Unruly (12 page)

Mama stroked my hair. “Hush, now.”

Tears were streaming down my face. I didn't want to mention my father, didn't want to think about that horrible night—or any of the ones that followed. If not for Echo, I don't know that my mother would've known how to get back on her feet. He wasn't all handkerchiefs and soft words. He'd given her a couple of days, but then he was . . . tough. I remember him telling her to get it together. I remember him telling me to call and check in with him or Uncle Karl every other day, and then eventually it was every week.

Right now, the man who had pulled us to our feet was hurting. His son—
my friend
—was hurting. My ex and my only female friend were both hurting too. I didn't know what to do, but I wanted to do something.

“How do I . . . what do I do?” I asked Mama.

She kissed my forehead. “You come into the kitchen with me, and we make a few dishes to put in Killer's fridge. We call the other wives and daughters, and we make sure that they know, so everyone's Wolf is taken care of. Then we look after those that don't have old ladies or daughters.”

I straightened and stepped back. I knew how to do this. Wolf families don't falter. We were tougher than that.
I
was tougher than this. “Right.”

We walked to the kitchen, and Mama went to the table with her phone. Mine rang again. It felt surreal, but having a focus was all that I had to keep me from crying.

She looked at me and motioned me to go. “Take it in the parlor.”

I wasn't even through the doorway when I heard her say, “Dar? It's Bitty.”

“Hello?” I answered.

“Did someone tell you?” Alamo asked by way of greeting. “He's okay. The surgeon said he'd be a hundred percent fine.”

“Yeah.” I smiled at the fact that he'd opened with reassurances. “Noah called.”

There was a pause, and then Alamo added, “I know you three grew up together. Do you want to come over? I can fetch you or send someone or . . . I don't think Dash ought to be driving. He's shaky, and Echo's keeping him near.”

I laughed despite myself. Echo wasn't going to let Dash too far out of sight, as rattled as he must be, but that wasn't something that was my place to point out. The family background was complicated. Dash wasn't Echo's kid. Neither was I. That didn't stop Echo from paying a fair bit of attention to us, as well as to his actual son.

“Ellen?”

“I'm guessing there's a pack of Wolves there,” I said mildly.

“No reason you can't be here if you want to. I'll tell Echo myself if you want,” Alamo offered.

I could hear the sounds of the hospital PA system in the background. I didn't want to be there, not right now. “It wouldn't do Killer any good for me to be there,” I said. “I'd only be coming to make myself feel better . . . You'll call me though if anything changes, right? I mean, maybe I should—”

“He's fine,” Alamo stressed. “But I can call or text updates. Hell, I can take his picture and text it.”

My tears made my eyes blur. “I'm sorry. I just . . . he's not supposed to get shot. The last time someone did . . . he died.”

Just then I couldn't make myself say
who
that was. I couldn't think about my father dying. All I could do was remind myself that I'd had two separate people verify that Killer was going to be okay.

“How about I come get you tomorrow as soon as you're up to it? I'll tell Killer's old lady that you're coming. Maybe she'll go home for a nap if you're here.” Alamo sounded like he knew exactly the right things to do, and I had to wonder what sort of crisis sent him out of North Carolina that he was so damn calm.

“Is eight too early?”

“I'll be there or send someone else if you want. Just tell me what you need, darlin'.”

“A ride to see Zion,” I said. “Eight a.m.”

“I'll be there,” Alamo promised.

The next few hours were a blur. Mama and I cooked and talked. She talked mostly about the early days of marriage, about Daddy singing in the house, but neither of us mentioned the long-ago night when the phone call about a shooting was about him.

I sang. It didn't fix anything, not truly, but it made me feel better. Maybe part of that was because it made Mama feel better too.

“So Dash
and
Alejandro both called?” she asked mildly about an hour into our marathon cooking session. We were done with a pair of casseroles and had started to prep lasagna.

“I'm not dating either one of them.” I stared down at the noodles I was rinsing.

“Riding with them?”

There was something awkward, even at my age, at having my mother bluntly ask if I was having sex with two different men. “Noah and I used to, but . . . we're better as friends.”

“Your decision or his?”

I looked up and met her gaze so there was no doubt as to my truthfulness. “Mine.”

She nodded. “And Alejandro?”

“He's a friend.” I squirmed under her attention, turning my back to her and trying to avoid the topic.

“Mmm.”

There was no way to pretend that noise was anything other than doubt, but I wasn't taking the bait. I started singing, knowing full well that she'd let the subject go if I kept on. Even when she wanted an answer, Mama rarely interrupted me midsong. It was a trick my father had taught me years ago. She knew it too, but still went along with it. The only thing she did was give me one of her “you ain't hiding a thing, missy” looks. I swore they ought to give her a patent for that look, but I wasn't pretending that I'd given a full disclosure. I shrugged and started singing “Down to the River to Pray.”

Mama let me dodge the conversation, and we cooked with little conversation after that. The most she said was a song title here or there or a small note on Daddy or me and Killer and Noah when we were kids. I knew that she was trying to make me relax enough to sleep, and maybe she was doing it for her own nerves too. It worked, though. By the time I crawled into bed, dawn wasn't far off, but I was past my tears and I slept without nightmares.

Chapter 11

A
LAMO WASN
'
T A STRANGER TO TROUBLE
. H
E
'
D COURTED
it like it was an art form for a few years before he realized that Zoe required a parent. Admittedly she was self-sufficient to the point that he was somehow enough for her, but he wasn't sure he'd have figured out how to be an adult if not for her. Between being there for her and coping with his own stupidity, he'd thought he was ready to handle whatever drama came his way, but he was at a loss right now. Ellen wasn't
his
to look after, but he felt compelled to do so all the same.

