Dauntless (Sons of Templar MC) (19 page)

Lucky knew what he meant—the various explosives he had scattered around the warehouse before they had stormed the place.

Gage nodded. For once he didn’t grin at the prospect of blowing something sky-high, eliminating people who had hurt the club. Looking at his brothers now, they had
crippled
the club. Opened up old wounds that barely healed, no matter the fact that years had passed.

“Yeah, we get Wire to make the call…
boom
,” he said softly, the last word echoing through the room.

Cade nodded briskly. “Good.”

Lucky finally jerked out of the state that had frozen him in place, a spectator to his nightmare come alive, rushing forward. “Give her to me,” he ordered Gage tightly.

Gage didn’t do as asked. Instead he looked at him, at the blood that Lucky barely registered which covered him almost to his elbows. He was regarding Lucky like a mother to a child requesting to hold a newborn baby, like he was measuring whether he would drop or harm the precious bundle.

“Give me my fuckin’ woman,” he gritted out, wanting to snatch her. The only thing stopping him was the fact that he worried such a movement might harm her more, if that were even possible.

She didn’t seem to register their presence, the fact that they were talking about her. She merely continued tracing patterns on Gage’s scarred arms with a look of vivid concentration.

“Let’s get out of here, get her to a hospital,” Gage answered, still not giving him his woman.

Lucky clenched his fists and swallowed a bellow of frustration.

The moment he was considering forcibly removing her from his brother was the moment her matted head snapped up and he visibly flinched at her face.

“No hospitals,” she hissed, her eyes focused on Lucky. What haunted him was the fact she was looking right into his eyes but wasn’t
seeing
him. Her pupils seemed to take up every inch of those beautiful irises. She wasn’t seeing any of them, but something else. She was face-to-face with demons.

“No hospitals,” she repeated, her voice rising. “No hospitals.” Hysteria mounted on her croaky, almost foreign voice.

With massive amounts of effort, Lucky managed to clear his face of the fury, the utter devastation eating at him. He turned it soft, looking into those dangerously empty eyes. “Okay, firefly, no hospitals,” he soothed.

She gazed at him for a long moment, long enough to shred his insides. She nodded briskly and bent her head once more to trace Gage’s arm. She didn’t seem to have any desire to leave those scarred arms. Those empty eyes showed not one glimpse of recognition. So, with even more effort, with pain that almost floored him, he stepped back.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said, not making eye contact with anyone in the room. Those empty eyes were the only thing he thought of. Utter fear at the prospect of being able to fill them up again. After
that
.

If he couldn’t fill them, there was one thing he could do.

Kill every single motherfucker responsible for this.

Slowly.

Asher hadn’t stopped his bike when I flew off, my feet barely touching the ground as I sprinted past the various bikes parked outside the clubhouse. My heart was in danger of beating out of my chest. I didn’t stop until I made it into the common room. One that was always filled with laughter, with easy atmosphere that engulfed you in its warm glow the moment you stepped in. The utter silence had my heart silencing. Stopping.

“Where is she?” I demanded in a hoarse voice.

The men I had at first feared and then come to consider as family were scattered around the room. They were all in various positions, nearly every single one of them clutching a bottle of alcohol of some sort. Every single one of their strong gazes was tainted, etched in defeat.

I struggled to stay upright as fear blanketed my entire body. For these men to be beaten down to this, it had to be bad. Bad was what I’d been prepared for. Bex had been missing for weeks, so I had known it wouldn’t be good when we found her. But I hadn’t been prepared for how bad. My mind hadn’t been able to entertain that. Until now. Until I was confronted with it and couldn’t escape it. Something bad had happened to my best friend, my sister, and I wasn’t sure if I’d survive it.

I felt hands at my waist, yanking me into a hard body. “Flower,” a voice murmured. A voice that usually soothed me no matter what. Arms that took the weight off my chest the moment they made contact with my skin. They didn’t that time. Not with the ice running through my veins. Not with the weight of a thousand tons that settled on my chest the moment I registered the energy in the room. When I realized what that energy meant for Bex.

