“Please stop.” I touched the side of her face, begging her. “I forgive you for what you did. I know it wasn’t your fault. This… This will destroy you.”
Sarah exhaled hard having heard what I said, but was too far gone. It wasn’t about penance for betraying me or even to protect her family. I could see it in her eyes she needed this for herself. Patrick had to die.
“Don’t let him change who you are. Don’t let him take that last spark of goodness inside you,” I said softly, not having the strength to rip her away from him. “Please let go. I can’t love someone like me, Sarah. I can’t love a murderer.”
Even if I could break her grip on the scarf I couldn’t make that choice for her. She had to be the one to decide what kind of person she wanted to become. Sarah finally looked at me gasping in air as if almost forgetting how to breathe. Her trembling fingers let the fabric slip and soon she was openly sobbing at how close she came to the line.
Patrick stirred, choking and coughing and sucking in air in labored bursts. He clawed at the scarf with one hand while groping blindly for his gun with the other.
Sarah looked at me with pleading eyes and mouthed two words. “I can.”
Summoning all the strength I had left I mounted Patrick, wrapping my hands over the scarf around his throat. He thrashed, punching and clawing, but my two-hundred-pound frame pressing down was too much for him. I watched the anger, then fear, and finally the life itself drain from his beady eyes. It was all over and I couldn’t hide my relief that Patrick was dead.
But what about Sarah?
Worried, my lips pulled into a tight line as I furtively searched Sarah’s face. This was the first time she’d ever seen me kill a man with my bare hands. Sarah looked at me, a maelstrom of conflicting emotions on her opening and closing lips. She searched for something to mouth at me, a way to convey what she was feeling but couldn’t find any words. Instead she let her head drop and started softly crying again.
A few moments ago she told me she could love a killer, but that was before seeing the raw ugliness of it with her own eyes. Abrupt assassination and rage-fueled homicide were one thing but calm, emotionless murder was far scarier.
Knowing what I was capable of, could she ever fully trust me?
“All your friends out here are dead! It’s me or the fire now, motherfucker! C’mon out and face me like a man.” Dreamer yelled from just outside the side door.
Dreamer was alive? I choked on a surprise laugh. Of course he was. Of all of us he would be the one to pull through. My heart leapt at hearing his voice. My brothers weren’t all dead!
“Patrick’s dead!” I called back as loud as I could manage. With the automatic door at the end of the trailer open the smoke wasn’t nearly as bad, but the fire was fast approaching and the heat of it all was becoming unbearable. “We’re coming out. Don’t you fucking shoot us!”
“Wreck? Did anyone else…” Dreamer popped his head into the trailer. His question trailed off when he saw the mournful shake of my head, then spotted the bodies on the ground. He didn’t say another word while he helped me and Sarah down the short ladder. What was there to say?
“You get all of em’, even the guys walking the perimeter?” I asked.
“Yeah,” he replied with a quick nod helping me into the backseat of the car we pulled up in. Dreamer looked utterly exhausted, but the lucky bastard didn’t have a scratch on him. I had no idea how he took everyone else out, but that was Dreamer. He was a resourceful sonofabitch and far better with a knife than Buck ever gave him credit for. Dreamer saw the tension lingering in the air between me and Sarah, and decided to give us a little room. “I’m going to do another sweep just to be sure. Be back in ten.”
“I’m sorry you had to see all that,” I said to her after Dreamer left.
Sarah didn’t reply, instead she opened a first aid kit she’d grabbed on her way out of the trailer and did her best to tend to my wounds. Minutes passed in agonizing silence as she cleaned and dressed the bullet hole in my bicep. I growled against the antiseptic sting and the wrapping of the gauze but felt a little better after it was all over. Swallowing some painkillers helped as well.
“I’m so sorry about your brothers. I’m so, so sorry that I led Patrick here. It’s all my-” She signed, before utterly falling apart again.
