by C. M. Marin
He sounds as furious as I feel. His temper is volatile, rage gushing in strong, thick waves from him. I can sense them.
“We were living together, for Christ’s sake,” I say more to myself, but he heard me anyway since Nate’s voice has died.
Memories of our only Christmas together invade my befogged mind. It was a year and a half ago. We went to spend the holidays near Denver, renting a cute cabin. We enjoyed the simplest Christmas as we watched the snow falling from the front porch, snuggled in the swing chair under three thick blankets.
It was perfect.
“I blended into your world. Nothing different from an undercover mission. Used to do that for the club before Rod told me about you. The plan was simple, but then I had to come back here for some business,” he says vaguely.
“The plan?” I croak out, hating how broken I keep sounding.
He shrugs. “Spending a year or so with you in your world, then marry you and take you back to your true family.”
That kills the trance I’ve been in since I caught sight of his face. Anger is fast to surface.
“My true family?” I spit out. “We were engaged!” I can’t help raising my voice. It’s the only way I can avoid humiliating myself by falling to the ground and sobbing out the betrayal swelling in my chest. “Engaged, for God’s sake! You were supposed to be my family! But my true family were the parents that raised me! Now it’s clear! Look at you, Colin! Jesus, look at you,” I repeat almost sadly. “You put me through hell willingly, and now you’re standing here telling me to come with you like I’m a pawn you can move as you see fit. Either you’re delusional or you’re mentally sick. I bet on the latter,” I give him my opinion, not caring about the anger his eyes are spilling. “You’re not my family,” I affirm. “It looks like you stopped being anything at all when you died. And even if you showed me a freaking paternity test, your president would be nothing to me, be sure of that. Besides you, he’s the last person I want to have anything to do with.”
“Rod is your father, you have to respect him!” he roars as he points a finger at me through the gate.
I could slap myself for flinching at the violence of his tone, but instinct kicked in and there was nothing I could do to help it.
This man is dangerous. He has nothing to do with the sweet, discreet guy I met at the gym. I’m scared of him, it’s useless to deny it. But at the same time, I refuse to let him intimidate me. Some people tend to walk all over a person they see as weak just because they can, and this man is one of those.
“Even if what you’re saying is true, I wouldn’t respect him. If you ever listened to me during that year you nothing but lied to me, you should know that I’ve always thought there was a reason Mary didn’t tell me anything about my real father. It’s her I’ll respect by not approaching that man. I’ll even spit on his grave when someone has the brilliant idea of putting a bullet in his head. That’s all the respect I owe him.”
Chapter 18
Nate
On the other side of the gate, a string of growls rises at Camryn’s outburst.
Fuck, this is going to go down badly.
Any other day, in any other situation not involving Cam, I would have joined the wicked snickers my brothers send the fuckers’ way with a deliberate smugness. But I’ve been more than on edge since she walked over here.
Her dead fiancé is CJ, the vice president of the Royal Spiders. That fucking blows my mind, to be blunt. A shitload of questions floods through my brain. So many of them, mixed with so many emotions, that I need to put up my own internal fight to stay focused on the precarious situation. The dread swelling thicker in me every time I imagine Cam’s motionless body on the ground, hurt or worse, helps a lot with that, though.
“Nothing to add. Now, you get the fuck out of my town, and don’t ever think about coming back,” I warn him through my teeth as just one step moves me forward.
Every inch of my skin itches to tear the gate open and fuck this bastard up. But besides Camryn, there are kids inside I can’t put at risk.
Right now, Camryn doesn’t seem to recognize the danger standing in front of her. Disrespecting their president is the ultimate sin for guys like them. But weighing her words doesn’t seem to be her priority. Even the guns pointed at her don’t stop her from expressing her mind without restraint. Maybe she’s seeing in front of her the man she lived with and who betrayed her, not the dangerous criminal he really is. But whatever it is she’s thinking, she seems unaware of how impulsive men like them can be. This can easily turn into a blood bath.
