Chapter 34 Oak
Oak
“Is this necessary?” Crow sounds close to exasperated as he sits across from Snake and I at the diner with his elbows on the table and his fingers steepled.
After receiving a call from Crow stating there was a problem and he wanted to meet at neutral groundings I took the insurance policy of bringing Snake with me.
Is Crow a threat? No.
Can he become one? Absolutely.
He then glances over at Snake who is wearing a wicked grin upon his face while he strikes the match from the matchbox he always carries.
I lean back in my seat, keeping my face as stoic as his. “Did you really expect me to come here by myself? This could’ve been a set up for the feds to take me in.”
Crow tilts his head to the side. By the small, almost unnoticeable tick in his jaw I know he’s frustratingly annoyed with me. It’s his only tell. “I wouldn’t do that.”
I raise a brow. “Wouldn’t you? We aren’t necessarily on the best of terms. And for the most part you don’t particularly like the club. What is holding you back from turning my ass in?”
The match Snake holds meets its end as it burns the tip of his finger. Feeling no pain he strikes another match and directs the flame at Crow. “I second that question.”
“Nora,” he says her name and I straighten up in my seat, fists forming on top of the table.
It hasn’t slipped my attention how he looks at her. The only time the man has shown true emotion is when he’s around her. He’s soft, affectionate. Completely unlike the man he is to everyone else.
My eyes narrow at him as they harden. “Nora,” I repeat through clenched teeth.
He appears the least bit intimidated nor afraid. The truth is I can’t strike fear into a man who has seen the horrors of combat.
“Are you going to provide context?” Either way I’m going to fucking ruin his face.
Now it’s Crow who leans back in his chair as cool as a fucking cucumber.
He leaves his hand on the table and raps his knuckle against it without time or rhythm.
“If I was a different man I would enjoy the misery I’m making you suffer, but you suffer enough, Oak.
Even I recognize that. And I would never use Nora in that way. ”
My finger twitches against my thigh. All within thirty seconds he’s not only confirmed his feelings for Nora, but he’s also letting me know that between us he’s the better man.
It’s like rubbing salt into a gaping wound.
“So, you have feelings for my little sister.” My voice is as sharp as a blade.
“I’m not even going to tell you what I feel when I haven’t even told her.” He sits back up straight, cocking his head from side to side. “But all I will say is I will always have her best interests at heart. And I wouldn’t do a god damn thing to hurt her.”
In my eyes no man is good enough for my sister, not even this righteous fucker who is sitting across from Snake and me.
“You’re going to stay the fuck away from her. Do you understand me? If I ever find out that you’ve even touched her you’re dead,” I threaten him in a voice that’s unnervingly cool and calm.
He regards me unaffectedly. “With all due respect Oak, you can fuck off.”
Snake whistles lowly. “Wrong words, Crow.”
“Nora wouldn’t want your ass rotting in jail and quite frankly neither do I.” Crow opens the ominous Manila folder and spreads out its contents.
Before me I see multiple pictures. All with what can be damning evidence if used against me.
One of me with a hood over my head and my knuckles busted, hands stained crimson. Another photo of me tailing Stud after his MC had posted his bail. And finally photos of what witnesses have said. Many claiming that I was a man on the path of vengeance and wouldn’t be satisfied until Stud was dead.
And if any of this evidence has been seen by those two fucking agents then I’m fucked.
“This is enough evidence to charge you but not enough to keep you.” He pushes the photos in front of me but I don’t need a closer look. “They’re going to question you, Oak. I want you to be prepared for what they are going to throw at you.”
Fucking great.
I wipe an exasperated hand down my face before scratching my jaw. “This is all the evidence they have?” Crow nods and I hear Snake curse under his breath.
“What they really need is a confession. And I don’t know what state of mind you’re in but I’m here to tell you as a request from Nora not to fucking talk.”
“Why wouldn’t Nora tell me that herself?”
Crow looks at me as if I’m the dumbest creature on the planet. It’s not a look I appreciate and if he doesn’t change it I might just for him. “Because she knows you better than anyone, and she also knows that the guilt you’re suffering will be your downfall.”
I stay silent because I hate the fact that he’s fucking right. And I hate the fact of my sister not coming to me and discussing this but she went to Crow instead.
“Nora doesn’t have to worry,” I assure him, although he doesn’t look quite convinced.
