Chapter Twenty-Seven
Harley
S taring down at the coffee pot in the kitchen, I debate making some, even though I know I shouldn’t. It’s three in the morning; I should not be drinking coffee. I should be sleeping.
But no. Instead, I am up, feeling restless. Even after the guys spent hours wearing me out last night, I still feel this pent up energy that won’t go away. I wish my dad was here so I could talk to him. I feel like he would give me the advice I needed to hear right now, because I feel a little lost.
I still haven’t talked to the guys, and I’m sure that’s what’s keeping me up. I need to get it over with and just word vomit and expect the worst. That’s the best I can do. I think.
“Harls?”
My heart skips a beat as I spin around, shocked to see Atlas standing in the kitchen. “What–”
“We just got in. I saw a light on and wanted to see who was up so early. What are you doing, glaring at the coffee pot at three in the morning?” He smirks at me.
Without thinking about it, I head straight for him and toss my arms around his shoulders, burying my face in his neck as tears well in my eyes.
“Oh,” I hear a soft voice say. “We will go upstairs, give you guys some space.” Brielle touches my back gently before footsteps from multiple people can be heard shuffling away.
“What’s on your mind, kid?” Atlas asks as he wraps his arms around me tightly.
“I miss my dad,” I murmur softly.
Instead of responding, he just holds me tighter before eventually pulling back. “Not that I’m complaining, but why are you guys back? What’s going on?”
He hums softly. “Well, Brielle’s dad decided he doesn’t want anything to do with the club anymore. He actually asked us if we wanted to become members and take over, but we don’t. So I wanted to talk to Sugar about it and see what he says. Brielle is going through some things, so we decided she needs to see what we had been planning.”
“You’re going to tell her about the house? I thought you wanted to wait until you had one?” I ask.
“That was the plan, but things change.” He shrugs. “Besides thinking about your dad, want to tell me why you're up so early?”
“I don’t know. I just feel restless and like things aren’t right, I guess?” I grimace, not even sure how to describe what I am feeling.
He tilts his head. “Sugar has kept us in the loop about everything, so we know about Tammy and Richard. How are you feeling about them being dead?”
“He is dead, but she isn’t yet–”
“Why not?” he interrupts, furrowing his brows.
“I–I don’t really know. At first, keeping them alive made me feel like I was getting real revenge, but now, it just is this headache that won’t go away.”
“I don’t think I have ever said words like this before, but you need to just kill her and let yourself move on. Whatever you're holding onto, let it go.”
Huffing a laugh, I place my hands on my hips. “Right before you came in here, I was thinking about how I really wanted to talk to my dad. I feel like he would have just said the same thing.” I roll my eyes.
“Then maybe you should listen, kid.” He bops me on the nose, making me crinkle it. “I love that you are calling him your dad now.”
“I wish I would have done it sooner.” I tell him.
“We all wish we had done things sooner or changed the way we did them.Instead of wishing for those things we can’t change, do something now so you don’t have another, I wish, tomorrow. Which I am going to go do now.” He grins at me as he starts to walk away.
“How long are you here for?” I ask.
He spins around and walks backward, a grin stretches over his lips. “Forever.” Then he’s gone, taking off upstairs.
“Okay, you can do this, Harley,” I tell myself and then shake my head. “Maybe don’t talk to yourself out loud.” I groan and head back upstairs.
When I walk in, the spot where I was lying in bed in between Cade and Grayson is now taken up by Ryker and Cade has his arm thrown over Ryker, holding him.
Pinching my lips together to hold back my laughter, I grab my phone and snap a picture before walking over to Cade’s side and placing a kiss on his cheek. “Wake up.”
He groans and rolls onto his back, blinking up at me. “What are you doing up? What time is it?”
“It’s time to deal with Tammy, I don’t want to wait any longer.” I tell him.
He nods, and sits up, grabbing his phone from the nightstand to check the time. I grimace when I notice it’s still really early. When he notices my face, he rubs his hand up and down my arm, “It’s alright, baby girl. If you are ready, so are we.”
