Chapter 4 Diesel #2
“Run?” Her expression is wry. “I think we’ve established I’m not very good at that.
Besides, you’d find me in five minutes out here.
You really went all out with the kidnapping plot, babe.
Remote house, didn’t leave my car keys somewhere I could snag them.
” Her head drops back against her knees.
“I’m not running. I didn’t want to run in the first place.
” That admission lets that knot in my belly unfurl just a fraction.
“I was too hot, and everything in that place smells funny. Whose house is this anyway?”
It’s not warm tonight. There’s a bite in the air, so it worries me that she’s warm. “You sick?”
“Of this shit? Yeah, Zane.” Sarcasm drips from every word.
I don’t feed that fire. Instead, I answer her original question. “It’s a club safe house.”
Makenna’s dry laugh reverberates around the dark hills surrounding the house. “Of course it is. The elusive Untamed Sons. The ‘other woman’ in our marriage.”
Those words sit in my chest like a weight. The resentment doesn’t surprise me, but it burns a path through my veins. Every step I’ve made has been to make the club safe for her—for us.
“That’s what kept us alive, Kenna. Kept us breathing easy all these years.”
“It ruined our relationship too.”
“It gave us a home, security,” I press on, ignoring her barbs. “It’s not the other woman. It never has been.”
It doesn’t soften that simmering frustration in her. If anything, she retreats further into herself, somewhere I can’t reach.
I fidget, swaying side to side on my feet, watching as she stands slowly, using the wall to lever herself off the ground. She makes a show of brushing the dirt off her jeans, and my fingers twitch to reach for her.
“I don’t know what to do, Zane.” She cracks on my name, her chin wobbling and when she folds her arms around herself, like she’s protecting her body from me, I feel like I’ve been cut open.
“We find a way to make this right,” I say, firm and sure.
“How? This thing between us is so broken there’s not enough pieces to glue back together.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. I ignore it. Right now, the only thing I need to reach is her.
“So you want to just throw this away? Give up?”
“No.” Relief washes away the tightness in my throat, just for a second because she delivers another blow with her next words.
“I wanted to fix this months ago, but Zane and Diesel are different people, existing in different worlds and I don’t know how to reach you when you’re in theirs.
When you’re… Diesel.” She waves a hand at my kutte, at the colours I didn’t feel worthy to pull on when I first prospected for the club.
Colours I’m not sure if half the members in my chapter are worthy to wear even now.
The rot spreads deep into every corner of a place I thought of as a sanctuary. Somedays, when I’m sleeping alone knowing my wife is doing the same, I have to wonder if wearing the Sons name is worth it.
What the hell am I even fighting for with the club if I don’t have her?
I offer her my hand. Makenna drops her eyes to the olive branch I’m holding out, and she hesitates. That hurts more than any wound I’ve ever had and when she finally reaches for me there’s no relief. She doesn’t want to be here with me.
I lead her into the house and stop at the kitchen table, guiding her into a chair. I open the cupboards again, trying to find something edible while she leans her elbows on the table, her shoulders slumped, disappearing inch by inch.
“Are you expecting a five-star Michelin meal to materialise?”
I glance over my shoulder, her eyes showing just a little spark of something that’s not exhaustion. Fuck. I didn’t realise how much I needed to see that right now. I haven’t completely dimmed her spark.
“No, trying to find something that’s not mouldy or older than us.”
She snorts. “Food poisoning is so underrated.”
I yank a tin out of the cupboard, checking the date and swear. The sound of her chair scraping back has my head whipping around in case she’s making another break for it, but she’s not. She’s behind me, her perfume in my nose, her heat at my back.
“I should have stopped and got food on the way.”
She hums. “Yeah, but that would have ruined your dramatic kidnapping of me.” She gives me a smile that stops my heart for a second. Makenna’s beautiful, always has been, but that cheeky little quirk of her lips is my Kryptonite. “This is fine, Zane. We’ve lived on worse.”
She’s not wrong. Images of a younger Makenna curled against the wall, her knees drawn to her chest, fill my mind.
The entire side of her face is purple, her left eye swollen almost shut.
I keep one eye on the cupboard and one on her, scared she’ll shatter the second I look away.
