52. Fury
Chapter 52
Fury
You know you’re a miserable fuck when alcohol doesn’t dull the pain. I stare at the whiskey left in my glass, not really wanting another drink. I drank most of the night. It didn’t help.
“You look like shit, Brother.”
I pull my gaze away from my whiskey glass to look at Devil.
“Thanks,” I mutter. I really didn’t think it was possible to drink yourself sober, but I have. Either that or I’ve been staring at my next drink so long the effect of the others has worn off.
“How you doin’, man?” he asks sitting beside me.
“Now’s not a good time to ask me that, Devil.”
“You didn’t take my advice last night, did you?”
I frown, my grip on the glass tightens, but I still don’t drink it. After I talked to Diesel, I sought Devil out. He’s the man I’m closest to in the crew. I needed to talk to someone who could listen and help me sort through everything I was feeling. He tried, but it didn’t help. His advice was to go back and talk to Ellie and try to sort shit out with her. I didn’t do that, because I wasn’t sure I could handle looking at her.
“I didn’t,” I confirm, still refusing to look at him.
“Stubborn as hell. A man has to be, but I’m thinking you got an extra dose,” he mutters.
“She betrayed the club, Devil. Ellie was an old lady for over two years. She knew the rules. She knew what a fucking toxic woman Vicki was. She knew the hell that Diesel had gone through. How in the fuck am I supposed to overlook that she helped that bitch?”
“You aren’t supposed to overlook it, but you might keep in mind that Ellie isn’t a brother. She didn’t swear an oath to this club, and she doesn’t think like a man who has seen blood spilled does.”
“Bullshit. She swore an oath to me, and I am the club,” I growl.
“You and me. We see shit in black and white, Fury. There’s good and bad and sometimes the bad has to be dealt with. Nothing in between.”
“Devil, I really can’t handle any heart to heart right now,” I mumble.
“I think you get that when I met Torrent, she wasn’t ready for me.”
“Yeah.”
“And even when I knew she loved me, instead of giving in to what we both felt, she tried to play devil’s advocate and make sure no one was hurt.”
“Devil—”
“Which kind of blew up in our faces, but still her heart was in a good place and she was letting her heart lead her decisions, which ultimately is what a good woman does, Fury. They lead with their heart, because that’s where their goodness is. A good woman feeds your soul and she does that because of her heart.”
“Fuck, man. Are you the one drinking here instead of me?”
“Just listen to me for a minute asshole. You and Ellie had been trying how long to have kids?”
“A while,” I mumble, understating it. I knew that Ellie was beginning to give up hope. The doctor had been giving her fertility medicine and each month that went by, a little more of the light inside of her died.
“She got her hopes up and they were squashed. Then, she’s faced with a fellow woman?—”
“A conniving evil cunt,” I spew.
“But, still a woman. A woman who had this beautiful son that Ellie would have died to have and she turns her pain loose, telling the woman to get help before it’s too late.”
“I know what she did, Devil. She warned the bitch. If she hadn’t have done that, we could have gotten to her before she kidnapped Ryan and put him through hell,” I growl.
“And, before I would have met Rory,” Diesel says, coming up behind us. I turn to look at him. Telling him about Ellie’s betrayal was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. It’s not exactly easy to look at him now. I think that’s the reason Ellie’s actions hurt the most. I owe Diesel everything. He brought me into this club and gave me a life. After getting back from overseas and seeing so much shit, suffering with PTSD, I felt like I was drowning. Being in the club gave me purpose again, and I began to heal from wounds that I wasn’t even aware I had. I owe Diesel for everything I am now. To know that the woman I loved sold him out…
“Diesel—”
“I’m not saying it doesn’t piss me off to know that the reason Vicki got away was more or less from my own club.”
“There was no more or less. If Ellie hadn’t told her to find a dry out and get her head together, we would have got her. The nightmare would have been over. Fuck man, Ellie’s actions created so much fucking fallout. You almost died. How do you think I would have lived with that if you’d died?”
“How do you think I would have lived without Rory in my life, Fury?” he asks and I pull my gaze up to look at him.
“Because of Rory, Ryan is happy. He doesn’t have nightmares. What he has is a life where he knows his mom would die for him and do it happily to protect him. My boy knows nothing but good now and that’s because of Rory.”
“Man—”
“And me? Fuck, Brother. I gave my club up. I walked away and went to Montana.”
“And you did that because I wasn’t able to shut Vicki down.”
