‘Well, he’s been used to having lots of people around him since the second he popped out of his mum, haven’t you, kiddo?’
Coby looked at Lexi. ‘My son’s arrival had an audience, huh?’
‘I gave birth in the middle of the clubhouse so, yeah. Kind of.’
Coby bowed his head, clasping his hands together, and Lexi felt her heart break so many times over for the mess they’d made of everything. Half the Newcastle chapter of the Lone Riders had seen Ozzie come into the world, but his daddy had missed it all.
‘Hey, come on, soldier.’ She reached out and touched his face, making him look up at her. ‘It really wasn’t very pretty. And I made a lot of noise.’
He gave her a small smile. ‘We never talked about it, did we?’
‘You didn’t want to.’
‘I do now.’
Charlie stood back up, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jeans. ‘Well, before you two get into some kind of mummy/daddy conversation I really don’t want to hear, I need a word with Coby.’ He looked at Lexi. ‘Listen, sweetheart, why don’t you take the little ‘un back inside, let everyone fuss over him for a bit.’
Lexi frowned slightly, looking over at Coby, but he just nodded, throwing her a reassuring smile.
‘Okay.’ She knew better than to argue. ‘Come on, Ozzie. Let’s go see if Uncle Blake’s got mummy’s bacon sandwich ready.’
Charlie waited until she was back inside the clubhouse before he spoke again. ‘The past couple of days must’ve been a real head-fuck for you.’ He lit up a cigarette and offered the packet to Coby.
Coby took one, pulling his lighter out of the top pocket of his cut. ‘I’ve handled worse.’
Charlie studied him closely for a second or two. ‘Yeah. You have. But that was before you got involved with Lexi – properly involved with Lexi, I mean. Before you had a son to think about. Once kids come on the scene – once you fall in love – everything changes, Coby. Everything. Are you in love? With my daughter?’
Coby looked at Charlie, keeping his eyes on him as he took a long drag on his cigarette. ‘Why do you think I’m doing all of this, Charlie? It’s for her, all of it. Maybe it wasn’t before, because I didn’t know how hard I was gonna fall, how much she was gonna fuck with my head. I couldn’t have known that. But now – now it’s all for her. And Ozzie.’ He took another drag on his cigarette. ‘And the club.’
Charlie leant back against the table, staring out ahead, into the compound. ‘You should have come to me sooner.’
‘It happened, Charlie. There wasn’t anything we could do about it.’
‘That’s bullshit, and you know it.’ Charlie turned to look at Coby. ‘You were almost forty years old, for Christ’s sake. You knew you shouldn’t…’ Charlie sighed, pushing a hand through his hair. ‘You both knew.’
Coby hung his head, taking one last drag on his cigarette before throwing it down on to the ground with an almost violent force. ‘I couldn’t help myself, okay?’
‘You were thinking with your dick.’
‘You weren’t there.’
‘She was with Jesse. A fellow brother, and you know the rules, Coby. You don’t go there, you don’t cross that line. No matter what she’s doing, or what she’s saying, and I know what my daughter was like back then, all right? But that’s still no excuse. You should have walked away.’
‘You think I don’t know all of this?’ Coby looked back at Charlie. ‘You think I don’t regret what happened? What it forced us to do? All the shit it caused?’
Charlie looked straight ahead again, finishing his cigarette, stubbing it out on the table. ‘Yeah, well, it’s done now.’ He left a couple of beats before he spoke again. ‘You having second thoughts about this?’
Coby shook his head, his eyes back down on the ground. ‘I want that gavel, Charlie. I want to be in control of this club, take it down the route I think it should be going down. Because you’re right.’ His eyes met Charlie’s. ‘I’ve got a family now. And I need to think about what’s best for them, as well as this club.’
‘It won’t be easy, you know that, don’t you?’
Coby nodded, bowing his head again.
‘And there might be a little bit of resistance. People respect Tay, even if that respect has been waning slightly. The guys, they still look up to him.’
