Chapter 17
Rue
“This place is amazing,” I said, spinning to take in the room.
“Thanks!” Mercy said, practically glowing. “There’s still a lot of work to be done to get it to where I want it, but opening day is still a ways out.”
“I’m still impressed you can cook well enough to open a restaurant,” I admitted.
More than once Ryan had complained over the years about my lack of culinary skills.
A complaint that was not unfounded. If we had adopted Norman years ago, I suspect he would have had a lot of my dinners snuck under the table to him.
“You save people’s lives,” she said with a soft smile. “I just feed them.”
I followed her into the kitchen area and watched as she started pulling out pots and pans. “That’s important too,” I told her.
She grinned at me over her shoulder. “It is, especially for these guys. They live to eat.” She hesitated, then added, “And drink.” We exchanged smiles. “We’ll make them a feast tonight and you’ll see that it’s true, the way to a man’s heart is through his stomach.”
“Then I better stay far away from whatever you’re doing,” I said with a laugh as Mercy tied an apron around her rounded belly. “They’ll think you’re trying to poison them.”
“You can keep me company.”
“I feel like they’re trying to keep us occupied and out of their way,” I complained. “Not that I’m not grateful for all their help-”
“It can be a little overwhelming,” she said before I could continue.
“Exactly,” I sighed. “I just…don’t understand.”
“I do,” she said, turning to face me. “Both sides. You don’t understand why they’re helping you. They did the same for me, so I get it. And you don’t understand these guys overall. This is just how they are. They help people. Kind of like you do.”
I let out a soft scoffing laugh.
“Don’t get me wrong,” she said with a wry smile, “they kill people. It took me a while to process that. But they only do it in defense of others.” She rocked her head side to side as though considering the words.
“Somehow I’ve come to find that acceptable.
Never thought I’d be in the position to ever come across that moral conundrum, but these are good men.
Dangerous,” she added, “but good. I can live with that. Well, actually, I’m alive because of that. My whole family is.”
I studied her face, then nodded. “I can, too.” That was a decision I’d made after they’d help me save Teddy.
They’d already started making such a difference there was no way I could hold their methods against them.
In this case the ends justified the means.
Especially when the guys we were going up against were what Overdrive referred to as shit bags.
I’d lost all remorse or guilt for their fates.
Not once I found out they were the reason my brother wouldn’t come home.
“What are we making?” I asked, hesitant to include myself in her task for the day.
But I had nothing else to do for now. I planned to speak to OD about letting me help them in any way I could.
I didn’t want to just be left behind while they did all the work.
Not when I was the one who started all this.
Kilo had asked if she would make dinner for everyone tonight.
The men had split up this morning first thing, all off to do one task or another.
Bolo had started bellowing the minute two carbon copies of himself—though maybe a few years older and quite a few years older—had shown up at the clubhouse.
Relay had rolled his eyes and stalked off. That one had some kind of family trauma. Or maybe it was just trauma, but he was holding something deep inside. I wasn’t one to pry, though, so I’d said nothing. I didn’t like it when others did that to me.
This was all new for me. Having people to depend on had never been something I’d had. I always had to be the one in charge. The strong one. And I’d never been resentful of that role. It was just something that had to be done. But it meant that accepting help from others was difficult.
And now here was OD and his family. And there was a part of me, a tiny piece I’d shoved deep down forever ago, that really wanted to belong to them.
They’d said I was theirs, but I wasn’t sure where this thing with OD was going.
He’d said he liked me, that was a far cry from me belonging to this group though.
I also wasn’t sure I could accept everything they were offering me without inadvertently self-sabotaging it.
Everything was so uncertain and just out of my comfort zone.
I was determined to take this one day at a time.
I needed help with Carrick. For both Ryan and Teddy’s sakes.
I also really liked OD and wanted to spend more time with him.
So I was working on not thinking about the rest too much.
That way I wouldn’t panic and shove OD away.
“I think we’re going to go with a seafood boil,” Mercy said, putting her hands on her hips and looking around at the tools of her trade.
My mouth watered. “Sounds good to me.”
“Good. You’re going to help me peel and devein shrimp.”
Sucking in a breath, I nodded. There was no way I could mess this up with her overseeing things.
Challenge accepted.
OD had warned me that we’d be in a holding pattern for a couple of weeks. Ruck wasn’t going to make a move until he had a safe place for all of their brothers, and us, to be. That meant getting the apartments at the clubhouse finished.
It gave them time to look into the people involved in Carrick’s business. I was so curious it was hard not to be impatient. But I already knew that these guys would figure everything out. It just took time.
I eyed Mercy as she worked quickly and efficiently, showing me what I needed to do to prep the shrimp. Washing my hands, I took over after she ran me through the process with three different shrimp.
We worked in silence for a while, then started up some light-hearted chatter. The kind you did when you were first getting to know someone. You know, after the casual talk about how your boyfriends kill people when your life was in mortal danger. Just girly things.
It didn’t take me long to realize I really liked her and could see us being friends. I got the feeling that was what OD and Kilo were hoping for. They’d shoot each other meaningful glances anytime the two of us were in the room together.
Normally, that kind of thing would make me claustrophobic.
Like I was trying to crawl out of my own skin.
