Broken Wings

by Sweet, Izzy

I know Coy is going to be pissed if he ever finds out I did this, but Horse is going so fast now, holding onto his shoulders is no longer enough.

  Quickly, I slide my hands down and circle my arms around Horse’s chest.

  Leaning forward, I plead one last time in his ear, “You’re scaring me, Horse. Please slow down!”

  Horse laughs again and shakes his head before he roars back at me, “Is Allie Cat really a scaredy-cat? I ain’t slowin’ down, girl! I gotta get back to Sugar so I can get me some sugar!”

  The bike picks up even more speed like the asshole has something to prove.

  The world around us becomes a dark blur as he flies down the back roads leading to my parent’s house.

  Each turn causes my heart to jump into my throat, and I can’t shake the sharp, impending sense of doom taking root in my stomach.

  This fucking idiot is going to kill me.

  And if I do survive and Coy finds out about this—

  Suddenly the world is no longer dark.

  A bright light appears in front of us and I hear Horse scream out, “Shit!”

  I scream as Horse tries to turn but it’s too late.

  “Jesus!” Coy curses and the bike swerves before he straightens it out and pulls off the side of the road. “Allie?”

  I hear him repeating my name over and over, but I’m so upset, my body racked with sobs, I can’t respond to him.

  Coy shuts down the bike and twists around. He says my name one last time, trying to get through to me, before he grabs me and drags me forward until I’m seated on his lap.

  Hands grabbing my face, he forces me to look up at him. “Talk to me, Allie. Please. What’s wrong, baby? I wasn’t going that fast…”

  I stare up at him through the blurry curtain of my tears, taking in his face and how it’s changed over the years.

  So many years…

  We’ve lost so many fucking years.

  “I’m sorry, baby, if it feels too fast. I’d slow down, but if I do, we might tip over,” he says, his face twisted with guilt.

  And god, I hate to see that guilt.

  Especially now that I know what put it there.

  “Fuck, I shouldn’t have done this to you. I’m so fuckin’ sorry. I knew you weren’t ready,” Coy goes on.

  I try to shake my head, but his hands are firmly holding me in place.

  “It’s okay, Coy,” I finally manage to sob out.

  “No, it’s not.” He scowls. “Maybe I can call one of the brothers and have ‘em bring the flatbed before they grab those cars…”

  “It’s okay, Coy,” I repeat, trying to get through to him. “It’s okay, I remember.”

  He continues talking like he didn’t hear me. “I can get Grem to come back with the flatbed. It might take twenty to thirty minutes, but if I call him now…”

  “Coy, I said it’s okay! I remember!” I cry at him and reach up, grabbing his face with my own hands. “You weren’t going too fast. Horse was going too fast!”

  “Horse?” Coy says, his brows pulling together in confusion until what I said completely dawns on him.

  His hands tighten around my face and mine drop as he pulls me closer.

  Eyes searching my eyes, his voice cracks with hope as he asks, “You remember?”

  More tears pour out of me as I say, “I remember, Coy. I remember him driving too fast because he wanted to get back to a girl named Sugar…”

  “Fucking hell,” he growls low in his throat and murderous rage flashes in his eyes. “If he wasn’t dead, I’d—”

  “Our first kiss, Coy! I remember our first kiss!” I part laugh, part cry at him as the memory suddenly comes back to me like it never left.

  It’s just suddenly there in my head. The sights, the smells, the taste of him. I can smell the grass of the football field and the spilled soda on the concrete. I can hear the people talking about the game above us, and my squad cheering, doing our routine without me.

  I can feel Coy’s arms warm and tight around me as his tongue urgently teaches mine how to stroke his back.

  “You grabbed me during halftime and pulled me behind the bleachers, you dirty dog!”

  Coy looks at me like I just punched him in the gut. “You remember that, too?”

  I nod my head up and down again, my tears beginning to slow as my sadness is replaced by this warm joy pulsing through my body. “I also remember you stalking me at all my cheer practices until I agreed to go out with you. I didn’t want to go out with you, but you wouldn’t give up!”

