by Ava Ashley
Cooper moves again as he awakens, shifting onto his back and reaching out an arm to pull me onto his chest.
“Good morning, my love,” he says, opening his beautiful, blue eyes. Though I have seen it daily, with the exception of the last miserable days without him here in New York, his beauty still takes my breath away.
“Good morning, love,” I whisper, before giving in to his kiss. He wraps his arms around me, squeezing me tight for a moment before releasing. We lie there, together in a peaceful and intimate silence, for some more minutes. Then a sharp knock on the bedroom door interrupts our peace.
“Guys?” Nate calls. “Guys? Are you up? Should we get going? It’s already after eight. We should get to it.”
Cooper groans. I feel the same way. I would never again leave his arms if I didn’t have to.
“We have to go, babe,” Cooper says. “We need to get on the 10:35 flight to Chicago.”
“Do you think we’ll still be able to get three tickets?” I ask. “It’s New York to Chicago on a weekday morning. I bet it’s packed with business travelers.”
“Don’t worry, babe,” Cooper says. “There are some perks to being a former Navy SEAL. I have it all covered. Getting on that flight is the least of our hurdles today.”
I give him a kiss. He instinctively pulls me in, kissing me so hard I feel it in my fingertips.
“Still,” he says, reluctantly pulling away. “We do need to get out of here.”
“So are we going?” Nate calls through the door, obviously still waiting for a response.
“Yeah, give us ten,” Cooper calls back. “And stop listening at the door, perv.”
Nate laughs. It’s weird to hear him having an almost friendly exchange with Cooper, or at least one that isn’t overtly hostile, but I guess the three of us are a team now. For life or death.
Huh. Savannah Santos and Nate Moreno, together as a team against the mightiest motorcycle clubs in Chicago, the Santoses and the Morenos? It must be snowing in Texas.
Chapter Thirteen
Savannah
Sure enough, the three of us find ourselves aboard the 10:35a.m. flight to Chicago, sitting in our oversized United Airways seats like any other business travelers. With our near complete lack of luggage, unless you count my backpack, we fly through security. We aren’t wearing the business suits and pointy-toed shoes of consultants, but an unwitting bystander could assume that we’re well-traveled, efficient, and cultural internet people on a work trip. There is nothing that betrays that we are on a mission of life or death, other than my clammy palms and racing pulse.
Cooper did something on his phone on the cab ride over to LaGuardia Airport and somehow made three first-class tickets magically appear for us. We are offered hot towels and drinks before the aircraft is even done taxiing down the runway, but we all just take towels and water or juice. Today is definitely one of those days when it is most crucial that all of us have full control over our faculties.
When we land in Chicago, after a flight that feels simultaneously forever long and like it passes all too quickly, Cooper gets a rental car from the Hertz next to the airport and we hit the road.
“Are we going to Vlad’s house?” I ask. I assume Vlad is the friend that Cooper is talking about, because he is the only other person I have heard Cooper speak of in a way that suggests some deep personal connection and trust. And whoever Cooper is taking us to now must be someone whom he trusts with all of our lives.
“We are going to go see Vlad,” Cooper confirms. “But not at his house. He knows to expect us and he is meeting us elsewhere. We definitely can’t meet at his house, because Vlad is married. There is no way that I would put his wife at risk, not that he would ever even consider it. And we can’t meet at our apartment, because they probably have someone watching it, especially with Nate gone now, too.”
I nod. Cooper is always a few steps ahead of everyone else.
We drive for a bit in silence before Nate breaks the quiet.
“Hey, Savannah?” Nate says, clearing his throat.
“Yeah?” I turn around to face him. He has a strange look on his face, like he is trying to figure out how to say something uncomfortable.
“I’m...” He clears his throat. Whatever he is about to say, it isn’t something he says often. “I am sorry.”