And the biker he'd ask permission of was the one who was laid up in the hospital bed.

He did his part while the club members were in and out of the waiting room. Dash, for all of his idiocy in regard to Ellen and the club, had stepped up and was standing where Killer should be, where he would be if he was able. Alamo didn't know Killer as well as the rest of the club, but in the months he'd been here, he'd come to value him as a friend. There was always something awful about one of the club brothers getting injured. This was worse, though.

The result was that come dawn Alamo was still in the waiting room. He'd caught a nap in one of the uncomfortable chairs, which was more than Dash had managed. He had stood at Echo's side as if he'd stepped into Killer's boots between one breath and the next. Both Aubrey and her grandmother seemed grateful for his presence there, and Echo obviously was. By morning, though, he was the only one still there who hadn't slept.

It earned Dash a little of Alamo's respect, enough that he walked over to Dash and offered in a low voice, “I can look after them if you want to take a breather.”

Dash tensed. “I've got it.”

They weren't ever going to get along, and the offer wasn't going to change that reality. It was, however, the right thing to do. Alamo held up his hands. “No disrespect. I know you can, but you'll do them all more good if you catch a couple hours.”

Dash looked over at Echo, who was obviously watching them. Even now he was keeping his eyes on everyone and everything.

“Killer's going to be fine.” Dash wasn't relaying anything they didn't all know, but as the night went on, it had been a sentence said more and more often as if they all needed to repeat it to reassure themselves.

“Everyone will be.” Alamo looked over at Aubrey and her grandmother. They were both leaning on Echo in some degree of sleep. They'd been in with Killer, but the nurse suggested he'd rest better if they left.

Alamo suspected she'd meant “leave the hospital,” but Echo wasn't willing to tell Aubrey's grandmother she had to leave, and
she
wasn't willing to force Aubrey. So they all three stayed—and Dash stayed on guard. Everyone else had left by now.

“Look, man, I don't like you any more than you like me, but we care about some of the same people.” Alamo kept his voice pitched low. He was fairly sure there was nothing that went on in the club that escaped Echo's attention, especially if it concerned Killer, Dash, or Ellen, but that didn't mean that they needed to discuss it in front of him.

Dash didn't reply.

So Alamo opted to be even more direct. “Killer's good people, but even if it were you in that room, I'd be offering. We're in the same club.”

“Fair enough,” Dash said after a long moment. “I'll take two hours, but I'm not leaving. Killer says you can handle whatever comes, and Echo trusts you, but if something happened to any of those three, I'd be needing a hospital bed because Killer wouldn't forgive me.”

“Understood.” Alamo gestured to the back of the room where he'd been. The light overhead was out, which was probably not intentional, but it made that little nook darker. One of the Wolves' old ladies had turned off all the televisions earlier. So between the silence and dark, it was about as comfortable as it could be in a hospital waiting room. “The corner over there is quiet enough.”

“If they need me or Killer asks for me or—”

“I'll wake you,” Alamo assured him.

It was probably about as friendly a conversation as they were capable of having. The situation with Ellen made it impossible for them to be friends or even comfortable acquaintances. Alamo wanted to punch him more often than was reasonable, strictly speaking. He
knew
it was a little unfair, but it was what it was. Ellen stood between them, not because Alamo was trying to take what wasn't free to take, but because he thought Dash was an ass for the way he treated her. The fact that Alamo wanted to treat her right didn't factor in as much as the fact that he was regularly incensed that she was unhappy—and that Dash was at fault. If a man was lucky enough to have someone as talented and assertive as her, he ought to be proud to carry her wherever she wanted to go. Instead, she was left calling him for rides because Dash couldn't be bothered.

Thinking about that wasn't going to improve his odds of being civil to Dash, though, so he shoved those thoughts aside and walked over to Echo. One of the nurses looked up as he approached. She hadn't looked at Dash with that same sort of apprehension, but some people have an easy charisma that makes them seem safe even when they're wearing the same sort of leather jackets and riding boots. Dash had this, the charm that leaders needed. Alamo was a lot more like Killer:
Brute
and
brawn
were the kind of terms people used to describe them. It wasn't the patches proclaiming them as Southern Wolves or even the 1% patch. If it had been, the nurses would look at Echo that way too. He was obviously the man in charge, obviously the one who kept the rest of them on leashes—or released them from leashes when necessary—but even though he wore the same patches, the nurses smiled at him. Some people simply had that indefinable trait. They'd make great leaders, politicians, heads of state, or even cult leaders. Alamo didn't envy them. There was a weight to that kind of thing.

Alamo, on the other hand, was perfectly content to be the sort of man who did the dirty work. He had the skill and the lack of guilt. Like Killer, he was a good soldier. Unlike Killer, Alamo had zero urge to be anywhere other than among Wolves. He couldn't imagine life without the club, and he'd be damned if he looked long at a woman who wouldn't share that sentiment. He could respect Killer's decision to leave the Wolves for Aubrey, but the cold truth was that he wouldn't be able to find a woman attractive if she wasn't as devoted to the club as he was. Family was essential, and this was the only family he'd ever known—other than Zoe, of course.

Echo looked up at him when Alamo came to stand near him. He was unobtrusive about it, far enough away to give him privacy if he needed it, but close enough that there wasn't anyone going to get close to him without Alamo's allowing it. Being Echo's guard meant taking any bullet or blade before it was even in spitting range of Echo—or in this case, Aubrey and her grandmother too.