She and Daniel had plans to head up to his hometown after the game. They were going to stay with his mom for a few days. Since he didn’t have a house there, he normally bunked at the trucking company headquarters when he was in town, or stayed with his family. The appearance of Mason and a handful of Rebels made her feel like their plans might be changing.
Mica mentally reminded herself these two men walking towards her were prepared to do nearly anything to keep her safe. She was okay. She was safe, and so was everyone else…as long as everyone played by the right set of rules, namely theirs.
Standing, she lifted her face for a quick kiss as Daniel slipped an arm around her waist, pulling her tightly into his side. Smiling, she waited patiently as his brothers congratulated him again and his mother pulled his face down for a kiss on the cheek.
Mason stood at her other side, careful not to touch her, but looking searchingly at her face. “Babe,” he started, shaking his head, “what’s wrong?”
At his question, Daniel’s gaze swung to her, and he considered her expression much as Mason had. His arm tightened around her, and she swallowed hard. Mason spoke again, “I can feel you vibrating from here, Mica. Something’s up. What is it?”
Turning her head to look Mason in the face, she wanted to see his reaction when she asked him, “I take it you know that Duck is Reuben Nelms?” Even looking at him as closely as she was, she still nearly missed the nanosecond of a flinch he gave at the name, but she could never have missed the way Daniel’s arm tightened around her at the same time.
“Mason, you wanna talk about something, babe?” she hissed at him. Pushing hard and carelessly against Daniel’s arm, she freed herself to stalk a step closer to Mason. “You wanna tell me about Reuben? You wanna tell me how long you really knew about Ray? Was it when you heard the story from my lips, or was it months ago…maybe years ago? Have you been walking around with that in your head for a long time? With my history? Is that why you inserted yourself in my life? Is that why you are my friend?”
Picking her hands up, she placed them palm first against Mason’s chest. “Was that the only reason, babe? Huh? How about the entourage you brought to a hockey game tonight? You wanna tell me about the Rebel brothers up here on the concourse, and why you are wearing your cut?”
She pushed against his chest hard, shoving him back a step, her voice rising in volume. “You wanna freakin’ tell me what Reuben Nelms was doing in our backyard at a freakin’ Rebel barbeque? You wanna tell me who invited him onto our property? To interact with people I love?” She swept her hand out to indicate Daniel and his family.
Mason stood there, absorbing her fear and anger stoically. He wasn’t giving her any kind of emotional reaction, nothing to springboard off of and keep her emotions running high, so that took some of her anger away, as he probably knew it would. He was such a control freak he wouldn’t even let her have a hissy fit.
She growled at him, “I can’t even stay mad at you, dangit, but that doesn’t mean you get a free pass here. You got something you want to talk about? With me? About me? To me? Because I found lots that I want to chat with you about.” She paused a second, waiting. Scowling, she punched his shoulder. “Get a clue. This is where you say something, Mason.”
Daniel’s arms snaked around her, one low by her hips, and one higher across her chest. She rounded on him, pushing to get away. “Get off. Get your hands off me. You are no better, Daniel. You met him. You knew he was there. Why would you not tell me about Reuben?” Looking between the two men, she yelled, “You both knew Ray. You knew the history. So why?”
Mason frowned at her, dragging her attention back to him. “Be pissed at me, babe. This was my call, not Daniel’s. Let’s give your man his night and we can talk tomorrow. I’m staying with J.J. tonight, and me and him will be over at Darlene’s for breakfast, if that’s okay.” The last part was aimed at Daniel’s mother, who nodded at Mason. “Okay, we got that decided, now let’s go celebrate.”
Mica opened her mouth and Mason just looked at her. She closed and opened her mouth a couple times, thinking she probably looked like a goldfish out of water. She was also thinking Mason was right; she was stealing Daniel’s night. She didn’t want to be the girlfriend that always came with drama. They could go stay at his mom’s, have a few beers, and go to bed. Tomorrow would be soon enough to continue the hissy fit.
