The Biker's Religion (Rough Riders MC Book 2)

by Shelly Morgan

  Pulling out my phone, I pull up Angel’s number. Hitting dial, I put the phone to my ear. She picks up after the second ring. “Ice Man, hi. Thanks for calling me back,” she says, sounding nervous but eager.

  “Ah, yeah, sure. Hey, I was wondering, would you—” I start to say, but she interrupts me.

  “I need to tell you something, but not over the phone. Is there any chance you could come back to Reno? I could get you a plane ticket right now so you could get here faster.”

  I’m on alert now. What would she have to tell me that would garner a conversation in person? Fuck, I’m glad I’m already here because I’m not sure I would be able to last the flight thinking about this and wondering what the fuck is going on.

  “I’m already here. I came by Amy’s place to talk to her since she hasn’t been answering any of my calls, but she’s not here. I was actually calling you to see if you could help me find her,” I tell her, hoping to get what I want out of her first on Amy’s whereabouts before we discuss whatever it is she wants to talk to me about in person. I’d really like to see Amy before doing anything else. I need to fix this between us.

  The line goes quiet. I start to wonder if she hung up on me or we lost connection, but when I pull the phone away from my ear to check, I see that the call is still running. “Hello?” I ask.

  “Uh, yeah, sorry, I’m here. So, um, you’re here? In Reno? Right now?” she asks, her voice sounding weird.

  “Yes. I’m here in Reno, right now. I’m at her apartment. Do you know where she is?”

  “I’ll be there in five minutes. Just stay there,” she says, but before I can tell her I need to see Amy, need to speak with her, and grill her more on her whereabouts, she hangs up the phone.

  Sighing, I plop down on Amy’s couch. Guess I’ll have to wait for Angel to get here before she’ll tell me where Amy is. Hopefully what she has to talk to me about doesn’t take long so I can see her. I want hold her in my arms and kiss her sweet lips. But I know there will have to be a long talk before any of that happens, but when it does happen, and it will, I’m going to pour all of my pent up frustration and all of my feelings for her into it. It’s going to leave her breathless.

  I’m staring at the clock, waiting for her when I hear her walk up the stairs. It took her more like ten minutes, instead of five, but as long as she tells me what I want to know, I won’t bring it up.

  I didn’t tell her that I was inside Amy’s apartment, so I hear her call out my name from the hallway, “Ice Man. Are you still here?”

  “I’m in here,” I call out from my spot on the couch. I left the door unlocked, so she’ll be able to get in.

  The door opens and in she walks, and holy shit, does she look different than the last time I saw her. Before Amy and I left, she was still using her crutches, but other than that, you couldn’t really tell that anything had happened to her. Sure, her eyes were a little more distant sometimes and there were some days that black circles were under her eyes, but nothing like there is now.

  Angel’s face is pale, her eyes are sunk in, under her eyes are so dark it looks like she has black eyes, and her clothes are baggy on her, hanging off of her like she lost twenty pounds. What the fuck happened to her?

  “Are you okay?” I ask, standing up and going toward her. I don’t see Torq here, which is unusual for him. “Where’s Torq? Is he okay? Did something happen to him?” I fire the questions off one after the other. It’s the only thing I can think of that would make her look like this and explain why he’s not here with her. Is this what she wanted to tell me but didn’t want to over the phone?

  “Wha-what? Oh, no, he’s fine,” she says, seeming confused about my line of questioning.

  Now I’m really confused. “Okay,” I say, drawing out the word.

  Well, if it’s not Torq who has her looking like that, maybe she’s been having a hard time with what happened to her. Shit, maybe I shouldn’t have let Amy come with me. Dammit, I’m an idiot, taking her only friend away. She probably needed her while we were away.

  Or, she could have just been worried about Torq while he was down in Texas helping us out. I guess that would make sense too.

  “What is it that you wanted to talk to me about? I’d really like to go see Amy, to apologize and make things right, so I’m not meaning to hurry you, but if we could move this along,” I say, trying not to sound like a dick.

