Laken (The Phoenix Club Girl Diaries Book 2)

by Addison Jane

  “Myth,” Shotgun scolded.

  “Stop it!” Kennedy hissed, and her hand went to her mouth, smothering a painful sob. She fell back against the wall, her body sinking to the floor.

  Shotgun jumped up and rushed over to her, crouching down and speaking to her softly. I watched the tears stream down her face, focusing on hers and pretending like my own weren’t collecting on my lips. I was no longer in control, no longer able to fight the way my body, my mouth, and my emotions responded.

  I just didn’t fucking care.

  And I knew later I’d have to apologize. I knew Kennedy was hurting just as fucking bad as I was, and Repo would probably make me pay for making his old lady cry, but I was far past that point.

  Kennedy had her for years.

  She had her time.

  I’d had weeks with Laken, and it wasn’t fucking long enough.

  I needed more time, I needed a fucking lifetime, but reality was a harsh bitch.

  And if weeks were all I was going to get, I’m definitely making sure everyone knows just what those few weeks meant.

  “Come on,” Shotgun urged, pulling Kennedy to her feet and directing her toward the door. “Give him something, fucking anything,” he muttered softly as he stepped out.

  Sweat was collecting at the edge of my cap, my mind beginning to fade. My hand went to my shoulder, the pain throbbing now, making it almost hard to speak.

  So, when the doctor stepped through the door, I felt my body sag into the chair, almost allowing the cloudiness around my vision win. “Let’s look at that shoulder.”

  “You need surgery to correct it,” Doctor Elms explained as he tied my arm up into a sling. “The bone is completely snapped and will need to be realigned.” They’d dragged in this portable X-ray machine when I’d refused to leave the room. It’d taken a couple of hours to get results in, the hospital simply packed to the brim with victims from Jester’s explosives—the death toll at this rate unknown.

  But apparently, the results were in, and they said I had a broken collarbone and three cracked ribs.

  “I’ll have the surgery when I know she’s okay.”

  “Reef…” the doctor tried, but my head was already shaking back and forth before he could even offer anything else. “We can talk about it later,” he finally relented, shaking his head as he backed the large machine out of the room. I knew he was going to find my president, and my brothers were going to come in here, and they were going to be taking all the fucking abuse I could throw at them as they forced me into surgery.

  Because it needed to be done.

  I knew it.

  And when it came to this shit, they would always do what was best for me.

  Even if I fought it.

  “I forgot how blunt you get sometimes,” my little brother noted, slipping in through the doors before they swung shut. “I hope you’re this brutal if this is ever me.”

  I frowned, pulling at the white fabric of my new sling. “I thought you were meant to be in New York?”

  “Canceled.”

  I clenched my teeth, inhaling deep and long. “Kai. You can’t just cancel sold-out shows.”

  “Ah,” he snorted, dropping into the chair Shotgun had vacated earlier. “Yes, I can. They’re my shows.”

  “Peopl—”

  “Can you just shut up for five fucking minutes,” he growled, staring me down across the bed. “You gave up everything to protect Shy. Put your future aside. Put your family first and said fuck everyone and anything else. So here I am… saying fuck everyone else and putting your salty fucking ass first. So you can either just sit back and take my love, or I can force it on you while you’re weak. Your choice.”

  The sound of Laken’s breathing machine took over the silence in the room. I had no argument. My smart-ass little brother had made his point, and whether it was the now dulled pain that was interrupting my ability to argue with him, or my brain simply unable to form a response, I couldn’t argue with the little part of me that was actually kind of relieved to have him there.

  “So, it’s her? She’s it?” he inquired, not a drop of doubt in his voice but just needing the confirmation.

  Everything was muted. The sound in the room, the colors, the world around me dull compared to what they were like when Laken usually filled a space. “Yeah, she’s it.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because right now, I’m considering the prospect that I could lose her for good, and I’ve never felt any kind of pain that hurt this bad.”

  I’d felt pain. Plenty of it—mental, physical, even a mixture of both.

  But this was something different. This was knowing that you haven’t had enough time with someone. It was feeling like you could have done something better, faster, or just more. It was watching the people you love hurting and not being able to do a single fucking thing to stop it, even though you’d give your life if it meant they could keep theirs.

  This pain was deeper.

  More intense.

  Something you felt so deep inside you, you were positive there was no way anyone could ever find it or fix it.

  It was feeling like your ribcage was collapsing in, and the only way to stay alive was to keep breathing, but each breath hurt so fucking bad, you almost wanted to give in.

  Coughing had me leaping to my feet, almost tripping and falling right on my fucking face as I shuffled to Laken’s bed. “Hit the call button, Kai!” I hissed, my brother scrambling to get the button hanging from the side of the bed. “Laken, it’s okay, you’re okay,” I rambled, my heartbeat choking me as I watched her eyes open, blinking, and then panicking.

  Her hands reached for the tube that was shoved down her airway, and she began tearing at it, trying to pull it from her throat because she felt like she was choking.

  “Lake, stop!” I couldn’t do anything, my arm up in the sling while her body convulsed, her back arching up off the bed and her arms and legs flailing about.

