Revolution (The Lone Riders MC Series Book 1) (31 page)

Thirty-One

Angie found Lexi sitting outside in the yard, Ozzie lying asleep over her shoulder, a bottle of beer in her hand. She looked up as Angie approached, her expression screaming
back off!
‘Ozzie’s fine. And I need this, okay? I fucking need it.’

Angie held her hands up in surrender before sitting down next to her daughter. ‘Why didn’t you just talk to me, baby?’

Lexi took another swig of beer, staring straight ahead of her. ‘You think talking would’ve stopped any of this?’ She turned to face Angie. ‘All it would’ve done is cause a different kind of mess.’ She kissed her sleeping son’s cheek. ‘One that meant I might not have my boy.’

Angie took the beer from Lexi, taking a swig of her own.

‘I didn’t love him, in the beginning.’ Lexi’s voice was quieter, calmer, as she gently rubbed her baby’s back. ‘I don’t really know
what
I felt for him.’ She looked at Angie again. ‘I didn’t make his life easy. I pushed myself at him, gave him no choice in the end because I just wanted him so…’ She closed her eyes, breathing in deeply. ‘I don’t know what it was. I don’t know. He was something I couldn’t have – I guess I always thought of him as this man I’d known since I was a kid. Uncle Coby. And that’s why I wanted him. All of a sudden I was all grown-up, and I thought it would be fun to mess with his head, make him remember me as that ten year old girl he first encountered all those years ago. And then show him the grown-up version. Show him what he could have now. It became this game I couldn’t stop playing, and it wasn’t fair on him, because he really did try to push me away. But the harder he pushed, the more I kept on coming at him with shorter skirts, tits pushed out… whispered promises of all the things I’d do to him if he just gave in.’

‘You were Jesse’s old lady, Lexi.’

‘I’m well aware of what I was, Mum. And I know that what I did back then was cheap and dangerous and all kinds of wrong, but…’ She hung her head. ‘He fought as hard as he could. I just pushed him too far.’ She looked back up at Angie. ‘And now look where we are. Because now I love him so much it kills me, but what’s happening over at the compound… I’m not sure I understand any of that.’

Angie reached out and took Ozzie from her, cradling him in her arms, leaning over to kiss his forehead. ‘No. Neither do I, baby.’

‘What’s gonna happen, Mum?’

Lexi’s eyes were almost child-like as she looked at Angie, and for a fleeting second her daughter was fourteen all over again, asking her the very same question she’d asked her the day they’d left
Newcastle
. ‘I don’t know, darlin’. I really don’t. I guess that’s something we’re just gonna have to let the men work out.’

Lexi pushed both hands through her hair, sighing heavily.

Angie rocked Ozzie gently in her arms, looking over her shoulder into the kitchen, nodding slowly at the figure who’d just walked in. ‘There’s someone here to see you, Lexi.’ Angie stood up, stepping back into the kitchen as the figure stepped out. ‘I’ll look after Ozzie. Leave you two alone.’

Lexi looked up, her stomach dipping, her throat tightening as she tried to catch her breath. ‘This is crazy,’ she whispered as Shane sat down next to her. ‘I feel like I’m gonna wake up any minute now and find these past couple of weeks have all been nothing but some fucked-up dream.’

Shane clasped his hands together between his open knees, staring out into the yard. ‘I’m sorry, Lexi.’ He turned to face her. ‘I really am.’

She didn’t know what to say. She was so over all this, all the crap and the lies and the shit this club dealt out. She was over it.

‘But I love your dad. He’s given me the kind of security I could never have found on the outside…’

‘Where were you?’ she asked, facing him head on – this man she’d thought was dead. Killed by the man she loved. The father of her baby. ‘Where did they hide you?’

Shane kept his eyes locked on hers. ‘I’ve been with the Vegas chapter.’

‘Jesus Christ, this just gets better,’ Lexi said, unable to keep the almost hysterical laugh out of her voice. ‘That’s where
Tay
was just a few weeks ago… did he…?’