Not that I blame her. If anything, I’m so damn proud of her for not breaking down in front of that son of a bitch. The fragility fusing from her is palpable, surely trying hard to get her to fall apart, but she fights it bravely.
The fucker has the nerve to glare at me, but his attention darts back to Cam in no time. His eyes on her fuel my murderous instincts even before he opens his mouth to spill out more stupidities like I didn’t just order him to leave my fucking town.
“You belong to me,” he tells her, and my hand tightens around my gun. “You love me. You know you do, don’t deny it. You owe me that. Now, you just come with me. You’ll calm down soon enough.”
Fucking God. Even the best psychiatrist wouldn’t be able to do shit for him.
It doesn’t matter how long they’d been together or what nice rock he put on her finger. She started to deeply hate his guts five minutes ago. How he can’t see that definitely comes within the competency of a psychiatrist.
“I owe you shit!” she seethes. “Look at yourself! I loved someone who never existed! I lived with someone who never existed! Then I mourned someone who never existed! How someone can do that to someone else? I stood in front of a fucking empty casket with no family, crying for someone who never existed! A casket I paid for because just like me, you had no family left to bury you. Jesus! Did you even give me your real name? Are you officially dead? This just doesn’t make sense.”
“Wasn’t my real name. I created a fake identity. Fake birth certificate, fake driving license, fake college degree… But I spare you the details. Colin North died when I faked the crash, simple as that.”
“Simple as that? Simple?! I still didn’t get rid of our apartment even though it hurt every night I had to sleep alone in our bed! You bastard!”
The image of this motherfucker touching her in bed doesn’t have time to settle in my mind, thankfully killed by something white flying through the air to collide with the gate. It’s too large to sneak between the bars, and the fucker ducks his head for no good reason. It’s only when several small colorful things crash and roll on the ground that I realize she threw at him the bag of candies she went inside to get for the kids.
Okay, she’s losing it. Like, completely losing her shit.
“Fuck, Camryn, calm the fuck down, now!” CJ roars, and only for the way he addresses her I want to put a bullet in him.
“Don’t you dare tell me what to do! And don’t say my name ever again! Now, listen to me carefully,” she goes on. “I do not love you. I’ve seen firsthand what you’re capable of. Hell, I had to kill two of your friends because you sent rapists to take me and bring me to you!”
“My mistake, I admit. Both prospects were only there because they knew their way around a good fire.”
She gasps in a breath, briefly stunned to silence. “Your mistake? Oh my… You’re sick. As sick as those bastards were. Get something through your fucking head, CJ,” she snarls the name he’s always went by here, and I think she cursed more in these past minutes than in the entire time I’ve known her. “I hate you, and not only for what you did, but for who you are. You disgust me.”
When she takes a step forward, I need to intervene. “No, baby, you stay behind me,” I command as I plant myself in front of her.
I can get her visceral need to give a piece of her mind to that scumbag, but if I keep visualizing her sprawled on the ground at my feet, I’m going to lose my
damn mind just as she has. She doesn’t realize that it’d take no more than one word that really pisses one of them off to push them into making a rash decision like shooting us all. Camryn only starts to unveil the truth about her former fiancé, but I’ve known CJ for years. He’s like an unstable stick of dynamite, ready to blow off at any time.
“Baby?” he groans, his jaw ticking as his face reddens even through his tanned skin.
Yeah, the nickname probably wasn’t a smart move on my part.
His furious glare is on me. He definitely looks like he’s ready to rip my ribcage open and tear my heart out of it with his bare hands.
“You’re fucking that piece of shit, you slut? I fucking knew it,” he snarls, and I take the smallest step toward the fucker before remembering that I need to stay right here and shield Camryn from him.
“Be careful now,” Jayce warns, making himself heard after having been as quiet as the rest of my brothers during all this.
