Chapter 16
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
JOHNNY “HAWK” MANN
I don’t know if I should be disappointed or grateful. It turns out I didn’t have to chain Jo to my bed after all. She willingly fell asleep with my arms wrapped around her naked body, and her ice-cold feet tucked between my legs. My definition of bliss in its purest fucking form.
We woke up, took turns showering, and prepared for what will probably go down as one of the hardest days of her life. Instead of my usual garb that consisted of a pair of worn jeans and a thermal, I threw on a black button-down shirt and a pair of slacks, while Jo opted for a black form fitting knee length black dress. Seeing her all dressed up had me making a mental note to take her somewhere fancy when all of this was behind us, like the new steakhouse that just opened in Raleigh.
After she slid her feet into a pair of heels, I took her hand in mine, and led her out of my bedroom. That’s when I saw them—all my brothers, dressed and ready to escort us to the funeral. Jo’s eyes filled with tears as they all took a moment to offer her their condolences. Holly, Birdie, and Bianca were there too, and when Holly hugged Jo, she told her that she planned a repass for Andrew.
“Thank you, but you didn’t have to do that,” Jo said. “I…well, Andrew and I don’t have much family. It’s just me now.”
Holly pulled out of Jo’s arms and took her hands in hers, giving them a gentle squeeze as she glanced from me to Jo. “I know you just met us, and things between you and Hawk are…well, I don’t know what they are, but he took you here to us, and that means something. If you let us, we’ll be your family.”
Jo thanked her by pulling her into another hug, and I mouthed my thanks to my president’s wife. I wasn’t sure Jo would let them in—hell, I didn’t even know where she and I stood after the funeral—but the offer was there, and for that I was grateful.
Sometimes life deals us a shitty hand, and we lose the people we were born to. But that doesn’t mean we can’t find new people to belong to.
Leftie handed me Chestnut’s leash, and with the Satan’s Knights leading the charge, I drove Jo’s car to the funeral home. Mable greeted us and escorted us to the room where Andrew’s body was. The flowers we had chosen were displayed on top of the American flag that covered the sleek casket, and a tray of prayer cards were left on a small table for people to take on their own.
Jo seemed to hold it together, which I was surprised about. Chestnut, on the other hand, was a different story. As soon as we entered the room, I lost my grip on the leash, and he rushed for the casket. He sat on his hind legs, just staring at it. Chestnut was on his final watch. For as much experience as I have with dogs, I’d never seen anything like it.
When it was time to transport Andrew to his final resting place, the room cleared out to give Jo a few moments alone to say goodbye. I didn’t go far, I just stood in the back of the room in case she needed me. After she was done, I escorted her and Chestnut back to the car. Then I went back inside and said goodbye to the man I called a brother, myself.
“It wasn’t supposed to be like this,” I said as I dragged my fingers through my hair. “We took a vow—
leave no man behind, and here we are.” I dropped my hand back to my side as my gaze locked on the ribbon pinned to the flowers, and the words that read beloved brother . “I know you weren’t too keen on me starting something up with Jo when we got back, but I got her from here, and I promise you can rest easy knowing that.”
With that I turned to leave. Maverick, Ghost, Shady, Capone, and Ink all stood in the doorway, waiting to act as pallbearers. The carried Andrew out of the funeral home, and when we arrived at the cemetery, they carried him to the gravesite. They stood with me and Jo as the taps played, and they didn’t straddle their bikes until after was presented with an American flag, thanking her for her brother’s service.
It wasn’t until it was just the two of us, saying our final goodbyes, that Jo fell apart.
“How am I supposed to walk away and just leave him here?” she cried, as I wrapped my arms around her. She buried her face against my chest and sobbed. I don’t know how long we stood like that, but it was good while before she pulled out of my arms and wiped her tearstained cheeks. I wasn’t a fan of seeing her so distraught, the only time she looked somewhat at ease when was she came.
I could fuck her day and night, but I wanted more than that. I wanted to hear her laugh. I wanted to stare across a crowded room and have her smile at me. It wouldn’t happen overnight. Grief didn’t just disappear, but it didn’t have to consume her.
We made our way back to the car and spent the rest of the day surrounded by my brothers and their women. There was an abundance of food thanks to Holly, and Maverick kept everyone’s glasses full. Jo looked like she belonged, especially when she beat Leftie in a game of pool.
“Be honest,” she said, nudging the old geezer playfully. “You let me win, didn’t you?”
“No, but I should probably tell you I have arthritis in both my hands, and a chimp could beat me. You want a fair game, go up against Ink.”
Jo’s eyes flit to Ink, and she raised an eyebrow, silently challenging him. I was about to intervene and tell her that he’s not the type to play games. But he put down his beer and picked up Leftie’s abandoned pool stick.
“Rack ‘em,” he grunted.
