“Don’t worry. He paid,” I assured him.
Slater nodded once and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the surface of the table between us.
“You two were getting Owen in the truck when Eric pulled me aside. One minute you were there, and the next you were riding out, and Eric turned to me and asked me to torch the training room.”
“Why?”
“He wanted rid of all the evidence of what we’d just done to Sinclair, but more than that, I think he wanted it to look like Owen had turned against the club, and he’d set fire to it to hurt us, and then he’d run. He was covering his bases. Our bases. I don’t know.”
“And after that?” I asked, fisting my hands together in front of me. “Once you’d agreed to it?”
Slater shrugged. “I got to work.”
“And what did Eric do?”
“He…” Slater stopped and frowned, taking a moment to think. Deeks, too, looked lost in concentration, his eyes searching the surface of the table.
“Last I saw of him, he was talking to Jedd and the kid,” Deeks answered.
“The kid?” I sat forward, my heart rate picking up speed. “Rubin?”
Deeks lifted his eyes from the table to me, offering a small, understanding nod for my obvious concern. “Yeah. Rubin.”
“Fuck,” Slater whispered.
“Did Eric take Rubin anywhere when he left the yard?”
“No,” Deeks answered with absolute certainty. “No, Eric left not long after you. He was with Slater before he moved to Jedd and Rubin, and then he threw himself on your bike like it was a Playboy pussy, and he rode the hell out of there.”
“Was Rubin around when you set fire to the training room, Slate?”
He reached up to scratch his beard, blowing out a long, tired breath. “Not a clue, Drew. I was lost in wondering how the fuck I was going to do what I had to do without fucking it up. I ran to Deeks to tell him what Eric had asked of me, and the next thing I know, the yard is half empty, everyone’s running into The Hut, and Moose, Kenny, and Deeks are heading my way to help me. I think Deeks went into the pawnshop to get some of the documents out of there in case it spread farther than we wanted it to.”
“That’s right.” Deeks nodded slowly.
“And no one saw where Rubin went?”
“I did,” Moose called out from behind us. I raised my head to look at him, trying to recollect how many times I’d actually heard him speak before.
“Where did he go, Moose?”
“I don’t know, but he had his pushbike with him, and it wasn’t long after Jedd went back inside The Hut to grab something that Rubin was pedaling out of the yard as though he was trying to win some kind of race.”
I leaned back in my booth, throwing an arm over the back of it and glancing Ayda’s way. There wasn’t anything I could say to her or ask her, so I simply stared into the beautiful blues that sat hidden behind her marred and swollen skin, still needing that connection, despite seeing her wounds.
“What the fuck is going on, darlin’?” I asked her softly.
Ayda took her time before answering, her glance bouncing around the faces that surrounded us in the booth. The men she’d come to love as her family were mostly all here, but her confusion was still obvious. It looked like she was trying to put two and four together and coming up with one.
“I wish I knew,” she finally answered. “Rubin would do anything for any of you, so I know anything Eric asked of him he’d do without hesitation, but that’s all I’ve got.”
I turned back to Slater and Deeks. “Did they give you any idea how long they planned on holding Jedd?”
“None.” Slater shook his head, but I saw something on his face: a twitch of his nose, a subtle shift in his gaze as he tried to side-eye Deeks before looking back up at me.
“What was that?”
“What?”
I slammed a hand down on the table, making Ayda and the men around me jump before I leaned forward and ground my teeth together. “Slater Portman, don’t lie to me.”
“Calm down, Drew,” Deeks interrupted, shifting a hand to move on top of mine and trapping it there. “Calm down.”
“Then tell me why the hell Slater looked at you that way. What is Jedd doing?”
“What he thinks is best, I imagine.”
“Yeah? Like Pete did? Like Harry, too?” I pressed. “Well, fuck that. I’m not losing any more of my men, do you understand me?”