  Her eyes fill with tears, and I start to get a really bad feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Um, well, I’ll take you to her right now. But I have to tell you something first,” she starts, but doesn’t go on.

  “What is it?” I pry, knowing that what she’s about to tell me will rock me to my core. I don’t know how I know this, but I just do.

  “There was an accident,” she begins and my world stops.

  “No.”

  “She was driving on the mountain road,” she continues, and my world crumbles.

  “No.”

  “There was a mudslide.” My world burns.

  “No.”

  “It hit her car, pushing her over the mountainside.” My world is gone.

  “No!”

  “They rushed her in to surgery because her brain was bleeding and swelling. They were able to stabilize her, but she’s in a coma and they aren’t sure if she’ll wake up.” There’s now nothing left in my world. There’s only blackness and ice.

  “No!” I yell. I’m too late. I should have come sooner. Why didn’t I leave after she ignored me for days on end? Or when everyone started acting weird? Wait a minute.

  “How long?” I seethe, grinding my teeth, trying not to lose my shit. Or more than I already have already. The way Angel looks, this shit didn’t just happen today. Not even yesterday.

  “Just over a week ago,” she says, not even looking at me.

  Turning around, I kick the end table next to the couch. The lamp that was sitting on it shatters as it crashes to the ground as the end table breaks into at least five pieces.

  “Why the fuck didn’t anyone tell me?” I yell, pissed that I’m just now finding out about this. Amy has been lying in a hospital bed, fighting and clinging to life, and I didn’t even fucking know it. I’m broken, filled with rage, and everything in between.

  “I-I’m sorry. I wanted to tell you, but Torq and Bear thought it best not to. We know you both had a-a fight before she left,” she says, sniffling, tears streaming down her face like a tsunami. “We hoped she would have woken by now, and we could ask what she wanted us to do. But she hasn’t. I’m sorry. So fuckin’ sorry, Ice Man.”

  A little of my anger dies. This isn’t on her. It’s on me. For leaving her before we were able to mend what was broken. Before I could apologize for all the things I said. Before I could tell her how I feel about her. Before I ruined everything, she said she thought she was falling for me. But I didn’t want to hear it. I didn’t want her to fall even more for me because I had already fallen for her, I just couldn’t admit it to myself and risk the pain that would surely come when she realized she was so much better than me. And now it might be too late.

  Pulling Angel into my arms, I hold her because she’s struggling to stay upright. Amy is her best friend, and after everything she went through months ago, this must be horrible for her too. I can’t lose my shit on her. Though when I come face to face with Torq and Bear, I won’t be held accountable for what I do for the part they played in keeping this from me.

  “Shh, don’t cry. We’ll get through this, I promise,” the words fall from my mouth before I can stop them. I don’t know if I should promise something like this, but I can’t help myself. I need to believe that Amy will come back to us both, and mend what is left of those who love her the most.

  “Thank you for telling me, though. I can’t say I’m not pissed that I wasn’t told when it happened, but none of that matters right now. I just need to see her,” I tell Angel, pulling back so I can look at her.

  “I’ll take you there,” she says, leading me ou
t of the apartment and down the stairs to her car. I don’t even bother to jump in my own car. I’m not even sure I could drive without putting myself and others in danger right now. My mind is with Amy right now.

  On the way to the hospital, I ask her more of what happened and what her injures are. She tells me what she knows of the accident, but there wasn’t really much to go on besides what the police and fire department told her, which was that the mudslide hit her dead on while she was driving. She didn’t even have time to stop or try to get out of the way. Her car went over the embankment, sliding down the mountainside a few hundred feet. Thankfully, the mudslide wasn’t as big as it could have been, otherwise it could have been a lot worse.

  Her car is totaled of course, but aside from a few cuts, bruises, and a broken nose, her main injuries were caused from hitting her head so hard on the steering wheel and from being whipped around so much inside the car. They also think her head crashed into her driver’s side window, causing her brain to swell and bleed. But they were able to get the bleeding under control and the swelling has started to decrease, but she’s still in a coma. They said the brain can be damaged without showing the damage. Only time will tell if she’ll fully recover or even wake up.

