by Trent Jordan
Unaware of the sunshine of joy coursing through my brain at that moment, Lane proceeded to recap everything that had happened with Lucius. He told me how he thought his two allies had died, how he thought he was going to die, and then how seemingly, out of nowhere, what he thought were the Black Reapers had come to rescue him.
Except, I fully knew, they weren’t the Black Reapers.
“And then the damndest thing happened,” Lane said. “I saw my brother, Cole. I keep thinking it was an illusion. There’s no way. I mean, there’s no goddamn way. He’s been missing for a year, and—”
“It’s real.”
Lane stopped mid-sentence and looked at me with wide eyes. I nodded and bowed my head, half-anticipating that he was about to tell me to get out. It was no secret how much he disliked his brother, blaming him for the death of Shannon.
“It was a coincidence at first, honestly,” I said. “I got an email from Beth saying that Cole had popped up recently in a town called Ashton about twenty minutes south of here. Apparently, he’d lived off the grid for some time but had recently appeared. Craziest thing, I know. Maybe he got tired of living away from the world. In any case, I knew you needed help.”
“I hate how much you were right,” Lane said.
I smiled as I kissed his forehead.
“We all could always use a little help,” I said. “Part of being human is to know that sometimes, you need to ask for it.”
Something in Lane’s eyes seemed to flicker at that, but he didn’t follow it up with any words.
“Anyway, not going to lie, he was a little resistant at first. But... he came around.”
I wasn’t sure this was the place to explain what had gotten him to come out. The moment was shocking and emotional enough for all of us—I didn’t need to add to the heaviness of it by saying I had invoked his deceased girlfriend’s name. This was especially true given Lane had long considered Cole the murderer.
“He said he did it as a favor for me,” Lane said. “But... you got him out there?”
I nodded.
“Well, maybe not got him out there, but I made him aware of your predicament. I guess your brother still cares for you.”
“Or he just also wants Lucius dead,” Lane growled. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he still hated my guts. After the way I kicked him out... ”
I didn’t know what to say here, so I just kept silent. This was a conversation we’d have someday, but today was not that day.
“In any case, Angela... do you know what you did tonight?”
“What?” I said, even as I had an idea of the answer.
He leaned forward, groaning and grunting, but getting up off the bed so he could get within distance of kissing me. Even though he was bruised and battered, he still had a face I would kiss.
“You saved my life,” he said. “I... we have a lot to figure out, but honestly, it’s all small stuff. This is what I know. You’re a wonderful person, and you saved me from death. That you thought that much about me... ”
I swore I almost saw him on the verge of tears. There was perhaps no bigger turnaround from him being an arrogant asshole to vulnerable than the fact that tears actually did start to stream down his face. It was, once again, beautiful.
“Let’s not dodge the hard subject. I still think about Shannon every day. But I know she would never want either of us to be miserable and recluse. She would want us to find true love. And you know what? I think if she knew that two of the people she loved had found happiness with each other, I don’t think she’d find it awkward. I think she’d find cheer in it.”
“Lane... ”
“So this is my vow to you, Angela,” he said. “My focus will be on you. My heart will be set on you. My mind will think about you. I will be your man. If you are willing to take me on.”
“Oh, Lane,” I said, throwing my arms around him and kissing his cheek. “Yes, absolutely!”
I then pulled back and kissed his lips, smiling wide. Even though he had so many scars on him, there was just something so perfect about his imperfections.
There was just one thing I had to ask about.
“True love, huh?” I said. “I guess that answers what you are looking for.”
“Is it what you’re looking for?”
I nodded.
“With you? Yes.”
“Well, let me put it like this,” Lane said.
I began to get a creeping feeling that he had set this whole conversation up by implanting the words “true love” earlier in there. He was good, this Lane Carter. I had a feeling we were going to have some fun times and some lasting memories together.
“I think you love someone when you would do anything for them, when you would put anyone else behind them. When you would make someone the center of your world, that’s love. But more than that, when you know, you know. What you did tonight, I don’t know if you can say it was out of love, but it was the actions that someone would take if they loved someone.”
He gulped. He was actually nervous! It was so cute.
“Angela, I will never try and speak for you. You’re too strong of a woman for me to speak on behalf of you. But I can tell you how I feel. How do I really feel? I feel like I love you.”
My heart warmed, and sparks shot all over my body. I had never heard those words from a man before. And yes, my rational brain was telling me too soon.
But that was just for normal circumstances. A normal person in a normal situation saying that would have given my rational brain reason to freak out. For everything that we had gone through in the last couple of weeks? For how well I now knew him and for how much we had done for each other?
“I feel like I love you too,” I said with a smile.
I grabbed his cheek with my hand and kissed him once more... only to quickly pull back when the door slammed open.
“Lane Carter!” I heard a booming voice say.
I looked over my shoulder to see Patriot standing with, somehow, Axle and Butch. Though Axle and Butch were not smiling, Patriot sure was.
