Why?
Why did I want to fill him in on these things?
I sat in my office staring at his file. I scanned through the information on him, taking it all in. His height. His weight. His stature and his pictures. Those brown eyes and long, luxurious brown hair that had felt so soft between my fingers. I stared at the home address he had on file and scanned my eyes over the telephone number he’d given to us.
Was that really his number?
If I called it, would he pick up on the other end?
I closed the file and tried to get back to work. I had a few clients throughout the day. People who needed help with worker’s compensation claims and people who needed a lawyer for one too many traffic tickets. I had a couple of single mothers that wandered into my office, looking for a lawyer to have pity on them. I took one of the cases pro-bono and sent the other across the hall to Rose.
I couldn’t be certain, but I got the sneaking suspicion she was lying to me about something.
I sank myself into work and tried to get Knox off my mind. But it was hard to do. His file kept taunting me from the filing cabinet. Calling to me in a whisper that sounded eerily like his voice in my ear. If I chanced to close my eyes and take a breath, I could feel his lips on my neck. I could feel his body still pressing into mine.
Fuck. I’d crossed a line with a client I was struggling to come back from.
I knew I needed to forget him. I needed to toss him out of my mind and not think about him until The Dead Souls needed us again. I needed to heed Rose’s advice and keep my damn personal emotions to myself. I couldn’t get emotionally attached to every client we had. If I did, their personal stories and their own heartaches would sink me. It would drain me of all the energy I had and I would be unable to perform the job I’d chosen as my lifetime career.
But it wasn’t simply emotional with Knox.
At least, it didn’t feel like it.
Heaving a heavy sigh, I stood up from my desk. I ripped open my filing cabinet and thumbed through the files. I got to the one that had Knox’s name on it and ripped it from the masses, then flipped it open to find his number.
I committed it to memory before I turned the light off in my office.
Picking up my cell phone, I dialed his number. I sat on a chair in the corner of the room, keeping my voice down so Rose couldn’t hear me. The phone rang and rang on the other end, and for a moment I thought it was a dummy number. A burner phone or something that would endlessly ring until I finally decided to give up.
Until someone picked up on the other line.
“Hello?”
That voice. That low, rumbling, rib-shaking voice. I closed my eyes and bit back a sigh, relishing how it felt wafting over my ears.
“Hello?”
“Knox?”
“Monroe? Is that you?”
“Hey there,” I said. “I wasn’t sure if you were the one who was going to pick up.”
“How did you get this number?” he asked.
“Your file,” I said.
“Using your powers for evil. I can get behind that.”
“Thought you might be impressed,” I said with a grin. “How are you?”
“Doing good. Still healing up, but most of the pain’s gone. You?”
“I’m… okay.”
“That wasn’t very convincing. You all right?”
“I was wondering if we could get together and talk,” I said.
“You wanna talk.”
“Yes. Without the yelling, preferably.”
“About that-”
“No, just… tell me you’ll meet me somewhere,” I said.
“Depends on when you were thinking,” he said.
“When are you free? I can work around it,” I said.
“I’m full up today. Won’t get back to my place ‘til almost seven.”
“Not gonna lie, going to your place doesn’t sound like the most appealing thing right now,” I said.
“I got my bike. I can meet you wherever you want.”
“I have yet to see this bike of yours,” I said.
“Let me come over and you can see it.”
“To my place?” I asked.
“You got one of those, right?”
“Yes, I have a place. Asshole.”
“Screamer.”
“Somehow, I think that’s not really an insult,” I said.
“Never said it was, beautiful.”
I shivered at his voice as I curled my arms around my chest.
“Is this your cell phone?” I asked.
“It is. Though don’t go handing it out to anyone,” Knox said.
“If I text you my address, would you like to come by and talk tonight?” I asked.
“Gimme a time and I’ll be there,” he said.
“Great. I’ll text it to you later. Say, around eight? Do you want me to pick you up something to drink?”
“I’m good. I can bring a beer or two from my place if I need to.”
“It’s just I’m a wine drinker. Not really a beer girl, so I don’t have any at my place,” I said.
“Then I’ll bring some with me. Don’t worry. I don’t expect everyone to drink what I drink.”
I felt a soft smile spread across my cheeks.
“Well, I’ll see you tonight then.”
“See ya tonight. Get me that address. I’ll see you around eight.”
“See you then,” I said. “And Knox?”
“Yep?”
“Thanks for picking up.”
“I almost didn’t. I don’t usually pick up numbers I don’t recognize,” he said.
“Then why did you pick up this one?” I asked.
There was a beat of silence before I heard him draw in a deep breath.
“Because I was hoping it was you,” he said.
His words left me breathless as blood rushed hotly through my veins.
“I’ll see you tonight,” I said breathlessly.
“See ya then, Monroe.”
Chapter 21
Knox
The entire ride to Monroe’s was tense, at best. I’d had a long day with the guys, trying to dig into who the fuck set me up for this kid’s murder. Whoever the hell it was, they weren’t smart. I wasn’t even carrying a damn knife on me that day. All I ever carried was a taser and a fucking gun on my side. If anything else was required, I simply cocked my fist back and punched the shit outta whoever the fuck needed it.
