Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC) (22 page)

“That’s not possible,” Brock ground out. “I slit the fucker’s throat myself.”

Something danced behind Brock’s eyes. A shadow of what Lucky was doing the tango with. The fear and rage that came with knowing someone fucked with your woman.

Cade regarded him evenly, but it was Steg who spoke. “Fucker had a son. One who’s obviously been building up the remains of the empire we shattered. One who’s chosen now to strike.” He paused, sighing. “And he seems to have done his research. Figured out who the players are, who’s stupid enough to strike out against us. What our weaknesses are.”

Lucky felt the old man’s gaze on him, but for once he stayed silent. He didn’t speak much these days. He sure as fuck didn’t laugh. Joke. Now he spent his time trying not to unleash the dragon that had awakened inside of him two months back. One that needed revenge. Vengeance. Thirsted for it.

“So we fuck them all up,” Gage put in simply.

“We don’t have the numbers, not this charter,” Cade explained, gritting his teeth.

“We may not have the numbers, but one of us is worth ten of those fuckfaces,” Gage replied.

Cade leaned back. “We’ve got to be smart about this. They’re targeting
women
.” His gaze landed on Lucky once more before he continued. “No fuckin’ way am I doing anything that even has a one percent chance of blowing back on my woman. My family,” he declared.

“Agreed,” Asher said from beside him, his jaw hard.

“We call in other charters,” Cade told the table. “Then we go to war. And burn them all.”

For the first time in months, Lucky smiled.

* * *

“
B
rother
.” Lucky felt pressure on his shoulder as the rest of the men filtered out of the room.

He turned to Bull. “Got shit to do,” he bit out.

Bull’s hand stayed firm. “A minute,” he requested, though it seemed less of a request with his hand at Lucky’s shoulder.

Lucky couldn’t take him, he thought. Bull was a big fucker. Strong. Lucky was no small-fry either, he could take care of himself. Before, Bull might have been able to take him. But now that he had that dragon inside him, Lucky wasn’t sure if his brother would win.

He didn’t fight him, though. He had a tenuous hold on the rage inside him, enough to make sure he didn’t come to blows with his brothers. Just enough.

Lucky sighed and nodded, surrendering.

“Make it quick,” he bit out.

Bull raised a brow. “What? So you can rush off to the bar and continue your efforts to put Jack Daniels out of business? Or so you can cruise around beating up every tweaker and small-time player in the game, looking for info and askin’ to get fuckin’ arrested?”

Lucky gritted his teeth. “My dad died in prison ten years ago. Don’t have a mom, not anymore. And I don’t remember havin’ a third parent lookin’ anythin’ like you.”

“I’m not your parent. I’m your brother. And I know what you’re goin’ through.”

Lucky clenched his fists. “Do you?” he hissed. “Because from where I’m standin’ you got yourself some peace. In your new fuckin’ family. Knowin’ Laurie isn’t livin’ with demons of that day. She got peace. My woman? She’s gonna live with chaos for the rest of her fuckin’ life,” he yelled. “And I can’t do a thing about that but kill everyone who put that chaos there. And I can’t even fuckin’ do that.”

Bull’s eyes went black. Alien. He stepped forward. “Because I know you’re hurtin’, I’m not going to break your nose for insinuating that Laurie is somehow better off six feet under,” he said quietly, his voice deadly. “I’m just gonna tell you that Bex is not. She’s living, breathing, and bleeding. So instead of goin’ around searching for more blood to spill, how about you try and fuckin’ staunch the flow of hers.” He gave Lucky a long stare before leaving him there, in the clubroom where life and death were dealt.

Where he would make the decision between the two.

“
S
he never seemed shattered
; to me, she was a breathtaking mosaic of battles she’d won.”

-Matt Baker

B
ecky

I
t was my fault
. I was trying new things, forcing myself to start becoming a functioning member of society. Society I’d never belong to, but I had to exist in. I was planning on going back to work in a couple days, so I kind of had to do things like answer the door.

