Thirty-Eight
THIRTY-EIGHT
CHAOS
I set my phone down on the bar just in time to catch King leaning back to steal a kiss from his woman. She’s been hard to read since I arrived in Lincoln, shrewd gaze following me everywhere I go as though I stalk their halls with a gun in one hand and a knife in the other. But for him…
“What are the kids up to?” He pats her on the ass as he asks the question, the other hand on the bar to stabilize himself atop his stool.
“They’re playing with the others,” she purrs, wetting her lips as her hooded gaze falls to his mouth again.
I put a hand to my neck, elbow on the bar, and scowl at the scratched surface.
A fist knocks me in the shoulder. “You good?”
I turn my head and nod at King. “Sure.”
He grins as though thrilled for the challenge. “You been paying attention since you been here?”
“What do you mean?” Of course, I have. You're instantly the aggressor when you walk onto another club’s property with one of your men in tow. Chests puff, and shoulders roll back, whether you’re friend or foe. All I’ve fucking done is pay attention.
“If you had,” he teases while a shy woman I’ve learned is Abbey pours him a new drink. “Then you’d have noticed that half these fuckers are younger than even you.” He pauses to take a sip of his whiskey. Somewhere around forty, he doesn’t look that old, but in comparison to many of these guys around us wearing the patch, he is. “I recognize a sulking kid when I see one. Got a couple of my own on top of these juvenile assholes.” He gestures to a trio of guys bantering over a game of pool. “So tell me again, and tell me the truth this time. You good?”
“How do you do it?” I say quietly, leaning toward the guy. “Talk about the shit we just did and still sit there looking as though you’re on goddamn holiday.”
He smirks, swirling his drink. “Never judge a book by its cover, brother.” He gestures to his old lady, Elena. “She’s picked me up off the bathroom floor more times than I’d like to admit.”
“That so?”
He dips his head to one side. “You’re young, Chaos. About the age I was when I first met your old man.” King’s face contorts briefly as though he’s sorry he has to mention the traitor. “Don’t discount the work you’re doin’ holding it all together for your boys.”
I swallow hard, fingers toying with the edge of my phone.
“This arrangement will be good for your club,” he states, alluding to the two-year deal we cut with them to spread our green into multiple states nationwide. “At the end of the tenure, if you decide it’s not in your best interest anymore, I invite you to call it quits. You ain’t indebted to us, and we ain’t to you. If you think you can do better without us, that’s your choice, not mine.”
“Appreciate that, brother.” I offer him my hand, and he claps his palm across mine.
“The shit you’re goin’ through ain’t anything but a rough patch, kid. It’ll pass.” He twists at the waist and leans back to shunt a cynical-looking brother as the man walks past. “You giving your woman a break any time soon?”
The blond guy—Sawyer—twitches his upper lip and then looks at our bartender. The intent in his stare makes me feel as though I should get a room. “How long you got to go, Abbey-girl?”
Her chin dips, gaze feral as she peeks at him from beneath her lashes while sorting dirty glassware. “Figure I’ll get someone to take over in another half hour. That good with you, pretty boy?”
“How long she been there?” he asks King.
“Since this shit kicked off, so four hours or so.”
“Why are you dropping me in the shit?” she quizzes King, teasing the Fallen Aces president.
“Because it’s fun watching him get worked up,” he jests, thumbing to the tower of muscle who looks ready to steal the small woman away. “As you were.”
“Nah,” Sawyer—their enforcer—growls. “She can quit early.” He lifts a hand and beckons her with a stiff finger.
She sets the glassware down, chest heaving. “Sorry, King.”
He chuckles as the blond guy scoops Abbey off her feet and storms through the clubhouse with her over his shoulder.
“Sonya,” King hollers. “You’re up.”
A pretty, older blonde slides in to take Abbey’s place with a wide smile.