Seeing Ink back in his element had everyone crowding around the table, even lovesick Capone, who had spent the better part of the night on the phone with Tara. Jo won that game too, and Ink challenged her to a rematch.
“Best out of three.”
The night went on and Jo’s victory was short-lived. The next day she went to the salon, and I brought a crew to Andrew’s apartment. The plan was to clean everything, so Jo wouldn’t have to walk into a crime scene. It took three days. We wound up throwing out the bed and stripping the walls. By the time I let Jo in there, there wasn’t much for her to do. We donated his clothes to charity, packed up some pictures, and got rid of all his furniture. We turned the key back to Andrew’s landlady and brought whatever Jo had decided to keep back to her apartment.
While she unpacked the two boxes and started going through whatever paperwork she recovered from Andrew’s, I scoped out her fridge. I wasn’t shocked to find it bare, she’d been staying with me for over a week. But now we were going back to our normal schedules. She needed food.
“There’s not much in there,” she said from the couch. “I have a couple of menus in the righthand drawer. We can order in if you’re hungry.”
I shut the refrigerator and joined her on the couch, draping my arm across the back of it as I took in all the papers she was reading through.
“I was actually thinking I’d go to Kroeger and pick some things up. Anything in particular you want me to get? No rice of course.”
She dropped the papers on her lap and turned to me, a soft expression filling her features.
“You want to go food shopping?”
“Well, yeah. You got stale crackers in your cabinet and six bottles of water in your fridge. There’s also something in the vegetable drawer but I can’t figure out what it is, and I think it’s growing hair.”
She stared at me for a beat, then shook her head. “I can go tomorrow after I visit Aunt Barbara. I have an appointment with her caseworker about potentially moving her somewhere closer to here. But I might have to cancel. Well, I might have to cancel the appointment. I can’t find the paperwork we used to place her in the home. Andrew wasn’t the most organized person. I knew I should’ve kept them myself.”
“You didn’t mention that earlier.” I twirled a strand of her hair around my finger. “What time is the appointment?”
“Ten.”
“Alright, well maybe they have a record of everything.” I tucked the loose strand of hair behind her ear and got to my feet. “You keep looking, and I’ll go get us some food. I gotta head into Booker & Mann tomorrow, but I should be good to take you to the nursing home.”
I was halfway toward the door when she responded. “Are you planning on staying here?”
“Tonight, yeah. Don’t know what the rest of the week looks like,” I admitted.
Leftie agreed to keep an eye on Chestnut for the night, but he wasn’t a dog sitter, and I didn’t feel comfortable putting him in a kennel at Booker & Mann. Jo wasn’t blowing smoke about her landlord not allowing pets, and her place was way too small for a dog Chestnut’s size. Still, I hated that there would likely be nights where I left her here. There was nothing wrong with her place. It was cute and the building was in a safe neighborhood. I just didn’t want to be apart from her, but I knew she’d spook easily if I pressed too hard. Jo was independent, or maybe she was too used to doing life on her own. Either way I had to ease into it, or I’d lose her.
“We’ll talk about it more once we get some food in our bellies.”
She didn’t argue, and I left for the store. I put the frozen pizza I bought in her oven, and after dinner we didn’t talk about shit. She abandoned all the papers we recovered from Andrew’s house on the couch and led me into her bedroom where she gave me the best blow job of my life. Thinking back now, I think she intentionally tried to distract me.
The next day we visited with Aunt Barbara, and I was surprised by her condition. It had been a couple of years since I saw her, but the woman looked decades older, and could barely speak. The stroke she had must’ve been massive. I didn’t see how moving her would help matters. She seemed to be well taken care of and disturbing that might be a setback to any progress made. I didn’t voice my opinion though. The nursing home was far from Jo, but it wasn’t that far from me. We could make it work, I just needed to somehow convince her of that.
She met with the caseworker, and I stayed with Aunt Barbara. When the meeting was over, Jo returned with a stack of brochures, and a troubled expression on her face. She braved a smile, and we finished our visit with her aunt. I waited all night for her to tell me what happened, we ate dinner together, and fucked three times. It wasn’t until I was halfway out the door, that she decided to share her worries with me.
“I feel guilty moving her,” she confessed as she pulled the sheet around her chest and peered at me from under the fringe of her long lashes. “The nursing homes the caseworker suggested all look nice enough, and they have great reviews, but I feel like I’m ripping her away from her home.” She sighed, holding the sheet to her chest with one hand as she pushed her fingers through her hair. “I’m sorry…you got a long ride ahead of you.” She dropped her hand back to her side and offered me a sad smile. “Text me when you get to the clubhouse?”
