by C. M. Marin
A rushed breath slips between my lips when I try to lift one of the bags.
“Jesus, drop this, woman,” Nate growls as he hurtles toward me, but the bag heavily crashes on the floor before he even gets to me.
“Too heavy,” I state.
“I’m sure you could have guessed that without breaking a couple of vertebras,” he groans sarcastically.
With one eyebrow lifting high, I point out his dramatization.
“I need this body in good shape, baby,” he drawls, lifting the trash bag like it weighs nothing much. “Now you wait obediently for me while I deal with those bags and the ones downstairs. Ten minutes, tops. Then I think we need to go take a very long shower,” he says with a suggestive tone.
“Hurry, then. I’ll put the sheets and duvet into a trash bag as well in the meantime.”
Bringing with him the four bags in one go, he makes his way downstairs, and I get busy taking everything off my bed. Duvet, pillows and sheets all go away.
It’s heartbreaking. Not the linen being thrown away, but this whole picture surrounding me. The walls are still standing, but everything else has vanished. Memories are all I have left of my parents and of the life we lived together, and even those seem now somehow broken.
At least I still have my photos.
As I walk over to the memory box and start rummaging through the old pictures, footsteps already fill the room. A smile instantly brightens up the rather morose vibe that invited itself around me.
“That was suspiciously fast even for your sexy, hard abs.”
When I turn to face Nate, my heart jumps violently into my chest as registers the fact that he isn’t the man charging across the room with a spine-chilling expression on his face and a goal that is obviously me.
I can’t manage to put myself together to at least scream Nate’s name before Colin has me trapped against the desk. His hands are spread onto the wooden surface at either side of me, so close to my body that his forearms are brushing my hips.
“Don’t make a sound and listen carefully,” he demands.
He keeps his voice low, but the warning in it is crystal clear. Even if he hadn’t requested my silence, no sound would have found its way out of me. The fear left me paralyzed the moment he stormed into my room. My muscles don’t even shake, my brain too busy praying for Nate to come back upstairs before this ends like it could have ended the only time Colin’s club got to me.
“You’re still pissed I lied to you, I get it. But this has lasted long enough, and it has to stop now,” he says in a hard yet scolding tone as though I was some child throwing a tantrum out of resentment.
It’s scary that he seems to really believe it. That man is genuinely sick.
“Their club isn’t the one you belong to, and I’ve been patient enough,” he goes on as one hand comes up to settle on my shoulder, and his fingers dig through the flesh with such brutality that they’ll most likely leave my skin bruised. My eyes water as he keeps talking, unaware of the pain he’s inflicting on me―or maybe he is but doesn’t care. “You think I can’t do shit if you let your new fuck buddy tail you like a guard dog? You’re wrong. You once decided to spend your life with me, Camryn. With me is where you belong. And I’ll do just what the Chasers would do in my place to get one of theirs back. I’ll kill.” He stresses the last word, almost like he would enjoy for things to get this far. “I’ll start with the one downstairs, what do you think? Think he’ll see me coming? No.” He makes a tsk sound. “He won’t, just like he didn’t see me getting to you. Can you imagine how easy it’d be for me to pull out my gun, walk to that window and press the trigger on him?” The visual he paints with a frightening ease tears a whimper from me. “Very easy,” he smiles a dark smile. “And apparently, you don’t want that. But it’s up to you. Leave that club,” he commands. “I’ll even be understanding and allow you some time before you join us. But I swear to God, Camryn, I won’t hesitate to put a bullet through his head if you stay with him one more day. I won’t hesitate to start a war. So, if you want to save him and your new friends, leave that club. There won’t be any more warning before I do what needs to be done.”
A slamming sound that reaches us through the open window makes me jump out of my frozen state. Glancing toward it, Colin must realize at the same time I do that Nate just shut the trunk and is probably already on his way back up here.
“I’m very serious, Camryn. You’ve lived in this world for weeks only, but you’re a smart girl. You already know what the men in this world are capable of. Get something through your head: you’re mine. If I can’t have you, no one will.”