I don’t know who flinched first, me or him. I guessed I looked different since he last saw me, what felt like a lifetime ago. I’d lost weight, gotten a new hairstyle, and my face was devoid of anything I could describe as life, as vibrancy.

But him.

Fuck.

I barely recognized the man in front of me. He was the same, physically, I guessed. Tall—not huge, but taller than me. He was dressed in all black—jeans, motorcycle boots, tee, and leather cut. That in itself was cause for pause. Usually he was wearing blue jeans so faded they looked like they were made for him. And most of the time, apart from when he decided he needed to ramp up the badass, he was wearing some stupid tee under his cut.

It wasn’t just the lack of stupid tee that had me physically recoil. It was the lack of
anything
. He looked like he had somehow gained more muscle in the two months I hadn’t seen him, but he had lost everything else. His jaw was covered with substantial stubble, hiding half of his attractive face. His cheekbones seemed more angular.

But his eyes. They were haunted. Destroyed. The humor that constantly twinkled beyond them was gone.

“Fuck,” he rasped, looking over me much the same I had him.

I didn’t have time to think about shutting the door in his face, turning on my heel, and running or bursting into tears. I didn’t have time for anything because suddenly, he wasn’t on the doorstep. He was everywhere. I was in his arms.

I sank into them immediately, like the only place I had belonged. Home.

“Fuck, baby. Fuck,” he muttered before I felt him kiss my head. We didn’t say anything else. Didn’t move for what felt like an eternity. It was as if by stepping into his arms I had stepped into some sort of void in the universe where nothing existed. Not even my own thoughts.

He pulled back slightly, enough so his hands could run through my hair and his tortured eyes could meet mine.

“Different,” he whispered. “I like it.”

It was as if his words jolted me out of whatever madness had me sinking into his arms in the first place. I suddenly realized what he was doing, and I felt it. Filthy. Corrupted. Insects crawled under my skin.

I yanked myself out of his arms, and although his jaw hardened underneath his stubble, he let me.

We stared at each other once more.

“You shouldn’t be here,” I whispered. “You
can’t
be here.”

He shook his head. “Here is where I should’ve been the entire time,” he replied softly. “Staunching the bleeding.”

His last words confused me for a second before I stepped back so I hit the wall. “You need to leave,” I ordered in a shaky voice.

I hate that my voice shook. That I retreated. That I was weak the moment I was faced with him.

He shook his head again, stepping forward. “No. I need to stay. For selfish reasons, like sanity. Firefly, I’ll go fuckin’ insane if I leave right now, with the image of you like this. Beautiful. Still hauntingly fuckin’ beautiful, but broken.” He paused, evaluating the distance between us as if he wanted to close it. Thankfully he didn’t move. “I’ll go insane if I don’t stay and help repair you. Fix you,” he muttered.

I blinked away tears. “I can’t be fixed,” I declared, my voice firm, resolute.

His fists tightened at his sides, the veins in his arms in danger of jumping from his tattooed skin with the effort I guessed it was taking not to move them. Not to touch me. I knew he wanted to. Ridiculous as it sounded, I could taste it in the air, the charge, the electricity. I knew he wanted to because I wanted him to, more than anything.

But to survive, to be able to handle this moment sober, he couldn’t touch me. I still had the memory of how dirty I felt under his touch seconds before. Even under his gaze, in his presence, I was itching to escape my own body so I didn’t have to swim in the filth anymore.

His jaw was granite as his caramel hazel eyes hardened. “You can be fixed,” he gritted out. “You will be. You fuckin’
are
. You’re standing right in front of me. Different, in a way that almost kills me, but still beautiful, still breathing, still surviving. You, right here, right now, is proof that you can be fixed. That you will be. I’ll make sure of it.”

I stood stock-still as his words hit me physically. As his eyes branded my soul. “This is not something you can badass your way into. That an alpha male attitude, some muscles, and a cut can fix. What they did….” I didn’t miss his flinch. Didn’t miss the way the air turned bitter with his fury. I managed to find a way through it, to meet his eyes. “What they did, it didn’t wound me or break me. It
disfigured
me. Permanently changed my core, my identity, every part of who I am. I’m not ever going to heal, be whole, be someone who is ever going to be worthy to stand beside you. I’m always going to be this…
thing
they turned me into. That I turned myself into. Nothing’s going to change that.”