  The door behind me slammed open, a rush of nurses and doctors pushing past me.

  “What’s going on?” Kennedy yelled as she rushed inside, Repo right on her tail, his arms catching her around the waist. “Laken!” she screamed, my club brother pulling her back, her eyes moving between Laken’s and my struggling form.

  I stumbled back, hitting the window ledge as I watched them pin her down.

  Two people on each arm and leg.

  Her body still bowing off the bed.

  Looking like something out of the fucking Exorcist.

  Kennedy was yelling, Kai was tapping my shoulder asking if I was okay. The doctors were calling out to her, trying to get her to calm down and were holding her body against the bed, so they could have a second to remove the tubes and figure out what the hell was going on.

  Each second felt like an hour.

  “Myth!” I looked over my shoulder just in time to see Shotgun rush in, holding a leather cut with Property of Myth stitched across the back. I sagged, Kaiser catching me when I stumbled against him, his arms quickly wrapping around me when Laken’s body suddenly fell limp, and the ventilator started wailing like a siren.

  Kaiser tugged me backward as more nurses and people rushed into the tiny room, crowding the bed.

  It was chaos.

  I couldn’t see her.

  I didn’t know what was happening.

  I could just hear someone screaming.

  Yelling for her to breathe.

  Apparently, that someone was me.

  MYTH

  Three Months Later

  “All right,” I called, pulling my phone out and hitting pause on my music. “Go for a jog and warm down.”

  Each of the boys slumped a little, their arms hanging almost down past their knees, probably feeling like they weighed a damn ton after the past two hours of drills I’d put them through. It’d been a hard class, but not once did I hear someone complain.

  These boys weren’t like that.

  They knew what kind of opportunity t
hey had here, and they weren’t about to screw it up.

  I walked outside watching the boys jostle and taunt each other as their feet pounded the broken concrete of the old parking lot outside. “Faster!” I called, not about to let them slack off just yet. They kicked it up a notch as I stood back, rolling my shoulder forward then back, trying not to cringe when it pulled tight.

  It’d taken surgery to get this fucker back in the right place, and three months later, it was still giving me fucking hell.

  “Either of you seen Mase?” I questioned as the guys finished their laps and almost dropped dead on the concrete from exhaustion.

  Keagen’s head was the only one that bobbed up and down. “Caught the bus with him Friday,” he huffed, trying to catch his breath. “Said his brother was due out of lock-up on Monday just been.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut and pinched the bridge of my nose.

  The news I didn’t need to hear. “Goddammit.”

  More than three months, he had to come in every fucking day, an hour early to get in the ring, then he would do his other shit without a single fucking complaint.

  He’d clean, he’d pull weeds, he’d set up for classes, and clean up after. And the more respect he showed me, the more I showed him. We’d even had him and Lola around at the club a couple of nights when shit was a bit up in the air with his mom. He was sorting his life out, and I refused to let some little fucker come back in and ruin it.

  I patted each of the boys on the back as they walked out the door, letting them know I appreciated the hard work they had put in before pulling my cell from my pocket and hitting Shotgun’s number.

  “Yo.”

  I pulled down the roller door to the gym and hooked the lock through it. “You think you can grab a couple of the boys and meet me somewhere?” I asked my president as I walked toward my ride. “Mase missed a class, and it sounds like I need to have a few words with his brother.”

  My brothers were aware of the boys I had in classes and their connections within the city.

  I made sure they were, so we knew exactly who we were dealing with when shit like this happened. The 8th Street Hellions were your typical street crew. A handful of guys using damaged teens and women to do their dirty work, while they sat back and watched the money roll in. They weren’t huge, but they held a presence in the north of the city, mainly running drugs, pimping out girls, acting like hardasses, and starting wars with other crews who did the same.

  Even though they were within the city, it wasn’t worth our time getting involved in their bullshit. They stayed well away from any place the club frequented, and up until this point, we’d left them to fight it out with each other, the club having plenty of bigger, more important fish to fucking fry.

  I had a feeling, though, that we were about to have problems. I’d been telling these kids I would put in the effort for them as long as they showed me they could step up and put it in for themselves.

  Mase had proven his shit.

  And I was a man of my word.

  “Busy right now, but I’ll send Shake and a couple of the boys,” Shotgun agreed without question. “How big of a message do you want to send?”

  I threw my leg over my ride and paused.

  “Depending on what we find, one that could need cleaning up after.”

  “Gotcha. What’s the address?”

  I gave him the address and started my ride. The boys wouldn’t be that far behind me. They would drop everything and be there within minutes because I called.

  That was the world I lived in.

  People looked at the MC like we were the fucking enemy.

  We’re drug dealers, murderers, men who had no respect for the law or what it stands for.

  And you know what? Maybe they were right.

  But at the end of the day, it wasn’t up to me to give a shit about the way people looked at me or judged me, it was my job to do what the hell I had to for my brothers, for my family, and for the club. Anything outside that came second.

  I was there to provide for them and protect them, and legal or illegal, if you touch the people I care about, I will take that shit personally.

