‘You were Jesse’s old lady, Lexi.’
‘I’m well aware of what I was, Mum. And I know that what I did back then was cheap and dangerous and all kinds of wrong, but…’ She hung her head. ‘He fought as hard as he could. I just pushed him too far.’ She looked back up at Angie. ‘And now look where we are. Because now I love him so much it kills me, but what’s happening over at the compound… I’m not sure I understand any of that.’
Angie reached out and took Ozzie from her, cradling him in her arms, leaning over to kiss his forehead. ‘No. Neither do I, baby.’
‘What’s gonna happen, Mum?’
Lexi’s eyes were almost child-like as she looked at Angie, and for a fleeting second her daughter was fourteen all over again, asking her the very same question she’d asked her the day they’d left Newcastle. ‘I don’t know, darlin’. I really don’t. I guess that’s something we’re just gonna have to let the men work out.’
Lexi pushed both hands through her hair, sighing heavily.
Angie rocked Ozzie gently in her arms, looking over her shoulder into the kitchen, nodding slowly at the figure who’d just walked in. ‘There’s someone here to see you, Lexi.’ Angie stood up, stepping back into the kitchen as the figure stepped out. ‘I’ll look after Ozzie. Leave you two alone.’
Lexi looked up, her stomach dipping, her throat tightening as she tried to catch her breath. ‘This is crazy,’ she whispered as Shane sat down next to her. ‘I feel like I’m gonna wake up any minute now and find these past couple of weeks have all been nothing but some fucked-up dream.’
Shane clasped his hands together between his open knees, staring out into the yard. ‘I’m sorry, Lexi.’ He turned to face her. ‘I really am.’
She didn’t know what to say. She was so over all this, all the crap and the lies and the shit this club dealt out. She was over it.
‘But I love your dad. He’s given me the kind of security I could never have found on the outside…’
‘Where were you?’ she asked, facing him head on – this man she’d thought was dead. Killed by the man she loved. The father of her baby. ‘Where did they hide you?’
Shane kept his eyes locked on hers. ‘I’ve been with the Vegas chapter.’
‘Jesus Christ, this just gets better,’ Lexi said, unable to keep the almost hysterical laugh out of her voice. ‘That’s where Tay was just a few weeks ago… did he…?’
Shane shook his head. ‘They kept me hidden, in one of the houses the club owns just outside of Henderson.’
‘So… the Vegas chapter knew everything?’
Shane nodded, briefly dropping his eyes to the floor. ‘Charlie’s making sure everyone else is up to speed now.’
Lexi laughed again, turning her head away from him, unable to comprehend everything that was going on. ‘I thought you were dead,’ she whispered, exhaling deeply as she tried to get her shit together. She was tougher than this.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘I should have known, really.’ She looked at him, right into his eyes, a part of her still struggling to come to terms with the fact he was there – alive. ‘You would… you would never do what they accused you of doing. What my dad said you were supposed to have done. You’re not that kind of man.’
‘You’d be surprised at the kind of people we can become, when pushed.’
She looked down at her hands clasped tightly together. ‘We had something, Shane. I mean, it wasn’t the greatest relationship, and I know it wasn’t… I know… but we had something. Didn’t we?’
‘You have to understand…’
She stood up, stepping back from him. ‘No. Don’t you dare start telling me I need to understand the way this club works, I know the way this club works. I was born into it, it’s been my life for thirty-five fucking years so don’t tell me I need to understand how it all works. Don’t. I know your loyalty is to my dad first and foremost, Jesus, I get that. I so fucking get it. But this… I will never understand this.’
Shane got up, walking over to her, but Lexi continued to step away, holding out her hand to stop him from coming any closer. ‘We all need a new start, Lexi.’
‘I have no problem with that, Shane. Yeah, we all need a new start, we do. It’s how we’ve got here that bothers me.’
He tried to move towards her again, and this time she let him. ‘I need this club, Lex. And I was willing to do anything I had to to show Charlie my loyalty.’
