Chapter 19
NINETEEN
DAKOTA
I held the phone to my ear as I stood in the front yard, watching the controlled chaos taking place before my very eyes.
My girl Iris hadn’t been lying when she said she had it handled, and now my new driveway was filled to the brim with Iron Wraiths hauling furniture off the back of a moving truck and carrying it into the house I was now sharing with my estranged father for the foreseeable future.
For signing a six-month lease, Lennon gave me all her old furniture she’d put into storage when she moved in with Pope and decided it didn’t fit.
Which was most of it. The guys moved everything into the guest room first so that Ezra had a place to rest and were now working diligently to fill the rest of the house.
After taking off for sixteen years, and my icy demeanor when I first showed up at the hospital, I’d expected the cold shoulder, but was surprised when I got nothing but friendly smiles and familiar greetings from the guys I’d known before.
They treated me like I hadn’t been gone all this time and hadn’t spent most of my life secretly hating them for taking my father from me.
“So you’ve gone full-on looney toons then,” my sister said through the line after I finished relaying the events of the past couple hours.
“Apparently so,” I deadpanned. “Honestly, I don’t know how the hell this happened. It was as if my brain short-circuited in the middle of that hospital room.”
“Or,” my sister chimed in, her voice softening slightly, “you met a group of women you really like, and they made you realize maybe that town isn’t so bad after all.”
My mouth dropped open as I turned around to face the street, my free hand falling to Hank’s head where he sat by my side without a care in the world. “How can you say that?” I squeaked, shock settling over me at my sister’s words. “You’ve always hated this place as much as I have.”
“Don’t lie to me, Kota. You already do too much of that to yourself.”
I reared back like I’d been slapped. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It wasn’t the town, not really,” she continued.
“I knew from an early age that wasn’t the place for me.
That doesn’t mean I didn’t see the good in it, or the way you loved it before everything went bad.
Dad’s club doesn’t make up the whole of Ashland.
Our shitty mother doesn’t make up the whole of Ashland.
There’s good everywhere and you’ve always seen that.
There isn’t anything wrong with being happy to be back and making a new group of friends, the kind you really deserve. ”
I sniffled against the now damn-near constant burn behind my eyes and in my sinuses. “When the hell did you get all mushy?”
Remy’s laughter carried down the line, forcing my own smile to peek through. “Oh shut up. I’m not mushy, I’m wise.”
I sniffled again, my vision of the street ahead of me growing glassy. “I miss you,” I whispered.
“I miss you too,” she returned just as softly. “I’ve been thinking about it, and I think I’m going to make a trip down there.”
My hand froze on Hank’s head, and the dog let out a disgruntled woof when I stopped petting him.
“You’d really do that?” I asked, reaching into my pocket and pulling out a treat that I now always kept on me and in the house—just in case—and passing it to him to buy his affections back.
What could I say? I was a sucker who had a soft spot for the street’s mascot.
Spending time with Hank reminded me how badly I’d wanted a dog of my own growing up.
Not that my mother ever let me have one.
Then, after I left, I bounced from place to place for a while, and that kind of life wouldn’t have been fair to a dog.
When I finally met Adam and moved in with him, I broached the subject, only for him to tell me he had horrible allergies. Something I found out later was a lie. He just didn’t want to deal with any kind of mess that came with having a pet.
Was it ridiculous that I was wondering if this was a good time for me to consider getting a dog?
I didn’t bother asking that question out loud because I feared what the answer would be.
“He really divorced the she-devil?” Remy asked, pulling my focus out of my head and back on the present. “I can’t believe it.”
“Neither can I.” I turned back to the house to see that the biker moving company had made some serious progress, and the moving truck was nearly empty. That meant all that was left to do was for me to get my stuff from the inn and bring it here.
“And you haven’t seen her at all? Not even in passing?”
I shook my head, then remembered my sister couldn’t see me and answered, “Not once. No one’s even brought her up.”
“How are things with?.?.?. you know,” she said, lowering her voice ominously like she was speaking of Lord Voldemort himself.
“Things are?.?.?.” I heaved out a sigh to try and alleviate some of the weight sitting on my chest, but it was no use. “Messy as hell. I really screwed up, Rem.”
She sucked in a sharp gasp across the line. “Oh my god! You had sex with him, didn’t you?”
“How could you possibly know that?” I yelped in return.
“I didn’t,” she replied cheekily. “That was just me trying to get a rise out of you. But?.?.?. are you serious, Kota?” she finished on a shout. “What were you thinking?”
“I wasn’t, clearly,” I grumbled sullenly. “And my head’s been a fucked-up mess ever since. Rem, he has a daughter.”
She sucked in more air, to the point I was worried about her lung capacity. “ No . Seriously?”