“I had a message from our two casualties earlier, but they insisted on coming to tell you themselves. You’ll forgive me if we’re interrupting a moment.”
“It better be something really fucking good,” Lane said as he curled his arm around me a little tighter.
I smiled at Lane’s touch as Patriot moved to the side, letting Axle and Butch come forward.
“We heard what you did with Lucius tonight,” Axle said. “Lane, you’re an idiot, but you’re a presidential idiot, and you’re a courageous man. We’ll follow you wherever you go.”
“And next time, tell us when you want to kill Lucius,” Butch said.
Lane laughed, leaning into me, trying to fight the mixture of pain and pleasure fighting through his body. Even Axle finally smiled. Butch, though, that man was as stoic as a rock.
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve got a lot to tell you guys about at our next church meeting. But for now... how about a little privacy?”
“Was our talk worth it, man?” Patriot said.
“Yeah, but it’s losing its value. Get the hell out.”
The three bikers chuckled as they headed out. I turned back to Lane, happy to finally be alone.
“So... we’re really in love, huh?”
Lane smiled, running his finger from my arm up to my shoulder and down to my heart, where he gently pressed his hand down.
“Madly so.”
I smiled and kissed him once more.
Yes, I was really in love.
Epilogue
Two Weeks Later
Most of my wounds, thankfully, were just of the superficial variety. I didn’t have any brain damage—well, none readily apparent, anyway—nor any broken bones. The worst was a dislocated nose, and that was an absolute pain to get placed back in line, but other than that, it was just a matter of taking some time off and letting things heal.
I fought like hell to get back to the shop, I really did, but in what felt
like a rather amusing twist, Patriot and Axle wouldn’t let me come by for two weeks. They threatened to reset the clock, and so it was that for the next two weeks, I spent most of my time with Angela.
It was a perfect setup, honestly. I had no regrets about telling her I loved her, but it was nice to get more evidence in support of those feelings. Every moment with her was honestly perfect, and while it might have sounded sad to say, it was a good thing that thoughts of Shannon became less frequent. I would never forget what she meant to me, but it was time to move on—and if I was serious about honoring her memory, there was no one better to love next than Angela.
With nothing to do, it left me so much time to wow her. I took her on trips on my bike. I cooked her delicious meals. I took her to the movies a couple times. By the end of my two weeks, I was feeling a little sick about being away from the club for so long, but I was also grateful that those two weeks all but sealed my relationship with Angela. The only question now was not if we’d get married someday, but when.
For now, though, I wasn’t thinking about that.
I was just happy to be walking up to my first church meeting since everything had gone down.
As I pulled up on my bike, I noticed that everyone at the shop stopped to cheer me as I walked by. It almost felt ridiculous and embarrassing to see everyone cheering for me like I had rallied from cancer or something, but it felt good. It went a long way to reassuring me about my place in the club as well.
I shook hands with Axle, Red Raven, and Butch as I approached the church doors. I hugged Father Marcellus when I got to the entrance. And there, inside, was Patriot, who embraced me tightly and patted my back multiple times.
“How are you doing, brother?” he said.
“Man, I feel alive,” I said. “Gotta admit, the last two weeks were tough not being around. But you know what it did? Gave me a chance to really be around Angela. I think I made the right choice with that one.”
“Oh, damn!” he said, happy for me.
I hadn’t told many people in the club just how serious we were. I had made them all aware that she was my old lady, but I didn’t say anything about the degree to which she was.
By the way I couldn’t stop smiling, though, I think Patriot knew just how happy I felt.
“Hey, maybe you’ll find someone like Angela too,” I said, patting my arm. “Heaven knows when she first walked on the lot, I thought she was the world’s most vile person. And now look at us!”
“Yeah, thanks, but no thanks,” Patriot said. “I’m good.”
“You sure?”
Patriot shrugged and had a flash of an expression that told me he wasn’t quite just “good.” There was a little more to him than he was letting on, and I was determined to find that out.
But as the rest of the club officers walked in, I decided to let him off the hook.
“Things can change, just remember that,” I said.
He nodded in appreciation. We all took our seats. All eyes rested on me.
It felt really damn good to be back in this seat. It felt really damn good to have the full support of the club. I still had to figure out who the rat was, but I knew I would have the support of the club whenever I did unearth whoever did this.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” I said. “It’s good to be back.”
“Amen,” Axle and Butch said simultaneously.
I smiled. It was time to get down to business.
“So,” I said. “You won’t believe who rescued my ass when I went to fight Lucius.”
Preview of “Patriot”
The second book in the “Black Reapers MC” series
Prologue
Michael “Patriot” Giordano
After two weeks, my battle wounds in my shoulder and upper chest still hurt, but not as as much as two very distinct mental thoughts.
One was positive—the feeling of having defeated the Fallen Saints in battle. It took a little bit of unexpected outside help, but in battle, one could never deny Lady Luck from helping out.
