25. Mack
25
MACK
T he next day, Gigi explains to me, Fury, Magnus, Norse, and Elmo what Blaze — also known as Dylan — said to her while she was his captive. About destroying her, and then Fury, and then our entire club.
Elmo is in attendance because we’re trying to figure out the location where Dylan was holding her hostage. Gigi tells us that she was so scared and frantic to escape that at first, she was just driving blindly, trying to keep the bike on the road and looking for any sign that would turn her in the right direction to get her back to us.
“I remember the highway number I finally pulled onto, when I saw the signs pointing me toward Minneapolis,” she says, and tells us what it is.
“How long were you driving before you hit that road?” Elmo asks her.
“Fifteen minutes? Twenty?” Gigi frowns and shakes her head. She’s pale and drawn, and I can see in her eyes that she’s remembering the terror she felt then. “I was probably only going forty or forty-five miles an hour for most of that. I barely remembered how to ride a bike, and that one was bigger than I was used to.”
Blaze/Dylan’s bike is hidden away in an outbuilding on our compound, after being thoroughly checked for trackers. He won’t be getting it back.
Elmo has Gigi describe everything she can about the place she was held. When she can’t remember anything else, he says, “Okay. Give me a bit. I’m gonna go pull up some satellite views. See what I can figure out.”
Half an hour later, he comes back and asks us to come into his command station. When we get inside, he pulls up a chair for Gigi and starts typing in some stuff. On one of his large monitors, an aerial view comes up. Elmo points to it. “Do you recognize this at all?”
Gigi takes a deep breath and starts to examine the image. Then she freezes. Her eyes grow wide.
“That’s it. That’s where it is!” she chokes out. “Oh my god, Elmo, you’re a genius.”
“Are you sure?” Fury asks her.
“That’s the trailer,” she breathes, pointing at a rectangular structure. “That’s where he held me.” She shivers. “He might still be in there, if they haven’t found him.”
Gigi explains to the others how she got away from Dylan. How she stabbed him with his own knife, then crushed his head with a fire extinguisher.
“Is he dead?” Magnus asks her.
“I don’t know.” She looks down at her hands. “He was definitely unconscious when I left. I didn’t wait long enough to figure out whether he was still breathing.”
“If he is, he won’t be breathing for much longer,” Fury says through gritted teeth.
“Fury, no!” Gigi cries, clutching his arm. “Please, let this go. I’m here. I’m safe now.”
“Babe, we can’t let it go,” I tell her. Fury gives me a sharp look when he hears me use the term of endearment, but he says nothing about it. “If nothing else, we need to make sure that Blaze is actually dead. Until he is, you’ll never be safe.”
“But we need to make those motherfuckers pay. Every last damn one of them,” Fury rasps.
Gigi looks at each one of us imploringly. “No! Please! Please, stop this quest for revenge. Too many of your own people have already been hurt. You know the Royal Bastards won’t get out of a war without it killing too many of your own people. I don’t want to be the cause of that.”
“You’re not the cause, Gigi,” Magnus says grimly. “Besides, this is club business now. Brothers, we should be talking about this among ourselves, not in front of her.” He turns to Norse. “I’m calling church for later today.”
Our VP leaves the room to go alert the other men. I take Gigi back to the apartment, noting that she’s practically vibrating with anxiety. We’re barely inside when she starts to beg me to get Magnus to change his mind.
“Mack, please, stop the club from going to war. I can’t bear the thought that people are going to die because of me. It needs to be over. Now.”
She starts to tremble, then shiver uncontrollably. She’s got the adrenaline shakes. I reach for her, but she pulls away. “If you don’t stop this war, I’ll have to leave, Mack. I can’t be the reason for this. It will make me insane, knowing you and Connor are out there risking your lives because of me. I mean it.”
“Gigi…” I begin.
