‘And you thought a life here, being brought up as part of an outlaw motorcycle club would be a better future?’
‘I knew people in this club. I knew they’d be able to help. Cooper was a good man, and Laney – she was one of the best, from what I was told. A strong woman with a big heart. I knew they’d love you.’
I don’t want to feel angry; I don’t want to feel anything, this night’s been a big enough mind-fuck without this adding to it. But that anger is growing, it’s there, inside me, and if he keeps talking I don’t know what I’m gonna do. ‘So why just leave me, huh? Why’d you dump me like a sack of fucking garbage?’
‘I was seventeen years old, Mack. I was a kid…’
‘You’re using that as an excuse?’
His expression remains impassive; he doesn’t even offer up a twitch of nerves or regret or apology for what he did to me. And I don’t know what the fuck to do. I’m freakin’ lost.
‘Your mother, she was killed. Two days after you were born. We got caught up in a fight, in a bar out on the main street. She was trying to get away, I’d told her to run, to get out, but she didn’t look where she was going and she… she ran into the road. The car, it had no chance of seeing her.’
For the first time I start to notice some real emotion in his eyes; a sadness, almost. Shit! There really must be a human being under there somewhere.
‘She was killed instantly. And I couldn’t cope with a baby, not on my own. You weren’t planned, we were just kids, but once you arrived…’
There it is again. Emotion. And I don’t know whether he intended to show any but it’s there, I’m seeing it, but it don’t change this fucked-up situation any.
‘Once we saw you, we wanted you. Both of us did. And you have to believe that. But I couldn’t cope alone. My own mother, she was dying – lung cancer. She couldn’t help. And I had no one else, or I thought I didn’t, at the time. So I left you where I thought you’d be looked after. I’d grown up within an MC, Mack. Back in California. We’d moved here when my dad, God rest his messed-up soul, was made President of the North Carolina chapter…’ He bows his head, and I wait until he raises his gaze, never letting my eyes leave his, not even for a second. ‘It was shut down, in time. My father’s MC. A whole lot of trouble went on there, and I guess some of that must’ve rubbed off on me, because once I knew you’d been taken in, once I knew you were safe, I went back to that life. I became a prospect in a club not all that far from here, and I threw myself into everything that could help me forget what I’d done. But I never forgot you, Mack.’
‘Didn’t you? It never crossed your mind to, y’know, maybe, come looking for me? Or did you never really grow up, huh? I mean, if I wasn’t that far away…’
‘I was sent down, when I was twenty-one. For a long time. I spent almost two decades locked away…’
‘What the fuck did you do?’
‘I killed a man. Two, actually, although the second wasn’t supposed to be a target. He got in the way. And I didn’t cover my tracks well enough. The police, they got to me before anybody could protect me... I was a bad man, Mack. But the one thing I didn’t want for my own son was for him to turn out like me.’
‘Bad luck.’ I shrug and pull a cigarette from my cut pocket. ‘He did.’
‘Your life wasn’t a good one, Mack?’
I narrow my eyes as I continue to stare at him. ‘Laney and Cooper treat me like their own. They were good to me. They cared about me. This club, yeah, it was – is my family. But it didn’t exactly teach me right from wrong.’
He smiles and chuckles quietly, but I’ve yet to see a funny side to any of this.
‘You’ve been out of prison a while now I’m guessing. Right?’
‘Almost fourteen years.’
‘And you never thought to try looking me up again? Y’know, see how your son was doing?’
‘I did exactly that.’
I frown. What the fuck’s he mean by that?
‘I found out I had a brother, when I was in prison. Spending hours on your own for days, months, years on end… you have a lot of time to – well, let’s just say you start thinking about things that may not have become all that important on the outside. I contacted him, and he visited me on many occasions, as did his son. My nephew. Your cousin.’
I narrow my eyes even further as I take a long draw on my cigarette, and then the penny drops, and I don’t know whether to feel sick or angry or whether I should just fucking kill the bastard. ‘That freakin’ idiot out there’s my cousin?’
