Resonance (Marauders #4) (21 page)

“It didn’t help, did it?” Brick asked.

“No. He caught me while I was sleeping. He’d been out drinking with his buddies and apparently wanted to get some before he went to bed.”

“Did you report him?”

I shook my head, and I couldn’t look at him. “No, I didn’t.”

“Why the fuck not?”

“Because he was my senior officer, which meant that I was supposed to report him to himself. The step up the ladder, which was my next option, was his drinking buddies and… you get the picture. The woman he raped before me was charged with conduct unbecoming, since he was married.”

“You’re shitting me?”

“No. And the process until that was less than… painless. But I still should have. I think… I tried to tell myself that it hadn’t happened. Then Zach died. I was waiting for him to come home, so I could talk to someone, and he died before I could.”

“And Tommy was the next best thing?”

“He was one of few men I trusted fully there for a while—maybe still is. I don’t know. I don’t think I had a good reason, but I trusted him. When I found out I was pregnant, I was
terrified
that it would be my officer’s. I didn’t
really
think it was, I’d had… my period after the rape, but I managed to give myself panic more than a few times. And I was also relieved because pregnancy is a reason for an honorable discharge.”

“It gave you an out?”

“Yeah.”

“None of this explains why you didn’t tell him.”

“No, it doesn’t. I didn’t tell my parents who Felix’s dad was until he was two and we found out he was sick. I didn’t tell anyone. I called Dwayne before Felix was born, but he told me to leave Tommy the fuck alone, that I’d done enough. If I’d told him the truth, he would’ve let me talk to him, but…”

“You didn’t.”

“No. I think he was more of a mess than I was, and for a while I didn’t know if telling him would make it better or worse. Or it was at least what I was telling myself.”

“Does he know this?”

“Yes.” I smiled at Brick. “You have that ‘you can trust’ me face, but I wouldn’t tell you something he didn’t know. Or something I didn’t want him to know.”

“Why?” he asked with a smile.

“Because you’d tell him what you think he needs to know.”

“Smart girl.”

“Then we found out that Felix was sick, and I don’t think I gave a shit about anything but him.”

“Understandable. I’ve thought about it more than once the past few months, how fucking lucky I am to have had three healthy kids. Given everything that can go wrong, I think it makes me lucky as fuck.”

“It does.”

“I’m gonna ask you something, and I’m good at spotting liars, and it’s going to sound rude to you. Are you leading him on just so he’d give Felix a kidney?”

“The first time we met, when I told him about Felix, he said he’d give him his kidney without even hesitating. The next sentence was basically that we’d be civil to each other in front of Felix, but that I otherwise should stay the fuck away from him.” I looked at Brick. “And I don’t blame him.”

“Good. I just wanted to make sure,” he said with a nod. “I care about my guys, and I don’t like women who fuck with their heads.”

“Sounds sensible,” I said. He gave me a curious look, and I answered before he’d had the chance to ask. “Told you, I’m an army brat, my dad is an officer, I know how it works.”

“You think I’m running an army?”

“I think you’re running an organization, and you need it to function. The cliché about the weakest link is a cliché for a reason. But I do think you care about him, too.”

“What makes you say that? Maybe I’m just trying to keep my organization functioning.”

“Because you’re here. You didn’t send someone to keep him company, you’re here yourself, despite the discomfort.”

“Discomfort?”

“You look like shit.”

He laughed, and he had a great laugh. It was honest, from deep down in his chest, and it reminded me of my dad’s. It was the laugh of a man who didn’t give a flying fuck about what others thought about him.

“That makes two of us, Shooter. And we still have a long way to go.”

“Yeah. Long way to go.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Short For Cockroach

~oOo~

IT HAD BEEN FOUR weeks since the transplant, and I was still on edge. I checked Felix’s temperature a lot more than I should. A fever could be a sign of infection, and an infection could be the body rejecting the kidney. So far there were no signs of it at all. Everything was going well, and his growth spurt was already starting. Basically, his body was adapting to being healthy and was trying to gain what it had lost due to his sickness.

He was thriving.

Another reason for his perkiness was that he loved Tommy and me together as a couple. When he was released from the hospital, Mel and Mom had ganged up on Tommy to tell him that there was no way they’d let him go home to his shithole of an apartment. He had to choose: our place or Brick’s place. He chose our place—in my bed.

I wasn’t convinced the doctor had really said that two weeks was long enough to wait for sex, but he’d said it while he was fingering me, so I’d agreed that if we were careful, and he promised that he’d stop if it hurt, we could have some careful sex.

I was very relieved when he came back from his next check-up and said everything was okay.

He’d gone back to work after two weeks, but he wasn’t actually working. He was just hanging out. Sitting at home was driving him nuts. He’d never been the kind of guy who could just take it easy. When he lived with us, his response to Zach reading a book was to start beating on the punching bag in the basement. That was how he’d started teaching me, actually. We’d kept training together until he and Zach enlisted.

