Chapter 37
CHAPTER
THIRTY-SEVEN
WES
After a stint at a rehab facility in Rapid, I was finally released and returned to Meager, to Mom and Ronny’s new home where they’d just moved in a few days before. Their new house was in Beck and Violet’s neighborhood and although was smaller than our old one, was full of natural light and seemed more spacious and comfortable. The small backyard was a patch of green surrounded by trees giving the property privacy.
Mom had wanted to put off moving in, but everyone insisted she go ahead with it. And while she stayed with me at the rehab hospital in Rapid, the move had taken place. After the professional movers had done their job, all the brothers and old ladies had pitched in and got everything unpacked with furniture in place, food in the kitchen, and appliances and light fixtures hooked up and working.
Fernando, Ronny’s dog, an old German Shepherd he’d had for years and years, lay on the foot of my bed. We’d nap together most of the day. He was always tired, just like me. Whenever I’d wake up and spot him at my feet, a sense of calm eased through me. All was right with the world.
“Honey—” Fernando raised his head at Mom in the doorway. “Butler’s here to see you.”
Today was the day.
Today was the first day I’d felt I had any kind of normal energy, so early this morning I called Butler to see if he could come over this afternoon. Slowly, I swung my legs out of the bed and sat up, shoving my feet into my Vans slip-ons.
Mom brought over the new thin robe she’d bought me and helped me into it. I grit my teeth at the sting that raced over my muscles. Stretching my arms and chest wasn’t easy but getting better. “It’s a beautiful day. Butler’s out on the patio. I’ll bring y’all coffee.”
Together, Mom and I and Fernando went downstairs. I had to take a break and catch my breath; luckily, she didn’t say any encouraging words. She knew better. She waited, and the moment I took another step, so did she.
Mom took off for the kitchen, and Fernando followed me out onto the backyard patio. Butler shot up from his chair, his pale blue eyes gleaming in the sunlight. “There he is.” He came over and squeezed my shoulders with his massive palms. “Sucks I can’t hug you. I just want to crush you and never let go.” He chuckled, his face reddening. We sat down at the table side by side, Fernando next to me on the grass. “It’s so good to see you standing, walking, with color back in your face again. My heart literally stopped when I got there that night.”
“Then I’m glad your pacemaker works.”
“Not funny.” He leaned over on his thighs. “Not funny at all.”
“Lindy told me about Finger getting me out.”
“I had to stop her from trying first. Then Finger stopped me, and he went in and got you out. Didn’t hesitate.”
The Jacks and the Flames working together. Brotherhood was a beautiful thing.
“The Flames put the fire out and found a trap door in that cabin,” said Butler. “Raptor had a stash of ammunition, a few weapons, a pile of brass knuckles.”
“And Raptor?”
“As the feds have been after him since that shit went down with Trick and Nicole, Finger cut a deal with his fed contact in return for them smoothing things out with the local cops where your, Pick, and Minty’s injuries are concerned. He also had Pick give them any info he’d gotten from Raptor on his latest activities and contacts.”
“Good.”
“Before we left there, Boner found a backpack filled with cash. That yours?”
I met his gaze. “I got something to tell you.”
His eyes narrowed. “You want to wait ’til you get stronger? Last thing you need is…”
“What I need is to tell you.”
He took in a breath and leaned back in the chair. “Tell me.”
“Coffee!” Mom swept in with a tray filled with two mugs, a pitcher of steaming coffee, sugar and half and half, and the corn muffins I loved from the Meager Grand. “I’ll leave you to it.”
“Thanks, Alicia.”
She left us alone again, and Butler poured us coffee. I took a muffin, but I couldn’t face eating yet.
“Go on,” said Butler, taking a sip of coffee.
I told him my father had wanted to kill him and had hired the Blades, specifically Pick, to do it.
Butler’s eyes clouded, his brow furrowing as he stiffly put his coffee down on the table. His gaze darted to the trees at the end of the yard. My insides twisted as I waited in the awful silence, watching his jaw clench tighter and tighter. His hands dug through his blond hair and he cleared his throat. “When I returned to Meager to rejoin the chapter, I’d stopped to eat at this restaurant in eastern South Dakota. Happened to bump into Tania there, who was also on her way home for good, and we ended up sitting together. Guess who showed up and threatened me?”
“Pick?”
“Pick.” His stony gaze returned to me. “He told me word was out that I’d been working with people I shouldn’t be, and that his president didn’t like my ‘interfering.’ They’d been keeping an eye on me when I was a Nomad. That was way before that day in Deadwood when he showed up.” He wiped a hand across his mouth.
“Hit day.”
“But Lindy being there stopped the hit. Lindy being there with me and you. And then he chose to take his daughter home.” Butler swallowed a gulp of coffee.