“I sure hope not. Even on the most traumatic night of her life she was thinking about you, Oak.”
The tendons in my neck strain as my eyes harden. Through tight lips I ask him, “What the fuck do you know about that night, Crow?”
He grits his teeth, his emerald eyes cutting into mine. There’s a hardness there, one I haven’t seen before. One that contains rage and unbridled fury. One that thirsts for blood. “Who the fuck do you think found her on the side of the road, Oak?”
My finger taps against my outer thigh. The haze of red becoming the only thing I see. And I want to kill Stud all over again. Make him suffer longer. Tear him apart piece by piece until all that is left of him is unrecognizable scraps of his flesh.
Because not only did he do what he did, he tossed her aside when he was done. Like she was nothing. Like what he did was nothing.
“Your father did.”
He shakes his head. His eyes then glisten before they harden to stone.
But he can’t hide the waver in his voice.
“I found her. I found her as I was coming home from my shift. I found her.” His voice breaks and I can’t see shit past the tears in my eyes.
I can’t swallow past the lump lodged in my throat.
I can’t feel past the splintering of my heart and the ache of my soul.
“And it took everything in me not to hunt down the man who did it to her and make him wish that he was never born.”
There’s not enough pain in the world that I could’ve inflicted that would’ve amounted to hers.
And that’s what kills me more than anything.
Nora will forever be healing.
His death wasn’t the cure and it certainly wasn’t enough to be considered justice. It wasn’t even fair.
He got off way too fucking easy in my opinion.
And it kills me how Nora still has days where her suffering cripples her. It kills me how that night changed the course of her life.
“She was hurt, beaten and bruised. Wrecked beyond imagine and you want to know the first thing she said to me when she finally allowed herself to fall in my arms?” I stay silent, the tears in my eyes making their descend as my throat feels as if it’s in a chokehold.
“She told me, don’t tell Ethan you found me, don’t tell Ethan about it at all.
And I asked her why and you want to know what she said?
She said because she knew you would take the blame; she knew me finding her would only bring you more pain and the only thing she wanted was for you to be okay.
She wasn’t thinking about her as I took her to the hospital for a rape kit and to bandage her wounds and to take her report. She was worried about you.”
Then the bomb around my heart detonates. I feel it shatter as it shatters every vital organ I have.
“I’m not telling you this to feel guilt, Oak,” Crow says and I see him roughly wipe away a tear of his own. “I’m telling you this because I want you to think about Nora. I want you to think about what this will do to her if you confess. You think about her like she thought about you.”
“What if I deserve it?” My voice sounds like sandpaper.
“We bear the consequences from the actions we have done and can only hope to learn from them and strive to be better.” A forlorn smile crosses his face, pain entering his eyes.
“My father had told me that when I resigned from the armed service. And I tell you, Oak, it’s stuck with me every god dammed day.
Don’t confuse bearing your consequences with punishment. They’re not the same.”
“And how would you know?”
“Because I too would beat myself up everyday for losing my brothers. I blamed myself for surviving unscathed. I grew to hate myself for saving a brother who didn’t want to be saved.
What no one understands is the mental warfare you inflict upon yourself is the greatest pain you will ever feel.
But our war is done, Oak. Your war is done,” he stresses.
“Allow yourself to feel peace. Allow yourself to enjoy it. And for fucks sake allow yourself to grow and be a better man.”
“He’s right, you know,” Snake says softly. I turn to look at him and the expression upon his face kills me. “Punishing yourself is only killing you, Oak. And if you keep going back to the past you’re killing the future you know you can have. The future you want.”
I nod my head at the both of them, the decision already made. “They can bring me in but I’m not confessing to anything.”
The look of relief upon both of their faces hits me. “And Crow?”
He raises a brow. “Yeah.”
I swallow. “Thank you.”
He nods his head back. “I’ve never been your enemy, Oak.”
“I’m sorry it took me this long to see it.” And I genuinely am. And after everything he’s done to help with the club, knowing he helped my sister. . .
I fucking can’t hate him.
The only reason I ever did is because I saw a man who was better than me. A man who saw combat and chose to better himself. A man who stood on the righteous path. And I hated that he did everything right while I did everything wrong.
The only way I can heal is if I forgive myself.
And if forgiveness is what it takes to be the man Grace deserves, if forgiveness is what it takes to have a future with her then forgiving myself might not be as daunting as I thought.
How can it be when at the end I’ll have her.