Cole: The Wounded Sons

by Leah Sharelle

  “Don’t look so shocked, Low, I’m a commando–remember Team FIVE? I might look like I’m not listening, but I heard every word, little sister, and I’m telling you you’ve got none and buckley’s chance of putting that plan into effect.”

  Draping an arm over Willow’s shoulder, I steered us towards the front entrance to the Bar and Grill, my eyes automatically scanning the parking lot. Seeing bikes I knew belonged to members of the Club and several cars I didn’t know, I put the registration plates to memory until I came to a black Hyundai Veloster. A chick car if I ever saw one. The plate number tripped a memory of seeing it at the Club when I was home, which wasn’t as often as my mother would like.

  My lip curved at the corners of my mouth, and for some strange reason, my heartbeat kicked up a notch.

  Oaklee was inside.

  “Come on, Low, I’m hungry,” I urged, picking up my pace, eager to get inside to see the object of the sexiest night of my life.

  One I was still having trouble piecing together … but I will.

  The bar was packed with bodies jostling for a prime spot at the long mahogany bar to watch the bartenders entertain the patrons with fancy bottle work and good-natured humour. Steel and Mia knew how to keep people spending money while being responsible for alcohol consumption. Steel maintained a big personal presence as well as plenty of staff to make sure no one went home with their keys in their hands with the intention of driving. His bar was one of two in town that offered a shuttle bus service free of charge if they were over the limit. He even went as far as installing a breathalyser at the front door; patrons appreciated it and so did the local police force. Jason mentioned once that Steel’s idea to have one meant the police didn’t have to show much of a presence there, allowing them to be elsewhere where they were needed.

  The music was loud and the conversations were louder, and for a minute, I was regretting my choice to be here. My job gave me the peace and quiet I craved, alone in the jungle or desert; even the firefights didn’t feel like noise to me. My mind takes over then, calculating my next move, my focus on my team, and the ability to tune out all the unnecessary sounds around me. I do the same now, finding that place in my mind where nothing around me can penetrate and take me away from the silence I need when in situations like these.

  Gabe calls it my tunnel vision, where I get my strength from to do the shit that I have to do in war to get the job done.

  I call it my salvation, the only way for me to survive the harsh world where I live most of the time. Lately, I was having difficulty assimilating back into the civilian world … after losing Deke. This time the death in front of me wasn’t a nameless face, not an insurgent coming at me with a gun pointed my way. No chaos, no gunfire, no sounds of RPGs going off around me. This time it was different. This time it was Deke’s eyes haunting me, wild and pleading for me to save him, then rolling back in his head as his body lifted violently off the floor of the chopper with every electric shock to his bloodied chest.

  Usually, the nightmares came in a hurry giving me hell, but they always left, allowing me to move on. Deke’s battered face wouldn’t leave, no matter how much alcohol I consumed. He was there, bones breaking under my palms as the light had faded out of him, leaving me with a nightmare so vivid nothing could rip it from my mind.

  Until Oaklee.

  I tried to talk myself into believing it had been the grog I inhaled that night, but in the cold light of day, I admit it was her soft hands, her sexy moans and her tight wet heat that pressed pause on my torment for those few short hours. I remembered the way she cuddled into my side, her nose pressed into my throat, and her small hand over my pec in a possessive gesture, but most of all, I remember sleeping without dreams of death.

  The best sleep for years, and I woke up alone, the smell of sex and lilacs on my sheets and skin. For days I thought it was all in my imagination that I had finally lost the plot and heading for a medical discharge. Once it all fell into place, the guilt and remorse quickly kicked in. The look she gave me the next morning in the kitchen made sense now; she’d looked at me expectantly when she walked in. Her hair wet from a shower and smelling exactly like my room, not that I put two and two together, not even when her pretty, shy smile dropped, replaced with a pained, hurt expression. I had been so wrapped up in my own quandary of had I had sex or had it been a dream, I never took any notice when Oaklee excused herself from the kitchen table and took off like a scalded cat.

