Knox Brotherhood

by Knox, Elizabeth

  Slash chuckles lightly, walking down the hallway with me. “Sweetheart, we live and breathe on the back of those bikes. We’re not the green witch from Wizard of Oz, we’re not gonna melt. We’ve ridden in hurricanes, babe.”

  I look at him like he’s lost his freaking mind.

  “I didn’t say I recommend it. I’m just sayin’ we’ve ridden in hurricanes and survived; a little bit of water isn’t gonna kill us.”

  “Please tell me you have jackets or something,” I beg, already knowing the answer before it leaves his mouth.

  “We’ve got our leather babe, and that’s all we need.”

  I roll my eyes. Men are stubborn and bullheaded, and there is absolutely nothing that you can do about it. It’s almost like it’s burned into their DNA, completely unremovable. They should come with a warning label that reads ‘does not have common sense’. I freaking know one of those two is going to end up with a cold in just a few short days.

  Slash walks me to the back door of the hotel, into the parking lot where the tour bus happens to be parked. I know Rocky and Syd stayed in the hotel last night, but I’m not sure about Jase and Miles. “You’re leaving in an hour, right?” he asks me, and I nod. “Alright. If you leave sooner, text me and we’ll be right behind you. Got it?”

  “Aye, aye, Major Slashie.” I give him a salute and walk up to the bus. When I look back Slash is giving me the finger and sticking his tongue out like a five-year-old.

  I laughed so hard boarding the bus, who would’ve known where I’d be right now. There was no preparing me for this, and I’m loving every minute of it.

  ***

  “Alrighty folks, let’s get cracking about our schedule.” I look up from my cell to see Evie standing in the middle of the room, demanding all our attention. “Shit is getting real, okay? Like…super real. We’ve sold out every show.”

  “Wait…what?” I say, smiling from ear to ear.

  “You heard me right, Bells. We’re a full house, bitches!” Evie laughs, I clap excitedly for not only the guys but for Evie as well. She does so much work and barely gets enough credit for any of it. Even though she is a massive bitch sometimes.

  “We’ll be in Baltimore in about…. about 5 hours, and we’ve got a show to prepare for. Right after the show, we’ll leave for Philadelphia and then we all get an entire week off. Who’s excited?”

  All the guys plus I hoot and holler. Don’t get me wrong, I love being on tour, but I love having a break too.

  “After our lovely week break, we’re back and closing out this tour strong with our last two stops in Camden and New York. Now, Bell, your interview with Summer is going to be while we’re in Camden. Okay?” Crapmundo, Batman. I already forgot about the interview Evie set up with Summer.

  An interview where Summer can ask me anything, absolutely nothing is off limits and it’s going to be a live feed, so that’s just great. It’s not like I’m nervous about this interview at all.

  “Sounds great,” I tell her, lying through my teeth. No matter what, I just have to go in and be myself. Summer is nothing but a bitch who profited from trying to take me down, and she didn’t even win ‘cause guess what, look who’s still shining bright, bitch! I’ll prepare myself as much as I can, but I don’t want to sound rehearsed or cold during my interview. That wouldn’t go over too well with the viewers I don’t think.

  “Have you decided on the name for your cover yet?” Evie grumbles, taking a few steps in my direction and sinking in on the chair across from me.

  “I think so…I’ve got a couple idea’s floating around in my head.”

  “Finally. I need to know colors and all that too.”

  “Pink, but a bold pink.”

  “Got it.”

  “And maybe flowers on vines, but a classy kind…. nothing that screams Barbie.”

  “Got it…” Evie mutters, sounding more and more annoyed as I don’t tell her the name I’m going with.

  “Relentless.”

  There just happens to be this guy who thinks I’m pretty relentless, and until he said it…I didn’t really think I was.

  I plan on everyone knowing the real me, and now they will.

