by A. M. Myers
“One more,” he murmurs before leaning in to steal one last kiss before turning and walking back to the clubhouse. Travis and Lincoln pass each other and nod in greeting but tension fills the air around them and I sigh at just how ridiculous they are. My brother closes the distance between us, his hands shoved in his pockets and his gaze glued to the ground in front of him as my heart thrums in my chest.
Oh, God, I’m so nervous.
“You two work things out?” he asks as he sits next to me on the picnic table and I sigh as my mind drifts back to last night. Heat rushes to my cheeks as I think about everything we got up to in my room and butterflies flap around in my belly. I can’t help but grin. After what happened, I know I can’t stay away from him anymore but I’m not naive enough to think that he’s suddenly going to decide he wants more. This will end and it will hurt but I don’t want to focus on that anymore. I want to be happy and enjoy the time I do get with him instead of ruining it all by obsessing over the end. Maybe it’s reckless and stupid but all I can do at this point is jump back in with both feet and deal with the aftermath when the time comes.
“Yeah, I guess we did.”
He glances over at me, his expression hard. “Did he apologize for whatever asshole thing he did to upset you?”
“It wasn’t like that, Linc. Travis has been amazing to me.”
“If that were true,” he growls, crossing his arms over his chest and turning back to the crowd. “He wouldn’t have hurt you.”
I lay my hand on his bicep and he meets my eyes. “Please believe me, big brother. Travis has been nothing but kind, respectful, and honest with me since the beginning.”
“Then why have y’all been avoiding each other for four fucking days?”
“It was my issue,” I whisper and he sighs as his gaze flicks to the crowd. There is a current of tension swirling in the air around us and my belly flips again as I try to figure out what he’s going to say about the information Ash revealed. If I know my brother, and I do, he’s going to rip me a new one and spend the next hour chewing me out about how I’m better than that. The silence stretches between us and the longer it takes him to kick off the conversation, the more anxious I feel. Dropping my gaze to the ground, I shove my hands in the pockets of my hoodie and my knee shakes, bouncing up and down as I try to telepathically will him to say something. Finally, he clears his throat.
“I owe you an apology, Rowan.”
My head snaps up. “What?”
“Look,” he sighs, running a hand through his hair. “I’ve tried my damndest to be the best big brother I could be but clearly, somewhere along the way I failed you. I made you feel like you couldn’t come to me and tell me absolutely anything because I would judge you. That’s on me and it fucking kills me…”
“Lincoln, please… stop. It wasn’t like that, at all. Stripping wasn’t something I was proud of. I didn’t tell anyone about it except Ash and we can all see how that turned out for me. This isn’t on you.”
“Yeah, it is and I know I’ve been too protective at times but I’ve only ever wanted you to be happy and safe. That’s it and I’m so fucking sorry if I made you feel like there were things about yourself that you couldn’t tell me.”
I shake my head and tug on his arm, forcing him to look at me and the pain in his eyes hurts worse than anything else I have ever felt. Tears sting my eyes and I shake my head again. His face crumples and he pulls me into a hug, crushing me to his massive body as a wave of comfort washes over me.
“All I ever wanted was to make sure you didn’t feel like you were missing out on anything because Dad was gone and here I fucked it all up.”
“Lincoln,” I whisper, a tear trekking down my cheek as I pull back to look at him. “Please don’t ever think that. You are amazing and I’ve always thought that. The way you stepped up after Dad died and became the man of the house even though you were still a kid yourself… I’ve always admired you and if anything, I didn’t tell you about the stripping because I just wanted you to be proud of me.”
He smiles. “I am proud of you, kid. Fucking always… but can I ask you a question?”
I nod.
“Why stripping?”
Sucking in a breath, I turn to look out at the protestors as the question runs through my mind but the more I ask myself why I did it, the more stumped I feel. Turning back to him, I shrug and force a smile to my face.
“Would it be too cliche to say daddy issues?”
He winces and I immediately regret my terrible joke.
