8. Chapter 8
BONER
The whole club helped with the search. Curtains worked his technological wizardry, Zeus put out feelers with dealers and smaller allied clubs in the province, the prospects did rounds of our territory, and I went out every day for two weeks searchin’ the cold trail of our one night together for any sign’a Blue.
We didn’t find her.
But Curtains wasn’t a well-known hacker for nothin’.
We found out Blue was Faith Felicity Cavendish, born to ‘Rooster’ Thomas Cavendish and Davina Wood in Calgary in 1998. Married to ‘Hazard’ Rick Elsher.
She was twenty-five. Same as Mei and Cleo.
Only three years younger than Curtains and me.
And married.
Curtains had tried to talk me down from my feelings as if I was on the ledge of a buildin’ about to plummet to my death.
“She’s married , man,” he’d said like I didn’t know. Like those words weren’t branded on the inside’a my skull. “And you told her to wait for you, but she didn’t. I know you think you had somethin’, but maybe…I mean maybe she just wanted independence or hell, wanted to go back home?”
Home.
I’d known the woman for less than twenty-four hours and we’d barely talked about our pasts, our traumas, but I knew in my bones that Blue was a girl who’d never known a home.
It was in the way she seemed shocked by my kindness and praise. In the way she seemed stunned by the club, not ’cause of our outlawed nature but ’cause we got along, shot the shit and supported each other like a family.
Even though I was the one who didn’t have any family left, save the sister I’d lost years ago, it was Blue who was alone in this world.
And I couldn’t stand the thought’a that.
It haunted me almost more than her absence. This idea that wherever she was, she was alone, and she’d probably stay that way outta fear for a long fuckin’ time.
A girl like Blue deserved the world, and I wanted to be the one to give it to her so bad it ached in my fuckin’ teeth.
So no, I didn’t think she went back to that motherfucker Rooster and that limp dick Hazard ’cause she missed her family. I had to hope she’d left me to flee from them and find some kinda freedom for herself again. I liked the idea of her livin’ free and bold, blue hair shinin’, smile beamin’ as she went through her day without worryin’ about the men who’d tried to cage her for so long.
I wished she’d given me the chance to prove I could take care’a her myself, especially ’cause I refused to believe the connection between us was one-sided, but I got rationally that a lifetime’a fear had a lot more weight than one night’a heaven.
If she had found some peace somewhere far away, I could live with that. I just needed to know, or my mind would take me to dark places I knew all about ’cause my sister had disappeared once ’fore too and ended up in exactly those kinds’a places.
“She’s not Swan,” Curtains’d reminded me softly as we sat side by side on the couch playin’ Call of Duty one night. “You don’t know she needs savin’.”
The sound’a my sister’s nickname burned through my brain and tangled with the synapses worryin’ about Blue.
I knew they weren’t the same.
Elsa was lost to me forever. I got that. We’d saved her from the triad years ago only to lose her in a way we knew she didn’t want to be found.
But…
“I gotta know she’s okay, man,” I’d murmured, lettin’ the ache in my soul saturate the words on my tongue. “You think I can get outta bed every day knowin’ I’ll never see my sister again without those emails she sends once a year checkin’ in? If I didn’t know she was alive, that she didn’t want us to find her, you think I wouldn’t tear the world apart searchin’?”
Curtains was quiet after that. He got it ’cause it’d been years, but he still loved Elsa more than he’d ever loved anyone probably.
It was the thing that’d brought us together. The thing that brought us to this club.
“I gotta know,” I’d finished, unpausin’ our game. “If she needs help, I gotta be there to give it.”
So we searched for weeks, and Z even pulled Lion in on it. I offered to pay him ’cause he was one’a the most sought-after private investigators in the province now, but he’d tossed my wallet in the trash and told me not to be a fuckin’ idiot.
I’d always liked that guy.
We didn’t find Blue, but I did find her mother’s ring. Or really, Lion found it and paid a buddy to pick it up for me on Vancouver Island and drive it up to Entrance for me. Like hell I was trustin’ the postal service with somethin’ like that.
With nowhere to send it, I’d decided to give it to Grouch Pederson at Evergreen Gas. He hadn’t seemed surprised when I showed up with the package, and he’d made no promises she’d get it, but he promised to try.
At that point, it was all I could ask for. Even if I never saw her again, Blue deserved to have that piece’a her mother back, and I wanted to be the one to give it to her after so many other men had fucked her over.