My entire body started to shake involuntarily as my gaze landed on Lucky. Or, more accurately, the top of Lucky’s head. It was bowed down, cradled in his large hands that rested on his knees. He hadn’t even moved when I spoke. Something about that position, a position of defeat, teetered me closer to the cliff I was in danger of tumbling off.

“Where is she?” I repeated, my voice raw, almost a screech.

Something in my tone, maybe the despair, registered and Lucky’s head snapped up. I physically recoiled at his face. At the emptiness there. There was no grin. No twinkle in his eye. Nothing. It was as if something had come along and sucked every inch, every possibility, of happiness out of his body and replaced it with something horrible, something ugly. Fury simmered underneath it, vengeance.

“Flower,” Asher said, his voice soft. Concerned. Knowing.

“Don’t ‘flower’ me,” I snapped. “I want to know where my best friend is. Right now.”

Cade stepped forward, his eyes first over my shoulder, meeting Asher’s gaze, then focusing on me. Their edges were crinkled slightly, soft. But the emptiness, maybe not the same gaping chasm as in Lucky’s but a fraction of it, was still there.

“She didn’t want a hospital,” he explained slowly.

Some part of me, some distant part, relaxed a smidgeon at the fact she was okay enough to communicate what she didn’t want. Another more aware part of me sank at the knowledge that she’d needed a hospital. At the flatness of Cade’s voice, mirroring an echo of the defeat on Lucky’s face.

“We’ve got someone we trust in there, treating her.” He lifted his chin to the door, where they held their ‘church.’

I nodded and stepped out of Asher’s arms, one destination in mind.

A gentle but firm grip on my shoulder stopped me. I glanced down at Cade’s hand and then glared at the owner.

I didn’t glare at anyone, apart from Asher because I was confident enough to come out of my shell with him. No matter how far I’d come from who I used to be, I was far from actively glaring at men who radiated badass-ness, despite their kind eyes. But this man, no matter how scary, hot, or intimidating he may be, was barring me from going to her. I’d engage in a physical altercation with him if need be. Not one I was likely to win, but I’d fight tooth and nail.

“You don’t want to see her right now, Lily,” he almost whispered. “It’s… not good.”

His words had a physical effect on me, stabbing me with daggers of meaning. I straightened my shoulders. “It’s not about what I want. Or what you think I want. It’s what she needs,” I hissed, then shrugged off his hand and strode purposefully towards the door, praying to be as fearless as I knew Bex would have been in my situation.

Asher moved to follow Lily as she darted towards the door. The one he knew held more pain and suffering for his girl. Pain and suffering he intended to protect her from as best he could. He couldn’t protect her from this and it almost killed him. She didn’t need any more blows. He knew she was strong enough to handle them, but she shouldn’t fuckin’ have to.

And despite Bex’s downfalls, she was a good person. Asher knew she had waded through some epic shit in her life. Not the details, but he saw it in her eyes. People didn’t become heroin addicts because they’d enjoyed a cloud-free existence. He’d been furious at her for putting Lily in danger at the start, but then he saw how much Lily meant to her, how much she meant to Lily, and he managed to swallow that anger. He’d even begun to respect her for the way she was turning her life around, trying to beat the demons at her back.

Now they were back, in full force. And all he could do was witness her and his wife battle them. A hand on his shoulder, much firmer than it had been on Lily’s, restrained him.

Asher stopped, his eyes on the blonde head disappearing behind the door. He raised his eyebrow at Cade in warning. He really didn’t want to have to break his president’s nose, but he would if he stopped him from going to his wife. If he made it so she had to face this alone.

“No, brother,” Cade said quietly.

The two words gave him pause. The way he said them, reminiscent of the tone he’d heard from him years before. When he’d come back from the hospital to let them know that Laurie had faded away, unable to survive the brutality inflicted on her.

His gaze snapped to Cade. “No.” It was more of a prayer than a question.

Cade nodded slowly.

