But instead, he swallowed and said, only half-mockingly, “Where do I belong, then?”
“I don’t know. But I’d like to give you the opportunity to find out.”
Tango bowed up, hands curled against the edge of the table. “If you think you can turn me against my club–”
“This has nothing to do with the club, Kevin.” The passion, the coldness, the control and the power all coalesced into the mask of a king on Ian’s face. It was terrifying. The boy that he’d been, the boy who had known Tango better than anyone else, had become this noble, platinum-coated monarch, like something straight from Shakespeare’s stage. “This is about me telling you that if you are unhappy, and you want to start all over, I will help you do whatever you want. Because you saved my life, and for the affection I bear for you, I will do anything to help you. Say the word, and I can change your life.”
Nine
Not Cool, Bro
In the years after her violent miscarriage, Ava had wondered what her life would have looked like had the baby not been killed in the womb. If she’d been on the cusp of her eighteenth birthday when her first child was born. She might still have been able to go to college – hell, she was going to grad school now with a baby – and for sure Mercy would have proposed. Would her life have been somehow more magical? No, but she grieved for that lift she’d lost anyway. She didn’t wish she’d been a mother at seventeen. She wished the life she’d created with the man she loved most had had its chance to come into the world.
That sting of bitterness was eased in moments like these. Moments when her Remy was a solid, contented bundle in her arms as he nursed from her, the delicate soft curve of his skull cradled in her palm. Everything about him fascinated her. The downy skin of his rounded cheeks. The dark spiky fans of his lashes. The tiny, perfect fingers and toes, and the way they curled as he slept.
No advice, no motherhood manual could have prepared her for this: the way she would be enraptured.
“Done?” she asked as Remy pulled back, and she shifted him gently onto her shoulder, rubbed his back until she felt his ribs expand with a burp. “That’s better, isn’t it? There we go.”
She rose from the sofa and paced slowly down the hall, rocking her upper body in the slight way that always sent him off to sleep. By the time she’d reached the nursery, his eyelids were heavy.
“You take a nap, Big Man.” He was no small weight as she leaned over the crib rail and lowered him to the sheets. “And I’ll see you in an hour.”
She waited, lingering with arms draped over the rail, until his breathing had evened and she was sure he was asleep, then she tiptoed barefoot from the room, leaving the door ajar, straightening her bra and shirt so she was covered.
Mercy had asked her more than once if she was going stir-crazy being at home this much. She wasn’t taking summer classes, having needed the semester off to give birth and spend time with Remy. She worked part-time at Dartmoor when she could, but it wasn’t a regular gig. Was she bored? He’d wanted to know. Was she feeling locked up? He hadn’t asked if she felt like her life was slipping away, but that had been heavily implied by the notch between his black eyebrows.
The poor man had no idea. She was working toward her Creative Writing masters, was writing fiction in her downtime, was married to the man she loved more than life itself and was dreading the day she had to leave Remy with someone while she went to class.
“Stir-crazy” just wasn’t part of her vocabulary these days.
In fact, she was pretty sure she’d won the lottery.
The TV was murmuring to itself – a home reno show on in the background to provide white noise. She didn’t want Remy requiring absolute silence in order to sleep.
Sunlight fell through the naked windows – they really needed drapes or blinds or something – and lit on the polished floor, the dust-free coffee table. Clean as a whistle around here, and virtually all the unpacking was done. With a satisfied sigh, Ava headed toward the kitchen. She’d grab a snack and boot up her computer, make a little headway on the story she was –
She saw the tall shadow on the other side of the window before the doorbell tolled through the house. She jerked, hand jumping up to cover her startled heart.
A face pressed itself close to the glass and she recognized Colin.
Her pulse changed gears, driving hard in anger now instead of fear. She was in a full-on, super-feminine huff by the time she answered the door. She wedged her body into the gap, refusing to just invite him in. “What are you doing here, Colin?”
“Well, how’s that for hospitality?” he asked with a laugh. “You know, you’re in the South, darlin’. Aren’t ya s’posed to be bringing me a cold glass of tea?”
“A cold glass of what-the-fuck-are-you-doing-here.”
His brows went up in an expression of dramatic mock-offense. “Jesus Christ, you’re touchy today. Is it–” he leaned in and winked -
“your special time or something?”
She drew herself up straighter. “You mess with my man, you mess with me, simple as that,” she said flatly. “So I repeat: What do you want?”
“Are all you biker women this way?”
“Pretty much.”
Some of the humor left him. “Can I come in?”
“What for?”
He sighed. “To wait on your husband to get home.”
“You could have done that at the shop.”
“I wanted to talk to him here.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, titled his head to the side and gave her a look that was much too much like one of Mercy’s more charming, boyish glances. His didn’t have that disarming honesty, but it was close. “May I please come inside, Ava?” he asked, his accent thinning on purpose, as he said her name with respect that, if fake, was convincing. “I keep trying to hash things out with Felix and we can’t seem to get anywhere. I want to finish this, once and for all.”
“If you’re hoping to change his mind, I’ve got a news flash for you: not gonna happen. But you can come in, yeah,” she relented, stepping back and clearing the way for him to enter. “The baby’s asleep, so keep it down.”