“Hey, hey...” I pulled her in close, not caring about my many tender cuts, and bruises. “I forgive you. I now know exactly what that sonofabitch was holding over you. Besides we all got our part in this. You’re no more at fault than Dunk for not taking Patrick more seriously or me for… well for fucking everything...”
You’re going to be what gets us all killed. You know that, right?
Buck’s words haunted me. The sudden loss and failure of it all cascaded over me like a dump truck of wet sand. The heaviness of losing my friends, no, my family was crushing. I stuttered in breath, then like a faulty dam after a structure breach goes critical I broke down completely. The air refused to fill my lungs. My sobbing was a miserable stunted thing. Fuck, the grief was unbearable. I’d lost people before, but not like this. Killing Patrick didn’t change a motherfucking thing. The world might be better off but Buck was right.
Everyone...My whole family is gone.
And it was my fucking fault.
I buried my face in my hands and slunk sideways away from Sarah in shame, all the fight in me had melted away. I was a broken, helpless child. I’d never been this debilitated before let alone in front of someone I cared about. It was awful. My whole world was on fire and all my macho MC bravado couldn’t save me from the overwhelming weakness I felt.
Then something incredible happened.
Sarah wrapped her arms around me and hugged me with all the strength in her small frame. The sheltering warmth in her embrace calmed me down. I felt her lips moving as she noiselessly formed words across my forehead. I didn’t need to know what they were to know that she was trying to console me, and that was all that mattered. It took me a few minutes to realize what she was repeating and that alone almost made me cry again.
“I’ll be strong for both of us,” she said.
When I was finally able to pull away from her, I wiped my face with my good arm and looked at her.
“You’re the strongest person I know.” I gave her an exhausted half-smile and pulled her into me this time. Holding her in my arms made me feel a little a little less broken and I knew right then that I could never, ever let her go.
“Now that Patrick and his whole empire is gone, what are you going to do? Go see your family?” I asked.
“Word will get out soon enough that the person they’d welcomed into their house was a fucking evil monster. And I’m legally dead. They had a funeral for me years ago.” Sarah signed, hesitance and deep pain – deeper than any bullet wounds – settled across her furrowed brow. “Honestly? I think I just need to get away from this place for a little while. I want to see them, of course, but I don’t think I can handle it right now.
“Can I -” She paused, found her courage then continued, “Can I go wherever you’re going?”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” I scoffed, then chuckled despite myself. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m ever letting you go. I’m sorry but I need you too damn much for that.”
We mostly held each other until Dreamer came back. He had a haunted, verge-of-breaking-down look in his eyes too. Pushing through all the physical – and even some emotional – pain I was feeling, I staggered out of the car and hugged him.
We all stood in that empty lot for longer than we should’ve and watched our old lives burn away. It was the end of an era for all of us – me and Dreamer in our nomad chapter and Sarah in her captivity. Sarah felt confident she could dig up enough evidence to link Patrick to at least several members of the Baltimore police department and when that happened that department would be in for a world of shit.
Me and Dreamer would likely be classified as dead after this whole clusterfuck,
which in a way was freeing, but also incredibly inconvenient. We’d either need to clear our names, and after all the violence in the streets tonight that’d be fucking impossible, or we’d need one hell of a support network to help us out with daily living.
“So what now?” I asked Dreamer sometime later as he drove our getaway sedan up the onramp of the interstate.
“Now?” He repeated softly, before continuing as if mulling the word over in his head. “I think it’s time to go home and meet this new club president.”
“Rosewood, Ohio then huh?” I nervously ran a hand through my bloody beard then caught Sarah’s eyes and relaxed a bit. “It's a small town outside of Columbus. That good for you?”
Sarah nodded, then nestled herself under my good arm. She signed, “As long as I’m with you I don’t care where we go.”
I smiled, hearing her voice in my head and loving the sound of that. I kissed her gently, then touched my forehead to hers. I’d lost so much but part of me felt hopeful at the promise of not having to always be moving. I could build a life with this woman.