“Sorry?” I ask. “For what? I know all of this mess, our engagement and all the related disasters, isn’t your fault. You were just a kid, too. It’s not like you wanted to marry me any more than I wanted to marry you. And I get why you followed us. What choice did you have? If you didn’t do everything you could to find me, you would have lost your family. You would have been dishonored, disgraced, and exiled. Nikki’s dad is in the Moreno motorcycle club, an old prison friend of your dad, and so she can’t be with anyone who isn’t approved by the motorcycle club. You would have to go out and try to build a life, starting with nothing, knowing that your son or daughter is somewhere out there without a dad. And that Nikki is alone, abandoned by you. I get it, you don’t have to apologize. I couldn’t do that to the person I love, either.”
Cooper reaches over with the hand that isn't on the steering wheel and takes my hand in his. He leans over a little, tilting his cheek to me but never taking his eyes off of the road, and I lean over and kiss him on the cheek.
“I love you,” I whisper in his ear, before I lean back.
“Not that,” Nate says. “Savannah, I am sorry for your loss. I never said it back then and I didn’t say it in the many years and countless opportunities that I have had since then, but I am sorry that you lost your mom and your sister. I lost my mom in the same battle, as you know, and I understand how much that hurt. I just never thought about how you must feel. I am sorry for your loss and I am sorry for being such a dick to you when you were already hurt. I just wanted to say that I’m sorry.”
I look back at him. After our long history of hating each other almost recreationally, I half expect an ironic smirk. But Nate looks sincere and I can smell bullshit a mile away. He isn’t just saying this to make Cooper less hostile to him, or to make me trust him more. He is saying this because he means it. When pushed, people really can change and, sometimes, they can change for the better. His apology is genuine.
Just like that, all the years of hatred fall away like nothing. Suddenly, I look at the man I detested for the great majority of life, the man I identified as the cause of everything that went wrong in my life, and just see a hurting young man who was just as lonely and scared as I was. Now we have both somehow, against all odds, found love. He has Nikki, and a little one on the way, and I have Cooper. And now we are going to have to work together to make sure that we can keep both of those relationships—and all of our lives.
“Nate,” I say. “I am sorry, too.”
Just like that, I make a new friend on what might be the last day of my life.
Chapter Fourteen
Cooper
We pull into the trailer park where I grew up and I hop out of the car, onto the dirt of my old haunts. I jog around the front of the car to open Savannah’s door for her. Damn, she just seems to get more beautiful every time that I look at her. I love her with every cell in my body and I am going to keep her safe. That’s not an ‘if.’ I am going to make this work. Someone so beautiful, so kind, so warm, and so good cannot die so young.
She gives me a small kiss before we walk over to where we’re meeting Vlad. I wrap my arm around her waist, holding her close as we walk over to the abandoned shed down by the edge of the park. When I was a kid, the shed was a hotspot in the trailer park. It was where the junkies would come to do their deals, away from the prying eyes of tattle-tale, busybody neighbors and the plainclothes police who would occasionally show up, search some trailers for narcotics, give some kids warnings for truancy or public underage drunkenness, and then swing by my mother’s well-worn bed to reward themselves for a job well done. These days, the shed stands empty and abandoned, no longer really a part o
f the trailer park as trees grew around it and cut it off from the rest of the land. It is the perfect place to meet Vlad.
I try the door of the little, rundown shed, but it won’t give. Vlad blocked it with something, as agreed. I feel bad for pulling Vlad into this, but he is a grown man with the freedom of choice to decide whether or not he will do it and he has military training of his own. He took the most roundabout way here and we are taking all the precautions to keep the motorcycle clubs from knowing that he is the other one in on the blackmail plan, so he should be fine. Still, he is a real friend for doing this.
I knock again, in the Morse code pattern we agreed on, and then it swings open from the inside. Vlad hurries us in, then closes the door and shoves an old iron gardening chest in front of it again.
“Hi,” Savannah says. “I don’t believe we have ever been formally introduced, but I am Savannah.” She reaches out to shake his hand, still perfectly polite. The girl can keep a tea party level of class even when she’s about to walk to her possible death. If that’s not SEAL spirit, I don’t know what is.