Turning back to Daniel and tamping down her anger and fear, she closed her eyes and swallowed, finally nodding her head briskly. “Okay, let’s go. Who’s riding with who?”
58 -
Duck’s show
Sitting in Darlene’s kitchen in the thin light of early morning, looking out the back window and drinking coffee alone, Mica still wasn’t sure she wanted to hear Mason’s responses to her questions from the night before.
At Mason’s request, she hadn’t brought up the issues again, and they all had a surprisingly good time talking about hockey, goals, hits, and the championship—what the championship meant for the franchise, and for the players. Mica learned a lot about the off-season routine, and was glad she’d have more of Daniel’s time for a while. Of course, his other businesses would fill in, because they’d been neglected a little during the playoff series.
It was a nice, normal celebration that went into the early morning hours. Then, she was sleeping next to the man she loved, who was an awesome cuddler. Picking up her coffee mug and smiling, she heard gravel crunching, and then subdued male voices coming into and through the house.
Expecting Mason and J.J. to walk in, she leapt off her stool when she didn’t recognize the first person through the door. Standing there, deciding whether to flee out the backdoor, her hands began trembling when she realized this man had to be Reuben.
He was big…really big. Both tall and wide, and dark-skinned like Ray, showing their mother’s Hispanic background, he had dark hair and a roughly hewn, strong face. As he stood there at ease, with his arms at his sides and his palms relaxed and facing down, she had a hard time trying to be afraid of him. He just didn’t seem dangerous to her. He was followed into the room by four additional Rebel members she didn’t know, and then by J.J. and Dickie.
Lifting her chin, she spoke to him, asking in a small voice, “You here to do me harm?” She saw that Daniel and Mason had both crowded into the room from the side door. This was a lot of men in one room, and the tension level had just ratcheted up significantly. Standing straighter, her hands in fists at the end of stiff arms, she took a single, long step towards Reuben. “I asked you if you were here to do harm, Reuben.”
He shook his head in denial, his voice rumbling up from his chest as he told her, “No, Michaela, I’m only here now, because I’ve been commanded to present myself by my club president. I would not have had this meeting with you otherwise,” he looked at her for a minute, “but it could be I’ve been wrong, and this meeting is necessary.” Pulling out a stool, he sat down heavily, glancing over at Mason. “Just tell me what you want to know. I’m here to help, Michaela. I’ve only ever been here to help.”
Staring at him, she saw the pain he was carrying and knew this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. She suspected it probably wasn’t one they needed to have with witnesses either.
Stepping around him, she advanced on the other men in the room and made shooing motions with her hands. “I want a clear freakin’ room. Everybody out,” she pointed at Daniel and Mason, “and that means you too, guys.” She scowled at them until they started moving, but Mason stayed hovering in the doorway until she gave him a confident chin lift, and a wink.
Grabbing another mug, she poured a cup of coffee and set it down in front of Reuben. Moving back to her stool, she waited across the breakfast bar from him. He sat there and wrapped his hands around the mug, staring down into the dark liquid quietly, letting the heat seep into his fingers.
Tucking her hair behind her ears, she started, “I remember you, Reuben. I do. I might not have recognized you right away here, ou
t of context, but you are familiar to me, and I think I’d have known who you are eventually. I remember you had a beautiful sorrel mare you used for roping, and I helped you with a hock injury she had. We weren’t close, but I’d have figured you out if you spent any time around me.” She took a drink of her coffee. “So, start…I want to know, and dangit…it matters to me, so be straight. How did you wind up in Chicago, and then in the Rebel Wayfarers motor club, and finally, at a party in my backyard?”
His deep voice startled her as he corrected, “I think we need to start a little further back than that, Michaela, to find out what motivates me to be here.” He took in a breath. “I knew what Ray did, what he did to you. I knew when it started, and I knew when it got bad…and then I knew when it got really bad.”