  It was quite the scandal among all the girls. Half of them thought he just wanted to get in my pants and the other half thought it was true love and wanted a bad boy biker to stalk them.

  Fuck… those girls who wanted the biker stalker were totally Roxy, June, Ivy, and Peaches!

  Coy tips his head back and laughs, his eyes lighting up. “Yeah… I was kinda relentless. One look and I was a goner. I knew you were mine.”

  “You were such a stereotypical bad boy,” I smirk and roll my eyes, remembering the way he used to strut around like he was hot shit. “Wearing your leather and driving your motorcycle to school. I knew my parents were going to flip when they found out…”

  That memory seems to sober us both a little, and I sigh sadly.

  Coy’s thumbs stroke tenderly against my wet cheeks as he asks, “What else do you remember, Allie?”

  I’m almost afraid to try to remember more at first, afraid my brain will pull up a giant blank like it’s done every time I’ve tried over the past five years. But everything is right there now, waiting for me to find it again.

  “I remember prom and riding in there on your motorcycle…”

  I wore a pink dress and he made me wear a leather jacket over it and jeans under it. He also made me tie my skirt up so it wouldn’t get caught in the wheel. We totally had a fight about it, especially when we got to prom and my hair was a mess.

  He should have at least warned me about helmet hair. But then, like always, he softened me up and made it a night to remember. We danced and danced until…

  “I remember just the tip! Oh my god, you really said that!” I exclaim and slap him gently on the chest. “I can’t believe you… Wait, I totally can! Ugh.”

  That first time was magical though… even if it hurt like a bitch. Afterwards, Coy was so sweet and caring. We showered together and he insisted on washing my entire body for me. I never felt so loved or cared for all my life. Then he held me tight all night. I think we both knew from that point on we wanted every night together for the rest of our lives.

  Coy laughs again and then he’s kissing me, his lips pressing hard against mine before he rasps eagerly, “What else?”

  Laughing, I twist more in his lap until I’m straddling him. More and more memories come back to me and I want to burst with them. I want to tell him, the world, everyone, everything because it feels so new and amazing to me.

  “I remember climbing out your window and landing in a damn bush. My legs were all scratched up because I was only wearing one of your t-shirts and a pair of your boxers. Holy shit… I remember you climbing into my window. You nearly broke that limb off my favorite tree!”

  He almost broke his damn neck to have an hour with me. An hour he spent keeping his hand slapped over my mouth so my parents wouldn’t catch on to what we were doing.

  He kisses me again, his lips and eyes growing hungry for more. “What else?”

  Wrapping my arms around his neck, I press my own kiss to his lips before I say, “I remember the first time we did it on your bike. The night was a lot like this night…”

  Warm and peaceful with the stars twinkling their approval above us.

  “What else?” he demands after pulling a hard suckle from my mouth.

  I press against him, suddenly needing to not only remember but to experience it all again. “I remember the night you first told me you loved me… It was prom night. After our first time…”

  The look in his eyes when he
said those words the first time while he was holding his body above my body… even now I shiver from the power of it. To be loved by this man… to be needed by him… I can’t even describe it.

  It’s heady, powerful, and humbling all at once.

  Pushing past my lips, Coy’s tongue strokes lovingly against mine before he growls into my mouth, “What else?”

  Arms tightening around his neck, I kiss him back, sweeping my own tongue hungrily into his mouth. I’m full, so full of so many intense feelings for him. There’s so much inside me, I can’t contain it.

  Feeling like I’ll die if I don’t put it out in the universe and tell him, I moan into his mouth as he starts to rock his hips against me. “I remember I love you so much, I fell in love with you twice.”

  Epilogue

  Coy

  “You feelin’ better now?” I ask Grem.

  “Not really,” he grumbles as I help him lift the next dead body up onto the tray to cremate.

  “Why the fuck not?” I ask with a smile.

  “Because this is like a fuckin’ cycle or something,” he growls at me as we head to the back of Barney the minivan.