I shake my head, thumbing my phone again. I know this visit is good for our club, but shit, my heart is at home with Vanessa. She sent me a goddamn video shot in our new house. In my room. And all I could think when she asked where I’d put the bed was wherever would be best to watch her from when I fucking put her in it.
“Don’t look so scandalized,” King teases with a laugh. “Those two have been together for years, and it hasn’t faded. It’s good to wind them up occasionally so that the single guys see what’s important in life.”
“Yeah?” I say. “And what’s that?”
“Living,” he states, turning his head to stare at me. “Find someone you love and let that feeling take away all the pain you got to go through to honor your position.” He gestures to my president badge with his chin. “I’m guessin’ it was no accident your boys voted you into that position.”
“You know it was my old man’s before me.”
He scoffs. “Yeah. So what? Bet they had a few other officers who’d do the job just as good, am I right?”
“I guess.” I shrug. “I don’t doubt my right to sit at the head of the table, King.” I look him in the eye. “I doubt my worthiness.”
He leans back with a sigh, rolling his lips. “Careful with that way of thinkin’. It gets dark, fast.”
“I know.” I wake the screen of my phone, then send it to black again. “It’s just this shit with the loading dock that’s given me a shake-up. Shit’s changing in our area, and change always feels uncomfortable at first.”
“True that.” He turns side-on to face me yet looks out over his people. “But it’s worth it in the long run.”
“You’re somewhat of a legend, you know, for what you’ve managed to do with this club.” I huff a laugh to ease the tension.
“I’ve heard stories.” He nods. “But it’s just my name on it all. All these people put in the work to get us where we are now.”
“No doubt.”
He nods to where I fidget with my phone still. “Expecting something?”
I pull my hand away and run my thumb along my upper lip. “Yes and no.” Hands on the edge of the bar, I lean back. “Sorry, man. You’re a great host, and here I am, sulking at the bar.”
He nods to where Highway tastes what some club bunny had for dinner; his tongue is that far down her throat. “Your brother there is having a good time. I’m happy enough.”
“He’s unstoppable.”
“Question is,” he says, eyeing me hard. “Why ain’t you?” King nods to my phone again. “Who is she?”
Everything. “Just a woman living over the road from where we’re moving to next week.”
“Just a woman.” He huffs at my words. “You still think you can bullshit me?”
“What does it matter?” I straighten and stare him down. “My responsibility is with the brothers and the club. Doesn’t matter how I feel—if she has a chance of coming between them and me, she’s not worth it.”
“You want some paper for that shit dribblin’ out your mouth?”
I widen my eyes, one eyebrow hitched. “Come again?”
“You don’t know how I met my old lady, do you?”
“Not really.”
King shakes his head, reaching for his drink. “And you say I’m a legend.”
“Go on then,” I taunt. “Spit it all out.”
“She was engaged to Carlos Redmond.”
My face falls, gut near dropping out my ass. “The guy who had the kids killed?”
He nods.
“Fuck.”
“And you think no woman is worth risking your club for.” He gestures to his woman, stone-faced, as she pulls one of the drunk bunnies into line. “You want to go tell her that?”
Fuck no. “How’d you decide?”
“I didn’t.” He pats his chest over his heart. “This did.” His leg jiggles as he stares at the drink in his hand. “I damn near walked away from the Aces. Our president tried to have me kicked out. She weathered that fucker’s abuse while fuckin’ pregnant with my kid, man, and she made me fuckin’ work to set that right after she escaped.” He sets the glass aside and drags a hand over his face. “I put the club first, and I almost lost it all. And now I live with that regret.”
I stare at my phone and lick my lips. “She told me I make everything worse.”
“They always do.” He slams the last of his drink back. “But you got to listen to their actions, not their words.”
“How do you mean?” Ness went to the house and taunted me with a video there. She told me I made things worse, but then she sought comfort in things that were mine. What does that mean?
“Elena told me to stay the fuck away. Took our kid and hid from me for years. But you know what happened when I showed up at her door?”