We still kept a gym with a punching bag in the basement, and Felix loved watching me beat on it, which was what he was doing one afternoon when Tommy was at the clubhouse. He did it while flipping through
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz.
He hardly went anywhere without the book, and he still talked about it a lot. It had somehow become a link to the past, and he asked a lot of questions about me, Tommy, and Zach as kids while looking in it.

“You said Daddy called you Munchkin already when you were a kid,” Felix said.

“Yes, both him and Uncle Zach.”

“Why?”

“I’m not sure,” I said between punches with my right hand. “Probably because it annoyed me.”

“They did it to tease you?”

“I think so.”

“Hmm,” he hummed. I knew that hum.

I switched and started punching with just my left hand. “What was that
hmm
?”

“Just that Daddy said that wasn’t why he called you that now.”

“Really?” I laughed. “So why does he call me that now?”

He went quiet and started flipping through the book again, but I could see that he was smiling. He was dying to tell me.

“Come on, little guy. Tell me.”

“He said it was because he was like the Tin Woodman, and you’re the beautiful Munchkin girl he loves with all his heart.”

I halted and looked at Felix, but he was still looking at the pictures in the book. He could read a little, we’d been practicing with him, but he still preferred it when we read to him.
The Wonderful Wizard of Oz
would have been too much anyway, but by now he most likely knew it by heart.

“Is that what he said?” I asked with a chuckle and sat down next to Felix. “That’s nice of him. Think I’ll like it better now.”

“Good. Does that mean you’ll marry him when he has enough money to buy a house? Like the Munchkin girl promised the Tin Man.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. Do you want us to get married?”

“I think so,” he whispered.

“Isn’t the most important thing that we love each other?”

He nodded, and then he finally looked at me with a smile. “He told me why they call you Sparks, too.”

That was something Dad had started with, and it was because I could get Zach to explode, I was the spark that set the dynamite off, and I was the only one who could. That was why I’d liked it. Even if it wasn’t an altogether positive thing, it was something that singled me out when it came to Zach. Something that marked me as unique in his life.

“You’ve had quite the chat, haven’t you? Not sure I like it if he tells you all my secrets.”

“He only tells nice things about you. Daddy said you were the only one who could piss Uncle Zach off. And Daddy said you did it often.”

He said that often, ‘Daddy said,’ and he sounded so proud and happy when he did. Like it was a relief that he was able to say it, and it made me regret what I’d done even more. In my defense, the way Tommy was now wasn’t how he’d been when he was younger. Back then he was a completely different person. War and loss did that to people. It changed them. There was never any way of knowing beforehand if they would change for the better or for the worse; in Tommy’s case it was definitely for the better. He was still him, with his humor and his charm, but it was a more mature, careful, and responsible version of him.

“I did piss him off often,” I admitted. “I was a really annoying baby sister.”

Felix nodded, and I got up to keep working on the bag. I thought he was done, but I was wrong.

“Why were you annoying?” he suddenly asked.

“I don’t know, honey. I think most siblings fight. When I became older I often felt left out. Zach and Tommy took off, and they didn’t want me with them. So when they got back, I annoyed Zach. I wanted him to notice me, I think.” I smiled. I’d been such a jerk, and it was just so he’d give me some attention. That was all I ever wanted from him. “He was my hero.”

“And Daddy?”

“Daddy, too.”

“If I had a baby sister, I’d be really nice to her.”

“I know,” I said with a laugh. “But you know she’d try to annoy you just like I did. Ask Travis about it. I bet he’d tell you Jacob can be a real pain in the butt sometimes.”

Felix didn’t respond to that, so I returned to punching the bag. Once I’d found the rhythm, it was therapeutic. It was a steady rhythm, meditative, while I at the same time could punch my frustration into the damn bag. I kept going, until my lungs were burning, sweat was dripping on the floor underneath me, and I could just barely lift my arms.

Panting, I lay down next to where Felix was sitting, and he handed me my water bottle just like he always did. He didn’t even look up from the book when he did it.

“Are you working today?” he asked just about the same time as I’d managed to get my breathing slow and pulse right.

“No. Why? Something you wanna do?”

“No. I was just wondering.”

“I need to go and see Mel. She said she might’ve found some houses for me to look at.”

That made Felix finally look up from the book, and he was smiling.

“Yeah?”

“Think just the house will be enough even if we don’t get married?”

He nodded eagerly.

“Then let’s start there. Drink some water, then we’ll go upstairs to see if we can find something new for you to taste.”

~oOo~

“I’M FINE,” TOMMY INSISTED. “I can go. It’s—what?—a five hour ride. I can do that.”

“Tommy, I appreciate that you’re willing to, but I’m not gonna let you in on the run,” Brick said. “I got a paper from your doctor that says you need at least six weeks off.”

“Because I have a job that sometimes involves heavy lifting!”

“And if you lay down your bike?”

“What? You wouldn’t help me lift it up, and when the fuck did I lay down my bike?”