  “Whatcha mean?” I ask and look at him before we pick up the next body.

  “Like every five years, I’m gonna have to see Jude’s ass again,” he says to me as he grabs the arms of the next thumbless body. “And every time he shows up, we gotta get rid of bodies for him.”

  “So?” I say as I grab the legs of the body. “You don’t hear me bitchin’.”

  “That’s cause you’re as twisted as he is. For fuck’s sake, you’ve got a pair of eyeballs in your office,” he grumbles at me.

  “Yeah, well the ol’ lady ain’t too happy about that either,” I say with a laugh.

  “What really fucking gets my damn goat,” Grem continues to rant, “I didn’t fucking kill a single one of these motherfuckers! I didn’t get to kill ‘em. I didn’t get to do all the fun shit. No, Gremmy boy’s been fuckin’ wastin’ away! I’m fucking burning bodies and I didn’t get in on any of the action! Even Allie got more fun than me! She ran over two motherfuckers!”

  Laughing, I can’t help but feel for the guy. He’s the Sergeant at Arms, and he’s supposed to be the one who causes and does all the mayhem. But he’s been so fucking busy doing all the other shit, he ain’t had time to let off steam.

  “Brother, the Scorpions still have a lot of life in ‘em,” I say. “You’ll get a chance to let out your inner Gremlin.”

  “I fucking better. This damn bell on my kutte ain’t been helpin’ with my anxieties and shit,” Gremlin says.

  That fucking gremlin bell… Fucking thing still gives me the heebie-jeebies. If it really has what he says he has in it…

  Fuck.

  And he uses duct tape to keep that shit safe. Fucking only Grem would do that.

  “Hey Pres,” Poster Boy calls out to get my attention from inside the van.

  “Yeah?” I ask.

  “This guy’s got both thumbs in here,” he says. “He also has all them Russian tats and shit on him.”

  “Shit,” I say as I roll my neck and hear it pop a couple of times. “Fuck it, we’ve paid our debt already.”

  “That’s for sure,” Grem says as we load the body onto the tray. “That’s it for this cremator.”

  “Yeah,” I say as we push the tray. “Gonna have to use all the cremators tonight, boys.”

  Moving the rest of the bodies onto the remaining cremator trays, I’ve got a bad feeling about all this.

  The Russians haven’t been in Kentucky before, and why should they? We aren’t a powerhouse state for corruption like the big port city states. But we may have alerted them to our state by killing the stupid fuck Mikhail. If they’re anything like us, they’ll be seeking retribution.

  Doesn’t matter if Mikhail was in the wrong, brotherhood looks past that.

  Lots of shit’s gonna be changin’ now.

  The Scorpions aren’t going to take kindly to us taking out their VP. The Russians aren’t going to be happy we murdered one of their own and sent the body back in pieces. Even with the promised backing of Garden City and the rest of the Royal Bastards Chapters, we’re entering new territory.

  Lots of fat has been trimmed from the club in recent years, but I can’t imagine this will be an easy road for us.

  As we all know though, we’re country boys, and we know how to take care of our business. We’ll kill every single motherfucker that comes our way. Kill ‘em and send their bodies back just like Mikhail’s.

  Heading over to the cooler that Poster Boy so happily brought in, I snatch a beer out of it.

  “When’s Hammy’s night happenin’?” I ask Grem.

  “Tomorrow,” he says and grabs a beer for himself. “The guys are gonna go through it all in the morning to make sure we’re ready and then bring him in.”

  “Who’s guarding the house for me?” I ask and sit down on a chair.

  “Graveyard, Tampon, and Lincoln tomorrow,” Grem says.

  “Where the fuck is Poster?” I ask, looking around us.

  Last I saw of the fuck he was in the back of the van.

  “Poster!” Grem yells.

  “Go find him,” I say to Grem.

  “Fuckin’ young asshole making me do all the work,” Grem grumbles as he walks to the back of the facility.

  “Yeah, rank has its privileges,” I snicker and lean back in the chair. “Also, I’m fuckin’ exhausted.”

