Wild Ones (The Lane) (16 page)

I frowned, wondering if Luke had lied and hurt Preach that night that felt like so long ago. Looking back, however, I realized it wasn’t Luke he was pointing at.

It was Cam.

I took a step toward Preach, hesitantly, reaching for him, and his wild eyes swung to stare in mine, insanity tripping across his gaze in a fast-paced waltz.

“He comes without my friend. Without my release. His soul is dark. He’s dark. Stay away from him, little girl!”

The realization slammed into me like a linebacker.

Cam was his fucking dealer.

Without thinking, I swung around, rushed Cam, grabbed him by the front of his shirt and slammed him into the closest solid thing, which happened to be a booth.

“You’re his fucking supplier?” I heard myself shout, and it sounded inhuman, not like my own voice. “You son of a bitch!”

Hands were on my waist, attempting to pull me off, but I held fast to Cam, slamming him roughly into the booth again.

“You asshole! Why the fuck would you sell that shit to an old man?”

Cam didn’t attempt to fight back and the hands on my waist became insistent, finally succeeding in lifting me completely off the ground. As my grip was being ripped away from Cam’s shirt, I reared back and landed a solid punch on his mouth, my knuckles connecting with his teeth, breaking the skin there on impact.

“Bri! What the fuck?” Luke roared from behind me, and I tossed my hair out of my face, feeling like the fabled banshee my da had used to scare Christian and me when we were younger.

“You deserve worse, you prick. You fucking deserve worse.”

Luke quickly pulled me farther away from Cam before setting me down on my feet. I was still fighting to get back to him, my fist itching to bloody my knuckles further on his teeth so long as his teeth were being driven down his throat.

As if he sensed what I was thinking, Luke grabbed my arms forcefully from behind and shook me hard.

“What the hell, Bri? Get your shit together!”

“Why are you defending him?” I shot over my shoulder, continuing to struggle against his hold on me. “How can you stand there and defend what he does? He’s selling poison to an old man. He’s killing an old man!”

“I’m not defending him,” he ground out, trying and failing to pull me back against his chest where he would no doubt pin me. “This is who we are. We have jobs. We gotta do them. There’s consequences if we don’t. I’m not his judge and neither are you.”

Before I could respond, Jax was there, standing between Cam and me, glaring at Luke.

“Get your hands off her,” he said in a steely voice, and had I not been so intent on bloodshed, I probably would have told him to back off. As it were, I said nothing, still fighting to get free and rush Cam for a second time.

“You need to back off my nuts, boy,” Luke growled and Jax moved, stepping between us, breaking Luke’s hold on me. It was almost painful to turn away from my target but I did just in time to stop Luke from swinging at Jax. It was a narrow miss and I pushed him back, momentarily forgetting my own fight.

“The shit is this?” I yelled at him, using my body to keep Jax from pushing in between us again. Luke’s face was stone as he glared at each of us in turn.

“Pick a side, Bri. You can’t have both.”

“Like hell I can’t, you irrational bastard! I don’t have to choose between shit. For the thousandth time, there’s nothing going on between me and Jax.”

“Yes, there is,” Jax piped up from behind me, still attempting to move around me. “She’s been with me.”

I whirled around to face him, my face a mask of the wrath I was feeling. “What the hell?”

Jax ignored me. “I don’t know what she told you, but I know what she’s told me. We’ve got feelings for each other, dude. She just didn’t know how to tell you.”

I felt like a bucket of cold water had been dumped on me. Turning to Luke, my mouth hanging open, I prepared to reassure him that Jax was lying, but I didn’t get the chance. Luke was glowering at me, and with a sudden flip of his middle finger in our direction, he turned and stormed out.

“You dick,” I snarled at Jax before taking off after Luke. But not before I caught sight of Joshua, still in the corner, glass raised to his lips, that eternal amused expression on his face, watching as though he’d enjoyed every second of what had just happened.

Chapter Seventeen

“Luke! Wait!” I cried as I burst out the side door and onto the still-packed street. He didn’t even pause as he continued to storm in the general direction of where we had parked. I’d expected this and broke into a run, my heels clicking loudly against the sidewalk as if they were calling out to the people I passed to check out the crazy running girl with the desperation in her voice.