“Okay,” he said, the amount of emotion in that word turning his voice foreign and almost unrecognizable. His head was bent down to regard his feet.

“What?” I whispered.

He looked up, and I flinched at his eyes. There was no film, no filter between him and me. His demons were right there on the surface for me to see. “Okay,” he repeated. “Breaks every part of me that’s still left whole. But if that’s what you are, if you are so fuckin’ sure you can’t be fixed, that what’s in front of me is all I can have, I’ll take it.” He stepped forward. “What’s in front of me is beautiful in every fuckin’ sense of the word, just in case you’d forgotten that. It’s also mine. No act on this earth is gonna change that, and I’ll take you however I can have it.”

I blinked through my tears at his words. I couldn’t surrender to them. I wouldn’t.

I sucked in a breath. It was choked and strangled as the very air around me seemed to scrape the sides of my throat as it traveled down my lungs. Existing was hard, impossible, when the mere act of breathing clean air was excruciating. I blinked up at him, the man in front of me who’d haunted my nightmares. Who I promised myself would only exist in my nightmares.

“I don’t sleep,” I whispered.

He jolted and his face was a contortion of agony.

“And when I do, when my body loses its fight with exhaustion after a couple days, they come,” I continued. “The nightmares.” I looked up, to escape his eyes and in an attempt to force the tears threatening the corners of my eyes back where they came from. It was a long moment of silence before I found the strength to lower my gaze once more. “Though nightmares isn’t the best description. Nightmares aren’t real. You wake up from them and thank whatever you pray to that they exist only in the land of darkness and night.” I sucked in another mouthful of glass. “These are real. And they don’t leave me when I wake up. They’re always there.
Always
.”

As if he were unable to hear this anymore, he stepped forward. Like I’d coordinated it, I stepped back just as quickly. It was hard enough to get oxygen into me with him in the same room. I wouldn’t be able to do it if I could smell him. Taste him. He didn’t try to move forward again, but every inch of him was etched in stone.

“You’re in my nightmares,” I choked out. “Always. You’re always there, surrounded by the filth, elbow-deep in it. Saving me. You already did that. It’s done. I’m saved. You can sleep easy. At least one of us can. So you need to stop trying to save me, ’cause this is as close as it’s going to get. Leave.” The last word was a prayer.

Gabriel looked at me. Branded me with his gaze. It wasn’t comfortable, or enticing, or full of desire. It rubbed me the wrong way, like sandpaper on the psyche, with the depth of fucking sorrow in it.

“Sleep easy,” he repeated, his voice gravel. “I haven’t had a moment of fucking peace or easy since I woke up in that hospital room and learned that you were gone.” His fists clenched at his sides. “My nightmare, firefly, was being strapped to a fucking table while unable to go to you. Chained up while you were…. That’s what I’ll live with. What’ll keep me up at night. Every night for the rest of my life. So the only fucking way I’ll ever sleep easy if you’re next to me, and when I get shaken awake by my own nightmares, I’ll have you in my arms to chase them away.”

There it was. Him, basically begging at my feet. Offering me something I’d dreamed about since the moment I was lucid enough to realize my nightmare was never going away. Safety. He was offering me himself. Even though he knew what had gone on those three weeks. What they did to me. And he still wanted me. Or thought he did.

He wouldn’t. Not once he saw how deep the dirt went. How fucking shattered I was.

I didn’t even want me.

“I can’t chase away your nightmares,” I choked out. “I’m too busy with my own. Now, I need you to leave.”

He stared at me, and for one horrible moment I thought he wouldn’t leave. That he’d stay and I’d lose the battle I was waging with myself, take him up on his offer. That I’d cling to his fucking leg and never let go.