I glanced to the girl in question, who was currently skipping around the yard with what looked like a sparkly fairy wand, only the top had been broken off, and in its place was a paper cutout of a motorcycle.
“She’s beautiful, Remy. And just this giant ball of light. It’s impossible not to adore her. She’s the spitting image of Roe.”
“And her mom? Is she in the picture?” I explained what Roe had told me about his relationship with Cassi’s birth mother and was met with several seconds of silence after I finished. Then, “Wow. That’s?.?.?. surprisingly progressive.”
“Tell me about it. And you’ll never guess what he named her.” It was meant with disbelief and bewilderment when I told my sister all about Cassi’s name and exactly what Roe had told be about his reason for picking it.
“Holy shit,” she practically shouted so loud I had to pull the phone from my ear. “Holy shit ! That’s it, I’m definitely flying down there now.”
God, I loved my little sister. “You don’t have to do that, sis. I’m okay.”
“You’re not,” she insisted. “I can hear it in your voice. You’re stressed and panicked and probably feel like the ground beneath your feet in unstable.”
I let out a snort. “It’s like you’re a mind reader.”
“No, I just love you and know you better than most people. You’re struggling, Kota. I want to help. And?.?.?. and I-I want to see for myself that he’s okay.” I certainly hadn’t been expecting that. “I didn’t think him being sick would bother me the way it has.”
“I get it,” I assured her. “It’s the same for me.”
“I’ve got a couple projects for work that I need to wrap up first, but I have a ton of vacation days stored up. As soon as I’m finished, I’m putting in for a couple weeks and flying there.”
I hated that she was throwing her life into upheaval for me, but the truth was, I’d be a lot more stable with her there.
I hadn’t even told her about the pictures I was still getting with that creepy I see you messages on them.
I found a second envelope stuffed under my door the other day.
All it succeeded in doing was making me want to knock Tolliver Brady’s head off his fucking shoulders.
“I’m not going to lie; it’ll be nice to have you here.”
“Then it’s settled. I’ll text you the details when I get everything planned. I love you, sissy. Don’t ever forget that.”
“I love you too, and I’ll see you soon.”
I hung up the phone and shoved it into my pocket just as one of the bikers, a huge guy packed with muscle, scruffy dark hair, and tattoos that covered every visible inch of his skin headed in my direction.
“Just wanted to let you know we’re about done in there, Little Riley.”
The sound of my old club nickname made me jolt, and I narrowed my eyes as I studied the man closer. The thick, overlong hair and beard made it difficult, but after a few seconds, recognition dawned. “Holy shit! Bane ?”
That wasn’t his real name, of course. His real name was Justin Ryan, but it was a teasing nickname that his father, one of the founding club members, along with my dad and Courtland Pope Sr., gave him as a kid.
He used to bring him around the clubhouse all the time, and there was no limit on the shit that boy would try and get up to.
The name fit perfectly as a kid and apparently had stuck as an adult.
He smiled at me then, straight white teeth flashing through his beard, and suddenly, I wasn’t so intimidated by his size and ruggedness. Because that was one hell of a smile. “Hey, Kota. It’s been a while.”
I didn’t think before launching myself at him and wrapping the giant of a man in a hug.
He’d been a teenager when I left with a bent toward nerdiness.
I barely saw a hint of that kid in the beast of a man standing before me.
It was only when I looked closely at his eyes that I saw the boy I used to know.
“Jesus, look at you. You’re a freaking mountain. How did that happen?”
He shrugged, and I could have sworn I saw two spots of pink pop up on his cheeks beneath that beard. Then I remembered that Kid Bane and Teenage Bane used to have a harmless little crush on me. “No one can really explain it.”
I looked down at the leather cut he wore proudly over his faded black T-shirt. “And you’re a Wraith now.”
“It’s in the blood,” he replied. “You should know that better than anyone.”
My smile started to slip, but I made a valiant effort to keep it in place. “Yeah,” I said quietly. “I guess so.”
Bane’s hand came up to rest on my shoulder as the skin around his eyes grew soft.
“They missed you, Little Riley.” I really wasn’t sure how many more bombshells I could tolerate being dropped on me at this point.
“We all did. Don’t doubt that for a second.
But Pops and Roe haven’t been the same since. ”
I didn’t know what to make of that or how I was supposed to feel, so I mustered up another grin and reached up to pat the hand still on my shoulder. “Thanks. I appreciate hearing that.”
Just then, like a little Tasmanian Devil with the best timing in the world, Cassi came running up to me and grabbed my hand. “Come on, Kota! It’s all done so we gotta go see!”
She’d taken to calling me Kota since we left the hospital, and I could have sworn she tended to gravitate more toward me than anyone else as we worked to furnish the house.
And as I let her drag me inside, I found that I didn’t mind it much at all.
In fact, I really, really liked it.