“I’m sorry… I didn’t mean that…”
“No,” he whispers, nodding his head. “You did and I even understand. As hard as I worked, as much as I tried, I couldn’t be Dad and his absence left a hole in all of us.”
I sigh in agreement as I lay my head on his shoulder. “Honestly, after you left Alaska, I just felt so numb and… empty. I don’t know that I was thinking about much of anything those days… I was just going through the motions and surviving each and every day as it came at me.”
“I guess I have another thing to apologize for then,” he says and I scrunch up my nose in confusion as I lift my head off of his shoulder and look at him.
“Huh?”
“For leaving Alaska. I shouldn’t have bailed on you and Mom like that.”
I scoff and lie back down. “Don’t be fucking ridiculous. You couldn’t live your whole life for us, Lincoln. It’s not right and neither Mom or Dad would have been okay with that. My issues do not need to be shouldered by you, as much as I appreciate your mushy, soft heart.”
“Shut the hell up with that shit.” He laughs, shaking his head as he peeks down at me. I grin at him and he rolls his eyes. “Can I ask you something else?”
“Always.”
He lifts his shoulder, prompting me to lift my head up and glance at him. He searches my face for a moment and my belly flips.
“Are you in love with him?”
I blink. “Travis?”
“Yeah,” he answers, still trying to read me and my heart hammers in my chest as my hands shake. “Do you love him, Rowan?”
I nod. “Yes… but you can’t… you can’t tell anyone or say anything to him…”
“So this is what the past four days have been about? You love him and he doesn’t love you back? I swear to God, I’ll kick his ass until he has enough fucking sense in his head to realize you’re the goddamn best he’s ever going to get. That little motherfucker isn’t going to mess my little sister around…”
“Lincoln,” I cut in, laughing at his rant and furious expression as I lay my hand on his arm again. “Please, don’t. I know what I’m doing.”
He shakes his head. “You’re going to get your heart broken.”
“I know,” I murmur, the ache in my chest so fierce that I struggle to breathe through it as I try to put on a brave act. Lincoln’s gaze flicks over my face, studying me, before he scoffs and rips his arm from me.
“What’s so special about this dick hole that he thinks he can do better than you? He would be the luckiest son of a bitch alive to call you his and he’s rejecting you?” The disgust on his face as he glances over at the clubhouse has me grabbing his arm all over again, hoping he doesn’t decide to march in there and confront Travis.
“Please, Linc… the whole thing is complicated. Just let me handle this. Please.”
He shakes his head, looking at me like I’m insane. “I’m not going to let him hurt you.”
“I’m already in too deep and I can’t go back now. Whether we end today or months from now, it’ll hurt and I’ve accepted that.”
“Well, I fucking haven’t,” he huffs as his gaze snaps to the clubhouse door and I pull on his arm, making sure he stays here with me and hears me out.
“You can’t make him love me, Lincoln… and I wouldn’t want you to.”
He huffs in annoyance again as he glances back at me and I can see him thinking through everything I’ve just said. Finally, he sighs.
Laughing, I shrug. “Maybe. Talk to me then and we’ll see.”
“It’s fucking something, I suppose,” he growls, crossing his arms over his chest again and brooding as he stares out at the protestors. His jaw ticks and I would bet good money that he’s planning exactly what he is going to do to Travis if I ever give him the green light. I can’t see myself doing that but I guess we’ll see. “Hey… one more thing…”
“What?”
He sighs. “I’m sorry that I pulled you here to Baton Rouge in the middle of this mess. If I had known it was going to get this bad… I would have made you stay in Alaska.”
“There is no way in hell I was staying there after what Ash did.”
“Oh, yeah,” he mutters, turning to me with a look of disgust. “What did happen with all of that? I hope you made him pay.”
I shrug. “He lost me so I’d say he’s hurting pretty bad… even if he doesn’t know it yet. Oh, and I hurled breakable things at the wall in an attempt to impale the two of them with clay.”