He rubbed at his head like I knew he did when he was frustrated. “Baby, I know you’ve been through—”

“You have no fucking idea what I’ve been through!” I shrieked, interrupting him. I tried so hard to sound strong, but my words seemed to break as I said them.
I
seemed to break.

Gabriel stepped forward and I scuttled back against the wall. He frowned at the distance between us, obviously wanting to close it, but he must’ve seen something in me because he stayed rooted, his hands balled into fists at the sides.

“You’re right, firefly. I have no idea what you’ve been through,” he began quietly. “I only know what
I’ve
been through. The deepest depths of hell I’ve been living in, suffering in, for the past two months. The pain that seems to kill me, but somehow I keep breathing. The anger that I can’t swallow no matter what. That’s all I know, Becky.” He paused, his eyes never leaving mine. “I know all that shit, what I’m feeling, is nothing on what you’re battling. That what I feel is a drop in the fuckin’ bucket compared to your pain. I can’t understand how something can be worse than what I’m going through. The living hell. It makes me sick, physically sick to my stomach to know that’s what you’re feeling, what you’re living.” He couldn’t seem to stop himself anymore, closing the distance between us so he framed my face with his hands. I couldn’t say anything, couldn’t move. If my words had broken me before, his touch shattered me. Destroyed what was left.

“There’s nothing I can do to stop it. To fix it. That’ll haunt me to my dying breath. There’s nothing I can do but love you. And kill every last person on this planet who had a hand in hurting you. I’ll do it, babe. Every single person is going to die by my hand, I promise you that. But you gotta make me a promise. They’ll die by my hand, but I gotta live by yours. I’ve got no right to ask anything of you, but I’m doin’ it. Humans are hardwired to do whatever it takes to survive.” His gaze burned into me. “So here I stand, doing the only thing I can to survive. Touching the only fuckin’ thing in the world that’ll keep me breathing, other than the thirst for blood. I can’t exist on that thirst alone, or I’ll fall back into that hole I clawed my way out of fifteen years ago. I know this time, if I go anywhere near that thing, I ain’t comin’ out. So I’m here. Survivin’.”

His words were bullets, shattering me into smaller pieces. I couldn’t do this, be reminded of his demons, try to conquer them while struggling with my own. It was one or the other. And for someone who spent her whole life with the singular goal to take care of herself, to survive, I was finding myself wanting to do the opposite. To save him. To give him what he wanted, even if it destroyed me.

“I’m going,” he said, searching my eyes.

My body sagged. Staving off destruction for another day.

“But for today. Not forever. I’ll be back here every fuckin’ day for the rest of forever if that’s what it takes. To remind you that everything may have changed, turned ugly, broken. Everything but what I feel for you.”

His newly foreign eyes burned into me for a second more, and then he was gone.

I stayed standing until the door closed behind him.

Then I crumbled to the floor.

“See you next week,” Gage said as I unbuckled my seatbelt.

“Yeah, can’t wait,” I muttered.

We had just gone to another meeting, and despite my flippant attitude, it helped. Not with the dirt, the feeling of filth—nothing would help that. But with the cravings I was ashamed of. The cravings I sometimes questioned whether I was strong enough to fight. Whether it was worth fighting.

I glanced up at him. “They don’t… suck,” I said, my voice contradicting the sarcasm of earlier.

Gage only nodded.

I swallowed, my eyes going to the ribbons of scars on his arms. “Is that from junk?” I asked, nodding to them.

He glanced down, his face turning hard. “Everything’s because of junk, isn’t it? When it all boils down to it. The good, the bad, the ugly. Everything after that first taste is a result of that choice.”

I was taken aback by his answer. Or lack of it. Maybe he hadn’t explained his scars, but he had explained something exponentially more profound.

“Yeah, it is,” I whispered. “A biker and a philosopher,” I mused.

Gage stared at me. “What happened to you, that wasn’t your fault,” he said, his voice impossibly soft.

I gave him a long look. I didn’t do this. I didn’t talk about those three weeks. Not with anyone. Not Rosie. Not Lily. Not the fucking therapist Lily kept insisting I should see. Not Sarah who treated me, no matter how understanding she may seem.