Chapter 17
CHAPTER
SEVENTEEN
WES
A shamed schoolboy, that was me. I shrunk three sizes in one second.
Lindy sprang a foot away from me. Cool air stung my skin where she once was pressed against me.
I cleared my throat. “Finger, we were just?—”
“Oh, I know exactly what you were just ….” He tossed his keys on the kitchen table, and they clattered loudly on the wood. I winced.
Genuine truth in action , Beck had said.
Here we fucking go.
“Finger, could we talk? You and me?” I held my breath, and Lindy did a double take at me, at Finger, back at me, her eyes widening as she tugged on the edge of her T-shirt.
Finger’s brow creased. “You and me?”
My chest tightened. “You and me.”
I got a deeper furrowing of his brow and a snarl curling his lips for a response. He was a wild west outlaw and I was the young punk unworthy of his time.
“I-I’m going to get out of this makeup,” Lindy said.
“You do that,” muttered Finger, his fierce gaze lasering a hole through me.
“See you, Lind,” I said without looking at her.
“Bye.” She left the room, her bare feet padding in the distance.
Finger curled his maimed hands around the top of a kitchen chair. “Am I going to need a beer for this conversation or a whiskey?”
“Both.”
“You grab the beers, I’ll pour the whiskey.” He moved to a cabinet and took out a bottle of liquor, while I went to the fridge and grabbed two cans of beer. Setting a tumbler of whiskey before me, Finger sat down at the table, and I took a seat opposite him. He knocked back a swallow of the liquor. “What do you got for me? Been a long day.”
“Me and Lindy?—”
“There is no you and Lindy.”
“There was .”
“Say again?”
I cleared my throat. “Years ago, Lindy and I were seeing each other.”
“And how old were you? Twelve?”
“It was after my dad got killed. When the Broken Blades were still the Broken Blades. I was seventeen, and she was almost sixteen.”
“ Almost ?” His jaw visibly tightened. “Did her father know?”
“No.”
He let out an ominous, low noise, his metallic eyes narrowing at me. Grabbing a beer, he ripped it open and took a slug. “Go on. Because I’m feeling there’s a story here, and it ain’t only about teen angst.”
I took a swallow of the whiskey. “I came up with a plan to get revenge for my dad’s murder. I started ripping shit off from the Blade’s junkyard, throwing explosives. Minor shit that caused a big hassle.”
A crooked grin flared over his features. “That was you?”
“That was me. But then I came up with a grander plan.” I drank down more of the smooth liquor, and a trail of sweet fire flew down my throat, to my belly, making my back straighten. “I targeted the daughter of a Blade—Lindy. I thought what better way to get back at the bastards who murdered my father at his own club.”
“I better not hear what I’m thinking.”
“You won’t. It didn’t happen. Butler figured it out and snapped me out of my delusional fog.”
He tipped his head. “Delusional fog?”
My mouth dried. “I’d gotten obsessed with striking back, and striking out was the only thing that felt good. Like I was doing something important. I thought the Flames and the Jacks weren’t doing enough to find out who’d done it, like it didn’t matter to anybody. For me it wasn’t about politics or business. My father had been assassinated on his own turf , and I wanted justice for him. For the Jacks.”
His jaw tightened, and his heavy gaze went to the whiskey he swirled in his glass. “Frustrated, angry, powerless, and abandoned all at once.”
Shifting in my chair, I blinked at his perfect articulation of my clusterfuck of emotions. He knew what that felt like, didn’t he?
He poured more whiskey for me and I drank, the booze searing my throat. “What made it shitty was, at the time that he got killed, my dad and I were barely talking. My mom had kicked him out of the house, couldn’t take his cheating anymore. And I was glad ‘cause I was over his bullshit too.”
We drank in silence, the late afternoon light waning in the kitchen changing the colors and tone of everything as if I were in an orange-purple dreamscape and not here, in reality, spilling my guts to Finger in his kitchen.