‘I know,’ Coby said quietly. ‘Tay was my best friend. A man I could trust with my life. But somewhere down the line he got sloppy. He wasn’t putting this club first, wasn’t thinking about everyone else. I couldn’t trust him anymore, Charlie.’
‘We’ve both got our reasons, Coby.’
Coby looked up again, his hands still clasped between his knees. ‘Is this really still all to do with you bearing a grudge from twenty years ago?’
‘He stole my wife. He took my kids away from me. You don’t forget that easily.’ Charlie’s eyes bored into Coby’s. ‘Believe me.’
‘Exactly how much is everyone else gonna know, Charlie?’
‘Enough. But not everything.’ He took out another cigarette, lighting it up and offering the packet to Coby, who declined this time.
‘This is so fucked-up,’ Coby said quietly, hanging his head, clasping his hands even tighter together.
‘He just needs to know who calls the shots. Who’s really in charge.’
‘Am I putting myself in danger here?’ Coby looked back up. ‘Because we all know the kind of man Tay is, Charlie. Revenge and retribution, they’re his speciality.’
‘And I know him better than anyone, Coby. Do you really think I’d put you in any kind of danger now? Do you think I’d do that to my daughter? To my grandson? Like you, I want what’s best for them. And what’s best for this club. And what’s best for everyone is you. You’ll look after my girl, and your boy, and you’ll look after this club. That’s all that matters to me.’
‘That, and making sure Tay pays, huh?’
‘Oh, I think he’s already paid, in lots of ways. He’s spent his life looking over his shoulder to some extent. Because I know he’s never really been able to trust me. Not after what he did. He’s always known I’ve been there, watching him.’
‘And you don’t think he’s gonna be suspicious that you were the one to bring Ozzie over to California?’
‘I’m Lexi’s father. Ozzie’s my grandchild. What’s strange about that?’
Coby sighed, pushing a hand through his hair.
‘Things are gonna start moving quickly now, Coby. Do you understand? No point in hanging around.’
Coby gave a small nod. ‘I’d better get back inside. Lexi needs me.’ He jumped down from the table and headed towards the clubhouse.
‘Coby?’
He turned to look back at Charlie.
‘Don’t ever forget that. Okay?’
Coby held Charlie’s gaze for a few seconds longer before heading back into the clubhouse. The sooner the next few days were over with, the better.
Twenty-Nine
‘We need to talk,’ Angie said, sitting down beside Charlie at the bar inside the clubhouse.
‘About what?’ Charlie asked, taking a sip from his bottle of beer.
Angie let out a heavy sigh, dropping her head into her hands before pushing both hands through her hair. ‘How long are you staying here, Charlie?’
‘As long as my daughter needs me.’
‘Our daughter… Jesus…’
‘I wasn’t the one who sent her away, Angie.’
Angie turned on her stool to face her ex-husband head on. ‘What she did…’
‘You could have dealt with it all here, in Paradise. You didn’t need to run her out of town, make her feel like some cheap, dirty whore.’
Their eyes locked, a million memories from decades gone all rushing forward. ‘Like you did me, you mean?’
Charlie chuckled quietly, taking another sip of beer. ‘Lexi was never a whore, Angie. She was just mixed-up, messed-up…’ His eyes met hers again, boring deep, still holding he
r gaze. ‘She thought she was in love.’
‘Love didn’t cause all of this, Charlie.’
Charlie drained his beer, slamming the bottle down on to the bar and standing up.
‘We need to talk,’ Angie repeated.
‘We don’t.’
She stood up, too, following him out of the clubhouse. ‘No, you don’t get to walk away from me, you don’t get to do that. You keep my daughter’s pregnancy a secret, you…’
He swung around to face her. ‘Our daughter.’
‘Jesus… you keep that a secret, you don’t tell me she’s had a son, you don’t tell me she’s been sleeping with Coby Walker…’
He narrowed his eyes as he continued to stare at her. ‘Because that is none of your business.’
‘He got her pregnant, Charlie.’
‘I know. It all went on under my roof, remember?’
‘And you shouldn’t have let it happen.’ Angie’s voice was quiet, but there was an underlying tone of desperation there, of regret.
‘It had already happened, Angie.’