“I did that because I was tired, Fury. I was tired of being the president of this club. I was tired of living. I was turning cold and into someone that I didn’t even recognize. I was someone who hurt a woman that I was growing to love. I was a fucking mess.”
“That at least, I can understand,” I tell him. “I’m definitely a mess,” I mumble.
“If having Rory in my life means telling Vicki I was hunting her down and to go into hiding? I would have done it myself. I’d have told her exactly where we were looking. I’d have sold my soul if it meant I could have Rory when it was all over.”
“That doesn’t excuse what she did,” I warn him.
“It doesn’t, but in truth, what did she tell them, Fury? She didn’t say anything to Vicki that I hadn’t said to the bitch a hundred times over. I screamed at her that I was going to send men to hunt her down if she kept trying to get Ryan. I told her she needed to get her ass in re-hab. She just didn’t listen. Chances are she didn’t listen to Ellie either.”
I look at my brothers and really try and consider what they’ve said.
“So, you want me to forgive her? You can deal with having her here in this club, knowing what she did?” I ask, shocked and confused as fuck. I also feel a little bit of hope beginning to grow.
“That depends,” Diesel says. “Do you still love Ellie?”
“Of course I do. You can’t just turn that shit off, Diesel. But?—”
“The way I look at it, if I ban Ellie from the club, I’m going to lose my Sergeant of arms and I’m not prepared to deal with that shit.”
“I…You…”
“You can tell me you wouldn’t follow her to Phoenix or wherever it is she’s packed to head out to, Fury, but we both know you’d be lying. You grieved for her for almost two years. I didn’t notice it as much because of my shit, but I sure as fuck saw the difference in you when she came back. You were already planning on going to her then. I’m just stepping up before that happens again.”
“You’re serious?” I ask, feeling like a giant weight has been lifted off my shoulders. Ellie and I still have a lot to work through, but at least now it doesn’t feel hopeless.
“I’m telling you the same thing I told Ellie when she came to my room to talk to me and Rory in person. Besides, my wife pointed out that I’d never made it mandatory that we don’t talk things over with our old ladies. Our club is more relaxed than others—a fact she knows thanks to talking to Torrent,” he says, giving Devil a pointed look.
“That’s my Angel,” he laughs.
“She lovingly pointed out that I couldn’t get pissy now because ultimately it was my fault that I hadn’t talked to my men about the issue before. A woman who was struggling to become a mother shouldn’t have been expected to deal with all of the information she had. That’s on me.”
“And me,” I admit. I slipped up and told Ellie too much. That’s a big part of the problem.
“So, we work on those issues in the future—which hopefully won’t happen because we won’t have to face them,” Diesel says. “Now, it’s up to you, but Ellie was in bad shape earlier. Rory was worried enough about her, she talked her into staying in our room longer, and sent me to find you. Then, of course Torrent showed up with Cannon. That means you two need to go see to your women, so I can have mine back.”
“I’ll go find her.”
“Good call. I’m going to go hunt Crusher and Dani down to collect my offspring,” he says with a wink, walking off.
“Hey, Diesel?”
“Yeah, man?”
“Thanks.”
He nods, Devil thumps me on the back, and I take off to find Ellie. It’s not going to be easy, but I can’t let her leave. Diesel was right. If Ellie was banned from the club, I’d end up leaving. There’s no way I could go back to living without her.
I walk to Diesel’s room, and just as I’m about to open the door, Ellie opens it, crying. For a minute, I’m afraid that things have gone south again.
“Ellie, I’ve got my keys. Torrent will tell the boys—Oh, Fury!” Rory gasps, surprised to see me.
“What’s going on?” I ask, then my attention turns to Ellie. Her face is white, she has tears in her eyes and she’s holding the back of her head.
“It’s jut… st... just. Just a migraine,” Ellie says.
“It’s getting worse and she admitted her vision is blurry. I was going to drive her to the emergency room.”
“She has meds, she gets migraines often, although they’ve slowed down lately. I’m sure she’ll be…”
I stop talking as Ellie drops to the floor. I dive down to try and catch her, managing to get at least the upper half of her body in my arms.
“Ellie? Ice, wake up.” She’s out cold, looking abnormally pale.
“I’ll call an ambulance,” Torrent says, taking out her phone.
“Fuck that. I’m taking her,” I growl. Panic spreads through me. She’s never passed out before in her life. If the pain was so bad that she was stuttering earlier, something has to be seriously wrong. I can’t wait for an ambulance to take her to the hospital, I can get her there sooner.
I pick Ellie up in my arms, carrying her toward the front door—praying that she’s okay, and terrified that she’s not…