‘I had Zeb watch you, Mack…’
‘Watch me? What d’you fucking mean, you had him watch me?’
‘I never stopped thinking about you, Mack. I may have given up my rights as a father but it didn’t stop me thinking like one. I wanted to know you were OK. I wanted to know how you were doing…’
‘So you got prick of the freakin’ century to spy on me?’
All right. I’m angry. That’s the emotion I’m giving in to. I’m fucking angry.
‘Zeb is a good man, deep down.’
‘Is he? Because he don’t strike me as one.’
‘He looks after Izzi. He’s kept her safe.’
‘How long’s he been watching me, huh?’
‘Years. Almost a decade now.’
‘Jesus fucking Christ…’ For the first time I break the stare, stubbing my cigarette out on the table as I pull away and start pacing the floor. My head’s fucking spinning, this is crazy. ‘Christ! What the fuck is it with you, huh?’ I turn back to face him, raking my hands back and forth over my hair as I try to focus; try to calm the frustration that’s rising and rising and I can’t batter it down. ‘You just like playing games or something? What happened to just wanting to meet me? What happened to shit like that, y’know, normality?’
‘We don’t live in a normal world, Mack. You know that.’
‘And Izzi, what’s she got to do with any of this? Where the fuck does she come into it?’
‘Izzi was a coincidence.’
I can’t fucking do this. This is so screwed-up… man, I need some fucking air.
‘It’s complicated, Mack. Izzi needed me, and I offered to help her.’
‘From what I saw out there you shafted her, big time.’
‘She isn’t a murderer.’
‘So why make her one? Why bring her to this point and then order her to pull back? Why do that?’
‘Would you have preferred I let her kill him? Would that have been better for you?’
I don’t answer that, I don’t need to, he knows my reply.
‘Izzi came to me, and I in turn sent her to you. And she thinks I sent her to you because you could help her, too. But in reality, she was there for me.’
‘For you?’
I resume my position against the table and fold my arms, my eyes back locked on his.
‘She was there to allow me to see whether you really could be the kind of man I could never be.’
I’m losing patience here. And the pain in my shoulder, it’s fucking adding to the irritation.
‘Would you like me to see to that for you?’
‘What I’d like you to do is tell me what the fuck you’re talking about.’
He steps back and slips his hands into his pockets but he never once shifts his gaze from me. ‘You’re not me, Mack. You must have more of your mother in you, and that’s good. Despite everything I caused to happen to you, you’re a good man, deep down. You can love, Izzi proved that.’
‘I don’t love her.’
‘You’re lying.’
‘I don’t love her.’
He laughs, and that probably irritates me more than anything. ‘OK. You cared about her. Or you were starting to.’
I drop my gaze, and then wish I hadn’t because that gesture tells him he’s right. And he is. He’s right. I cared about her. I still do.
‘Why else would you have tried to stop her back there. You care about what happens to her, Mack.’
‘You care about her too.’ I raise my head and my eyes once more meet his. ‘You stopped her from firing that gun, so how does that make us any different?’
‘Over the years I’ve seen – I’ve been told of the things you’ve done. The people you’ve helped. You run an outlaw MC yet you find time, every now and again, to help others.’
‘It’s a front, for Christ’s sake. Make the sheriff and the police department think we’re helping out the community…’
‘Do you want to be a good man?’
‘Not really. I’m happy as I am.’
‘Are you?’
‘Where the fuck do you get off interrogating me? You don’t fucking know me, you’ve just had that asshole out there spy on me for years. What the fuck kinda shit he been reporting back to you, huh?’
‘Enough for me to know you turned out better than I’d hoped.’
‘I’ll take that as a compliment.’
He says nothing for a second, he just looks at me and I try to keep my expression stoic. ‘You couldn’t have her, Mack. She was never yours to take.’
What the fuck’s he talking about now?
‘She was beginning to fall for you, which is why she had to leave. Deep down she knew it was time to walk away. She was a test, for you. An experiment, if you like, to see if you really did want to find someone you could actually care about rather than the endless line of whores and tramps you’ve spent your life around. And that’s all I ever wanted for you – a little piece of normality. A family. And I think you want that too, deep inside.’
