by Tillie Cole
“Are you at peace now?” I kissed her forehead.
“I am now you are here,” she said and placed her head on my lap. She sighed as I stared at the glistening water of the river. “Can we stay here, Mama?” She looked up at me with her beautiful brown gaze. I leaned down and kissed the freckle on the side of her eye that I adored.
“We can stay,” I said, knowing we would be happy here.
“Good.” She drifted off to sleep.
And I smiled again. Because all was good.
At last.
Chapter Twenty-One
AK
“You think she’s gonna get through this?” I asked Rider quietly, so Phebe wouldn’t hear me.
Rider dropped the bullet into a tin beside him and looked up. Had to give it to the ex-prophet, fucker had gotten his head down and dealt with this shit without complaint. Turned out he took down a few Klansmen in the process too. We hadn’t seen another truck come up late in the shootout. Rider took out the driver and another before one got away.
The one Ash took out before he could kill me.
He nodded. “Stopped the bleeding early enough. She needs more blood, waiting on her type, but she should be okay. Bullet hit to the left of her stomach—no vital organs were touched. Luckily. She should be okay.”
Relief ran through me. I rocked on my feet as he began stitching her up. “Thanks,” I mumbled. Rider’s head snapped up in surprise. I reluctantly met his eyes, and he nodded his head.
“After what Phebe has done for me, for Bella, and after finding out Judah did all . . . this.” He looked at Sapphira and gritted his teeth. He’d been told the whole story of his brother’s trafficking side dealings. Fucker took it hard. Most of the shit had been going on for months, all behind his back while he was still prophet.
I actually felt something close to sympathy for the asshole.
I turned to look at Phebe at the back of the room. She wasn’t there. “Phebe?” I walked closer to the door. I stuck my head out into the hallway. “Phebe?” I tried again. I ran to the bar, wondering where the fuck she was.
Vike was sitting at the bar. “Have you seen Phebe?” I asked.
“She ain’t been in here,” he said.
I ran out into the hallway again and started checking the brothers’ club rooms. Most of the brothers were sleeping or gone the fuck home. I burst out of the doors and into the evening air. Hush and Cowboy sat in the yard, drinking and smoking. “You all right, mon frère?”
“Phebe?” I repeated her name again, starting to really fucking panic.
“Not come out this way,” Hush answered. “Been here since we got back.”
I tried to think. Tried to imagine where the fuck she could have gone. I darted back into the clubhouse and just started checking doors, one after the other—storage, armory, fucking bathrooms. Then I got to the door that led to a break room behind the bar, where whoever was working could catch a smoke or drink. I slammed through and froze in my tracks. An overturned bottle of Tylenol was on the counter. There were only a couple of pills left. My pulse raced. Then my motherfucking heart dropped when I saw a pair of feet sticking out from around the corner. Pale, dirty and covered in dried blood.
“Phebe!” I turned the corner. “No,” I said. I dropped to my knees. “Phebe.” I picked her lifeless body up in my arms. Her head flopped back, and a stab of pain sliced through my stomach. “No!” I looked to her left. An empty bottle of Jack lay beside her, one that I knew would have been full or nearly full when she’d picked it up.
I pulled her closer to my chest and looked at her face. She was still covered in blood, still fucking broken and bruised, and I couldn’t fucking take it. Not again. Not another fucking one.
“Phebe!” I shouted, and heard someone come in behind me. I turned, not giving a fuck about the tears running down my face as I held her lifeless body in my arms. “She’s hardly got a fucking pulse,” I said to Vike.
“What was it?” He got on his knees beside me.
“Pills and Jack.”
“Get her up,” he said. Too many past memories came crashing to my head. Dev, Tina . . . and now Phebe. I couldn’t, I couldn’t . . . “I can’t lose her too.”
Vike’s blue eyes met mine. “You ain’t going to, brother. I swear. Just get her chest up.” Vike’s hand slapped across my cheek. “She needs you, ’K. You know how this goes. You know this shit. She needs to puke that shit back up.” He took hold of my cheeks in his hands. “She’s still fucking alive. This ain’t Dev. She can be saved.”