I ignored the curious stares they drew and focused instead on Luke’s powerful retreating back.

“Baby, please. He was lying!”

“You expect me to believe that?” he snapped, coming to an abrupt stop that caused me, still in a full sprint, to collide into his back. Shoulders heaving with his pent-up anger, he turned and continued, “You live with a dude, Bri. And I’m not blind. He’s a good-looking dude. You can’t tell me you guys have never, not once, hooked up.”

I stared up at him, letting my eyes slide down first to his chest, a chest worth giving up sanity for, the material there forced to stretch unnaturally then down to his sturdy arms with the too-tight sleeves. How could he believe that I would ever hook up with Jax now that I knew he existed? After he spent time in my bed and me in his? There was no way. It just didn’t compute.

“Yes,” I told him with conviction and something like worship. “That’s exactly what I expect you to believe.”

“Yeah, well. Sorry, sugar. It ain’t happening. Your boy busted on you back there. Why would he lie?”

“Because he wanted to piss you off?” The same question had been playing on repeat in my own head. Why lie? Especially Jax, who’d always been honest and loyal when it counted.

It took a lot more convincing, standing out there on the street, surrounded by people who were all too willing to casually eavesdrop, but finally his eyes lost that sharp edge and I think he almost believed me. The walk to his truck was still tense. Jax’s words, believed or not, hung in the air between us, and nothing we said could drive them away. When we got into the truck, I wasted no time climbing over the console and straddling his lap.

“He was wrong,” I whispered against his lips and a shudder passed through him, his eyes slid closed, and I bit back a self-satisfied grin. His hands came up to dive in my hair, wrapping the strands around his fists.

“I’ve never had feelings for him,” I continued and he jerked my head back, exposing my neck. He lowered his head, nipping first at my pulse point then at my collarbone, making me arch my back and his.

“He had better be wrong,” he muttered against my skin before kissing his way up my throat. “Because if I find out you’ve been with him, I’m likely to kill him, sugar.”

Now it was my turn to shiver as heat slammed into my stomach and fanned out. I couldn’t help but think how fucked up I had to be for that to turn me on.

“He is.” I jerked my shirt over my head and unsnapped my bra with a sense of overwhelming urgency. “He couldn’t have been more wrong. He was lying.”

Luke leaned back slightly to rip off his own shirt and flesh meeting flesh felt a lot like home. My skin hummed, water to his live wire, and I could practically see the sparks flying.

“I fucking love you,” he growled before capturing my lips with his. Tongue battled tongue for dominance, making me moan into his mouth.

There were still too many clothes between us, and as we kissed, I frantically worked at his belt buckle, my movements taking on a clumsy urgency only true addicts know. I was too close to the object of my addiction and yet not nearly close enough. It was the sweetest kind of torture, one I needed to end before I combusted.

And maybe he felt the same way because his hands were hiking up my skirt forcefully and jerking my panties to the side. He chuckled that dark, promising laugh of his when I gave up trying to get his pants undone and just started ripping at them. He brushed my fingers aside and popped the button, sliding them down, barely moving me, and before he’d even readjusted himself, I was grabbing hold of him and guiding him into me.

Like every other time, we let out a dual hiss and my head spun, the feeling of completion, of obsessive dependency making my chest tight and my nipples hard. I swam deeper in it, rocking my hips forward, desperate to feel everything and nothing all at once. He complied. He always did. He was sweeter than any drug, though just as habit-forming.

His hands were everywhere, skating across my skin, grabbing, clutching, leaving a trail of fire in their wake. When he clamped on to my hips and drove himself upward, I was arching, the steering wheel connecting sharply with my back, wails filling the air. I almost didn’t recognize my own voice making those primitive sounds, but I recognized his when bestial roars came pouring out of his mouth, ripping through me, turning my wails into something barbaric, almost savage. It was a language born in the Garden of Eden, when Eve first met with Adam behind the bushes and learned him in ways that were almost unholy.

Maybe it was a night for quotes, but as we pounded into each other, skin slick with sweat and need, a single thought kept playing through my head on repeat and it drove my movements, turned into a soundtrack that throbbed at the base of my skull.

The devil hath power to assume a most pleasing shape.

