Chapter 37
SAXON
When shit hits the fan, it well and truly hits the fan.
Since I forced Sky away, my life has been spiraling into the deepest pits of hell, where I’m currently residing.
A few days later, I learned my best friend and little sister were seeing each other behind my back.
Then they got into a motorcycle crash where Sage was hurt badly.
I thought she fucking died. Hell, they’re both lucky to be alive.
Then she was fucking kidnapped from the hospital by none other than my piece of shit uncle.
Said uncle turned out to be the mastermind behind my father’s, a.k.a.
his brother’s, death. On top of all this, I can’t seem to get a certain pair of caramel-colored eyes out of my head.
Even now, when I’m staring at the man I’ve called uncle all my life, bleeding and on the verge of death, tied up in my basement in the woods.
I can’t erase her scent, her touch, or her fucking voice that’s like a melody repeating in my brain.
My only saving grace at the moment is I get to release the anger that’s burning inside me on the man who killed my father and almost killed Sage.
I punch his mangled face over and over again.
His features are unrecognizable at this point, but the fucker’s still breathing.
Down with the Sickness by Disturbed is playing in the background, but I can hardly hear anything besides the crunching of my uncle’s face.
I’ve successfully broken every finger on both of his hands and took a sledgehammer to his feet.
I blew out both his kneecaps with a wooden bat that is wrapped in barbed wire—courtesy of Finn, who loves the show The Walking Dead.
I’ve also gouged out his eyeballs with my fingers and made him chew and swallow both.
His nose is practically minced meat at this point, and he’s taken around thirty whips to his chest and back.
Again, I’m surprised he’s still alive. But I continue.
As much as I was hoping this would help my rage, it hasn’t stopped me from thinking about her in the slightest. The more I see her face in my head, the angrier I get.
How could she betray me?
Why couldn’t she just defend herself? Like her pride would take a hit if she did.
Didn’t she see how much I care about her?
Was she telling the truth when she said she wasn’t working with her father?
This makes me angrier. Angry at myself for possibly throwing away something that could have been a lie in the first place. I pick up the bat once again and swing as if I’m Babe-fucking-Ruth and successfully break my uncle’s neck with one swing.
He’s dead.
Finally.
However, now I have no one to take out this rage on. I’m heaving, my breaths coming out deep and heavy. The music has shut off, and I don’t even remember when it ended. The only sound that flows in the air is my breathing.
“You alright, man?” I hear someone say from behind me. I lower my head, not wanting my guys to see how emotionally fucked I am at the moment.
“Saxon.”
“I heard you,” I say in a low voice. Not turning around to see who’s talking.
It’s either Brooks, Finn, or Owen. Saint is with Sage at the house.
I’ve come to terms with their relationship.
If I’m being honest, Saint is the only man I know who is good enough for my sister.
He’ll take care of her. I was hard on him at first, beating his face pretty good when he finally told me.
I’ve come to my senses now, and they really are perfect for each other. I’m just mad I hadn’t seen it sooner.
“Why don’t you go home? Check on your sister. We’ll clean this up.” Owen’s hand is on my shoulder, and oddly enough, it’s grounding me. My thoughts keep me in a constant sensation of floating out of control and spiraling even further away from sanity. I should listen to him.
I should.
But I don’t.
This is my mess, and I need to be the one to close the door on this chapter of our lives for good. I need to bury this monster so I can finally move on. Move on to where? I have no fucking idea.
“I have to do this,” I say. It’s barely a whisper, but I know they can hear me. The room is silent otherwise. The good thing about my friends is they understand me. They’ve known me long enough to understand how I work and what makes me tick. That’s why they’re family to me. All of them.
The four of us wrap my uncle in the tarp we had lying beneath him and start carrying him up the stairwell. There’s a spot in the woods where we already have a grave dug and that’s where we toss him. Alone. Buried in the ground to rot away until he’s nothing more than a pile of bones.
We then clean up our basement and head towards my house. Finn drives the truck we took here, and Owen and Brooks walk with me through the night. We’re silent, the three of us, the way I like it, but having them here with me is comforting. Their presence is what matters.
Pushing through the back door of my house, I make my way up to my bathroom without a word to anyone.
I need to wash off tonight. Stripping out of my clothes, I toss them into a pile in the corner of my bathroom, making a mental note to burn those later.
I want no memories of tonight, nothing that would remind me of my uncle.
I don’t want to think of this night after I wake up.
After a long steaming hot shower, my skin is raw from scrubbing and washing every inch of skin.
I grab my towel and head to my room. I don’t even bother dressing.
I pull back my comforter and fall into my bed.