This ain’t Dev.
His words broke something in me, and I got my shit together. Flipping Phebe to her front, unable to watch for any injuries, I pushed my fingers into her mouth and waited until she gagged. I didn’t run for a fucking bucket, and I had to force myself not to look down at the blood between her thighs or else I’d fucking fall apart. Then a moan came from Phebe’s throat, the fucking small noise sounding like goddamn heaven.
“Come on,” I urged and pushed my fingers down further. A choking sound came from her mouth, and then she puked. I kept going, Phebe’s cocktail of Tylenol and Jack spilling all over the floor. “Get Rider,” I said to Vike.
I leaned down and saw her eyes. They were rolling, fighting consciousness. “You’re not fucking dying on me, Red,” I said. Phebe’s eyes opened a fraction. “I ain’t letting you go.” I said just as Rider came into the room.
“OD’d,” I said. “Think she’s got what she can up.”
“Get her into one of the rooms,” Rider said without missing a beat.
“Mine,” Vike said. I picked her up in my arms, watching as she fought for consciousness. I laid her on Vike’s bed. Rider came in seconds later. He pushed a needle straight into her arm and got her hooked up to an IV.
“We might need to pump her stomach,” Rider said. He checked the pulse in her wrist then the one in her arm. “Her pulse is strengthening.” He looked at me. “Was there anything left in her stomach?”
“Nothing.” I pushed her soiled hair out of her face, fighting not to break again. “She needs a bath.” I closed my eyes and swallowed against the fucking lump in my throat. Then I looked down between her legs. Her dress still covered her, but the blood was there. “He fucking raped her.” My voice cracked. I was losing the battle with my fucking tears. “Look at the fucking state of her.” I looked at Vike. “How much can one person fucking take?” My hand hovered over her swollen lips and cut face. She was so fucking beautiful. And she wasn’t fucking dying on me.
“We can’t take her to the hospital like this. Either her or Sapphira. The cops would be on our asses in seconds,” Vike said to Rider. “You gotta fix them up here. You need anything, me and Flame will get it for you.”
“Okay,” Rider said. I held Phebe as Rider checked her stats. A long sigh came from his mouth. “She’s getting back to normal. Her blood pressure is climbing again, and her pulse is getting steady.” He got off the bed. “Keep her here overnight so I can check on her while I watch Sapphira too.”
“Okay.” I looked down at my bitch. Fuck, she had just got her daughter back and she did this . . . and then it dawned on me. “She thought she’d lost her,” I said, watching Phebe’s sleeping face to make sure she was still breathing. “She thought Sapphira had died. Died saving her . . . her mother, when all she ever wanted to do was save her.”
No one said shit to me in response. But I wasn’t really talking to them anyhow. I kissed Phebe’s forehead, feeling the warmth filling her skin under my lips. “Wake the fuck up, Red. I . . . I kinda fucking need you.” I shut my eyes and pulled her closer. Didn’t know when Vike left, but the next time I looked up, the saline was hanging from a metal stand. I laid Phebe down on the bed and lay down beside her. I took her hand in mine and watched her breathe. And I stayed awake all night, making sure she was breathing. If she was breathing, she could come back to me.
So I fucking watched her breathe.
*****
The brothers watc
hed me from the bar as I carried her outside. Flame and Vike were at the truck, waiting. Ash was there too. “You good, kid?” I watched as he manned the fuck up and nodded. He wasn’t. I knew it. I remembered my first kill. Dev had given me a whiskey and told me it’d get easier from that day on.
And it had.
I sat in the back with Phebe as Vike drove us home. The minute I got in my cabin, I took her straight to the shower, turned it on and stripped her of her clothes. Her eyes flickered open, searching for me. “Gonna wash this shit off you, Red.” I placed her down as I shucked off my clothes too. I took her under the spray and washed her down. She moaned in my arms when the water hit a bruise, and I had to clench my jaw when I got between her legs. Vike had paid some lady doctor to check her and Sapphira. She’d said that Meister fucker had scratched her and hurt Phebe’s cunt. Weren’t anything lasting, would just hurt for now. Sapphira had been raped too, over and over again over months—which we knew. She gave them shots and tested them for every fucking disease under the sun.
