Wrath (20 page)

Emma

“Get dressed.” 

I shook my head and tried to clear the fuzziness of sleep from my eyes.

“What?” 

He was gorgeous, but he was fully clothed.  What time was it? 

I turned my head towards the alarm clock.  Eleven in the morning.  Shit.  I’d missed my first two classes. 

Oh well, it happened.  I wasn’t going to get in major trouble for missing the class, but I was going to have to get the notes from someone.

Aidan nudged me impatiently.  “I said get dressed.  We have places to be.”

I groaned.  “What?  Where are we going?”  His eyes lingered on me for a long time as I climbed out of the bed.  A part of me wanted to tempt him and get him back into bed, but I still had one more class for the day and work after.  Might as well get something useful done.

“Somewhere important.”  He watched me dress.

“That’s all you’re giving me?” 

He nodded.  “When is your next class?”

“1:15.” 

“We got time.  You’ve been missing a lot of classes.  That shit needs to stop.  It’s my fault.  And I’m not going to let you mess this up, Emma.  I know how important it is to you.  Fire and Steel can’t get in the way of that.”

I nodded, sensing the change in him.  It had been happening all along, but whatever that last hurdle had been, he was very different today.

His anger and need had been replaced with something more, something deeper.  Was it really love?

We drove out past North Braddock to a small cemetery just on the crest of the hill. 

It was a worn down old place and many of the headstones so weathered that I couldn’t make out what they said.  Those lives had existed so long ago, and all of the ones that loved them were gone, too, planted into the ground alongside them.

Centuries of people in a small little cemetery, some of the markers as old as 1803.  It was a humbling sight.  Someone, someday would forget me, too.

From the 1800s to the 1900s we wove down through centuries’ worth of lives, twisting and turning across the cemetery until we neared the creek.  I could see it, drifting by at the bottom of the hill, but the sound didn’t travel up the slope.

We kept driving until we reached a set of plots where the headstones were bright and new and shiny.

That was when it clicked why we were here. 

He’d lost someone, someone I didn’t even know, and he was showing it to me.

He got off the bike and pulled his helmet off, taking mine and hanging them both on the saddlebag.

“Who are we here to see?”  I asked, but he pulled me over to a set of gravestones.

“I wanted you to meet my family.”  He gestured to the three headstones in front of us.

I read the names: Mary Crowne, Elijah Crowne, and Madison Crowne.  Madison was just ten years old when she died.

“They weren’t much, but they were blood.”  His eyes lingered on his little sister’s headstone.  I remembered him mentioning that he hadn’t like his parents much, but his sister?  She seemed to have mattered deeply.

“Aidan.”  I turned to him but his eyes were grim.  I stayed quiet, giving him a moment.  In a way, grief was the only sacred part of living.  I wanted to respect his.

I waited until he was ready to speak again.  When he did, he explained a bit for me.

“I was at the training facility at Fort Jackson when it happened.  I was busy doing my own shit, and they were in their beds, suffocating to death.  There was a fire.  They died of smoke inhalation.”

I just listened as he let it all pour out.  He kept it matter of fact, but every word was like a stone he was removing from his shoulders. 

“I  got a week of leave, but I was back in three days.  I joined the Army for life when I got back to South Carolina.”  He paused, absently patting one of the headstones.  “It was the only thing I could do.  I picked a career and did training.  Did three tours in Afghanistan.  I didn’t care about much else besides my service.  Fuck.  I hated my old man, but losing ‘em all like that?”  Pain pinched his face as memories overwhelmed him.  His grip tightened on the headstone: it was his sister’s.

“I had nothing left.  Nothing.”  He pushed his hand through his hair and then looked at me.  “Not until you.”

I nodded.  I knew what it was to have nothing - to want for so much, and be left for so little.  But I had no idea what it was like to lose my entire family.  Not like that.

My father had never been in the picture, and my mother had faded away slowly.  Even so, she was still alive, still here to try and get better.  I realized that if she died, I would have a better idea of what Aidan felt like, but the truth was, I didn’t want to know.

Just thinking about a young version of Aidan, suddenly alone and dealing with that kind of grief.  It was almost too much to bear.  My heart grieved for him. 

I hugged myself and looked up at him, standing there by the graves.  They were well kept with new flowers in a beautiful stone arrangement – all of them.  Even his father’s.  That kind of loyalty… Aidan was an honorable man.

When he saw my tears, he held out his arm to bring me closer.  “I didn’t bring you here to make you cry, love.  Hell, I’m sick of being a walking tragedy.  I just wanted tell you what happened.  That was my life then.  This is my life now.”  He looked down at me, and I saw worry harden his jaw. 

