Calm & Storm (The Night Horde SoCal Book 6)

by Susan Fanetti

  Connor’s grin faded out. “What?”

  It had hurt to speak the words in the first place. When he tried to say them again, it hurt more—too much—and he simply shrugged. He grabbed hold of his knees.

  Bart had told Ronin that his thoughts were written on his face, but maybe they’d been written in a script only Bart, with his own doubts and conflicts, could see.

  Connor, on the other hand, was an open book. He leaned back in his father’s desk chair, surprise and burgeoning anger carved on his features. “You want out?”

  Did he? Now was the time he had to commit. He’d been a damn yoyo over this for weeks, months, and he’d never before wavered in his commitments. He was loyal. But he couldn’t find his place in the club anymore. The club had changed, and something in him had changed, and they hadn’t changed in the same direction.

  He’d thought and thought, trying to understand where the shift had happened, where and when his preferred solitude had become painful isolation. What had driven him to make a decision, to come to Connor, was finally understanding what the change in him was. Once he’d seen it, he couldn’t believe he’d been so confused.

  It was Rainy.

  Not that she was pulling him away from the club; she had left the choice entirely to him. She meant it, too—she honestly would accept his choice, whatever it was.

  And with the club out of the dark work, he could live in L.A. and maintain his good standing; it was unlikely that he’d be called in on an emergency. He didn’t need to leave his club life to have a life with Rainy.

  But he never would have chosen this life if he hadn’t been alone when the choice was before him. He never would have wanted it. He’d needed a family, and he’d found a club.

  Now he had the family he’d lost, and the place he’d had in the club no longer fit.

  But these men were still his family. For half his life, he’d ridden with them, fought with them, bled with them. He’d held brothers while they’d bled and died.

  He wasn’t sure how to stay, and he wasn’t sure how to leave.

  Sitting with Connor in the President’s office, Ronin knew that he still didn’t fucking know what he wanted.

  When he didn’t answer Connor’s question, the new Night Horde SoCal President sat forward. “What’s going on, Roe?” He cast his eyes downward, to Ronin’s hands. “This have to do with that new ring on your finger?”

  Ronin looked at his wedding ring. He folded his hand and brushed his thumb over the wood.

  Connor chuckled. “You went off and got hitched and didn’t tell a fucking one of us, didn’t you? Dude, I didn’t even know there was a woman.”

  “There is.”

  “Obviously. Congratulations. She want you out?”

  He shook his head. “She’s good with what I want.”

  “And what is that?”

  Again, he had to just say it, or he knew the words would get stuck. “I’m tired, Con. I don’t know where I fit here anymore.”

  Connor sat back with a sigh. “You fit across the table from me, just like you fit across the table from my dad. You are one of us. Roe, if you’re worried about the dark days coming back, I’m telling you that your woman is safe. You were at the table—you saw that none of us want to go back. We’re done. Protection runs, security, the shop, the entertainment crap, that’s it. Back to where we started—where we belong. Our family comes first—our whole family.” He smiled. “If you don’t believe me, believe my old lady. She wouldn’t let me knock her up while we were up to our eyes in bullets and blood. I go back on that now that she’s finally agreed to try, and she’ll have my dick stuffed and mounted on a fuckin’ plaque.”

  Ronin stared at his ring and thought. If he was having so much trouble making this call, then maybe it wasn’t the right call to make. But he needed to understand where his life was headed. He needed to know who he was. Joining with Rainy again had shaken him off his foundation.

  When he’d first met Lorraine Milligan, he’d been a different man. A young man, arrogant and willful, who sought out risk for the thrill of it and had never known what real risk was, who’d never known what it was to feel loss.

  If he’d been trying to reclaim that life with Rainy now, then he’d been foolish.

  The man he was now knew the cost of risk. He knew loss. And he had a family who knew it, too.

  He was a warrior, not a fighter.

  He’d been quiet too long again, and Connor finally filled the gap. “If you want out, Roe, then I’d understand. Everybody would. You can hand over your kutte. We’ll put ‘retired’ under your club ink, and you’ll still be one of us.” He leaned forward again. “But I’m asking you to stay. Give us a chance to heal and settle into the right life. Help us. Help me.” He sighed sadly. “I am losing too many brothers. Stay.”

  Ronin was a loyal man. When he loved, he loved for life. So the decision was made. It had never really been a decision, now that he could see it clearly.

  He nodded.

  ~oOo~

  Old ladies and children filled the clubhouse that afternoon. Hoosier’s team, the Colts, was playing Monday Night Football against most of the rest of the club’s team, the Raiders, and the family was coming together to party in honor of the old family rivalry and the man who’d made it a tradition. The kickoff was three hours away, but the women were arriving to get dinner started. Ronin smiled to see Bibi standing near the kitchen door, sending off her troops on their missions, every bit the Woman in Charge.