On that, his hand lets go of my painful shoulder, and he darts away from me. My eyes don’t leave his back as I watch him whizzing out the door.
I can’t move. I’m silently begging the heartbeat that’s pounding in my ears to slow down so I can hear something, but it’s too much to ask. I don’t hear anything. No steps rushing down the stairs, no steps jogging them up. Nate must still be outside or taking care of something downstairs, and I have no idea where Colin has gone.
There are no sounds at all for such a long time―it seems to be a long time to me, at least―that I start to wonder if Colin went downstairs to ambush Nate and hurt him anyway.
Jesus…
I’m ready to bolt out of the room when some noise finally travels to me from the stairs. I first tense, but then I recognize Nate’s steps. It’s an almost lazy gait that is confident at the same time.
My first instinct is to run until I’m into his arms. I want to find the solace I know I can only get from him. But even stronger than my instinct, there’s Colin’s threat ringing out in my head all over again.
That night in the desert left me so terrified by everything that for weeks I’ve accepted Nate’s protection, his club’s protection, without even considering the obvious fact that they could be the ones ending up hurt. The ones ending up dead. I’ve been selfish, and it has to change. I can’t keep putting them all in danger.
For the first time, I understand fully why Mary and Lilly did what they did. Why they left. Why Lilly stayed away. We talked a lot yesterday, and through her words and her eyes, I felt the love she has for me even though she barely knows me. She loves me like a daughter―and always has―because the woman who was like a sister to her hadn’t been given the chance to do it herself. Lilly didn’t say so, but she sacrificed a lot to keep me and everyone else involved safe.
A deep breath helps me stabilize my emotions at least a little, and I’m glad I managed to keep my tears at bay in front of Colin, even if I only owe that to the petrifying terror he stirred in me. Forcing my body to function again, I turn around and get myself busy with closing my memory box.
“All done. Time to go home and deliver, baby,” Nate drawls, and after another discreet breath taken to calm my nerves, I face him with a smile I don’t feel one bit inside me.
My acting skills don’t seem to be the best though, because Nate frowns as he comes to stand in front of me.
“You good? You’re pale, babe.”
I lean into his hand that grazes my cheek in a concerned gesture.
“Really? No, I’m good. Just tired, maybe. Let’s go?”
Worry lingers in his eyes as he clasps my hand. “I know the parties and the club full of loud guys don’t help you get enough rest, but it wouldn’t be safe to go to my place. But you need to sleep more.”
“So, no shower and straight to bed tonight?”
It’s amazing that I find enough lightness in me to joke, but no matter how much effort is needed, I have to make the following hours count. Tonight has to count. Because at this point, there’s only one thing left to do, even if the thought alone tries to throw me on the floor where I would roll myself into a ball and cry until there’re no tears left in me to shed. But I don’t have a choice, because going through the pain of losing someone I love not only makes me want to wail. It makes me want to die altogether.
Chapter 26
Nate
While I’m pouring myself a scotch, each fucking one of my brothers has his eyes on me. Their stares make me want to pour myself another drink before this one even touched my lips. I already drank ten of them, so what? They’re lucky I’m even down here tonight. And that’s only because I got sick of pacing in my room.
In my destroyed room.
I got enough time to crush both nightstands against the wall and use a broken wooden piece as a lethal weapon to beat the shit out of my chest of drawers before Liam barreled into the room to hold me back.
It was too late for the chest of drawers.
The now half empty chest of drawers.
The thought of that damn chest of drawers throws me back to this morning every single time it crosses my mind. It throws me back to the moment I opened my eyes around six this morning, at the fucking dawn, to find a folded note instead of Cam’s sleepy face on her pillow. My heart immediately bashed the walls of my chest and my fists were close to shaking because I knew what I was about to read. It was more than an intuition. I just already knew what was written on that piece of paper. But I read it anyway. Then I read it again. And again. Like I’d read something different at some point if I kept reading. But the few words never shifted into ones that didn’t rip my heart out of my chest every time I made them resonate in my own head.