I took a sip of the cold beer to clear my throat. “It’s strange talking about this with you ‘cause everyone knows my dad was no fan of yours.”
“And I was no fan of his.” His gaze was now even, controlled, only the muscle along his jaw pulsed once, twice. “But that’s got nothing to do with you, Wes. Or with you and me.” He lifted his glass in salute and drank.
I did the same. “I appreciate that.” My pulse eased its tight, quick rhythm at last.
Finger swiped a hand across his chin. “My dad was no saint either. Definitely no hero to his club. He stood up for me in the ways he could, but I always wanted more from him.”
“Yeah.” I licked the whiskey off my lip. “Always more.”
“My dad cheated on his wife with my mother. His wife and their kids wanted nothing to do with me, but he came back for me, saved me from a bad situation, and brought me to his MC. I grew up at the clubhouse, not with him at his house. Still, it was a way better situation. At the MC I was eating, going to school. I was safe.
“Did I want more from him? Fuck yeah, I did. Every time I saw him. Every time I didn’t see him. Did I get it? No. Did I have to suck it up? I sucked it up. We spent some time together, and it was priceless to me. He was a simple man, and yet the things I learned from him have helped me over the years in intricate ways.”
“What happened to him, if you don’t mind me asking?”
“I was a little younger than you are now when I got kidnapped by the Smoking Guns. He had a heart attack when he heard. Didn’t make it.”
“That must have been rough on you when you got out.”
“Changed everything. In an instant, all those little boy hopes I’d been hanging onto for so long vanished.”
“Little boy hopes…yeah…” I knocked back more whiskey.
He downed another shot. “That’s when I knew that all I had was me. That I could stand up on my legs and claim what I wanted for myself. And I wanted better, I knew there was better out there for me, and I couldn’t sit tight and hope no more. I had to go get it.”
“I hear that.”
“I figured whatever my father had given me—his practical smarts, his puny measures of love and support, even his inability to be the man I wanted him to be—that’s what I had. And I finally, finally felt thankful for what I had and for him. All that became a bridge from disappointment to opportunity.”
“And you crossed that bridge?”
He let out a short laugh. “I did, literally. This old narrow iron suspension bridge over the Missouri. Never forget it. Crossed over it on my bike to a new life on my own.”
“You made peace with him. With yourself.” I stared into my whiskey. “With all of it.”
“What is it, Wes?”
“I found out some new stuff about my dad, and it’s reeling me back into all that old shit all over again. That anger, that resentment. Making me question everything, making me…” I pressed my lips together. “I thought I’d put all that to rest.”
“Or you’ve only been pushing it down, out of sight? Trust me, Wes, I get bitterness and revenge. I do. It’s fueled me over the decades, but it doesn’t own me. Not anymore. That anger and revenge still boiling inside you?”
“That I laid to rest. The men responsible for his death got served justice thanks to you and Butler, and I’m good with that.”
He brought the whiskey to his lips and drained his glass. “Then what’s boiling inside you? Something is.”
“Regret,” tumbled from my lips, and my insides quaked at the truth that hurtled from my soul.
He leaned back in his chair. “You need to make a change, son—and I’m not talking about the paint color on your bike, or moving to another town. Or some pretty girl. I’m talking core, deep down. And no one can do that for you but you.”
I dug a hand in my hair. “I think seeing Lindy again reminded me of the shitty choices I’d made, of all the crazy back then, and how I’ve done nothing much about moving forward since. She sees it. My mom. Butler too. I know I don’t ever want to be that cruel, selfish asshole blinded by anger, or the guy who’s laying low because of doubts and regrets.”
“Wes—” A raw urgency in his growly voice had my muscles tightening at attention. “Make your bridge out of what your father gave you along with your own vision ‘cause that’s what you got. May be good, may be dark, doesn’t matter. Bright spot, your mother is a hell of a strong, straightforward woman, and you got Butler and the Jacks in your corner. All of that is the truth of who you are, and that’s powerful. You want better? Use it and cross that bridge.”