She stared at him, frowning slightly. ‘I don’t…’
‘Long before he got her pregnant.’
Angie’s frown deepened, her eyes searching Charlie’s for some kind of explanation. ‘What the hell are you talking about?’
‘What happened between her and Shane, Angie… this affair she was supposed to have had with him. Shane he… he had nothing to do with anything. She wasn’t sleeping with him. She never was. Not back then, anyway.’
Angie’s head was spinning now. She didn’t understand any of this, none of it was making sense. She sat down on a bench by one of the tables outside, still staring at Charlie.
He leant back against the wall, his expression calm, a strange kind of relief almost taking over. ‘She was sleeping with Coby.’
Angie’s eyes widened. ‘I… I don’t… I don’t understand…’
‘Right here, under this roof, Angie. Your clubhouse. Our daughter, and the one man you would never have picked for her. That’s who she was cheating on Jesse with. Not Shane. She was fucking Coby. So if anyone should have made sure all of this hadn’t happened it was you. And Tay.’
‘Oh, Jesus,’ Angie whispered, a state of confusion she’d never felt before filling her head. ‘Jesus!’
Charlie sat down next to her, leaning forward, his elbows resting on his knees as he stared out at the compound at work, the noise from the garage, the sound of chatter and good natured banter filling the yard; the thud of heavy rock music coming from inside the clubhouse.
‘I still… I can’t get my head around this,’ Angie whispered, her eyes fixed on her hands that were balled-up into fists on her lap.
‘She was going through all that shit with Jesse. She was questioning the club, it’s morals; trying to cope with the fact Jesse was pushing her away and fighting the reasons why. She was confused, she was trying to get her head around crap she couldn’t work out.’
‘And, what? Coby just happened to be the shoulder offered up to lean on?’
‘I think it was a bit more complicated than that,’ Charlie sighed. ‘Coby was the older man, someone she’d known since she’d been a kid; her stepfather’s VP – somebody who Lexi may have seen, at the time, as being out of bounds, almost. Dangerous. She wanted to rebel, hit out…’
‘Are you saying she threw herself at him? Just to prove a point?’
‘That’s what it sounds like, from what I can gather. A stupid game, something that probably should have been nothing more than a one-off. But our daughter was playing that game hard, and he wasn’t thinking straight, and if she’s standing there practically begging him to sleep with her, what the hell was the guy supposed to do?’
‘Walk away,’ Angie said quietly, still staring down at her balled-up fists. ‘He should have walked away.’
‘Oh, he tried. Believe me, he tried. He assured me he did all he could to ignore her. He tried telling her to stop, tried pushing her away, but you were there, Angie. You saw what she was like back then, the way she was acting…’
‘You saying it’s my fault? That I should have reined her in? Jesus, Charlie, she was twenty-six years old, she wasn’t some wayward teenager.’
‘She was acting like one.’
‘I am not responsible for Coby Walker’s inability to keep his dick under control. He should have walked away.’
‘And he was never gonna do that. Not really. She could have chosen any one of those guys and none of them would have walked away from that. Not if she’s putting it out there on a plate for them. They’re gonna take it. Aren’t they?’
‘That’s our daughter you’re talking about, and you’re making her sound like some cheap porn star.’
‘Like you said, Angie, she was twenty-six years old. She was beautiful, and young, and by all accounts she was flaunting everything the good Lord up there had given her. Coby was a forty year old man. There was only ever one way that was gonna end.’
Angie closed her eyes, balling her fists even tighter, her nails digging deep into the palms of her hands. ‘It wasn’t just the once, was it?’
Charlie shook his head. ‘It went on for a while, a good few months.’
‘And you knew this was happening?’
Charlie shook his head again. ‘The first I heard about it was when I got a call from Lexi. She was scared, Angie. Scared people were starting to suspect something was going on. So she had to tell me. She had to tell someone.’
‘You should have called me,’ Angie said quietly.