  “Exhausted from fucking you mean, asshole!” Grem shouts before he pushes the door open and heads out into the night air.

  Fuck.

  He’s got a point. My dick is almost fucking raw from being with Allie so much.

  I don’t know why, but as soon as she got all those memories back, she decided we needed to make up for lost time.

  Sex on the bike, sex at the house, and sex in the middle of the night. Then, this morning while Levi was watching cartoons, she decided to see if we could pull off a quickie.

  Christ alive, that woman’s going to be the fucking death of me…

  And I’ll have a smile on my face while I’m fucking dying.

  Allie and Levi are the two bright stars in my life. They’re what’s most important to me. They’ll keep me alive and moving during these dangerous times.

  Them and the brothers at my back.

  Grem may be my Sergeant at Arms, but he’s also my best friend. I’ve already been workin’ on how I’ll ask him to be my son’s godfather.

  Too bad he ain’t hitched, we need a damn godmother, too.

  Poster Boy seems even more overly protective of Allie and Levi now. This afternoon, when I told him she was remembering shit, he was almost rebellious when I said I had Graveyard taking over for him.

  It ain’t a sexual thing or anything like that. Fucking Poster Boy ain’t like that, I don’t think. He’s too fucking mental for a real relationship. No, it’s more of an extremely protective older brother thing.

  Especially since Allie doesn’t let him give her shit. She dishes as good as she gets.

  Thing is, I think all of the guys are feeling protective of Allie. When she was first introduced to the club, she had this fucking magnetism to her. It wasn’t a physical attraction or anything, it was like she was the mother to a bunch of crazy fucks. Even back then you could see how she was instantly pulled into the fold. She never went through the sweetbutt ranks or anything of the sort.

  No, Allie was my ol’ lady from the start, and they naturally wanted to make sure the Queen Bee was fucking happy.

  Allie is taking naturally to the role, too. I talked to Poster about what happens when I’m away and she’s taking care of my boys like a real ol’ lady. But she’s also fiery enough she ain’t gonna be walked on.

  Fuck, I’m going to have to be on my toes with her. She likes to fight back and it’s a fucking turn on.

  “Fuckin’ keep gettin’ this weird call, Pres,” Poster says as he comes in the back door with Grem foll
owing him. “Sorry about that.”

  “Yeah, keeps getting unknown caller as the label and no one says anything,” Grem says as he walks over to me.

  “Fuckin’ telemarketers,” I sigh. “My home line only rings because of ‘em.”

  Poster Boy grabs a beer from the cooler and says, “I don’t think it is. Every time I pick up today, I hear some weird noise in the background.”

  “Well…” I start to say before his phone starts to ring again.

  “Dammit,” he grumbles and he’s about to answer it before I hold my hand out.

  “Lemme talk to ‘em,” I say.

  Shrugging his shoulders, he hands me the phone.

  Looking down at the screen, it’s like he said. Unknown Caller, no number or anything.

  Pushing connect, I say, “Yo, who the fuck is this?”

  A whispering voice asks, “Luke?”

  I hand him back the phone. “Who the fuck still calls you Luke besides Allie?”

  Eyes widening, he looks down at the phone and says, “Fuck.”

  The End

  Featured Characters

  Royal Bastards MC characters featured in this book in order of mention or appearance.

  Rain from Frozen Rain by CM Genovese

  Jameson from Inked In Vengeance by Crimson Syn (Also featuring Coy)

  Nixx & FOCUS from Rotten Apple by B.B. Blaque (Also featuring Coy, Gremlin, and Poster Boy)

  Disciples Characters

  Characters from our Disciples series mentioned or featured in this book.

  Lucifer from Keeping Lily

  Simon from Breaking Meredith

  Jude from Gabriel’s story in Taking Meghan

  ROYAL BASTARDS MC SERIES

  Erin Trejo: Blood Lust

  Chelle C Craze & Eli Abbott: Bad Like Me

  K Webster: Koyn

  Esther E. Schmidt: Petros