‘Well, you certainly managed that.’
‘I didn’t want any of this to hurt you, believe me.’
She stared up into his eyes. ‘I’m not sure what to believe anymore.’
He put his hands in his pockets, bowing his head. ‘I loved it here, in Paradise.’ He looked back up at her. ‘This chapter, it made me feel like part of a family, and that wasn’t something I’d ever experienced before. For the first time in my life I actually felt as though I belonged somewhere.’
‘And yet you were quite willing to allow them all to turn against you, treat you like some kind of leper; run you out of town for something you didn’t even do? You were willing to cover up what Coby did? You could have said no, Shane. You could have done that.’
‘Your dad asked me to help because he trusted me. I had no ties, no commitments… and it was what you wanted, Lexi…’
‘No, don’t you dare blame me for this. I didn’t ask you to do what you did, but I was grateful – don’t get me wrong. What you did for me, for Coby… because what they would’ve done to him…’ She stopped talking, closing her eyes and breathing in deeply. ‘I was twenty-six years old, acting like some out-of-control teenager. I fucked-up, ran to daddy, and he got you to cover up my shit for me. How is that fair, Shane? So… so maybe it should be me apologizing to you.’
He shrugged, his hands still dug deep in his pockets. ‘I knew when I was patched-in that anything could be asked of me.’
‘But what you did… what we asked you to do… nobody should have to put up with that shit. I should have grown up, faced it all head on, sorted out my own mess.’
‘They would have cast him out, Lex. At the worst they would’ve killed him. And you know that.’
She closed her eyes again, leaning back against the wall. ‘The accident… who was in the truck?’
‘Coby.’ Shane’s voice was quiet, his eyes staring down at the ground.
Lexi turned to look at him, waiting until he raised his head, their eyes meeting. ‘Coby?’
‘He knew how to crash it without doing too much damage to himself. Only suffered a few bruises, not even a cracked rib. But your dad and me, we were close by, just in case anything went wrong. And to clean up the mess… Because nobody was supposed to know this had happened. Nobody was really dead, so if the authorities had found out…’
‘And how the hell were they kept out of it, Shane? How did they…?’
‘Tay has Sheriff Bailey, your dad – he has his own payroll, Lexi.’
Lexi turned away, taking another deep breath.
‘All we had to do was make sure the truck looked in bad shape,’ Shane continued. ‘Coby had got out before it blew. But the story was I’d been trapped inside. Burned to hell. That’s why it was closed casket when they brought the body back to the clubhouse.’
‘Jesus Christ,’ Lexi whispered, her stomach turning over so fast it was making her feel sick. She remembered Coby’s chest being covered in bruises when they’d had sex, his hands cut and scarred. She just hadn’t asked questions because, at the time, all she’d cared about was having him back in her bed. ‘They buried an empty casket?’ she asked quietly, the nausea slowly rising.
Shane leant back against the wall beside her. ‘The whole funeral was a set-up.’
‘I was told to keep away,’ she said quietly, the confusion surrounding the days that had followed Shane’s “death” flooding her head all over again. ‘For my own good, Dad said. Whatever the hell that was supposed to mean. But I didn’t even question why, at the time. Because I k
new better than to ask. I just did as I was told. I was only allowed to come back to the clubhouse once the wake had begun.’
‘That was because there was no official funeral. How could there be? There hadn’t actually been a death. Charlie had set it all up, made it look like I was getting some kind of club send-off worthy of a hero, but none of it was real. It just had to look that way, to everyone else.’
Lexi felt the nausea rise again as the realization of just what kind of man her father really was hit home – the people he knew, the situations he could create. It made her feel sick to her stomach. ‘I can’t get my head around this,’ she whispered. ‘This isn’t… this isn’t real…’
Nobody said anything for a few seconds, both of them letting the enormity of the situation sink in, the atmosphere around them peaceful, calm, belying the reality.