  So much for your commando training, very slick Stephens.

  Annoyed and frustrated, I followed Willow through the crowd of customers to a roped-off area where Steel kept reserved seats for the Club members who wanted to enjoy a drink but not necessarily the jostling for room. As a kid born into the Wounded Souls, I enjoyed the liberties that offered. Not all of us wore a patch of office like Shiloh, Zander and James did, but we had lifelong patch membership. I had my own Cut that I wore with pride when the occasion called for it—Club runs and charity events, I attended them if I was country side. I worked in my father’s custom shops, helped at the gun shop and took my turn pulling beers here or at the strip club. I grew up with a handful of part-time jobs just like any of the other kids, earned my pay and learned from the lessons our fathers dealt out.

  Sitting with my back to the wall, Willow automatically slipped onto the other side of the booth so as not to obscure my line of sight. She was used to this with Dad and our uncles and didn’t comment on it.

  “Did you speak to Monroe at the funeral?” Willow asked quietly, not looking at me rather at her hands on the table.

  “Yeah, briefly. She isn’t taking it too well obviously, being Deke’s twin sister, she is feeling his loss more keenly than she might otherwise.” I hated seeing Monroe’s pain at her brother’s funeral. Her grief had been palpable, so visceral I felt it all the way down to my soul. Holding Monroe Williams as she cried for her brother and telling her what happened that night was one of the hardest things I had ever done. We rarely talked about our deployments and what went on, it wasn’t uncommon to pay our respects by talking about them when we lost someone. And telling the family the circumstances about the death was par for the course for the beginning of healing.

  If only it was that easy for my team and me. Losing Deke had left a huge hole, one I was afraid couldn’t be filled. The trust between the whole team was fucking rare, not just comrades, but we were like brothers. We knew how each member worked, understood each other’s tells and moods. We were like a well-oiled machine, in tune with a deep respect. What our next step is, was anyone’s guess, the major gave Team FIVE leave for the next two months, the only commitments being some training at the base in Queenscliff and a coordinated military exercise with the Navy and Airforce. Other than that, I was free from the uniform to relax and ….

  What? Relaxing wasn’t my thing, too much downtime meant my head had a freehold on my dreams. What I needed was to keep busy, take some shifts at Dad’s shops, and see if Booth wanted to start on that new project at the gun shop, extending the outdoor range. Fuck, digging holes and trenches and going home completely exhausted appealed more than seeing Deke’s lifeless body in my head every night.

  A drink was placed on the table in front of me, the cold, frothy, amber liquid making my stomach roll.

  “Hello, my sweet, Cole,” Mia crooned affectionately, patting me on my shoulder. Aunt Mia was a kind, softly spoken woman, petite but full of sass and fun. She ran the Bar and Grill along with Steel and did it well. You would never judge by her size that she could kick any drunken uni student out on their arse without one swear word or broken nail. Of course, she never handled the drunks, she didn’t have to with Steel at her back, but it was Mia’s terse reprimands and lectures that had them running for the door.

  “Hello, Aunty Mia,” I smirked, accepting her cheek for a kiss, “nice tee-shirt.” My eyebrows quirked at the simple text tee that spoke volumes of who Mia was.

  Don’t let the cute fool you … I’m married to a
biker.

  Mia knew how to handle herself, but more importantly, she knew she didn’t have to; Steel was never far away from her. And let me tell you, Cooper Steel was not a man you wanted to cross, not when it came to his Beauty or his daughters. God saw it fit to give Steel all girls, and my dad liked to joke it was karma for some shit he did in his younger days before he and Mia got together and soon after.

  “Thank you, now are you here for food? Because if you are, we have amazing homemade meat-lovers pizza on the menu tonight.”

  “Sold! Give us two, please, you choose the toppings, Willow and I aren’t fussy.”

  Mia ran her fingers over the top of my head, her smile gentle and full of love. “You never were fussy when it came to your food, Coley,” she murmured affectionately, using the childhood name the Flock gave me. “If only my girls were as easy as you.”