Neither one of them answered, and I yanked my hand out from under Deeks’ and looked up at all the men standing in Rusty’s diner.
“Do ALL of you understand me? Are you fucking listening? Can you hear the words coming out of my mouth? I am your president. I run this show. I make the final decisions whether there’s a gavel in my goddamn hand or not, and I am telling each and every one of you here who thinks their life is worth less than mine… it isn’t. Cut that shit out, and if I find out any of you are trying to save me by hurting themselves, I’ll fucking kill you myself. It’s my job to protect you. Mine. I’ve lost too many brothers to bear any more grief, and I cannot, will not—I fucking refuse to have this conversation. If anyone is going to die for this club, it’s going to me.” I let my raging eyes drift down to Ayda. “I’ll fall before this club does. It’s what I was born to do. It’s who I was born to be.”
Ayda didn’t say anything. Her hand tightened around my leg, but it was the only indication at all that she’d felt the words and the weight behind them.
She was letting me be who I needed to be.
My brothers had been around from the beginning, through the worst, and they’d be there come rain or shine because they took the honor of their patches seriously. No part of me wanted to consider a future where I’d have to make the call, but it was part of the job.
Turning back to the men, I took in a deep, steady breath and released it with just as much control.
“Now, I’m going to ask this one last time: does anyone in this diner know what the hell my VP is planning while he sits in that shitty little cell all alone?”
Chapter Four
AYDA
It was late when we finally got clearance to go back to The Hut.
Rusty and Jan were the ever-graceful hosts and fed us two meals as we waited and talked, all coming to the same gloomy conclusion: no one knew a damn thing.
We’d exhausted every avenue we’d had three times over, and there were so many holes in the stories we did have, we only ended up frustrated beyond belief and more tired than I imagined we’d ever felt before. No one more so than Drew. Not having answers made him grumpy.
He’d already lost so much, been through so much, taken on so much, and none of his questions were being answered. He was also now down three men—Jedd, Eric, and Rubin. No one knew where they were, and that only added to the growing pile of questions we all had.
When the call finally came from the fire chief, we all knew we’d be better regrouping where we felt the most comfortable—our own home. Where alcohol would flow, and frustrations could be voiced without scaring Jan and Sam.
The metal of the training room was still glowing hot when we rode back in, but the fire was out, and the smoke had dissipated. The whole landscaping and horizon looked wrong. Even the stars seemed to stretch out over the midnight blue sky and taunt us.
This had been the longest day of my life.
Longer than the day of my parents’ funeral.
Longer than the day Tate and I had lost our home.
It was a close second to the day I thought I was going to lose Drew in that warehouse.
I just needed a minute to clear my head—a second to regain perspective—a moment when I wasn’t on display. I finally found it when I had a moment to crawl under the steamy water of the shower in our bathroom. It took everything in me not to look back on the day and focus on the terrible things we’d done. I managed, to a certain extent, but avoidance became impossible when I came to undress and found a few specks of blood ab
ove my boot—blood I seemed to understand intrinsically wasn’t mine. Drew and I had washed most of Owen’s blood from ourselves with Owen’s hose, and I had scrubbed Drew’s cut while he’d rubbed the worst of the blood off himself waiting for Eric to show up. Not that it had helped much.
Once in the shower, I scrubbed my body until my skin was pink, and ignored the ache in the areas that were most abused by Owen. I didn’t want this physical evidence left behind anymore. I didn’t want to be the reminder of what had happened, and I felt that’s exactly what I would be when they all looked at me. The damage on my flesh was all I saw when I looked in the mirror. Now that I was clean, it stood out even more.
This was why I was wearing Drew’s sweats and an oversized hoodie when he found me brushing my hair in our bedroom.
I didn’t worry too much about his reaction—he’d already exorcised his demons on Owen’s flesh. It was the outlaw's credence. Blood for blood. Blood for betrayal. Blood for treason.
