1. Falcon
Falcon
Iwake up angry. That's the norm these days.
Not because someone's decided seven in the morning is an acceptable hour to murder Metallica two rooms down, though whoever's doing it is skating close to losing speaker privileges. It’s not the stale whiskey either, sitting behind my teeth like punishment.
I'm angry because for three seconds after I open my eyes, I forget.
My brain gives me three seconds of peace where the world is exactly the way it's been for five years.
Cara is gone, I failed her, and I've already learned how to live with the hole she left.
Then I hear a woman's laugh somewhere down the hall. It isn't hers, but it's enough to drag me back.
Cara is alive. She's twenty yards away, give or take, depending which room she's in at the women's house.
After five years of believing she walked away from me, after five years of hating her because hating her hurt less than admitting I still loved her, she's sleeping inside my compound.
I sit up and plant my feet on the floor, rubbing both hands over my face.
Knowing she's alive should have fixed something, that's what people would expect.
You get the miracle. The woman you loved isn't dead.
She didn't leave because she stopped loving you.
Every year you spent wondering what you did wrong was built on a lie.
You're supposed to be grateful. I am. I'm also so fucking furious I don't know where to put it.
I'm angry at Castellano, at every man who touched her, and angriest at myself for not finding her sooner. I’m angry at the universe for handing her back while leaving five years of wreckage between us that I've no idea how to cross.
Mostly I'm angry because there's no target left.
Castellano's dead. Kane died the same year, one more body pulled out of the wreckage the night the Reapers came apart.
The operation's been gutted. Cara's safe, and I still wake up every morning feeling like I failed her anyway.
My cut hangs over the back of the chair. Vice President. Two words stitched into leather that used to mean something. Lately every time I look at them, I wonder if I'm still the man who earned them.
I get up, pull on jeans and a black thermal, tuck my gun into the back of my jeans, then reach for the cut.
The leather feels heavy on my shoulders the way it always has.
I feel steadier the second it's on. The patch doesn't care how badly I slept.
The club doesn't care that my head's fucked, and the men who depend on me shouldn't have to care either.
Outside my door, the clubhouse is already awake.
The smell of bacon hits me before I reach the stairs, which means Harrier's cooking.
Nobody appointed him clubhouse chef, mostly because he'd tell us all to fuck off if we tried, but somewhere along the way he decided the rest of us couldn't be trusted to survive on burned toast and gas-station coffee.
Carrot, a prospect, comes tearing around the corner at the bottom of the stairs with a laundry basket stacked high enough to blind him. He nearly walks straight into me, catches himself, and half the towels slide onto the floor. I grab one before it lands in something I don't want to identify.
"Shit. Sorry, Falcon." I’m sure I can see him shaking.
"Relax."
"Right. Yeah." His face goes red enough that I almost feel sorry for him.
I hand him the towel. "You already apologized."
"Get those over to the women's house when you're done," I tell him. "Knock before you go in."
"I'm not patched yet. I know the rules."
"Good." I watch him haul the basket toward the door, and something in my chest loosens a fraction.
Five years ago, this clubhouse looked like the aftermath of a hurricane most mornings.
Bottles on the floor, bodies on couches, and usually Ice Pick trying to remember where the hell he'd left his boots.
Now we've got rotas. There are still two beer bottles sitting out and somebody's cut is slung over a chair, but Digger, another prospect is sweeping and Dynamite, a third prospect is emptying bins, and Harrier's guarding his bacon like it owes him money.
Gull, one of the younger prospects, tries to sneak a piece and gets the flat of a spatula across his knuckles for his trouble.
"Fuck, that hurts." He pulls his hand back and rubs it.
"Get out of my kitchen, prospect." Harrier is not the man to mess with. If you think Gordan Ramsey can be angry, then you’ve not met Harrier.
Carrot, folding towels by the door with the dedication of a kid still trying to prove he belongs here, doesn't even look up. "Told you not to try it before the second batch." He shakes his head and has a smile on his face.
"Nobody asked you, Carrot."
"Nobody ever does." He says it easy, like it doesn't bother him, and goes back to the towels.
Zip's already at the counter with a coffee, laughing at him.
Ice Pick sits beside him scrolling through his phone.