  CHAPTER 16

  I won’t abandon you, and you can damn well know that I’m going to fight for you. -Lomasoope.tumblr.com

  Butch

  The trip to Baltimore was long and grueling, but it wasn’t the first time I’d rode in the rain and I highly doubt it would be my last. By the time we got settled to the hotel and warmed up, it was time for Bellamy’s show. It seemed more and more like our time together was passing by in the blink of an eye. Every time I saw her on stage I became more amazed with her raw and undeniable talent. She’s shared bits and pieces with me, last night even showing me some lyrics she’s been writing, unsure of what she’ll do with them. I don’t know much about songwriting, but every time Bellamy and I talk I learn more about her process. For instance, it doesn’t just magically flow together like you’d think. She gets bits and pieces and then creates a song out of many moving parts. That truly fascinated me, as I didn’t understand the complexity of what she does.

  It’s beautiful when she hums to a melody as she’s writing. I pointed it out to her and she didn’t even realize what she was doing, she tried to stop, but I told her not to, that it was part of her and that I admired it. Truth is, I admire a lot about this girl. I haven’t found one thing I don’t like about her, and I doubt that I will. I’ve never met someone who’s perfect, but Bellamy is pretty damn close to it.

  She crashed early tonight, right after the show. Instead of just opening for The Stones like she normally does, she ended up staying onstage all-night long. I had to make sure she got a good bit of food in her system before she hit the pillow. It’s funny, normally I wouldn’t give two shits if a bitch ate…this girl though, fuck if she isn’t different than any other woman I’ve ever crossed paths with. When she works, I’ve come to realize that she doesn’t always eat. She gets to absorbed in what needs to be done and insists on finishing the task at hand. I understand it, I’m just like her in that sense, but I’ll be damned if I don’t eat. Fuck, I turn into the world’s biggest dick whenever I’m hungry. Ask anyone at the club, they’re sure to confirm my statement.

  I hadn’t heard from Reed or Elena the past couple days, which threw up some red flags for me. It either told me that they were busy focusing on other shit with the club, or something had happened.

  The last time I ended up talking to Reed, there were still no answers on his father or Bones’ whereabouts. With each day that passed, I kept getting an eerier feeling about their disappearance. It didn’t seem like a coincidence now, and deep down I know that it wasn’t.

  Slash and I both quietly disappeared out onto the balcony of the hotel room. From here, we could both watch Bellamy safely sleeping, her arm curled up into her pillow, fingertips touching the root of her hair. She slept in that same exact position every night.

  I dialed Reed and put him on speaker phone, we could hear the ringing over and over again until it went to voicemail. Next, I called Elena, and the same thing happened, it rang and rang until ultimately her voicemail popped up. Shit was getting weird. Slash and I exchanged one look and the next thing I knew we were both calling up every single person in the club that we could. Sure, it was late, but someone was bound to be awake. We’re in a fucking MC, for fuck’s sake, someone is always up.

  I called Daisy and Seamus first, neither of them answered, going down the list of contacts in my phone I swiped until I saw Michelle’s name. She’s one that is always running amuck in the middle of the night. I’ve found her sitting up in the kitchen at three in the morning more times than I can count. She plays it off like she can’t sleep, but we both know there’s more to it than just that. A lot of us at the club have issues, but Michelle has issues.

  “I’ve called literally everyone, what the fuck is going on?” I bark out at her the second she says hello.

  “You haven’t he
ard?”

  “No. Heard what? How was I supposed to hear anything when no one has communicated with Slash or I for two days, Meech?” I growl, hissing out her nickname at the end. Shit. I shouldn’t have done that.

  “If you want to be a dick to me, then I’ll just hang up the phone. You don’t get to just…treat me like that.”

  “Fuck. You’re right. I’m sorry.” There’s a few second pause before I speak again. “What’s going on?”

  “Elena was admitted to the hospital.” Shit! The Cartel made a move when we weren’t there. Dammit. I knew this was bad. This was so fucking worse than just being bad. “We had to call an ambulance for her, turns out she was pregnant. She ended up losing the baby. It wasn’t a viable pregnancy, it was growing in her fallopian tube.”

  “What’s that mean?” I ask, not sure what Michelle is telling me.