In the end, King said somethin’ that eased the sharp bite’a longin’ in my chest.
He was good with words like that.
“The kinda love that redefines what it means to be alive is the kinda love that doesn’t come cheap. You gotta earn it, man, and sometimes that means bein’ patient, and sometimes that means fightin’ for it. If you really think Blue’s that woman for you, you gotta trust that you’ll see her again and ’til then gotta live life knowin’ she’d want you to be happy. Maybe that’s why she left in the first place.”
Twenty-four-year-old emotional savant.
So I had no answers, but the club had its own shitstorm to weather, and in a way, it was a welcome fuckin’ distraction.
The White Raiders were tryin’ to set up shop on our turf.
It wasn’t the first time another MC had encroached on our territory, but this was different.
The Raiders were here solely ’cause’a bad blood.
Rooster’d got Axe-Man sent down to prison.
Hazard and Cedar, both men in their crew, had gone to war with Axe-Man and Bat. Cedar had helped us with the Seven Song triad, but it only opened up more questions. What the fuck were the Raiders, known racists, doin’ with the Chinese gang? Why the fuck had Cedar helped us when he was flyin’ Raiders colours and Bat had admitted things didn’t end so smooth between them when their second tour ended.
We’d burned down their rathole in Newstone, but now, a month later, Kodiak was tellin’ us in church that he’d caught sight’a Cedar in town and followed him out to a rural farm out near Furry Creek.
“Burn it to the ground,” Zeus declared, almost dispassionately. “Don’t care if they keep croppin’ up, we’ll burn ’em down each time. These motherfuckers will not dig roots in our soil.”
“I gotta ask, why the fuck does Rooster hate you so much?” Shadow asked, and I was glad he did ’cause I’d been wonderin’ the same thing.
Z shared a look with Bat in that secret language they had I’d never been able to crack. It was the same kinda code Curtains and I shared, that I’d seen between Mute and King. The secret language’a soulmates writtin’ on each other’s bones.
“He was one’a the brothers we kicked out after takin’ down Crux,” Zeus admitted, and the silence that followed was toxic with old memories.
It’d been before my time, but lookin’ at the faces’a Buck, Bat, Skell, Smoke, and King around the chapel table, it wasn’t hard to imagine the horror’a that takedown.
Zeus had killed his own uncle, the prez’a the MC in Entrance, ’cause he’d gone so crooked that he started to target his own brothers in the club.
Includin’ Bat.
“Rooster wasn’t excommunicated like some’a the others ’cause we couldn’t find evidence he was involved in Crux’s betrayal,” Bat added, lookin’ down at his scarred hands, the words Hell Bent on each set’a knuckles. “He left himself when Zeus took over.”
“Sore loser,” Z added with a grim smile. “Wanted the seat for himself. Said he deserved it ’cause he’d been Sergeant At Arms to Crux.”
“If anythin’, it means he was probably involved in takin’ out his own club members, too,” King muttered darkly.
“I didn’t know shit, and I was his fuckin’ nephew,” Zeus pointed out with a long look at his son. “Eugene knew even less, and he still cut himself off from this club from the shame’a it. This wound these fuckers are pickin’ at? It′s old, and it’s gnarly as fuck. I want Rooster dead in the fuckin’ ground, and I wanna be the one to put ’im there.”
Axe-Man snarled, an animal expression that made the hairs on the backs’a my hands stand on end.
Zeus inclined his head like the magnanimous biker king he was and allowed, “If Axe-Man doesn’t get there first.”
“I can make him suffer,” Priest offered in that cold, hollow monotone that made most grown man crap their pants. “Better than any’a you.”
Wrath rolled his eyes and shoved Priest with an elbow, braver than any’a the rest’a us who stared at him like he was fuckin’ insane. “You’re not the only one here who knows how to deliver pain.”
Faster than I could track, Priest had his Karambit knife outta the holster, flipped through his fingers, and then sunk with a dull thud into the table.
Right in the sliver’a space between Wrath’s index and middle fingers.
Our second enforcer only blinked at the still vibratin’ knife and then slowly lifted his hand, deliberately slicin’ into the webbin’ between his fingers as he did so. He glared at Priest as he brought his bleedin’ hand to his mouth and smeared the blood over his teeth so that when he smiled, he did it bloody.