She recoiled at his words, her shoulders drawing inwards ever so slightly. She knew he’d seen her physical reaction when his features tightened. Reuben leaned back a little on his stool, giving her a few more inches of space. “I was a coward and I left. I just left; I walked away…and you were alone with him. I went home to work the stock business for Dad, but I couldn’t get out of my head how bad it had gotten before I walked away. I wondered how it had turned out, what you had to deal with at my brother’s hands. It was something I thought about every day.”
His embarrassment was in his voice as he continued, “When I couldn’t live with myself anymore, I finally swallowed my shame and headed back to the rodeo to find you. I went back to the circuit, and my only plan was to get you out somehow, but you’d already managed to get yourself free of him.” He swallowed tightly. “When I found him,” he cleared his throat, “um…Ray was…um, yeah…angry doesn’t really touch it. Furious is a good word. He talked about you all the time, ranting about how ‘you were his’ and ‘you had no right to leave him’.”
Scrubbing his hands down the front of his thighs, he picked up his mug and took another drink of coffee. “He wasn’t shy talking about you and the things he’d done to you. He also wasn’t shy talking about what he intended to do if he ever found you again—when he found you. I spent just a couple days with him, and found what I needed to do. I found my calling in life, maybe. It was you. I wanted to keep you safe from him, so you’d never have to worry about it again, so you’d never experience anything like that again.
“It took me quite a while, but I tracked down a doctor in Tulsa. I got him drunk and learned what had happened there. Then I followed the same pattern in Wichita. That doc was tougher to crack, but before I was done, I had a general area you’d escaped to, but because he wouldn’t tell me anything other than he really felt you were safe, I didn’t have specifics with where. So, I had Chicago, just that…Chicago in the Midwest. I had no idea how I was going to find you when you didn’t want to be found. Your family had no idea where you were. Even your best friend said you had just fallen off the edge of the world.
“I was on my second week in Chicago, nearly going street to street looking into the face of every dark-haired woman I saw on the sidewalk. I found myself in this great old bar, talking to the bartender. He told me the greatest probability, given your age, was that you were probably enrolled in college. He pointed me towards U of I. I also found an old acquaintance at the bar; Slate was someone I met in West Texas a couple years before. Small world, huh?” She gave him a small smile and nodded her head, giving him the courage to continue his story.
“So with that, I started looking and digging down at U of I. I found a trail that might be you, and then finally found you, and…and I found you were doing well. Really well. That made me happy, because it seemed you were going to be able to put Ray and the things he had done behind you.”
Mica stirred at this. “You came to UI to find me?”
Reuben nodded, sipping his coffee. “After that, after finding you, I went back to the bar and told the guy what happened, that he was right about where you were, and what you were doing. We talked for a long time, and he pulled more and more information out of me, finding out about what kind of person I wanted to be, what made me tick, and what I hated. By the time another two weeks went by, I owned a used Harley Davidson and was a prospect of the Rebel Wayfarers motor club. Even with prospecting in, I tried to make time to take a daily trip down to watch over you. I just…needed to know you were going to be okay.”
He cleared his throat again, taking another sip of coffee. “Over the next few years, I kept tabs on you, mostly just making sure Ray didn’t catch wind of you, but you were doing a really good job of staying low. Staying safe. He didn’t come near; he couldn’t find you.”
“You were healing, I could see, at least physically. You were better every time I saw you. Emotionally, not so much, but physically, you were okay. You kept people at a distance, didn’t have any close friends other than your roommate, Jess. Even then, I could see with the emotional baby steps you were taking, it was like you were finally coming into the light, like you were leaving the taint of Ray’s shadows, and dark places behind.”
He sighed. “Then, I heard there was a rodeo coming to town, and that he had contracted for the livestock. I was afraid you’d want to go watch the events, just for a whiff of the competitive side you’d had to leave behind when you abandoned your old self. I didn’t think you knew Ray was coming. In fact, I was pretty sure you didn’t, but whether you knew or not, if you went to watch, I knew you’d be too close, too vulnerable. He’d be on your doorstep. He could get you, but not if I was close enough to move fast, if needed. I wouldn’t allow it.