“You chasing after me to stop my grand fuckup of a lifetime saved both our lives and Lindy’s soul.” Uttering those words made my chest ache.
“Does your mother know?”
“I don’t want to tell her.”
“She knows plenty. Doesn’t need to know this.”
My shoulders sank. “I’m sorry, Butler. So sorry.”
He clamped a hand on my knee, his gleaming crystal blue eyes sending an icy current right through me. “You got nothing to be sorry about, Wes. Not a fucking thing. I knew Jump real well, and you know what? This makes perfect sense.”
“How does this make fucking sense?” My breath constricted for a painful split second, and I grit my teeth. “You were his brother!”
“Jump stopped trusting me a long, long time ago, Wes. It started the second I fucked things up for our chapter when I had a crush on Grace back in the day. She was with Dig, but I liked her and couldn’t stop flirting with her. So fucking stupid and so fucking careless. One day I got real careless, and everybody saw. Dig was furious, rightly so. He lit into me, busted me up, and I got sent to our chapter in North Dakota in the middle of all this tense political shit going on at the time. I was out of this crucial vote that was going to happen the day after. A vote we’d all been counting on, especially Jump. They ended up losing the vote.
“Eventually, Dig and I became friends again, but Jump? Never forgave me for ruining things. And then later, after my first wife died and I was fucking up with drugs, selling out the Jacks, that was it for him. I fucked up bad, absolutely. And your Dad kept that long list of my sins running fresh in his head.
“But the worst part? He never forgave Grace for it, either. Not ever. She’d done nothing wrong but put up with me, but nope, he blamed her as much as me. And almost twenty years later, he used it against both of us—for the good of the club, of course. That shit came easy for him.” He shook his head at the still vivid memory, a memory that burned. “Me, I’d deserved it for the shit I’d done when I was too busy getting high, but it was a vicious and cruel thing to do to Grace.”
My back went rigid, “What the hell did he do to Grace? Grace of all people?”
“You don’t need to know.” He cleared his throat. “After I stepped down as President of North Dakota, got clean, served as a Nomad for National, I came back. But he didn’t want me back, not in his chapter, and he made that real clear. Then, when he realized I’d been working to revive Dig’s idea of creating an alliance with Finger and the Flames, he got even more pissed off. I knew it’d be hard to convince him because he’d been against it from the very beginning. Yeah, I did it behind his back, but I knew it was a good opportunity for us.
“He wouldn’t listen. We argued, a lot. I said things I shouldn’t have, challenged him in front of everybody. We had to change course back then. The timing was right, so I took that risk and went in, hoping for the best.”
“But you were wrong,” I whispered.
“Deeply fucking wrong.” He let out a rumbly laugh. “I’m glad you told me. Know that I respect and honor how difficult it must have been for you to find out from Raptor, and under those circumstances, and how hard it was for you to tell me.
Leaning back in his chair, he sipped on his coffee. “Jump was set in his ways, stubborn often selfish ways. And in those last years, it had begun to take away from what our brotherhood was meant to be.
“Wasn’t like that in the beginning. We had a lot of fun. We worked hard together toward common goals. Most of all, we trusted each other. Every single one of us. But when the trust stops… infection creeps in.”
His lips tilted into a soft grin. “I remember when I was a prospect, I’d asked Wreck what the meaning of the gleaming eye on the Jacks skull was all about. Had to mean something, right? I wanted to know.”
“I don’t know what it means either. Never thought to ask. What did Wreck say?”
“He told me that even in the darkest of times, in despair and death, there’s always a gleam of brotherhood to light your way. It’s a promise. But it’s also a warning to never fuck with that.”
A prickle raced over my skin. “As it should be.”
“As it should be. You understand that promise, Wes. I know you do. You feel it.”
“I do.”
Butler cleared his throat. “Was that money in your backpack Jump’s payment for?—”
I interrupted him. “I want you to give it to the club.”
“It’s yours, Wes. You found it with the notebooks, right? You should?—”
“Don’t want it, makes me sick,” I muttered. “But it’s still money, money the MC can use. The club always needs cash, right?”
“Yeah.”
“It’s up to you. Use it or burn it.”
Butler let out a laugh. His rich and full laugh always set my muscles at ease. “Let’s use it for the club. We have a project coming up with the Flames and we need to make a down payment on that investment. Things have been a little tight for us lately so that cash is perfect timing.”
I let out a short laugh. “That’ll make Dad roll over in his grave for sure.”
“Think so.”
We both grinned, but our thin amusement quickly faded.
“If I hadn’t found those notebooks of Dad’s—” I lowered my voice “— and if I hadn’t shown them to Lindy, who recognized the Blades’ name for the area where the cabin was located, we might never have found Raptor and Pick. He was planning on taking Lindy too?—”
“You should have told me, Wes.” There was an ache in Butler’s voice that squeezed my heart.