The other, though, was a little less positive—the feeling of having gotten ambushed brought back a lot of negative feelings from the days in Iraq and specifically Ramadi.
The degree to which I experienced one or the other really depended upon the type of mood I was in. If I was feeling good, man, the euphoria of knowing we had an MC in a nearby town led by an old face that could help us fight the Fallen Saints was better than any drug or any whiskey drink. But if I was feeling down, man, there was nothing in the world that could help; not weed, not sex, not a cigar, not the company of friends.
For right now, though, being back in the first club meeting of my best friend and the club president Lane since he got hurt in combat had me feeling much happier than anything else.
“Good afternoon, everyone,” Lane said as he took his seat. “It’s good to be back.”
“Amen,” Axle, the club’s vice president, and Butch, its sergeant-in-arms, said simultaneously.
My buddy had come a long way form being viewed as the coward who was too scared to lead the club, let alone fight in battle, to the actual hero of the club. Axle and Butch were two mean men who didn’t reveal much and didn’t say much, so when they actually expressed support for Lane, it meant that much more.
Lane, though, had some surprising news for the club.
“So,” he said. “You won’t believe who rescued my ass when I went to fight Lucius.”
I already knew the answer to this statement. I’d faked my own death in the last battle with the Fallen Saints so I could ambush them if necessary. It wasn’t, but it had enabled me to hear who Lane had spoken to following the surprise ambush.
“Cole Carter.”
“What?!?” Axle said.
“Impossible,” Red Raven said—and he almost said nothing.
“Are you sure the conditions of battle did not make you go a little crazy, my son?” Fr. Marcellus, the club’s chaplain, said.
“I am positive,” Lane said. “I know the face of my own brother when I see it, and I can assure you that the face that I saw and the voice that I heard was that of my brother.”
I leaned back in the chair and folded my arms. I’d gotten so used to leaning forward and trying to send messages to my best friend that I had to deliberately force this action of sitting back and relaxing. It was a nice feeling; I could really get used to it.
“So… does that mean he is an ally of ours now?” Axle said. “And I still… he came to you?”
“Someone got his number and called him in,” Lane explained—this I did not know. “They got his number, apparently he popped up on the radar just south of here. So… but as far as being an ally? I don’t think that’s the case yet. He said he did this as a favor.”
You’ve got to apologize for all the things you said, man. You’ve got to reach out and be a brother, not a fighter. You’ve got to heal the Carter family if you want to get strong enough to attack the Fallen Saints.
“I sure am glad he did this as a favor, though. We were dead out there without his help.”
Dead out there without his help…
I wasn’t someone who just randomly flashed back and zoned out. I controlled where my thoughts went, even the dark ones. But sometimes, as if I had a masochistic streak, after a tough battle, I liked to think about what had happened to me during the Iraq war. Maybe it was as if I was trying to atone for what all went down while I was there, or maybe I just had a force of habit that I couldn’t break.
But all I know is that before I was “Patriot” in the Black Reapers, before I was a guy who had the appearance of a chill, happy individual who spoke the unfiltered truth, I was Michael Giordano, enlisted private in the U.S. Army, and a man who was damn proud of that.
More than just a man who was committed to protecting his country, though, I was committed to something else. Or rather, someone else.
My wife at the time, Jennifer.
And I threw it all away after what happened in Ramadi.
/>
You know what happened. The day you went on that night raid… the night you lost your two best friends… the night…
“… Red Raven?”
“Yay.”
“Patriot?”
I snapped back to attention, realizing that I had somehow missed the previous two or three minutes of conversation. This hadn’t happened in almost a year; Lane’s recovery from his guilt and the need to pull him closer to the club had given me a sort of mission to focus on in club meetings, but now that that had resolved, my old issues had bubbled up. I hadn’t solved my own problems; I had merely shifted them to the side to focus on the greater good of the club.
Perhaps I could have focused on new club problems, but I knew that I was going to have to face these emotional and mental scars alone. I’d have to face them alone, though. The club had enough problems to deal with, and I was a strong guy anyways. I’d be fine.
“You know I got your back in whatever you do,” I said with a thumbs up and a smirk. “Yay.”
I literally had no idea what Lane had asked about. He could have asked if we needed to do a second followup strike on the Fallen Saints, or he could have asked if I preferred pizza or burgers for the next Black Reapers public event. I could bullshit my way through just about anything.
Except the fallout of what happened after Ramadi. You know the deal. When you came home to Jennifer and tried to tell her you were fine, except…
Damn, man, I really needed help. If I ever wanted to have even just the potential or the possibility of dating or finding someone again, I needed help. At the very least, I had a lot of introspection and reflection I needed to do.
For now, though, I was in no position to have a relationship with anyone. If I couldn’t have made it work with my high school sweetheart, the girl I married just before shipping out at eighteen years old, I couldn’t make it work out with some stranger in Springsville. I was content to settle for sex at the club parties—it got me off, and since I was strong and didn’t need support from anyone else, it was all I needed to fulfill my needs.