He nodded, and remembered to take his boots off, shucking them just inside the door.
Ava watched him as she turned the deadbolt, the way his eyes took in the improvements, the orderliness, the lack of liquor boxes and Rubbermaid tubs. The walls needed paint, and the light fixtures needed updating, but it looked like a home now, and not a transitional space.
“You’ve been working hard,” he observed.
Ava walked past him into the living room, to the little desk she had set up in the corner with the view of the backyard. As far as desks went, it was on the pathetic side, but it held her laptop, her small mountain of notebooks, pens, pencils and a lamp. She sat down in the chair with her back to the window, so she could keep an eye on her guest.
“I’ve had lots of good help,” she said, gesturing to the room.
“Your friends?” he guessed, and must have been remembering the girls sorting through boxes on the floor the day he’d first showed up.
“And my mom. The guys did all the heavy lifting.”
“The Dogs?”
“Yeah. My brother and all his brothers.”
He nodded and folded his arms across his chest, leaning back into the sofa and rolling his head so he could look at her. This face he was making now – contemplative – didn’t resemble Mercy much. It was less sharp, less reflective. It made him look more like some generic handsome man, and less like the wild creature Mercy was.
“Can I ask you a question?”
She steeled herself. “Sure.”
“What do you do? I mean,” he rushed to say, “are you, like, some sort of…just his wife?”
“Are you asking if I’m some sort of club commodity?” she asked drily.
“I–”
“I’m not. My father is the president. I have only ever been with one member of this club, and that’s my husband.” She
wanted to be indignant and furious about his question, but couldn’t dredge up the emotion. Frankly, she didn’t care what Colin O’Donnell thought of her.
“I…” Colin swallowed, dark lashes long against his cheeks as he blinked. “Do you have a life? A real life?”
She gave him a small, thin smile. “You’re supposed to be a big womanizer. What do you care?”
“Fucking a girl and never calling her back doesn’t wreck her whole life.”
On some level, it was touching, his show of concern. On another it was none of his business. And inwardly, she was too tired to bristle up about it. “I went to college,” she said, “and I’m going to grad school.”
His brows went up.
“I work when I can, but I make time for writing too. I’m a writer – that’s what I do. And believe it or not, Mercy has never been anything but supportive on that front. I have a life,” she said firmly. “The only one I’ve ever wanted.”
“Hmm,” he murmured, and he looked confused.
“I think,” Ava went on, “that you’re the one without much of a life, Colin. And I think that’s why you’re here.”
He swallowed, and a protest darkened his face, high along his cheekbones, like Merc. “Don’t take this the wrong way, darlin’, but you don’t know shit about me.”
“You’re the easiest kind of man to know,” she countered. “Anonymous sex, too much beer, can’t hold down a steady job – there’s nothing as boring and predictable as a man who can’t stand to be tied down.” Quick grin. “But don’t take it the wrong way,” she echoed his words.
He glared at her. “Think you’re real smart, don’t you?”
She shrugged. “I think if you just wanted your pound of flesh, you’d have taken it and skipped town by now. You want something. And maybe you don’t even know what that is, but I think you want to come to terms with the fact that you have a brother, because I think, deep down, you need him, because your mother lied to you your entire life and you don’t have anyone else.”
He glanced away from her, unfolding his arms and passing his hands once, twice, down the thighs of his jeans, fingers twitching.
Nerve struck.
“I also think,” Ava continued, “that Mercy needs you too. You’re the only blood family he has left, and even if he says that doesn’t matter, I know it does. He’s Southern. Hell, he’s a Louisianan – family matters.”
Colin’s jaw clenched tight, and the silence stretched, grew thin and sharp-edged. It was quiet so long that when he spoke, it started her a little.
“You were with him?” he asked, voice strained.
“When?” she asked, but she already knew.
“When he murdered my father.”
Ava took a deep breath. “I was standing right behind him.” How quickly her mind went back to that terrible moment, to the cottage in Saints Hollow. How helpless she remembered being, the memory of panic leaving her legs weak and trembling. “I saw Larry through the door, standing on the porch, and there was this huge man behind him, putting a gun to his head.” She pressed the tip of her forefinger to her temple though Colin wasn’t looking at her. “He said he was sorry, he was so sorry, but what could he do? Mercy would have made the same decision in his place, he said. He was going to die that afternoon no matter,” she said, knowing it was true, “better it be Mercy defending me than some thug punishing him.”
Colin’s hands curled into fists.
“He was wrong about one thing, though,” she added, quietly, and Colin’s head snatched around. “Mercy would never have made that decision. He would never have gone along with that plan. He would have killed them all.”
A humorless snort flared Colin’s sharp, Lécuyer nostrils. “He could have tried.”
“No. He would have. That’s the thing you don’t know about your brother.” A little shiver stole across her skin. Not fear, not revulsion, but something very much like excitement. “He’s capable of anything. The deepest love, and the darkest violence. He doesn’t try things. He does them.”
He gave her a long, level stare. “You’re a spooky chick, you know that?”
She twitched a grin. “It’s been said a time or two.”
