“I do. I love Dr. Andrews. Wait. What? Why?”
Shannon blushed bright red. Fiery, electric red.
“Holy shit! Holy shit! Shannon, are you knocked up?”
“Mamma, you said shit.”
“Sorry, G.”
“You said it twice.”
“You’re right. I’m double sorry.”
“Okay. Mamma, what’s knocked up?”
“It means…” Lilli sent a silent question to Shannon, who nodded. “It means Aunt Shannon is going to grow a baby in her belly, like I grew Bo and Aunt Cory grew Loki.”
“Oh! I like when mammas grow babies. You get reeeeeeeally fat, but then you get skinny again. I have books that show what happens. You can read them if you want. But have a girl. I don’t want any more boys.”
The women laughed, and Gia looked at them all with suspicion and contempt, then, giving them all up as a lost cause, she went back to making pictures, her long, wavy chestnut hair tucked studiously behind her ears.
The meal was chaotic, what with the excitement over Shannon’s news, and Gia and Bo clamoring for attention from their mom and their various aunts, and Loki being an infant who conveyed all of his emotions, high and low, enthusiastically, but it was fun. Tasha felt surprisingly content and relaxed, considering the turmoil that surrounded the club and the town.
Despite the circling trouble, Tasha felt like her life was her own in a way it hadn’t been before. She felt right in her skin and in her life. She had made her peace with her Springfield friends, and they were solid again. Different, but solid. She had a medical practice and would be back soon, in mere days, to being a real doctor.
She had a family. She had friends. And she had Len. Love—that was what she had.
Her life and heart were full.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
“I’d be okay if we put a mobile home down. Or a pre-fab, anyway. They look pretty great now. The B&B is a pre-fab, and that’s beautiful.”
“No way. I’m building us a house. Right there—nice and level, good views, some distance from the trees.”
“Big trees make shade and keep the house cool in the summer.”
“Big trees fall down in storms and make the house extremely airy. Plenty cool with half the roof missing.”
Tasha laughed and circled Len’s waist with her arms. It was a warm, spring-like day, and the air and earth smelled fresh. Like hope. They stood on a rise to the south of Len’s stable and surveyed the plot of land he’d picked for their house—not the same place the original house had been.
“I’m tired of the clubhouse. The walls are thin, and Zeke snores—and he fucks really loud for such a quiet guy. It’s disconcerting. So how long before I never have to hear his dirty pillow talk again?”
“You sure you want a log cabin? Seems awful country for a city girl like you.”
She elbowed him in the side. “I’m no city girl. And I want a log cabin. With high ceilings and lots of windows. That one I showed you would be great.”
Len nodded, visualizing the house she’d shown him online. It was nice. Smaller than he’d have gone with, but it was just the two of them, and it always would be. He was forty-nine, and Tasha would be forty-one next week. Show might be okay with having a new kid in his fifties, in this life, but Len was not. “I can buy those plans and use them—that’ll cut a little time. And that one you’re talking about’s not big. Couple months or so, with the guys pitching in and the weather cooperating. It’s only March, though. We’re sure to have more shitty weather before spring sets in.”
“I can do a couple more months. But if it were a little warmer, I’d be advocating to put up a tent and live in that until the house is ready.”
“There’s the Airstream right over there, Doc. Move in there any time.”
“No way. You really have no idea what that thing smells like, do you? It’s like fifteen years of farts all stored up in a steel can. It’s so bad. I’d say we should set fire to it, but I think it would explode.”
“You know I’m still a slob. Too old to change at this point.”
“Oh, I know. I’ve been picking up your discarded crap for months now. I got the picture. But I’d much rather start from scratch cleaning up after you than start off all those years behind. So, no. I have no plan ever to enter the Airstream again in this life, thank you very much.”
Damn, he loved her. Damn. He was no longer the loner he’d been for so long. He still needed time away, but more often than not, the time away he wanted was with her. He kissed her forehead. “I will build us a log cabin, and you can clean up after me while we grow old in it together. How’s that sound?”