“I do want better. For me. And for Lindy.”
He cleared his throat and his back straightened. He seemed even taller. “Lindy’s dad isn’t around, so I’m going to step up here. She’s a good kid who’s had to do a hell of a lot of growing up real fast over the years. Responsible, tough on the outside, and a good girl on the inside. Doesn’t play games, was never one of the reckless young ones you had to keep your eye on.”
“That’s not Lindy, never was.”
He tapped a finger on the table. “Lindy is under my protection now. I’m responsible for her, and I take that responsibility very seriously. Which means you do not fuck with her.”
My pulse jerked. “I’m not fucking with her.”
“But you did fuck with her once.”
“I did. Now I want to help her. ”
“By seducing her in the two minutes that she’s been in Meager?”
My face flared with heat. “Uh…Lindy and I…”
“Lindy and you WHAT?” His lips curled into that harsh snarl and his thick brows jumped on his face.
“Lindy and I got chemistry. Always have. But now it’s different…now it’s?—”
“It’s what?”
“Brutally honest.”
Ain’t that the fucking truth?
His lips twisted under his mustache. He didn’t expect that reply, and I didn’t either. Finger drew himself up taller. “Right now, Lindy needs to be focused and clear-headed, not distracted by chemistry with a smooth-talking boy who only wants one thing from her.”
“I’m not a boy, and that’s not what this is.” I raised my voice.
His head tilted. “Then what the fuck did I walk in on, Wes?”
“Us getting carried away…with our chemistry.”
He broke out into loud peals of hoarse, raw laughter. I grit my teeth, the heels of my boots digging into the floor. “Ah, Wes, I know what it is to burn for a woman, and I know what it is to have a hunger for revenge burn in your veins. They can be two sides of the same fucking coin.”
“This is about helping a good woman I owe so much to, a woman who deserves her father back safe and sound. A woman who is suffering. I care about Lindy.” I sucked in a breath. “That same day in Deadwood, when Butler figured it all out and shook sense into me, those two men came for us on the road, and Lindy and Pick showed up and saved our hides.”
He dragged his fingers through his long beard. “That was when Butler had his heart attack?”
“He’d collapsed on the ground after all the shooting was done. Jesus, I’ll never forget it. Pick doing CPR on him, Lindy calling 9-1-1. I…I…fucking lost it.” My voice had gotten lower.
“You’d just lost your dad, for fuck’s sake.” That tense muscle along his jaw flexed again.
I swallowed the last of the cold beer, my grip tightening around the damp can. “I was so grateful my dad and his brothers taught me how to use a gun and that I had it on me that day, and so grateful that Butler survived, that Pick shot them down. In all that dark insanity, there was a flicker of light, and that light was Lindy.”
“Your guardian angel. Your angel of mercy.”
“She was, yes,” My back straightened. “A true angel of mercy. And that gave me this new sense of hope that I’ve never forgotten.” I scrunched the metal can. “And even more fucking guilt.” How had I finally expressed what I’d been feeling, and to Finger of all people on this planet? I met his gaze and swallowed hard past the stubborn knot of emotion still stuck in my throat. “And now, she’s going through this hell? I have to help her.”
“You feel obligated.”
“I need to help her. I want to.”
He leaned back from the table, studying me, and my pulse loudly banged in my veins under the weight of that heavy glare. In the tense silence, acid poured into every nook and cranny of my being.
“Finger, me and Lindy…it isn’t only some attraction I can’t get enough of. It is that too, but?—”
Finger’s lips curved. “Wes, you ever been in love before?”
“No.”
“Hits you like a train. A train that keeps rolling over you and hurtles you down the track along with it. You got no choice in the matter.”
I let out a nervous laugh. “Sounds like you know what you’re talking about.”
“I do know.” That crooked grin broke across his lips once more. “Still on that train. Never want to get off.”