He released a long, tired-sounding breath and let his head fall back against the couch. “I hate him for it. What he did to Dad,” he said to the ceiling.
“And you don’t want to hear the other side of the story,” she guessed.
Other sides had a painful way of stirring up empathy.
“But…I knew there had to be one,” he said, like it was an admission. “I knew…the Felix I knew growing up, anyway, wouldn’t have done that without a good damn reason.” His eyes flicked over to her. “Are you a good damn reason?”
“I am to him.”
He looked away again. “I know.”
A softening took place inside her, an urge to comfort him. He wasn’t the broken glass fragments of a man that Mercy had always been, but he was hurting too. And not just because of Larry.
“You know,” she said, “I have it on good authority that Mercy makes a guy a good friend.”
“Like I want to be ‘friends’?”
“You want to be brothers, but you’re both too pig-headed to face up to the fact that Remy Lécuyer and Evie O’Donnell fooled around.”
“Why the hell would I want that?”
“Because you can’t forgive a friend for what happened – but you could forgive family.”
He fell silent again, straightening his hands slowly and with effort as his eyes traced the stamped patterns on the ceiling.
“Did you two look alike when you were little boys?” Ava asked, careful to keep her tone low and soothing. She realized what she was doing, suddenly – she was using the same verbal approach she used with Mercy, because she was taking for granted they shared some of the same ways of thinking.
“I dunno.” Colin swallowed and his Adam’s apple jumped in his throat, more pronounced with his head back against the top of the cushion. “If we did, we didn’t notice, I don’t guess.”
She wondered if Remy had looked at the boy and itched to treat him like a son also. Surely Larry had noticed that the child he raised looked more like his friend than himself. People had to have noticed; and they’d kept it from the boys all along. It struck her as cruel. All their lives with a brother, and never knowing it.
“Can I give you some advice?”
“I think you’ve given enough.”
“Listen to what Mercy has to say,” she said, undeterred. “Sit down, have a drink, and really listen to him. If you can’t forgive him, then you ought to leave town. But revenge isn’t going to get you anywhere.”
The sound of a bike engine coming down the street was a welcome one. Ava didn’t know how to bring this strange conversation to a close, and she was ready to. Get along, don’t get along – she was just tired of the Colin drama. His side of it, anyway. That was the other thing about other sides – she didn’t give a damn about anybody’s side but Mercy’s.
She got to her feet as the bike rolled up into the driveway and then shut off. She could tell it was Aidan, and went through the mud room to let him in.
He yanked his sunglasses off when she answered the door, already pushing past her, his hair wild and damp from being under his helmet.
“What are you–” she tried to protest as she followed his charge toward the living room. “Aidan.”
He was tugging his gloves off as he found Colin sitting on the sofa, and he gestured at the guy with one, empty leather fingers slapping around in a way that made Ava want to laugh.
“Not cool, bro,” Aidan told him, inhaling sharply. He was panting like he’d run a race. “Not cool.” Then he pitched forward at the waist, hands on his knees, deep-breathing in earnest. “Shit,” he muttered.
As Ava stepped into the room behind him, she could smell the tang of male sweat coming off her brother. “What’s going on?”
“This jackass” – Aidan jabbed a finger Coli
n’s direction as he straightened and regained a scrap of composure – “came looking for Mercy at the shop, and when I told him Merc was out picking up parts, he fucking took off.” He turned a dark, Ghost-like glare on the Cajun. “What the fuck are you doing in here with my sister?”
Colin lifted both hands in a defenseless pose that looked anything but given the way his brows cranked down over his eyes. “Whoa. I didn’t do shit.”
“Man…” Aidan advanced on him with two charging, aggressive steps.
Ava caught him by the back of the cut, giving an insubstantial tug that he did in fact heed, pulling up short. “Hey! What’s going on?”
He tried to shrug her off.
“Aidan, explain please.”
He managed to get out of her grasp, but held his ground, glaring at Colin. “I told him Merc was coming back to the shop, and that he could wait. And instead, I turn around for two seconds, and the prospect’s telling me this one just fucking left in a hurry. After I fucking told him not to come here, and to wait at Dartmoor. What the fuck’s with that?” he demanded of Colin.
“And you assumed he’d come here.”
“Well duh! I wanna know why, though,” he growled at Colin. “What, you gonna hold my sister hostage or some shit?”
Indignation and amusement warred across Colin’s face. “I just wanted to talk.”
“Fucking yeah right, asshole.”
He needs to step up his vocabulary, Ava thought. She laid a hand on her brother’s arm and stepped in close to him. “We’ve just been talking. It’s fine.”
He ignored her. “You thought you’d…” He couldn’t say it, whatever was making him so furious.
“Aidan.” Ava slid an arm around his waist, leaned into him and felt his ribs lifting and dropping against her side. “He didn’t do anything to me, I swear. Besides – I can take care of myself.”
He glanced down at her, and she saw in his eyes that he was remembering the sight of the bodies in the road, the ones she’d dropped. He frowned, but he gave her a fractional nod. Yes, he knew she could look after her own safety. He remembered the New Orleans sun-drenched stretch of asphalt, and what she’d done there.
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