Was it Shakespeare who had once uttered those words? Perhaps writing about this boy beneath me, the one whose eyes were boring into mine, the one whose lips nipped and outright bit every inch of skin he could reach?

And if this was hell, why did it feel so good? Why did my nerve endings ache with pleasure?

When he slammed up into me a final time, I had already come at least twice and my skin felt too tight for my frame. I was a puddle of sensation as he lifted me up, both gentle and rough, to pull his pants up and help me with my bra. I leaned up against him, feeling his sweat-soaked skin against my own and I sighed, deep and almost dreamy, both content and strung out. It was a lesson in extremes, being with Luke, and I was a willing, eager student.

“Your boy wouldn’t be able to make you feel like that,” he remarked as he moved me back over into my own seat before reaching over and pulling the belt across my chest. I promptly unclicked it, earning myself a glare.

“My boy would never get the opportunity.” I leaned toward him and brushed the hair back from his forehead. With a defiance I knew too well, it promptly fell back into his eyes and I could feel myself grinning.

“He better not.”

Luke put the truck in drive, not bothering to put his shirt back on. The sight of him bare-chested and glistening was almost too much to bear.

“Where are we going now?” I asked, slipping my own shirt back on. It didn’t matter. Nothing did. Not even the Judas back at the Tap Room who hadn’t even been promised silver to betray me.

Luke looked over and grinned at me, his eyes shadowy omens in his face. Something inside of me trembled with excitement.

“Anywhere we want, sugar.” He winked and I smiled because I’d go wherever he said.

Chapter Eighteen

In the days that followed, I refused to go home, not wanting to even see Jax’s face, let alone have to talk to him in any capacity. The lengths I had to go through to avoid dealing with him at work were bad enough. I started taking my drinks from Annie, something that irritated me almost as much as Jax did, and I had Mike or Jared cash me out, a task that was definitely not in their job descriptions. I had always loved being at Duke’s, it had always felt more like home than a job, but now that was soured, ruined by the blond-haired betrayer who kept trying to catch my eye.

If all that wasn’t enough, Joshua, who’d always been like an absentee father—we knew he existed but rarely saw him—was suddenly a permanent fixture at Bar 9 and Duke’s. I didn’t think it was just my imagination whenever I felt his eyes on me, which was frequently, watching with both interest and consideration.

Sometimes I felt like there was another shoe somewhere, just waiting to drop.

Just over a week later—a week of silence between Jax and me that everyone noticed, of me wearing the same clothes over and over, reminding me of the days I slept on the streets and scrounged together change to use the laundromat—I cut out of work early, unable to deal with the presences of both Jax and Joshua. I didn’t even give them a choice, instead pulling Joshua aside and telling him to cash me out, something he insisted on doing whenever he was there. I had expected at least a little resistance—after all, we had been pretty busy—but I got little more than an amused look and a slight nod before he led the way back to the office.

“Going to be meeting up with your boyfriend this evening?” he asked as he added up my sales. I wanted to tell him to quit with the attempts at small talk like the encounter at the Tap Room had never taken place, but I nodded instead.

“Yeah. Figured I’d head over to the gym and watch him train for a while.”

Joshua glanced up at me, that ever-present amusement dancing in his eyes.

“It’s interesting to me how involved I hear you are,” he remarked with a tone that was somehow too nonchalant. “I never took you, or Turner for that matter, to be the type to be exclusive.”

I gritted my teeth, not wanting to discuss any aspect of our relationship with him but forced myself to answer, reminding myself that he was the guy who cut my paychecks. “We appeal to each other, I guess.”

“So it would seem.” He handed me a stack of bills and gave me a smile that put me on edge. “You had a decent night. An even two hundred. I’m not sure how you do it, but it’s impressive.”

I wasn’t sure which he was talking about, my ability to bring in tips or something else.

I left the office feeling a bit grimy, something I hadn’t felt when I entered it, and I chalked it up to Joshua, who’d caused me to feel odd ever since that night at the Tap Room. After saying a quick goodbye to everybody but Jax, I grabbed my coat and purse and headed out the back door.