‘She was panicking, crying, she didn’t know what to do. She just knew that if people found out about her and Coby… I had to do something, Angie. She’s our daughter, and I love her so much, no matter what she’s done. So we… we set the whole thing with her and Shane up. Made it look like she’d been having some kind of affair with him, not Coby. Made sure someone caught them, so there was no doubt as to who it was she’d been with.’
‘You should have called me,’ Angie repeated.
‘You would have told Tay. And even though Coby was Tay’s closest friend, his biggest ally, you know as well as I do… you know what he would’ve done. Coby would have lost everything – his VP patch, his place at the table… he would’ve been cast out, Angie. The club would have banished him. And he didn’t deserve that.’
‘But Shane did?’ She looked at her ex-husband. ‘So, what was he, huh? Shane? What was he? A scapegoat? Some poor, innocent bastard you used to cover Coby’s tracks?’
It was Charlie’s turn to look down. ‘Shane had no problem with helping me out, Angie. He was a willing participant. And somebody had to do it because I wasn’t willing to let Coby take the fall.’
‘Jesus Christ…’ Angie sighed, an almost maniacal laugh pushing its way to the surface. ‘I don’t believe you… You stood there and let Shane take the blame for something he didn’t even do… Coby messed with our daughter, Charlie!’
‘And she messed with him. But he was – he is – too important to this club, and he needs this place just as much as we need him. Yes, he was weak, he was thinking with his dick…’ Charlie pushed a hand through his hair, sitting back and sighing heavily. ‘Just before the set-up with Shane, Coby told Lexi it was over. That it couldn’t go on. Because that’s what I told him to do. I thought it was for the best. I was never sure it could’ve worked, never certain he could make her happy. So, you see, I did try to put an end to it. But, you know, maybe nobody could have prevented it from starting. Lexi wanted him, for whatever reason. And she wasn’t gonna stop until she got him.’
Angie’s expression was still confused. ‘All this… all that stuff about Shane threatening to bring you down, take over the Newcastle chapter, was that… was that true?’
Charlie looked down again. ‘No.’
‘But you… we killed him! Coby went over there and he…’ She stood up, pacing the floor, raking a hand backwards and forwards through her hair as she tried to get her head around things
she could never have thought possible. ‘He… he’s dead, Charlie. And we…’
‘He’s very much alive.’
Angie stopped in her tracks, standing perfectly still as she stared at Charlie. ‘He’s alive? Jesus Christ! I don’t believe this is happening.’ She sat back down, her breathing growing heavier, faster, as a kind of panic started to take hold. ‘What the hell is going on here, Charlie?’
‘Tay needed to believe all the bullshit I was feeding him. He needed to believe that the club was in danger, that we had a traitor in the ranks. And he needed to believe that that traitor had to be dealt with.’
‘Why – why did you ask for Coby specifically?’
‘Because I can trust him.’
‘Even after what he did to Lexi.?’
‘She was as much to blame for that as he was, Angie, we’ve been through this. She gave him no choice.’
Angie couldn’t help a small, cynical laugh from escaping. ‘Always the woman’s fault, huh?’
‘That isn’t what I meant.’
‘By asking for Coby, didn’t you even stop to think about the consequences his being over there could create? After what happened with Lexi?’
‘She wasn’t supposed to be there, Angie. Was she? And give Coby his due, he stayed away for as long as he could, he tried. He really did. But, just like before, she ran to him. He didn’t go to her.’
‘And once again, he could have – should have walked away.’
‘It wasn’t that easy.’
‘It was that easy. You could’ve made it that easy.’
Charlie sat forward again, clasping his hands together, but he said nothing.
‘So, you set everything up, staged it all, made us all think Shane was a traitor as well as a man who’d betrayed another brother. You made us believe that he deserved to die – for something he never did? What kind of man does that make you, Charlie?’
Charlie turned his head to look at her, his eyes hard, cold. ‘A man who doesn’t forget what his best friend did to him. A man who remembers betrayal like it was yesterday.’
‘I can’t get my head around this shit.’
‘Shane has been well compensated for everything he’s had to go through. Because he’s a good man. And I think he’ll be an asset to this chapter.’
Revolution (The Lone Riders MC Series Book #1) Page 28
