Chapter Thirty-Five
Ghost
Melissa walked outside just as I made it back to the table with a plate for each of us. I didn’t know what had happened, but I set the plates down and turned to glare at Sypher.
“What the fuck did you say to her?”
“Ghost, it wasn’t Danny,” Haizley quickly said.
“Bullshit. Don’t think that because I kept my mouth shut, I didn’t hear the way you questioned how she cared for your daughter. That woman loves that little girl like she is her own. She gave up everything to keep her safe. She’s fucking happy you are both here and alive. But she’s also fucking devastated that she’s gonna lose her.”
“Why would she lose her?” Dante asked.
I looked at Danny and raised a brow. Wondering if he would confess.
“Haizley is right; we have some things to discuss,” Danny said with a sigh.
Shaking my head, I turned to follow Melissa out the door.
“Ghost, wait,” Haizley called. “Eat your breakfast. Let me go out there. Missy and I haven’t had a chance to talk. Let me help her.”
Growling under my breath, I knew she was right. Melissa required someone to talk to who would help her work through her feelings. I could be there to listen, but I couldn’t offer advice on how to work through the shit she was dealing with.
“Thank you,” I said, kissing her head. “Where’s Gunner?”
The light in her eyes went out when I asked about my brother.
“He’s in the gym.” With a heavy sigh, she continued, “He’s been in there most of the night.” She smiled up at me and said, “Go help my old man, and I’ll help your old lady.”
“She’s not—”
“Bullshit.” She winked, then walked out the door in search of her friend.
Shaking my head, I headed downstairs. Haizley was right. I needed to check on my brother.
I found Gunner hitting the bag. As I got closer, I noticed the red stains on his knuckles.
“Hey, man, think you’ve about had enough.”
He ignored me and continued to beat at the bag. I wondered how long he’d been at it. The tape he had wound around his hands was stained bright red. Pieces hanging off, torn from the impact of pummeling the bag over and over.
Sweat dripped down his face, and I wondered if he even saw the bag, or if he saw the man he killed when he was fifteen.
“Hey, man, you want to take a break?”
“No.”
“How long you been down here?”
“Don’t know.”
“Did you sleep at all last night?” I asked, knowing the answer.
There was one thing we all knew about Gunner. He let himself get consumed by guilt. Whenever anything went wrong, if he was involved or not, whether or not it was his fault, he took on the guilt.
It was what made him a great SAA, but it also took a toll. He always looked back on what went wrong, analyzing the mistakes and how to fix them moving forward to ensure it never happened again.
“Did you?” he asked, stepping back from the bag. “She sleep in your room last night?”
“Yea.”
“You fuck her?” he asked, removing the tape from his hands.
“Not that it’s any of your business, but no, I didn’t,” I replied, crossing my arms and trying to rein in my temper as I wondered where this line of questioning was going.
“She’s broken. Don’t fuck with her.”
Counting to ten before I answered, I focused on my brother, one of my best friends, staring him in the eye. “She’s not fucking broken and fuck you for thinking that.”
“I fucking failed her!” he yelled.
“You didn’t fail her, man. You didn’t know. When you did, you fucking killed the guy. You can’t stop what you don’t know. You don’t have to be the fucking martyr in every goddamn situation.”
I walked closer, knowing the way he was feeling meant he was likely to lash out at me. But I reminded myself he was hurting.
“She wouldn’t have fucked you in a goddamn bar bathroom like a whore if I had protected her!”
I paused for the smallest second, letting his words penetrate my brain. This motherfucker.
When my fist connected with his chin, his head snapped back and he stumbled. He may be a fucking giant, but the bigger they are, the harder they fucking fall.
Before he could recover, I hit him again. And again. Somewhere in the back of my mind, I heard the door to the gym open. But my focus was on the big son of a bitch who just called my woman, his fucking sister, a whore.
He didn’t defend himself. If I hadn’t been out of my mind with rage at the way he spoke about Melissa, I might have noticed. It wasn’t until Jingles pulled me off him, I realized he was lying on the floor.
“What the fuck is goin’ on down here?” Jingles asked, pulling me back away from Gunner.
Gunner rolled over and sat up. His elbows landed on his knees and he held his head in his hands. But he didn’t open his mouth. He didn’t defend himself with his fists or his words.
“Deal with your shit. Talk to your old lady. Do whatever you have to do to get the fuck over yourself. But you ever call my woman a fucking whore again, brother or not, I will put you in the fucking ground.” Turning my back on them, I stormed out of the gym.
In the kitchen, I stood at the sink and let the warm water rush over my hands. The skin on my knuckles was cracked and bleeding, and I wasn’t sure how I would explain it to Melissa when she got back. I sure as fuck wouldn’t tell her why I beat the shit out of her brother.
Drying my hands with a towel, trying not to wince at the pain, I looked up when the door opened.