  “Mia. Meagan, Annie, Mylee and Christy haven’t ever given you an ounce of trouble in their lives,” I scoffed good naturally. The statement was as true as the sun comes up in the mornings, not even growing up did the Steel girls get into trouble unless Shiloh was leading the way … which was always.

  Mia chewed her bottom lip, her hands twisting nervously as she glanced over at Willow then back to me.

  “One is about to, I fear,” she muttered, shaking her head, then scurried away back to the bar, leaving me suddenly worried.

  “Low?” My sister found her glass of beer very interesting, studying it way too hard.

  “Willow!”

  “Meagan is seeing Doc, and Steel doesn’t know,” Low replied quickly, slapping her hand over her mouth, her eyes growing wide as she realised she’d blurted out Meagan’s secret.

  “You have got to be shitting me?” I mumbled, dropping my face into my hands. Meagan was two years older than me, born within months of Bastian and Gabe. The oldest of the Steel girls, she was also the quietest, never giving her parents a lick of trouble or grief … until now.

  “Jesus Christ, Steel is going to lose his shit, then tear Doc apart with his bare hands.” I wasn’t exaggerating, Cooper Steel was fierce when it came to what belonged to him. Meagan was the only one that carried his blond hair and movie star looks, the other three exact replicas of their pretty chocolate-haired mum. Meagan was smart too, she had multiple degrees in early childhood something or other, but the gist was, Meagan loved kids and wanted to be a mum more than anything. Hanging her heart on Doc, I feared was going to get her nothing but heartache. Doc served in the army as a medic, discharging honourably with a sealed file, found a home with the Wounded Souls and opened a tattoo shop under the Club’s name and financial backing. He left the service well before Gabe, Bastian and I signed up, so I wasn’t too familiar with the how and why he left. I knew one thing about him, though, recognised that haunted cloud in his eyes, was familiar with the signs of PTSD enough to know whatever he saw and experienced was going to be with him for a long time to come. Meagan’s kind heart might be in for more than it bargained for if she wasn’t careful.

  “She is transferring to Geelong later this year,” Willow shared, shaking her head, sadness passing over her face.

  “To follow him when he goes to the new charter.” I didn’t ask if it was why because I knew already. I wasn’t completely indifferent to what went around me when I was home on leave, once catching Doc follow Meagan around the main room at the compound with heated dark eyes, and saw the tick in his jaw when she sat down to talk to a group of invited outsiders. At the time, I never took it seriously, thinking it was Doc wanting what he could never have … obviously, I was wrong.

  “Doc is being considered for the president patch, and he can’t be with Meagan if he wants that patch, Low.”

  “We don’t have a rule about members going out with other patch’s kids, Cole. Shiloh will be fair and not swayed by Steel or anyone else when she makes her decision,” Low argued with me, as she always did. Her fierce loyalty to our cousins is one of her best qualities and that made her the best kind of friend to have in your corner.

  “And you want to go with her?”

  Willow nodded her head slowly, her eyes sad, but the stubborn tilt of her chin gave me pause. Low loves our family, but she wanted to get on with her life, and for some reason, she decided that Queenscliff and the new compound for the Wounded Souls was the place to do it.

  “I will be going as soon as the construction is finished. They are going to need help and I am willing to fill any role that is needed.” I recognised the stubborn tone, the way she sat ramrod straight staring at me, daring me to tell her no. That was not my job, Willow was old enough to make her own decisions at twenty-one, but fuck, leaving town to live at the new Club? Dad was going to have a lot to say about that.

  “What about your degree? Shouldn’t you get a job in that field?”

  Willow choked out a laugh. “My Art degree, you mean? No, Cole, I don’t want to get a job in that field,” she muttered sarcastically, “I love painting and drawing but making a living from it is harder than finding a needle in a haystack. I grew up in an MC, and I am more than qualified to help run the practical side of things.”