Asher closed his eyes for a split second and felt physical pain, not only at the fact he knew what this meant for Bex, for his wife, but for his best friend. Lucky sat like a statue, like a man who had lost everything rooting him to the floor and the world was in danger of tearing him away from himself.

“We’ve got Sarah in there with her. She understands the need for… discretion,” Cade told him.

“Is it bad?” Asher managed to choke out.

Cade gave him a long look. “It’s bad, brother.”

“Fuck,” Asher hissed under his breath.

Cade stepped forward, close to him so he could speak quieter. “They kept her high. Strung out so she didn’t even know her own fuckin’ name.” He paused, taking a huge breath. “When we stormed the place, she was chained to the bed. Naked.” He sucked in a harsh breath, fire in his eyes, defeat sagging his shoulders. “Some fucker raping her,” Cade explained in a flat voice. Asher didn’t miss the fury that barely stayed contained. That turned the air thick enough to swallow.

His entire body turned wired. He knew. The moment he had walked into the room, he knew. But hearing it, hearing the words, hearing the strongest motherfucker he knew so shaken, it got to him.

His gaze flickered to the door his wife had disappeared behind. Every inch of him was screaming to go to her. To be there.

“Fuck,” he repeated.

Another thing that would try to bruise his flower. To destroy her.

He swallowed it, that animal need to go to his woman. Barely. The thing that stopped him was the gaze that settled on his best friend; on all of his brothers. They were all feeling this. Bleeding from this.

He gave Cade another long glance and clapped him on the shoulder. Cade nodded to him and stepped aside.

The men gave him somber chin lifts as he waded through the room, through their fury. Brock was clutching a whisky glass so hard his knuckles turned white. Ranger was murmuring quietly into his phone, his eyes hard. Asher guessed he was talking to his woman, Lizzie. Each of the men might be hard motherfuckers, but their world was the club and their women. Seeing the shit that Asher guessed they’d seen, he knew they’d need to make sure their old ladies were going to chase away their demons.

He stopped in front of Lucky, who was staring between his knees. He hadn’t even flinched as Asher made it to him.

“Brother,” he said quietly, no fuckin’ clue what else to say. He didn’t do girly comforting words. They didn’t have fuckin’ heart-to-hearts. But his brother was bleeding. His best friend. Fuck if he would just stand there and watch it happen.

Lucky’s head slowly moved up a good few seconds after Asher spoke, as if it took longer for words to get through his head.

Asher flinched, actually fuckin’ flinched, at the look on his face. It was like what Bull had been wearing since the moment Laurie was dumped outside the club, since she died. The one that had only just faded away when he met his wife. It was always there, though. A shadow over him. A scar. You didn’t escape that shit; it was tattooed on your soul forever. It had been hard seeing that on Bull, but it almost fuckin’ killed him to see it on Lucky. They’d patched in together, grown up together. Fuck, they’d screwed their first girls on the same night when they were tangled up in a world they’d escaped together. Like Asher, Lucky had a fuckin’ rough childhood. He’d had to do some serious shit before he’d even gotten his dick wet. He turned into a ruthless motherfucker when needed, but most of the time he was smiling. Laughing. Not letting the shit of his past turn him into something else.

That’s why it got to Asher. Seeing everything torn away from his face. Everything.

“Fuck,” he muttered, locking eyes with the wild animal that used to be his best friend. “Let’s—”

He didn’t get to finish his sentence because Lucky moved. Surged up and pushed past him without a word. Asher turned to watch him storm out of the clubhouse and then heard the roar of his bike as he left the lot.

“Fuck,” he muttered again.

Then he welcomed the rage, let it fill him up. “We’re getting blood for this,” he said to Cade, who’d approached after Lucky left.

Cade’s gray eyes met his. “Oh there will be blood,” he bit out. “A fuckin’ ocean of it.”

There was only one problem with that statement.

They were already swimming in that ocean of blood.

Drowning in it.