She hasn’t stopped shaking since I brought her here. She hasn’t said a word either.
Two pieces of bread, both on the edge of turning, are the only thing in the cupboard that’s edible. There’s a packet of ketchup, and an almost finished bottle of hot sauce. She won’t eat the spice, so I hand her the bread and the ketchup.
She doesn’t take it immediately, but after a moment Makenna lifts her head off her knees. I hate the look in her eyes. Hate the fear I see, the despair. I loathe more than anything that I didn’t get to her in time to prevent this.
“I’m gonna kill that fucker,” I grind out between clenched teeth.
She shakes her head, wincing at the movement. “No, Zane, you’re not.”
I want to touch her face, to erase that bruise with my fingers, but I can’t. Even when it heals, she’ll still feel that scar in her bones. That’s what burns me most. Nothing bad should ever have touched her and this is the second time she’s worn his anger.
“I’m gonna make sure this never happens again,” I assure her. “You’re never gonna be in a position where you get hurt and I can’t stop it.”
Her fingers reach out, ghosting over my face. There’s a dusting of stubble, not enough to grow into anything but a reminder that I’m a boy on the edge of becoming a man.
You still can’t protect her…
“You don’t have to take care of me,” Makenna whispers. “Not when you’re going through hell yourself.”
Her fingers hover over the gash just under my temple. It’s scabbed over now, but it bled so much when it first happened, I thought I might pass out.
“I can take it.” And I can. It’s not the first time I’ve been hit or hurt by someone the system put in place to protect me. What I can’t stand is seeing her bleeding and bruised.
“You shouldn’t have to, Zane.”
My throat clogs. She’s the only person who’s ever given a fuck about me, and she has no idea how much that means to me. How it cements my loyalty to her. She’s etched onto my ribs like a spell.
“Did you know that the process of bruising is similar to how bananas ripen and turn brown?” It slips out, just as it always does in these moments where I need to fill the tension with something distracting.
Her lips twitch, her eyes softening. She’s the only one who ever does when I spout this crap. “Are you saying that my face looks like a banana?”
I frown that she came to that conclusion. “No.”
She draws her knees closer to her chest. “One day, we will get away from all of this, Zane. We’ll live in a big house with doors we don’t have to lock to keep out the monsters.” My stomach twists. She has endured too much for a fourteen-year-old girl.
“Where’s this big house going to be?” I ask, going along with the fantasy she’s creating.
“I don’t know. Somewhere green. Remote.” She nudges my shoulder. “I know how much you hate people.”
I snort, sliding in beside her, the wall cold against my spine. “Not all people.”
Her smile is everything. I want to bottle it and keep it. “And we’ll eat fancy steaks until we are sick. Go to bed when we want, in covers that smell fresh.”
She closes her eyes as if she’s seeing it in her mind. I don’t know how she does that. How she builds creations that don’t exist.
“And eat cake until we’re sick,” I murmur, because I don’t want her vision to end.
“Now that is the dream.”
I offer her the bread again and this time she takes it. “What are you going to eat?”
“I already had something,” I lie.
She shakes her head and tears the bread in half, handing it to me with the hot sauce. “You eat too.”
The memory splinters as the tin hits the counter next to me. Makenna is still in the cupboard, pulling things out like she’s trying to salvage something out of this disaster.
“This is tragic,” she mutters. “I thought we were done scrounging for scraps.”
I grab her wrist, stopping her mid-search. Her eyes lock on mine, confusion dancing beneath the wariness I don’t like. “You’re never eating scraps again, Makenna. Not while I’m breathing.”
She frowns, and as always understanding blooms in her eyes. “I know. You always take care of me, Zane.”
“But it’s not enough?”
I’m not enough…
I let that hang between us.
She leans her palms against the counter, letting her shoulders sag. “You’re everything, and that’s the problem.” I don’t know what that means, but I track her as she walks back to the table and sits. “You don’t have to make anything. I’m not even hungry. In fact, I feel sick.”
That admission cuts something open inside me. I don’t want her to feel ill because of me.
But of course she does. I drove her to this.
I turn back to the cupboard, needing a moment to collect myself, but inside me a war is brewing.
And it’s one I intend to win.