“What the hell.” I held her a little closer, then responded to Dreamer, “Here’s hoping Bravo isn’t a complete asshole.”
Epilogue
Sarah
If this wasn’t heaven, then it had to be around here somewhere. After the fifth hour of hiking and climbing I’d be damned if we weren’t at least close! Looking out the tiny plane window when we flew into Cusco a few days ago I thought I understood the scope of where we were, but being in it and walking it with my own feet… I was so incredibly wrong.
Wreck and I were miles from the nearest town and I couldn’t have been happier.
Sitting alone cross-legged on the ground beneath the straw roof of the open-sided rest hut and overlooking the rushing river far below that cut a path through the enormous Peruvian mountain range made me pretty sure the Sacred Valley went on forever. The expansiveness of it all despite it currently being a little cloudy was the biggest surprise for me.
Before me air rustled the ferns and tall grass at the walking path’s edge which was the only barrier between idiot tourists like myself and a steep, deadly tumble to certain doom. Being surrounded by such overwhelming natural beauty quieted the constant deluge of thoughts, emotions, fears, regrets and hopes so much so that I had virtually become an extension of my furiously scratching pencil on my sketchbook.
After spending so much time trapped by four walls every cell in my body soaked up the view like it was the sun to someone tanning by the beach. I never knew just how badly I needed this until Wreck told me we were coming to South America and I started researching.
Wreck trudged up the path a few minutes later and carrying not just his backpack but also mine which he wore in reverse covering the entirety of his chest and torso. I...may have overestimated my ability for a hike this intense when I excitedly agreed to this several weeks ago, but it was okay because Wreck was big and strong and dumb enough to offer to carry my burden.
Which was one of the many, many reasons I loved him.
Wreck grumbled something as he dumped both bags on the packed dirt and collapsed into the wooden benches set along the naked rock cliff wall at the back of the path beneath the straw awning. I tore my free hand away long enough from my drawing to sign him a distracted “What?”
“Just bitching,” he replied, laying down. “Don’t mind your dying packmule. Keep drawing, I’m just fantasizing about pisco sours, a massage and hot bath for a few minutes. Wake me up when you’re ready to go. ”
I closed my sketch pad, placing it on our bags and climbed on top of him. We were both sweaty, dirty messes like only a long hike on a warm day can make, but I loved every second of it. He slid to the side to make me more comfortable, wrapped an arm around me and passed right out. I thought about rousing him, but the big bad biker was so cute when he was all tuckered out.
This... this very moment was exactly what I needed after the year we’d just gone through.
I wasn’t sure what Wreck and Dreamer expected when we pulled into the Devil Kings headquarters in Rosewood all those months ago, but it probably wasn’t to be greeted with open arms. It was initially tense, especially considering we pulled up in a mostly legal sedan after probably being declared legally dead or outright fugitives from a firefight. At that time it was still too early to tell. However when the club president, Bravo, himself showed up things calmed down a bit. Despite the fact that Wreck’s chapter went nomad, Mac had never forgotten to pay dues and they all upheld the values of what the Devil Kings stood for.
Dunk, Mac, Yoga and Buck were given an official Devil Kings send off which was understandably important to both Wreck and Dreamer. In the long weeks after the service Bravo’s wife, Vikki, had begun helping us get back on our feet, legally-speaking. There were some serious favors called in and club-friendly influential eye-witnesses placed the three of us nowhere near the shootout in Baltimore so any allegations against us were thrown out by the judge. After hacking into Patrick’s computer and releasing a ton of damning evidence of his involvement with the local police, they were under too much intense corruption scrutiny by the Feds to care all that much about the three of us. Many people lost their jobs and a few even went to jail, but fortunately not us! Thanks to Vikki and her team of lawyers we were never even formally charged with crimes and I was currently in the lengthy process of legally being brought back from the dead.
