Saviour: A Devil's Spawn MC Novel (Savior Book 3) (4 page)

CHAPTER THREE

Priscilla

Priscilla’s Rules to live by 101

“Remember that some women marry death-row

Pen pals, so your life choices might not be that bad after all.”

Ever since I was a little girl I wanted to get out of Blackwater, Colorado. There was no rhyme or reason to it, I just wanted more than my home town had to offer me. I wanted to experience things. Travel. Be free from small town mentality, everyone knowing your business sometimes before you did. Circumstances change though, and now I find myself staring down the barrel of being a twenty-five-year-old woman permanently bound to a small town in Colorado, working a shit job with very few prospects, and attempting to raise my seventeen-year-old sister into adulthood without major incident or injury.

I’m not bitter about it. Shit happens, and I won’t have anyone else raising my sister or providing for her if I’m still alive, and able bodied enough to do it. This goes past family obligation, it’s firmly planted in the ‘morally imperative’ category. There’s no way I could live with myself if I didn’t give it my best shot, so that’s what I’ve tried to do.

Worse than that is the constant second guessing I do when it comes to this surrogate parenting shit. There have been plenty of times after Tilly’s gone to bed that I’ve sat up on the couch in our living room questioning whether I’m doing a good job with her. Am I providing what she needs? Would she be better off being raised by someone else with more experience? Will she resent me for having to be both parents’ when I should only have to be her sister? None of that seems to have crossed Tilly’s mind though. Whether it’s because she is a sweet girl that can’t bear to hurt me, or she genuinely believes I’m doing a good job I don’t know. I probably never will. But the one time I did bring up my doubts about my abilities she laughed at me saying I’m more than good enough, that she wants for nothing. She ended it with a tight hug making me promise to lighten up on myself. What she can’t possibly understand is that it’s impossible not to worry about her. I’ll forever question being able to guide her to good decisions. And with no one around to reassure me I’m doing right by her, I’ve become my own harshest critic.

The only time that was any different was when Tank was still coming around. It’s been fourteen months since Tank and I have sat in the same room. It’s been at least that long since we have actually had a conversation. And it’s been fourteen months since he came home from wherever he’d gone shutting me out entirely. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve seen Tank around enough to know that he’s still alive and accounted for, I just haven’t had any direct contact with him. I’m thinking now that I don’t want any either. For at least the next fourteen months, if not the rest of my life. His dismissal of me, his dismissal of our friendship
hurt
more than I ever thought it would. I suppose seeing as our friendship was built over time I hadn’t stopped to realise how intertwined our lives had become until it was too late. When I did it only served to illustrate that I was stupid having come to rely on him in the first place if it was so easy for him to up and leave me in the lurch.

He still spends time with Tilly which is all I can hope for at the moment, and I’m glad him being finished with me hasn’t extended to her. Tank takes her for dinner, to the library and back when she needed to study, and lately he’s been teaching her to drive. That’s a whole other worry best left untouched at the moment for the sake of my mental health. Unlike before though, Tank drops Tilly off at the curb beside our driveway leaving as soon as he sees she’s safely crossed the threshold of our front door. I won’t lie. I’ll openly admit I watch him through the living room window that faces out on to the street. Getting a glimpse of him is better than nothing these days and that’s all I‘m getting, so I take it.

Tank has secrets. Lots of them. I know it. He knows I know it. Yet he still keeps them so tightly under wraps you would think it’s a breach of national security if he were to share them with anyone. Other than Tilly and I the only other person that has any sort of insight into the inner workings of the ginormous ex-Navy SEAL is Arrow. In saying that, Arrow’s probably privy to less information about Tank than I have been. And that’s not saying much because in all honesty I know little to nothing.

In the beginning I was understanding when it came to his need for privacy. The little he did share about his mom and dad, his brothers, all five of them, (there is indeed a God because they are all top shelf pickings in the hot man auction), and his previous life in Chicago was enough. I didn’t even suspect at the start of our friendship that Tank has demons he’s trying to conceal. As the months turned to years that were passing us by quickly I began asking more and more questions. I got non-answers, you know the evasive ones that lack any actual information, or straight out ignored. To say it frustrating would be an understatement.