  “We’ve been sitting with her all day during visiting hours, just hoping and praying for a change, but up until yesterday, we didn’t see anything. Even then, we weren’t one hundred percent sure. Not until today when I tested out my theory,” Angel says as we pull into the hospital parking lot.

  She tells me about her and Torq arguing yesterday about telling me about what happened after I had called. When they spoke my name, Amy’s hand moved a little. But when they watched and tried to see if it happened again, there was nothing.

  But today, when they were discussing me yet again, her hand moved. Except this time, Angel was sure about what had caused it. Me. Something inside of Amy’s head woke up at the mention of my name. It was as if she were physically trying to reach out to me.

  Torq didn’t believe it at first, but when Angel said my name over and over, each time Amy moving either her fingers, hand, or eyes, he soon knew it was the truth. Especially when there was no movement when my name wasn’t mentioned.

  It gives me a little hope that I may not be too late. Not only in the sense that she’ll be okay, but that I can still win her back. All hasn’t been lost yet, and I plan to fight with everything I have inside me until there isn’t anything left.

  When we walk into her room, my breath leaves me all at once and I fall to my knees. Seeing her in that hospital bed slays me. It cut me up into little pieces, those pieces were then pushed into a grinder, and then it was set on fire.

  She looks so small lying there, with tubes coming out of her arms and head, and attached to her chest to monitor her. It looks like she’s being kept alive by only the will of these machines. But at least she’s breathing on her own, that’s one small victory I’ll take.

  Sitting down in the car beside her, I take her hand in mine. Leaning my head against it, I close my eyes. “I’ll give you some time alone with her,” Angel says, then quietly leaves the room.

  Minutes tick by. My eyes burn with unshed tears and my throat aches from unspoken words. But they won’t be unspoken any longer.

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you, but I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere, not even if you push me away. I called you so many times, but I guess it makes sense now why you never answered. I left you so many messages, your voice mail is probably about full. But you never heard them. So I guess I’ll tell you now.”

  I open my eyes and force myself to look at her as I say what I’d been trying to tell her since she left. “I fucked up, sweetheart. I told you that we couldn’t be together, that I didn’t want you like that, because I was scared. You know how much my ex fucked me up, and I was scared shitless that you would leave me too, only instead of leaving me broken, you’d obliterate me. There would be nothing left because you mean more to me than anything in this life ever will. Not my club, my bike, or any woman I’ve ever met or ever will meet.” My eyes focus on her face, hoping there will be a response.

  “You told me that day you thought you were falling for me. Well, I’m here today telling you that I’ll be here waiting to catch you, because I’ve already fallen for you. It took me a while to figure that out, and once I did, I swore that I would do everything in my power to get you back. I’ll spend the rest of my life making it up to you and fixing what I broke. Because I love you, Amy. I love you so fucking much it hurts. But I would rather feel this pain than the pain of not loving you, because that would be worse than any death this life could deal me. So come back to us. Come back to me, so I can prove to you how much you mean to me.”

  I lean down and kiss her mouth softly as a tear leaks from my eye, falling onto her face. Wiping it away, I say again, “I love you, Amy. Wake up.”

  Her eyes stay closed, but her hand squeezes mine for a second before falling limp again. But it’s enough for me to know she’s still in there, fighting to come back to me. She may not know it, but her heart and mind do. She wants me just as much as I want her.

  I keep talking to her, telling her how much I love her, what she means to me, and even stupid shit like the weather. Anything I can think of to keep talking, because every time I do, she rewards me with some sort of sign that tells me she’s here, trying to wake up for me.

  And when Angel returns with Torq by her side, I stand up to leave. Not because I don’t want to stay anymore, but because I need to not be here while Torq is here. I don’t want to get into a fight with him right now. He’s a brother, and I love him, but I’m still fucking pissed about what happened. I just need a little bit before I’m able to get over him not being on board with me knowing what was going on with my woman.

  Granted, he didn’t know she was my woman. For that matter, nobody did, not even me. But she’s mine. I’m claiming her. And I’m not leaving here until she is by my side.