  I studied my sister with narrowed eyes and wondered for the first time where the hell I had been while she grew up. Have I been so focused on my own job and shit that I didn’t even bother to notice that Willow was drowning in the shielded bubble she lives in at the compound? For the first time, I was seeing the woman in front of me, not the cute, little girl that used to look up at her big brothers with nothing less than hero worship.

  Reaching across the table, I gathered her hands in mine, holding them gently. Every cell in my body screamed at me to make sure she stayed here, in Ballarat, with the protection of the Club at her back, but who was I to insist on that? Shiloh and Booth knew what they were doing setting up a second charter. They would not even consider it if they didn’t have a list of good men to lead the Club in this new direction. I wasn’t privy to that information, not holding an officer patch, but I knew that the Club had everything handled.

  Sighing, I gave Willow a chin lift.

  “If that is what you want, Low, then I will help you with Dad. My only advice is you don’t lead with wanting to have sex as an argument to let you go—that will just get you locked up in a room until you are thirty.”

  A giggle erupted from Low, her eyes taking back the sparkle I liked better than the deep sadness she was showing me.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t,” she promised, giving my fingers a squeeze, “I have to go call Meagan and tell her I am definitely moving with her.” Without waiting for me to answer her, Low let me go and charged out of her seat, her hand already reaching in her back pocket for her phone.

  Chuckling at my sister’s exuberance, I picked up my beer and brought the cold, frothy glass to my lips to take a sip when my eyes caught sight of the shiniest waterfall of black hair. Hair I remembered tickling the skin on my thighs and falling over my face like a shield while she rode me until we nearly died from exhaustion. The same hair I remembered stroking my fingers through just before I fell into an alcohol and sex marathon-induced sleep.

  Taking a slow gulp of the frothy, amber drink, my earlier idea replaced the conversation I’d just had with Willow.

  Time to make some plans of my own.

  CHAPTER SIX

  OAKLEE

  The atmosphere in the Bar and Grill was insane and exactly what I needed after the hectic day I’d had. Once Memphis got out in front of the crowd of readers, it was hours of taking photos, handing out books and swag, and all while keeping one eye on my boss. Thank god it was only a small one-on-one signing at the book store and not one of those huge gatherings at a convention centre Memphis got invited to on a regular basis. She rarely accepted, but she has attended a couple since I started working for her, and I really hated them.

  From the minute I send the acceptance, the hard work begins to make sure everything Memphis needs to keep her safe and comfortable is in place and understood by the o
rganisers. Social media posts ready, promotion companies are lined up, and basically, I run myself ragged dotting i’s and crossing t’s.

  Today’s event wasn’t that kind of anxiety-ridden job, but with Creed pacing in the background watching my every move not only for Memphis but several times, I caught him with his eyes on me. Watching me with those all-seeing onyx black eyes, and he saw right through me, making me even more anxious.

  “You know, if I wanted to sit here and watch you stress, we could have done that somewhere where we didn’t have to pay eight bucks a beer,” Thayer drawled sarcastically, pulling me out of my head.

  “Huh?” Looking over the table at my friend to see her smiling smugly at me. “Let me guess, you are thinking about Cole?”

  Feeling myself blush, I poked my tongue out at her then giggled when she held up her middle finger at me.

  Thayer and I met not long after I finished my last stay in hospital. Thayer was outside of the hospital frantically trying to gather a bunch of papers that had escaped from the huge backpack at her feet. Without even thinking about it, I jumped into action and helped her, and just like that, I found not only a friend but my bestie. She was three years younger than me, small, actually she was petite but stacked with curves in all the right places—a tiny blonde tornado. She oozed fun, laughed all the time, and had the worst case of spewing inappropriate things at the worst possible times.

  I fucking loved her.

  “No, wench, I was not thinking about Cole.” This time, I added silently. “I was thinking about today at the book store and how relieved I was it wasn’t a big signing.”

  Thayer leaned back in her seat, her beer untouched in front of her. Thayer wasn’t a big drinker, truth be told, neither was I, but she loved the excitement a pub offered and frequented them often.

  “So you weren’t thinking about what his tally-whacker felt like in your waffle cone?”