"
S
ome women fear the fire
. Some women simply become it.
”

-R.H Sin

“Rebecca, you’ve been attending group for three weeks now and still haven’t shared. Have you got something to add today? To get off your chest?” The rehab counselor asked me in her throaty voice.

Get off my chest?
Yeah, how about the weight of the world, lady.

“Bex,” I said instead.

Her overgrown brows furrowed. “Excuse me?”

“Well, I’ve been here for three weeks and for that time you’ve called me Rebecca while I’ve repeatedly told you it’s Bex.” I thrummed my fingers against my jean-clad thighs in irritation.

I needed a smoke.

I actually needed a fix. A fucking huge one.

They didn’t offer that at this particular facility, hence me nearly smoking a pack a day.

Not the healthiest coping mechanism, but what was a little more tar on my already blackened insides?

She regarded me with those kind eyes that made me want to strangle her with one of her many tiny scarves. “Does something about your given name upset you?”

I didn’t lower my gaze, though I felt everyone else’s heavy on me. I didn’t like it, the attention. Precisely why I hadn’t spoken a word in this little circle jerk that I was subjected to daily. The group session of depression, of people’s addiction sob stories, would make even the most cheerful person want to eat a bullet just to escape it all.

“Besides the fact that the stupid name was the one and only thing my asshole parents gave me before dumping me on the state? It’s not really my style,” I said, leaning back in my chair. I inspected my nails instead of looking at the people who were staring at me.

The black polish had chipped off, the nails bitten down almost to the skin. They were a testament to how fucking ruined my insides were. Black and peeling, chewed and torn.

“You don’t know your parents, then?” the counselor probed.

I glanced up. “You think I’d be here if John and Judy Cleaver raised me and Mom baked cookies every day?” I was being a bitch. It was my default. Plus what little cheer I possessed had been well and truly beaten out of me. Only sarcasm and venom were left.

The counselor jostled in her chair. “It sometimes doesn’t matter what background we come from. Addiction happens to everyone. It doesn’t discriminate. But I’m intrigued to understand how you think your own addiction is connected to your childhood. Was it hard?”

I laughed, the first time since…. It wasn’t a pretty laugh; it sounded ugly, like nails on a chalkboard, like the soundtrack of my soul. “My childhood? No, it was a fucking breeze.”

She furrowed her brows. “It’s a safe space here, Bex. You can tell us.”

“Safe space?” I repeated. “There’s no such thing. You think ’cause we’re here spillin’ our guts, making the world a much grayer place with our addiction horror stories, that we’re safe? The very fact we’re here is a testament to the fact we’re
not
safe. Never will be. No matter where we are. That’s the whole fucking point, isn’t it? The monkey will always be on our back, always a shadow no matter how bright our life may seem. We’re never safe from that.”

A pregnant pause descended after I spoke. The counselor leaned forward onto her elbows. “Despite the experiences that have led to this belief, which I’m sure were traumatic, it’s not as dreary as that. Your future can indeed be bright and you
can
overcome your addiction. I can promise you that.”

I laughed again. “Can you promise that?” I asked, my voice flat. “Can you promise sunshine and rainbows for everyone in this room?” I held my arms out. “To the guy who almost killed his daughter? Can you say that’s not gonna haunt him every fucking day for the rest of his life? Or how about the girl who tried to slit her wrists? You think those scars are gonna fade away to nothing overnight?” I paused. “Or what about the girl who grew up in the system, had her virginity stolen by a sweaty drunk when she was twelve years old, and had to fight
every day since
just to survive. And that fight got her a drug addiction.” I sucked in a breath. “That fucking fight got her chained to a stained mattress, strung out but not enough to forget the men who raped her in that cold fucking room to the point she can still feel their hands on her skin
right fucking now
?” My voice was a shrill shout, scratching against the silent air. I pushed up, my chair rattling to the floor with the force. “I don’t think any amount of kumba-fucking-ya is going to make that shit go away. So if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to live my cloud-filled life. Good luck with your sunshine and rainbows,” I said to the silent room. “Say hey to the Easter Bunny for me.”

