by Addison Jane
Shake lifted his gun, brushing it against the nearest asshole’s temple. “Get the keys, unlock it.”
The teen moved quickly with Shake right on his ass, rushing over to where Luther was still rolling on the floor and plucking the keys from his pocket before stumbling over to the small door. His hands shook as he unlocked it and pulled it open. Lola sat on the dirty floor, her lip trembling and tearing my heart from my chest. Tears streaked her cheeks, her whole face red from crying.
Shake tucked his gun away before he reached down and picked her up, cradling her in his arms. I saw the way his face changed, the way he realized possibly just how long she’d been there, or how he questioned the kind of monster who would beat and neglect a fucking toddler.
His eyes caught mine.
“It’s up to you here, but I think you already know what my vote is,” he announced ominously. “I’m gonna call one of the girls to come help get these kids to the clubhouse and someone to come check them out.”
There was a soft tug on my club cut, and I looked down at Mase. The kid who’d brought himself back from this kind of life once already.
“He’s still my brother,” he whispered, his eyes letting me know everything I needed. The kid didn’t want to be responsible for his brother’s death. He didn’t want to make that choice right now because as far as he was concerned, this was still the man who was a part of him, even if it was in some fucked-up way.
And that alone granted him a pass.
Maybe one day that would change.
Maybe not.
But I respected the fact it was his choice, and all I would do at this point was support him.
I eyed every other man in the room, challenging them to move their drug-fucked asses and come at me, but they simply glared at me, curling their lips up like they thought they had the fucking balls but were about to use the excuse ‘oh, I had a big lunch.’
“Bunch of momma’s boys trying to be gangstas,” Crush scoffed, shaking his head.
For good measure, I walked over to Mase’s brother, placing my heavy boot on his fucking hand and pressing down, enjoying the roar of pain that filled the room as I crushed and cracked his fingers. Call it sadistic if you want, I called it active learning. And he was obviously having a hard time understanding.
His dark, shadowed eyes looked up at me, his face curled in a snarl.
“This is just so you know,” I added, crouching down beside him. “You come after Mase or Lola, and next time, I’ll kill you.” I reached out, patting his cheek with my hand before curling up my nose and wiping it on my jeans as I got to my feet and followed my brothers out of the room, pulling my cell phone from my pocket. I hit speed dial and put it to my ear as I walked down the path to my ride.
It only rang once. “Hey, babe.”
My shoulders sagged, and I shook my head wondering if that feeling of relief I had whenever I heard her voice would ever stop. “Can you set up your old room with Lola’s bed?” I asked, looking back over my shoulder to where Crush was sitting at the curb cleaning Lola’s dirty face with a wet cloth while Shake was checking out Mase’s arm.
“They coming to stay?”
“Yeah,” I sighed. “Maybe on a more permanent basis.”
“Okay,” she responded, not for a second thrown. “Are they okay?”
There was this instant protectiveness to her voice, and I was fighting the smile that turned up on my face. “Yeah, Rocky, they’re a bit rough, but they’ll be okay.”
“Okay, bring them home.”
This woman.
“Thanks,” Mase announced, walking up behind me as I hung up the phone. “Thanks for coming.”
“You should have called me,” I told him, shaking my head. “You don’t have to face this asshole on your own.”
Mase frowned, hanging his head and taking a deep breath. He cringed, pressing his hand to his ribs. “I thought I might be able to talk to him, tell him I was done, and to leave me out of his shit.”
“Sometimes, you have to take your own fights and stand on your own feet. I get it,” I told him, reaching out and patting him on the shoulder. “But there is nothing fucking shameful about letting the people who give a shit about you stand at your back while you do. That’s what family is for. Real family.”
He huffed out a laugh and nodded.
I could finish this right now.
Walk right back in the building and make sure that fucker couldn’t fucking come back again.
But I didn’t see that as my choice.
It was Mase’s.
And maybe one day he would decide to make that decision.
For now, all I was going to do was have his back as I had promised.
LAKEN
“Are we gonna keep them?”
Myth choked on a laugh as he tried to swallow his mouthful of beer, his eyes following my gaze to where Mase and Tyler were trying to teach Lola how to ride a bike. “They aren’t stray dogs, Lake.”
I frowned, my shoulder sagging at the idea of letting them walk back out of here, of not being there to protect them. “But someone has sure been treating them like they are,” I argued, leaning into his side and tucking myself in under his arm when he lifted it to accommodate my neediness. “Mase looks up to you. And Lola, well, he’s all she’s got.”
It’d been a long road to figuring out just how family dynamics work, but if anything, when you looked at this clubhouse, you knew there was no way in hell you’d call this anything other than a family.
Myth picked them up a week ago, and they’d stayed with us the entire time. Mase was now sporting a new cast on his wrist and two cracked ribs, and it had taken almost the entire week to get Lola to smile again.
She was petrified.
And I already knew it was going to start following her—that fear, the uncertainty—if no one stepped in and offered her something else or protected her.
“I’ve had a chat with their Mom,” Myth suddenly announced, surprising me. “I agreed to rent one of the club apartments across the street for them to stay in if she promised to try and get sober.”
