers had said of his current situation that, mentally, Mav had gone back in time.
He was twenty-seven, not thirty-seven, and to him, a year earlier, that was when we’d just broken up. Perfectly shitty timing considering the situation.
Still, Nyx needed to know if a local guy was a pedophile, and even if I’d been gutshot, there was no way in fuck I wasn’t going to find out the truth for him. Not just because it gave Mav a break either. I needed to prove myself to these fuckers—I just wished I wasn’t so goddamn exhausted that work was a chore.
As for the other task, the less important one in my opinion, I also had shit to find out about that cunt who’d been stalking Indy. The one who’d been monitoring the clubhouse through that Ukrainian bitch.
According to Nyx, the prick was dead now—I wasn’t about to ask for details—and not only had I already taken his cloud accounts apart, but the surveillance gear in Indy’s place was gone too. Plus, with the clubhouse gone and the stalker dead, there wasn’t much spying to be done…
Unless he wasn’t spying on Indiana for fun, but for business.
And there went my heart racing again, because if it was for business, then I needed to work on that situation. Fast.
So much to do, so little fucking time.
Grimacing, I got back to work, but shifted several times in my seat as I tried and failed to get comfortable. Only when the sun moved through the kitchen window and puddled me in a pool of warmth did things change. Instantly, my bones stopped feeling like they’d been run over by a Mac truck, and I could relax some. That was when Maverick made an appearance in the kitchen, of course, and he jumped so hard at the sight of me that I jumped in turn, which sent shockwaves of discomfort ricocheting through my system.
The horror on his face made it very clear that he was remembering our breakup, and I got it. I’d been the one to end things with him, so seeing me in the kitchen had to be like pouring salt on the wound.
Those final days had not been pleasant.
I’d tried, Lord had I, but pleasant simply wasn’t in my nature. Especially not when he’d been the best boyfriend ever and had been impossible to split up with. I’d had to go to extraordinary lengths to break us up that he hadn’t deserved. But love was dangerous, and I’d had to save us both.
“Maverick,” I murmured softly.
“Lodestar, what the fuck are you doing here?”
I pulled a face. “You might not believe it, but we’re friends now.”
“Jesus Christ.” He reached up and rubbed his forehead hard enough to make me wince. “This is starting to get fucking an
noying.”
“Only just ‘starting,’ huh?” I half teased, even though nothing about this situation was funny.
Of all the people I knew, of all those I trusted, Maverick was up there on the top of the list.
And because he’d gone back in time, I was the exact opposite to him.
The last thing I needed, with things as delicate as they were with the New World Sparrows, with things as wonderfully precarious as they were, was him back in 2010, but it wasn’t like I had much say in how his brain worked.
I had no choice but to deal with his suspiciousness and wary glares even if, and I’d admit this to no other, it hurt like hell to see his level of distrust.
It had taken years for him to trust me again. Years of sowing careful seeds, of being there after Nic died, of always having the information he needed, and being useful for him to appreciate me.
Even worse, he’d only started to truly let me in after I disappeared.
As much as I loved Maverick, as much as I hated that he disliked me again, I wasn’t about to sell myself to white slavers for the privilege of his friendship.
He grunted at my attempt at humor, then moved over to the fridge where he pulled out a gallon of milk. Investigating the cupboards helped him discover the location of a large tumbler and a packet of cookies.
Was I surprised when he wandered off with both without bothering to cast me another glance?
No.
It hurt though.
Even as I was reminded of how much milk he’d drank in the past, how he could consume a gallon of it per pack of cookies… When we’d dated, I’d always made sure I had milk in my digs because it would be like running out of Coke or beer for another guy.
Crazy how I only just realized that I hadn’t seen him drink milk in a very long time.
As I pondered that, watching his back as he left the kitchen, a little buzzing noise caught my attention. My gaze drifted down to the computer screen in front of me, and when I saw who’d overtaken it, I found myself smiling.
aCooooig was a nuisance to be sure, but the last time we’d chatted, he’d been helpful.
Maverick: A Dark MC Romance (A Dark & Dirty Sinners' MC Series Book 6) Page 8