“If Priest hadn’t knocked up Bea, I’d be readin’ some serious sexual tension between you two,” I drawled to break the frission’a tension runnin’ along the table.
Nova was the first to laugh, tippin’ his chin at me in camaraderie.
“I’m just sayin’, I get a shot at that asshole, I’m takin’ it, too,” I tossed out mildly even though the thought’a anyone else puttin’ Blue’s abusive fuckin’ father in the ground made my blood curdle.
“We gotta find ’im ’fore anyone can damn well kill ’im,” Z grunted. “Boner, King, Curtains, go with Kodiak and scout the farm. Take the prospects with ya. I wanna know how many brothers they got and what kinda heat they’re packin’. You can, you torch it then. We need to regroup, we do it tomorrow in church at eleven in the a.m.”
There was a chorus of “yeah, boss,” ’fore the twenty or so men in attendance started for the door. The prospects were on the other side standin’ guard, Carson handin’ back everyone’s phone as they piled out.
I waited for a beat ’til everyone was gone but my Prez.
“We’re still lookin’, brother,” Zeus said the minute we were alone, standin’ up to clap a hand around my shoulder. “We won’t stop, yeah?”
“Curtains thinks I’m bein’ an idiot. I can tell some’a the other guys think so, too.” I didn’t give a fuck what the other brothers thought about it.
I cared what Z thought, though.
Never had a mother or father, and Z was the closest I’d ever come to havin’ a parent.
Someone coulda said I was unlucky to never know my parents, but only if they didn’t know Zeus Garro.
No one was better than him, and he proved it every fuckin’ day.
And he did it again then by sayin’, “Men like us don’t fall in love the way they do in storybooks. We see a woman, and somethin’ hits us like a bullet through the chest. We get this sense in our blood and bones, through the center’a our bein’ that this person is meant for us. It might take a while to get there.” His grin was a small, secret thing in his beard, the one carved there by the hand’a his wife, Loulou. “Sometimes we gotta get our heads outta our asses to realize that no obstacle between us is worthy’a keepin’ us apart. But you already got that clarity. You’ve always been clear-sighted like that even when you came to me, just a kid and hurtin’. You’ve always known what you want and who you are right down to your bones. And now, they’re tellin’ you to find this woman and make sure she’s safe. Maybe even make her yours.”
Zeus’s rough palm moved to my neck, coverin’ the entire width and shakin’ me lightly the way I’d seen him do to King sometimes. Like I was his kid.
That ache in my chest I’d lived with since I lost Elsa eased at that touch and that look in his eye that said I was his brother, his son, his family.
“You picked a fiery one, though,” he joked. “Tellin’ you from experience, they don’t mellow over time.”
I laughed ’cause Loulou was a spitfire through and through.
It was what we all loved about her.
“So, yeah, I’m more than fuckin’ fine with that.”
Z shoved me away then reeled me to rub a hand into my perfectly done hair ’cause he knew I fuckin’ hated it. I swallowed my smile and glared at him.
He chuckled, takin’ his seat at the head’a the carved wooden table again and pullin’ out his phone in clear dismissal. The lit screen showed an image’a Loulou and his daughter, Harleigh Rose, holdin’ his two twin kids, Angel and Monster.
And for the first time in my life, I was greedy enough to want somethin’ like that for myself.
Not just the club but a family I could call my own with a woman who’d carve her name into my bones and make me hers forever.
Since I’d been stabbed in the spring, Zeus had me in charge’a the prospects. It was both a demotion and a promotion. The first was only in my head ’cause I wanted to be on the front lines of the action with my Prez, Bat, Priest, Wrath, Axe-Man, King, and Nova. But I also got that takin’ care of the prospects, teachin’ them our ways like an anthropologist introducin’ a new culture, was almost as sacrosanct as bikers got. This way’a life wasn’t for the faint’a heart. It took an inexplicable kinda courage to be a man who could look society in the eye and tell it to fuck right off. A certain kinda guy to stitch into the patchwork quilt’a The Fallen and make it more whole than it was before.
And there I was, the man to induct them and judge them and hopefully, find them worthy of wearin’ that flamin’ skull and wing patch’a The Fallen MC.