I tried to prepare myself for this talk with Monroe, because I had a feeling it was gonna get bad. She was gonna try to change me again and I was gonna have to tell her that wasn’t how it worked. She was gonna cry or yell or hit me or do some shit she thought was worthy of her emotional state and I was gonna have to give her a hard reality. I didn’t live the kind of life growing up that allowed me a father I could be proud of. A man whose footsteps I could follow in. There was no damn business to hand down or job to take over once he was dead. There was no trust fund set up or money to take after he was gone.
My father was a pathetic piece of slime that hung my momma out to dry.
My mother couldn’t work. Not full time, at least. Her pregnancy with me had been rough, and she sustained a lot of injuries during labor with me. I was sitting so high up in her fucking body that when she contracted, I went up instead of down. My ass jammed right into her lungs and collapsed them on the fucking spot. They had to rush her into an operating room to get me out and save her life, but I’d done so much fucking damage that she couldn’t fully bounce back.
One of her lungs was permanently damaged, her spine was permanently misaligned, and her kidneys still didn’t function the way they needed to anymore. I messed my momma up, and that came with a lot of anger spewed my way. My father blamed me for our financial problems. Said he couldn’t float the family by himself and expected me to get a job when I was old enough. There was always some sort of fighting at night when I was in bed. My momma would try to tell my father to shut the hell up when it ca
me to that kinda stuff and my daddy would tell her I was the reason we couldn’t pay our damn bills.
Another mouth to feed that couldn’t work.
He took off when I was fourteen. Tired of never having any money and tired of paying for my momma and I to ‘mooch off him’. He left one night and never came back and I’ll never forget how hard my momma cried. How many tears she shed that night wondering how the fuck she was gonna feed me. For two years after that, I watched her bounce around from one part time job to the other, never in the same place twice and doing whatever she needed to get money to feed my sorry ass.
That was when The Dead Souls came into my life.
That was when I found out what family was supposed to do.
I rolled with the club and got myself into some trouble. Tried to prove how tough I was and how no one could push me around. There were some men in the club, dead and gone now as I rose through the ranks, but they straightened me out. Taught me what it meant to be a real man. Taught me what it meant to provide for family and taught me a lesson or two in loyalty. I found my place in their charades and was made a prospect, and the moment that happened the money started flowing.
And it wasn’t long after that money started that Canyon was dropped on my porch.
Momma called me crying. Said someone had left a baby on her porch. There had been a note attached to her, signed by a one-night stand whose face I couldn’t recall until Canyon started to blossom into it. A random girl on a drunken night when I had money to throw around after paying off my momma’s house. A celebration to being inducted, being the provider my father was too pussy to be, and a celebration to the family I’d found.
And created that night, apparently.
I lived this life not because I had to, but because I wanted to. Because even through it all, those men at the clubhouse saw me through everything. Through the fights and the anger I held against my father. Through the confusion of having a baby girl I didn’t know about and being there when I yelled about what the fuck I was supposed to do with her. They had my back. Them. Brewer and Grave and Mick. Diesel and Rock and the rest of the gang.
All of them had been there.
And no woman, especially Monroe, was ever gonna get me to turn my damn back on them.
I pulled up to her apartment complex and grinned. Despite what I knew was coming, it would be good to see her again. That fire in her emerald eyes matched the glow of the sunset I’d watched on my way here, and her strawberry blonde hair reminded me of the sandy dunes of the desert I looked at every time I was at the clubhouse.
Damn. This was gonna be a hard conversation.
I walked up to Monroe’s apartment and knocked on the door. I had a couple of ice cold beers in my hand as I waited for her to open the door. I heard footsteps behind it and a light sigh, and it made me grin. I could tell she was just as nervous for this conversation as I was, and I figured I could leverage that to keep the conversation peaceful.
“Hey there,” Monroe said.
I raked my eyes down her form and took in what she was wearing. A dark green gown with a matching robe tied tightly around her waist. It matched her eyes and made her hair stand out. The hair that was piled high on her head with nothing but a clip and a prayer.
“Hey,” I said.
“Come on in. I figured we could talk on the porch.”
She led me into her apartment and it seemed very average for a woman like her. I expected vibrant colors or some sort of minimalistic shit furniture that wobbled whenever someone sat on it. But it was pretty bland. Tan walls. Popcorn ceilings. Laminate hardwood floors and hand-me-down furniture. No pictures were on the wall and there were no decorations on any side tables or anything. She had only what she needed and there was nothing else there.
It was almost like she didn’t regard the place as home.
I watched her sit down in wrought iron chair outside. Her eyes were cast towards the horizon as her fingers wrapped around a wine glass. The crimson liquid sloshed around in the glass as I stepped onto the porch, taking a seat beside her before I popped open a can.
“It amuses me that you actually brought your own beer,” Monroe said.