‘You have no idea what I want.’
‘You wanted Izzi.’
I stare at him, and I know if I move I’m gonna lay him out, I don’t care who the fuck he is. He means shit to me. He’s nothing.
‘And she wanted you. But she needed to focus.’
‘On something you then ripped away from her! This ain’t making any sense, Jesus…!’
‘It’s complicated. But everything we did, we did for a reason. And I’m sorry, Mack, I really am, if this has messed with your head…’
I laugh out loud, because he’s fucking kidding me, right? ‘I don’t fucking believe this…’
I move away from the table and start pacing again. If I stand still I’m gonna freakin’ kill him, so I pace, and I try to get my head as straight as I can with this much crap flying around.
‘Does she…? Have you seen the way she is around that asshole out there? It’s like he fucking hypnotizes her the second he touches her, I saw it in her eyes, Christ, that ain’t right. He’s got her fucking brainwashed, and that’s twisted, you’re twisted, you and that brain-dead prick.’
‘I can understand that all of this must be a lot to take in…’
‘Can you? Really? You arrogant piece of shit…’
‘I want to work with you, Mack. I didn’t come here to turn your life upside down…’
‘And what did you think would happen, huh? Did you think it was gonna be all “Hi, Dad, welcome home!”’
‘I knew it wasn’t going to be easy.’
‘Just get the fuck outta here. And take him out there with you. And he leaves Izzi alone, y’hear me? He leaves her the fuck alone. She needs to get away from the both of you…’
He grabs my wrist before I can finish the sentence, and he twists it back and the pain in my shoulder intensifies, an almost burning sensation ripping through me.
‘Izzi stays with Zeb.’
‘It’s sick. What you made her do…’
‘You don’t know what we made her do.’
‘You taught her to fight, he taught her to fuck. She told me.’
He smiles, and it ain’t a friendly one. But I’ve dealt with worse than him before. He don’t fucking scare me.
‘She needs Zeb.’
‘She don’t need that fucking freak. She needs to get as far away as possible from him, and you can’t see that? Yeah. I’m really not like you, am I? And there’s me thinking you actually do care about her when you can’t. You can’t possibly care a damn fucking thing about her if you’re willing to give her to someone like him, a man who’s using some twisted premise of pretending to teach her shit when it’s really just a license to fuck a woman who deserves so much more than this. She came to you to escape one kinda hell and you thrust her straight into a new one. And you really can’t see that?’
He lets go of me and steps back, and he shrugs, and it’s all I can do to hold myself back. ‘Go and ask her. Ask her who she wants to be with. Go on.’
I push past him and head outside, kicking the door open with so much force it practically swings off its hinges.
‘Get the fuck away from her, asshole!’
I yank Zeb back and deliver a blow to his chin that sends him reeling backwards. I can’t even think straight, there’s just this red mist descending and I can’t see shit for it…
Izzi
‘Jesus Christ, Sam, do something!’
Sam stands beside me, watching as Mack lays into Zeb, who in turn gives as good as he gets, but I know he can give so much more, and I’m scared, because I know what Zeb can do; how far he’ll go.
‘Leave them.’
‘You can’t be serious?’
‘Leave them, Izzi.’
I lean back against the wall and close my eyes as I try to block out the noise and the sounds of a world I was never destined to live in. Yet I’m here. I’m living it. And I can’t escape it now. ‘I’m guessing the truth reveal didn’t go down too well.’
‘He’ll get used to it.’
I open my eyes and look up as Mack deals another blow to Zeb’s cheek, and I’ve had enough now.
‘Izzi! I told you to leave them!’
I’m not listening. I run over and grab Zeb’s arm, finding enough strength from somewhere to yank him away from Mack. But he isn’t pleased, and his dark eyes are blazing as they glare into mine.
‘Trying to save your boyfriend, darlin’?’
‘Grow the fuck up, Zeb.’