  I wasn’t trying to act like I was a damn saint or pretending like I had the keys to fucking heaven because I was rescuing a bunch of kids off the streets. I was trying to get through to these kids like Mase to find your tribe.

  You didn’t have to be a product of the environment you grew up in or of the people who created you. Your family and the people who have your back won’t always come in the form of blood relations. If you’re dealt a shitty hand, you keep playing until you got a better one.

  And I was about to realize just how much of a shitty hand this kid had been dealt.

  The 8th Street Hellions were given their name because of where they congregated, where they set up their home. It was an old abandoned brick apartment building on 8th Street out in the west part of Phoenix.

  My brothers pulled up to the curb just seconds behind me, all of us switching off our rides and taking a second to look up at the run-down brick building which looked like the Big Bad Wolf could have blown it down with a sneeze.

  I opened my mouth to ask if they were ready to head in, but was quickly cut off by voices yelling, followed by a hard crash. My eyes met with Shake’s, and he nodded. I gritted my teeth, reaching inside my club cut and pulling my gun from the shoulder holster I’d strapped on. The heat of my anger swarmed within my body, making the cool metal of my 9 mil feel extra fucking good in my hand, the weight of it dropping to my side.

  Rushing up to the door, I didn’t even bother to knock, slamming my boot into the old wooden panels, sending it flying into pieces before I rushed through.

  “You don’t fucking come at me, you little bastard,” a deep voice growled as I rounded the corner to find a group of young guys standing around while a man kicked the shit out of a smaller body curled up on the floor.

  A body I recognized.

  “Show some fucking respect,” the man roared, rearing his foot back and slamming it with force into the kid’s ribs.

  I lifted my hand, my gun pointing at a window off to the side of the building before I squeezed the trigger.

  The gunshot resonated within the empty, open space, the window shattering and sending glass tinkling to the concrete floor, finally catching the attention of the group of guys in the room. It was too late, though, I’d already passed my weapon to Crush and was storming forward, my fingers rolling into a tight fist as I pulled my arm back.

  “Who the fu—”

  I clocked the guy in the center of the chaos across the face before he had a chance to finish his sentence or make sense of what the hell was going on.

  An orchestra of guns being drawn and safeties being flicked off joined the heavy thump of the asshole hitting the concrete floor like the exact premise of some kind of rap song, just missing the gold chains and bitches.

  Unfortunately for these gangstas, we weren’t afraid to pull the fucking trigger and leave one of their dumbasses to bleed out on the concrete. Whereas out of the six of them, they probably held an average age of nineteen.

  Still fresh-faced.

  Still has mom at home cooking them dinner.

  Still scared to die.

  The guy I’d nailed slowly pushed himself up off the floor, grabbing the armchair beside him to try and keep his legs from shaking as he stood. “Who the hell are you?” he mumbled, the side of his face visibly swelling, and the death glare he was firing my way softened by the tears sitting on his lower lashes.

  I knew my brothers were dealing with the men behind me.

  That was the thing about the club and my brothers, I didn’t even need to look around to check to see if they had my back. I just fucking knew they did.

  I crouched down next to a now-sitting Mase, finally allowing my eyes to examine him, noting the blood, the swollen eye, the way his arm was cradled to his body. It was swollen and angry, probably broken at the wrist. “What’s going o
n?” I asked seriously as I reached out and helped him get to his feet.

  “That’s my brother, Luther,” he murmured, his already dark eyes narrowing with hate at the asshole I’d leveled. “He…” His voice caught, and I could tell he was fighting tears.

  “Fucking pathetic,” Mase’s brother scoffed, his words like gasoline, and his tone like a fucking lit match. “So fucking weak.”

  I rushed forward, enjoying that split second when his eyes widened in fear before I kicked his legs out from under his body, watching him land with a heavy fucking thump on his knees. He screamed in pain, and when he fell forward onto his hands to try and relieve some of that agony, I grabbed the back of his head and drove my knee up into his nose, throwing his entire body the other way, onto his back. He writhed in pain on the cold hard floor, not another fucking person in the room moved.

  “I wasn’t talking to you,” I snarled, standing over the pathetic piece of crap. “Mase?” I turned, walking back to where the kid was still staring daggers at his sibling, where I was almost sure I caught a smile curl in the corner of his mouth before he turned his attention to me.

  Every other gang member watched on in silent horror, most of them trying not to look like they were shitting their pants, a couple of them with eyes which seemed to be flickering around like they were looking to make a run for the nearest exit, petrified they would be next.

  “Do you hear that?” Shake asked, his brow knotted and his eyes roaming the space.

  I held my breath for a second.

  Everyone did.

  And there it was.

  “Is that a baby crying?” I asked, looking back at Mase.

  The sound was torture, one of those cries you just know is a result of utter fucking pain, either physically or mentally. It was like throwing another fucking log on my already raging fire.

  Mase’s eyes started to shimmer as he pointed to what looked like it could be a cupboard or a closet. “It’s Lola. She’s been locked in there for two days. He caught me trying to get her out just before you showed up.”