Shane shook his head. ‘They kept me hidden, in one of the houses the club owns just outside of
Henderson
.’

‘So… the Vegas chapter knew everything?’

Shane nodded, briefly dropping his eyes to the floor. ‘Charlie’s making sure everyone else is up to speed now.’

Lexi laughed again, turning her head away from him, unable to comprehend everything that was going on. ‘I thought you were dead,’ she whispered, exhaling deeply as she tried to get her shit together. She was tougher than this.

‘I’m sorry.’

‘I should have known, really.’ She looked at him, right into his eyes, a part of her still struggling to come to terms with the fact he was there – alive. ‘You would… you would never do what they accused you of doing. What my dad said you were supposed to have done. You’re not that kind of man.’

‘You’d be surprised at the kind of people we can become, when pushed.’

She looked down at her hands clasped tightly together. ‘We had something, Shane. I mean, it wasn’t the greatest relationship, and I know it wasn’t… I know… but we had
something
. Didn’t we?’

‘You have to understand…’

She stood up, stepping back from him. ‘No. Don’t you dare start telling me I need to understand the way this club works, I
know
the way this club works. I was born into it, it’s been my life for thirty-five fucking years so
don’t
tell me I need to understand how it all works. Don’t. I know your loyalty is to my dad first and foremost, Jesus, I get that. I so fucking get it. But this… I will
never
understand this.’

Shane got up, walking over to her, but Lexi continued to step away, holding out her hand to stop him from coming any closer. ‘We all need a new start, Lexi.’

‘I have no problem with that, Shane. Yeah, we all need a new start, we do. It’s how we’ve got here that bothers me.’

He tried to move towards her again, and this time she let him. ‘I need this club, Lex. And I was willing to do anything I had to to show Charlie my loyalty.’

‘Well, you certainly managed that.’

‘I didn’t want any of this to hurt you, believe me.’

She stared up into his eyes. ‘I’m not sure what to believe anymore.’

He put his hands in his pockets, bowing his head. ‘I loved it here, in
Paradise
.’ He looked back up at her. ‘This chapter, it made me feel like part of a family, and that wasn’t something I’d ever experienced before. For the first time in my life I actually felt as though I belonged somewhere.’

‘And yet you were quite willing to allow them all to turn against you, treat you like some kind of leper; run you out of town for something you didn’t even do? You were willing to cover up what Coby did? You could have said no, Shane. You could have done that.’

‘Your dad asked me to help because he trusted me. I had no ties, no commitments… and it was what you wanted, Lexi…’

‘No, don’t you dare blame me for this.
I
didn’t ask you to do what you did, but I was grateful – don’t get me wrong. What you did for me, for Coby… because what they would’ve done to him…’ She stopped talking, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply. ‘I was twenty-six years old, acting like some out-of-control teenager. I fucked-up, ran to daddy, and he got
you
to cover up my shit for me. How is that fair, Shane? So… so maybe it should be
me
apologizing to
you
.’

He shrugged, his hands still dug deep in his pockets. ‘I knew when I was patched-in that anything could be asked of me.’

‘But what you did… what we asked you to do… nobody should have to put up with that shit. I should have grown up, faced it all head on, sorted out my own mess.’

‘They would have cast him out, Lex. At the worst they would’ve killed him. And you know that.’

She closed her eyes again, leaning back against the wall. ‘The accident… who was in the truck?’

‘Coby.’ Shane’s voice was quiet, his eyes staring down at the ground.

Lexi turned to look at him, waiting until he raised his head, their eyes meeting. ‘Coby?’

‘He knew how to crash it without doing too much damage to himself. Only suffered a few bruises, not even a cracked rib. But your dad and me, we were close by, just in case anything went wrong. And to clean up the mess… Because nobody was supposed to know this had happened. Nobody was really dead, so if the authorities had found out…’

‘And how the hell were they kept out of it, Shane? How did they…?’