I am really grateful for everything you and the club did for me. Please believe that. But this life just isn’t meant for me. I thought it’d be easier to leave without any long goodbyes. Please, take care of yourself.
Probably unable to handle the truth, I suddenly thought of this not being what it looked like it was. In my head, it made sense that she’d been snatched right from under my nose. Because she wouldn’t leave like that. She just wouldn’t. So how ironic is it that during the two seconds it took me to get to the drawers that had been hers since that fire, I almost prayed for her to have simply left me. And in the end, that’s what she did. Just like her spot in my bed, her drawers were empty.
She left.
She’s gone.
And if I decided now to drown myself into a damn barrel of liquor, I’d fucking do so.
“She’s done it for the same reason Mary left Connor,” Lilly says.
Oh, and apparently, no one wants to shut the fuck up about it and let me at least try to convince myself that I’ll soon be able to get her out of my mind for a damn second of reprieve.
Lilly seems to be a nice woman, but she’s also well on her way to pissing me off.
“I agree, bro,” Jayce insists.
He’s been repeating the same thing all day. She left to protect me. She left to make sure the Spiders wouldn’t hurt me because I was hiding her out. He even thinks something happened to make her leave so suddenly, but he can’t figure out what.
He doesn’t get that he can’t figure out what happened because there’s nothing to figure out. Nothing happened. Simple as that.
I was with her twenty-four-seven, for fuck’s sake. And what’s his proof about her leaving suddenly. For all I know, she had been planning to leave for days. Maybe more.
“It doesn’t make sense. Something had to make her leave,” he parrots himself one more time.
“Yes,” Lilly agrees.
It fucking exhausts me to have to listen to their bullshit. Like Jayce can be objective anyway. Camryn is probably his sister. Not surprising he stands up for her. And now he’s the one pissing me off.
“She’s done it becau…cause she doesn’t want to live with people who kill with their bare han…hands.” I slur the whole sentence even though I meant to bark it to the blind fuckers in the room and open their eyes to the reality.
Lilly doesn’t cower under my unfocused yet sharp glare. She has balls, I’ll give her that.
She even strikes back with a harsh tone. “Even if that was true―which it isn’t―, she’s not stupid. She wouldn’t have left like that knowing Rod still thinks she’s his daughter. And even if he knew the truth, she wouldn’t be safer. Even less, in my opinion. Camryn knows that. Jayce is right, it doesn’t make sense for her to have left like this. It doesn’t make sense that she left you.”
I try to snort, but the fumes of the scotch keep me from getting the sound out. Camryn was going to leave me. She was going to go back to LA. Considering Lilly showed up in Twican a couple of days ago, it’s almost funny that she thinks she knows what Camryn had in mind before she left. And when I say funny, what I really mean is ridiculous. Cam never envisioned staying here. Never. She never did because she didn’t want to live the only kind of life a guy like me could give her. No, she never envisioned staying. Probably even less after she found out about CJ. She was going to leave me. She was going to leave me before I entirely had her.
“And now she’s alone,” Lilly adds.
“Melvin’s t…tailing her,” I snap at her as much because she’s getting on my nerves fueling my own fear for Cam with hers than because I wouldn’t have let her wander around without protection.
Yeah, I’m pissed at the way she decided to part ways with me―I have no clue how I didn’t hear her pack her fucking things, by the way―but I need her safe anyway. And I sent Melvin because I need all of my brothers by my side to deal with what’s coming. Camryn doesn’t want to be with me, but I still need to know she’ll be able to live peacefully the life she’s chosen. And for that, Rod needs to be gone ASAP. And before I allow him to die, he also needs to get all the suffering he deserves for what he did to Jayce’s family and for everything he put Cam through.
“What? Melvin? Melvin, the prospect?” she asks, the horror in her voice also distorting her face. Excessively, if you ask me―or is it the unhealthy amount of alcohol I ingested that impairs what I’m seeing? Don’t know. Don’t care either. “You sent a prospect to protect her? Oh my God, this isn’t safe.”