  CHAPTER

  FIFTEEN

  Ice Man

  I haven’t left the hospital since I’ve arrived. If I have to go to the bathroom or shower, I do it in the bathroom in Amy’s room. If I’m hungry, I go down to the cafeteria and get some food or something to drink. And if Torq or Bear come in to see her, I either take a walk down the hall, or sit in the corner of her room quietly.

  The first night I was back, they both pulled me outside to talk. They told me that they were only doing it because they didn’t want to upset Amy or do anything she wouldn’t want. She told Bear that we had a fight and that’s why she was coming home. She said she didn’t want me to know about her leaving and then never said anything else about it. But they understood I was pissed and rightfully so. That’s why they both agreed to let me get in a good hit on each of them for payback, to reset the balance. I hit Torq for the both of them because warranted and agreed upon or not, I’m not hitting Bear.

  After that, things were still tense, but they were better. I still got the feeling that Torq didn’t think I should be here, but Bear just wants what’s best for Amy. And after telling him all that happened, and that I plan to make things right, he nodded and slapped me on the back, saying, “You hurt her again, you’re a dead man.”

  The nurses tried to kick me out, but after the first night of me not budging, they let up, though I think Bear had something to do with that too.

  Every day, I keep talking to her, and every day, it seems like she moves just a little more. I honestly think she’s close to waking up.

  I’m not delusional in thinking that once she wakes up that everything will be good between us though. I’ve told her so many times I’ve lost track that I’m in love with her and that I’m sorry, and I think a part of her hears me, but I know I’ll have a lot of work to do once she opens her eyes. And I’m game. I’ll do whatever it takes to show her that I’m not leaving, that I want her, and that she’s mine. I’ve got the rest of my life to prove it to her.

  Fo
ur days have passed, and I have a feeling that today is the day. I don’t know how I know that, but when I opened my eyes this morning, I knew that she would open hers today as well. Now, I just need to make it happen.

  After getting showered and dressed, I look at the clock and see it’s just after six in the morning. I know Angel will be arriving in an hour or so, and I’m really hoping that she’ll be awake before then. I want some alone time with her to tell her how sorry I am because I know that once she’s awake, Angel won’t want to leave. Not like I can blame her, I won’t want to either. But I want time to tell her how I feel, without prying eyes or feeling as if I’m being rushed. Plus, I have no doubt Amy would use Bear and get him to throw me out. And it won’t matter that we cleared the air between us, he’ll do it if that’s what she wants.

  I look at the chair I’ve been calling home for the past few days, and my whole body shudders. I’m sick of that chair. Then, looking at the bed with my girl lying peacefully, I decide I’m going for it. I want to hold her in my arms. There is a very real possibility that when she wakes, she won’t allow that to me. Like I said, I’ve got my work cut out for me. It won’t be easy to win her back.

  I’m able to maneuver her a little to make room for me. Then, once I’m in the bed with her, I lift her head and shoulders a bit so I can slide my arm underneath her, so her head is cradled on my shoulder. Now, it’s as if she’d fallen asleep in my arms. Perfect. Except, without all the tubes and injuries I know she has, and of course, the fact that she’s in a coma. Other than that, it’s perfect.

  “You know, Amy, I think it’s about time you wake your sexy ass up. You’ve had enough beauty sleep to last you a lifetime. Not like you need it. You’re gorgeous, no matter what you do,” I tell her, then kiss the top of her head.

  “Reggie says hi by the way. I think he misses you. He told me he liked hanging out with you. Said you were easy to talk to and weren’t as high maintenance as the women he knows. I had to give him the talk though, since I bet you both will be hanging out a bit after you start to feel better. But don’t worry, I wasn’t a dick. I just told no funny business and to always make sure you’re safe when he’s with you.” I laugh, thinking about that conversation. “He actually looked at me like I was an idiot. He told me he’d never let anything happen to you, so I had nothing to worry about. I think he even growled at me.” That boy might just be certifiably crazy. Most men are scared of me, especially the prospects. But not him. He’s got no fear. I like that about him. He’ll make a great brother someday.