She leaned her forehead on his chest. “Like a beautiful dream.”
~oOo~
Meeting in the Keep after returning from the latest weed run, Len sat at Isaac’s side and studied his President. It had been a year since Omen had been killed, six months since Havoc. All the men who’d experienced that hell were different. They were quieter, a little slower. They all dealt with psychic and physical pain, all in their own ways. Show was starting a new family with Shannon. At fifty-four. Len supposed he was starting a family, too, in a different way, building a home and a life with Tasha. Badger…Len was worried about Badge. He seemed to be hanging on well enough, and they’d had no real cause to challenge his assertion that he wasn’t hooked, but he wasn’t doing great.
Tasha had weaned him off the Oxy; he was down to a low dose of Vicodin now. But he was a changed man. Darker. Short-tempered. Much quicker with his fists. And no longer shy with the girls. In fact, he seemed to have decided to get as much pussy as he possibly could. Len had even seen more than one girl reeling out of the kid’s room, as if he’d taken up the baton Len himself had set aside.
Yet no one seemed as changed as Isaac. For all the years he’d been President, Isaac had been a positive force—confident, smart, quick-tempered but also good-humored, impatient but loyal as fuck, and always, always full of vigorous energy. Now, he was weary. Fatigue and sorrow rolled from him in almost tangible waves. The turning sentiments of Signal Bend toward the Horde had finally done it. Not Santaveria. No, Santaveria hadn’t broken Isaac. Or any of them, even though they were badly damaged. Len thought the only thing giving Isaac real energy, giving him will, was the hate and rage he felt toward the leader of the Perro Blanco cartel. A stalwart, steadfast need to win.
But losing the regard of the town they’d worked so hard to protect? To support? Their home? Their history? That was a blow. They had not lost the town yet, not all of it, but never before had there been hostility and resistance toward the club. Ingratitude. As Len watched Isaac take a long, heavy breath and prepare to start their meeting, he wondered if Signal Bend itself would deliver the blow that would, after all, break the man who’d been all but invincible. Who’d been paralyzed from the neck down and had clawed his way back to ride and lead again.
Len knew they couldn’t allow that to happen. They had to get the town back, every last ungrateful bastard. They had to find a way.
Isaac finally spoke. His deep voice was quiet. “The Keep is clean, brothers. The duffel’s in my office. We can speak freely. Got some new trouble to report. Just clouds gathering at the horizon for now, but we need to keep watch. Dom picked up some chatter from the Sheriff. Looks like he’s talking to Feds, trying to get their dicks up about us. Still looks like Seaver is trying to position himself for an election run, and, like we thought way back last year, looks like he wants to ride us to Washington. He’s been not much more than a nuisance to us, and not even that lately, because we’ve been rollin’ with our lights off since September. He tried to get Feds hard for us before, but got nowhere.
Dom cut in. “There’s been a change of leadership in the St. Louis office, though. Seaver’s got somebody returning his emails now.”
Isaac nodded, and Len knew he was irritated at having been interrupted, but he said nothing. Which wasn’t like Isaac at all. “Lilli’s cover might not be eno
ugh anymore. That’s what saved the club from law, back when the Ellis fight went down, but the guy taking over in St. Louis went on internal record then that backing off us was a bad call. With the weed run and our association with the Perros…well. We might look like a real fine fuck now. Career-making, even. And if Seaver can claim any credit for it, he most certainly will.”
“We have to get clear of the Perros, then, and shut our shit down. Soon.” Len hadn’t really intended to speak aloud, definitely not to state something so simultaneously obvious and impossible.
Show chuckled. “Yeah, brother. We do. Any ideas?”
“Napalm.”
Isaac turned to Badger. “Badge?”
“I don’t mean real napalm. I just mean…why do we always talk about, like, surgical strikes? Why don’t we just waste the motherfuckers? They come at us at the drop like they do, all cocky and grinning like we’re some half-brained assholes, and we just blow them the fuck up. Start the fucking war. We know fucking well we can’t sneak up—look what happened when we tried in Chicago. So we just come at them.”
