CHAPTER 8
KADE “DRILLER”
Knowing what you have to do and doing it are two very different things. Once you decide the right path in life, actually walking it can still be difficult. It’s a feeling I can’t shake as I head toward Mom’s house because I know what I need to do, what I’ve wanted to do for a long fucking time.
I’ve always allowed her guilt to stop me before. This time is different because the girls are older—almost out of the house entirely themselves—and I have a more important reason to keep both feet firmly planted on the shore than I ever have before.
There’s no way I would survive going months without seeing my woman. While she’s not ready to let me in fully and admit that she’s mine, there’s no doubt in my mind. It’s only a matter of time before I prove to her that she can trust me completely and that she’s my top priority.
The last three months felt like years were being taken off my life. While the guilt of how everything went down didn’t help matters, I don’t want to find out how much harder it would be to deal with the distance between us after fixing this shit with my woman and giving her a place in more than just my heart, but in my life as well.
Then there’s the other elephant in the room—why do I have to continue to put my dreams on hold? Mom falling back on her pride instead of leaning into the family Dad provided us is on her, not me. Maybe I was willing to write it off as grief years ago, but the longer this has gone on the more I wonder if there isn’t a whole lot more to Mom’s insistence not to help.
She’s become a bitter woman. Honestly, she was never overly warm and fuzzy, but she wasn’t like this. Maybe giving into her and allowing her to manipulate me and push away the club has done even more harm than I realized.
I don’t think she’s physically abused the girls, but I wouldn’t be surprised about some psychological warfare going on. And with teenage girls I’m not sure which would be worse. But it’s not really a matter of better or worse is it?
Emma and Miley deserve better. Fuck, I deserve better.
Now it’s time to really step up and be the brother I should have been years ago—to both my sisters and the club. It’s time to be the man who deserves my woman’s forgiveness and time for being able to share in her dreams.
Because they’re mine too.
Not being a man used to nervousness, it’s jarring to walk up to the front door of Mom’s house and not want to enter. Granted, there have been plenty of times when I didn’t want to face her because I knew it was going to be a heavy burden, but this is different.
Her words are going to be cutting.
Her ire is going to be burning.
I’m going to have to put my foot down in a way that I never have before and then hope for the best as the dust settles around us.
Am I ready to do that? Hell no, but I’m also not ready to walk away from Emery while continuing to put myself last and allow misery to exist in my life when it doesn’t have to. Yeah, it’s time to fucking step up.
Before I can stop myself I open the door and step into the house that hasn’t been my home in over ten years. The moment I could move to the clubhouse, I did. It was freedom I was after then.
Since I had already spent some time working on a rig, though much shorter stints, I didn’t want to come back to land and be forced into some cookie cutter existence that I was outgrowing. I wanted to be able to spend time with my club brothers and blow off some steam.
Then Dad died and shit changed. The feeling of the house I grew up in not being a home became stronger every time I walked inside. Sure, I forced myself to come around more often when I was on leave, but that was for the girls. I wasn’t going to abandon them when they needed me.
Fuck. I really should have been around more often for them. I know my club kept an eye on them, even if mom would have blown a gasket and never approved. Still, I should have been there to chase off boys and make sure they knew their worth wasn’t found in the heart eyes of some asshole who was only thinking with their dick.
Hopefully that won’t bite me on the ass later.
“Mom,” I call out into the still of the house since the girls are at school today.
I’m so damn proud of them. They’re much better in school than I ever was.
“I’ll be right out,” she calls back to me from the back side of the house where the laundry room is located.
When she enters the living room, where I’m wary about sitting, she has a basket in her hands that needs to be folded. I almost cringe because with these three females in the house, I am not interested in being close to their laundry at all.
No fucking thank you.
“Kade,” there’s a coolness in Mom’s voice that has me wanting to turn tail and run away. But I can’t. This is a conversation that is long overdue. “Why are you here? I would have thought you have plenty to keep you busy with that little club of yours,” those words are delivered with sneered derision that has my hackles instantly rising.
“Fucking hell, Mom,” I grunt. “Can’t you try to show the club some respect? Dad was a member. Being a patched brother of the DSMC is part of his legacy and one I wasn’t going to turn my back on,” I try to explain what she already knows.
The way her eyes harden tells me that she doesn’t want to hear any of it. Of course she doesn’t. I’m not even sure why I tried.
“That club,” she spits the word, “ruined my life and took your father’s life.”
“No,” I seethe, “Dad’s death had nothing to do with the club and you know it. The club could have helped you and stood by you while you grieved. Hell, the club grieved the death of a brother as well. You walked away when they could have helped you and when they needed you as well.”
“I’ll never give that fucking sorry excuse of a place my time or presence ever again,” the words come through her gritted teeth, and I find myself baffled.
Dad’s death was an accident. One that couldn’t have been avoided.
“This isn’t why I came to talk to you.” I shake my head because I know talking about the club isn’t going to get me anywhere.
I hate that my sisters didn’t grow up with the club having their back in the way I was able to. If I’m in town, I take them for family days and the club tries to keep an eye on them, but it’s not the same as when I was growing up. Mom has isolated the girls from the family they could have had.
That’s a sin I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to forgive her for. The worst part is that she doesn’t even realize she’s done it.
Or maybe she does.
“Then why did you come here,” she snipes at me.
When I look at Mom this time, I really look at her—more than I’ve allowed myself to in the last few years. She looks tired and older than she probably should, but there’s this rage within her that I don’t understand. She never moved on from Dad as far as I can tell. She never fully grieved him. She never let go.