So I decided to be honoured. There was no point in bitchin’ about it the way Skell had done when he was in charge’a Curtains and me as prospects. I refused to take my bitterness about the way life could punch a guy in the throat out on the young men who’d already suffered at life’s hands and found us for our unusual brand’a solace. We were a band’a outcasts and rebels, and there was no such thing as too much bad or weird in our crew.
Some clubs were ripe with racist, homophobic, misogynistic pigs, but not The Fallen.
So of course, I had to give Carson shit just like I woulda done with any’a my other brothers.
“Shit, you two don’t quit it soon, it’ll be turnin’ me on, and trust me, ridin’ with a boner is not comfortable.”
Carson’s Old Man, Benny, unlocked lips long enough to blush and duck his head in man’s shoulder. Carson just leveled me with a cool glare.
He was gettin’ better at those.
And the fact he didn’t immediately drop Benny’s ass to the ground was good.
Progress.
Kid was raised by a piece’a shit father who taught him to be ashamed of where he liked to dip his wick. But he was learnin’ there was no shame to be had here.
Sure, I’d surprised them makin’ out against the side wall’a the clubhouse, but this was our space, so it was their space. They wanted to suck face anywhere on Fallen MC property, they were sure as shit welcome.
God knew Nova and Lila did it enough for the lot of us.
“Really, I’m doin’ ya a public service by stoppin’ this ’fore you pop wood, kid,” I continued as I felt Curtains join my side.
“He’s right,” Curtains said, and I could hear his grin even though I didn’t turn to face him. “Heckler actually crashed his bike once after starin’ too long at this pretty girl in these little shorts.”
“Fuck off, Curtains,” Heckler hollered from inside the clubhouse.
We sniggered.
Carson sighed as if he was sixty years old and severely imposed upon and not a twenty-three-year-old prospect. “You two are the worst.”
Curtains raised his hand for a fist bump that I was only too happy to oblige. We exploded the gesture, then turned with matchin’ grins to see Benny hidin’ a giggle behind his hand.
“I think they’re pretty hilarious,” he admitted to Carson. “I’ll let you go. I just wanted to swing by to say hi on my way home from the bookstore.”
Benny worked at Cressida’s store, Paradise Found.
“Nice hello,” I muttered.
“Tell me about it,” Curtains quipped.
Carson raised his hand to flip us the bird.
Benny laughed, his big brown eyes sparklin’ like somethin’ from a comic book.
Unbidden, the image of Blue’s anime blue eyes flashed across my vision.
Fuck.
How was it possible to miss someone you’d only known for a single night?
It was more than missin’, though. Everythin’ felt…off. Like gravity had shifted and I was constantly off-balance, overcorrectin’ to fight the strain.
I thought about her when I went home at night and when I lay in bed alone. Again in the mornin’ when I woke up with my arms empty and my noise bereft’a the scent of that lush blue hair.
When I saw my brothers hold their women, or in Carson’s case, their man, and knew that I’d missed out on my chance for somethin’ like that.
“You ready?” Curtains asked, bangin’ his shoulder into mine.
I pulled my mind away from the sinkhole Blue’d left at the center’a my mind and clapped my brother on the back. “Let’s do it. It’s gonna be a drive.”
“Nice night for it,” Carson said, joinin’ us as we moved toward the line’a bikes shinin’ chrome bright under the hot sun.
Benny stood on the stairs to the clubhouse, watchin’ us like someone sendin’ their sailor off to sea.
It made somethin’ in my gut twist and ache.
Longin’ , I thought.
King came out around the back’a the clubhouse with a backpack on and another in his hand that he tossed to me as soon as he got close. “In case we need to light it up tonight.”
I unzipped the bag to see Firestarter sticks, flash torches, and good old-fashioned rags with bottles’a liquor.
Kodiak snorted from behind me, scarin’ me shitless so I nearly dropped the bag.
“Jesus, Ko, make a noise once in a while, would ya?” I groused. “Fuckin’ silent as the dead.”
His answerin’ smile was small and dark. He didn’t say a word as he pulled his bike outta line and swung a leg over it, not even glancin’ over his shoulder as he peeled outta the lot.
“Fucker,” I grumbled as we all scrambled to get after him.
Everythin’ fell away as soon as the purr of my Harley vibrated beneath me and the road opened up outside’a Entrance on the windin’ ribbon’a the Sea to Sky Highway.
This was peace.