Grabbing his pillow he uses it to whack Ryker right in the face. “Get the fuck up.” Ryker shoots up in bed, a wild look in his eyes before they narrow on Cade.
Ignoring the incoming argument between these two, I walk around to the other side of the bed and sit down next to Grayson, who has started waking up from the noise.
“Morning, beautiful,” he rumbles while rubbing his eyes.
“It’s really early, but I want to finish Tammy. I’m tired of all of this,” I tell him as he sits up and wraps his arms around me.
“We can do that.”
After the guys get up and are ready to go, we head out towards the shed. Grayson laces our fingers together, and I smile at him. “Everything is ready, right?”
“Yes, baby girl,” Cade says behind me. “You are the one who made sure it was. Don’t overthink this. Just do what your heart wants.”
Right. My heart. I don't know how much I can trust my heart lately, but according to the girls when I talked to them a while ago, these three would do anything for me. As much as I want to be glad for that, I feel like it could be a bad thing after today.
What if they resent me?
Shaking the thoughts off, I unlock the shed, and we head inside. “Harley, you don’t want to bury me alive. Just shoot me. It’ll feel better–”
“Stop fucking talking!” Ryker shouts at her.
She pinches her lips together and ducks her head, a few tears falling..
I cough as I glance at the guys. “We should hurry up because holy fuck this smells even worse than it did yesterday.” I cover my nose with my hand.
“That’s pretty normal for leaving a body hanging in here for days, beautiful. But I agree. I think I might hurl,” Grayson adds, pinching his lips together.
The boys get Richard’s body down and move it out into the woods. After he is ready, we come back, and they unhook Tammy. She falls to the ground, her legs weak from disuse. Cade binds her hands behind her back before yanking her back up. “Walk.”
“It hurts,” she rasps, as her lips tremble.
“It’s about to hurt way worse. Fucking walk,” he growls, forcing her to move forward as we lead her out to the back of the property where Sugar gave us a spot to dig a hole and place a wooden box in the ground.
As soon as she spots the box and then sees her dead husband laying in it already, she tries to get away. “No, no, no, please, Harley! I’m sorry. I don’t deserve this! Please!”
I don’t respond to her as Cade and Ryker force her down into the box. “Please just shoot me. Don’t bury me alive.”
I step forward and glance down at her, Grayson a solid force at my back. “Oh, I thought I told you. I’m not burying you alive. I’m burning you alive.”
Reaching for a gas can, my hands violently shake as I try to take the cap off, so Grayson takes it from me and hands it off to the others before gripping my shoulders to look into my eyes. “I know this is terrifying. I know this will change things for you, but we have you. No matter how many times we need to say it. We have you. We aren’t going anywhere.”
I nod and take a breath, anchoring myself in his eyes until Ryker announces it’s time.
They poured gas on her before placing the lid on the box and then poured more gas all over the box. Cade lights a match and hands it to me. “Whenever you are ready.”
Taking a deep breath, I let it all go and toss the match into the hole. As the fire starts to bellow out of the hole, Tammy begs and pleads with us until her words slowly turn into screams. As the flames grow stronger and louder, her screams die out until all we can hear is the crackling of the fire.
Everything hits at once: the pain, the losses, the relief. Everything I have lost, the pieces of me Tammy and Richard took away I will never get back. The years stolen from me.
The relief she can never harm me again. She can never speak to me again.
I never have to deal with her again, but I can’t get back all that time she took away from me, all the pain she inflicted physically and mentally.
It all becomes too much.
“It hurts so bad. I can’t, I can’t breathe. Please—please just make it stop.”
“We got you,” Grayson says softly against my ear as he holds onto me, the others joining in and holding me as I crumble to the ground and let everything out.
My mom was tortured and raped in front of me.
My mom died.
I was tortured and put through hell for three years.