The club had bought the apartments across the street, and The Exiled Eight’s construction company had just finished renovating them. There were six in total, two bedrooms in each.
Shake and Meyah looked like they’d be the first to move in, giving them their own space with Juliet, but being only feet away in case of urgent business. It was the perfect compromise.
“You think she will?” I asked skeptically. “She hasn’t given much of a shit up to this point.”
“And we will be right here if something happens,” he soothed. “You don’t know what kind of hell someone has been through. You don’t know what demons people are fighting until you offer them a sword.”
I hated how right he was. How badly I wanted to wrap these kids up and steel them away, knowing I would do anything humanly possible to keep them from ever feeling like they weren’t good enough. Or they weren’t loved by someone.
Fucking anyone.
But I also knew that sometimes we had to hit an all-time low for us to finally fight back.
I’d been there.
Maybe she was too.
“Stop it,” he whispered, grabbing my hand and pulling it away from the scar on my stomach.
The new one.
The one that had almost cost me everything.
It’d become a habit, something I did subconsciously when I was thinking, or as Myth liked to call it, worrying.
I was dead when they pulled me out of the freezer.
My heart had stopped.
I was ice cold.
Had I been healthy, I could have stayed in there for hours before my heart stopped, but it was the gunshot that sealed the deal. Jester had caught me in the side, missing any internal organs, but I was slowly bleeding out.
Ironically, it was the freezer that saved me.
It brought my heart rate down, so my blood wasn’t pumping as hard or as fast, which slowed the
blood loss. It gave the EMTs a chance—a slim chance, but a chance, nonetheless. It took them nine minutes and eighteen seconds to get my heart started again, but I’d lost a lot of blood, and things were touch and go on the ten-minute ride to the hospital. I could hear Myth’s voice, though, he was talking to me.
Keep fighting, Lake.
I can’t fight for you.
You have to do this one on your own.
I could hear it, and I just held onto him. He was my anchor, pulling me back.
If you asked him, he’d tell you they wouldn’t even let him in the ambulance. He’d tell you he lost his shit, and four brothers had to practically pin him to the floor—broken collarbone and all—so he wouldn’t tear the fucking building apart.
I preferred my version.
But his was rather romantic, in a strange way.
That basically explained our love. It was weird, it was a little odd, a little unconventional, but to me, it was fucking everything.
For a long time, all I knew was a bad kind of love. The kind of love that was hard, that you struggled to understand, and that drained every part of your soul as you fought to figure out your place in it. The love I had with Myth was different.
It was honest.
It was understanding.
It was him calling me out when I forgot I wasn’t alone anymore and tried to handle shit on my own. It was me not blinking an eye when he went for his fourth run of the day because I knew that was just a part of how he worked.
Our love was simple—and I think in the scheme of things, after a lifetime of complications, the both of us just fucking craved something simple.
And I was starting to think Mase and Lola deserved something simple too.
“Church,” Shotgun called from the bar, and I looked to Myth. He was just as confused as I was given they’d just had church this morning. “Now!”
Myth pushed back from the table, shrugging. “I’ll be back soon.” He quickly kissed my head and joined the flow of brothers tramping into church.
Thump, thump, thump.
“Uh, what ya doing?” I inquired, watching Meyah hammer a nail into the clubhouse wall while wearing Juliet in her front pack. “You want me to hold something? And by something, I mean the baby before you drop a hammer on her head.”
Meyah just laughed, waving me off like I was crazy, but I wasn’t the one balancing a nail on my child’s head while I tried to find the stud in the wall. “It’s fine, she will honestly just scream the moment I remove her from this pack,” Meyah explained, and when she looked up at me, though her bright smile was there, I could see the absolute exhaustion on her face. “I’ve tried to give her to Shake four times, and she just refuses. She only wants me, which I’m sure I’ll appreciate in a year when she can say Dad, Dad, Dad, and not Mom, Mom, Mom. But it just means I am the only one who can do everything.”
I let her ramble on.
It sounded like she needed it, just those few moments to vent before she picked herself back up and trucked along.
Meyah was one of the most amazing women I’d ever met. Her heart was in everything she did, parenting was no exception.
“Can I at least hold the nails for you?” I offered, drawing her attention to the nail still balancing precariously on poor little Juliet’s thinning hair. Meyah cringed, quickly grabbing it and shoving it into my hands while looking over her shoulder to make sure her man hadn’t seen. “What are we hanging?”
She grabbed the picture off the table and held it up in front of her.
UNEXPECTED HEROES
Bikers Risk Lives to Rescue Strangers in Majestic Tragedy
You couldn’t help but smile as you looked at the image of tattooed giants in overpriced suits carrying people out of my father’s charity ball. The boys would take this image down the second it went up, but Meyah was determined to let them know they were amazing. And they were determined to hide from any kind of recognition.
They’d saved hundreds of lives that night.
Including mine.
That was a simple fact.
“Lola, go inside!”
Meyah and I both paused what we were doing, hearing little footsteps crunch over the stones before appearing in the doorway.
