Epilogue
THREE YEARS LATER
T he Dirty Souls club compound isn’t what I expected it to be. This isn’t some dive bar, it’s a complex, and it’s evidence that my Uncle Jimmer doesn't do things in half measures.
I get out the truck and head inside, taking a deep breathe and wondering how the fuck this conversation is gonna go down.
After he died, Jimmer didn’t show up for Pops’ funeral, and I know Mitch would have told him that he’d passed. He makes no secret that the two of them stay in touch. I just gotta hope that the hostility Jimmer had toward my Pops ain’t gonna be inherited by me, too.
It’s been a long three years since we all took the brand, it’s made us stronger, but we’ve had something holding us back.
Cora fucking Wildman.
Over the years, she’s proved just how intolerable she can be.
Me and my brothers underestimated her. We expected her to move on to another rich fool.
But it turned out she was more resistant then we gave her credit for.
She refused to leave the house, even though I built her a cabin of her own.
She insisted that we held weekly meetings to keep her updated on her assets, and I’ve had to explain every damn decision I’ve made.
The bitch ain’t stupid, she knows there’s things we do below the law, and she’s been waiting for that moment when we screw it up.
Yeah, her scrutiny’s held us back, it’s been frustrating, but now she ain’t a problem anymore, and it’s time to put all those plans we’ve been making into action.
That’s why I’m here, in Manitou Springs, Colorado, to speak to my Uncle.
I step into a foyer and see a desk with the hooded skull carved into the wood. There's no one around, and so I follow the noise through the double doors into the barroom.
Immediately the chattering stops, and all eyes fall on me.
“Jimmer Carson?” There’s no denying which one of them he is. He looks almost identical to grandpa, and before the old man gets a chance to speak, one of his biker buddies is up on his feet, marching towards me.
“Who’s asking?” He looks me up and down with an unwelcoming scowl on his pretty-boy face, but I show him no fear. I just calmly raise my hat to greet him.
“Brax, you better hold your old lady back. We gotta real cowboy in the saloon!” I hear one of the big, bearded guys at the bar call out, but I don’t take my eyes off the man in front of me.
“You can stand down. I ain’t here to cause any trouble,” I assure him, fixing my hat back in place before looking past him, to my uncle.
“I don’t expect you to recognise me, Uncle Jimmer. It’s been a while.” I address him directly, and if he’s shocked to see me, he shows no evidence of it.
“Which one are ya?” He steps forward and places a hand on his man’s shoulder, to ease him off.
“Garrett,” I tell him, and the way he nods his head back at me is scarily familiar. Him and grandpa really were cut from the same cloth.
“Mitch send ya?” he asks, scratching his hand through his stubble.
“No, I came here off my own back.” Mitch has been telling me for years that the best way to repair the damage Pops did, is by fixing the Carson chain.
Up until now, the last thing I needed was to be affiliated with an outlaw motorcycle club.
Cora would have taken a whole lot of pleasure in that.
But now that she ain’t an issue, I can see where it would have its benefits.
“You wanna step into my office?” He nods his head toward the doors I just stepped through.
“Prez?” The guy beside him has a confused-as-fuck look on his face, but Jimmer shakes his head at him, before leading me back out the door and then into a much smaller barroom that leads off from the foyer.
“So, what can I do for you?” He steps behind the bar and picks up two glasses and a bottle of Jack.
“I wanna take back what my father lost.” I figure I might as well get straight to the point. Carson men don’t like bullshit, and when he finishes pouring, I pick up the glass he slides over the bar at me. “I got men, good men that I trust,” I explain, before knocking it back.
“Mitch tells me you brought back the brand.” The smirk on his lips suggests he admires me for it.
“Mitch talks too much,” I snigger back at him.
“He’s proud, that’s why,” Jimmer nods. I know the two of them were close before he left. They still are, and I can’t help liking the way it feels to hear that.
“So, what do you want from me?” he tops us up again, then looks up at me, waiting for a response.
“I want an ally, someone I know I can trust if the time ever comes,” I admit, swirling the liquor around in my glass. It ain’t ever easy coming to another man for help, but pride won’t stop me from doing what needs to be done.
“And you came to me?” he chuckles to himself.
“If you can’t trust family, who can ya?” I shrug my shoulders, making it sound simple.
“Your pa would tell ya different.” Jimmer’s got a serious look on his face now, one that suggests he’s testing me.
“My pa ain’t here—I am.” I hold his eyes with mine, so he knows how determined I am.
“I know you didn’t walk away from the ranch because you didn’t care. Grandpa talked about you a lot, and Mitch is always telling his stories. We share the same family history, and we got the same blood running through our veins,” I remind him.
“You’re right about that, but it still doesn’t explain why you’re here.” He frowns, slouching back in his chair.