“You’re right. But after Lindy got that delivery, all I could think of was helping her find her dad.”
Butler’s gaze lowered to his boots. “I almost lost you on that road in Deadwood. And I almost lost you again now…” His breath caught.
“I’m here, where I’m supposed to be.”
He met my watery gaze with his own. “And don’t you fucking forget it.”
“As for you, no matter how hard two different people wanted you dead and tried to kill you on the same damned day, they didn’t take you down.”
He put a hand on my shoulder. “Not even my weak heart did me in that day. And not even fucking Raptor could stop you and Lindy.” His fingers squeezed my flesh. “You and me still got a hell of a lot of living to do.”
All the emotions burst in my chest like a volcanic eruption. A noise escaped my throat, and I averted my gaze to the dog at my feet.
Butler’s arm slid around my shoulders and squeezed. “Listen to me, Wes. Jump’s choices are not your choices. His sins are not in your blood, and they cast no shadow over you. I think you let them all these years, along with guilt and regret.” Shifting to face me, he cuffed my neck and I met his gaze. “You gotta listen to me. I’ve been in those trenches, let that shit weigh me down and blind me. His shit is not your burden to bear. Never was, and never will be. I will not lose the fine man you are to any of this. You hear? We need you, Wes. Me, your mom. Lindy. Even Finger. We need you.”
“I always wanted to know how far his shit went. What I did know up until now kept me angry, kept me down.”
“Anger’s easy, but it can be deceiving. Is that why you haven’t wanted to prospect for the club?”
I nodded as I sucked in a breath, my chest aching with it.
“Listen to me. You are your own man, and all of us love you for who you keep showing us you are.”
My teeth scraped over my lip. “I feel so much shame…”
“That shows the kind of heart you have. You’re feeling the grief for everybody. The responsibility.” He clamped a hand on my leg. “Feel it and let it go. It sucks, but you’ll come out the other end stronger. You will because that’s the person you are, always seeing the best in people. Always being there for them. Those you love, you love hard. See all that in yourself now.”
We both settled back against our chairs, taking in the slanting ridge of evergreens in the distance.
“Your dad was a difficult, stubborn, self-righteous fuck. An ordinary man, a smart man, who always wanted his way. He did love you, even if he didn’t show it to you the way you would’ve wanted. He did love you.”
“In that cabin, when I thought it was over, I heard Dad’s voice calling me Flash, telling me what he always used to tell me at the start of a race to keep me focused. And all the fear cleared, and I knew what I had to do, what I could do, and I was ready to do it. Suddenly, Pick rushed at Raptor, Minty went at his leg, all of us working together to bring him down. And in that split second that Raptor loosened his grip on me, I went for it. He got his cuts in first, but I was able to grab the gun from his belt.”
“And you pulled that trigger right when you had to. There you go, Flash.” He shot me a grin, a hand mussing my hair. “How’s Lindy doing with this revelation?”
“It’s been a lot—for her and her dad. They’ve also got a lot of family stuff to go through together, stuff that has to do with Raptor. We’ve been texting, and she’s doing good.”
“So you’re keeping in touch?”
“We are.” My lips tipped up.
“Good. I’m glad.”
“Are you?”
“The two of you are great together. Best of all, you seem like good friends, and that’s real important.”
“It is. She’ll be back soon. She’s helping her dad get settled in a new apartment.” I ate a piece of muffin. “Got to say, at the end of the day, no matter what muck Lindy’s father was sunk in, Pick always chose his family, like he did that day in Deadwood.”
“Mark of a good man.”
“You’re a good man too, Butler. Your choice to come to Deadwood and stop me from hurting Lindy changed all our lives for the better—even Pick’s.” I met his fierce gaze with my own. “You and Pick and Finger have shown me what it means to be a father, a friend. A brother. Love you, B,” I whispered.
“Love you, too, Westley.” He refilled our mugs. “I admit, when Lindy came to town and I saw you two hanging out, I was concerned.”
“It was a shock seeing her here, but it forced me to look in the mirror for the first time in a long time. I felt like I’d gotten this second chance to get to know her, to become friends, to make it up to her somehow, but also to deal with my own shit that I’d packed away.” I let out a laugh. “And then that spark that has always been there between us blew the fuck up.”
“You in love with her?”
“Like crazy.”
He let out a laugh. “You told her yet?”
“I’m planning on it. The minute she comes back to Meager.”
“Proud of you. Proud of both of you.”
“After Deadwood, you told me that I had a burning heart inside me and that I should let it lead me to figure out what exactly I believed in and to stand up for that before it was too late. You were right, B. I let it lead me, and it got me right here.”
“Ahh, Wes.” He gripped my arm. “When you leave this house, it all begins.”
“What’s that?”
Grinning, he stretched out his long legs. “A new life worth living.”