On that note, I stormed out of the room as fast as my combat boots would take me, praying that the ocean of tears brimming at the corners of my eyes wouldn’t escape. ’Cause if they did, if I gave in to that sorrow, I knew for a fact I’d drown. And no one, not even the hazel-eyed biker I’d done everything to forget, could save me.

I knew I was expected to stay longer to be ‘cured.’ The concept was laughable. I would never be cured.

Clean.

It did its job. I was ‘clean’ in the sense I no longer had drugs coursing through my veins. The need for them would always course through. It was about managing that need.

I guessed my relapse hadn’t been precisely that, considering I had been forced to take the drugs I had previously kicked. My body didn’t know that, though. The only thing it knew was that it had been robbed of the thing it needed.

So my body needed to be stuck somewhere it couldn’t get the better of my mind and suck me into a hole of addiction.

Because I knew if I touched any drug again, it was the end. Those three weeks broke me, and I knew drugs would shatter me.

I was in pieces, but I wanted to carry them around a little while longer.

Which was why I was there.

And why I was leaving.

I could barely stand being stuck in my own crazy, barely managed to fight my own demons. I didn’t need to be surrounded by other people’s. I didn’t need to know that some guy had been so high that he left his two-year-old daughter in a hot car for two hours. Didn’t need to think about how a woman had nearly killed a whole busload of people while driving drunk.

Luckily it wasn’t some sort of prison where they locked the doors and stopped you from leaving.

I knew I wanted to leave but didn’t know where I could go. I wanted to go nowhere. Be nowhere. Feel nothing. Problem was nowhere wasn’t a place. As much as I wanted to disappear into the sunset and make everyone’s life better for it, I couldn’t.

So I went back.

Rosie, insane as she was, not only let me move back in to where I had been living
before
but had insisted on it.

Like I said, I didn’t like it, spreading my dirt around good people, but I didn’t have much of a choice.

I had money saved, thanks to not spending every cent of it on drugs, and earning a crap-ton more than I had stripping at the Sons’ club than I did with Carlos.

It wasn’t enough, though.

So my plan was to somehow work up the nerve to work again, get enough money, and then disappear.

When I was strong enough to walk out the fucking door, that was.

* * *

“
W
ant to talk about it
?” Rosie asked, speaking for the first time since she’d yanked me into her arms an hour before. She glanced up at the rehab building, shuddering. “Let’s break you out before Nurse Ratched comes out and drags us both in.”

I kept staring at the rain trailing down my window. Mother Nature matched my mood. How adorable. “Really,
really
don’t,” I replied. My words were clipped, and I probably should’ve cared about not being a bitch to the person who had dropped everything to pick me up from rehab when I’d called on the edge of breakdown two hours back. Actually, I should’ve been groveling at her feet considering she hadn’t asked whether I really should be leaving or requested some certificate of sobriety before bundling me into her car. I just didn’t have the energy. I was using everything I had to inhale and exhale, and to brace for the pain that came with that motion.

I saw Rosie’s curls bob in my peripheral vision. “Fair enough,” she replied, her voice light. “How about a cheeseburger?”

I glanced at her. I didn’t smile, but I tried. “I’d kill for a cheeseburger.”

Rosie grinned back. “Well, let’s get you one before you get into a state penitentiary just hours after I sprung you from rehab.”

If the prospect of holy matrimony didn’t turn my blood, I would seriously consider marrying that woman.

Comfortable silence descended. Rosie could talk better than any politician I’d ever met, but she also knew when to shut up. I’d learned that living with her in the months… before. I’d also learned she had a different date every weekend, and a different persona to take with her on each one. Her easy sense of humor and filthy mouth had her quickly becoming one of my closest friends. Plus the rest of the women who came along with the family Lily had adopted. Despite all my reservations and hatred for groups of girlfriends who had perfect lives and eyebrows like the ones in said family, I’d liked them all. I’d tried to keep my distance but it didn’t exactly work, especially with Rosie.

