by C. M. Marin
“Not the same writing, though,” he adds, handing me the white envelope.
I grab it hoping the tremors that have taken over my hands are discreet enough for Nate to miss. His concern about me and the current mess that is my life is obsessive enough as it is.
Deciding I’d rather rip the band-aid off, I open the envelope without overthinking it. I frown when I see a smaller envelope inside this one, along with a piece of paper I unfold immediately. Placing it between me and Nate, I let him read it as well.
Camryn,
My name is Lilly Jenkins. You don’t know me, but I knew your mom. Your real mom, I mean. I was her best friend a very long time ago. I’m sending you this today because I heard about your involvement with the Chaos Chasers as well as your issues with the Spiders.
I suppose that you already read the first letter Mary wrote for you. As for the one you’ll find with that note, she asked me to only give it to you should some part of her past ever catch up with you. And by some part, I mean Rod. The thing is, considering who is protecting you at the moment, I suppose I didn’t even have to give you that letter since what Mary wanted you to do in case Rod threatened you happened anyway. But if your plan is to stay with the Chasers, I think there are some truths that you should know. And I’m sure Mary wouldn’t blame me for this. This must sound very cryptic, but you’ll understand once you’ve read the letter.
I’m staying in town until late afternoon, then I’ll have to leave town. If you want to see me in person, we can meet anywhere you want. My number is at the back of that note. I’d be very happy to see you again, Camryn. If you’d rather not, it’s alright. Be very careful and take care of you.
With my love,
Lilly.
After discarding the piece of paper in Nate’s hand, I slide the second square, white envelope out of the bigger one. My heart hammers in my chest as I stare at my name elegantly written in blue ink.
When I finally speak, my voice is no more than a shaky murmur. “That writing is Mary’s. The same one was on the first letter I got from her. The one this Lilly Jenkins is talking about.”
“It can wait, you know. You’re not forced to read it now,” Nate says, his palm rubbing my back soothingly.
Can it? Can it really wait? Nate and the guys have been trying to find a solution to this mess since Colin’s reappearance, and despite their efforts, I still can’t see how this all can be resolved. Besides, I’d lie saying that note didn’t leave me confused and curious to know those truths I still ignore about myself.
“It can’t. I’ll go back upstairs to read it if you don’t mind.”
“Sure.”
I walk back up the stairs, smiling faintly at a disheveled Ben strolling down them and acknowledging me in his usual way. “Good morning to you, love.”
Once alone in Nate’s room, I open the letter written by a woman who resembles me so much but whom I’ve never had the chance to learn anything about.
My beautiful baby girl,
This is a letter I hope you won’t ever read. One that my best friend, Lilly, will only bring to you or your parents if she learns that your origins have caught up with you despite everything I did to protect you from them.
If you are old enough to be the one reading that letter, it means you already read the first one by now, so you know why I had to let you go. What I didn’t tell you, hoping you would never have to know, is where I come from. The day I learned you were there, growing inside of me, was the day I found the courage to leave this life that I knew wouldn’t bring you any more joy than it brought me.
Well, that isn’t entirely true. Things are always a little more complicated than we’d like them to be. The MC life I met when I was barely seventeen brought you to me and offered me the love of your father. I know that he would love you as much as I do if he knew you were his and not the monster’s it took me so much time to escape. Not telling Connor about you and about me leaving town broke my heart, too, but please, believe me when I say that I didn’t have much of a choice. Rod, my boyfriend at the time, wouldn’t have let me leave with a child he thought was his. And if he had known you weren’t his, he would have killed me and you both. It might be hard for you to believe, but it’s the plain truth.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Connor would have welcomed us into his own club, but the chances of that ending up in a witch hunt and a possible tragedy were too high for me to take the risk. And I still can’t reach out to your dad now. The idea of leaving this world behind as you live your life so close to Rod and the psychopaths surrounding him is unbearable. And you and your dad wouldn’t be the only ones I’d put in danger by taking you back to Texas. Your big brother, Connor’s young son, would be in danger, too. This must sound very unfair to you, but keeping you away from Texas is the best way for me to protect all of you. It doesn’t mean I can bring myself to let my story with Connor end with a lie, so I’ll tell him the truth through a letter. But I’ll be gone when he reads it, and you’ll be living your new life already.
As for Rod, I’ll have a letter sent to him as well. Just to tell him about the cancer and how I lost the baby because of it. But if you’re now reading this letter, it means he didn’t believe me and found you somehow, probably thinking you’re his daughter. If so, I’m begging you, Camryn, don’t go near him. But even that won’t be enough. If he believes you belong to him, running to the end of the Earth won’t be enough. This man always gets what he wants, no matter what horrors he has to resort to. That’s just the man he is, and I’m so terribly sorry to be the cause of what’s happening to you.
I know you don’t know me, but I need you to trust me. This time, there are no other options for you than to turn to your dad for help. His name is Connor Vale, and he’s a member of another motorcycle club, the Chaos Chasers. You’ll find him in Twican, Texas, and even if he most likely hates me for what I did, I can promise you he’ll help you. He’s a good man I wish I had met first, and he will protect you with his life. I get that you could be reticent to get close to a motorcycle club, but please, trust me on this. Connor is the man I loved more than anything, the one I should have spent my life with, and I’m very proud he is your dad. Go to him, sweetie.