Isaac shook his head. “We’re seven men, Badge. Seventeen with the LA Scorps. The Perros have men all across the country. And what they’d do first thing is roll through town raping women and killing children. These are not men who give a fuck. They go straight for the worst pain. You know that.”
“Fuck the town. They don’t want us. Morons think they’d be better off without us. So fuck ‘em.” Badger shoved himself away from the table, leaning far back in his chair.
“Badge. Take a breath, little brother. We’re just in a rough patch.” Len reached out, intending to lay his hand on Badger’s shoulder, but he knocked him away.
“No, it’s not! It’s not a rough patch. It’s quicksand. Everything is wrong. Everything’s changing, and it’s all changing wrong.” Badger jumped up and turned toward the door.
“Sit, Badge. Now.” Isaac’s voice was at full power, and everybody in the room knew that Badge was at a crossroads.
He stopped and turned to face Isaac. They stared at each other. Isaac did not repeat his order, and Badger neither argued nor complied with it. Len was reminded of a similar standoff, when C.J. made as if to leave a Keep meeting. But this was very much different.
The rest of the Horde sat and waited until Badger sat back down. When he did, Isaac nodded.
“I am tired of this shit, too. I can feel it wearing on my will, like sandpaper, dulling my fight. I was thinking riding back today that I just fucking want to stop. I want to lock myself in my shop and make furniture. I want to fuck my wife and raise my kids and just stop the rest of it. Everything’s wrong. Nothing is the way we intended it to be. Everything’s gone off the rails. And now the people we’ve been helping are turning on us, too. So you’re right, Badge. It’s all wrong.”
As Len was contending with the dawning suspicion that Isaac had already broken, and the Horde was therefore well and truly screwed, their leader surged forward in his seat, leaning far over the table. “But we can’t do shit about yesterday. All that mountain of shit behind us is behind us. We can’t gun down the Perros because there are too many of them, and they will blow up what’s in front of us. But we will bide our time, and we will pay attention, and we will find a way to take down Santaveria and the Perros and Seaver and the Feds and who the fuck ever else wants up our ass. Santaveria told me I was ‘unique’. I didn’t have any idea what that meant, and at the time he was tearing my brothers up, so I didn’t fucking care. But I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then. And I think it means he can’t figure me out. Which means he can’t figure us out. So we use that. We don’t try to think like him—I was wrong about that. We think like us. We keep doing what we do for the reasons we do it. I think he caught us up in Chicago because we went out for vengeance, not justice. That’s not our way, and we missed the signs of a setup.”
“Hav needed that vengeance. Would you have denied him?” Show’s voice shook just slightly.
“No. Allowing a brother to make a call like that is our way. But we didn’t talk it through with him enough. Think of all the ways we exposed ourselves to make that happen. None of it was our way. I was wrong when I said we needed to be the bad guys, to think like bad guys. We can’t play on that level. We will never be as badass as the Perros, because we do give a fuck. We need to make them play our game instead.”
“How?” Badger was engaged again, interested. Possibly a sliver of hopeful, too.
“No idea yet, Badge. I just woke up to this when you stood up. I’d about given the fuck up when I came in this room today. So let’s get back to thinking like Horde and figure this out.”
Len thought maybe he felt some hope himself. In fact, the whole table felt lighter.
Maybe it was a pipe dream. Maybe the Perros would destroy them anyway. But it felt better to think that they’d go down as Horde, fighting their fight. Len felt stronger just for that.
They had hope, after all.
~oOo~
That afternoon, Len drove down Main Street and saw that Tasha had ridden her Ninja to the office. It was another warm March day, and she must have been feeling her oats that morning. He was sorry to have been away—morning sex with Tash was…lively.
Really lively. He was really sorry to have missed it.
He pulled into the lot and parked his Harley next to her Ninja. There were only two cars in the lot—Bree’s little Escort, and Pattie’s Honda. No patients. That gave him an idea. He went in.