Winter was upon us and though the ground was brown but bare, the sharp scent of snow was in the air. I’d always loved the first snow, something about the way it blanketed everything and wiped it clean appealed to something in me. It felt a little romantic, a thing I most definitely wasn’t, and yet every year I waited impatiently for that first snowfall, feeling a little like the kid I’d never been allowed to be.

I’d seen glimpses of Preach here and there, as if he’d finally come out of his hiding place, a groundhog anticipating spring, but he hadn’t approached me. I wondered if he remembered what had happened. Both the mugging and the run-in with Cam, because I never knew exactly what he did remember. Now I wondered if he even remembered he had a son and I knew him.

I’d been taking different paths to my car every night, changing up my routine slightly, because after two attacks, I was starting to feel a little too predictable. It had nothing to do with being careful, but predictability was something I couldn’t allow to happen. That night I took the long way, walking the length of the Lane, drawing stares from passersby due to my flapper dress, and cut down a long alley across from Sharkie’s between an abandoned building and a karaoke bar that had never had a name I could remember. At the end of the alley, I spotted a group of people gathered, and I shrugged internally, figuring they’d wandered off looking for a place to piss.

I didn’t think that for long.

I was about halfway down the alley when a figure broke free of the others and started walking in my direction. My eyes narrowed as I tried to place him, the gait familiar. It wasn’t until he drew closer that I breathed a little easier, realizing it was Cam.

“Why aren’t you at the gym?” I asked with a glare once he was close enough to hear me. I still hadn’t forgiven him, choosing instead to ignore him whenever he and I were forced to share the same space, and while I hadn’t attempted to hit him again, mostly for Luke’s sake, it still couldn’t be said that we had reconciled either.

He didn’t answer as he fell into step beside me.

“Luke ask you to meet me?” If he had, I wondered why it had been Cam of all people whom he’d sent. Ahead, the small group he’d been with stood in a loose semicircle as though they were waiting for us.

Again, he didn’t respond, and a faint alarm went off inside me. I attempted to stop but he, catching the movement out of the corner of his eye, threw out a hand and latched on to my forearm, continuing down the alley and forcing me to keep moving beside him.

“What the fuck, Cam?” I snarled, attempting to pull my arm free. “What the hell are you doing?”

“Brandon tried to tell him. Told him he needed to stay away from you, put some distance between you. But he wouldn’t fucking listen.” He looked over at me with hostility in his eyes. “He was supposed to lose interest. He always has before. But no. You’re still here. From that very first night, you’ve been nothing but fucking trouble.”

I glared at him and jerked my arm back, but he held fast, pinching it in his grasp. I barely held back the yelp that threatened to escape as bone ground against bone.

“I’ve heard it before. I’m a distraction. I’m trouble. Get a new fucking line, Cam. And let me the fuck go while you’re at it.”

It was as if I hadn’t said a word.

“Brandon had his chance to do things his way. Didn’t work, did it? And since Luke wouldn’t listen, something else has to be done. Should have been done in the first place. We know what we have to do.”

My heart plummeted to my feet, speeding up on the fall down. I forced myself to remain flippant.

“So now we’re going to share our nefarious plans? Good idea. Please. Tell me all about how you’re going to make me swim with the fishes or whatever it is you wannabe mobsters do exactly.”

He jerked me closer midstep, causing me to lose my balance, and the hand holding my arm tightened impossibly.

“You’re a fucking bitch who’s going to ruin him. You’re going to ruin us. There’s too much money involved for that to happen. We’ve worked too damn hard for someone like you to come along and fuck it all up. I am this close to being free of this shit. We all are.
This fucking close.
A few more fights and we can walk. You. Will. Not. Fuck. This. Up. For. Us.”

“So that’s what this is about? Can’t hack it? Afraid you’re going to get stuck being a towel boy?” I scoffed. “Pussy.”

I didn’t see his fist coming until it connected painfully with my jaw. I thought I heard a crack, blood filled my mouth, and suddenly I was filled with rage. I leaped at him, drawing back and punching and clawing anything I could. He tried to fight back but I was everywhere, a crazed banshee with a coppery taste on her tongue and fury in her soul. I was a Fury. One of the Greek Erinyes, intent on destruction, it pounded like blood in my veins. Even when hands gripped my arms from behind and jerked me backward, I continued to thrash, kicking out, desperate to connect with anything, stomach, shin, it didn’t matter so long as it was felt.

