Chapter 5
Tank – Age Twenty-Nine
“How are you feeling, Granny?” I ask quietly as I sit forward on the chair and grab her hand, the woman in her late eighties looking so fucking frail, and sadness fills me as I lock eyes with light blue ones that look so much like my girl’s at the heartbreak that shines back at me, the pain.
Her heart is failing. I did the tests my fucking self, and she is one heart attack away from leaving me, or not getting to see her granddaughter again after she disappeared without a word six years ago breaking her heart and shattering mine.
“Tired,” she whispers, and I nod as I gently rub my thumb over her paper-like skin.
Six years I’ve been coming to see this woman every Tuesday, six years making sure she was comfortable, six years allowing her to celebrate all the achievements I’ve gotten, even becoming a doctor earlier than my peers, working nights in the ER.
I’ve ensured to make sure she was involved with everything while keeping my brothers at a distance about my whereabouts, about my pain, not willing to put my shit on them right now, or fuck, ever.
Over the past few years, some have struggled, especially Trigger, who cheated on Ashley like a fucking idiot.
They’ve just had another baby, adding to their family after having their son Cole in high school, which is why they married so quickly to begin with.
The beautiful baby who looks just like his father spent a while in NICU after Ashley was attacked and went into early labor twenty weeks before her due date. Don’t get me fucking started on Anchor, whose girl was taken by the now dismantled Pillars.
Summer's own mother sold her to the group where she was held for a year and a half, and Anchor believed she’d gone back to her ex-boyfriend before the truth hit him in the face and he found her naked and bloodied in a cage with hundreds of others.
After she tried hanging herself, an ex-clubwhore just managing to hold her up while she was dangling, Summer killed her mother while Anchor killed her ex but it didn’t stop Summer’s nightmares.
Last week I helped her give birth to a baby boy that was conceived by rape and though she was adamant to put the baby up for adoption, I managed to convince her to hold him after Anchor begged me with his eyes to pass him over to her, wanting to keep the baby because he was a part of his wife.
Thankfully, after holding him, Summer changed her mind about the adoption. She kept the baby, and honestly, she’s an amazing mama. Even though she has her bad days and struggles, the woman is healing slowly with the help of her husband and their baby, Kai Logan – yes, after me – Mathews.
That was a proud fucking moment, but I couldn’t help but feel jealous, I guess is the right word.
I should have been married by now with at least four kids, but I’m not. Instead, I’m broken and keeping everything bottled up inside.
My girl left me after two years of building a life together with no explanation, taking my heart with her.
“She’s left town after disgracing the family,” the woman before me sneers, her plastic face not even breaking out a line despite the anger that etches from her, and my jaw ticks as she looks at me up and down with disgust, her eyes lingering on my cut, burning with rage.
Have to admit, I understand now what Jas meant when she said her mother was an ice queen.
The bitch literally thought she was better than me, than my club, and I understood why Jasmine didn’t want her family to know about us in that moment. How much shit they would have caused for us, especially after her dick of a brother started on me and I was close to shooting the fucker.
I press my lips to Granny’s cold hand as I hold it before sighing, the weight of my pain from the last six years without my girl drowning me.
Jasmine has vanished off the face of the earth. I had Dirty, the only fucking brother aware of my girl, trying to find her, but he couldn’t. Even after contacting Leads, a brother who was our tech guy for years, teaching Dirty all he knew before he went nomad, couldn’t find her.
I feel like I’m drowning every goddamn day, like I can’t breathe, fuck, I’m watching my brothers slowly fall in love, settle down and have kids.
Here I am, struggling because my girl left me without an explanation that I can’t seem to get over, and when Granny called Reginald, Jas’s uncle, in tears because my girl at least gave Granny the grace of saying goodbye, the fucker ended up admitting my girl saw him before she left.
He helped her disappear, and I swear I have never felt so fucking angry in my life, and for months I refused to speak to the fucker knowing if I did, I’d kill him.
After helping Jas disappear, the idiot forgot to get the name she chose and the details of where she’ll be fucking going, and obviously she never told him why she needed to go, only that she had to, so he helped her.
Now he’s kicking himself because none of us can find her, not even in my personal opinion, the two best techies I know and like fuck am I getting the club involved.