  “It means she’s going through a lot right now and neither of you needs to be bugging her or Reed about shit. They need time to deal with this, to process it. Neither of them even knew she was pregnant, and they’ve been trying for a little while. This is hitting them both pretty hard. Kyle has been handling everything until Reed is back. Right now, he needs to be in one place, and once place only – beside Elena. God…this is so hard for her, Butch. She’s never…I just feel so bad for her.”

  “Yeah…I can’t imagine,” and I couldn’t, I couldn’t imagine going through what they both are right now. They have to be crippled with grief. “I was calling because we hadn’t heard anything from them in the past couple days. Can you give me any updates on what’s going on with everything else?” Like I’ve said before, we aren’t like most clubs. We don’t hide shit from the women unless it’s real hush-hush.

  “Well, as far as we know the Cartel is still being a nosy fuckin’ bitch. They’re becoming more active in Nashville, and now Reed is talking with some gangs to make sure that the Cartel doesn’t infest the city. Keeping them out of Nashville means keeping them at bay, which is good for everyone.”

  “Who’s he been talking to?” I think about every known gang in Nashville, going down the list inside my head I keep internally saying “no” because Reed wouldn’t communicate with people who were on the wrong side of the law. We may be on the wrong side, but we do things the right way, and that’s what counts.

  “You know those people…. crap. What’s their name? It’s something weird, they’re these holier than thou do gooders, who kill people. Shit.” She curses, I can hear her thinking from a few states away.

  “Purgatory?’ I ask, shocked that Reed would even talk to them…He’s never once discussed any sort of alliance with The Arcane, but if he was going to align the club with anyone local, it would be them. This is the part that sucks, most of our allies are states away. Their numbers are vast, but their distance from us is what kills us. I suppose at the end of the day if shit went south we could count on The Arcane showing up in enough time to help.

  “Yep. He met with some dude named Darius, and from what I found out, it seemed to go well. I know he’s been talking with Fist too. Fist said he’d send a couple guys down to help and show more club presence, but Reed didn’t want him to do that quite yet.”

  “I bet he didn’t,” I mutter, rubbing my jaw harshly as I try to get inside of Reed’s head. No matter how much I try, I know that I’ll never be able to.

  “How’s the babysitting going?” Michelle sneers, with a laugh at the end of her question. Here’s the thing about Michelle, she can be as sweet as pie, and then there’s the other side of her, which is one thing and one thing only – a bitch that you want to strangle with a piece of wire.

  Slash tosses his cigarette off the balcony and goes back in the hotel room. I know for a fact he doesn’t want to hear this side of Michelle, those two are oddly close. They’ve never been romantic, all of us know that Michelle either belongs to Max or Kyle and nobody else. Way back when she and Kyle were a thing, and then she moved on to Max, and now that Max is gone…. well shit, it’s not gonna be hard to figure out who’s bed she ends up crawling back to.

  “We aren’t babysitting her,” I hiss lowly, not amused with her sudden change in attitude. “Elena and Reed gave us orders, we’re simply following them.”

  “Yep. You’re ‘protecting’ the newfound princess from the evil creatures, got it.”

  “She’s in just as much danger as the rest of us, and you know it.” I’m tired of her shit. I don’t know what it is, or why Michelle seems to hate Bellamy already, but she’d better cut this shit out ‘cause I won’t stand for it.

  “No, she isn’t, she’s got an entire security team.”

  “Wrong. You are so beyond wrong. She’s in danger every day because of her job, and now that we’ve found out she’s related to Elena that jeopardizes her safety even more.”

  “That’s such bullshit. We need you two here, not running around the states on vacation ‘watching’ that girl.”

  “Well, luckily for you, it isn’t your call to make. Is it, Michelle?” I snap, ending the call before I can even stand to hear another word spilling from her mouth.

  I know that it isn’t her fault that she’s the way she is, that it’s everything that she’d gone through over the course of years and years but let’s face it, we all go through shit. It doesn’t give us an excuse to be a royal bitch to everyone around us. I try to give her passes every now and again, but that’ll be stopping soon. No more passes for Michelle, it’s about time she grows the fuck up. I understand she’s been hurt a lot, and by the people who are closest to her, but enough is enough.