“NO! Stop it!” she shouts, putting her fists to the sizes of her head like she’s trying to drown the world out. She closes her eyes. “Please, Mack. Just… leave. I want to be alone right now.”
I want to argue with her. I want to lay down the law. But I don’t. Because coward that I am, I know it will just push her further away from me, and I can’t fucking stand the thought of it. Letting out a long breath, I stand and walk to the door, casting one last glance at her before I walk out and shut it behind me.
Out in the main room, Fury is waiting for me. “She okay?” he asks. “I heard yelling.”
“No. I don’t think so. She told me to get out, but I don’t think she really wanted me to.” I glance at Fury. “Fuck. Sorry. Probably the last thing you want to hear about is me and your little sister.”
Fury sighs. “Goddamnit. Come on outside. I need a smoke and some fresh air.”
I don’t point out that those two things are kind of mutually exclusive. I follow him out, accepting the cigarette that he offers me from his pack. He lights his own, then hands me his lighter. He takes a long drag, then exhales, smoke billowing out around him. “Okay. Talk.”
“About what?”
“The fuck you think, about what? About Gigi. You think she wants you to leave her alone, but she doesn’t want you to leave her alone. The fuck does that mean?”
“It means, she’s pushing me away. I don’t think she wants to. But when she tells me to leave, I feel like I don’t have a fuckin’ choice. I don’t want to make what happened to her worse for her. I think she thinks she wants to be alone, but I don’t think she really does.” I light my own cigarette, then snort at what a fuckin’ pussy I sound like. “Goddamn, I ain’t making any sense at all, am I?”
“Nope.” He grins. “But your heart’s in the right place.”
I take a drag off my own cigarette. “This is a supremely weird fuckin’ conversation.”
Fury chuckles. “You got that right.”
“Sorry. We can change the subject.”
“Naw. That’s okay. Look, brother, I just wanted to clear the air between us. I gotta admit, I wasn’t too happy to find out what was goin’ on with you and my sister. But that was when I thought you were just bangin’ her. You know? I didn’t know you were, like, serious about her.” He side-eyes me. “You are serious about her, right?”
I look down at the ground. “Yeah. Fuck, I sure am. Tell ya the truth, I think she’s it for me.”
He nods. “Yeah. That’s what I thought. The way you look at her, I think it reminds me of the way I look at Kat. You in love with her, then?”
“Yeah.”
“She know it?”
“I mean, I told her, so yeah.”
“She love you back?”
“She told me she does.”
He nods again. “Gigi wouldn’t say that if she didn’t.” He tosses his butt on the ground, crushing it under his boot. “So, okay. That’s where we are.” He claps me on the back. “You know Gigi, she’s prickly. She pushes people away when she really wants to pull ‘em close. Because she doesn’t trust that people feel the way they really feel. I think shrinks call that shit ‘abandonment issues.’” He puts air quotes around the words. “So when she’s hurtin’, she pushes people away because she can’t handle the thought of them hurtin’ her even more.”
“Huh.” That makes sense, actually. “So, what do I do?”
“You give her her space, but you make sure she sees that you’re still there. That you ain’t goin’ anywhere.” He pushes off the wall and turns to face me. “You do that long enough, she’ll figure out that you’re stickin’ around. She’ll stop bein’ afraid of the thing she wants, when she finally starts to figure out that she can actually have it.”
“Jesus,” I say, shaking my head. “Where’d you learn all this shit? You sound like a shrink yourself.”
“From bein’ married.” Fury shrugs. “Chicks spend more time thinking about psychology and shit than we do. Kat’s damn smart, too. Perceptive. She just kinda gets people. Gets what makes ‘em tick. She explained to me about Gigi a while ago. Made me see why she acts the way she does sometimes. And damned if she wasn’t a hundred percent right.”
“Well, shit. Remind me to send Kat a fuckin’ fruit basket if this whole thing works out.”
“It will.” Fury claps me on the back. “It will, brother. Just you wait.”