“I got some wolves at my door, and I’m prepared to do whatever it takes to protect what our family fought so hard to build. I won’t be the Carson that fails, and if that means I have to ask for some help, so be it.” I finish what’s left in my glass and await his response.
“It’s been a long time. My brothers here don’t even know that part of me exists.” He scratches his jaw again, and if I was playing poker with the man, I’d say it was his tell.
“And yet, the Dirty Dozen was built from it,” I remind him of another fact. A man doesn’t come to a gunfight without bullets. I’ve learned all I can about my Uncle Jimmer and this club he adores, since.
“The day I founded this club was the day I left all that behind. Yeah, some branded men followed, but only because they had your grandpa’s blessing.
We’ve never looked back, only forward.” He makes the words sound like a warning, and I can’t tell which way he’s gonna go when he stares back at me long and hard.
“I’ll help ya,” he eventually agrees, keeping his lips straight and that warning look on his face. “But, before you make your deal with the devil, you should know that I got some wolves on my doorstep, too. And if you’re an ally of this club, I’ll expect to call in some favors of my own,”
“I think I already gotta couple of those favors back on my ranch,” I smirk, knowing that Jimmer was the one who called up Mitch and asked him to find a home for Finn, after his old man died.
Jimmer’s right. This is me making a deal with the devil, but the Souls are the kinda devils you wanna be dancing with instead of fighting, so I hold out my hand to seal that deal, and I get a sense of something real fucking strong when he grips it firmly and shakes.
After he’s poured us another drink, he looks at me curiously as I bring it to my lips.
“You came all this way just to ask for help?” he narrows his eyes, suspiciously.
“I remember Grandpa always said, if you’re man enough to ask for a favor, you should be man enough to face the man you’re asking.
” I smile fondly, when I think of the old man.
Uncle Jimmer never came to his funeral, either.
Pops said it was because he was a coward, but I’ve always known differently.
“It’s a wicked world, and I may be a bad man in it but I’m told, by a man I trust, that me and you share a lot of the same morals.
There ain’t no need for us to be strangers.
If you need me, that’s the number you call.
” I place the ranch's business card on the table and watch my uncle smile when he picks it up.
Finishing my drink, I stand on my feet and get ready to leave.
“Whatever it takes,” Jimmer’s words make me pause, and he looks up at me with a glisten of pride in his eyes. I’d like to think that wherever he is, Grandpa’s witnessing the wrongs that are being righted, here.
“Whatever it takes.” I smile and nod my head back at him. Then lifting my hat in farewell, I head out the door, back toward my truck.
I take a breath once I’m behind the wheel.
That went hella better than I expected. But getting the Souls on my side is just the start.
There’s a whole bunch of crap waiting for me back in Montana, and when I pull down the vizor and take the picture I keep there, of Maisie, out of the note holder, I’m reminded of what’s not.
I took the photo from Pops and Cora’s wedding album a few days after I let her go.
She’s wearing that pretty, pink dress, and the photographer’s captured her unaware, with the sunset in the background and a smile on her face.
I run my thumb over her blonde hair and let myself wonder what she might be doing with herself these days.
Maisie’s far too pretty a girl not to have someone in her life, and the thought of her being with that someone, makes me wanna tear my heart out my chest to stop it from hurting.
My cell ringing shakes me out of my thoughts, and keeping the photo between my fingers, I quickly answer it with my other hand.
“How’d it go?” Wade shouts, over the chaos in the background.
“As well as it could. We got him on side,”
“That’s great fucking news, Garrett,” Wade sounds about as relieved as I am.
“You fightin’ or fuckin’?” I ask, when I hear moaning in the background.
“I ain’t doin’ nothin’. Tate’s politely reminding a few guys in the bar that it’s rude to gossip,” he chuckles to himself.
“It’s started, then?” It was only a matter of time before word got out.
Cora’s body was found last night, and in a small town nothing stays a secret for very long.
“You can’t blame the town for thinkin’ it, Garrett. You made no secret about the fact you hated her.”
“I know, but I ain’t the only one who hated her.”
“How’d she take it?” I resist putting off asking any longer. Having Wade be the one to call Maisie and break the news was a weak thing to do, and as I look at Maisie’s pretty, blue eyes in the picture and how they shine when she smiles, I feel like an asshole for it.
“It was hard to tell her reaction over the phone. But she’s coming here for the funeral, next week,” he informs me, and I feel that scrape in my chest when his words sink in.
Maisie hasn’t been back to Fork River since the day she left for L.A. From what I've heard, she barely spoke to her mother, either. I’ve regretted letting her go every day, since.
I don’t know what I was expecting her to do after she found out Cora had died; I guess I should have seen this coming. But, now that I know she’s coming back, there's one thing I can be sure of.
I won’t let her go again.
Maisie Wildman belongs with me, and sitting here in my truck, staring at the photo of the woman who owns my heart, I just decided that when it comes to getting her back, there are no fucking limits .