‘Look, Lexi, I… I know we didn’t really have sex that night… the night Kip walked in on us,’ Shane began, his eyes down on the ground. ‘It was a set-up…’
‘They seem to be quite common around here.’
Shane waited a couple of beats before he spoke again. ‘It was all an act, I know that, but… when we were in Newcastle, away from everything…’
Lexi looked at him, willing him to look back at her now. She wanted to make sure he was really there, that it was really him talking to her. ‘I still missed Coby with every inch of my heart, Shane. I’d fucked with Jesse’s head, hurt him in ways I’d never really meant to, but we were a mess, everything was a mess… and I missed Coby so much. So fucking much.’
Shane raised his gaze, their eyes once more locking. ‘I wanted to be there for you.’
‘And you were,’ she whispered, smiling slightly. ‘Even after everything we’d put you through you were still there, and I will never forget that.’
‘We did have something, Lexi.’
‘Yeah. I guess we did.’
‘But I don’t think you ever loved me, did you?’
She broke the stare, looking the other way. ‘My head was a fucking mess, Shane. Coby, everything I’d done to Jesse, being driven out of Paradise by people I loved, people I thought of as family…’ She faced him again. ‘I turned to you because you’d been through all that, too.’
‘When we finally made love, for real, did you… were there any feelings there?’
She felt her heart shatter slightly, her stomach dipping so low she had to take a deep breath to compose herself. ‘You made me feel safe, not so alone. And I… yeah, I felt something for you. But it could never have worked, Shane. Not really. Everything was too much of a mess.’
It was his turn to break the stare. ‘And that’s why I was quite willing to help Charlie with whatever he needed me to do.’
‘So… if we’d… if we’d actually fallen in love, if our relationship had worked, are you saying you wouldn’t have been so keen to get involved?’
‘I would’ve had something worth sticking around for, wouldn’t I?’
‘I’m so sorry, Shane.’
He looked at her, that beautiful smile of his that she’d never forgotten lighting up his handsome face. ‘I guess I couldn’t compete with Coby, huh?’
‘Nobody was competing with anyone,’ she said quietly.
He held out his hand and she took it, closing her eyes again as he squeezed it tight. ‘Are you happy, Lexi?’
She opened her eyes, looking up into the dark night sky, focusing on a cluster of tiny stars twinkling away in the blackness above her, like a myriad of minute fairy lights. ‘I don’t know. I don’t know anything anymore. I thought everything was working itself out, that we were finally on the way to creating some kind of stability.’
‘That’s exactly what we’re trying to do.’
She looked at him, right at him. ‘What? By faking deaths and carrying out two-decade-year-old grudges? How does that solve anything?’
‘It’s a fucked-up world we live in, Lex. We’re just trying to sort it out the best way we can.’
She kept a hold of his hand, letting him pull her into his arms, and she held on to him, almost terrified to let go in case he disappeared again.
‘Forgive your daddy, okay?’ he whispered into her hair as he held her close. ‘Know the man that he is, and live with that. Because, deep down inside, everything he does is for his family.’ He pulled back slightly so he could look at her. ‘And forgive Coby. Please, Lexi, after all you’ve been through… forgive him and love him and realize that he’s doing this for you, too. For you, and Ozzie.’
‘He didn’t have me or Ozzie when he came over to Newcastle.’
‘And you don’t think part of the reason he came over to England was because he wanted you?’
‘I wasn’t supposed to be there, Shane.’
He pulled her forward, gently kissing her forehead. ‘But he had hope, darlin’. And sometimes that’s all any of us are left with.’
***
‘I never thought you’d do this to me, Coby.’ Tay’s voice carried a tone of defeated resignation. ‘I thought we were friends, allies. I thought we were tight.’
Coby kicked the chair at the head of the table out from underneath it, but as yet he hadn’t actually taken his newly appointed seat in front of the gavel. Something still felt strangely odd about taking the place of a man he’d once respected, a man he still loved, despite everything. They were still brothers, still part of this club. It was just that the roles had changed slightly. ‘Shit happened, Tay. A mess that got out of control. And this is what we need to do to finally start putting things right.’