“Why you crying, baby?” 

“Look at you.  Look at all you’ve had to go through.  I just.  I can’t –” I felt like an idiot, but sometimes tears just had to come.  I buried my face into his leather jacket and sobbed openly.  For him.  For me.  For all that we’d been through. 

It wasn’t enough that we’d both suffered.  The universe was cruel to make us have to bear through it over and over again.  I knew I was strong, but sometimes I wondered if it would ever stop.  If I would ever just catch a real break.  I’d start to get ahead and then trouble would reach out and trip me up.  I’d have to struggle and fight just to keep my head above water, and even when I made it through, there was never enough time to catch my breath or relax.

I looked at Aidan’s life and I knew how exhausted he felt in it, because I lived it, too.

Aidan squeezed me and picked me up, leaning back against the headstone.  “Shit, darlin’.  Thanks, but things are going well for me.  I got a job, a family, and you.  What more could I ask for?”  He looked at me for a moment, then added, “Can’t get this family back.  Won’t grow another leg.  You gotta make things work, keep moving, find out what’s worth living for.”

The way he looked at me then, as if I really was what he lived for, took my breath away.

“I love you.”  I looked up into his eyes and felt whole for the first time in my life.

I’d spent so long running from attachments.  I wasn’t sure I’d been wrong to do so, either.  I hadn’t met anyone till Aidan who had been worth the risk.  But here he stood, accepting all of me – the tears, my work, my problems and my strength.  He thrilled under my hands instead of judging me.  He laughed whenever I challenged him. 

I could be myself with him and still love him completely.  He wasn’t interested in breaking me to keep me.

Shaking, I wiped my eyes and choked down the lump in my throat.  “Why did you bring me here?  Why now?”

“Because I want you to know me, Emma.  You deserve to know it all.”

I nodded, understanding.  I wanted to share everything I was with him.

“Shit is going to get harder before it gets better, darlin’.”

“This shit with the club isn’t over, is it?”  I asked when I looked up at him.

“No, it’s just getting started.”  The way his eyes narrowed let me know he meant it, too.  There was a battle brewing back at the MC and it was serious.  I needed to keep out of it as much as possible and just let the men do what they needed to.  But it was so hard to keep out of it.  The person I loved most in all the world was in danger of losing his life. 

I was in danger of losing him.

I gritted my teeth and leaned back to look up at him, tapping the patches on his vest.  “I’m willing to deal with it all, if it means being with you.”

“Thanks… I couldn’t leave it if I wanted to.  They are good men.  But I couldn’t live without you, either.”

For all its faults, the MC wasn’t completely bad.  I knew I needed to sit down and really sort through what I was going to do, because running away from the MC was starting to feel like cowardice.  Yes, I was afraid, but that didn’t mean I had to let it beat me.  I just needed to find my place in it all. 

It helped that I could respect some of them, too.  Many of the men did a lot for charity and they worked hard. 

And Layla was the closest thing I had to a real friend, and she was a part of the club. 

Even my cousin was a part of the club. 

Aidan kissed my forehead and steered me back towards his ride.  “Come on.  You have class to get to, and my shift’s coming up.”

“You have to work today?”

“Yeah, ain’t no rest for the wicked.”  He winked at me and I climbed up on the bike after him.

Confessions of love or not, life didn’t slow down.

I had a feeling I wasn’t getting any real rest anytime soon.

Aidan

“Hey, man.  I didn’t think you were working today.” 

I had been surprised to find Rage in the shop.  He was going through his toolbox and sorting through shit, checking to see if he needed to replace anything.

“Eh.  I wasn’t, but Tommy shit his fucking pants last night.  Turned in his cut this morning and bolted the fuck out of here.”

I shook my head.  I had a feeling he was of that caliber, but it hadn’t been my place to say anything.  Not until I got patched in.  “Piece of shit.”

“Yeah.”  Thrash came around, and then pointed at my station.  “You left your tools here the other day.  No touched them.  I think you’re safe to set up a permanent station.”

When he nodded, I nodded back.

“You know your shit, man.  You saved our fucking asses.”

“You hear anything about it?”

“Nah.  It’s crazy the shit that happens up there in the country.  Heard there was some kind of teenagers out at that warehouse.  Target practice or some shit.  No one got hurt from what the cops said.”  He shrugged. 

It was a clear fabrication of events, since we were the ones causing the fight out there, but it was the story that the police were going with.  Mick had a cousin on the force.  The cousin happened to be the chief of police.  To say they were in Fire and Steel’s pockets was an understatement.

That was how we dealt with these things, swept it all under the rug and kept it quiet.  Suited me just fine.  A mission was a mission, didn’t care what it meant.  I trusted Fire and Steel.  I trusted Rage and Thrash.