But I could see the tension in Drew’s body as he paced the room with a bottle of scotch fisted in his hand. Agitation rolled from him in waves, while all I found myself capable of doing was falling to the bed on my back and staring at the ceiling as I listened to his boots pound their way across the room again and again.
“Sit with me?” I finally asked, raising my head so I could see him. My hair was in damp tendrils because I hadn’t had the energy to dry it.
Drew stopped in his tracks, taking a moment to tilt his head and look at me. Of course, there was sadness there as he took in my new bruises and mottled skin, but he wasn’t as angry as I once would have predicted from him. It took him a moment, but eventually, he moved, dropping the scotch onto the side before he sank down onto the mattress, resting his ass on the edge and leaning over me. He brushed a hand over my forehead and across my damp hair, his eyes searching mine.
“I mean this in the nicest way possible… but you look exhausted, darlin’.”
I offered him a smile. I wasn’t sure there was a word that could adequately describe my level of fatigue. I was tired down to the very marrow of my bones.
“Long day.”
“Yeah? What you been doing?” he asked with surprise humor lacing his voice.
“Oh, you know, the usual. Mayhem and mystery. Earning my keep.”
“You’ve earned a lifetime of happiness in one day, and then some.” He ran a gentle thumb over the creases around my tired eyes. “Do you think you can stay awake until after I’ve showered?”
“I already told you I’d wait forever for you, pres.”
Gathering his shirt in one of my hands, I fisted the material, pressing against his abs, making sure he felt our connection there as I held his gaze. I had so much I wanted and needed to say, and yet none of that seemed like it needed to be said now. I just wanted to be with him, the rest I could deal with later.
I rose up to kiss him, ignoring the bite of pain on my fragile skin as I made the meeting of our lips deeper and more needful.
“Go and wash today off yourself,” I spoke against him.
“Yes, ma’am,” he answered with his best southern drawl attached to it, and then he reluctantly made his way to the bathroom.
Dropping his cut into a chair, he didn’t take much care with the rest of his clothes and shed them on his way to the bathroom. I pushed myself to sit in the middle of the mattress and listened to the shower come on. The sound of water beating down was hypnotic and almost lulled me to sleep several times before it cut off again.
I listened as Drew made his way through his usual routine and soon appeared at the door of the bathroom, one of the fluffy white towels I’d bought for us wrapped low on his hips as droplets of water clung to his skin, unwilling to give up their only moments with him.
“I really wish I had more energy right now. I’d have climbed in that shower with you.” I sighed dreamily.
Running a palm up the back of his head, Drew shook more water out of his hair with a rough hand, and he made his way to the bed, climbing onto it from the bottom before he crawled up and over my body, landing carefully beside me so he didn’t hurt my already aching body. His skin was still damp, but the coolness of it was drowned out by the heat of Drew being Drew, and him pressing against me like he wanted to hold me tightly.
Propping himself up on one shoulder to give me the space he knew my body needed, he let his gaze drift from head to toe, taking in the many layers of clothes I didn’t usually wear for bed. His free hand drifted over them, his nails trailing tenderly over my thigh before he flattened his palm over my waist, across my ribs, and back down to rest on my stomach. Once there, his eyes fixated on it, and a small scowl took over his handsome face.
“I can’t remember how it was when I had to do this life alone, without you there at the end of the day to make me believe life was different. That it wasn’t always so fucked up.”
I swallowed my irrational emotions brought on by fatigue and tried to remember how to breathe. “I’m not sure I existed before you.”
“Funny how you feel so alive when surrounded by so much death, isn’t it?”
“It’s not death that makes me feel alive. It’s you. You and the love I have for you.” I searched his face for the longest moment. “You do realize I would follow you into Hell, don’t you?”