“Word came up that Ray showed, so I pulled a couple of my brothers with me, and we all watched over you that week. We shadowed you, and everything was just fine. After the rodeo was over, he loaded up his bulls and left, and you were safe. You were fucking safe. It felt like we dodged a bullet, knowing he’d gotten that close to you, but you were safe.”
“We, my brothers and I, kept track of you through everything. We were there with you for most of the important things, like your graduation. We were proud as we stood in the audience, and we whistled and cheered for you, because you were already ours. We loved you, and you owned us.”
Her eyes welled with tears. “Reuben, that was you? I remember being surprised and thrilled when the shouts came, because I didn’t have any family there that day. It was so unexpected that I cried, but it made the day complete for me. I felt like someone had seen me, really seen me, and was glad for me.”
Reuben nodded, grinning. “Yeah, hell yeah. We were so proud of you, so of course we cheered for you. You were ours.” He continued, “Then you decided to move to Chicago proper. As part of that move, you bought a house right next door to the president of my club, my true brother. I couldn’t believe it; it was like you were drawn to the area.” At this, he grinned, the white slash startling against his dusky skin.
“So then Mason met you as you were moving in. Suddenly, that bartender friend, my president and brother…he started coming into the bar talking about this beauty who had just moved into his neighborhood. He wouldn’t shut up about how pretty and nice, how strong and self-sufficient you were. And hot…that was mentioned too.” He gave her another smile. “He, uh…he didn’t like my response much, because I got up in Mason’s face about respecting you.”
He grinned across the countertop at her. “He pretty quickly put two and two together about the gal I’d been talking about and protecting for years, and his hot, new neighbor. He’d never gone down to UI visiting with us, so he honestly didn’t know who you were when you moved in. He and I talked for a long time, and I tried not to go into too much detail, because I’ve always felt it was your story to tell…or not. I just focused on you being someone important to me, someone who’d been through way too much for her little body to deal with, definitely too much for your emotions to recover from, and that you were off-limits as far as I was concerned.
“Again, I expect you can set the scene if you try hard, Michaela. You know Mason doesn’t do well with sudden changes. He fought it at f
irst, but then he listened to me and understood the importance to me…and for you…and we set out to keep you as safe as possible. Sometimes, even against your wishes.” He smiled at her again, but it faded as he searched her face with his eyes.
“In the end though, nothing I did saved you, and that’s on me. I’ve been watching and tracking my brother for a long time, following him around to see if he’d changed his ways. Never happened. I knew he was still bound to you by his sick, twisted shit, and then I couldn’t save you. I made no difference in the end. I couldn’t save you.” He lowered his head, sipping at his coffee.
His gaze swept up and across her face, focusing on her eyes. “Michaela, I am so sorry for what you went through, for what happened to you at the hands of my family, my blood brother. Words…words will never suffice; they can never make up for what was done to you. I am so sorry.”
She looked at him, chewing on the side of her thumb. She’d sat fairly quiet and still as he spoke, trying not to interrupt, but now, seeing he wanted—no, needed a response to these last statements, she shook her head, denying his words. “Reuben, I learned something early on in life, even before Ray happened. You don’t get to pick your family. You just don’t. You are locked into that association by blood, genes, and luck. That means we don’t get to be judged because of them, our families. We shouldn’t be judged by their decisions, or their behaviors. We are our own products, not that of our family’s.”
She took a deep breath. “Your friends…now that’s a different thing, because those are your chosen influences. You can tell a lot about someone by who they arrange around themselves in support circles, both all the time, and then most especially when they are doing important things…things that matter. You were not responsible for what Ray chose to do, or not do. Ever. In his life. That’s on him, and always has been. Always was his decision, and it should be his consequences. His, not yours.”
Mica (Rebel Wayfarers MC) Page 39
