He wanted to destroy everything in that compound.
All of them.
Every fucking single one.
No one there deserved to breathe the same air as she did.
Not one.
A noise in the distance, a creak of a door, a racking of a shotgun, sank into his spinning brain.
Forcing himself to his feet, he stumbled as he tried to move since he was blinded with his rage.
Move away from the sound.
Move away, not toward it.
You’ll fuckin’ get ‘em.
You’ll get ‘em.
They will fuckin’ pay.
Whoever did this will fuckin’ pay.
He forced himself to ignore his instinct, to right the wrong the Shirleys had done and to go into the woods instead. He paused every few yards to try to hear past the rush of his own blood in his ears. To hear if anyone followed.
He kept moving through the dark and the shadows until he stumbled over a tree root and fell into a tree.
Then he held onto that tree because everything began to spin out of control. Like a tornado, ready to wipe out everything in its path.
He pressed his forehead to the rough bark and tried to catch his breath. Tried to regain control.
He was in the middle of nowhere and he needed to find somewhere.
But he couldn’t.
He couldn’t.
He was lost.
He was so goddamn lost.
His chest heaved and he doubled over, throwing up. Expelling everything from his churning gut onto the forest floor.
Again and again.
Until he was empty.
All but the anger. That was what remained.
The fury. That was all he had left.
He had nothing to destroy so it would destroy him instead.
From the inside.
It would rip through him until there was nothing left of him. Until nothing recognizable remained.
Just an empty shell.
No heart. No soul.
Nothing.
A keen escaped him before he could control it and he used the tree to push himself upright.
Then he funneled all that anger and pain into one part of him in an attempt to rid himself of it.
Because if he destroyed himself, he couldn’t help Red.
She’d be alone.
Disappointed in him.
He held that ball of rage in his palm and curled his fingers around it, squeezing it tight.
It burned him, seared him.
So, he smashed it into the tree to put it out.
Again and again.
Over and over.
Until the anger was gone.
Until he almost had nothing left. Which was what he’d been afraid of.
He was nothing but that shell.
But like his brother always said, something was better than nothing.
An empty shell could be filled, while a broken shell would only leak.
He needed to keep that shell whole.
Because something was better than nothing.
And Red was that something.
Chapter Fifteen
Sig heard the door open and black heavy boots came into his line of vision.
“Jesus fuck, brother!” Trip yelled. “What the fuck happened?”
He was on his brother’s porch, back at the farm. He couldn’t remember how he got there.
His throat was dry and raw like he’d been screaming. His body was stiff from being curled up into a ball on the wood floor of the farmhouse’s back porch. Most likely for hours since the sun was now up.
“Stella!” his brother screamed.
More footsteps and then an upset female’s, “Christ, Sig.”
Trip’s ol’ lady was on her knees next to his head, one hand on his cheek, cupping it gently. “Sig, where’s Autumn? Is she okay?”
“His fuckin’ hand. It’s all busted the fuck up,” Trip said, worry lacing his words.
“Holy shit. He needs to go to the hospital,” Stella said next.
“No,” Sig forced out, trying to get his brain working. Shake off the darkness and get it unstuck. “No. Red...”
“Is she okay? What did you do?” Stella was now sounding a bit panicked.
“Gettin’ shit to clean that up,” Trip announced.
“No,” Sig said louder. He forced himself to sit up, his head throbbing, his hand pulsating, too.
“It might be broken,” Stella insisted.
“No. Red.”
“Where is she?”
“Need a key.”
“D’you lose yours?” Trip asked, standing over him, and, for the first time since Pete and Buck had beat the shit out of him when he was fifteen, Sig saw fear on his face.
“No.”
“What d’you need a key for?”
“My place.”
“For what?” Trip yelled. “What the fuck’s goin’ on?”
“Need another key.”
“We need to clean you up, Sig. Is Autumn all right?” Concern. Fear.
“Gotta check.”
“You don’t know?” Stella’s voice again, a higher pitch than normal.