Whether he’s defending my honor or Camryn’s, I can’t say. His edges haven’t ever been harder than since the day he lost his family, but I think he’s had a soft spot for Cam since day one. Could be the fact she’s lost everyone, just like he did. It’d make me smile if I didn’t have to focus on whoever could hurt her at any second.
“If I had known you’d turn into a chick with no self-respect, I’d have come get you sooner. And now I’m losing patience.”
“Well, get used to it,” she shoots back, stepping aside so she can see him.
“Stay back, Jesus,” I growl.
Her body is still there, but I now feel it against my side, not my back.
“I’m not going anywhere with you. I don’t want to see your face again. And just so we’re clear here, I’m going to fuck whoever I feel like fucking from now on!” Her voice raises a few octaves again.
I’m almost happy she doesn’t hold a gun.
For the first time, she shows a side of her I hadn’t seen so far. That’s the side of her that died the day that son of a bitch died. Someone fierce who was still there but hiding behind the pain. A little firecracker not taking shit from anyone. If she’s brave or reckless right now, that’s totally debatable, but she’s damn well alive.
“Now, ten seconds,” I say. “That’s all you got to decide whether you all want to leave my town alive or start shooting and see who’s lucky enough to watch another day rising. Your choice, but my girl stays right here.”
Huge risk I’m taking here, but I don’t need to even look at my brothers to have an idea of what they would have done in my place.
We protect our own no matter what.
Heavy silence settles as I can sense the wheels whirling in CJ’s brain. My ultimatum might have been bold, but I’m betting our lives on his own self-preservation. No doubt he can read in my eyes that he’s the first one I’ll be shooting if it comes down to that.
Unsurprisingly, he surrenders. “We go, but this isn’t over. She’s mine, and I’ll take her back.”
Camryn tenses against my side, and a breath slips between her lips, a presumably nasty comment ready to burst out.
But I beat her to it. “You better not be threatening her, or you’ll have to live on lock down for a very long time to stay alive. Now, get the fuck out of my fucking town before I put a bullet between your eyes, consequences be damned.”
His cold, homicidal eyes hold my stare for a moment as he’s surely dreaming of killing me as much as I’m dreaming of tearing his body apart limb by limb. But then he motions for his goons to retreat. They obey but walk backwards, their weapons still trained on us.
CJ is the last one to move, but not without one last warning. “This ain’t over, Bowers.”
“Get lost, I’m losing patience, too,” I repeat the words he paternally threw at Cam.
He does as I say, and Brent closes the distance with the gate to keep an eye on where they’re going. There’s no sound of tires squealing, but that’s not surprising since we didn’t hear them arrive. They must have parked a block or two away from the clubhouse.
When I realize something’s missing at my side, I turn around to see Camryn walking away and toward the front door.
“Five of us take a SUV and make sure they leave town,” Jayce commands before addressing me. “We got this.”
I make a mental note of thanking my best friend later. He’s taken over a lot of my responsibilities lately. The circumstances are unusual, and we’ve always had each other’s back, but still, I’ve never been more out of it.
“Fuck, Alex! Next time I tell you to go inside, you go the fuck inside!” Liam roars, his eyes on her lethal, and his stance taut.
“Don’t talk to me like that!” she shouts back, far from intimidated.
“He’s right, Jesus.”
The yard falls into a full silence at Jayce’s quiet growl.
In a year, no one heard them talk to each other, for the mere reason Jayce wouldn’t even look at her when she was here to visit. And according to Alex’s bemused expression, she is as shocked as everyone else.
She puts on a mask of indifference quickly, though. “Well, how about you shut the fuck up and continue not talking to me?” she bites back and spins around to walk away from them both.
Jayce grumbles something before more distinctly telling the guys to move their asses.
A handful of my brothers jogs to the garage as I stride toward the front door, eager to get to Cam.
As I catch up with Alex, and though we both keep rushing in, I ask her, “Hey, you good, little one?”