I chewed over all of this on the drive. I hadn’t seen any of them considering I’d been delirious the first few days of my freedom, and then when I was lucid enough to understand how I’d be suffocated by kindness, I’d convinced Lily I needed the confines of rehab. I was pretty sure I’d broken her heart by demanding to be taken to a facility full of shrinks and addicts instead of letting her ‘take care’ of me. She’d insisted she could do it, but I couldn’t let her. She was married, went school, had a life. Lily was finally coming back to life. I wasn’t sucking that vibrancy from her.

I could see it happening, even through the film of my despair. The way her eyes sparkled with agony every time she was around me. It was fucking horrific. Not just for her—I wasn’t that much of a martyr—but for me too. I’d probably be heading for a long stay in the loony bin if I had to see the effect of my shit on my best friend. See the reality of it.

It was hard enough when she came to visit as soon as she was allowed, which was thankfully only once a week.

Another reason I’d escaped pretty much as soon as I’d stopped shaking from withdrawals was
him
. I knew he wouldn’t stay away.

That was ingrained in these men. To save the flailing. To fix the broken.

So he’d come. To fix me.

I didn’t trust myself not to seek him out in my damaged, shattered state. He’d put me together once before, and I craved to be whole so bad I knew my resolve would shatter. But I knew I’d never be whole. Sometimes people were broken in such a way that there was no repair to be had. Just finding a way to live a life as jagged edges of a person who once used to be whole.

Rosie was driving closer and closer to all that I’d tried to escape. I hadn’t truly realized that until now, too busy trying to get away from the place that I thought would be some kind of retreat. It may have hid me from the people who would make me think too hard about reality, but it unveiled what I was trying so hard to hide from—myself.

Catch-22, really. The only reason I’d called Rosie and not a cab to the airport was because I had no other choice. I’d used up pretty much all of my meager savings to fund my stay at the Silver Farm. Lily had, of course, tried to insist she pay for it. Or, more aptly, her husband pay. Which he’d been happy to do. That residual hardness that he used to have around his eyes when looking at me was gone. He’d treated me like some little broken dove ever since I’d woken up and realized that consciousness wasn’t an escape from my nightmare. No way I was letting them pay for what I’d gotten myself into.

So I’d used the money I’d been saving to finally get myself out of the gutter. Maybe I was destined to live there forever.

I turned to Rosie on that thought. “Look, I completely understand if you don’t want me living at your place anymore. I’ll pack up my shit as soon as we get back—”

I was cut off by the jolt of the car slamming to an abrupt stop. I braced my hand on the dash to stop my head from rebounding on it. Rosie pulled over to the shoulder of the deserted highway.

I glanced at her. “Give a girl some warning! I almost Frenched the dashboard. I’m not wanting dentures just yet.”

She didn’t smile, glaring at me instead. “If you
ever
think of moving out because you have some fucked-up reason about why I wouldn’t want you living with me, I’ll find you the second your shit leaves my place. Seriously, I can be like Liam fucking Neeson when I want to be. I’ll find you, and I’ll drag you back to my place and make you watch
Sex and the City
with me for twelve hours as punishment,” she threatened, her tone serious.

I blinked at her, unsure of what was going on here.

Her face softened slightly and she reached out to give my arm a quick squeeze. “This is the one and only time I’ll bring this up without you saying something first. You went through hell, Bex. Hell,” she repeated, shuddering. “Breaks my heart every time I think about it. And somehow, you’re sitting here, whole and not a basket case. Somehow you survived it with your sanity intact. I’m in total awe of your strength, seriously, sister.” She paused. “But no matter how strong you are, you can’t get through this alone. I know you’re a strong independent woman who don’t need no man, but you need your girlfriends. And even if you don’t think that’s true, they need you.
I
need to have you around, under my roof, for my peace of mind. So I know you’re okay, you’re here. Lily needs you five minutes’ drive away so she doesn’t go back to those three weeks where she thought she lost her best friend. Okay?”