  The whole family was there: Bibi; Connor and Pilar; Trick, Juliana, and their two little girls; Demon, Faith, and their three kids; Muse, Sid and their boy; Sherlock, Sadie, and theirs; J.R. and Veda; Fargo, Keanu, and Big Nate; and several of the club girls, those who’d been around so long they’d earned near-family status.

  It was a young club, but it was a family. That youth—maybe it meant hope. A future. And he could be a part of that, in and out of the clubhouse. He just needed to get out of his head. Rainy would help him. In trying to live two lives, he’d lost the way to make sense of either.

  The only people missing were Bart and his kids. Bart, understandably, hadn’t been around much since Riley’s funeral. Ronin wondered again whether he was a brother lost.

  It was Monday, Rainy’s only reliable night off, and Ronin, thinking he was leaving the club, had not planned to stay. But standing at the side of the Hall, watching the women work and the kids play with their fathers and uncles, hearing laughter and chatter at a level of lightness he hadn’t heard in a long while, Ronin didn’t want to leave.

  He wanted to be with Rainy, too. Cameron and Mac were coming over for dinner. Rainy was making pork tenderloin and garlic mashed potatoes.

  Pulling his phone from his pocket, he called his wife.

  She answered right away. “Hi, baby.”

  “Hey. You started dinner yet?”

  “I just got in from the restaurant. I was planning to get started in about fifteen minutes. That a problem?”

  “No. Just got a better idea. Call Cam and have them ride his bike over. See if they can be there in an hour.”

  “Okay…why? What’s your idea?”

  “I’m coming to pick you up. I want you to meet the club.”

  She was quiet for a long time. He was about to say her name, when she said his. “Roe. Are you sure?”

  He was. At long last, he was sure. “I am. It’s safe. I belong here, and you belong with me.”

  “You don’t want me to move to Madrone, do you?” She sounded confused and suspicious, but he understood why. She’d been buffeted by his storm of doubt for months.

  “I’m still selling the house. I want to live in the canyon with you. Rainy, will you come back with me tonight? I want them to know you and Cam.”

  “Of course I will. We all will. If it’s what you want.”

  “It is.”

  “Then we’ll be waiting.”

  ~oOo~

  Just more than an hour later, he was riding east wi
th his wife behind him and his son at his side. Sure, Cameron had bought a sport bike, but he’d gotten a good one—and Ronin liked sport bikes. They were quick and responsive. It had taken him a long time to get used to riding a Harley as his main—and, though he kept it to himself, he still preferred a sport bike for intense riding. A Harley was a good cruiser. A bike like Cameron’s Duc knew how to take a turn.

  Traffic was thick; it was evening rush hour on a weeknight. But when Ronin moved out to split the lanes on the 10, Cameron ducked out right behind him, and they whizzed passed the Joe and Jane Averages trapped in their cages.

  About twelve miles west of Madrone, they got ahead of the jam, and the road ribboned out before them, nearly empty. Cameron pulled up alongside Ronin, and they grinned at each other. Mac, riding behind her man, laughed and threw her hands out to the sides.

  Rainy then surprised them all by doing the same thing. Ronin felt her thighs grip his waist, and then her arms were gone, and he could hear her happy laughter at his back.

  He opened the throttle, and she leaned forward, wrapping him up in her arms again.

  Cameron kept pace with him. He was still on his permit, and not technically supposed to be on the freeway at all, but fuck it.

  They were outlaws, after all.

  ~oOo~

  By the time Ronin opened the clubhouse door and led his family through, everyone in the Hall had sat down to dinner. The pregame show was playing on the massive television on the side wall, but the Horde family was focused on putting food on their plates.

  On nights like this, they put out a long row of portable banquet tables down the middle of the Hall to form one long table and pulled up folding chairs to it. Nothing fancy, just resin tables, metal chairs, paper napkins and plates, and plastic utensils.

  Ronin realized that it had been years since they’d had a dinner like this. Years. There had been a time when it had been routine.

  It had been just as long since they’d all come together, as a complete family, for anything other than a lockdown or a funeral. They were missing some very important people, but even as he stood on the sidelines, Ronin didn’t think they were missing at all. They all remained part of the family, and they wouldn’t be forgotten.

  Especially Hoosier. As long as the club he’d built existed, as long as his family stayed together, then he’d be with them, right in their midst.

  The people around the table had finally noticed Ronin standing there. As a group, they went silent, and they stared. Several let their mouths drop open.

  He smiled and stepped forward, taking Rainy’s hand. “Hey. Want you to meet Lorraine, my wife, Cameron, our son, and Mac, his girlfriend.”

  “Fiancée,” Cameron corrected, and Ronin and Rainy both turned and did some gaping of their own. Cameron shrugged sheepishly, and Mac beamed and leaned closer to her man, lifting her hand to show a glittery blue stone on her finger.