‘
Tay
has Sheriff Bailey, your dad – he has his own payroll, Lexi.’

Lexi turned away, taking another deep breath.

‘All we had to do was make sure the truck looked in bad shape,’ Shane continued. ‘Coby had got out before it blew. But the story was I’d been trapped inside. Burned to hell. That’s why it was closed casket when they brought the body back to the clubhouse.’

‘Jesus Christ,’ Lexi whispered, her stomach turning over so fast it was making her feel sick. She remembered Coby’s chest being covered in bruises when they’d had sex, his hands cut and scarred. She just hadn’t asked questions because, at the time, all she’d cared about was having him back in her bed. ‘They buried an empty casket?’ she asked quietly, the nausea slowly rising.

Shane leant back against the wall beside her. ‘The whole funeral was a set-up.’

‘I was told to keep away,’ she said quietly, the confusion surrounding the days that had followed Shane’s “death” flooding her head all over again. ‘For my own good, Dad said. Whatever the hell
that
was supposed to mean. But I didn’t even question why, at the time. Because I knew better than to ask. I just did as I was told. I was only allowed to come back to the clubhouse once the wake had begun.’

‘That was because there
was
no official funeral. How could there be? There hadn’t actually been a death. Charlie had set it all up, made it look like I was getting some kind of club send-off worthy of a hero, but none of it was real. It just had to look that way, to everyone else.’

Lexi felt the nausea rise again as the realization of just what kind of man her father really was hit home – the people he knew, the situations he could create. It made her feel sick to her stomach. ‘I can’t get my head around this,’ she whispered. ‘This isn’t… this isn’t real…’

Nobody said anything for a few seconds, both of them letting the enormity of the situation sink in, the atmosphere around them peaceful, calm, belying the reality.

‘Look, Lexi, I… I know we didn’t really have sex that night… the night Kip walked in on us,’ Shane began, his eyes down on the ground. ‘It was a set-up…’

‘They seem to be quite common around here.’

 
Shane waited a couple of beats before he spoke again. ‘It was all an act, I know that, but… when we were in
Newcastle
, away from everything…’

Lexi looked at him, willing him to look back at her now. She wanted to make sure he was really there, that it was really him talking to her. ‘I still missed Coby with every inch of my heart, Shane. I’d fucked with Jesse’s head, hurt him in ways I’d never really meant to, but we were a mess,
everything
was a mess… and I missed Coby so much. So fucking much.’

Shane raised his gaze, their eyes once more locking. ‘I wanted to be there for you.’

‘And you were,’ she whispered, smiling slightly. ‘Even after everything we’d put you through you were still there, and I will never forget that.’

‘We did have
something
, Lexi.’

‘Yeah. I guess we did.’

‘But I don’t think you ever loved me, did you?’

She broke the stare, looking the other way. ‘My head was a fucking mess, Shane. Coby, everything I’d done to Jesse, being driven out of Paradise by people I loved, people I thought of as family…’ She faced him again. ‘I turned to you because you’d been through all that, too.’

‘When we finally made love, for real, did you… were there
any
feelings there?’

She felt her heart shatter slightly, her stomach dipping so low she had to take a deep breath to compose herself. ‘You made me feel safe, not so alone. And I… yeah, I felt something for you. But it could never have worked, Shane. Not really. Everything was too much of a mess.’

It was his turn to break the stare. ‘And that’s why I was quite willing to help Charlie with whatever he needed me to do.’

‘So… if we’d… if we’d actually fallen in love, if our relationship had worked, are you saying you wouldn’t have been so keen to get involved?’

‘I would’ve had something worth sticking around for, wouldn’t I?’

‘I’m so sorry, Shane.’

He looked at her, that beautiful smile of his that she’d never forgotten lighting up his handsome face. ‘I guess I couldn’t compete with Coby, huh?’

‘Nobody was competing with anyone,’ she said quietly.

He held out his hand and she took it, closing her eyes again as he squeezed it tight. ‘Are you happy, Lexi?’