Condor's got a laptop open at the far end because there's apparently no hour of the day that man isn't tethered to a screen.
Rook and Hustler are arguing near the pool table about something that doesn't matter.
It's ordinary. Heartwarming, even, though this place wasn't always home.
Chicago wasn't supposed to be permanent for most of us.
Vulture came for his father. The rest of us followed for our own reasons, and somewhere between bloodshed and rebuilding what other men tried to burn down, we stopped being a collection of transfers and became a chapter.
A family. One I haven't been showing up for.
Zip clocks me first. He always does, I swear he looks at me like a customs officer looks at a bag he already suspects.
"Morning, sunshine," Zip says.
"Fuck off."
"Good start." He's grinning into his coffee.
Harrier slides a mug across the bar without being asked. "Drink that before you speak to anyone else."
I catch it. "Am I that bad?"
"Worse."
Ice Pick doesn't bother hiding his smirk. I flip him off and drink. It's strong enough to strip paint, exactly how I like it.
"Church at noon," Zip says.
"I know when Church is. I'm VP, for fuck's sake."
"Do you?" He doesn't even look up from his mug when he says it, which somehow makes it worse.
"I said I know."
"Good. Vulture wants everybody there. Especially the VP." Zip is pushing me today.
Harrier's got very interested in his frying pan. Ice Pick's still staring at his phone, though I'd put money on him not having read a word of it in the last minute. I lean one forearm on the bar.
"You got something to say?"
Zip takes his time with another mouthful of coffee. "You've been missing meals. Sleeping like shit. Disappearing on that bike every chance you get. You missed two planning meets this week."
"Those weren't Church." Do I need to spell it out for him?
"They were club business." That hits me hard.
My jaw tightens, because he's right and I hate that he's right. "I've handled everything Vulture's asked me to handle."
"That isn't the same as being here."
The words land harder than they should, mostly because there's no heat behind them. A year ago, this would have ended with one of us swinging. Maybe both of us. Now he just looks tired, and tired is worse.
"You keeping score now?"
"I'm your brother. Somebody has to."
Before I can answer, his whole face shifts. He doesn’t look amused, he looks more like he’s concerned, and I hate concern more than I hate being called out.
"You know she's up," he says.
Every muscle across my shoulders locks at once. There are a dozen women on this property. He doesn't have to say which one.
"She went to Sterling about twenty minutes ago," Zip adds. "One of the younger girls had a bad night."
I look toward the hallway before I can stop myself, and of course he catches it.
"Don't," I warn.
"Didn't say anything."
"You were about to."
"I was about to tell you Harrier made a real breakfast for once, so maybe try eating some of it instead of living on whiskey and rage."
Harrier points the spatula at him without turning around. "Leave my name out of whatever weird marriage argument you two are having."
I take another mouthful of coffee and let it go, because pushing this further with an audience isn't worth it. Harrier slides a plate in front of me. Eggs, bacon, and toast. When I don't reach for it fast enough, he points at the stool.
"Sit."
"Did you forget who outranks who?"
"In Church, you. In my kitchen, sit the fuck down."
I sit, because arguing with Harrier before I've eaten is not a good idea, I know I won’t win. I'm halfway through the eggs when I hear her voice.
It's quiet, quiet enough that I shouldn't be able to pick it out over the rest of the noise, but I've known that voice too long. My body recognizes it before my head catches up.
Cara steps into the common room with Sarah beside her, and the room doesn't stop.
That's one of the things I'm proudest of about these men.
Six months ago, most of them wouldn't have known what to do around a group of women who'd survived what these women survived.
Now nobody stares. Rook shifts his chair a few inches so Sarah has room to pass without being crowded.
Harrier drops his volume without being asked.
Ice Pick moves his phone off the empty stool next to him.
Nobody's told them to do any of it. That's what makes it matter.
Sarah looks better than the day we pulled her out.
There's color in her face, less tension in the way she carries herself, though she still checks the room on entry and picks her exit before anything else.
Cara walks beside her carrying two mugs, her hair twisted up loosely, wearing a pale cardigan that looks completely wrong against all this leather and denim.
Somehow, she looks right here anyway. That thought lands somewhere I don't want it to.