“It’s my pleasure,” Vlad says, drily. “And this is?”
“This is Nate,” I say.
“He is a friend,” Savannah adds. Right.
“It is interesting to meet you, Savannah, and you again after seeing you fight.” Vlad nods at Nate. “But I am going to need a word alone with Cooper.”
“Of course,” Savannah says, with a nod. I give her a quick kiss on her forehead, then follow Vlad back to the small, partially closed-off section at the back of the shed, where rakes and hoes and shovels were stored in its heyday.
As soon as we are behind the wooden partition separating the storage area from the rest of the shed, Vlad drops his cool, calm facade.
“What the fuck have you gotten yourself into, man?” Vlad hisses, grabbing me by the bicep. “If you’re trying to fuck up your MMA career completely, you’re sure on the fucking right track to doing that. At this point, you would have to do everything—and I mean every fucking little thing—more right than right in order to have any chance at a comeback. Do you realize how much this is costing you, how much this is costing us? And what is this thing that you are in now? You need to give me something? To send?”
“I love Savannah,” I say seriously, looking Vlad straight in the eyes. “I love fighting, but that love can’t touch the one I have for Savannah. And all the money and prestige in the world means absolutely nothing to me if I can’t be with my girl and I can’t keep her safe and happy and provided for.
Vlad looks at me. He really looks at me, in that deep, all-baring way that only Vlad can do, and sees that my love for Savannah is the real thing.
Finally, he shakes his head. “She is a beautiful girl, man,” he says. “And if she is to you what Bettina is to me, I one hundred percent understand how you could throw away everything you have worked for. I have seen you grow and heal in these years, man, and for you to be able to go full on and love someone with all your power, that’s growing up. That’s being a man. I am proud of you.”
“Thanks, man. That means a lot coming from you,” I say. It does. “But Savannah is in real trouble and she is my girl, so I am in it with her. Life or death trouble. And that is why I’m here. I need your help. I have no right to ask for anything more, considering how much you have already done for me, and I really don’t want to have to ask you to stick out your neck again for me. But you are the only person I can trust with something this important.”
Vlad rolls up his right sleeve and turns his arm over, showing me the half yin-yang symbol, a white waved half-circle with a black dot in the middle of the top. He takes my right arm, turning it over to show my matching tat, a black waved half circle with a white dot in the middle of the bottom. We got the tattoos after I helped Vlad through a really bad spot. He had been saving up for years to start his own MMA gym, but the investor he had his money with scammed him out of all of it. He moved all his clients’ savings, including Vlad’s, overseas to a Caribbean account and disappeared with it. Vlad could have gone to court to fight to get it back, but it would have taken years, at the very least, and by then he would have been out of his home. Instead, I spotted him the money to start the gym and cover his mortgage payments, so that he would be financially stable enough to marry Bettina, his then-girlfriend and now wife. Business at the gym really took off and he paid it back to me pretty quickly, but that first loan really turned his life around after the debacle with his investor and made his present financial solvency possible.
“We’re brothers for life, man,” Vlad says, “And I will never forget that. You have been there for me through incredibly critical times and I will be there for you. Ha, man, it’s lucky that you live on a poverty budget when you earn an Escalade salary, or I would have been really fucked back then. But you’ve always been a smart guy, and a good guy who doesn’t ask much, so I’m here for you when you do need something. What do you need me to do?”
“Savannah, Nate and I are going to talk with some people today. If I don’t make contact with you within the next forty-eight hours, express mail this. It’s already addressed, postage paid, and everything. All I am going to need you to do is bring it to the military mail office on the west side. Keep it safe until then and make sure no one sees you.”
“It’s done, man,” Vlad says, pounding me on the back. “Don’t even worry about it. But be safe. I want to see you again, soon, and I want to see you with your pretty-boy face still intact, you hear? I know you’ll be fighting again come the weekend. You’ve got this. Failure is not an option.”