I was taken again by the man who killed my mom.
My father was killed in front of me.
I was tortured.
I—I was.
“I was raped.”
“You were raped, but you’re the strongest person I know, baby girl.”
“You were hurt, but you’re so fucking brave. You came out the other side and have kicked ass, my little flame.”
“I’m so proud to see you keep going after everything you’ve been through. You’ve never let it stop you. You're beautiful in every way.”
“You will never lose us, no matter what, we will be together. You have us forever.”
“I—I want to get the hell out of here,” I gasp.
Grayson
I glance at the other guys huddled around Harley on the ground. They look as confused as me. “What do you mean, Harley?” I ask her gently.
Her glossy eyes look up at me. “I know this is your home. I know you guys are all meant to be here, where your lives are just beginning, but this isn’t mine. At least not right now. Jacksonville has brought me more pain than anything else, and as much as I love everyone here–” She shakes her head and looks down again.
“Maybe this is a conversation we can take elsewhere,” Ryker says as he stands and grips Harley, pulling her to her feet.
“I’ll text Nerds and ask him to have someone keep an eye on the fire,” I say as we all start walking back towards the club.
Instead of going into the main club, Ryker steers Harley over to Rage’s house and into the living room. She immediately takes the corner seat on the couch and pulls her legs up, wrapping her arms around her knees.
Ryker and I each sit on one side of her while Cade sits on the coffee table in front of her.
“Before you say anything, I need you to understand something,” Harley starts, wiping the tears from her eyes but keeping her body, and heart, closed off from us. “I didn’t mean to blurt it out like that. It just really hit me that I need to stop hiding from everything. I’ve locked away all the things I haven’t wanted to deal with in a little box and threw away the key, but right now, it feels like someone just blew the box up, and my emotions are all over the place.”
She lets out a big exhale. “I’ve thought about this a lot lately. I talked about it with the other girls, and they all told me I just need to tell you guys because you love me and will support whatever I want. But that’s the problem, which is why I haven’t known how to say anything. I don’t want you to give up your lives and futures for me.”
“I’m going to stop you right there,” Ryker demands in a clipped tone, his eyes narrowing on Harley. “You say that as if you think our lives exist without you.” Her head snaps up, and she opens her mouth to say something, but he stops her with a glare. “I’m not done. You may not see it, but you saved all three of us. We would not be as close as we are now without you. Grayson and I would have never explored this connection between us, and I wouldn’t have fallen in love with him. Cade would have retreated farther. It was terrifying to watch my best friend slowly retreat farther and farther away from everyone around him as time went on. You brought him back to life. You gave him his reason. I would have probably ended up in jail or bare minimum being kicked out of this club with the path I was going down. Our lives have become what they are because of you. Our home is wherever you are. If you want to move to another country, I think I can speak for us when I say we will go right now.”
I nod. “He’s right. I don’t want to do this without you. I like this version of myself with you. I don’t want to be apart from you.”
She moves her teary eyes to Cayden. “Leaving me isn’t an option. You are stuck with me.”
“Okay, caveman.” Ryker chuckles, causing Harley’s lips to twitch in an almost smile.
“What if I… we leave, and I never want to come back? This club is here, all these people–”
“That love you as much, if not more, than they love us,” Ryker cuts her off. “We would visit. We would have trips or invite them wherever we are.”
“Have you thought about where you want to go?” I ask her.
“That’s it? Don’t we need to talk about this more?” She gapes at us.
“There’s nothing else to discuss. If you need to get the fuck out of Jacksonville to heal yourself, find yourself, become who you want to be, we will go,” Cade tells her.
After showering and cleaning up, Harley was quick to pass out when we were sitting downstairs in the main room. Ryker carried her up to her room, where they both have been napping since.
Brielle has been sitting at one of the tables on her laptop for the last hour or so. Since she and the guys got here early this morning, they announced they are moving here and buying a place of their own. An idea occurred to me earlier, but I have been too anxious to actually go talk to her.