“Been gone.”
“Gone where?” his brother demanded.
“Up there.”
“Up where?” Trip shouted, his frustration only too clear. Then a long hesitation before his brother exploded with, “Up that mountain? By your fuckin’ self? D’you go up there?”
“Saw it.”
“Saw what?”
“Where they kept her, what they used...”
“Oh my God,” Stella whispered.
“They’re all gonna fuckin’ die.”
“Sig,” Trip said more firmly.
But before his brother could continue, Sig repeated, “Need a key.”
“Why?”
“Just get me a spare.”
“Your hand,” Stella started.
“Fuck my hand!” Sig yelled. “Fuck my fuckin’ hand! Gimme a goddamn spare key.”
“Trip,” Stella whispered.
Trip nodded and headed into the house.
“Let me see your hand. Just to make sure it isn’t broken.”
“You a doctor?”
Her face got hard and her eyes narrowed. “I’m going to stomp on it if you don’t let me see it.”
Cursing under his breath, he lifted it and she carefully took it into her own hands.
“You can’t go to her like that, Sig. It might freak her out. Does she know you went up there?”
“No.”
“Let me at least clean it up and wrap it. It looks like ground meat.” Her voice hitched as if she had swallowed a sob. “God, Sig. Why? Why are the two of you like this?”
“You know why,” he mumbled.
“He ruled our lives then, don’t let him rule our lives now, Sig. Please.”
“Why d’you care?”
“Because you’re family,” she whispered.
He lifted his face and stared at her. Tears ran down her cheeks as she held his bloody hand between hers, the knuckles split open, his fingers swollen.
He hadn’t felt the pain of it.
Not until that moment.
When his pain had become someone else’s.
And if what he did affected Stella like this, it might bother Red worse. She was right. He couldn’t go back to his apartment like that.
“Don’t destroy this family like he did,” she begged, sniffling.
He sucked in a breath and nodded.
She released his hand. “Can you get up on your own or do you need Trip to help?”
“I’m good,” he mumbled, slowly getting to his feet.
Stella got him inside and over to the kitchen sink, holding his hand under the faucet. She gently rinsed away the oozing blood, removed any dirt and pieces of bark, and inspected just how bad it was.
“You’ll live. You’ll just have to use your left hand to jerk off for a little while,” she said with complet
e seriousness.
His eyes hit hers which were full of sadness and regret, so he turned and stared at the running water instead. He didn’t want to see that.
Trip came into the kitchen and placed a single key on the table. He moved over to them, carrying a bottle of peroxide, some gauze and an Ace bandage.
His brother and his woman patched him up while Sig stood there as helpless as a fucking baby.
And when they were done, Stella quietly disappeared, leaving him and Trip alone.
They sat down at the table together, and he told Trip what he discovered on that mountain. After he was done, when he’d stopped speaking, Sig saw what he’d felt up there reflected on Trip’s face.
“We need a plan,” Trip said, his words strained as if he was struggling to contain his own fury.
“Yeah, brother, we need a plan,” Sig agreed.
“Shouldn’t have went up there on your fuckin’ own.”
“Yeah. Needed to know.”
“She’s still not talkin’?” Trip didn’t sound surprised but more disappointed.
“No. But that ends today.”
Trip tilted his head and considered Sig for a moment. “Might break her to take her back.”
Sig understood what he meant and he agreed it was a risk. But he also needed to know everything. “Yeah, gonna give her that key, then I’ll just start talkin’. Open up to her about some of my own shit. Hopefully that’ll get her talkin’, too. Just need to hear it once. Just once. Then we can plan.” In truth, he was hoping he was wrong about what happened up there. That the shed wasn’t where they kept her and she hadn’t been strapped down to that bench.
He hoped to fuck he was wrong.
He knew he wasn’t.
“You need Stella up there with you?”
“No, brother. Gotta do it on my own. Gonna do this as easy on Red as possible.”