More than a few times Tank and I have gone days, occasionally weeks, and once months five of them to be precise, without talking after a huge argument. They were all about the same thing, and all ended the same way with Tank storming out of wherever we were, and me cursing, calling him every name under the sun. During the five month sabbatical we took, which was mainly my doing because I refused to forgive him so easily that time, I thought about what I really knew about the man I’d come to call my best friend. In the end this was all I could come up with.

Tank, born Hunter Adams is thirty-five years old, just. He was born in Chicago Illinois where he grew up in the upper-class suburb of the Gold Coast, or Old Town depending on how elitist you are. His parents’ Daphne and Thomas have been married for forty years. His dad comes from ‘Old Money’, and being a third generation lawyer he’s only added to his family’s fortune over the years. Tank’s Grandpop, Peter, lives with his mom and dad, and has done so since his wife Loretta passed away almost a decade ago. It’s sad I didn’t get the chance to meet her, because from everything Tank and his brothers have told me she was an amazing woman a lot like my mom. As I said before, Tank has five brothers in total, (smoking hot brothers), and of the five he’s the second oldest, but by far the hottest in my eyes.

The oldest, Brody, followed in his father’s footsteps becoming a lawyer at the family firm. At thirty-seven he’s the only married one out of them, and on the couple of occasions I’ve seen Brody over the past two years his wife Charlotte hasn’t been with him. Sometimes I wonder whether they ever loved each other, or if it was a marriage of convenience. Brody never looks happy. He doesn’t talk about Charlotte. And they don’t have any children, which I know he desperately wants. The man is miserable half the time and he’s too good a man to spend the rest of his life that way.

Jasper the middle brother is only a year younger than Tank, so you’d think he would be all grown up by now. You’d think wrong. If there’s one thing I can say about Jas is that he’s a serial flirt and he doesn’t look to be slowing down any time soon, regardless that he’s hit his thirties now. He started his own IT security company when he was just out of college twelve years ago. ‘InterSec’ has become one of the leading IT security companies worldwide, specialising in early fraud detection. They, specifically Jas, developed a piece of software that manages and reports inconsistencies in the financial sector. Jas will give you the shirt off his back if he thought you needed it. He’s a sweetheart, and I’m glad I have him on my favourites list on my phone because without a doubt he’s been there for me every time I’ve needed an ear or a shoulder.

My favourite brother has to be Noah though. Noah has a gentle nature in general, but he has a fierce, determined, if not dogged side hiding not far beneath the surface. At thirty, Noah owns ‘Voyages’ an adventure sports business that he built it from the ground up, improving it in leaps and bounds over last nine years. He accessed his trust fund when he could at twenty-one deciding to use his passion for the great outdoors and turn it into something profitable. Most people don’t know this, but I’ve been doing his books for the last two years and I can attest that Noah has made far more than just his original investment back. He’s patient, considerate, and determined and exceeded his own expectations when it came to being in business for himself. We’re close, more than that we’re good friends that chat about anything and everything. Well except for the Tank thing, and that’s only because I’m scared Noah will take my side, like usual, and take that out on his brother.

Kai’s the second youngest, and can rival Tank with his complete and utter lack of communication skills. He’s twenty-seven-years-old for God’s sake and he still can’t manage to have a conversation that’s more than two sentences in length without looking like he’s going to break out in a cold sweat. So it was fortunate for him that he excelled at a profession that’s relatively solitary.

Kai started surfing when he was young. Being that their family holidayed to exotic tropical destinations often, Kai took to water like a fish and apparently he showed a natural talent right for the sport. Kai made a name for himself quickly, now he holds more world records and championship titles than anyone else has in the last thirty-five years. He might be the strong silent type, but that doesn’t make him any less of a sweetheart. It’s a shame he travels so much, I don’t get to see him as often as I’d like. Six times in the last three years isn’t enough for my liking.

