Revolution (The Lone Riders MC Series Book 1) (18 page)

Coby didn’t say anything, and she continued to stare into his eyes.

‘You would’ve just tried again, wouldn’t you?’

Again, he said nothing, and she briefly turned away, aware that his hand was still on her hip; he was still close to her. This man who’d played a part in ending the life of another brother.

‘Why didn’t you go straight home? After the accident?’ She turned to face him again. ‘Why did you stay in
Newcastle
? I mean, you’d done what you’d been sent over to do. So why hang around, why prolong the risk of someone seeing you?’

He reached out to cup her cheek in the palm of his hand. ‘Because I was in love with you, Lexi.’

She frowned, another wave of confusion sweeping over her.

‘Tay, he… he wanted me to hang around, make sure everything was okay; make sure it had all gone to plan. He wanted me to wait until after Shane had been buried before I came back to
California
…’ He stopped talking, bowing his head, his hand still resting lightly against her cheek, his thumb absent-mindedly stroking her skin.

‘Coby?’

‘I don’t know how it happened, kid. This – us. I don’t know how the fuck it happened, the exact moment it hit me; when I knew you were all I wanted…’ He looked up, his eyes meeting hers. ‘I don’t know when it was, I only know it happened over there. And I wasn’t willing to leave
Newcastle
until I knew what you felt like…’ He moved a little closer to her, his mouth almost touching hers as he spoke. ‘I wasn’t willing to leave until I knew what it felt like to be inside you. Again. So when
you
came to
me
…’

They were kissing before he’d had a chance to finish that sentence, a kiss so desperate and urgent it was all Lexi could do to catch her breath as he lifted her up, pushing her back against the wall. She wrapped her legs around his hips, knowing what was coming, and craving it. Even though it felt almost sick, to be so turned on after what he’d just told her; but she needed him like a drug, like a hateful, potent drug she was never going to be able to kick. He’d helped kill a man who, allegedly, had been plotting to kill her father, take from him everything he’d worked his whole life for; everything his father before him – her grandfather – had created. But she had to put that to the back of her mind, forget that, for a little while. And the second Coby pushed into her, so hard it rocked her whole body, slamming her back against the wall with a thud so loud it almost shook the room, she wiped it all from her mind.

All she could do was hold on to him, and let him take her. Let him invade her again, infect her with his beautiful poison and his unending love for this club – her wise and brave soldier; the father of her baby. Her world. And she knew now that she had no choice in the matter. Not anymore.

Nineteen

Angie looked up as Lexi walked into the office, her arms folded tight across her chest, a look Angie couldn’t quite read on her beautiful face. She was so much like her, in every way, that it scared her. She hadn’t really wanted this life for her daughter, but at the same time she’d always known it was never going to be any other way. ‘You okay, baby?’

Lexi threw herself down on to the couch, pulling her legs up to her chest, hugging her knees. ‘Did you know, Mum?’

Angie frowned, swinging her chair around to face her daughter. ‘Know what, sweetheart?’

‘That Tay sent Coby over to
England
to kill Shane?’

It took all the strength Angie had to keep her expression stoic. To not let her daughter see how much hearing those words affected her. ‘You make it sound so cold, when you say it like that, Lexi.’

‘Well, it was never going to sound warm and fluffy, was it?’ Lexi stood up, pacing the floor of the small office, walking over to the window that looked out into the garage next door. Coby was leaning back against the wall, laughing at something Luca was saying.

‘Did he… how did you find out?’ Angie asked, her voice still managing to stay steady. Somehow.

‘He told me,’ Lexi replied, still looking out into the garage, watching as Blake joined Coby and Luca, Coby pulling him in for an exaggerated hug, kissing the top of his head, mercilessly teasing the younger man. ‘Because I asked him. Outright. I asked him if he’d killed Shane.’ She turned around, leaning back against the window, folding her arms again. ‘And he told me. Everything.’

‘Oh, Jesus…’ Angie whispered, standing up, perching herself on the edge of her desk. ‘You were never meant to find out, Lexi. Nobody was.’

‘Why? I mean, if Shane really
had
been planning to do what Coby says he was…’

‘It was just best that way. To keep it low key, to make it look like an accident. Putting the word out that one brother is about to take out another, it makes people nervous. It can cause rifts and unsettle chapters, so we decided to keep it under wraps, send Coby over to do the job because he’s the best we have…’

‘The best, what? Killer?’ Lexi asked, raising an eyebrow.

Angie fixed her with a look. ‘The best man we have to make sure no shit hits the fan in situations like this.’

‘Well,
that
worked, didn’t it?’