Tay closed the door, leaning back against it. ‘There’re a few shell-shocked people out there.’
Coby looked at his friend – because that’s what he still considered Tay to be. ‘I’m sorry it all had to happen this way.’
‘No one’s more sorry than me, Coby. But, hey, I gotta give you some credit here – you played one hell of a game. Because I just didn’t see this coming.’
Coby hung his head, digging his hands into his pockets. ‘I need to do this.’ He looked up, his eyes once more meeting Tay’s. ‘At first, okay, it was all for the club. You weren’t… you weren’t treating it with the respect it deserved. And you are one of this club’s longest serving members, Tay, so that just didn’t sit right with me. But now – now there’s Lexi. And my baby boy. So now I have to do this for them, too. I have to make sure we get out of the shit you got us into. Settle our differences with our rivals. Start building some bridges. Start making a go – a real go – of the garage, The Candy Cave, and the boxing club.’
Tay lowered his gaze, pushing a hand through his hair, letting out a loud and heavy sigh.
‘Are you with me here, Tay?’
Tay waited a few beats before looking back up at Coby. ‘I don’t have much choice, do I?’
‘I need you on board because you want to be. Not because you feel you have to. This club is still as much yours as it is mine.’
‘Which is why I can’t ever walk away from it, Coby. You know that.’
Coby held out his hand, and Tay walked towards him, finally taking it, the two men shaking their way to an uneasy truce.
‘You need a good VP. A strong man. Someone who’s willing to go that extra mile for you, Cobe. And Charlie’s right – what better man to fill that role than Shane? I mean, shit! There’s another man who played one hell of a game.’
Coby nodded, letting go of Tay’s hand. ‘It’s just all gonna take a bit of getting used to. But I guess we just have to give everyone some time to get their heads around everything.’ He looked out of the window to his right, the one that looked out into the clubhouse. Jesse was sitting on the couch, his head in his hands, and Coby felt a stab of pain cut through him for a man who hadn’t asked for any of this. ‘You go with Charlie.’ He turned back to face Tay. ‘Get this meeting with the Mexicans sorted. Take Luca and Blake with you.’
‘What about the sit-down with the Cabos and Black Ravens? Want me to get on to that?’
Tay looked over at the large wooden table that took up most of the space in the room. At the chairs strewn all around it after one hell of a meeting. At the gavel laid down at the top of the table. ‘You’re gonna have to sit in that chair at some point, you know. Now you’ve got that President’s patch on your cut.’
Coby looked down at the patch on his chest, then over at the chair that had yet to feel the presence of its new occupant. ‘It still doesn’t feel real.’
‘Hey, you wanted the reins, brother,’ Tay said, opening the door. ‘Now take them.’
***
‘You okay, son?’ Charlie asked, sitting down next to Kip at the bar.
Kip shrugged, taking a swig of his beer, not looking at his father. ‘Everything’s fine.’ He turned to face Charlie. ‘I mean, I’m a Sergeant-at-Arms now, aren’t I? Thanks for the promotion, Dad.’
His sarcasm wasn’t lost on Charlie. ‘Shane is the best man to be Coby’s VP, Kip. It’s not a snub to you, believe me, kiddo. It’s just that – he’s the best man. Okay? He’s coming back to this chapter, and he’s gonna help get it back to where it needs to be. Things really will start to settle down now, I promise. With Coby at the helm, and Shane on his left.’
‘But everybody knows it’s still gonna be you running things, isn’t that right? Even from all those miles away it’ll still be you pulling the strings, sending out instructions. Coby’s just your puppet.’
Charlie’s stare grew colder, his voice low and tough. ‘I know you had a great deal of respect for Tay, son. I know how you feel about your stepdad, and I understand that. But he was killing this chapter, this club. And in doing that he was killing your future. You and Lexi, you are the most important people in the world to me, and this – this place, this is your future.’
Revolution (The Lone Riders MC Series Book #1) Page 30