“Good.” He laughs before glancing at me with an evil grin. “Speaking of which… maybe I’ll just let Tate loose on Streak when…”
His words are interrupted by the sound of glass shattering and we both jerk toward the protestors as one of them lights a rag on fire before hurling a mason jar filled with liquid over the fence. It lands on Chance’s truck and flames roar up from the impact.
“Holy shit…”
Lincoln wraps his arm around me and we stand up as another protestor lights another Molotov cocktail and flashes us a grin. He hurls it over the fence and I watch in horror as it sails toward us with remarkable accuracy before landing on the pavement a few feet in front of us.
“Fuck. Get inside now,” Lincoln orders, shoving me toward the clubhouse door as he follows behind me and another cocktail flies over the fence.
Oh, shit.
This is so bad.
The street is full of people and we’re trapped in here like rats.
“Blaze!” Lincoln roars as soon as we step inside and everything in the room screeches to a halt before Storm turns the music down, a look of concern on his face.
“What’s going on?”
Lincoln releases me and they huddle together, whispering about the situation before they march off toward Blaze’s office and everyone else turns to me. My heart climbs into my throat and I point to the window.
“Look outside.”
They all rush to the closest window and gasps fill the room followed by angry hisses and whispered curses but I turn away from them, desperate for only one person and before I can even fully turn around, his arms wrap around me and he buries his nose in my hair.
“What’s happening, Princess?”
I pull back and meet his eyes. “The protestors… they’re throwing Molotov cocktails over the fence… one hit Chance’s truck and one almost hit me.”
“Fuck,” he snarls, his face the picture of rage as he pulls me tighter into his body. He’s shaking and his heart is racing against my ear and I grip his t-shirt, clinging to him with everything I have. Storm, Blaze, and Lincoln step out of Blaze’s office and Blaze whistles to get everyone’s attention.
“We can’t stay here anymore.”
Murmurs of agreement ripple through the room.
“I’m going to call Rodriguez and get us an escort out of here but y’all need to go pack and we need to be quick. Understand?”
My mind is blank as his words slip in one ear and race out of the other. A chill descends over me as I turn to look out of the window, trying to put all of the pieces together but it’s like someone dumped a hundred different puzzles in a bag and I can’t find any that fit. Travis grabs my arms and gives me a little shake, forcing me to focus on him as he meets my eyes.
“Go pack your stuff, baby, and I’ll be down in just a minute, okay?”
I nod on autopilot and when he releases me to go to his own bedroom, I walk across the bar as chaos rages around me. Flames dance in the window as I pass by it and it feels like something out of a dream. I lean my shoulder against the wall in the hallway and close my eyes, remembering the cocktail hitting the ground right in front of me and tears sting my eyes. When I open them again, I lightly slap my face and suck in a breath.
“Get it together, Rowan.”
I take a few seconds to take a couple of deep breaths to calm myself down and when I feel more in control, I push off of the wall and slip into my room. Moving through the room like a tornado, I throw things into my bags haphazardly, not even checking if things are clean before I shove them into my luggage and when it seems like I have everything, I zip my bags closed and carry them out into the main room. Travis is back at the bar, two bags at his feet as he chugs some whiskey straight from the bottle.
Excellent.
“I know this looks bad,” he says, glancing over at me when I stop next to him and drop my stuff on the floor. I arch a brow.
“You think?”
He nods and takes another swig. “Thing is, I was already too tipsy to safely drive so this seemed like the best thing I could do.”
Sighing, I decide not to argue with him about it when we clearly have much bigger things to worry about. The move is dumb as hell and unreasonable but if he was already well on his way to drunk before shit hit the fan, which he was, I can’t expect him to think rationally. He offers me some and I shake my head. He may not be able to drive but I can and it’s going to stay that way.
“Any idea where we’re going to go?”
He shrugs. “Someone suggested Emma and Nix’s house since it’s fucking massive and already secured.”
