Worth The Battle (Heaven Hill Series)

by Briscoe, Laramie

  “Liam had a talk with me today,” he started, absently running his hand over the jeans that covered his thighs.

  “Did he?” She wasn’t sure she wanted to let on that she knew what that talk had entailed. She was positive that Liam hadn’t mentioned that she had in reality come to him, and Layne was already in such a precarious position, she absolutely did not want to spook him.

  “He did.”

  She sat there for a long time wondering if he would elaborate, but she could tell by the way his posture straightened and by the movement of his mouth several times without any words coming out that he was having difficulty expressing himself. Just let him come to you, she told herself. Let him set his own pace with what and how he wants to tell you.

  “He asked me to seek counseling after what happened with you,” he pushed out from a throat that was thick with emotion.

  Her response was careful and slow in coming—she wanted to make sure she didn’t seem too eager. “What did you say?”

  “I wanted to tell him a great big ‘fuck you’,” he laughed, although the sound lacked humor.

  “I just bet you did.” She couldn’t help the grin that spread across her face.

  A real grin answered hers. “I so did, but that wasn’t possible.” His faced sobered. “He threatened to take my patch if I didn’t get help for what’s going on,” his index finger pointed to his forehead, “up here.”

  Jessica nodded, not knowing what to say. This was one of those hard times in life where you weren’t sure what the correct response was to the hard decisions. “I don’t know what to say, Layne,” she finally answered.

  “You don’t have to say anything. If I want to keep this patch, if I want to keep my family, I’ve got to get my shit together. There’s no if’s, and’s, or but’s about it. I’m fucked up, I’m broken, and I need to be fixed.”

  He said those words with such a hollow tone to his voice that it broke her heart.

  “Is that really how you see yourself?”

  “It’s the only way to see myself.” He scratched the back of his neck and sat up straighter. “So, I agreed. I had my first appointment with Doc Jones today. Jagger took me. Apparently he and B both go to see her on the regular.”

  That surprised her, but she didn’t let it show. “How did it go?”

  “I told her about what happened here last night. I told her what I did to you, but I didn’t tell her everything.”

  She didn’t know what to say, didn’t know how to react. Should she touch him? Should she tell him it was okay, that he didn’t have to continue with what he was saying to her? In the end, she didn’t have to say anything, and he kept going.

  “I didn’t tell her how ashamed I felt when you came in here instead of staying in my room. I didn’t tell her how scared I was when I realized that both Liam and Tyler had hold of me. Tyler can normally put my ass down by himself. The fact that it took both of them…” he trailed off, having a hard time finishing his sentence.

  “You’re not yourself,” she whispered softly.

  “You’re right, I’m not, and I don’t know that I’ll ever be that person that you remember again, but I can’t tell you how fuckin’ sorry I am.” The words ripped from his throat, the emotions right along with them. “I don’t know how to tell you how sorry I am, or even what I’m sorry for. There’s so much, Jess, so much that I should be apologizing to you for. There are even things that you don’t even know, that I’m scared you’re going to find out and then you aren’t going to look at me again the way you looked at me before.”

  “I’m not perfect either, Layne.” She took his hand and pressed a kiss to his palm. “Both of us have been in many different places and situations since we were last together in any sense of the word.”

  “But I’ve been in the pits of hell,” he argued. “I’m not fit to be sitting on this bed with you, much less to be thinking about touching you.”

  The honesty in his face got her; he really did believe the words he spoke to her. She had to find a way to show him that while she had been scared the night before, she was willing to help him work to get back to a semblance of the man she had once known, cared for, and slept beside.

  “We’ll do this together, Layne,” she told him, clasping their hands together, entwining their fingers.

  Out of anything he had imagined would come out of her mouth, this had been the absolute last, but he couldn’t help but be the most grateful bastard in the world.

  Chapter Seventeen

  “Hey Liam, we’ve got a problem, and I’m not sure how big it is.”

  Those were the last words that Liam wanted to hear out of Travis Steele’s mouth. They could run the gamut of ‘we’re screwed’ to the even worse ‘we’re fucked up the ass without the courtesy of lube’. “Do I need to come down there?” he asked, although he knew the tone of his voice told Steele that he didn’t have time for this.

  “Yeah, I need some help here,” the other man said on the other end of the phone. “I’m not exactly sure what we’re facing, and I need you to give me permission to do what I need to.”

  Those were also words he didn’t like to hear from Steele, who could usually handle anything that was thrown at him. Even worse was if it was from Steele, it had to do with security, and right now, the baby sleeping over in the bassinette next to Denise in the living room meant that their security had to be top notch. “I’ll be right there, and if Tyler’s not down there, do me a favor and call him.” There was not another person that Liam trusted more in the world than his best friend, and if decisions had to be made, he wanted the quiet but formidable presence of his second in command.

  “He just walked in, pres. I’ll grab him, and we’ll meet you at the table.”

  Disconnecting the call, Liam sighed, throwing a look at the woman in his life. “I’ve got to take care of some business, and it’s Steele-related business, so make sure you get Mandy and Drew in here and everything’s locked down.