“If you can’t get your bike up, you have no business on a bike,” Bear butted in with a shrug from the door to the chapel, where Tommy and Brick were having their discussion. “Just wanted to let you know they’ve arrived. You should come and greet them.”

“Did you just come up with that rule?” Tommy asked Bear, ignoring his comment about the arrivals.

“It’s not a rule; it’s common fucking sense,” Brick answered instead of Bear and got up.

They
were three members from the New York charter who had come Greenville on a loan. Since Eagle, and soon Pico, was currently based in New York, the charter had agreed to send a few guys to Greenville. Brick had asked for reinforcements from experienced guys, preferably vets, and New York had members like that to spare. Tommy only knew that one of the guys was called Ahab, and he was an old friend of Dawg’s who’d served in the army until he got a general discharge. Tommy had no idea why, but he knew from experience that it could mean he was a complete fuckhead, or just a guy who’d had the balls to take a stand against a fuckhead officer.

“I’m just going crazy sitting on my ass here,” he muttered, as he got up and walked towards the door next to Brick and Bear.

“I’m sure Shooter can keep you occupied,” Brick laughed.

Brick kept calling Billie ‘Shooter,’ and Tommy knew it was mostly out of respect. He wasn’t sure how he felt about his president having a nickname for
his
woman, though, no matter how respectful it was. Not that he thought that Brick had any interest in her in a… less than respectful way, but it was still weird.

They stepped outside on the lot, and the three of them halted at the same time. Dawg was standing next to a tall, skinny guy with long, slightly greasy hair in a ponytail, and he had a horseshoe mustache—not unlike Brick’s. There were two other men standing a bit away from them. Or, one of them wasn’t really a man. He was a fucking kid. He had dark buzz cut, paired with a five o’clock shadow, sunglasses—and a coat! Kind of like a coat, or a long jacket. No matter how determined or tough he looked (or tried to look), he was still twenty—at best! He almost looked like a skinhead, Tommy realized, down to the black pants and heavy work boots.

And Brick seemed to have had similar thoughts.

“They sent us a fucking kid,” he muttered. “What the fuck is unclear with ‘experienced,’ and when the fuck did anyone think kids were experienced in anything but jacking off?”

“Well,” Tommy started and decided to try to be diplomatic. “We send kids around that age into war.”

“Yeah, ‘cause the government ain’t there to see them get killed,” Brick muttered. “When I do that, I get to see them get killed, which is why I don’t want fucking kids fighting my fucking battles.”

“He’s a member,” Bear pointed out, “so someone must’ve seen some value in him.”

Brick didn’t answer that, he just groaned and then started towards the visiting men: Ahab with the horseshoe mustache, a huge dude called Slug, and the kid, who was called Roach.

“Roach?” Brick asked when he shook the kid’s hand, possibly with a little tighter grip than necessary. Roach seemed to understand why and gave Brick a knowing smile.

“Yeah,” he answered.

“Short for Cockroach,” Slug explained. “It was too long to yell, so we shortened it. Felt a bit weird to yell Cock all the fucking time, though.”

“He was my prospect,” Ahab said and put his hand on Roach’s shoulder. “Might not look like much, but I’m sure he’ll surprise you. I got some messages for you from up north. Think you have five minutes for me in private? Bring the VP if you want.”

Brick had explained to Tommy why he didn’t like taking in loans or transfers. He thought a strong club was created when people grew into it and their place in it. Loans and transfers were usually guys who were used to getting their deserved respect as members, but in a different environment, and it usually got rocky when they first arrived. The fact that Brick had called in loans had initially made Tommy slightly worried, he had thought Brick was expecting trouble coming their way, but Brick had said he just wanted to get the help there in time to get to know everyone. They’d stay a few months, and that way they had guys they could call on later that already knew the club and were comfortable in it. As usual, he was covering his bases.

A part of covering those bases had been to invite two members from the Blood Paradigm—or they were Marauder Prospects now—to Greenville and the clubhouse, too. If they felt at home and like a part of the club, and then went back to their own charters, it might spread. To everyone but Tommy’s surprise, Dig, the former Marine, had volunteered, and the other one was Crank, the president. They were coming the next day and were supposed to stay for a month. The idea was to feel them out, but also to introduce them to the business and be a part of a run.

The situation made Brick itchy, and Brick didn’t have much patience when he was itchy, so Tommy was sure Veetor, the NY president, would get a chewing out like he’d never had before for sending them a kid as backup.

They all went inside and sat down to have a beer together. Brick told him he’d talk to Ahab in a few minutes; he just needed to make a call first.

Roach watched Brick as he left, and then shook his head when a sweetbutt offered him a beer.

“Think Veetor might be in trouble,” Slug said with a chuckle, and Roach shrugged.

“You not old enough to drink?” Tommy asked him with a nod to the sweetbutt who was still offering a beer Roach was ignoring—like she couldn’t believe she’d understood his decline correctly