“Why is it secured?” I ask and he takes another drink before slamming the bottle back down on the bar with a wince. His eyes look glassy and I sigh. Jesus, he’s so far gone already.
“We use their house sometimes to keep the girls we rescue safe until we can move them so Blaze ordered that we make it as safe as we can for them,” he says before grabbing the bottle again. “They have cameras, perimeter fences, motion detecters… the works.”
I nod, turning to gaze out over the clubhouse as people frantically try to pack everything we could possibly need and my heart climbs into my throat when I hear the sound of glass breaking again. This clubhouse, which has felt so safe since the moment I got here, now feels as dangerous as the other side of the fence and I don’t want to be here another second longer than we have to. After a few more minutes, Blaze steps into the room and whistles again.
“Okay, Rodriguez will be here momentarily with the fire department so let’s get all this shit packed into cars and get out of here.”
I turn to Travis and hold out my hand. “Give me your keys.”
“Yes, ma’am,” he answers, digging them out of his pocket and dropping them into my hand before he stands up with his bottle and stumbles. My muscles tense, ready to react if I have to but he catches himself and takes a deep breath as he stands up straight.
“Do we really need to bring that?” I ask, pointing to the bottle as I grab my bags and he glances down at it before nodding.
“Yeah, we do. I’m being run out of my home by a psychopath. He brought these people here and made them hate us so this is all his fault… you know?”
I nod, my heart breaking for him as I wrap my arm around his waist. “Yeah, I know, baby.”
“You need help with anything, Row?” Lincoln asks, stopping next to me and glaring at Travis as he leans against me. I sigh and nod.
“Could you grab his bags?”
He narrows his eyes. “Is he fucking drunk?”
“He is,” Travis answers, holding up the bottle of booze. “Because, fuck you, Warren. That’s why.”
“Jesus Christ. Just get him to his car and I’ll get the bags,” Lincoln mutters, flashing Travis a look of disappointment but I don’t hang around long enough for him to start berating him, not that it would d
o any good at this point. Since I’ve been here, I’ve noticed that, as time passed, there was this edge to Travis’s demeanor and I know he’s been so stressed trying to save all of us from Warren but it feels like more than that. The problem is, I’ve been too afraid to ask, too afraid to upset the good thing he and I have going.
When we get out to the Impala, I open the passenger door and help him inside before running around the hood and slipping behind the wheel and starting it. Glancing down the lot, I see Lincoln loading all of our bags into his truck and nod, checking one thing off of my list before rolling my window down to listen to instructions. Red and blue lights bounce off of the clubhouse followed by the “whoop” of a siren and I glance down as four police cruisers pull to a stop outside of the gate and the officers jump out. As they begin to push the crowd back, I scan the area and frown. Where the hell did the other officers go? The ones that have been posted out there day and night since this all started to keep everyone safe.
Two officers jump back into their squad cars and flip a U-turn in opposite directions to act as a barrier between us and the crowd as Blaze stands in front of us and motions for us to move out. He runs over to his bike and as the deep rumble of the engine fills the air, Rodriguez punches the code into the lock and slides the gate open. We move out, one by one, and when it’s my turn, I slip behind Fuzz and Piper’s Bronco as Travis sighs from the passenger seat. I glance over at him.
“What?”
Peeking over at me, he takes a sip of his whiskey before turning away from me and shaking his head. “You’re amazing, you know?”
“No, I didn’t know,” I answer, fighting back a smile as I eye the bottle in his hand. He’s really fucking going for broke tonight and my gaze flicks back up to his face, trying to understand the emotion that flickers through his eyes.
“You’re fire, baby… like, for real.”
I arch a brow. “Thank you… I think.”
“This isn’t coming out right,” he growls, scrubbing his hand down his face and I glance out of my window to hide my smile. Fuck. I want to be mad at him for getting drunk when shit was seriously going to hell but he’s just so damn cute right now that I can’t. Turning back to him, I flash a pointed look at the whiskey bottle.
