Roan (The Henchmen MC 17)

I hated myself for wondering too, for spending endless hours stitching together the man I thought I knew with the accounts of him from others, creating this hideous Frankenstein's monster of a creature, then staring at him in my head, wondering what was real, what was fake, what he was capable of.

My answer to that question depended on the day, on my mood, on how much anger I still had burning inside toward him.

Enough.

There was always enough rage left.

Because, well, if there was no more of that, I wasn't sure what would be left at all. This was all my life was about since I was on the cusp of twenty-years-old.

At the time, I felt like such an adult.

Looking back, though, I was a child.

A child.

And he put his sights on me, sank his claws into me, ripped vital things away, never to be seen again.

"Enough," I grumbled to my reflection, reaching up, gathering my long brown hair into a ponytail, a style it was almost always in. For utility purposes. You couldn't train and fight, with long hair blowing all over, just begging to be yanked by an opponent, an enemy.

Or, in situations like this, you couldn't finish digging a tunnel under a fence with your hair sticking to your sweaty face.

It was a slow, painstaking process, made difficult by the never-ending eyes on the place. From what I heard when I put my ear to the ground, the club had been dealt a devastating blow years back, decimating their numbers. Which was when they got extra careful, accepted help from that survivalist place on the hill.

They were good. There was no denying their training. But they could only cover so much of the grounds when they were manning the gates. Which was why there were still rounds done by bikers.

Luckily, though, most of the bikers were just... dudes. Not trained. Not experienced enough to be able to tell someone was tunneling in. And, let's face it, everyone got lazy doing the same task day in and day out. And I had taken advantage of that after watching the compound for a few weeks, choosing the furthest corner in the back, hidden behind a giant Weeping Willow which provided some cover, and often meant that whoever was on guard that night just glanced around the tree rather than actually walking behind it to check the ground.

Then, of course, there was always someone in the glass room.

And by someone, I meant usually him.

Roan.

It wasn't always easy to get a good look at him, so high up, not usually right up against the glass.

But even that first night, perched on a building down the street with binoculars, I had known it was him even when all I saw was a back.

I knew that body.

I had seen it countless times over the years, just from far enough that I couldn't make out the finer details, never wanting to give myself up, not until it was right anyway.

Sometimes, depending on his cover, he was clad in a suit, fitting, but not overly tight, completely clean-shaven, hair short. Other times, he would get scruffy, look more unkempt, wear clothes that hung off his solid frame to make it less obvious how well-built he was.

I didn't want to say it, but I maybe liked his present look best of all. Jeans, a white, black, or gray tee, his leather cut. He'd let his beard grow out. And not in a clean-cut way either. It was all unkempt and long. His hair - once a chestnut brown - was now striped with gray, long enough to maybe be called shaggy. If people still used that term.

It was all casual and carefree, something that I found appealing, having become a little hard and unbending myself.

I hated that age had only recommended him, that it affected me, that I wasn't as immune as I thought I would be after so many years, after so much hurt and anger.

But he looked way, way too good.

And that fact somehow managed to fuel my hatred, helping me dig the last bit out. The layer of dirt was thin enough that I could burst through it.

But then I had to wait.

Sit and wait.

I had been doing a lot of that over the past fifteen years.

So another few nights, it wasn't so bad.

I just had to wait.

I'd been watching them for long enough to know that they were due. For a drop. And that the new, hungry guys were often taken on those drops, leaving just a handful - at most - of people behind. And that most of those men were family men who liked to go home at night.

Roan never left.

Neither did the guys with guns at the gates.

I just had to wait to catch it when it was just the three of them.