‘I don’t need you fighting my battles, sweetheart.’
I turn to face Mack. ‘Who’s fighting?’
‘You’re playing this all wrong, princess,’ Zeb murmurs in my ear but I ignore him. And Mack’s still looking at me, and I feel something I really don’t want to feel but I can’t tear my eyes away from him.
‘You knew, huh? Who he was.’ Mack jerks his head in Sam’s direction. ‘You knew everything. And you didn’t tell me?’
‘That wasn’t on me, Mack. I didn’t get to choose what you knew and what you didn’t.’
‘You can’t stay with them, Izzi.’
‘And you don’t get to make that choice for me.’
I feel Zeb take my hand and I curl my fingers around his.
‘Please, Izzi.’ Mack’s tone is almost pleading. ‘Don’t do this.’ He shakes his head and I still can’t break the stare. It’s a mess, everything, and none of it makes sense anymore. All I know is that nothing got solved today. Everything I needed to do, that got ripped away from me. But I can’t go home. I’m not going back there. The woman I am now, she doesn’t belong there. She belongs here. ‘Talk to me, Izzi. Forget these two jerks…’
I feel Zeb start to move and I pull him back, he isn’t doing this. The fighting, all that shit, it’s over. For tonight, at least. I’m tired, and I can’t do this anymore, not right now.
‘Talk to me. Please.’
I turn to Zeb, and the look in his eyes tells me that’s the last thing he wants me to do. But I think I owe Mack something.
‘Let her talk to him, Zeb.’
Sam comes over and places a hand on my shoulder, giving it a protective squeeze.
‘We’ll be inside. Come on, Zeb.’
I watch as Zeb’s fingers slip from mine and I wait until both he and Sam are inside before I turn to face Mack. He walks over to me, and once more my eyes lock on his and I suddenly feel defeated. Confused. I just want to curl up into a ball and sleep all this crap away.<
br />
‘You OK?’ he asks, and I can’t help but smile.
‘Shouldn’t it be me asking you that?’
He leans back against the wall and tilts his head back a touch, staring up into the night sky and I watch him for a few seconds; the way the moonlight catches his jaw line, and a part of me aches to reach out and touch him, to run my fingers over his rough chin.
‘Why now, Izzi?’ He turns to face me, and even in the dim light I can see the confusion in his eyes. ‘Why’s he come looking for me now?’
‘I don’t know. I really don’t. But the one thing you have to believe, Mack, is that he does care for you.’
His laugh drips with derision, and I can’t blame him for that.
‘He only ever wanted you to be happy.’
‘By taking away the one thing that could’ve made me that?’
I stare at him, and I allow myself to remember those things I’d started to feel for this man. And then I remember why I had to stop feeling anything. I lost Aiden in a brutal, heartbreaking manner. Mack’s part of that world. And I can’t risk being with a man I could lose in the same way.
‘I was never meant to be with you, Mack. It couldn’t happen, and I should have walked away sooner…’
‘Why didn’t you?’
I don’t know if I can answer that. Because I don’t know why I didn’t.
‘What he – my so-called father – what he made you do, Izzi, it was wrong. It was twisted and cruel and none of it – none of it makes any sense.’
‘I needed to become someone else – something else. He helped make that happen.’
‘He used you, Izzi. To get to me. Can’t you see that?’
I drop my gaze, because there might be an element of truth in that. But it became more than that, in the end. ‘I think, deep down he – Sam – he just wants to get to know you. And he was willing to do anything he could to get to you.’ I shrug and look up, and his eyes are still on me. ‘We were all using each other, Mack. To some extent. It’s a mess, nobody’s denying that, but – but I think he really does just want to get to know you. He wants to put things right.’
‘Then he has one shit-crazy way of going about it.’
Tiredness is sweeping over me slowly now and that need to close my eyes is growing. ‘He’s never had a stable relationship, Mack. Him and your mum – they were nothing more than kids when they had you. He’s never really loved, or been loved.’
Broken (Soldiers of Darkness MC Book 1) Page 23