  “Are you expecting trouble?” she asked, glancing at Tatum, who slept blissfully unaware. Trouble seemed to follow them around, but now, with the new baby, she wanted to make sure that she knew what she was facing.

  “I’m not, but you never know. It’s better to be prepared than to be caught with our thumbs up our asses,” he told her, sitting down as he put his motorcycle boots on.

  Denise walked over to where he sat and pushed against his chest so that he leaned back against the soft cushion of the chair. She sat in his lap and turned to face him when he wrapped his arms around her waist and put his chin on her shoulder. “I understand what this life is now, Liam. It’s not going to scare me away from you or the family I’ve created here. Let me get Mandy and Drew inside and then lock up as you leave, that way you don’t have to worry about us.”

  He breathed easier. Early on in their relationship, she had run, and it hadn’t made anything better, it made it worse. Now that he was a father to not only Tatum but her kids from a previous relationship, he worried, even though she wore his patch, that she would leave again. That maybe this life would get to be too much for her again, and he’d come home one day and find his family gone. “Okay, that sounds like a plan. I’m sorry,” he apologized for his feelings, even though she didn’t know what he was feeling. “I’m just really fuckin’ tired, and this is not something I wanted to hear right this second,” he told her, scrubbing his hand over his face.

  “I know, it’s been a long day for you,” she told him, leaning in to place a kiss on his lips. A small smile played across her own lips as he placed his hand behind her neck and deepened it, allowing his tongue to claim her mouth for a moment. “You’ve had to deal with Layne and force him to do something that could ultimately hurt him, and now you have this. We’ll get through it, though. That’s what we do here,” she told him when she pulled back, running her tongue over her swollen lips.

  She was right; that was what they did, and that’s what he had decided to deal with when he took this group of men
and women under his care. That didn’t mean that he always liked what he had to deal with, but it meant that he had others who would be depending on him, and he had to try to make the right decisions for everyone involved.

  “I’ll be back, babe. Hopefully it won’t be real late,” he told her, tapping her hip to let her know that he was getting up.

  Denise walked with him to the door and yelled for Mandy and Drew. They came running, both noticing that Liam was leaving.

  “Where you goin’, Dad?” Drew asked, taking note that he wasn’t dressed for just a leisurely stroll down to the clubhouse.

  Liam put his hand on Drew’s shoulder. “Got some business to take care of, keep things locked down tight here.”

  Minutes later he walked into the room that held their meeting table and shut the door, having a seat between Steele and Tyler. He sat there for a minute and composed himself. Sitting at the head of this table was a lot more pressure than he had ever imagined, but he knew that he had to keep these people safe, he had to make tough decisions, and he knew that he couldn’t do that without first taking into account all the details.

  “What’s going on?” he asked, running his hand through his hair.

  Steele looked at him, his mouth set in a firm line and his eyes traveling between both Liam and Tyler. It was obvious he was nervous, and a nervous Steele wasn’t something anyone liked to see. “I’m not sure, and that’s what scares me.”

  “Okay then, tell me what you know. How about that?”

  He turned Jessica’s laptop so that it faced his pres and clicked on a few buttons. “Jessica came to me and told me that she had an alert in her email that one of her accounts had been breached. I thought it was a fake one, you know a phishing scheme, trying to get her to put in her information so that someone could potentially steal her identity. That’s how hackers normally do it,” he began.

  “But it wasn’t?” Tyler asked from where he sat.

  “Not when I got to looking at it, no. Someone has legitimately breached her information, I checked with a contact that I have at the cell phone company. There was a full scale cyber-attack the night before last. Jessica’s wasn’t the only information that was breached, but she’s the only person that Heaven Hill associates with.”

  “So what does that mean for us?” Liam asked, trying to wrap his mind around what the other man was telling him. “You’re going to have to break it down in small sentences too, man, ’cause my brain just ain’t firin’ on all cylinders like normal. You got me?”

  “We all know that these smart phones, especially iPhones, are a hacker’s dream because if users aren’t smart and turn all that GPS shit off, they can figure out where the fuck you are by remotely putting in a tracking app. I think that’s what has happened with her.”

  “I know all about tracking apps, and it does pinpoint roundabout where that person is,” Tyler groaned. “I put one on Meredith’s phone before Steele made his own.”

  The three of them sat in silence for a few moments; all mulling over what this had to do with them.

  “So what does this mean?” Liam asked. “Who’s doing this?”

  “It means that no matter what she puts on her fuckin’ Twitter account about where she is, the hackers know where she is. And to answer your other question, I have no fucking clue who they are, these people are good.”

  That was the last thing that Liam wanted to hear. They were just coming off of having to deal with Bianca being held hostage, Tatum being born. When would it end?

  “I know, brother,” Tyler told him where he sat. “If it ain’t one thing it’s another.”

  Liam knew that he had to address this, but he wasn’t sure how. “What do we tell Jessica? Better yet, what do we tell Layne? He’s having a hard time right now; I don’t want him any more twitchy than he already is.”

  Steele shrugged. “I wish I had answers for the both of you, but to be honest, this is going to take some time.”