I stood in the doorway of her bedroom for a good minute before I walked back into the living room where she left the brochures on the coffee table, then I made my way back to her room. I kicked off my boots and climbed in beside her. We went over the brochures, and she shared her pros and cons for each one, but when we were done, she didn’t look any closer to settling on a place.
“What if you don’t move her?”
Her gaze snapped to me. “Johnny, you saw how long it took for me to get there today. I can’t make that trip every week.”
“Because of the salon?”
She looked away and sighed. “The salon is in trouble. Business isn’t that great, and I’m drowning in debt. I can’t miss work to go visit my sick aunt. I need to find ways to bring more clients in, so I can crawl out of the hole I’ve gotten myself into. If she’s closer, I can stop in for a visit after work…or… I don’t know.” She blew out a ragged breath. “I’ll figure it out.”
She threw me for a loop with the news of the salon suffering, but we’d visit that situation once we got Aunt Barbara under control.
“Andrew would go visit with her every Sunday, am I right?”
“For the most part, yes,” she replied, bringing her eyes back to me. “So what if we kept her there, and I took Andrew’s place. It’s not far from me, and Sundays are slow for me unless I’ve got something with the club.”
“I can’t ask you to do that,” she whispered.
“Why not??”
“Because it’s not your responsibility. You and I… we’re just—”
I cut her off, not liking where she was going with the conversation. “We’re just what? Fucking?”
She cocked her head to the side and stared at me. “Johnny…it’s been a little over a week. I appreciate everything you’ve done, and I am enjoying spending time with you—but I can’t ask you to help me take care of my sick aunt.” She pauses for a beat. “It shouldn’t be like this, you know? We’re new, we should be doing things people do when they’re just getting together, not juggling one problem after another. It’s not fair to you.”
“Jo, life isn’t fair. Now, I told you I’m in this, and I fucking meant that. So we got to deal with some hard shit. I’ve been dealing with hard shit my whole life. I ain’t afraid of it. We’ll be stronger for it. You just got to lean on me a little.”
She nibbled on her bottom lip despite all my previous warnings. “It just feels like I bring nothing to the table. You’re the one picking up the pieces, and what happens when you get tired of being the knight in shining armor?”
I pulled her lip free and cradled her face in my hands. Maybe a small part of me wanted to be the hero in this story, but it’s deeper than that. I don’t want to save her, I just want to be part of her life, and help when I can.
“Let’s get something straight, you bring everything I never thought I could have to the table. I’m not some cowboy on a white horse that’s lookin’ to rescue you, Jo. I’m a guy who has a long list of flaws, staring at a girl, who rescued him when he thought there wasn’t a soul in the world who cared about him. I don’t think you realize the impact you made on me, and that’s probably my fault. I never properly showed my appreciation. I turned my back on you and pretended like you didn’t exist because I was scared of what we could be if I let you in. Now you’re the one scared, but I got patience, baby. I got loads and loads of patience.”
She seemed to let that sit with her for a second, then she threw her leg over mine, and straddled me, winding her arms around my neck.
“You’re going to make me fall in love with you, aren’t you?”
“That’s the plan, baby.” I threaded my fingers through her hair and held the back of her head as I stared up into her brown eyes. I hated that they always looked so sad.
“Why?” she whispered. “So I can lose you too?”
“You’re not gonna lose me.”
“We’ll see,” she whispered.
Then she bent her head and took my mouth. I liked being the one in charge, manipulating her body to succumb to the pleasure I inflicted was becoming my favorite pastime, but letting her take the lead wasn’t so bad either. The view was top notch. I had her tits in my face as she bounced up and down on my cock, fucking me to a steady rhythm until we both came violently.
Life was good and it held promise to only get better. Week after week, she started to open up. Gave me her trust and let me shoulder some of her burdens. We didn’t spend every night together, in fact most nights I stayed at the clubhouse, and she stayed at her apartment. But the weekends she slept at the clubhouse with me. Some nights she was tired from standing on her feet all day at the salon, but that didn’t stop her from going on a ride with me or shooting pool with Ink.
Last weekend Tara came back home from college. She and Capone weren’t together, but that didn’t stop them from going on a double date to the state fair with us. We ate our weight in fried foods, then came back to the clubhouse and fucked until the sun came up.
I was hoping for a replay this weekend, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards, seeing as all hell broke loose this morning when Maverick got a call from Wolf, revealing Bishop’s son had gone missing. Someone had taken him from the camp he was attending down here, and Bishop was enroute to North Carolina. I was tasked with picking him and Charlotte up from the airport and taking them to the camp so they could meet with authorities. The rest of New York was riding down on their bikes.
Pulling out my phone, I call Jo. It’s my third attempt since this morning, and again the call gets sent to voicemail.
You’ve reached Jo, I can’t get to the phone but if you leave a message, I will return your call.
“Yeah, Jo, it’s me. I’ve been calling you all morning. Call me back.”