Danny walked in, carrying Danika on his hip. His eyes dropped to my hands, and he asked, “Everything ok?”
“No, it isn’t fucking ok. I just beat the shit out of my woman’s brother.” Grinning at him, I asked, “Any chance you’ll let me beat the shit out of you? I think she’d take that easier.”
Danny smiled. “Not a chance.”
“I don’t know, you look like you could take me.” I smirked, knowing I was full of shit. He might be a Golden Skull but he didn’t strike me as a dirty fighter. And he would need to be to take me down.
“I could. But I ain’t pissing off my man.”
“Chickenshit.”
Danny put the little girl down, and she toddled over to me, putting her hands up. I didn’t hesitate to lift her up, blowing a raspberry into her neck just to hear her laugh.
“She’s happy here.”
“She’s happy. Period.” Watching his expression, I chose my next words carefully. “Melissa did that.”
“She did. And I am incredibly grateful that she kept Danika safe. That she loved her when Dante and I couldn’t.”
“But?” I pressed.
“But she has no idea what I went through to protect my family.”
“And whose fault is that? Who kept her in the fucking dark? Who lied to her about who he was, throwing her into a world she wasn’t meant to be in?”
“That has nothing to do with me.”
“Bullshit. Are you gonna sit there and lie to my fucking face?” I set Dani on the chair, knowing my rage was building. Opening the fridge, I grabbed one of the snacks we kept set aside for the girls. Opening the small Tupperware of blueberries, I set them in front of Dani. “You gonna try to give me some bullshit story that you didn’t know exactly who she was and how she was connected to the MC?”
Danny looked down at his hands. I may not know him well, but everyone in the MC world knew what he was fucking capable of. There wasn’t much you could keep him from learning.
“Exactly. You fucked up, Sypher. You went after someone you had no hope of taking down—alone, might I add— knowing Dante would come after you.”
Danny glared at me. “He wasn’t suppo—”
“Then why did you set everything up, making Melissa Dani’s mom? You knew he would come for you. You knew he would leave Dani in Oklahoma.” My grip on the counter tightened. “What you did was fucking selfish.”
When he opened his mouth, I held up my hand. “I get why you did it. I can even admit that I would probably have done the same goddamn thing in your shoes. But it doesn’t change the fact that you fucking used her. That you gave your daughter a mother, and now you want to take her away. You weren’t thinking about anyone but yourself.”
“Everything I did was for Dante and Dani. I was protecting them. If this bitch got her hands on him again...” I could see the emotion rolling through his body. His hands fisted and his shoulders bunched. His jaw ticked and his breaths came out heavy while he considered his words in front of his daughter.
“Dante and Dani are not safe until that bitch is dead.”
“And how did that work out for you? She fucking dead?” I asked him, knowing she wasn’t. “No, she isn’t. You did nothing but make your husband’s life miserable and my woman’s life miserable.”
“And my daughter’s too, I guess?”
“No, leaving her with Melissa was the one fucking thing you did right. You left her with someone you knew would love her. Someone you knew would put her fucking first when you couldn’t. Now, you have to decide how you’ll fix the fucked-up situation you find yourself in.”
Leaving Danny to think about what I said, I made my way to the main room. Sitting at the bar, I settled in while I waited for Melissa to get back.
“What the fuck was that downstairs?” Jingles planted his ass on the stool next to me.
“Gunner can be a real asshole sometimes.”
“He really called his sister a whore?” Jingles asked, wincing as he said it.
“Not directly, but close enough.”
What the fuck was he thinking, saying that shit to me? If he wanted a beatdown, I gladly would have given him one. All he had to do was ask.
I spent the morning sitting at the bar, waiting for Melissa and Haizley to come back. Two months ago, when Gunner suggested we all try therapy, we assumed it was because he wanted to fuck the shrink.
We weren’t wrong. But now she was his old lady and we couldn’t deny she was good at what she did. Maybe he wasn’t far off in thinking we all needed a little therapy.
Aspen had come a long way working with Haizley. And Amber was lighter and happier than she’d been in months.
Tabby and Dani sat playing on the floor, while Diesel, Aspen’s dog, watched over them. He might look like he was sleeping, but if any of the guys walked a little too close to the girls, or Aspen herself, he was up and alert in seconds.
I noticed he had taken to watching Danny closely. But he didn’t seem wary of him. We didn’t know what Danny had been through, but getting blown up couldn’t be great for the body or the mind.
The front door opened and there she was. Seeing her here, in the clubhouse, continued to feel like a dream. I often heard people say fate was a vindictive bitch. But fuck if I didn’t do something right to have her smile down on me and bring this woman back into my life.
She looked around the room and locked her eyes on me. The drop of her shoulders had the hair on the back of my neck standing up. Leaving my stool, I swiftly met her across the room.
“What’s wrong, Princess?”
Fear swirled in her eyes as she said, “I got another note.”