I’d give anything to feel that sure about Spider and me, thought Tallie. And once, I did.
* * *
No one knew how word got around in the club that Gonzo Hendricks had come back from the dead.
Spider sure as hell hadn’t told anyone. He was still trying to figure out what to do with the information when a couple of the club members came up to him demanding to know whether the rumors were true. Next thing he knew, Chig had been released from the hospital, and the Fugitives were seated around the table in the chapel, talking about a long-buried past.
“I brought him back here,” Chig said to the others. “It was my idea. I tracked him down and wrote to him, asking him to come back to the club. I was the one got him out of here in the first place. We did Gonzo wrong, and we all know it down deep. He and his old lady did everything they could to protect the club, and we turned our backs on them. It’s time to repair old wrongs.”
“We just supposed to forget about the fact that he lied to us?” demanded Dime Bag with a sneer. He had only been a prospect when Gonzo had ‘died,’ but many of the club members sitting around the table were new enough not to know that, and he was banking that a few more of them had forgotten.
“I was the one that lied to you,” Chig said easily, but there was a challenge in his eye. “You want to unpatch me for that, go ahead.” He looked around the room, making eye contact with all of those who had been with the club when Gonzo had been around. “There’s been too many lies, for too long. I ain’t gonna go to my grave with this injustice on my conscience.”
“What do you want us to do?” asked Robbie.
“Gonzo was acting on my decision. He did what I thought was in the best interest of the club at the time. His loyalty is unquestioned. I want us to reinstate him as a fully patched member. Or rather, acknowledge that he always was, and still is.”
A murmur of voices rose in the room. Some were confused; others were angry. “What the fuck?” Mack shook his head. “Some of us don’t even know this guy. Now you’re asking them to vote on reinstating someone they’ve never even met?”
“You questioning our judgment on voting him in in the first place?” Chig demanded. He looked over at his son. “Gonzo was Spider’s best friend. They grew up together. Got patched the same day. Gonzo has given up more for this club than anyone else here.”
“I dunno, man, I need some time to think about this,” Robbie muttered. “Can we at least have a few days before we vote?”
Chig banged the gavel down. “We meet here three days from tonight, same time, and put it up for a vote. Meantime, you think long and hard about your vote. A nay means that we’re basically unpatching him. Think whether you want to unpatch a man whose only crime was loyalty to his president and his club.” He stood up, on legs that he willed not to shake, and walked out the door without a backward glance.
Chapter Nine
Brenna, Tallie, and Deanie were all sitting around Tallie’s kitchen table, just like it was the most normal thing in the world. In just two days, Tallie had gone from feeling like the loneliest woman in the world to having a family again. Whatever happened between her and Spider, she told herself, at least she had her brother back. And now, a sister. Tallie sent up a silent prayer that he and Brenna would stay and settle in Crystal Spring.
“So you’re a nurse?” Deanie was asking Brenna.
“Yes. I work in a clinic in Mesa.”
“I bet the hospital could use someone like you,” Deanie replied nonchalantly. “Seems like it’s tough to get good people in a small town like this.” So, Deanie was hoping for the same thing she was, Tallie thought with a smile.
Brenna didn’t reply to Deanie’s prompt, but changed the subject, turning to Tallie. “Kyle is so happy to have reconnected with you, Tallie. He’s carried a lot of guilt with him all these years, leaving you behind, and then letting you think he was dead.”
Tallie nodded pensively. “I get it, though. At the time, when he left home, I was devastated. I thought he didn’t love me anymore – that he’d never loved me. But… things were rough on him, growing up, you know? I was too young to really realize it at the time, but he had a lot to deal with. I can’t imagine a young boy like that having to take all of that on. Looking back on it, I can’t really blame him for doing whatever he could to escape, I guess.”
“He’s never forgiven himself for not being there when your parents died,” Brenna continued. Her voice was full of love and sympathy. “I think, being able to have another chance with you, it’s like it gives him the chance to make up for some of the wrong he thinks he did.”