I stay quiet, allowing him to continue.
“It felt like nothing had changed,” he grits out. “That fucking fire was there, hotter than ever. She pushed me away from a place of fear, Chaos, and all I had to do was prove she was safe with me. That everything that had happened to her before we met meant shit. All I wanted was what she had to give me; however, that came packaged. That she,” he says, jabbing a hand in his old lady’s direction, “is everything I want and need.”
He speaks with such fucking conviction. The man is goddamn sick with obsession for her.
And he doesn’t find a fucking thing wrong with that.
“I was supposed to case her out,” I admit. “Make sure she wasn’t a threat to the club. But the closer I got, the more she fascinated me. I took her fucking journal and read that thing cover to cover like a goddamn bible,” I say with a laugh. “Like, what the fuck, man?”
“What did she do?”
“Huh?”
“When she found out what you did?”
I stare at him, swallow, and answer. “She asked me to stay for dinner.”
His brow lifts, King’s smile widening before he erupts into laughter. “And you’re worried she doesn’t want our brand of trouble around?”
“She told me she didn’t.”
“How?” he challenges. “What happened? Lay it all on me.”
He thrives off this conversation, and the connection boosts my confidence. “A doctor threatened her, so I paid him a visit. Might have punched the guy a few times. Choked him.”
He sucks a breath between his teeth.
“She said it makes things worse because her stepfather, her abuser, the reason the guy threatened her, will just retaliate.”
“So kill him.” He doesn’t flinch as he says the words.
“I mean, I’d thought about it.” I wake up the phone again and navigate to one of my favorite screenshots from the cameras. “Tell me she ain’t something to worship.”
He leans closer to look at the screen and nods. “She’s pretty.”
“But she’s so much more,” I explain. “The shit she went through, man, and how fucking strong she is for getting out of that, for surviving.” I shake my head, staring at her image. “She makes me feel like a coward in comparison.”
King nudges my arm to get my attention and then points to Elena. “I feel you, brother.”
“So what do I do?” I ask. “How do I change her mind?”
An arm slides around my shoulders as Highway joins the conversation. “You stop jerking off to the recordings of her, and you fucking tell her the shit you’re too pussy to say out loud.”
“Fuck off.” I give him a shove.
He cinches me tighter, laughing, as King says, “He’s right. But I’d add to that. She understands actions over words, right?”
I nod.
“So use your goddamn actions to show her what you’ve been saying.”
“I did,” I gripe. “With the doctor, look where that got me.”
“Prove to her that setting things right won’t make it worse for her.”
“How?”
Highway takes a step back, arms folded as he stares me down. “By asking your brothers for help instead of shutting us out.” Every scrap of his playful mood has vanished.
Instead, I stare at a guy who’s insulted that I’d chosen to keep this shit to myself. “I thought, with what Jinx has been saying, that you assholes would think I’m no better than my old man, putting her over the club.”
“Fuck what Jinx says.” Highway shakes his head. “He’s got his own issues getting on his balls at the moment. We’ve never doubted you, man. Just wondered why you doubt yourself.”
Motherfucker is trying to make me cry. “Settle down, yeah?”
“What’s the matter?” he teases, grinning again. “Truth hard to hear?”
“Something like that.” I wake up my phone again and open the thread to Crow. “How do you feel about an extra week on the road, brother?”
“If we get to do more of this,” he says, snagging a bunny around the waist as she walks past and making her squeal. “Then I’m fucking good with that.”
“Can’t promise anything.”
King laughs. “If you think this lame-ass shit is fun, then wait until you stop in with our Fort Worth brothers.”
“Yeah?” I thumb out a message to Crow as I speak.
“Spend one night there, and you’ll understand why Sawyer thinks his behavior is normal.” He slaps the bar, standing. “You going that way?”
“I’m going wherever she is.”
And this time, I’m not stopping until I’ve slayed every last demon and dragon at her door.