Every one came back negative.
Thank fuck.
So I washed her. I cleaned her until she was my Phebe again. Red hair bright and skin like fucking snow. And those freckles. Those motherfucking freckles. I dried her and took her to the bedroom. Our bedroom, because this time she was going nowhere.
Not a fucking chance.
I climbed into bed beside her and held my goddamn breath as she turned to me and smiled as much as she could through her cracked lips. “You are here too?” she whispered. “My two great loves with me, happy and at peace.” Her eyes closed and she sighed. “I could not have dreamed I would be so lucky.” My eyebrows pulled down, wondering what the fuck she meant. “I will introduce you to her, AK. You will love her.” She laughed lightly. “And she will love you. Because you are so easily loved . . .”
She slipped back into sleep, and I laid my head down beside her. I closed my eyes, keeping her hand in mine so she couldn’t get away again. And the wait began. The wait for her to return to me.
So we could start again.
Chapter Twenty-Two
Flame
I left Vike’s place and walked to my cabin. I opened the door and saw Ash sitting on the couch, staring at the unlit fire.
He didn’t even look up when I shut the door. His face was pale and his hands were clasped together on his lap. I heard Maddie in the kitchen. I walked past Ash, but he still didn’t look up. When I got to the kitchen, Maddie turned. Her face was strange.
She was worried.
She held her hands out. I took them with mine and pulled her into my chest. Maddie’s arms wrapped around my waist. I inhaled her scent and closed my eyes. “How is Phebe?”
“At AK’s,” I said. “But she hasn’t woken up yet.”
“And Sapphira?”
“Alive.”
Maddie stepped back and put her hand on her forehead. “What a mess. Everything is a mess. Grace is okay. She is shaken and scared, but Lilah and Ky are with her.” Maddie’s eyes shimmered. “She was so young to have that happen to her. And Sapphira.” My bitch took a took breath. “I . . . I know what her life was like. Being forced into that kind of servitude.”
“Maddie,” I growled, unable to stop the fucking burning in my veins at the thought. But her eyes went to Ash on the couch.
“He is young too.” She looked back to me. “I do not know what has happened. He would not say.”
“He killed someone today. He saved AK’s life.”
Maddie’s lips parted in shock. Her face paled, and she looked at Ash again. “No wonder he is so lost.” She wiped a tear from her eye then faced me again. She took my hand. “You must speak to him.”
I felt ice fill my chest. “I don’t know what the fuck to say.”
Maddie stepped closer until she was up against my body. Her hand came onto my chest. “Flame, you have been there. You have lived this life. Which means you have been in this position.” She paused. “What happened to you? How did you cope with it?”
“AK,” I said, thinking back to my first kill. It was a Diablo. We had been on a run when we were attacked. I stabbed the fucker right in the heart. I stabbed him and watched him die. “AK sat me down, gave me a whiskey and told me I would never feel that way again. Feel bad at taking life. That it would get easier.”
“And did it work?”
“I didn’t feel bad in the first place,” I said and watched Maddie freeze, then nod her head. “I liked it. It made the flames in my blood not burn so bright.”
Maddie reached up and brought my head down to hers. She kissed my mouth. Then she took my hand. “But Asher is not like you, Flame. I can see from here that he feels this moment heavily in his heart. I think he is in shock. He keeps staring at his hands.” Maddie kissed my fingers. Bumps broke out on my skin. “He needs you, Flame. He needs his brother.”
My heart started beating too fast. “I don’t know what to say. I’m shit with this stuff. I’ll just wait until Phebe is better and AK is back. He’ll talk to him.”
“He does not want AK,” Maddie said and put my hand over her heart. “He wants you. He only ever wants you.” Maddie smiled, but it wasn’t a happy smile. It was sad. I didn’t like her being sad. “Asher came straight here, Flame. About an hour ago, when you were still at the clubhouse. Here, Flame. Not Viking’s. He did not pine for AK. He came to our home. For you. His brother.” A tear ran down Maddie’s cheek. “He came where he felt safe. You made him feel safe.”
