Chapter 20 EMMETT
EMMETT
“Do you have a jacket?” I asked as Nova climbed out of her car. Christ. Did I really care if she got cold? Yes.
She blinked, looked to the house and then back to my face. “Um . . . yeah.”
She went to the car’s backseat and grabbed a blazer, quickly slipping it on.
I wasn’t letting her inside the door, not just because I didn’t trust her but because it was a goddamn wreck. After a week-long bender, my house was trashed. There were beer cans and liquor bottles scattered everywhere. My living room reeked of old pizza and my bedroom of dirty clothes.
I hadn’t been on a tear like this since the club.
Ironically, I’d gone on a bender after shooting Nova’s brother.
Leo had gotten me piss drunk last Saturday after I’d put it all together. He’d stayed the night, never leaving my side as I’d come to terms with this. Or tried.
I was still struggling.
And rather than deal with it, I’d spent most of my days in the bottle. Hell, today was the first day all week I’d managed to sober up enough to head into work.
Dash had told everyone I’d gotten sick. He knew the truth. So did Leo. But TJ Johnson’s death was club business, and even though I hated lying to Presley and Isaiah, it was better they didn’t know.
I’d planned on drinking tonight away too and would have if Nova hadn’t shown up. One look at her and it was amazing how quickly my buzz had disappeared.
She looked beautiful. Stunning, really. My fingers itched to dive into her hair. My mouth watered at the thought of fitting my lips over hers. Mostly, I wanted to pull her into my arms and pretend that this past week hadn’t happened.
Instead I kept my distance, leading the way to the deck chairs we’d sat on countless times.
I took my usual seat.
Nova—June—whatever the fuck I was supposed to call her, took hers too. She placed her hands in her lap and looked out at the trees, her body tense.
I sat perfectly still, not trusting myself to keep from touching her. There’d been a split second at the bar, right after she’d walked in the door, that my heart had leapt out of my goddamn chest. I’d been so fucking happy to see her, but then it had all come crashing back.
The lies. The deception. She’d used me.
And now she was here because she wanted the truth.
I bit back a bitter laugh. The truth? We were months too late.
“I’m sorry, Emmett.” She looked over and even in the dark I saw the tears swimming in her eyes.
It would be so easy to fall for those damn tears. To pick her up, cradle her to my chest and promise her we’d figure this out. But it was too late.
“Was it all a lie?”
“No. Not all of it.”
I stared at her, studying her face like I had at her condo last week. A face I thought I’d known so well and now . . . I didn’t know shit. “What was true?”
“Most of it. More than you probably think. And when we were together, that was true.”
I believed her. There was only so much she could fake. Her intentions here. Her name. But when our bodies had been connected, when I’d moved inside of her, there’d been no faking that.
She’d been mine.
And damn it, I would have kept her.
But I was a fool tricked into believing a string of lies. Tricked into thinking there was a woman out there for me. Tricked into falling in love with her.
“Why?” I knew the answer, but I asked it anyway. If she wanted the truth, she could blaze the trail.
“My brother was a Warrior.” Her voice was so quiet it nearly got lost in the night. “You know that already, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“He joined the club as soon as he turned eighteen. He didn’t even finish high school. He wanted to be a Warrior and the second they’d let him prospect, he was knocking on their door.”
It didn’t sound all that much different than when I’d joined.
The same was true with Dash. Granted, we’d graduated from high school.
My parents wouldn’t have allowed it any other way.
But the moment I’d been able, all I’d wanted to do was ride a bike alongside my dad.
To wear the cut and share in the pride of being a Tin King.
“When we were growing up, TJ was my best friend. That was his name. TJ. You probably know that too.”
Again, I nodded.
“My older sister and I would fight a lot, but TJ and I were close. We’d spend our summers together playing outside.
Mom would let us stay up late on Friday nights after school, so we’d camp out in the living room and he always let me pick the movies we watched.
I helped him study algebra and would make him grilled peanut butter and jelly sandwiches whenever he flunked a test.”
She’d loved him. Pure and simple. She’d loved her brother.
My insides twisted and chest pinched. I really should have had more to drink tonight. The guilt had been unbearable this week but being here, listening to her . . .
There was no way she could know that I’d been the one to kill her brother.