Another question must now be nagging at you. You might not understand why I robbed you of a relationship with your father. I can only tell you that I made my decision in all good conscience. I made it for one reason and one only, and I hope with all my heart that it was the right one. As you are reading this letter, I hope you are able to say that you once were a happy little girl.
I will always love you,
Mom.
I… This is… No.
Okay.
Even with several deep breaths, I keep failing to wrap my head around all that. This isn’t possible. My biological father would be a member of the Chasers? Maybe he belongs to another charter. But she said Twican. There must be a mistake somewhere. It doesn’t add up. I’ve basically been locked up in here for weeks now, and I haven’t met anyone called Connor.
My mind deals with so many news and emotions that I can’t even be properly thrilled by the eventuality of the president of the Spiders not being my father.
A brother? Do I really have a brother? A big brother, but who would have still been a young child when I was born. That means he now could be anywhere from…let’s say from twenty-five to thirty-one, thirty-two years old. Maybe a little more depending on what Mary considered young.
I can’t hold back my tears, though they stream silently.
Oh my…
No. No, it’s not Nate. It can’t be. He’s not from Texas. Besides, Vale isn’t his last name. Thank God for that.
Between sniffles, I focus on breathing in and out at a slow pace, urging my fragile state to stabilize a little so I can go back to Nate. This is going to shock him as much as it does me. I have no idea how to break that news to him, but I know that I could sit here in a passive stupor all day long and never come close to find out the best way
to do it.
Inhaling deeply one last time, I stand up.
As I leave the room and walk back down the stairs, I dry off my cheeks with the hand that doesn’t clasp my mom’s letter. But my eyes apparently give away my pathetic condition according to Nate’s reaction when I close the distance between us.
He swiftly jumps from the stool he’s sitting on to meet me, and I notice that more guys have gathered around during the short minutes I was away.
“What’s wrong?” He has reached me within seconds. “Talk to me,” he says quietly, his thumb wiping away a new tear.
For a moment, I don’t know what to say. I don’t know where to start. Then I decide to just speak.
“Mary says Rod isn’t my father. She says that she left town and disappeared to protect me and herself from him. She says that my real father is a member of the Chaos Chasers and that she also left to protect him and his son. She wrote this letter in case Rod ever found me. She wanted me to go find my father if I was in trouble. She seemed pretty certain that he would help me. But I’ve been here for a while and never met him, so…”
I trail off. My rambling makes not much sense even to me anyway, so I stop there. I think I even zone out, losing myself into my own head to silently rehash this whole messed-up situation, because when voices find their way to my brain again, I realize the guys have all moved closer to Nate and me. Nate, who is gaping at me, as speechless as I was a couple of minutes ago.
“Your father is one of us? How is that even possible? Unless he didn’t know it himself,” Blane suggests. “I understand he’d be one of the older members, but we sure as fuck would have known something like that.”
“In her letter, Mary also says my father didn’t know I was his daughter until after she died. She told him the truth through a letter, but she didn’t tell him where I was. I don’t know why he would have kept my existence from you, but Mary seemed certain that Rod would have killed us all for revenge if he had learned the truth. Even me as a baby. Maybe my father believed that, too.”
“The sick fuck sure would have,” Cody asserts.
On a weary sigh, I admit, “I don’t understand any of this. Mary gives too many details to be lying about this. And why would she?”
“That’s why it’d be nice to finally have a name to kill the suspense,” Ben says in his usual laid-back way.
“Oh, yeah. The name is Connor. Connor Vale.”
Chapter 24
Nate
The silence is fucking loud. Deafening. Forming words is no longer a skill that any of us possess. Same for breathing skills.
Hell.
I’m suddenly thrown back to the day I first met her at Dona’s, remembering how her eyes seemed familiar to me.
We never speak about Connor. Just like we avoid mentioning Isaac and Billy. Even during times of crisis when we could use wondering what they would have done in a similar situation had they still been here, no one dares bring them up.
My gaze has frozen on Cam, whose expression is lost as her eyes successively leap over the face of each one of my brothers.
“Fuck…me.” Ben is the one that drawls slowly after a while.
Cam’s widened eyes whizz to him, and it takes no more than a couple of seconds for him to get a firm grasp of what thoughts have taken place in her mind.
“Oh, no, love,” he raises a hand as though asking her to put a halt to her thoughts. “Not my father who planted that seed. Consider yourself lucky.”
On that, he walks away.
“But it’s one of you, isn’t it? One of you is Connor’s son,” she asks, or says, rather.
Before anyone gets their shit together and relearns how to participate in a conversation, Ben strolls back and hands a glass filled with amber liquid to Jayce. Without sparing anyone a look, he snatches the drink and gulps down the entire thing in one go.
“Connor was my father,” he says then, though I think Cam got the memo just fine through his sudden need to get some liquor running through his veins.
She blinks a couple of times, and my heart fucking breaks at the exact moment her face falls. “Was,” she whispers, probably only now remembering that Jayce’s father is gone.