‘The only reason things got complicated, Lexi, was because he started thinking with his dick. We asked him to come home the second he knew Shane was dead. The longer he stayed over there, the higher the risk of someone seeing him, of anyone putting two and two together…’

‘Hang on… he said Tay wanted him to stay in
England
until after the funeral. The funeral I, for some reason I still don’t understand, wasn’t allowed to go to.’

Angie shook her head. ‘No.
Tay
wanted him out of there ASAP, but he told us Charlie needed him, just for a few more days. We trusted him, Lexi. We thought he was telling us the truth. We had no idea he wanted to stay there because he was trying to get
you
into his bed. Because if we had…’

‘How much more messed-up can this get?’ Lexi sighed, throwing her head back. ‘If he
had
come home when you’d asked him to, this wouldn’t be half as complicated as it’s turned out to be. Would it?’ She fixed her mum with a look that told her that statement was only partly true. ‘But then, I always had my suspicions, Mum. About the way Shane died.’

‘But if you’d never known Coby had been over there, would you still have those same suspicions?’

Lexi shrugged, raking a hand through her hair. ‘I don’t know. Probably. But it’s all academic now anyway. It’s pointless talking about “what ifs”. What happened, happened. And nobody can turn that clock back. Nothing can be rectified. And to be honest, Mum, there are some things I wouldn’t
want
to rectify.’

Angie looked at her daughter – into her big blue eyes, her pretty face. ‘You don’t regret what happened with Coby?’

‘How can I regret falling in love?’ Lexi whispered, turning her head to look back out into the garage, her eyes on Coby as he held court with the two younger men. They were hanging on his every word. They respected him. And she loved him. So much. Even though, right now, she was struggling with those feelings. Struggling to come to terms with what he’d done. With what he was capable of. Even though none of it should have been a surprise. These men she’d grown up around, they were all capable of things she didn’t always want to think about.

She turned back to face her mother. ‘So, how do we explain Coby being in
England
? How do we explain our baby? If you still aren’t willing to tell everyone the truth.’

‘We’ll think of something,’ Angie said quietly, sitting back down at the desk.

‘And the secrecy? The lies? Because you are worse than naïve if you think no one’ll pick up on that. Coby was supposed to be in prison when he was sleeping with me, when our son was conceived. That’s a pretty big lie to work around there. You think we can do that?’

Angie dropped her head into her hands, pulling them both back through her hair, sighing heavily. ‘Lexi, darlin’, don’t push this sweetheart. Okay?’

Lexi stared at her mother. A woman who’d lived so much of her life within the confines of this club with all its rules and codes and twisted morals. Was that how
her
life was going to pan out, too? Was she looking at the woman she was going to, one day, become? ‘I am so tired of this place,’ Lexi whispered, turning and walking away, out of the office, folding her arms as she strode across the yard, over to the row of bikes all lined up outside the clubhouse.

Kel was tending to his, polishing the chrome handlebars as he straddled the black leather seat. He looked up as Lexi wandered over. She leant back against Coby’s bike that was parked next to Kel’s, her eyes meeting his.

‘Need to talk?’ Kel asked, leaning over the handlebars.

‘It was Coby. He had a hand in Shane’s death, Kel. Him, my dad, and
Tay
.’

Kel briefly looked down, letting out a heavy sigh. ‘Coby tell you that?’

She nodded. ‘Shane was… he was planning on bringing my dad down, taking over the
Newcastle
chapter… he was going to kill Charlie, Kel.’

‘Oh, Jesus… Lexi.’

‘
Tay
sent Coby over there to help my dad. To make sure the job was done, that the threat was dispensed with.’ She stared into Kel’s kind eyes. ‘Was this all my fault, Kel? If me and Shane… if all that hadn’t have happened, if they hadn’t driven us out of
Paradise
, would he have become so hell bent on some kind of revenge?’

‘I can’t answer that, sweetheart. I mean, who knows whether it was the club who pushed him that close to the edge, or whether it was something he was always planning to do, at some point.’

‘Nobody deserves to die. Not like that.’ Lexi felt a guilt so heavy start to push down on her, spread through her like a wildfire she couldn’t stop. This was a mess that had got so out of control now, so many blurred lines and forgotten actions pushed aside. So much wrong had been done. So many lies had been told. And she knew she was just as much to blame for Shane’s death as Coby was. They were
both
to blame. And they both knew why.

‘You know how it goes, kiddo. How this club works.’

She threw her head back, letting out a quiet but frustrated sigh. ‘I am so tired of hearing that now. Yes, I know how this all works, it’s all I’ve
ever
known. But that doesn’t mean I have to like it.’ Her eyes met Kel’s again. ‘Or agree with it.’

Kel left a couple of beats before he spoke. ‘So, what happens now?’