“I’m glad,” Tallie said, her eyes shining. “It’s nice having some family again. Being an orphan is tough.” Tallie felt Deanie’s eyes on her, probing, and then before she could stop herself, she continued: “I… I’m pregnant, Brenna. And I don’t know if Spider’s gonna want this child.” Her voice cracked. “I don’t know if we’ll even be together when the baby’s born. So, it’s nice to… to think he or she will have his aunt and uncle, too.”
Brenna’s eyes widened as she listened to Tallie, but she didn’t seem particularly surprised. “I was wondering…” she murmured. Then, she broke into a wide smile and stood up, holding her arms out wide. “My God, congratulations, Tallie! That’s fantastic! A baby, oh, I’m so happy for you! What joy!”
And, standing there engulfed in her sister-in-law’s embrace, it did seem fantastic, just for a moment. As she hugged Brenna back, Tallie felt a surge of hope, the first one since she had found out she was pregnant. It will be okay, she told herself. No matter what, it will be okay.
* * *
Just before dinner time, the sound of an engine pulling into the driveway stopped the women’s conversation. For a moment, Tallie’s heart leapt, thinking it was Spider, but then she realized this motorcycle did not have the distinctive rumble she knew so well.
“That’ll be Kyle,” Brenna said easily. She stood up from her chair and went to Tallie’s front door. Tallie and Deanie followed her into the living room. Soon, Kyle appeared in the doorway. “Hey, sis,” he grinned at Tallie as he hugged his wife. He looked over at the older woman. “Deanie,” he nodded. “Didn’t recognize me in the hospital the other day, did you?”
Deanie laughed softly. “Well, it had been a long time, Gonzo. You’ve changed a bit, too. And it’s not often people come back from the dead.”
Kyle smiled easily. “Yeah, I guess not.” Glancing at Brenna, he said, “You ready to go?”
“Um, Kyle,” Tallie began shyly, “Could I… could we go out back for a little bit? It won’t take long.”
“Sure,” Kyle replied. Looking at his wife: “Can you give us a minute?”
Brenna nodded. “Deanie can keep me company,” she said, glancing at the older woman.
Tallie led Kyle out to the back deck and sat down on a wooden glider; Kyle sat next to her. “I can’t get over how surreal it is to have you here,” she began.
“I know,” Kyle said soberly. “I really thought I’d never see you again.”
“How come you never tried, Kyle? I mean no judgment,” she added hastily. “But… why?”
“I don’t know, exactly.” Kyle looked down, pain evident in his eyes. “I was just a young, stupid kid when I left home. And then all this shit went down with the club, and I couldn’t figure any other way out than to leave. Eventually, I looked around and so much time had passed, I figured it was just too late.”
“I’m glad you came back,” Tallie whispered. “I’ve missed you so much, Kyle.” Kyle folded his arms around his sister and murmured: “I’ve missed you too, Tal. You have no idea.”
They stayed like that for a few moments, listening to the breeze rustling the leaves of the single oak tree in Tallie’s back yard. Finally, Kyle broke apart and grinned at his sister. “Brenna really likes you,” he said.
“I like her, too. She’s amazing!” Tallie enthused. Then, more hesitantly: “I hope you guys stay around, Kyle. I mean, I
know I have no right to ask you to do that. But… I hope you do.”
“Right now, I don’t know what the hell is going on,” Kyle said flatly. “Honestly, I don’t even know why I’m here.” At Tallie’s stricken expression, he backtracked: “I don’t mean it like that, Tal. I’m really, really glad we’ve reconnected. But this thing with the club… I don’t know. Spider… I can tell he hates me for disappearing. I think Chig’s crazy for thinking this could work out the way he wants it to. There’s no way the club’s gonna let me back in. Even if everyone else voted for it, Spider’s gonna say no, and that’ll be that.”
“Spider never forgave himself for your death, Kyle. It was his biggest regret. Now that you’re back… Well, I think it’s just gonna take some time for his heart to catch up with his brain. He’ll come around,” Tallie reassured him.