Sun blurrin’ into one golden smear behind the dusky silhouette’a the mountains, gemstone colours streakin’ across the sky like a child’s finger paintin’. The purity’a this kinda beauty stole my breath, but I didn’t need it as I streaked across the road just like those colours, only I was flyin’ the green and black’a my club. Curtains rode beside me in formation, and it felt like home, like comfort, like brotherhood to have him at my side and King at my back with Kodiak leadin’ us.
Whenever I felt small and alone, that kid who just lost his sister and the only family he’d ever known, I came to this place in my mind or rode out with any’a the brothers who’d keep me company.
Because this ––this place, this club, this version’a myself––would always be my haven.
And I’d die fightin’ to protect it, smilin’ ’til the last.
So when we finally took the exit off’a Furry Creek headin’ into the wild, the only thing I felt was excitement that we might crush an enemy ’fore they could hurt us. That I might stomp out the light’a someone who had taken the peace from a woman I cared about.
We parked the bikes one click out from the farm and continued on foot, stickin’ to the high grass at the side’a the road even though dusk was settlin’ a dark cloak over the landscape. By the time the black rectangle punctuated with yellow boxes’a light appeared before us, stars were startin’ to dot the night’s sky.
Still, two men were outside the house near a barn, the lit end of a cigarette like a firefly, and the low murmur’a their voices indistinguishable from where we hid, crouched in the dark. Kodiak turned to face us, usin’ hand gestures to order us to spread out.
I crept around the left side’a the property, behind the two smokers, behind the barn and back up the side’a the house. Gravel crunched almost imperceptibly under the careful tread’a my boots, mostly drowned out by the buzz and click of crickets in the grass. Through the lit window, I could see a dingy kitchen with an older, heavyset woman sittin’ at a peelin’ Formica table scrubbin’ potatoes with muddied hands.
And across from her, a flash’a blue caught my eye.
My heart crashed into my ribcage and lost power.
A second later, Blue herself appeared in the square frame.
Fuck, the sight’a her moved through me like a blade.
My imagination hadn’t done justice to her beauty, the thick thighs and heart-shaped face, the glint’a metal in her upper lip and nose matchin’ the way the light shone in those azure-blue eyes. She was wearin’ somethin’ that covered her from wrists to ankles to throat and she was still the sexiest woman I’d ever seen.
But my mind only had a moment to catalogue the joy’a seein’ her ’fore I noted the blue’a the bruise tattooed on the skin’a her cheek as she turned her head to speak to the other woman.
She was here in the den’a the enemy, and she was hurt .
Rage possessed me, a demon wearin’ my face.
My gun was in my hand in a heartbeat.
My feet takin’ me to the back door in the next.
She must’a heard me comin’ ’cause she was there lookin’ at me through the closed screen door a beat after that.
And everythin’ in me arrested as if in doin’ so I could extend that single moment into many.
“Aaron,” she mouthed without sound, those gorgeous eyes wide with shock.
Her gaze dropped to the gun, then back to my face, notin’ the fury vibratin’ every molecule in me.
“No,” she mouthed then in an actual whisper, “No. There are nine men in this house with guns. Another few near the barn. Rooster is due back any minute with more.”
I could barely digest the words. Rage was rushin’ in my ears, drownin’ her out and whisperin’ its own devilish song: kill them all, kill them all.
Kill. Them. All.
What was a dozen men against the weight’a my wrath?
“Please,” she said, steppin’ closer to press her hand to the thin wire screen separatin’ us. “I can’t see you hurt.”
“You’re fuckin’ hurt,” I hissed quietly between my teeth.
“Not as much as I would be if you got yourself killed,” she promised, before checkin’ over her shoulder as someone hollered within the house. “You’ve gotta go.”
“Promise to meet me,” I pushed, placin’ my hand over hers, the warmth’a her skin seepin’ through the screen door. “And I’ll go.”
“It’s too dangerous.”
“I like livin’ on the edge,” I reminded her as thuds sounded inside and Blue tried to pull away. My fingers punched through the flimsy screen, tearin’ holes so I could curl my fingers around hers.
She bit into that plush bottom lip, and I noticed a healin’ split in one corner. My fingers curled tighter over hers.
When she whispered a series’a numbers before slippin’ her hand from mine and turnin’ back into the kitchen, I didn’t get it at first.
It was only after I dissolved into the shadows to find my brothers to call off the fire that I realized what they were.
Her phone number.