Last, but certainly not least is Reid. He is quite possibly the front runner for the title of hottest and most magnetic when it comes to the Adams brothers. Aside from Tank. And I’m not talking to, or about him at the moment so Reid takes the lead in my opinion. Reid’s isn’t only hot because he’s the drummer for ‘Frantic’, a hard rock band that made it big about four years ago. No. Reid is a younger version of you know who, and that unfortunately catapults him to the top of my hot or not list.

If I wanted to know what you know who looked like at twenty-six I would only have to open any search engine, type in Reid Adams, and voila there you have it. Not quite as tall as his brother’s six foot seven, only an inch or two shorter mind you, Reid has the same ice blue eyes with flecks of grey through them. His shaggy sexy hair is longer on top, shorter on the sides, it suits him and the persona he’s trying to create. It always looks like he’s just rolled out of bed, or gotten laid. Either could be true depending on the day, he is after all the epitome of all things rock star. I’ve been to a few of Frantic’s concerts, the last one I even took Tilly to, and I have to admit the man is gifted when he’s behind his kit, shirtless, banging on his custom set of Pearl drums.

Since Tank’s departure from my life Reid stepped up into the role of my best friend. It’s not the same as it was with his older brother, but our friendship is easy and fun. And at the moment I don’t know where I’d be without it. Reid hasn’t got any great insights on how to handle Tilly when she has her rare occasional mood swings, or whether I should let her go off to college more than two hours away. He doesn’t try and convince me to cut back the hours work so I can spend more time at home. He doesn’t fight with me or go weeks without talking to me. Reid calls every day, texts me so many times a day I think I’m going to have to carry a portable phone charger with me. He offers to visit as often as he can while he’s on tour too, but I haven’t taken him up on that yet. I honestly don’t know how his brother would feel about that, and the last thing I want to do is come between brothers. I can only imagine how I’d feel if someone tried to come in between Tilly and I, and it wouldn’t be good.

The only issue Reid and I have, and I can assure you it isn’t an issue for him, is lately Reid’s been dropping what he thinks are subtle hints about becoming more than friends. To be honest if the circumstances of our friendship and how it came about was different, for example if I hadn’t friends with his brother first I might have considered it, because it isn’t my lack of attraction toward him that’s the issue.

Reid is fucking ridiculously handsome. He is a rock star after all, and the Adams good-looking genes are potent, so he got the best of both worlds. The problem is that I’m not attracted to him like ‘that’.  Stupid I know. Here’s this super sexy man paying
me
attention. A guy who cares about me. One who genuinely wants a shot at a real relationship with me, and I keep telling him no. But I can’t help how I feel, and with Reid I’m just not feeling it.

My problem stems from having had my sights set on his brother for nearly as long as I’ve known him, which would be almost six years now. However hard I’ve tried, and believe me I’ve tried, my focus on the second oldest Adams brother hasn’t able to be diverted once. After hooking your star to someone for such a long time, someone you can never have, it leaves you romanticising a relationship with that person. You use them as the yard-stick in order to measure all other possible romantic entanglements against regardless that you have no idea what that reality actually looks like.

Over the last few weeks Reid’s turned his game of seduction up a notch. This is what convinced me I’ll never be able to give him a fair shot at a relationship. It isn’t the seduction per se that’s the issue, it’s the fact that it makes me feel uncomfortable when he’s doing it. I don’t get butterflies in the pit of my stomach when his voice washes over me. I don’t feel like I’m about to combust when I look at him falling into a puddle of goo at his feet. I don’t find myself dreaming about him night after night. And I don’t know how to tell him nicely a relationship isn’t going to happen between us while still remaining friends, because the last thing I want is to lose him too. The thought alone has me swallowing back bile rising in the back of my throat. There’s only one man that’s ever made me feel any of those things. I’d like to deny it because he’s been an epic douchebag over the last year and a bit, but I can’t. I just wish I could work out a way to get over my feelings for him. I’ve wasted too much time on him already and clearly he’s never going to reciprocate my feelings, so it’s time to move on.