I roused Wreck from his nap, then breathed in deep, filling my lungs to bursting with warm mountain air. Never in my life did I ever think I’d be in a different country on my way to seeing one of the wonders of the world. I had stopped daring to dream when Patrick killed me and now I was both legally alive and physically free for the first time in far too long.
Wreck tried to roll over and steal a few more minutes of shut eye but slid off the bench by accident and grunted when he hit the dirt.
“Ok. I’m officially awake now.” He stood up, stretched, brushed his hand through his beard then stretched again. “We’re almost done right?”
“Halfway,” I signed, smirking sheepishly.
“How ‘bout we leave all this crap here...” Wreck pulled me against him so that we were both looking out over the view, then whispered in my ears. As he spoke he moved my hips so that we were both dance-swaying back and forth. “You ride me up here, then I carry you back down the mountain and we ride the train into Aguas Caliente together. Get some food, drinks and make some bad decisions.”
I turned to face him, my smirk turning devilish at his suggestion. I walked my hand down his side then slid it into his pants over the thin layer of his boxers.
“I do owe you for all your help with my pack…” I mouthed the words in between kisses along his neck and collarbone. He tasted of fresh, drying sweat, earth and...leather. That last scent must be in his pores because he didn't bring his vest with him for this trip. I guess you can take the boy out of the MC, but you can’t take the MC out of the boy.
“You’re goddamn right you do,” Wreck teased, as he started sliding his hands down my lower back and over my ass. “You can start by -”
The cacophony of english whines echoed through the valley just below us as an overweight family of five laboriously meandered up toward the shaded hut we were resting at. I pulled my mouth to the side with disappointment then dropped my forehead into Wreck’s chest.
“Fuck em’.” Wreck pulled me tighter when I moved to seperate. “We can just be animals in the wild, baby.With this beard I could be confused with a llama.”
I flared my eyes at him, my smirk of deepening. I feigned giving it some thought then shook my head. Wreck still wouldn’t let me go when I pulled away again and my eyes flashed at him a second time.
That mischievous punk!
The closer the family drew the more obnoxious their bitching and moaning became and Wreck, despite his bluster, relented and let go so we could move out. I didn’t think it was possible for anyone to be more unprepared
for this climb than me, but I was quickly proven wrong.
The next few hours were an exhausting uphill battle, but we were rewarded along the way with picturesque waterfalls, canopied trees, mostly safe-looking wooden bridges, gorgeous flowers, and enormous ancient ruins that left me with a sense of wonder and bewilderment. How the hell did people do all this with simple tools? One site we stopped at had terraces dug into the cliff face for agriculture and stone housing that was so interesting I had to sketch it from both the bottom terrace and eventually – after we made the grueling climb – the top.
Closing my sketchpad for the tenth time today I looked up and caught Wreck admiring my work, his eyes full of love his beard and mouth full of one of the sandwiches we packed for the hike. He never once complained when I pulled out my sketch pad or tried to hurry me along.
“You’re not bored yet, are you?” I signed.
“I could watch you draw all day,” he said in between big bites. It was as heartfelt a sentiment as it was goofy to watch a grown man try to be supportive and encouraging of my passions while working the peanut butter from the roof of his mouth with his tongue.
How did I ever get so lucky to find a man like Wreck?
“Well that’s good because you have been!” I signed with a smile, despite still feeling a little bad at how long the hike had become with me stopping so often. Tour groups and hikers had been passing us in waves since we first started this morning and at this rate we’d probably have to hustle if we were going to make it to Machu Picchu before dark. The busses back down the mountain and into town stopped at a certain time and if we missed them we’d have to walk all through the night to get to our hostel.
“So on a scale from one to ten are you excited or terrified to get back home?” Wreck shrugged on my pack over his chest then hauled up his backpack worn the traditional way.
“Eleven,” I replied chuckling at the intentionally silly way he phrased the question. I knew what he was referring to though so I wasn’t caught off guard by it.
Outlaw's Ride: An MC Romance Page 17