“You bitch!” Cam shouted, spitting a mouthful of blood onto the pavement before advancing on me. Using the grip of the person behind me, I pulled my lower half up and threw my legs out, hitting him squarely in the chest. He staggered back slightly and the hands gripping me tightened, wrenching my arms up. I stilled instantly, not daring to press my luck despite how loudly the beast inside me roared for vengeance, for me to not be a victim again.

Taking advantage of the situation, Cam stalked forward and slammed his fist into my stomach, making me double over as much as I could in the position I was in. I groaned loudly, the pain so intense I thought for sure I’d be sick from it. I almost wanted to, so long as I was able to direct it into Cam’s face.

Again and again his fists rained down on me until I was sagging and the fire inside me, still burning bright with animosity, started to flicker. Somewhere in it, the hands holding me dropped away and I barely had the sense to bring one of my arms up to protect my head, the other striking out blindly, barely making contact. I was slammed up against the brick wall, the back of my head colliding painfully with it and I slid to the ground.

I was vaguely aware that the group had gathered around me. Though a few moments later, that became all too clear as multiple feet connected with my hips, my ribs, my back, and I curled into a ball, remembering the little girl who’d once done the same. It was her who instructed me to stop fighting back and wrap both arms around my head, to tuck my knees as close to my chest as I could get them and make myself as small a target as possible. It was her who stood by weeping for the woman she’d grow up to be, the one who never really escaped, just found new faces to dish out the same old punishment. It was her who called for ghosts who weren’t there as my head swam with agony.

It lasted forever. I know it did. I know because time stopped and the only thing that was real was sharp distress that clawed at me like the Fury I’d been only moments before. I wanted to cry, I wanted to scream, but I buried my face in my thighs and bit my flesh, extracting another ounce of pain, willing pain, to counteract the unwilling miseries being thrust upon me like the greatness that was thrust upon others.

Then it stopped so fast I was sure I was imagining it. Something must have spooked them, because one minute they were there and suffering was all I knew and the next, there was a loud crack that split open the air and they were gone.

I turned my head slightly to see Preach standing over me. The metal pipe in his hand—really, where did he get a pipe?—clattered to the ground with a clang.

He bent down, slowly, and brushed the hair back from my face. I grimaced and he nodded like he agreed.

“Wasn’t fast enough,” he muttered. “The Lord’s been delayed lately.”

I coughed and it hurt too intensely to be normal.

“My phone,” I managed to croak out. “Preach, is my purse...?”

“It’s right here, little girl,” he said, producing it magically, though I knew, even muddled as I felt, that he’d only retrieved it from somewhere out of my line of sight.

“Luke. Call Luke.”

Preach looked at me with eyes clearer than I had ever seen, and for a minute, one slightly insane minute, I believed that maybe the Lord had sent him.

“You sure that’s who you want, little girl?”

I nodded, though something inside of me screamed when I did.

“It’s your call,” he muttered. “Can’t say it’s the right one.” But he did as I asked and he called. I didn’t hear their conversation, I slipped away to a place where the pain couldn’t touch me, where the Cams and the Jaxes of the world didn’t exist. Maybe where I didn’t exist either. When I was jerked back to the present, it was Luke lifting me up off the ground and I was curling into him before I even fully realized what was happening.

I tipped my head back and it swam but I needed to see him, needed to tell him. He glanced down at me, war, death, destruction, three of the four horsemen raging in his gaze, and I shuddered at the sight of it.

“Was it Johnson?” he ground out, and I clutched at his shirt with one hand, the one that wasn’t throbbing, feeling his heart pound furiously against my palm.

“No,” I murmured, afraid to raise my voice, afraid to hear how it sounded after everything that had happened. “No. It was Cam.”

Luke’s hands flexed as they dug farther into bruised and aching skin. I didn’t bother telling him that it hurt. I didn’t ask him to ease his grip. I wanted this pain. I wanted to focus on it and drive away all the others. I closed my eyes, feeling his lips brush against my forehead, his arms shaking slightly underneath me.

“I’ll kill him.”

I had just enough energy before I slipped away to answer him.

“I’ll help.”