Chapter 26 Diesel
TWENTY-SIX
DIESEL
The sun peeks through the curtains, casting a soft glow across Makenna’s face. It took her forever to get to sleep last night. Too long. She clung to me like I was the only thing stopping her from drowning and I held her while she cried herself into exhaustion.
Her tears felt like a fist lodged in my gut. I never want to see her break like that again.
I lie facing her, counting her breaths, watching every twitch she makes, wondering if she’s being chased by nightmares. Ones I could’ve protected her from.
In broken words she told me last night what she found in that room. She gave me vivid details, haunted by the cuts in her wrists, the way the blood collected under her, the smell. I hope in time it’ll fade, that she won’t feel it so intensely.
Her eyes flutter, her breathing changing as she comes awake. Even with the grief and pain drowning her, she manages a smile that almost unravels me.
“Hey.” Her voice is croaky, raw from crying last night, and worse. She told me she’d screamed until someone came to help her.
“Hey,” I murmur, brushing her tangles off her face. I wish I could carry this for her. I would shoulder any burden for her.
She sucks in a breath, then another as she’s trying to centre herself. “I’m sorry you had to take care of me yesterday.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Do what?”
“Act like you’re a burden. You’re not.”
She snuggles against me, burying her head in my chest like she can hide from the world. From me. This is how she always is when her feelings are too big, when she can’t handle what life has thrown her way. She runs, or she hides.
I rest my chin on her head, wrapping her tighter in my hold. And for a moment neither of us speaks, lost in our heads, in our own thoughts.
“Have you… Have you heard anything about Chloe?” She doesn’t say but I hear the unspoken do you know if she’s alive still.
“I’ll find out for you.”
She does that sigh again, like filling her lungs is the only thing she can manage. “I don’t even know why I’m so upset,” she murmurs. “It’s not like I know her.”
I brush my nose through her hair, like I can inhale her into my body. “You don’t have to know someone well to be affected by seeing something like that, firefly.”
“It felt like I was back there… With him.”
I try not to stiffen, but I can’t help it. I don’t want her to ever think about that fucker again. Not when he changed her sense of safety. Not when he gave her nightmares that never faded. Not when he was the reason I wasn’t able to be in her life for five years.
“Not because it was the same situation,” she clarifies. “It was the blood on my hands. It was just like that night.”
She keeps her words level, like she’s trying to be calm for me. Measured, shallow breaths. Hands still, eyes downcast like she’s rationing her own emotions. I don’t need her to protect me from this. I don’t need her to guard my feelings in anything. That’s my job, not hers.
“I’m sorry,” she says, mistaking my silence for judgment. It’s not. But if I speak, I’m going to lose my grip on what little control I have left. She doesn’t need to see that.
I kiss her temple, my thumb swiping over her shoulder over and over, counting the swipes like it can ground me.
Eventually, I drag my thoughts into something that explains what I’m feeling. “I hate that you had to see that, baby. I would’ve crawled through broken glass to take that from you.”
I want to unleash on every brother who was in the clubhouse when she found Chloe.
They were meant to protect her while I was gone.
They were meant to shield her from anything bad.
It sits like poison in my veins knowing they let her walk into that room alone.
I bite down my anger. It doesn’t help her now. I’m not sure anything will.
“You don’t have to set yourself on fire to keep me warm, Zane. You’re my husband, not my blast wall. You stand beside me, not in front of every fucking grenade tossed my way.”
She says it like I can stop, but I’ll always be the buffer between her and the world. I don’t know how to be any other way.
When I don’t answer, she lifts her head out of my chest, and I hate the way she looks at me. Like she expects me to agree to terms that go against every instinct in my body. “Zane, I mean it. I might be yours, but you’re mine too. You don’t get to sacrifice yourself for me.”
I tap my tongue behind my teeth, trying to settle the roaring in my ears. It doesn’t help. “You want to talk about sacrifice? I’m not the one who stood between me and a bullet.”
She strokes her fingers down my cheek. “One time. I took a calculated risk that Riot wouldn’t shoot me, even if he’d shoot you.”
I don’t try to stop the growl that rumbles in the back of my throat.
I’m pissed that she thought that was an acceptable variable.
“You didn’t know that. You didn’t even know him at that point.
The only thing you knew is that he had a loaded gun aimed at me, and you decided in that moment that your life was worth less than mine. ”
She shrugs, as if that’s irrelevant. “It worked. You’re still here.”
My entire body twitches. She doesn’t get it. I don’t care if I die, but if she does? There is no way forward for me. I’d bleed for her every fucking day, but watching her take one for me isn’t something I’d survive.
I pull back, just enough to look at her properly, enough for her to see what’s blazing in my eyes.
“Don’t fucking do that. Don’t sit there and act like it was nothing.
You don’t get to gamble your life like you’re rolling a dice and then brush it off because you landed on a six.