Dad had insisted on taking responsibility. He’d made Leo and me swear that when we returned to the clubhouse after the shooting, we’d tell everyone Dad had pulled the trigger.
Technically, he had. But he’d been out of bullets, having used most of them earlier that day to sight in his new pistol. He hadn’t reloaded his magazine.
My Glock had been loaded full.
I would have owned it, but the Kings had been at war with the Warriors for so long that a dead member was bound to cause another stir. Dad had wanted the retaliation aimed his way, not mine.
I’d wondered many times over the years if he’d known just how the Warriors would strike back. If he’d known that by taking responsibility, he’d signed his own death certificate.
Dad had saved my life. He’d saved me so I could be here sitting beside Nova.
The only way she’d know was if I told her the truth.
She’d despise me.
Yes, she’d deceived me for months, but I wasn’t sure I could stomach her hatred. She had every right. Just like I had every right to hate her.
Yet here we were, on my deck, sitting in chairs we’d sat in for months because I couldn’t let her go.
“He was at a fight,” she said, her voice hoarse. “Boxing or MMA or something. I don’t know. But it was organized by your club.”
“Boxing,” I told her. “It was always boxing.”
She nodded, tucking her hands between her legs. She was probably cold. The sun had disappeared behind the horizon and the temperature was plummeting.
“I don’t know if TJ was a good boxer or not. I’d never seen him in a fight. He came home once from the Warrior clubhouse with cuts on his knuckles and a black eye. He didn’t talk about what happened with the club. Not that he’d tell me anyway.”
How had TJ even gotten hooked up with the Warriors?
From the outside, the Johnsons were a normal family without any ties to a motorcycle club.
They hadn’t lived in Ashton, so it wasn’t like TJ had been exposed to the Warriors on a regular basis.
Was there a relative or some tie I’d missed?
Maybe if I hadn’t been in a drunken stupor this past week, I’d know the answer.
“He went to one of your fights.” Nova’s face hardened and she stared out into the distance.
“You cheated him. I don’t know exactly what happened but the other Warriors who were there said that TJ got cheated out of his fight and his winnings.
When he called you on it, he was killed. By your father.”
There was rage in her voice. And that fury, right there, was the motivation for her charade. There was enough anger vibrating off her body to drive her to revenge.
Except TJ’s death had been years and years ago. Maybe she hadn’t known. Maybe the real story had only come out after the Warriors had all been arrested.
It was a fucking shame her story was wrong.
“That’s what you think happened.” I scoffed. “Figures.”
“What figures?”
“It figures that the Warriors would come up with that bullshit story about how your brother was killed.”
“It’s the truth.”
“Whose truth?”
She flinched.
“Do you want the truth or not?”
“How do I know you won’t lie to me?”
I leveled her with my gaze. “One of us on this deck is a liar. It sure as hell isn’t me.”
Nova had the decency to look ashamed.
“I remember your brother.”
She sucked in a short breath and even in the faint light, I saw the flush leave her cheeks.
“I remember that night.” I never forgot those nights. The bad ones.
Those were the nights I questioned everything. The nights when I didn’t want to wear the patch. The nights that stained my soul and no matter how many times I washed, the blood stayed on my hands.
“For the most part, we hosted our fights at the clubhouse,” I said. “We’d have them in the basement. But every now and then, we’d organize something bigger. Something that would draw a larger crowd and more money. A lot more money.”
The clubhouse fights had been an excuse to party.
We’d fight and drink and mess around with women not afraid of some blood.
When Draven had built the clubhouse at the far end of the lot at the garage, he’d made sure the basement was large and secure.
It had been a bunker of sorts, a place where people could come in a disaster.
Most of the basement had been one large open room and that was where we’d had the fights.
The basement’s smaller rooms had been for other purposes.
They’d seen far worse than some drunken fights.
Which was why all the rooms, including the main room, had been built with a drain in the center to wash away blood and grime.
Dad had once made the joke that the club should have bought stock in bleach for how much we’d poured down those drains.
TJ wouldn’t have been allowed through the front door for a clubhouse fight.
But the bigger fights had required we loosen the restrictions on the guest list. We never would have invited a Warrior, but TJ and his fellow members had slipped in the door regardless.