“Hey, pretty lady,” I cooed, lifting her onto my hip when she held her arms out to me. “What’s wrong?” She jabbed her finger toward outside before snuggling in and burying her face into my shoulder. Meyah followed us as we walked over to one of the open roller doors and peered out, fighting the sun strike.
“Who’s that, Lo?” Meyah asked with a gentle smile, eyeing the car parked at the gates and the way Ty and Mase were both walking backward toward the clubhouse.
“Bruda,” she whimpered, clutching my body a little tighter.
Their brother.
The asshole who had locked her in a cupboard and beaten the crap out of Mase. The same brother who had Mase dealing his fucking drugs while he sat at home with his feet up, letting Mase take the fall when he was caught.
Oh, hell, no.
Meyah bounced back and forth on her toes, rocking the sleeping baby. “You think this kid is dumb or ballsy to show up at a place like this…”
“Come here, you little fucker,” their brother screamed, stepping through the clubhouse gates and storming at Mase. “Come here! You don’t turn your back on your family.”
“… and just walk in like that.”
“I’ll take dumb for four hundred, thanks.”
“I’ll get the boys,” she offered, scurrying away to the room where they held church. But I didn’t have time for that fucking shit. I looked up again, seeing the crazy bastard throw a punch at Mase, then one at an unarmed Ty.
I shuffled Lola back in behind the bar. “Sit here,” I ordered, pressing the bartop and watching the panel flip open to give me access to the sawed-off shotgun inside. “I’ll be back in a minute, okay?” I told her happily as I grabbed a couple of rounds, giving her a peck on the head before strutting out the front of the compound.
“Put him down,” I yelled, holding the cocked gun at my side as I stomped across the lot. He had Mase’s shirt in his hand, holding him captive while he drew back his fist, ready to plow it through this sixteen-year-old’s face. But hell no, not here, not on my watch. “Down!”
“And who the fuck are you?” he hissed, tugging Mase a little bit closer.
Too close.
“I’m the person who’s going to blow your face off if you don’t do what you’re told.”
“Bitch, who the fu—”
I slotted the ammunition down into the dark hollow barrels before snapping it into place and flicking the safety off. Lifting the deadly weapon, I pressed the handle into my shoulder and balanced the weight of it in my palm. My eye line was perfect. The gun was heavy as hell, but I was ready to use it and blow this bastard’s face off if he laid a single finger on Mase.
“You were saying?”
He dropped Mase instantly, and Tyler swept in, helping him up off the ground.
“You the brother?” I demanded.
“Lake…” Mase warned, he and Ty moving toward me, but I refused to drop my aim.
“The only reason I’m letting you keep your balls right now is because I love this kid right here, and I respect his choices.” I started to walk forward, smirking when the brother stumbled back, tripping over his own feet and landing on his dumbass. “But I swear to God, if you come back, I will aim this gun at your balls and blow them the fuck off.”
“You’re fucking crazy,” he spat, climbing to his feet, his eyes flicking past me as he hurried to get to the gate where his car was parked. I looked over my shoulder, seeing the entire club standing just outside the clubhouse, all looking rather amused.
I didn’t put the gun down until the car pulled out and fishtailed down the street as he sped to get the hell away from me.
“All right, so I’ll take that.” Ty laughed, reaching out tenderly and retrieving the shotgun from my hands.
&nbs
p; Rolling my eyes, I handed it over. “My arms say thank you.” They felt like jelly. That thing was fucking heavy, and I could only imagine the punch it had behind it.
Before I could turn around, there was a body suddenly in front of me, Mase’s arms wrapping around my shoulders, pulling me in. I laughed, wrapping my arms around his waist and squeezing him. I hated that he was already taller than me, but I would take all the affection this quiet, standoffish kid would give me.
Because I really did love him.
And Lola.
They deserved a chance to become something so much more than a product of their circumstances, forced into a box because they were born in the wrong house to the wrong people.
“I don’t think he’ll be back.” Mase smiled, pulling back and shaking his head.
“Looks like you’re stuck with us,” I joked, jabbing him in the ribs as we walked back to the clubhouse.
“I don’t think there’s any other crazy bitch I’d rather be stuck with.”
I gasped, pressing my hand to his chest. “Uh… we do not use the word bitch to describe women, young man.”
“Oh geez, Myth,” he called, searching for help.
But Myth just laughed, calling back over his shoulder. “You’re on your own!”
Sexy, passionate, and smart.
He was the whole package.
MYTH
“Casen’s coming by tomorrow with some papers from Dad’s lawyer. I’ve got a class, so I might be a little late to meet him,” Laken announced as she poured a perfect beer from the tap. She held it up, admiring her handiwork with a smile before placing it on the bar in front of me. “Can you make sure the boys know to let him in and not give him hell.”
Grabbing the tall glass, I took a step back. “You want me to tell these assholes to not be assholes?”
She rolled her eyes, wiping her hands on the cloth tucked into her pants. “Yeah, I guess that was reaching a little too far.”
“I’ll try and be here,” I promised.