It’s fucking sad, honestly.
“I’m here to talk about my future.”
Mom throws her head back and cackles. Yes, cackles. “Your future?” There’s a curl to her lip that makes her look this side of unhinged. I almost want to take a step back, but I don’t. I’m not sure where my mom went, but it’s hard to find her in the woman standing in front of me. “Your future of being only good enough to break your back out on that rig? Or your future of mixing it up with the criminals of that club,” the word is spat. Again.
I clench my jaw before the words woosh out of me, “What the fuck?”
I’ve seen contempt on my mother’s face before, but this is a whole new level. Then something shifts and I swear she looks almost gleeful.
“You owe this family and you’re going to continue to take care of it. It’s your responsibility,” she points out like it’s the most natural thing in the world to say to her son.
It’s almost exactly the same thing she’s said to me throughout the years whenever I started to really take a look at my life and want something different, something more. I did feel responsible for my family, especially the girls.
She used that against me. She manipulated me.
I knew it was true, honestly I did, but the clarity of this moment, of needing so much more than my life has been filled with, of wanting a life with Emery, brings everything that she’s been using against me crashing down around us. Yes, my family is my responsibility.
“I can’t even think of the last time you were really family to me,” I snarl the words and she looks taken aback for a split second before she masks the reaction behind cold indifference.
“You’ll be harming your sisters,” she gives the threat with her head held high and a haughty as fuck expression on her face.
“I’ll take care of the girls. I have no problem with that. What I won’t do any longer is support you. Not when the club could have done that for the last ten years without me needing to put my life and body on the line. Without me missing so much,” rage is infused into my words.
“Those bastards won’t be doing anything for me or my girls,” she seethes.
I can only shake my head, wondering how the fuck we got here while knowing all the same. She was never the typical old lady, not when compared to Cherise and some of the old ladies the old timers have. I don’t know if it’s just part of who she is or if she never really trusted the club.
Honestly, I’m not sure it matters.
What I know for certain is that in the wake of Dad’s death, she was more than happy to heap the blame at the feet of the club and then turn the hate she has for them onto me.
Her own son.
“You should be ashamed of yourself. For everything you stole from me and how you used my grief to do it. I won’t allow it any longer,” it’s a vow wrapped up in words of steel that ring through the quiet of the room. “I will never turn my back on the girls, but I’m done living my life by your edicts. I’ve done it far too long.”
She scoffs, but I can see the wheels turning. She’s looking for an in, a chink in my armor. She won’t find one.
“I’m done breaking my back for some twisted hate that you’re harboring. It’s time for me to live my dreams.”
“Your dreams will never get you anywhere,” she says the words, but they sound like a lie—filled with weakness and uncertainty.
I shrug one shoulder and turn to leave. I don’t look back as I tell her, “Maybe not, but I’d rather try than continue living my life for you because you’ve been more than happy to use me instead of love me. That’s not what a mother does, but it is what a selfish, sad person does. I feel sorry for you.”
When I step out of the house, knowing that I’ve done the right thing, the sun shining down on me feels like a cleansing. There’s only one place I want to go, and it doesn’t take me long to get there.
I had Hacker get me Emery’s address. Fuck, I should have had him track down her phone number months ago, but I didn’t. That’s on me and no one else.
When I pound on her door, I hope I’m not fucking up by showing up and that she’s home. I’m about to turn away and head to the shop she works at when the door swings open. Her dark eyes are wide and filled with curiosity when she looks at me.
I have no idea what she sees on my face, but she’s wrapping me up in her arms without a word passing between us. I haul her against my chest and soak up her strength and her care.
She doesn’t know it, but I’ll need it because she will be what keeps me standing when self-doubt starts to creep in. My mom has spent years sowing it in the recesses of my mind.
“I know we’re not fully on solid ground, Ink,” I mumble into her neck where I’ve buried my face, “but I need you. I need-,” my voice cracks as my words break off.
She’s right there to soothe her hands over my shoulders and down my arms, pulling me farther into her place. “Then take me. Use me how you need to, Kade.”
“Fuck,” I breathe against her neck, kicking the door shut behind me, “I don’t deserve you or your forgiveness.”
“I didn’t say I forgive you. I said you could use me how you need.”
As I lift her in my arms and stomp my way through her far too small apartment, I know we should talk about what she’s just said. I know I should try and win more pieces of her heart before we take this step. But I don’t.
Because everything still feels like rubble at my feet and she’s the only solid thing I can cling to. She’s the only thing I want to cling to.
I undress her quickly and then follow suit, my eyes roaming over her body as she lays on the bed which is exactly where I put her. “This will be enough for now, but I’ll earn the rest, Emery,” I promise her.
“We’ll see,” there’s a glint of amusement in her eyes mixed with her challenge.
My body covers hers, giving her warmth while I try and meld the shattered piece around me—the time lost, the love lost, the comfort destroyed—into something useful again.
When my cock slides between her folds, I can feel how wet she is for me. She might say she doesn’t forgive me, and maybe her head and heart don’t yet, but her body is more than on board with us being together.
It’s enough.
For now.
I thrust myself fully into her, relief filling every part of my body at the contact, at the connection. This is home.
And I’ve missed it.
We move together, our bodies taking over and the reality of the world and the past we share falling away. No hurt. No questions. No mistakes. Just us.
“Yeah,” I grunt after we’ve come together, our bodies still connected, “we’ll see.”