“Are you good?” Cade asks from where he sits on the couch across from me, nursing a beer.
I nod and shoot to my feet. “I’ll be right back,” I tell him and head straight towards her before I lose the confidence I don’t even feel and change direction.
When Bri spots me, she smiles at me as my heart threatens to explode out of my chest, it is pounding so hard. “Hey, Grayson.”
“Hi.” I attempt to clear the lump in my throat.
“Are you alright? You look a little pale.” She tilts her head at me.
“Um, yeah. Can we talk?” I rub the back of my neck awkwardly.
“Sure. Want to go outside?” I nod, and she stands, leading the way outside and taking a seat in the chairs on the patio.
“This is a little personal, and I don’t want to overstep, so just tell me no.” I wince.
“Okay,” she chuckles. “What is it?”
“What are you going to do with your house now that you guys are moving here?” I ask.
“Well, I don’t really know yet. I don’t really want to sell it. I love that home, and it was something I managed to do all on my own,” she muses. “Why?”
“Now that things are finally over, Harley is ready to take her next step, which means we need to leave Jacksonville, at least for now. She hasn’t announced it yet, so please don’t say anything. But I was thinking, if you aren’t selling, maybe you’d want to rent it out? To us? She hasn’t said where she wants to go, but I don’t think she knows where. The beach would be perfect for her to really work on healing and figuring things out.”
Brielle smiles at me and places a hand on my arm. “Take a breath, Grayson. I think that’s a fantastic idea. She loved the house when she stayed with us. If it’s something you all want to do, you guys can of course live there. You don’t need to worry about rent money, though.”
“Oh no, we would definitely pay you rent,” I tell her, not wanting her to think we are going to just use her for a free place to live.
She chuckles and squeezes my arm. “Okay, we can work that out later. I won’t say anything, but I am really glad she found you, Ryker, and Cayden. You guys were meant for each other.”
“Thank you,” I say as we both stand, and she gives me a hug before heading back inside.
Deciding to stay outside a bit longer, I take a seat again. I really hope this is the right choice. When she said she wanted to leave but wasn’t sure where she wanted to go, I immediately thought of Virginia.
Then, Harley told us Brielle and the guys are moving here. It feels odd that as soon as they move here, we would leave, but I also understand where Harley is coming from. Jacksonville holds so much trauma for her; healing here would be hard. I don’t find myself hating the idea of getting away. I love it here, love the club, and I will miss everyone terribly, but the idea of getting away with just Cade, Ry, and Harley seems like the best thing for us. It really gives us a chance to grow on our own and form an inseparable bond.
I’d like to hope Rage would be proud of us for doing this. I think he would be the most hesitant, not wanting to let his daughter out of his sight, but also the most onboard because of everything that has happened here.
“You alright?” Cade asks from behind me as he walks over and takes the seat Brielle had used. “You didn’t come back in.”
“Yeah,” I breathe out and glance out at the woods. “I talked to Brielle about her house and what she is planning to do with it.”
“You think that’s where we should go?” he asks.
I glance over at him. “Yes. Brielle said we can live there. She doesn’t want to sell it, so it would work out perfectly.”
“Bear has never been to the beach.” He tilts his head in consideration.
“You’re really on board with this?”
“Why wouldn’t I be?” He leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees.
“Because your brother is here. This club has become your sanctuary,” I explain.
“True. But if I think about staying here while you three go, it’s what I imagine someone removing my heart from my chest and leaving with it would feel like.”
I nod, understanding how he feels. I think it’s how we all feel.
“Plus, I think I can find what I want wherever we go. I just don’t want to be surrounded by people.”
I smile. “I believe her house is pretty isolated, and it sits right on the beach. It just won’t be like this set up.” I nod towards the woods.
“Don’t overthink it. You just found us a place to go. Now, we just need to go. If we get there and decide we don’t want to be away, all we have to do is come back. Everything will work out how it is supposed to.”