I wiped the tear from her eye and felt my stomach tighten. I held out my hand. “I put my hand on his shoulder.”
Maddie gasped. “When?”
“Afterwards. He was being weird. I put my hand on his shoulder, then I rode next to him all the way home.”
Maddie’s bottom lip shook. “You protected him. Looked after him.”
“Did I?” I furrowed my brow. “I made sure he got home. Made sure he rode AK’s bike straight. His hands were shaking bad.”
Maddie smiled as she cried. And this one was a good smile. “He needs you, Flame.” Maddie hugged me again, and I kissed the top of her head. “You see this?” she asked. “This embrace?”
I held her close, confused. “Yeah.”
“Asher may need one too.”
I fucking froze, every muscle in my body tight. “I can’t.”
“You can,” she said, then looked up. I looked down into her green eyes. “Like me, he loves you. And you love him. He is safe for you. He may need to know that he is loved right now. A hug will give him comfort.”
“Maddie . . .”
Maddie pulled back and walked to a cupboard. She took out two glasses and a bottle of whiskey. She poured two glasses—just like AK had done for me years ago. She brought them to me. “You remember what AK said to you?” I nodded. I remembered every word. “Then take one of these to Asher and tell him the same. It will help him. I promise.” I took the glasses from Maddie. “I will be waiting for you in our bedroom.”
“Maddie . . .” I said again, not sure I could do it.
“I love you.” She went into the bedroom, leaving me alone with Ash.
The whiskey in the glasses sloshed from side to side. I frowned, seeing my hands were shaking. You remember what AK said to you? I thought of Maddie’s words then walked toward my brother.
He didn’t lift his head until I sat on the couch beside him. I looked into the fire too. Nothing to see but burnt ashes. Clenching my jaw, I thrust out my hand in Ash’s direction. “Here,” I said, holding out a glass of whiskey.
Ash didn’t do shit for ages, but then he took the glass from my hand. His fingers touched mine. They were ice cold. They were shaking.
I heard his breathing. It was weird, stuttered and low. I glanced to the side and saw his head was down. He held the whiskey in his hands, not drinking. “Drink,” I said. Ash looked up. His cheeks were pale as fuck, and his fucking eyes were wet. Tears were running down his face. My gut twisted. I didn’t know why. I pointed at
the whiskey again. “Drink.”
He didn’t. Just sat there, looking at me with tears running down his face.
I knew I’d be shit at this. I told Maddie I couldn’t do it.
You remember what AK said to you?
I closed my eyes and remembered AK that day. I remembered what he did, like Maddie said. I just had to tell Ash what AK told me.
AK had started by putting his hand on my shoulder. Opening my eyes, I looked down at my hand. I clenched my fingers in a fist. I could do this. I could touch Ash.
I had to.
Reaching out my hand, fighting the urge to pull it back, I put it on Ash’s shoulder. It felt fucking weird. I wanted to pull back, but I imagined Maddie’s green eyes. Imagined her smile as I did it. Ash swallowed and met my eyes. I wanted to look away, but I fought the need and repeated—word for word—what AK had said to me. “Come on, Ash. You need a drink.”
Ash’s mouth was open a little, and he looked at my hand on his shoulder out of the corner of his eye. I didn’t think he was gonna do shit, but then he brought the whiskey to his mouth and took a sip.
“All of it.” I downed my own. The liquor burned my throat. But it made things better.
Ash finished his too, then wiped his cheeks with his forearm.
“It gets easier,” I said, saying AK’s words to Ash in exactly the same way he’d said them to me. “From this moment on, it becomes second nature and don’t bother you as much. I promise.”
Ash blinked, blinked again. “I just keep picturing his face as he stared up at me from the ground.” My teeth gritted together. “He had brown eyes. I keep seeing his fucking brown eyes, Flame.”
“He was scum. He deserved to die. And you saved AK.” A weird pain pulled in my chest at the thought of AK being killed. I didn’t like it. I didn’t fucking like it.