Forced human interaction wasn’t usually my thing.
I liked my human interaction unconscious and bleeding.
But not this time. I attributed it to Mercy being so easy-going and sweet.
It was impossible not to like her. And she wasn’t pushy, even if the two bikers in our lives seemed to be.
“So how did you and Kilo meet?” I asked, focusing on my task. Out of the corner of my eye I saw her stiffen slightly. I was about to tell her she didn’t have to share when she started talking.
“We moved in next door to him,” she said.
That didn’t sound too bad. Not bad enough for the nervous energy rolling off her. I was sensitive to body language. Came with the job. My patients couldn’t always articulate what was wrong, so I got really good at reading their energy and visual cues.
“My mom, sister, and I were on the run,” she added.
Yeah. Okay, that made more sense. Plus, OD had mentioned someone trying to kill her.
Oh how quickly my life turns upside down that ‘we were on the run’, AKA, people were trying to kill us, equals, this makes perfect sense.
I worked slowly and carefully as she recounted everything that’d happened with her father, the club, and Kruzman. “Wow,” I said when she finally fell silent. “That must have been so hard to deal with.”
She looked over at me. “You’d know.”
It hit me then that she was right. I’d had my head buried in the sand.
Just doing the next thing that needed doing in order to get by.
Trying to find Ryan was like my lifeline.
The only thing that got me from one day to the next.
But my life was just as chaotic as hers had been a mere six months ago.
Seeing her like this, now, was almost like a glimpse into a possible future for me. I hoped mine would turn out just as well. Maybe not the being pregnant part. Panic slid over my spine at the thought. I wasn’t quite ready for that level of domestication.
The silence between us stretched out for a few minutes before I realized that Mercy was practically buzzing beside me. “What?”
She gave me a side eye with a guilty smile. “Has OD made you his old lady?”
I made a face. “His what?”
She laughed. “It’s what they call their wives.”
I choked on air. That was how fast the panic closed up my throat at the word wife.
Then I wheezed as she whacked me on the back so hard I nearly toppled into the giant metal bowl filled with shrimp.
“Oh my God,” I gasped. Images of babies in leather vests flew across my imagination, a wedding dress with biker patches. What the hell?
Her laughter floated through the kitchen as she walked over to wash her hands. “I know I shouldn’t pry,” she said, “but I’m dying to know. The way he looks at you makes me worried you’ll go up in flames.”
I couldn’t help but laugh. “Being attracted doesn’t mean he’s going to marry me.”
She made a face that clearly said she disagreed. “I’ve gotten to know these men well. Especially Overdrive. He and Kilo are best friends,” she explained. “He doesn’t show this kind of interest in women.”
“Sexual?” I asked, raising my brows. No way I believed that.
She shook her head. “That was the only kind he did show before. This is more. Be glad he hasn’t chained you to the wall.”
Setting the shrimp I’d been holding down, I sighed and turned to face her. “I don’t know what this is. I like him. A lot. But…” I searched for how to admit to her that I was a bit damaged. Okay. A lot damaged.
She watched me, her face open and curious.
“I have issues.”
It was her turn for her eyebrows to shoot up. “What kind of issues?”
“Abandonment issues,” I admitted. The fact that I was even telling her any of this was nothing short of a miracle. “My mother left us when Ryan and I were young. But not before years of her telling me how much she regretted having me. And him. And how we ruined her life.”
And now my brother had left me behind in the dust, too. It was all a bit much for me not to have issues.
“That’s awful,” she said in a soft voice. “I’m so sorry.”
I shrugged. “It was just our reality.” I hesitated, then decided I was already in this. She’d shared her story with me. And the idea of actually having a friend was starting to grow on me. “My mom named me Rue because she claimed she regretted the day she decided to have me.”
Mercy’s face tightened and though she didn’t say anything, I could see the anger in her eyes. “No child deserves that,” she finally said.
I couldn’t agree with her more. Kids deserved to be loved, but it’d made me strong and I didn’t regret the person I’d turned into because of my upbringing.
Well, didn’t regret most of myself. And it was hard not to feel as though Ryan had abandoned me as well.
He’d chosen this group over me. I sort of understood it.
He’d never really had parents. And boys often needed those strong male role models.
It was why gangs managed to lure young men away from their families so often.
“It means though, that I don’t let people in,” I told her, not mentioning Ryan for now. It was the first time I’d ever said those words out loud. “The fact that I haven’t pushed OD away yet is nothing short of a miracle,” I said with a scornful laugh.
She leaned a hip against the counter as she studied my expression. “Do you want to make something work with him?”
I swallowed past the automatic denial that tried to force its way out of my mouth.
She nodded at my silence. “Don’t worry, that’s answer enough. I can’t pretend to know how to fix any of that, but communicating is usually the answer.” She gave me a wry smile. “Kilo and I have figured that out anyway, though it’s not always easy.”
“Easier said than done,” I told her and turned back to the shrimp.
“I’ll help in any way I can,” she told me, “but don’t worry,” she added when I opened my mouth. “Your secret is safe with me.” She smiled at me over her shoulder as she got back to work. “We have to stick together against these stubborn bikers.”
Laughing, I went back to my work somehow feeling lighter despite everything that was going on.