“I don’t know. And honestly, I’m not sure I want him to. That club meant everything to me once upon a time. But I’ve moved on. I feel like I don’t have a choice about whether I want to be in or not.”
“Kind of like you didn’t have a choice about whether you wanted to take care of a sick mom and a little sister?” Tallie asked gently.
“Tallie, I never resented taking care of you,” Kyle said. But… yeah, I’ll admit, it was a lot. It’s true, though, actually. I’m feeling a lot of the same shit I used to feel when I wanted to go goof around after school but I couldn’t, because I had to come home and make sure mom was okay and you had your snack. Like I don’t have a choice.”
“You always have a choice, Kyle,” Tallie said. “The feeling of being trapped comes from letting the choice make you, not the other way around. I’ll be sad if you and Brenna decide to go back to Mesa. But if that’s your choice, own it. Don’t run away.” She looked up at him, her eyes raw with emotion. “Just please stay in touch with me.”
Kyle fought back a lump forming in his throat. “I promise,” he smiled. “And thanks.”
* * *
“Fuckin’ bullshit, is what it is,” Dime Bag sneered to anyone who would listen. The harsh light of the noonday sun glinted off his shaven head as he spoke. “They fuckin’ expect us to just let this guy back in, and take their word for it that he’s legit?”
Half a dozen club members were hanging around a picnic table just outside the back door of the clubhouse. D-Day, a barrel-chested man with a big red beard, gave a slight nod. “Don’t seem right, though, if he ain’t been unpatched, to judge him for following his president’s orders.”
“How do we even know Chig’s tellin’ us the truth?” Dime challenged. “And if he ain’t tellin’ us the truth, how can we trust his fuckin’ son?”
It was well known among the bikers that Dime Bag and Spider didn’t get along as well as they could. Dime had been Chig’s Sergeant at Arms for a few years now, and had always seemed loyal until Chig’s cancer returned. Since then, he had been grumbling about the lack of leadership, claiming it wasn’t fair that Chig had given his own son the VP spot.
“Weren’t you around when all this went down?” Rat asked. “From everything I heard, Gonzo did everything he could to help the club. His old lady went against her own father to protect us.”
Dime Bag had indeed been around. His involvement with the events that caused Gonzo to disappear was even greater than anyone – including Chig, Spider and Gonzo himself – had ever known. Gonzo’s convenient disappearance had essentially put Dime in the clear. As long as the club had pinned Gonzo as the rat, no one ever discover that it was in fact Dime Bag who had been taking money from Brenna’s mayor father. In exchange, the mayor got an insider who could plant discord within the club, hopefully pushing them off the piece of land the mayor’s wealthy friend wanted to make into a housing development.
The mayor’s plan had worked. Chig had eventually talked the club into selling the land and moving to the other side of town. Dime Bag had made a tidy profit on the deal, which he wisely placed in a bank account and waited for other opportunities to cash in. Over the years, the mayor had occasionally asked for another favor, but nothing nearly as profitable as the first one had been. Now that Bear Connor was dead, the well had dried up, and Dime’s ambitions had turned toward power within the club. At least Bear’s death also meant that no one would ever know it had been Dime who had been the rat. Even so, with Gonzo’s return, the past felt closer now than it had been in years. Dime’s campaign to be the new president of the Fugitives now had an even larger target: using the club’s doubts about Gonzo to take down Spider.
“Yeah, where did you hear that Gonzo sacrificed himself for the club? From Chig and Spider.” Dime snorted disdainfully and lit a smoke. “We got no proof of that.”
“I was around then, too,” Doc said mildly. He peered at Dime with narrowed eyes. “From what I recall, we were judge and jury hangin’ that boy with no evidence at all he was lyin’ to us.”
“There was a rat in the club, at the time,” Dime challenged. “We knew that much. Who else could it have been?”
“Could have been anybody,” Spider said from the doorway. “Shit, could have been you for all we know.”
The challenge hung in the air between them. For a moment, Dime’s blood chilled at the thought that Spider knew something he wasn’t saying. Can’t be, he reassured himself. He woulda done something before now.