Lexi shrugged, her attention distracted by Coby’s voice booming out across the compound as he shouted over to Kip at the gate. ‘I really don’t know. My mum still doesn’t want it to get out that Coby was over in
England
, but I can’t see how that can be avoided.’ She turned back to face Kel. ‘Because of Ozzie. That’s when Ozzie was conceived. And the one thing I am not prepared to do anymore is lie about his father. I’ve gone along with it for far too long as it is, but I’m finished with the lies now, Kel. I’m done with all that shit.’

‘And you and Coby… you’re okay?’

‘Now that I know the truth?’ She shrugged again. ‘Having my suspicions confirmed doesn’t make it any easier to deal with, and there’s this huge part of me that feels almost… it feels wrong. Shane is dead, and I’m in love with the man who helped take his life.’ She looked over at Coby again. He was sitting up on one of the tables outside the clubhouse now, nursing a mug of something, talking to Luca. ‘I don’t really know
what
to feel, if I’m being honest. This place, it’s messing with my head. And there’s this tiny, tiny part of me that can’t help thinking maybe I should have stayed over there. In
England
. That I should never have come back here.’

Kel climbed off his bike and pulled her in for one of his big bear hugs. Lexi clung on to him, closing her eyes for a second or two, once more breathing in that familiar smell of engine oil and cigarette smoke. That strangely comforting smell. ‘You don’t belong over there, kiddo. You belong here, with us.
We’re
your family.’ He looked at her, stroking her hair from her eyes. ‘Listen to me, sweetheart. This club – it might seem like a real fucked-up place at times. But when all is said and done, we just want to make sure the people we love are safe. And if that means breaking rules and moral codes… we do it because we have to.’

She sighed, leaning back against Coby’s bike.

Kel looked at her. ‘You gonna be okay?’

She nodded. ‘I don’t know exactly what’s gonna happen now, but – I guess that’s up to
Tay
.’

Kel took her hand, giving it a quick squeeze. ‘Yeah. I guess it is.’

***

‘Do we all understand what I’ve just told you?’
Tay
asked, his hand hovering over the gavel as silence fell around the table.

‘After this, we go totally legit? For real, this time?’ Luca asked, sitting back in his seat.

‘This job is gonna make us a lot of money,’
Tay
replied.

‘That isn’t what he asked,’ Coby said.

Tay
threw him a look, but Coby wasn’t intimidated. He never had been. His friend was losing it, taking risks that were way too big for them to handle should the shit hit the fan. And he wasn’t sure
Tay
had made that completely clear. It wasn’t fair to send anyone out there thinking this was going to be easy, no matter how much
Tay
tried to make out that it was.

‘And we’re all needed, are we?’ Kip asked, looking to his stepfather for some kind of reassurance.

‘We need a full crew,’
Tay
replied, leaning forward. ‘Plus, I’m calling in some back-up from Hilton. Just as a precaution.’

Jesse let out a low whistle, clasping his hands together in front of him. ‘I dunno,
Tay
…’

‘Believe me, this really is the last time we do this. And if I didn’t think we could handle it…’

Coby let out a low but audible laugh, dripping with more than a hint of cynicism.
Tay
glared at him. ‘Something you wanna say there, Coby?’

‘You know how I feel about this,
Tay
.’

‘Our VP has his doubts,’ Tay said, twirling the gavel over and over between his fingers as he surveyed the rest of the table, fixing them all with a look that told them
he
was in control here. Him. Nobody else. ‘But I’m telling you all – as President of a club I love – doing this job, it could be really good for us. The financial gains, both personally and for the club as a whole, are too great to ignore…’

‘Can I have a word?’ Coby interrupted, pushing his chair back and standing up, looking down at
Tay
.

‘We’re in the middle of a fucking vote here, Cobe.’

‘Five minutes.’

Tay
sighed, pushing his own chair back. ‘Give it some thought, guys, okay? We won’t be long.’ He followed Coby out of the room, out into the clubhouse. ‘What the fuck are you doing?’

‘You haven’t told them the whole truth,
Tay
.’

‘Because they don’t need to know the frigging ins and outs, Coby.’

Coby couldn’t help but let out another loud and humourless laugh. ‘Oh, you reckon?’

‘I
know
.’

‘Why? Because you think if they knew the real reason you’re putting their lives at risk is because of some stupid mistake
you
made, they’d say no? Is that it?’

‘Jesus, Coby, come on. Be the VP I need right now, brother.’

‘I don’t want any part of this shit,
Tay
. Not really. Because I don’t think you’re being fair to those guys. You’re sitting there, spouting some crap about how this is gonna make us financially secure but you haven’t really given them the full story, have you?’