Chapter 23
23
Rogue
Melody showed up an hour before I expected her, still dressed in her scrubs. Her long hair is still wet from the shower we took together, right before we did the best we could to need one again.
She’s sleeping now, her chest rising and falling in time with her rhythmic breaths. In sleep, all tension leaves her face and she looks so young, so gorgeous, so untouched. The things she sees at the ER everyday are what puts that tension there, I’m sure. And I’m glad, proud even, to be the one who can wipe it away, even if just for a couple of hours.
I can still feel her pussy clenching on my cock although it’s been over an hour since she came for me last. I wish that and her warm, soft body next to me in bed, were enough to put me to sleep too. But there’s too much to do. Too much to plan. We started something that needs finishing fast. Before resting on our laurels gets anyone else hurt.
So as much as I’d love to keep trying to fall asleep beside Melody—or wake her up and go another round—I get out of bed, missing the warmth of her closeness the moment it’s gone. But I push all that out of my mind as I dress and leave the room, heading downstairs to the bar.
Soft music is playing and several voices talking reach me as I descend the dark staircase. It’s not a party going on down there. Not even a quiet unwinding after a job well done. No one’s laughing. Everyone sounds serious. Some sound like they’re arguing. All that’s on me too. I should lead the MC better. I should give us all a purpose again. I should make sure we can once again feel like winners.
I open the door that leads into the bar and just stand there for a couple of moments, watching my brothers and sisters. Blade, Alice and Creed are here. As are Trinity, Rock and Minx. Lotus and some of the other club girls are hanging out by the bar. The bruises on Lotus’ face are starting to fade, I’m happy to see. Skye and Judge are sitting at a table by themselves. She’s bending over her laptop and he’s the only one who notices me standing here. He nods and I nod back.
Then I open the door wide and walk in. As usual, they all turn to me, the ones that were talking quieting down in preparation to hearing some words of wisdom from me.
It’s a gift from God, what you have . The way you can captivate anyone and everyone. People will follow you whether you want it or not. So be wise.
My grandmother told me that often, the last time on her deathbed right before she passed about eight years ago. Back then, I thought she was just exaggerating. Lately, I’m starting to accept that she was right and I should try to be wiser.
“Someday soon, we need to throw a party,” I say loudly and grin. “It’s been too heavy around here lately.”
More than a few whoop in agreement and even Blade smiles as he raises his beer bottle at me.
I pick up a beer at the bar and go join him and Alice at their table.
“But first we have to finish what we started,” I add.
“So, what’s next for us, Prez?” Rock asks, turning in his chair to face me. “Are we going after that strip club owner? Blade says we are.”
I glance at Blade then nod. “Yes, we are. We were too late to save the poor women he was holding at that house, but we’re gonna make sure he never does a thing like that again.”
The sounds of agreement are darker this time, but no less enthusiastic.
“This will mean making war on Hydra,” Alice says, her voice easily chiming louder than any other in the room.
“But we’re ready for that,” I assert. “We proved it over and over again in the last couple of weeks. We’re ready to take on anyone.”
Almost all who heard me raise their glasses as I say that and voice their agreement. Skye just glances at me over her laptop screen. It’s impossible to read what she’s thinking off her face and I won’t even try.
“So relax tonight, because tomorrow we go to war,” I announce to the room and raise my bottle in toast. Glasses and bottles all over the room go up a second time.
A good two thirds of the club is gathered in here tonight and lone wolves as most of them were before joining us, they all seem of one mind tonight. They all seem ready to stand behind me.
The dissent sown by Tito, his brother and their mother seems to have died down since they left. Unless it’s the one third not here tonight who are still feeling mutinous. Not for long. I plan on earning their trust and their loyalty every day from here on out.
I take a long swig of my beer and about half of it very nearly goes down the wrong way as I hear a very familiar voice say, “You run a loyal club here, Rogue, no two ways about that.”
I didn’t see the door open and I didn’t see him walk in, but Zane is now standing by the door, his leather jacket zipped up to the throat, his eyes shining bright even in the dim light of the bar.
“But whatever happened to not walking on the dark side?” he asks as he approaches. “Whatever happened to not making pacts with the devil?”
Several of our newer members stand to block his path. I signal them to let him through, because Alice is as shocked as Blade, Creed and I am.
“I heard you finally tracked down Ghost,” Zane says as he comes up to me. “I would’ve like to have been there.”
I’m standing and I don’t remember getting to my feet. I haven’t seen Zane—or Unholy, as he began calling himself after he broke out of prison for killing a priest—in years.
“What? You all lost the ability to speak?” Zane asks looking over the room, then fixing me with a very piercing gaze.
“How’d you get in?” Creed asks. “We have a guard on the door.”
“He didn’t want to test me,” Zane says.
“And he was with us,” Tito chimes in from the near darkness by the door. “We’re still members here, aren’t we?”
“You walked out, last I checked,” Alice answers, saving me the trouble.