“Hey man, you got a moment?  We wanted to talk to you about something - fuck!”  Rage threw a wrench back into his box with a clang.  “That motherfucker took my socket wrench.  I’ll fucking kill him.”

I gave my tools a quick check.  All there.

“Yeah, I got a minute.  What’s up?” 

“You really going to talk to the asshole without including me?”  Mick shouted as he hobbled into the shop, his arm in a sling. 

“Well, I didn’t think you’d be in today, old man.”  Rage clamped him on the shoulder, not hard, but enough to make him wince.

“You’re a fucking dick, you know that?”  Mick spat at Rage.

“What do you all want?”  I asked.

“What we want is to talk about a promotion,” Rage said.

“At the garage?  Do yinz even do that?” 

“Nah, man.  The club.”  Thrash, who I never expected to say anything positive about me, came forward.  “You’ve been doing a hell of a job.  The run, and then the raid.  You know your shit, know what I mean?  We’d  be willing to give you a shot at the inner circle.” 

“What are you talking about?”  I asked.

“Mick here was taking the post of Sergeant at Arms -” Rage started, but Mick interrupted.

“It was only temporary, until we could find someone to fill it.  My nephew, he was, well, he was one hell of a gun.”

His nephew.  Beast.  Layla’s brother.

“And we want you.”  Rage finished.

“Me?  Fuck, man.  You really think you know me well enough for that?”  I’d been with the club for less than a month, working my ass off day in and day out, but still.  They’d run a background check on me, but I’d been out of the army for a while now.  I could have become anybody in that time.  I could have been a snitch, or someone planted from their old faction, or FBI.  I could be the fucking devil himself, and they’d have no idea.

“Oh, we know you.  Trust me.  We’ve watched you.  You’re true.  If you had shit you were trying to hide, little bits and pieces would’ve started to unravel by now.  We’d’ve seen it.” 

Rage looked me right in the eyes as he said it I looked back at him calmly.  I knew I was legit.  But I was glad to realize he knew it, too.  I was just amazed by how fast this was happening.

“What we need is your attention to detail.  Your ability to use strategy and tactics.  Shit is going to go down.  We have several different things going on, and we need a guy like you.”

“Fine,” I rubbed my jaw and pulled up a seat.  “But if you want me, I need to have some say over who the fuck you give access to your clubhouse.  Because motherfuckers like Tommy are a hell of a lot more dangerous after they have some information on us than before.  Give me veto power on prospects.”

Thrash’s brows had risen as I spoke, and he glanced at Rage when I finished.  After a moment, they both nodded to me. 

“Anything else?”  Thrash asked, a touch of irony in his voice.  

“Yeah.  We need to secure this place.  It’s good, but we need lookouts.  Guys on smoke breaks, cameras.  And something to keep the bunnies in line.  The girls we got seem to have their shit together, but more recruits’ll mean new girls.  And someone’ll figure out to send a woman in if we leave that back door unguarded, you got me?”

“We let your girl in.”

I shrugged.  “You didn’t do that just for me though.  She’s Kat’s cousin.  You know Kat.”

Rage gave me that.  “She’s got a good head on her shoulders, yeah.” 

“I kept an eye on her at the club,” Thrash added.  He had leaned back against the station, his arms crossed, and now he looked down his nose at me, faintly smug.  I knew he was shitting with me, but I still glared at him.

Mick whacked me on the back, chuckling.  “We ain’t complete fools, kid.”

Rage finally spoke.  “Wrath’s right about the bunnies, though.  All it takes is one loose tongue.  We will need to find a good way to ‘guard that back door.’” His lips quirked at that, as if he was amused by some private joke.

I didn’t get my nose in that, just nodded.

“What else?” 

I ran through a list of the shit I saw wrong with the club, and the organization.  A half hour later we’d agreed and moved on to contemplating what to grab at the bar later. 

I felt good about the day.  They knew they’d made the correct decision, and I knew I could do the job they had given me.

I looked around the shop.  At the office and the cubbies, the kept floors and the spotless stations.  Emma’s car was almost done, too.  I’d been working on it every spare moment I got.  We were just doing the interior restoration now. 

Pretty soon, she’d be driving around on her own.  I didn’t like it.  A part of me wanted her to stay on the back of my bike.  But I had a feeling she was gonna get impatient with me soon if I kept her car from her.  She liked my old Chieftain.  I didn’t need to trick her onto it.

This was my workspace, and these were my brothers.  I had jobs I was good at.  My girl wanted me and I needed her. 

That’s when it hit me.  For the first time in over a decade, I was home.

This was home. 

It felt good.