Trip sat at the table, staring at it for the longest time. When he lifted his head, he asked, “Sig... You expectin’ her to stick when this is all done?”
He knew what his brother was asking. “No.” Hell, he wasn’t even planning on sticking afterward but he couldn’t tell Trip that.
“Then why the fuck you goin’ through all this?” He jerked his chin toward Sig’s now wrapped hand.
“Got no choice.”
“Brother, you got a choice.”
“No, Trip, you’re wrong. I fuckin’ don’t.”
Autumn heard the key turn in the lock, but she didn’t bother to move.
He had locked her in when he’d promised not to do that anymore.
He’d done it anyway and disappeared.
Her trust of him was now a little shaky. Her disappointment in him now not shaky at all.
She kept her eyes glued to the TV, not really seeing the program. Not seeing anything as the door opened and Sig stepped into the apartment, closing it behind him. But not locking it.
The tension in her chest loosened a notch.
She kept her gaze straight ahead as he moved through her line of vision to the kitchenette, shrugged out of his cut and hung it over the back of one of the stools at the counter.
“You eat?” he asked in a hoarse voice.
She thought about not answering but didn’t want to be rude. Not like he was when he had locked her in and disappeared. “Yes. You?”
He didn’t answer. Instead, he came back to the couch where she was. As he sat, the cushions sank with his weight and, with a groan, he bent over and began to unlace his left boot.
That was when she noticed the bandaging on his right hand.
Had she caused that? “I shouldn’t have pushed you last night. I’m sorry.”
He lifted his wrapped hand for a second like he had to think about it, then went back to slowly unlacing his other boot. “Wasn’t you, Red. Was nothin’ you’d done. This was on me.”
“Like your back?”
“Yeah. Like that.”
Once his boots were unlaced, he kicked them off and yanked off his socks, dropping them onto the floor.
Then he simply sat there, staring straight ahead the same as her.
Neither of them said a word for a few stilted minutes.
However, she needed to say something. It was her fault if he’d lost control and hurt himself. “I shouldn’t have asked you to touch me when I knew I couldn’t let you do more than that.”
“Wasn’t it, Red. Liked touchin’ you. But won’t lie, wanted more.” He turned his head toward her. “A lot more.”
“Me, too,” she whispered.
His lips became a slash and his nostrils flared slightly. He nodded. “Yeah. Maybe we’ll get there. Maybe we won’t.”
“I don’t want you to suffer. It’s best I move in with the Brysons. I’ve been thinking about it all morning. I’m nothing to you, there’s no reason you should be put out because of me. You shouldn’t have to take care of me. I’m not your responsibility. And you should be sleeping in your own bed, not forced to sleep on the couch.”
“Ain’t movin’ in with the Brysons, Red, and you ain’t puttin’ me out. Just get that outta your head.”
“You said it was my decision.”
“It is.”
“Then that’s what I want.”
“No, it ain’t.”
She furrowed her brow. “I just said it was.”
He leaned back to dig his hand into the front pocket of his jeans, pulled out something metal and held it out to her.
A key.
He was giving her a key. She would never be locked in again.
“You’re safer here than there. But don’t want you to feel like you have no choice. You already had too much choice taken away from you. Don’t wanna be someone who did that to you, too.”
“You said it was for my safety.”
He nodded. “It is. So, you need to fuckin’ promise me that door,” he pointed to it, “is locked at all fuckin’ times when you’re in here alone. Understood?”
“Yes.”
He held out his uninjured hand, the key in the center of his open palm. “Now, you wanna go live with the Brysons for the next coupla months? Or you wanna stay with us?”
She didn’t miss the tremor in that hand. She also didn’t miss that he was handing her her freedom.
Her freedom of choice.
She reached out and, as she went to pluck the key from his palm, his fingers curled around hers. Using their clasped hands, he tugged her closer and his brown eyes were darker than normal as they held hers. “Want that key?”
Her voice trembled just slightly when she answered, “Yes.”