Funny how things can go from one thing to another in the blink of an eye. Most of the members in here with us never knew Zane. Some were here the last time he wanted to join us. And they all look confused as fuck right now, some poised to leap into action, most looking at Zane, Tito and his brother warily.
I ignore it all and offer Zane my hand. “It’s good to see you again, old friend.”
“But not brother?” he asks as he shakes my hand. His tone might be cold and level, but his eyes seem content. And not as wild as they were the last time we spoke. Maybe he finally found some peace. I hope so. He needed it.
“What brings you here?” I ask as I sit back down, pointing at the empty seat next to me, meaning he should take it. He does.
“I’m ready to call you brother again,” he says. “I’m here to ask if I can join your club.”
I’ve known Zane all my life. Since we both wore diapers. He was closer to me than my own two brothers. But that all changed the day he tortured and killed a young priest that might not have deserved it. He’s done a lot more since. Unforgivable things.
“Nothing’s changed,” I say, wondering if I’ll be able find the right words to send him away again. A part of me doesn’t want to.
“Sure it has,” he says and laughs harshly. “You murdered Ghost. So you’ve now joined the elite club of stone-cold killers.”
“We did what had to be done,” Blade says, sounding like every syllable hurts him to utter. “What needed to be done.”
“And you’re in league with Devil’s Nightmare MC,” Zane says. “So much for all your righteous talk of never crossing over to the dark side.”
He’s still firmly on the dark side. That much is clear to me from the dead, cold look beneath all that burning brightness in his eyes. Maybe he’s still as wild, but just better at hiding it.
“I’m sorry, Zane,” I say. “But I don’t follow your logic. We don’t harbor criminals and fugitives. And we never will. I wish things were different for us. I really do. I would love to call you brother again.”
I’ve said pretty much the same thing to him the last time he came asking this same thing. He ranted and raved and fought then. Now he just barks a laugh, leaning his head back to get more of a bellow going. It is not a happy sound.
“I wish I could believe you,” he says. “But you did always know how to lie convincingly.”
“It’s not a lie,” I say. “Our paths diverged a long time ago?—”
“I told you there’d come a time when you’d need me more than I needed you back then,” he says. “And that time is now.”
“How so?”
He shakes his head, grins darkly and stands up. “Maybe if you’d welcomed me as a brother, I’d tell you. Maybe if you didn’t spew your vile lies while trying to get me out of here the moment I walked in. But I see now that this particular dream of mine will never come true. Goodbye, Gabriel. God speed.”
He strides out, the crowd parting for him. I should just let him walk out. But I can’t.
It’s not that I need him to tell me what he knows.
It’s that I need him to believe I meant everything I ever told him.
He’s standing beside his huge bike when I catch up to him. The saddle bags hanging off the sides are bulging, probably because they carry all he owns. I’ve kept tabs on him all these years, as best I could, and did what I could for him from afar, because I couldn’t acknowledge him as the friend he is to me. If things were different, if he hadn’t lost his mind the way he did with that priest, he would be running this MC with me. Possibly even instead of me.
“Zane, wait,” I say.
He stops moving, but keeps his back turned on me.
“You’re making a fool of yourself in front of your club, running after me like this,” he says.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “Come back inside. Let’s have a drink together. For old times’ sake.”
He turns, his lips curled up into a snarl. “Old times are nothing I want to remember. I don’t need your pity, Gabriel. I got your answer.”
“Not giving you a place here with us is what I have to do,” I tell him. “Not what I want to do. You made your choice. And now I have to make this one.”
No one followed us outside and I’m glad for it. This whole conversation should’ve been held in private. Between friends.
“It’s the only way we can do the good we do,” I say.
“I did good killing that priest,” he says. “He was a predator and no one saw it. He had already ruined many lives and he would’ve ruined many more. Even if no one else believed me, I expected you to believe me.”
I didn’t then and I’m still not sure I should. Nothing ever indicated Father August was what Zane claimed he was. Even back then, Zane showed his dark side. Now, I’m afraid it’s all there is to the man he’d become.
“What do you need from me?” I ask. “Money? A place to lay low for a while? You can have that.”
He shakes his head, his face tightening into a grimace of anger, the only unguarded emotion he’s displayed there since he got here.
“I told you what I want,” he says and mounts his bike. “I want to be your brother again. But that’s more than you can give.”
I close the distance between us and grab his arm to stop him leaving. “You are my brother. Nothing will ever change that.”
He shrugs off my grip, chuckles darkly and revs his bike. The prospect manning the gate gives me a questioning look.
“Let him go,” I yell over the rumbling of Zane’s bike.
He does.
And I just stand there, staring at the gate long after it’s closed again and the rumbling of Zane’s bike isn’t even an echo anymore. Truth is, I never stopped wishing that things had gone different between Zane and me. But he’s a wanted man. A killer on the run. And he’s added considerably to his body count over the years.
The day I let him return to the MC—the club he founded as much as I did—is the day we can say goodbye to working with the authorities.
And that’s just the sad truth that didn’t need rehashing tonight. Because it changed nothing. Just added another layer to the regret of it all.