If what’s written in that letter is true, it means that the last parent she didn’t know about wasn’t a cold-blooded monster after all. But it also means that she’ll never get to meet him. Fucking hell. I can’t remember a time when I felt as useless as I feel right now.
She doesn’t say anything else as she moves toward the closest couch where she sits down. Staring at the floor, her sad gaze doesn’t glance up when she speaks again. “Can you call Doc?”
The unexpected question hauling me out of my trance, I hurtle toward her.
“You’re not feeling okay?” I blurt the same question I could ask Jayce.
The poor guy turned ashen, looking even worse than Cam, if that’s possible.
“No,” she answers, and I’m ready to cradle her against me and bring her back to my room. “I mean, no, I feel fine,” she stutters, putting my plan on hold. “You said Doc helps you guys a lot, so maybe he’ll be able to do a DNA test. I’m sick of all these assumptions and guesses. I just want to know now.”
Her gaze shifts up when Jayce finds enough focus to drag himself to her. He sits on the coffee table, right in front of her.
“What is she saying about my dad?”
“That he’s my dad and that she’s proud of it. She also regrets not having met him first. I mean, before she met Rod,” she says before handing him the letter she hasn’t stopped clinging to since she got it. “You can read it if you want.”
Jayce eyes the piece of paper like it will combust on its own the moment it touches his hand, but after a short moment of hesitation, he takes it anyway.
He blows out a breath. “Fuck. Someone calls Doc right now. He’ll need to drop by as soon as possible to get a sample of Camryn’s and my DNA. I want that done ASAP.”
“On it,” Liam says and walks away.
It’s a chance someone can still function properly, because I don’t even want to try at the moment. Camryn looks calm, but she didn’t need that kind of crazy twist. She’s a strong girl, but going through what she’s gone through this summer would leave the strongest one vulnerable.
“But you were living close by, I don’t understand,” Jayce says, still trying to wrap his head around it all.
“Not when Mary left me with my parents. We were living in Colorado, not too far from Denver. My parents thought I was born around there, actually. We moved here when I was seven because my dad got a better job. I think it was nothing more than a coincidence.”
“You don’t think they could have hidden your origins from you?” he asks her.
She seems to think about that shortly. “To me, it’s obvious that Mary didn’t tell them, so, no, I don’t think so. But if they did know about Mary’s past, I can totally imagine them lying to me if it meant protecting me. But in this case, there’s no way they would have moved here. They wouldn’t have put me in danger.”
“Yeah, makes sense,” he agrees.
“I think Mary lied to them to make sure I’d never end up here if I ever tried to find my origins.”
Makes sense, too.
After appearing lost in thought, Jayce frowns. “A few years back, when I started… Anyway, a few years back, my dad told me about a woman he loved. Told me he had failed her, and that a part of him died the day she did. He said he couldn’t tell me more, and I automatically thought that her death was club related, but… Could that woman have been your mom?” he mumbles though it seems like it’s more to himself.
“I don’t know,” she honestly admits before her attention swings to me. “This Lilly Jenkins might know. I think I should meet her,” she says and waits for me to voice my opinion.
“What? Lilly?”
While he’d been as quiet as the rest of my brothers so far―which is surprising considering he was Connor’s best friend―Cody keeps me from
answering Cam. He also almost knocks Ben over by bumping into his shoulder while striding toward us.
“Lilly contacted you?” he freezes near Cam.
Briefly surprised by his abrupt reaction, she then confirms, “She’s the one who brought me Mary’s letter. There’s a note from her with it. She left it in the mailbox, because there’s no stamp on it.”
“She’s in town? Right now, she’s in town?” he probes urgently.
Before Cam can answer, I ask him, “You know her? Wait, wait… She’s the best friend you told us about the other day, isn’t she? The one who left town with Mary when she got pregnant?” I only now put two and two together.
Some of his urgency tames when his eyes settle on me.
He nods once.
“Did you know about Mary and my dad?” Jayce asks him.
“I had no idea, no.” He pauses before he goes on. “What I know is that Lilly wouldn’t lie. And she wouldn’t hurt Camryn either. She loved Mary like a sister. Left her entire life behind to help her disappear. And she’s putting herself in danger by being in town. Rod must know she helped Mary hide out.”
“It’s been more than two fucking decades,” Ben points out.
“It’s been more than two fucking decades and the fact he found Camryn barely over two years ago means he never stopped tracking her down,” he snaps, attracting everyone’s shocked attention on him.
Cody doesn’t snap. He’s the more poised motherfucker I’ve met. Reactions like that one is simply not the kind he has.
“Hell,” he goes on. “For all we know, he knew she was here since she came back as a child,” he adds, ignoring our penetrating stares.
“You believe he knew all along?”
Anguish twists Cam’s features, and if Cody didn’t look on the verge of losing his shit for whatever reason, I’d tell him to shut the fuck up with the help of my fist. I don’t want her even more upset than she already is.
“I’m only saying anything is possible with him.” He sighs, rubbing a hand over his beard before jumping about. “You can trust Lilly.”
That’s all he says before storming away. Loud steps thump up the stairs and his door slams shut.