Something moved behind his eyes at her answer. Relief, maybe. With a mix of something else she didn’t recognize.
“Thank you,” she whispered as he leaned in, his lips just a hairsbreadth from hers.
“Welcome, baby. Now... It all right to kiss you?”
“Yes,” she breathed as his lips closed in, brushing lightly over hers.
She opened her mouth, letting him in to explore.
This morning he tasted of only tobacco and not of pot and alcohol.
When he broke the kiss, he released her hand and gripped her cheek, brushing his thumb back and forth over it. “Need to talk.”
She dropped her hands into her lap because if it was up to her, they’d spend the rest of the morning kissing and not talking.
“Gonna explain some shit about me. Why I do some of the shit I do. Can’t explain everything because it’s way too much. Would take weeks to do it, anyway. But I’m gonna give you a bit of me so you can gimme a bit of you. Deal?”
She wasn’t sure she liked that deal. “Sig...”
He kissed her again, his tongue sweeping through her mouth, then he said against her lips, “You listen, then you decide, ‘kay?”
He twisted on the couch and, settling against one end, put one denim covered leg up and settled his other foot on the floor, then pulled her in between his spread thighs so her back was to his chest and she was nestled tight
ly between his legs.
She wondered if he did that on purpose so she couldn’t see his face when he told the story he was about to tell.
But if that was what he needed, then that was what she’d give him to make it easier. And she didn’t mind leaning back on him, the arm with the injured hand across the top of her chest, securing her there, his other arm snaked around the bottom curve of her belly, supporting it.
She let her head drop back to his shoulder and he pressed his cheek against the side of her head and began to talk.
He told her what happened that fatal day when his real father was killed. What it meant to the club, what it meant for two young best friends. What it meant to all of them.
How that day was the beginning of the end of the original Blood Fury MC. How it tore them all apart.
How they all scattered. Trip taken by his mother to Wisconsin. And Sig being left behind with his own mother.
“Didn’t know Trip was my brother until a few days later. Not until we landed in West Virginia in some backwoods hole of a trailer park. My mother loved to party when she was Razor’s ol’ lady, but once both Buck and Razor were dead, she blamed herself and began to drink heavily.”
“She pitted two men against each other.”
“Basically, yeah. She was a cheatin’ whore.”
“Sig,” she breathed. “She’s your mother.” She assumed the woman was still alive but he didn’t say either way.
“Didn’t have a choice to come outta her snatch. Just did and had to live with it.”
Good lord, the bitterness he exuded when he talked about his mother was palatable. But she understood it. Her own would never be mother of the year, either. But her mother had been a good one while Autumn grew up, when her father was still alive...
“She was a lyin’ whore, Red. No other way to put it. Many a night, she’d tell me stories. Stories I didn’t wanna hear. Stories no son should ever fuckin’ hear about his mother. But she’d be fuckin’ stoned out of her fuckin’ gourd and soaked all the way to her bones in booze. She drank vodka like it was water. Began to trade her cunt for a bottle or drugs. Some nights more than one dick would come into our trailer and use her. Had to listen to it all. Even had some sick motherfuckers offer her shit for me...”
Autumn’s heart raced as she waited to see if Sig went any further with that, but he didn’t.
“Late one night, drunk as fuck, with the cum from three dicks runnin’ down the inside of her thighs, she cried and confessed how she’d only ever loved Buck. Said she only pretended to love Razor, who I always thought was my father. She only stayed with him to remain in the fuckin’ club, so she could be close to Buck. If she’d lost her ol’ lady status, her ass would’ve been kicked to the curb because there was no way Tammy—Trip’s mom and Buck’s ol’ lady—would’ve shared her ol’ man if she’d known. That salty bitch didn’t take shit from no one. Her man was the fuckin’ prez and she acted like she was his damn queen. Though, in truth, she held no power. She just thought she did.”
Blood & Bones: Sig (Blood Fury MC Book 2) Page 20