Dime decided to ignore the implied accusation. His lip curled in contempt as he contemplated the VP. “So you’re just gonna let someone who disappeared for ten years come back into the club, with no questions asked?”
Spider’s anger and bitterness at Gonzo had dissipated very little since the latter’s reappearance. But his dislike of Dime Bag, coupled with a deep, innate sense of fairness, led him to defend him anyway. “I didn’t say that,” Spider said evenly. “But I sure as shit ain’t gonna hang something on him when everything points to him not doing it.” A murmur or two of assent greeted Spider’s words.
“‘We can’t prove he didn’t do it’ isn’t good enough,” Dime Bag retorted. “We can’t afford to have someone in the club we don’t trust. The stakes are too high to have someone whose motives we don’t know.”
Spider took a step toward Dime Bag, then stopped. Looking him in the eye, his expression spoke a clear challenge: “I agree.”
Nobody spoke for a moment. Spider waited one more beat, making his meaning clear. Then he met the eyes of each of the other men, one by one. Then, silently, he turned and walked through the door.
Chapter Ten
Spider needed to get some air, and a couple changes of clothes. He glanced at the wall clock above the clubhouse bar. Tallie would be working at her vet tech job right now. He passed through the corridor that connected the clubhouse with Teasers, the strip club owned and operated by the Fugitives. Nodding to Larry the bartender as he passed, he called, “I’m gonna run home for a couple hours. Should be back before dinnertime.”
Larry waved at him wordlessly as he left. Outside, Spider ambled over to his 2000 Dyna Glide. The Harley started up immediately at his touch, its signature lub-dub, lub-dub heartbeat music to his ears. As he pulled out of the Teasers parking lot and accelerated onto the highway, the familiar jump in his gut came, and he marveled at how it never went away.
There was too much going on right now, too many things that Spider couldn’t see how to resolve. Thankfully, his father was out of the hospital, but who knew for how long? Gonzo’s unexpected arrival had sped up the process of something he knew was coming but didn’t want to face: Chig’s resignation as an officer and the battle for presidency of the club.
A year ago, Spider would have said the job was his for the taking. But now… Dime Bag had been campaigning hard, behind the scenes. It wasn’t so much that Spider thought Dime had the votes, but his persistent challenges definitely had the potential to sow doubt about Spider’s readiness among the club members. Chig’s wild-ass decision to bring Gonzo back into the mix might backfire mightily, Spider feared. And if it did, Spider was sure that the club was i
n danger of splintering. Spider couldn’t bear to see the club he loved – his family – broken apart like that.
Lately, it felt like everything was breaking, ending. His father, the club, him and Tallie…
Tallie. Right now he missed her so much he ached. He remembered what it felt like to have her riding behind him, her arms wrapped around his waist and her thighs pressed up against his ass. His cock gave a little jump just thinking about it. Maybe, now that Gonzo was back…
A flash of anger coursed through him as Gonzo’s face stood before his mind’s eye. Only now, as he sped along, he realized that the fury he felt since Gonzo reappeared was as much at himself as at his friend. He was enraged at Gonzo for disappearing like that without a trace, and at his father for hiding it from him. But he was also furious at himself, because he knew that if he had stood by his friend and brother, maybe Gonzo would never have felt the need to leave in the first place.
Maybe… Maybe if he and Gonzo could make things right with each other somehow, then things could be okay between him and Tallie. Maybe Spider’s fucking nightmares would go away. Maybe now, when Spider looked at Tallie, seeing her eyes the same emerald green as her brother’s wouldn’t wrench at him, reminding him what a faithless coward he had been.
Spider was lost in thought as he absently pulled up in his driveway and shut off the bike. He turned the key in the locked and walked in the door, only to find Tallie standing in the living room, wearing nothing but one of his T-shirts.
Tallie’s eyes widened in shock, but she struggled to keep her voice neutral. “Spider,” she stammered. “I… I wasn’t expecting you.”
“Sorry,” he murmured. “I thought you’d be at work.” He reddened, realizing he’d just admitted he’d been trying to avoid her.
“I, uh, took the day off.”
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