None of them even know Jas exists and they’ve dealt with enough shit.
I squeeze my eyes tight as Jas’s hit me square in the chest.
Her grandmother is about to die, and we now can’t get a hold of her to let her know, for her to say goodbye to the woman she saw as a mother figure.
Fuck I feel like I can’t breathe.
“She called me, Logan,” Granny whispers out of the blue, her words hitting me and I shoot my head up in shock, my eyes wide as they lock with her teary ones.
She called her…
Jasmine called her…
“Is she okay?” I choke, my voice raw with so much emotion, and Granny shakes her head as a few tears fall.
“No, she’s not, she cried the whole time she was on the phone, which was for over an hour, Logan,” she croaks as she gently squeezes my hand, and my eyes tear up.
So many fucking emotions are running through me right now.
Jealously.
Anger.
Hurt.
Pain.
Relief, so much fucking relief because she’s alive…
I clench my jaw to stop myself from bawling my fucking eyes out as Granny whispers, “She wouldn’t tell me why she left. She sounded so down, Logan my boy, she kept asking about you, asking if you’ve moved on, if you were happy, like she needed the reassurance that you made a life without her.”
And here comes the blinding fucking anger yet again.
I got her name tatted for fuck’s sake, she knew what that meant, she knew I wanted to spend forever with her.
I shake my head, my temper rising like it always does when I think of my girl, and I mutter, “There is never going to be someone else other than her. I haven’t been happy since the day before she left.”
And she left without a single word to me. She left me, instead of coming to me, asking me for help with whatever was going on, without explaining what scared her. She fucking left, breaking my heart.
Fuck, after leaving her parents' ridiculously large, gated house, I was that much of a mess, I fucked up and nearly allowed Lyndsey to suck me off. Dad walked in on her, dropping to her knees in the garage, and kicked her out, stopping me from making a massive fucking mistake before demanding to know when I started fucking Mama’s best friend.
I muttered, “When I was sixteen and forced to go to a stupid ass dance I didn’t want to go to,” before I walked away from him, leaving him reeling knowing his teenage son was fucking groomed and went along with it because of his wife continuously pushing shit on me that I didn’t want and I went home to fall apart before speaking to Dirty to help me try and find her.
I’ve been lost without her these past six years, only living day by day for the club and every fucking day that goes by and I don’t hear from her, my heart breaks and the fact that I managed to get my medical license was a miracle.
I’ve spent the past six years hiding my true feelings, fuck, I haven’t even said one word to my mother after she tried to give me an engagement ring a week after Jas left for Kate.
Demanding I propose, claiming I owed her for not being a fucking girl like a crazy bitch, though it hasn’t stopped her from trying to speak to me, trying to shove Kate down my fucking throat every chance she gets.
“I know there is no one else for you, and I told her so, I made sure she understood the pain she has put you through, how selfish she has been to leave without an explanation to me, to Reg and to you,” Granny whispers as she tries to grip my hand, and I drop my head as she chokes, “I made sure she knew that you would never love anyone else.”
The last time I heard from Jas was a text asking if we could talk. It sounded urgent, but she said she loved me so I didn’t panic, I didn’t think anything of it until I finished class and I realized I never heard back from her after I replied and something in my gut niggled at me.
I rushed home, only the house was empty, Jas nowhere to be found and even though her clothes were still hanging up in our closet, which are still there now, her perfumes, jewelry that I bought her, all still in the same place, I knew she was gone, I could fucking feel it.
“Did she, has she moved on?” I reluctantly ask quietly, my heart in the pit of my stomach at the thought of her settling down.
It’s been six years, she must have right?
“No,” Granny instantly denies, and I try not to show any emotion as I squeeze my eyes tight, keeping my head down. “She said she’s just been working, but I could hear the loneliness in her voice.”
Yet she left, she cut all contact.
“Granny,” I hear behind me before I can voice my thoughts, knowing the woman will give me some insight, and my jaw ticks.
Don’t kill the fucker, I try to remind myself as the urge to grab my gun pulls.
“Brady, sweetheart,” Granny replies, and I slowly stand, knowing I need to get outta here before I hit the pompous dickhead or worse, shoot him between the eyes.