” She opens her mouth to argue, but I don’t stop talking.
“You don’t ever do that again, Kenna. I don’t give a shit what the situation is, whether you think it’s calculated, or fucking noble, you don’t stand between me and a bullet ever again. ”
Her expression falters. “I didn’t do it to be noble, or because I thought I was being clever, Zane.
I did it because I love you. Because I was looking at you standing in front of that gun, not moving, not flinching, just willing to die because you knew I was inside and you thought you could stand between me and the danger.
Guess what? You don’t ever do that again either!
” She shoves my chest, her voice thick and wobbly.
“You don’t die for me! Do you think I would survive without you?
You’re all I’ve ever known!” Tears slide down her cheeks, even as her eyes spit fire.
“Don’t ask me to do something that you can’t do yourself.
Don’t ask me to sit on the sideline while you bleed on the pitch.
” She shoves me again, this time letting out a cry of frustration.
“I fucking love you, you ass! This isn’t some tragic love story where you get to leave me behind doing the honourable thing. ”
She glares at me like she’s contemplating smacking some sense into my head. Maybe I deserve that. “I don’t want to leave you anywhere.”
She takes a shaky breath. “Good. Because if you try, I’ll just follow you anyway. If you die, I die. If you walk, I walk.”
I clamp all the things I want to say behind my teeth, knowing this is an argument that will never end. There is no part of me that is ever going to stand by and watch her get hurt. But I let it go in this moment, because it serves no purpose.
“You are the most stubborn woman I’ve ever met,” I murmur.
“Yeah, and you still married me knowing that.”
My lips twitch into a grin. “Yeah, I did.”
Her smile fades. “Can you find out about Chloe?”
I nod. I need to get up anyway. I’m probably needed somewhere. Crank’s still out there, and the tanks are still reloading, ready to fight again today.
She snuggles back into the pillows, and I ease myself out of bed. I take a quick shower, and by the time I’m getting dressed, her eyes are closed again, as if the weight of yesterday is still pulling on her bones.
I press a kiss into her hair, and she makes a sleepy noise that hits me in the chest. She has no idea the lines I will cross for her. I hope she never has to find out.
I grabbed my kutte off the back of the door and slip out of the room. When I step into the main bar area, it’s already busy. That heavy shroud of unease presses in around me as I make my way over to Nic. He’s sitting with Mace, both of them with expressions as serious as a heart attack.
The sixth sense I have for trouble is screaming like a klaxon as I approach, and they both stop talking when I stop at the edge of the table.
“How’s your girl?” Nic asks.
I take a second to read him, but his question seems sincere. “Fucked wrecked,” I say. “She’s traumatised. She’s asking how Chloe is. Is there any news?”
A look passes between them, one that makes a cold lump settle in my stomach. Nic taps his fingers on the table top, like he’s trying to circle the words. He doesn’t meet my eyes, his gaze sliding past me to the wall behind me. The wall with the Sons insignia painted on it.
“She was dead before she got to the hospital.” It comes out clipped, flat, coated in a pain he’s trying to bury beneath his tone.
I blink. It’s the only response I let slide onto my face. Mace scrubs a hand over his jaw, like it’s the only way he can hold his anger back.
Chloe was troubled, but she was just a kid. She didn’t deserve to be Crank’s plaything and didn’t deserve to be discarded the way she was when he was done with her.
“I told her mum she was safe here, that I’d take care of her until I could get her home.” Nic swallows the anger down, but beneath it I hear the grief.
Sandy is going to be distraught. She loved that girl with her entire soul. It killed her to lose her to Crank. She tried everything to get her daughter home, but Chloe… She needed the club, needed to feel close to the father she never knew. I guess now we’ll never find out who her dad was.
I curl my fingers into fists, my nails digging into my palms. I’m tired of losing people. Tired of fighting with no end in sight.
“Just another reason that fucker has to die,” I say under my breath.
Nic lets that threat breathe between us before he says, “His time’s coming.”
I want to believe that. But in my experience, the bad guy doesn’t always get what they deserve. “What about King?”
The last time I saw him he looked like he had one foot in the grave. I brace, waiting for another hammer blow to land. Nic’s jaw unlocks just a fraction. It probably wouldn’t be noticeable, but I’m good at reading that kind of thing.
“Still out cold. He’s been stable for the last few hours, but…” His cheek ticks. “His injuries were bad. We won’t know anything until he wakes up.”
“If he wakes up,” Mace says with devastating finality. It hangs between us like a live wire.
“He will,” Nic says, his words biting. “For now, all we can do is keep looking for Crank. I’ll let you know if we get a lead. Spend as much time as you can with your families.”
I hear the exhaustion in his voice, the lack of hope, like he’s already given up on the idea that we’re going to find him and fucking end him.
But I know one thing about men like Crank. He might be a coward, but he’s also stupid and power-hungry. Men like that always slip up and when he does, we’ll be waiting.