“You already have… so many times. Some days I have to pinch myself to see that you’re still here. Thank God you’re still here,” he blew out in a heavy breath. “But, Ayda, I can’t take seeing you this way ever again. I can’t. The bruises, the pain you’re trying to hide… seeing some guy holding a gun to your head, mistreating you and marking your body.” Drew shook his head softly. “I can’t do it anymore, darlin’. This is the last time. It has to be. It’s killing me. Holding it together right now is killing me. Seeing you this way kills me.”
I ran my palms over the stubble on his jaw, never breaking the eye contact. “It will all go away. The pain I can handle. The bruises will fade, and everything will go back to the way it was. I’m not made of glass, Drew.” I felt him tense beneath my touch, and I continued before he could argue. “But this was also a really unique situation that no one could have predicted. No one will get that close again. You won’t allow it, and neither will our family. We’ve cut the disease out. The rot is gone.”
“Everything will go back to the way it was, huh?” His thumb pressed down on my stomach, and his gaze drifted there, eyes thoughtful and his soft sigh somewhat dreamy. “Maybe not everything.”
“A few minor changes along the way are inevitable.”
I glanced down to my stomach and felt the flutter of emotion rising. I still wasn’t sure whether or not there was a baby growing inside of me. Not for sure, but whether right or wrong, I was beginning to realize that I was hoping there was.
“What are your thoughts on all of this?”
“I think I’m scared,” he answered without hesitation in the most un-Drew-like fashion while he stared at his hand. “I think I’m excited, too, but mainly scared. It feels like… fuck, I don’t know. Like I’m still a child myself, barely keeping my head above water and with not enough arms to keep everyone I love afloat.” Drew’s head slowly rolled my way, his eyes finding mine. “And I’m scared to love something else the way I love you.”
I think I stopped breathing.
Lost in the intricate blue-green of his eyes, I floated somewhere between reality and fantasy as the words slowly seeped below the surface of my brain and settled over me.
He was hoping, too.
Even after all the shit that had gone down, and all the hell that we were about to face together, I felt happy. I felt loved.
I couldn’t form the words, though. Not the ones filled with hope and promises of a future that was so uncertain at that moment. Instead, I kissed him, pouring all of the things I couldn’t say into the passion that was always present between us. My hands fisted his thick, damp hair, pleading with him via touch to understand what I wanted to say. No o
ne would know as much love as our baby would—not another living soul.
“I feel so much more than love for you,” I whispered against his mouth.
“Open your eyes.”
I did as he asked, allowing a tear to escape.
Drew lifted his hand and wiped away the tear with his thumb, brushing it away on the towel still wrapped around him before he placed his hand back on my stomach. “I’m going to say something now, Ayda, and I need to say it while I’m feeling this way, and I’m going to need to you to listen to me. I’m going to need you to let the words sink in without telling me I’m being stupid. Is that okay?”
I searched his eyes, but nodded anyway, despite there being no hint of what he was trying to say.
“Babylon is our home. I belong here, so do you, but this isn’t just a place for us to live anymore. It holds a lot of… history.” He exhaled through his flared nostrils, looking away like he was nervous before clearing his throat and scowling, a pain deeper than physical creasing the beautiful features of his face. “If you are pregnant. If by some miracle I’ve been graced with a boy or a girl, a son or a daughter, twins, triplets, whatever… I need you to make me a promise that you’ll see through to your dying day.”
More tears fell from the corners of my eyes as the weight of his words hung between us.
I hated it when he asked me to make a promise before he told me what it was.
I would give him anything he wanted, he already knew that, but some promises? Some were impossible to keep, and I hoped this wasn’t one of them.
“Tell me,” I whispered.
“If anything happens to me, and I don’t get to see them grow… get my baby the hell out of Babylon for me. Don’t let them live a life like mine.”
Biting my lip, I forced the sob back in my throat. This baby—if he or she was in there—meant that I wouldn’t be able to follow him anywhere anymore. Not the way I’d always intended to anyway. There would be another life to think about. One more valuable than each of ours.
Without Forever: Babylon MC Book 5 Page 3