  The first thing I’ll be doing when I get back is talking to her about her behavior, there’s no sugar coating this shit. It’s going to be rough and brutal, but at the end of the day, I’ll get my point across.

  I put my hand on the slider door, moving it to the left and stepping into the hotel room after I’ve opened it. Bellamy is fast asleep, her hand moving up further into her hair with every breath that she takes. The way she sleeps is too damn adorable.

  “Night, brother,” I hear Slasher mutter, and when I look up he’s turning off the bedside light and sliding under the covers. I glance around the room, knowing very well that I could sleep on the pull-out couch that is there for me, but I don’t want to. There is only one place I want to be, and I’m going there.

  I walk to the other side of Bellamy’s bed, turn off the light, and pick up the sheets. Slowly, I slide in, careful not to wake her.

  Her breath hitches in her throat, and I think I’ve woken her, but her breathing centers, and she’s back to normal. I nestle myself behind her, my chest pressed against her back, arm going around her hip, holding her close…right where she belongs.

  “Mmmm,” she mumbles, and I peer up, beard scratching her cheek.

  “Sssh, I’ve got you, Sugar.”

  “Butch,” she whines, whispering it out.

  I pull her closer to me as I rise up, turning her face towards me to plant a soft, lingering kiss on her lips. “Sleep,” I tell her, it’s an order, not a request.

  She nods through the kiss, and when I pull away she flips around, nestling her head against my chest.

  “Goodnight, Butch.”

  “Night, Sugar. Sweet dreams.”

  That’s the last thing I remember before the darkness takes us both.

  CHAPTER 17

  The rebel girl in me will never die.

  -Anonymous

  Bellamy

  I don’t even remember being brought to the tour bus. We were set to leave at five a.m. sharp for Philly. Even though it was only a couple hours away it was important that we arrived at every venue early to conduct a sound check and rehearse if we needed to. In almost every case it was necessary, especially when we didn’t know the stage layouts, or if the set up was new to us. Apparently, Butch carried me onto the bus and laid me down right before the bus took off. I don’t recall any of it. I can remember getting the best sleep of my life last night though.

  Sy
d and Rocky were making jokes at me after I woke up on the bus feeling like a lunatic, I knew what I could remember from last night in the hotel room wasn’t a complete figment of my imagination. I can very clearly remember the way Butch’s arms were wrapped around my body, his breath against the back of my head. It’s funny, the whole reason that Slash and Butch are with me is to protect me – to make me feel safe, and last night, that’s exactly the feeling he gave me. The sense of security I felt being in that bed with him was astonishing. I hadn’t let myself fall into that deep of a sleep in ages, but with Butch, I feel like I don’t have to be on guard all the time. It’s a nice change.

  It’s just an hour before the show, and I’ve made myself familiar with the stage as best that I could have, never seeing the venue. I haven’t ever played a show in Philly, so tonight’s show will give me a bit of insight on if I’ll have a bigger fanbase here. I pay attention to these things, every city where I’m being received well by the crowd I want to remember – because I want to come back and perform for them, especially because they had seen me while I was opening, basically, while I was no-one.

  “Are you gonna fess up and tell me how your likin’ spending the night with two men?” Rocky asks, chuckling as he leans up against the wall next to me.

  I turn my head to look at him, grinning “Just as much as I liked spending the night with four.” I add a wink on the end and he cocks his head back, laughing as if I told him the funniest joke he’d ever heard. Sometimes I think he forgets that I’m a witty gal.

  “You haven’t talked too much about them, you know,” he adds, and all of a sudden I’m getting the protective brother vibe from him, and it’s exactly what he is. This guy looks like he could compete with the Hulk, but boy does he have the gentlest and sweetest heart. I glance around and see that both Slasher and Butch are within sight, but not hearing distance. They always seem to have their eyes on me, no matter what I’m doing or where I am.