The last thing I see is a pair of angelic eyes filled with tears as I slip off into the horrors of my nightmares.
I’m sitting in the office at the garage, going over our recent numbers from the month and working on payroll.
As mundane and tedious as this part of the job is, I enjoy it.
It brings a sense of normalcy to my life when everything else is a fucking shit show.
I’m focused on the last few employees and their weekly hours, when I hear a faint knock on the door.
Lifting my head, I notice a man who I’ve seen before. Mack. As in Skylar’s Mack.
I stand and wave him in, panic instantly flooding my system at the thought that something could be wrong.
“Is she okay?” I ask in a frenzy, closing the door behind him. He knows exactly who I’m referring to. The look on his face tells me my answer.
“No, she’s not.” He lets out a deep sigh.
He looks exhausted, worry and panic etched across his face as he rubs his hand over his short hair.
“I’m here to tell you about her suicide mission.
I can’t stop her from doing, and believe me, I’ve tried.
I’ve never been involved with any club activities, and I very much like it that way, but she means the world to me.
She’s like a daughter, and I have no idea how to stop her or help her. You can.”
I respect his man and how he cares for her. He’s been there for her when no one else was. When I wasn’t. I watch as he paces slowly back and forth in my small office before sitting down on the couch against the wall. Defeated, he looks me in the eyes, silently pleading for me to help.
“What’s she about to do?”
“She’s about to head back to her hometown and kill both her parents.” Mack’s right. That is a suicide mission. She would be walking into the lion’s den, and for her to do it on her own is far from stupid—it’s ludicrous.
“Fuck.” I let out a sigh. Pulling my elastic out of my hair, I quickly redo my bun before sitting back against my desk.
“When is this happening?”
“She’s leaving tomorrow.”
Fuck.
So much for planning this out. The room is silent as I manically try to think of a plan, but I’m coming up short.
She wouldn’t listen to me right now anyway after what I did to her.
Then I remember she’d been spying on me.
Why would I help her? Why would he think I would help her after learning she is a spy?
Wait, if she was a spy, why does she still want to kill her parents? My head is pounding.
“Why should I help her?” I ask, grabbing water from the mini fridge and twisting the cap, downing half its contents.
“Saxon, you’re a smart man. So how is it that you could have believed she was a snitch just like that?” He snaps his fingers as he says the last word. She told him.
“She’s been running from her life for two years, maybe even longer.
She’s been doing any and everything she can to lie low, and before you say she came here to spy on you, answer me this.
Who pursued who? I like to think I know Sky pretty well, and I could almost bet my life that you sought her out. Not the other way around.”
Have you ever had the feeling that someone just reached inside your chest and used your lungs as a punching bag?
The guilt is so heavy it’s currently turning my insides black with an inky thick, paste-like substance that’s coating every inch of me.
What started off as a dull ache now feels like someone is holding me under water until I think I’m going to pass out, only to be brought to the surface to taste the sweetness of air.
Mack’s right. I was the one who sought her out.
Fuck, I’m a stalker for Christ’s sake. I’ve installed cameras in her apartment just so I could watch her.
That whole time, not once did I see her communicating with anyone from her past life.
She never called anyone, never checked in with someone, so how could she have been a spy?
Plus, this news of her heading back to her hometown to off her parents, like she originally planned, should be enough of a sign that I was wrong.
So fucking wrong. How could I have been so utterly stupid?
As if seeing my spiraling, Mack breaks the silence.
“Listen, I have an idea, but I don’t know if it will work.” At this point, I’ll do anything to speak with her.
“She agreed to meet me tonight for dinner before she leaves.”
“Where?” I ask in such haste, Mack doesn’t have time to finish his sentence.
“It’s actually not a dinner. I was going to bring her to a Uptown Rage Rooms in hopes it would help release some of her anger.
It’s a last-ditch effort to stop her from leaving.
She doesn’t know it’s a rage room. She just thinks we’re having dinner.
” I scoff at the idea that Sky could benefit from a rage room.
Little does Mack know, Sky has been dabbling in her own types of rage rooms in the basement of Vice with her victims.
“As much as she’ll hate me for talking to you, I need you to talk some sense into her. I need you to make her see that she won’t survive this.” The room grows heavy with the thought of losing Sky.
“I won’t let her leave,” I say matter-of-factly.
I can’t lose her like this. I can’t let her go and fucking get herself killed because I was an asshole and didn’t believe her.
I need to make this right. I need to fix this mistake and show her that I’m sorry and I won’t let her do this alone.
I can’t lose the only woman I’ve ever loved.
If I can’t convince her, well, that’s too fucking bad. She’s not leaving.