“I don’t have a choice,” he said, voice harder than his eyes. “This is my club.”
“And what am I, Liam?” I asked, my voice a whisper. “Am I not more important than a club? A patch? A war that isn’t even fucking yours?”
He moved his hands from my grip. “Men that I considered family, men I laughed with, shared beers with, men who saved my fuckin’ life multiple times, men with families, wives, kids, they were killed. Massacred. This war is fuckin’ mine. Don’t ask me to choose. Because I’ve already chosen you over the club. But I can’t choose you over vengeance. That’s not who I am now.”
And then, Jagger slipped on his cut and walked away.
He didn’t look back.
I was sitting at the bar. The clubhouse wasn’t empty.
Not by a long shot. Most of the women had gone home for one last night in familiar surroundings, before they were all taken here, locked down as the men went to fight.
Because, despite the stories I’d heard from every woman I’d met, it seemed these men still needed to hold onto the notion that they needed protection. That they could protect them.
There was also a scattering of club girls, for the seemingly dwindling number of patched members who didn’t have Old Ladies.
And then there was me.
Sitting at the bar, staring into a chipped glass, for once, not staring into the past, but into the future. One where Liam didn’t come back. Where I buried a coffin that wasn’t empty. It was full of truth, pain, forgotten promises and a ruined past.
Sometime in my contemplation, the previously empty stool beside me was filled.
I glanced to my side to see a woman, beautiful but hard. Cold. Lines around her heavily made-up eyes told parts of her story. But the eyes themselves told more. I knew that because I’d looked into the mirror for well over a decade and saw the same eyes staring back at me.
She was dressed in a more elegant version of biker chic the club girls wore. Silver around her neck, in multiple holes in her ears. Her hands were bare but for a large diamond on her left ring finger. She was wearing all black. Tight. Lace. A bra peeking out under her sheer mesh top. Long boots tucked into tight leather jeans.
She was the biker queen…of the New Mexico charter at least. Evie, Steg’s wife was also around somewhere, barking orders at people. Scaring the absolute shit out of prospects.
This was biker widow, Linda.
I knew it instantly.
I was aware that the last president had been one of the victims of the Christmas day massacre. I thought I’d been aware of all of the victims.
But I’d missed one.
One sitting on the stool beside me.
She lit up a smoke. “Guess you know who I am,” she said after taking a long drag.
Her voice was husky, evidence of just how many cigarettes she’d smoked over the years. Interestingly, her skin didn’t show that same evidence. Apart from the lines on her face that were natural, her skin was clear. Beautiful.
I nodded in response to her question.
She took another drag. “Figured that. You’re smart enough to find your way into the club as a rat, and survive them findin’ that out, figures you’ll know some shit.”
I didn’t argue her label. In their eyes, I was a rat. I’d been called worse in the pursuit of a story.
She didn’t speak for a long time, just kept smoking beside me. I expected her anger. Her disdain. I got none of that.
“Jagger,” she said finally. “Came here a broken man. And trust me when I say, I’ve seen a lot of men come into this club, broken, lookin’ for somethin’ not to heal them, but for somethin’ to hurt them worse than what brought them to the reaper.” She inhaled. “He had something about him that was beyond that. A hurt that scarred more than anything he wore on his face. Was curious, to say the least.” She eyed me. “I see it now. You’re made of tough stuff. Gotta be to walk into a Sons compound dressed in lies and lace, ready to take them down. Took balls. Doesn’t mean I wouldn’t have happily helped bury your body if you had thought you were gonna succeed, but I respect it. Also respect the fact that what you lost put you on a path to do things like that.” She stared into space. “We go on living out of habit. Then the pain gets too much that we either have to stop the habit or start up some much more dangerous ones.”
Something in her voice disturbed me.
Something in her words disturbed me plenty more.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Gwen
I watched my husband kiss his daughter, murmur something in her ear that sent her giggle into the air, sweetening it.