“Nate sent a prospect who can take on three guys by himself and leave them barely breathing,” Cody explains to her with a calm tone that contrasts with his lethal eyes locking on me when he catches me glaring at his woman.
Yeah, I think that’s what it is. In two days, Cody hasn’t let her breathe for even one second, and it never seemed to bother her in the least. I bet that woman isn’t going back to Colorado anytime soon.
“I’m afraid, Cody,” she says more quietly, and I almost feel like a dick.
Almost. I’m too drunk to care about anyone but myself and anything but my own misery.
“Poor Camryn,” she goes on as Cody places a kiss full of affection on her temple, pissing me off all over again because I can’t do the same to my girl. “I can’t believe what that CJ guy did. Mary left her with the Jones’ so she wouldn’t be mingled with the club life and in the end, she suffered even more than Mary did.”
“Yet you don’t believe she went back to LA bec…ause she realized she d…didn’t want to live that sort of messed-up life any longer.”
Fuck, are they all this fucking blind?
Tired of their lectures, and not wanting to hear Lilly, Jayce, or anyone else argue once again, I stand up and walk away, but not without snatching the bottle of scotch from the table, my fist clenching around the neck.
I climb the stairs with a gait I apparently just stole from a clumsy fawn, but as long as it helps me get away from everyone, I don’t exactly care if I fall a couple of times before finding my room. My brothers clearly aren’t willing to help me shut down my thoughts―quite the contrary―, so I’m going to do it the old-fashioned way. I’m going to drink myself to a comatose state.
Once I miraculously made it to my room without breaking my legs, my arms or my neck, I slam the door sharply, telling my brothers I don’t need fucking babysitters all over my ass either. Then I sit down on my bed. But now that I am alone, I remember the main reason why I even went downstairs to begin with. It smells like her. Everything smells like her. The sheets, the pillows, the fucking air, it’s all clogged with this perfect scent of hers. Stupid thing is, it’s that
scent that pushes me to lie down on my stomach and bury my nose into the pillow that was hers until this morning. Pathetic as it is, I can’t help it.
At least I won’t drown in my own puke if the entire bottle I gulped down makes its way back up.
Chapter 27
Camryn
“Melvin, I know you’re in here,” I call out, knocking on the dark green closed door. “I heard you shuffling, and I know you wouldn’t have gone anywhere until I did,” I go on and wait, sure that he’s trying to decide whether to pretend he’s not actually here.
His scowling face when he finally opens the door puts a smile on mine despite my shattered heart that started to scream in pain the second I left Nate and the club behind.
“How did you know?” he asks gruffly, not bothering with greetings.
“Depends on what you’re talking about. If you want to know how I knew you were sent to tail me, the answer is that I saw you in my rearview mirror when I stopped to get some gas the first time. You should have parked a little farther,” I feign lecturing him with a shake of my head. “As for how I knew you were in this room, it’s simple. I knew you’d get a room right next to mine no matter the manner―I just hope you didn’t kill anyone,” I joke. “And someone in the other room used a hair dryer earlier. You biker boys are too fond of bragging about how big your balls are to use a hair dryer, so it couldn’t be you,” I shrug.
He grunts. “That’s what happens when the first person you’re asked to tail is a damn teacher. That’s not going to win me any points with Prez and finally get me my damn cut.”
My rather subtle smile is quick to recoil at the mention of Nate, just as my heart is quick to squeeze. The fact Nate most likely hates me is an unbearable thought that followed me all the way to California.
Despite the very long drive I overcame with only one short break to stretch my legs, I didn’t sleep much last night. The nightmares kept me awake most of the night. Struggling to fall asleep was a weird feeling to have back after all those nights I slept like a baby next to Nate. And I sure hadn’t missed the nightmares, though the one that kept me from resting last night traded the image of a screaming Colin in a crashing plane for an image of a barking Colin on a shiny bike and pointing a gun at Nate’s head.