I knew I’d get a smile with that nickname. It might as well had been her real name when she was this thirteen-year-old who looked so small and fragile among all the men of the club. But after she threatened to have our balls if we kept treating her like a kid when she was about sixteen, we started to only call her that when we wanted to mess with her.
The smile dies when she snorts, though. “I should be thrilled he finally deigned to spare me a few words, but it only pisses me off. Anyway, I’ll live. You should go to Camryn.” She gives a nod toward the stairs. “I can honestly say I wouldn’t want to be in her shoes right now.”
I don’t doubt that, though until now, I didn’t realize what kind of hell Alex has been living in because of Jayce. I’ve spent no more than a few weeks with Camryn, but the prospect of her leaving and giving me the silent treatment for only a few days is hard to comprehend. So, an entire year? Hell, I’d go out of my fucking mind.
Alex reassures everyone as I race up the stairs.
I expect to find Camryn on the bed, crying for the betrayal of the man she had planned to marry and grieved for no good reason. But when I cross the threshold, I’m met with silence. I spot her immediately, standing in front of my chest of drawers with her head bowed. She seems calm, and I first think of that as a good thing, but when I close the door and follow her gaze, I catch something that causes my feet to stride toward her.
A glass I think I left here this morning is broken, and red liquid is leaking from Cam’s fisted hand, where some sharp piece is trapped.
“Fuck, let that go,” I demand firmly, though I try to control my voice so I don’t rip her out of her trance by making her freak out. “Open your hand, Cam.” Pressing my body against hers from behind, I grip at her wrist and speak more softly to her ear. “Open your hand, please. Please, baby, you’re hurting yourself.”
Slowly, as though her palm isn’t on its way to bleed out, her head lifts as she squints at me over her shoulder. Then her gaze lowers down again, and it takes her five more seconds to do as I asked and open her heavily shaking hand. The piece of glass hits the wood and the other pieces, but my focus is set on the blood sweeping from her palm.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t…” she blurts out, not saying more as she just stares down at her wounded skin like she hadn’t noticed anything happening.
“It’s okay, come sit on the bed.”
She complies, still holding her hand with her palm facing the
ceiling, and I wait until she’s sitting to get to the bathroom. If there’s something we never run out of at the clubhouse, it’s a first-aid kit. Or several, rather.
I snatch the damn thing from the cupboard and go back to the room to kneel in front of her.
Her cut doesn’t look nasty enough to need stitches, but I’ll ask Alex to have a look at it later. She’s been done with nursing school for only a couple of months, but she’s been patching us up for more than a couple of years now.
Camryn winces when the cotton ball first meets her torn flesh, and I wish CJ had given me a reason―the fucking smallest reason―to take him out right there. I know it would have been suicidal to pull that trigger, but my rage is so intense it’s a fucking ordeal to get my head to stay straight.
“It was all a lie,” she whispers, her blatant vulnerability making me feel fucking useless. “I know it was only a year, but it was all a lie. Even the year after his supposed death was a lie.”
“I’m sorry.”
Great. Could have found something even more lame. It probably would have been smarter to keep my mouth shut at this point. But hell, what am I supposed to say? I could try all night, I wouldn’t understand what kind of feelings are brewing in her right now. It’s so fucked-up. I hate that she had to live this illusionary life, but what has my blood boiling is the thought of her living daily around that psycho for a year. Chills shoot up my spine thinking about how many times he could have lost the preppy boy mask and hurt her. And then there’s this picture of her sharing her bed with him. Only for that, I want the fucker lying in a damn large puddle of his own blood. And at the risk of sounding like a bastard myself, I can’t help liking a hell of a lot the fact her grief isn’t accurate anymore. It’s obvious that she has to come to terms with what happened, but she has no one to mourn anymore. There’s no shadow of a perfect guy standing between us anymore.
After wrapping her hand in a bandage, I keep it in mine and delve my eyes into hers. Tears are silently following a path down her cheeks.