“Told ya I would, and I’m a man of my word,” I said.
“Which means you’ll still be going back to the club,” she said.
“Monroe, I get it. You wanna change me and help me find a new way of life and all that. But you gotta understand, these are my brothers. My family. The family I was born into, it wasn’t the greatest. I got a momma that can’t work well because of having me and a sister that relies on me to provide for them so they can live the life they deserve.”
“You have options, if that’s the issue,” she said.
“It’s not,” I said. “It’s more than that. I went through some shit in my teenage years, and they were there to help. Men in that club who have been dead and gone for years taught me lessons my own father should’ve. Lesson about loyalty and hard work and what it meant to really have a family. What it meant to be someone a person could lean on. They got me through hell and back. It’s not that I can’t turn my back on them. It’s that I don’t want to.”
“What’s wrong with your mother?” she asked.
“Bad back. Bad lung. Bad kidneys. Shit like that.”
“You said it was because of her pregnancy?”
“Yeah. I was a rough one.”
“Doesn’t shock me,” she said with a grin.
It lit up her eyes and I had problems pulling my gaze from her face.
“What happened to her?” Monroe asked.
“Long story short, I used her kidneys too much as a punching bag and when she started contracting, I started goin’ up.”
“Up?” she asked.
“Yep. Up. Right into her lungs. Collapsed them and killed her. They had to rush to get me out before they could revive her.”
“Holy shit, Knox.”
“She’s a tough woman, but it didn’t come without a price. She’s on disability and works when she can, but it isn’t much. It was barely enough to pay the bills until I paid off her house.”
“You paid off your mother’s house.”
“I did. The club helped me do it.”
“Hell of a gang,” she said.
“Hell of a family,” I said.
“I know what our reputation is around town. I hear the whispers. I get it. But whether or not people understand it, we’re trying to become more legit. Get ourselves out of some things and take on other ventures.”
“What does that mean?” she asked.
“Can’t talk about it. But we’re trying to clean up our act a bit.”
“A bit,” she said with a snicker.
“Yep. A bit. That’s how change works. A bit at a time.”
“Do you guys launder money?” she asked.
“Am I talking to my lawyer or a friend?”
“Would a friend get an honest answer?”
“Possibly.”
“Then I’m a friend.”
“It’s not my place to talk about that, but I can tell you this: we did used to do a lot of the things the whispers around this town accuse us of.”
“Of course,” she said with a whisper.
“I don’t expect you to understand, or even like it. But sometimes people gotta choose their own family. And I chose mine. It might not be perfect, and we might not be completely legal or whatever, but they’re mine. I trust those men with my life. Mostly.”
“Mostly?” she asked.
“We’re going through some stuff. All families do.”
“Uh huh. And what… stuff… does this kind of family go through?” she asked.
“Someone’s opening their mouth on something they shouldn’t. But we’re figurin’ it out.”
“I don’t even want to know.”
“I wouldn’t tell you if you wanted to know,” I said.
“You think I don’t get it, but I do,” she said.
“Which part?”
“They part where you have to choose your own family.”
“I’m interested to know how you understand that,” I said.
“My father left when I was a kid. Like yours did,” she said.
I turned my body towards Monroe as her eyes lost itself in the star-studded horizon.
“I never said my father left.”
“You didn’t have to,” she said. “I know how to read between the lines. Anyway, there wasn’t some grand fight or anything. No shell-shocking reason why he left. He just left. Went to work and never came back one day. There was nothing off about my parents or any unnecessary fighting. We still had family nights out and cuddled together and watched movies. I was nine when he left. That man gave me a smile and a hug before he left for work, and I waved him off.”
“Fuck, Monroe.”
“I begged Mom for years to tell me what happened. But all she told me was they just… stopped loving one another. Like that. Like, just overnight or something. But it never explained why I didn’t hear from him. Why Christmases and birthdays passed without phone calls or presents. It didn’t explain why all the family pictures were suddenly gone or why his side of the closet was tossed out the next day. I hated that woman for it.”
“You know she was lying to you,” I said.
“Until she got sick, yeah. Cancer’s a bitch sometimes.”
My heart ached for her. I could see her eyes glistening over with tears as her wine glass rattled in her hand. I reached over for her. Put my hand on her knee to try and steady her shaking. She was so stoic, despite the tears in her eyes. Despite the one that had escaped and was sliding down her skin.
“The first time she beat it, she was strong. But the second time, she didn’t have it in her. She was tired of crying and working all the time. She was tired of being strong without anyone to be strong for her. I watched her slip away from me, pound by pound, until the tumors growing in her lungs finally suffocated her one night.”
“Did she ever tell you what happened to your father?” I asked.
“She did. About an hour before she died. Turns out, we were the other family.”
“What?” I asked.
“Yeah. Can you believe that? All the business trips my father went on and the weeks away in another country doing whatever the hell it was he was supposed to be doing. But he was really with his other family. His first family. Two separate names, two separate lives.”
Knox (Dead Souls MC Book 1) Page 13