  “Take her cell phone, disable the fucker, give her a club issue cell, and transfer her contacts to it for her,” Liam said. “Don’t say a word to Layne. He’ll figure it out, but let’s try to buy ourselves a day or two.” He ran his hand over his face again. “And you,” he pointed at Steele, “you’re on this until you figure it out.”

  Steele nodded. The cave was the place he most loved to be in the world. “I’m on it.”

  As he got up and walked out of the room, Tyler and Liam looked at each other, disbelief on their faces.

  “Can you believe this shit?” Liam asked, a laugh rumbling up from his stomach, because now the only thing he could do was laugh.

  “With us? Anything is possible, but just to be on the safe side, I’m going to have some of the guys make sure that the outer fenced-in property is good. I’ll make sure the security cameras are all working properly too. We can’t get lax apparently.”

  “No we can’t. Keep this under your hat until we know for sure what’s going on. When Steele has some more info, I’ll call a meeting, but right now I don’t need everybody freaking the fuck out.”

  “We got this, pres,” Tyler grinned as he used the nickname that the other guys had been using.

  “Fuck you and kiss my ass, VP,” Liam laughed as the two of them got up and walked out of the room.

  Pretty soon they knew they might have much more serious decisions to make.

  When Steele got to Jessica’s room, Layne was leaving, and he looked at the other man, his eyebrow up in question.

  “I gotta get her cell. She asked me some questions on how some of the apps worked, and I’m cleaning it for her. She’s got a lot of stuff on when it doesn’t need to be, and it’s draining her battery life,” he lied smoothly, hoping to calm down the ruffled feathers he saw prickled up.

  “I didn’t ask anything,” Layne told him.

  “Didn’t have to,” Steele grinned as he knocked on the wall since the door was open.

  “Hey,” Jessica grinned up at him. “Did you find out what was going on?”

  “Maybe, can I see your phone again? I need to do a couple of things to it,” he told her as he held his hand out for it.

  “Sure.” She swept her finger across the bottom, put in her passcode, and handed it to him.

  “I’ll get back with you soon,” he told her, backing out of the room.

  Jessica nodded. “That’s cool, just let me know. There are a few calls I need to make.”

  He didn’t have the heart to tell her it might be longer than he had actually lead her to believe, but the safety of the club had to be put first. Quickly, he made his way back to the dark room he used to monitor all safety issues with the club. Not many people ever came in here, and he liked it that way. It let him do what he loved without being bothered. Taking a stick of gum out of his pocket, he popped it in his mouth and began delving into the parts of a cell phone that not many people even cared about. He hoped that in the back end, in the code, he would be able to find out just who in the world thought it would be okay to fuck with someone under Heaven Hill’s care.

  Chapter Seventeen

  The next morning, Jessica sat on the back porch of the clubhouse, enjoying her coffee. Layne had already left for the shop by the time she had woken up, and not many people were around the clubhouse on this day, so she decided to take advantage of the quiet and pulled out a well-worn notebook from her bag. She sat with her coffee on one side, the notebook in front of her, a pen in her mouth.

  If there was one thing she kept hidden from most of the world at large, it was the fact that she loved to write. The fact that she liked to write wasn’t what was embarrassing, what was embarrassing was the fact that she wrote erotic romance. She never even wrote it on a computer for fear that someone would find it and trace it back to her. Every story she had ever written was written by hand, and she always took them with her, no matter where she went. This particular notebook that she was working on filling up was number ten. Two of them had been stolen in the burglary, and that was making her e
xtremely nervous. Glancing around, she made sure that no one was out there with her; no one was around or could read over her shoulder, before she opened the notebook and began writing.

  She wanted him to take her hair in his hands and pull. Harder than he ever had before, harder than she had ever asked him to, so hard that it would hurt. It was a secret fantasy, one that she hadn’t ever been able to share with him, no matter how many times the two of them had been in this exact situation with each other, no matter how many times he stripped her and took control of her body, this was something she couldn’t put into words. Why? She wasn’t sure, but wanting him to cause her pain embarrassed her.

  “Hey, Jess.”

  Jessica fumbled, closing the notebook as quickly as possible. “Hey, Bianca.” She smiled brightly up at the other woman, hoping like all hell that Bianca hadn’t read the words on the page. She had absolutely no clue how long Bianca had stood behind her before she announced her presence.

  If Bianca thought it was weird the way she all but lay across the notebook on the table, she didn’t mention it. Instead, she rolled on ahead in what she had come out onto the porch for. “So, I start my teaching job in August, and I need to buy some new clothes. I’m thinking of heading down to Goodlettsville. They have a bigger selection of stores than what we do here, and if we’re feeling real adventurous, we can head to Nashville. You want to come with me? Meredith’s coming, and I think she’s letting us steal Tyler’s truck, which I love. You feel up to a girl’s trip?”

  A shopping trip with the girls? She was so excited for that. “Yes, I would love to!”

  “Awesome, let me go grab Mer, and we’ll be heading out.” Bianca grinned.

  “Yeah, I just need to put some stuff in my room, and can you text Layne and let him know where I’m going? Steele’s doing something to my phone, and he hasn’t given it back to me yet.”