I nod. “Thanks, man.” Vlad never stops coaching, and it is just what I need. This I know how to work with. And results are what I know how to produce.
Chapter Fifteen
Savannah
Vlad and Cooper come out from the separate section of the shed a few minutes later.
Vlad walks straight over to me. “It is a pleasure to meet you, young lady,” he says, shaking my hand. “You clearly mean a lot to my good friend here and it’s nice to see the old ‘Veni Vidi Vici’ all locked down with a nice girl. You stay safe and let Cooper take care of you, you hear? He is a good man. You’ll be well cared for with him. Don’t worry about it too much. You have other things to focus on now. I hope to have you over for dinner with Bettina sometime. She makes a mean chicken pot pie.”
I smile. “That sounds wonderful. I hope to do that, too.” It’s nice to be able to talk about a pleasant, normal future. Maybe it will really happen. “And I know Cooper is a good man. I am lucky to have him.”
Vlad laughs. “He is a lucky man to have you.” Then he turns to Nate. “I’ll be seeing you and Cooper in the ring soon. I want to see another fight happen between you guys, so train hard and make sure neither of you breaks anything important while you’re doing whatever you’re doing later today. You got it?”
“Yes, sir,” Nate nods. “Thanks for helping us out, sir.”
“Cooper is a real friend,” Vlad says, with a nod. “Well, then. I expect you guys need to be getting on your way soon.” He looks around him, gesturing at the dirty, dusty shed. “I know this place is so tempting to stay in, but don’t let me hold you up.”
“Let’s go, guys,” Cooper says. “Bye, Vlad.”
They do one of those manly half-hugs that always amuse me so much and I enjoy a little smile, despite the seriousness of the situation.
“I’ll leave in a bit,” Vlad says. “It will be more inconspicuous that way, and I will take a different route out. I could use a long run today, anyway. A little roundabout exit never hurt anyone. Good luck.”
“Thanks,” I say. I am glad Cooper has a true friend like this, and had one like this to help him through all that he has been through. He is a good man and it seems like Vlad is, too. I really hope that we’ll make it through this. Maybe I can be friends with Vlad’s wife and we can have dinners together, hang out as couples and go on double dates. Maybe even have wonderful lives with lov
e and friends. It would be everything I have always wanted.
But first, we have to survive the next two days. When we get back to the car, I lean over to Cooper. “Cooper, can we make a quick stop before we go to see the motorcycle clubs? I need to see Tamryn. I never got to say goodbye and I want to say it now. You know, just in case.”
Cooper’s face looks a little pained when I say the last sentence, but he nods. “Sure. But we can’t stay long. Every extra minute is more risk. They are expecting us today. I had Nate get in touch with them to set up a peace meeting. We do not want them getting antsy and deciding to change the terms of the meeting to more hostile ones before we even arrive.”
“I know,” I say. “I don’t need long, I really only need a few minutes. I need to do it right this time. I can’t just leave without a goodbye now that...I mean, if this is my last chance...well, I just won’t feel right if I don’t say bye. I owe Tamryn that much. She’s is one of the only friends I’ve ever had.”
“Of course,” Cooper says, ignoring Nate’s groan of frustration. “Where do you need me to go?”
“Can we swing by The Ink Joint? Tamryn should be working today,” I say. I hope her schedule has not already changed, or that she’s traded shifts with someone. I just really want to say bye.
Cooper nods and drives a little faster. He isn’t flooring it, probably to avoid attracting unwanted attention more than anything else, but he is also definitely a little over the speed limit. We get to The Ink Joint in record time and I am relieved to see Tamryn’s beat-up Chevy in the parking lot.
“I will be right back,” I say, leaning over to give him a kiss. Then I open the passenger door and let myself out. The bell chimes as I walk into the now-familiar tattoo parlor. Seeing my chair and workstation, now covered in someone else’s tools and knickknacks, hurts more than I expected. But I am not here to mourn a career. I am here to say bye, and thanks, to the friend who brightened my days in this parlor not too long ago.