  “We were gonna tell you at dinner tonight,” she said. “Guess we kinda did.”

  Grinning himself, Ronin turned back to the table of Horde gawkers. He waved between both groups. “My family. Thought you all should meet.”

  Bibi stood up and stalked over to him, the heels of her boots thundering in the dumbstruck Hall. “Well, it’s about damn time. Thought you were gonna keep her in hidin’ forever.”

  “You knew?”

  She cocked a groomed eyebrow at him. “Baby, what don’t I know? I didn’t figure you’d started wearin’ Dior Diorissimo perfume yourself. You did surprise me with the boy, though, gotta admit.”

  She hugged Rainy. “Welcome, darlin’. I’m Bibi. We’re a motley crew, but we’re good at heart. Always got room for more.” Then she hugged Cameron and Mac. Every hug was firm and sincere, like she was greeting loved ones.

  Because she was. That was how the Horde worked.

  The rest of the family had stood up, and Ronin, Rainy, Cameron, and Mac were swamped with hugs and back slaps.

  Then they all went back to the table and found the way that Ronin and his family fit.

  ~oOo~

  EPILOGUE

  Note:

  As with the conclusion to the Signal Bend series, it became clear to me that the Night Horde SoCal required more closure than the ending to the final book could provide.

  In this case, the series concludes in the POV of the man who bridges both series, and whose story at this point in the narrative deserves to be told. I couldn’t leave him where he was at the end of Ronin and Lorraine’s story.

  So, I’ve appended the final novella of the Night Horde SoCal series. This is not a “side trip,” because the SoCal ride ends here.

  This is Bart’s story.

  HOME & SAFE

  The Night Horde SoCal

  Conclusion

  The ache for home lives in all of us.

  The safe place where we can go as we are and not be questioned.

  ~Maya Angelou, All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes

  ONE

  He slid his hand up her leg, the skin silky and smooth under his hard palm. When he reached the top of her thigh and moved back, sweeping over the pert curve of her ass, letting his fingers slip into her cleft and brush over the delights within, she moaned and pressed herself up and back, against him.

  “Bart,” she gasped, little more than whisper. The kids were sleeping, and Deck was right next door. “God, please.”

  He nosed her hair out of his way and sucked hard on her sweet neck while he let his hand continue its journey—over her hip, her waist, her belly, changed by their children, over her ribs to her beautiful, beautiful breasts, their points pink roses now instead of the pale pearls they’d once been. When he caught a tip between his fingers, she arched and moaned, scissoring her thighs, reaching her arms over her head and around his.

  “Bart!”

  “What do you want, babe?” he murmured at her ear. “Tell me what you want.”

  “Daddy! Daddy! Daddy!”

  Bart’s eyes flew open. He was hard, his cock throbbing with need, and he chuckled ruefully and reached to pat Riley’s pretty ass.

  For just that brief second—just the barest hint of a breath of a moment—still in the dream, he’d forgotten.

  And then he remembered.

  “Daddy!” Deck stood at the side of the bed, clutching his weird blue dinosaur, the one with the floppy ears that he had found at a charity rummage sale the Horde had been involved with and Riley had worked.

  Caught in a vortex of physical need and psychic agony, beset by loss and grief, Bart’s chest cramped hard. He couldn’t breathe. Every time it happened, that forgetting and then remembering, the pain was worse. It hurt so much now, he wondered if he might be having a heart attack. It would be okay if he were.

  He closed his eyes and lay back on his pillows, alone in a bed he’d shared for more than a decade. God, please. Just let me die, he thought.

  “Daddy!”

  No. He had three children who needed him. He forced in a breath and opened his eyes.

  “Hey, little man.” He sat up and lifted Declan onto the bed with him. It was still dark; Bart glanced at the tablet propped on his nightstand: after three o’clock. “What’s wrong?”

  “You didn’t get the ghost. I told you it wouldn’t work. It only works when Mommy says it. I need Mommy to come and say the magic word.”

  For about the past year, Deck had had an occasional visitor in his closet. He called it a ‘ghost’ and described it as being all black, with a big black hat, a huge mouth with giant teeth, and long, long claws.

  What he was describing was the Babadook, because he’d come into their bedroom while they were watching that movie, one of Riley’s favorites, and seen his image on the screen. He’d screamed, and they’d shut the screen off immediately, but not before his vivid imagination had gotten firm hold.

  It had been Riley’s idea to banish the Dook—as he and she had called Deck’s ghost when they’d talked about it—with a word she’d used in her old series,
Hades High, to banish the bodies of demons she’d killed. The word was recedemus, and when uttered forcefully in the voice of Desdemona, the character she’d played—Recedemus!—the word handily sent the Dook off to pester some other imaginative preschooler.

  Earlier tonight, for the first time in the two months since Riley’s death, the Dook had come calling. Bart had stood in Deck’s closet doorway and done his best to deliver the banishment.