Bree was at the desk. “Hey, Bree. The Doc around?”
“Hi, Len.” The pretty girl smiled and pointed toward Tasha’s office. “She’s returning emails.”
“She got any more patients today?”
“Nope. Nothing scheduled.”
“Excellent. Don’t get too wrapped up in anything, doll. I’m gonna try to get you released early today.”
Bree clapped her hands lightly, and Len headed to his wife’s office. He didn’t knock.
As soon as she looked up from her laptop, her face brightened into a wide, relieved smile.
“You’re home!” She jumped up and into his arms.
“Hey, Doc. Missed you.”
“I missed you. I hate that run. Hate hate hate it.”
“I know. Me, too.” He set her down. “Saw you rode your little girly bike to work today.”
Sucking her cheeks in an unimpressed look he knew well, she said, “Yes, I did. Nice day for a ride.”
“You know, I agree. So I’m kidnapping you. We’re goin’ for a ride right now.” She was wearing black leather pants. He loved those leather pants in ways for which he had no words. And they were perfect for riding. “C’mon. I already told Bree I would spring her early. Let’s go.”
“Len, this is a business. I can’t just close up whenever I want.”
“Sure you can. You go in at all fucking hours when somebody calls because they sneezed, so sounds fair you can take an early day once in awhile.” He hooked his finger in the bottom of her V-neck; the sides of her tits brushed against his finger, and he wondered which underwear set she was wearing. “C’mon. You and me, the open road, a little sex on the grass…you know you want it. Be an outlaw, baby.”
“I’m already an outlaw. Yeah. Let’s ride.”
~oOo~
He took her out on 68, and they rode for almost an hour before he pulled off onto an overgrown gravel road. He had a place in mind; he’d been damn serious when he said he wanted to fuck her on this ride. But while they’d been riding, he’d changed his mind—not the grass. It was too early in the year. Too cold, too wet. No, he had a better idea. So he led them down this disused road on property that hadn’t been owned by actual people in years. His mom’s best friend had lived here when Len was a kid, and he’d had run of the place whenever they went over for a visit. Far back on the property was a tumbled-down old house that had been the original structure. It had always been known as “The Homestead.” It had been left to nature for probably eighty
years or more, and the nature that had taken it over most aggressively had been wild irises—a huge natural bed of purple and yellow irises, growing up through the ruined building and everything that had once been the yard. He’d seen wild irises blooming often on the run they’d just finished; he figured The Homestead would be a riot of spring color and scent.
Nothing said hope like wild irises. They came up early, and they came up anywhere, even in a ruin like this. Nothing could stop them. And they were good. Beautiful.
He’d been right. They were everywhere. He pulled his Sportster up at the edge of the huge iris bed, and Tasha pulled up alongside him. She took her helmet off and looked around.
“Oh, my God. This is beautiful.”
“Yeah.” But Len was looking at his wife. When she noticed, she grinned.
“You want to fuck me in the flowers? Babe, that’s practically poetic!”
“Nah. Better idea.” He hooked his helmet over his handlebars and patted his lap. “Get those sexy pants off and hop up.”
She blinked at him. Repeatedly. “You want to fuck me on your bike?”
“Yep. Get naked.” He opened his jeans and pulled his decidedly ready cock out.
“Flowers would be poetic. Fucking on your bike is just…raunchy.”
“That a problem for you?”
“Not even a little.” Her head went back as she laughed, and the sun caught her red-gold hair and made it shimmer. Then she dismounted her Ninja, toed her boots off, and slowly shimmied her ass and legs out of those pants.
She was wearing the black lace set with the blue satin backing. That was a good set. Leaving her jacket and top on, she walked bare-legged to him and mounted him, sitting astride his lap, facing him. He held himself ready with one hand and guided her down with the other. She moved her panties to the side and slid right down on him, already wet and hot for him. As she sank down, her eyes rolled up, and she bit her lower lip, moaning quietly.
“I love you, Doc.”
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