Breaking It All: A Hellfire Riders MC Romance (The Motorcycle Clubs) (19 page)

Gunner

About an hour south of Pine Valley, Anna asks, “So where are we heading?”

I glance over. She’s been quiet since we left Daisy at her parents’ house, where it went just as badly as we both knew it would. Seeing their girl had been hurt tore up both Clara and Paul.

And it went better than I thought it would, because Anna clung to my hand the entire time, using me for support as she told the truth as far as she could—saying the girl Stone was with ended up being more trouble than he thought, and that same trouble showed up at Anna’s place the night before. And that now I’ll be watching over her until the trouble is taken care of.

I suspect they’d have packed up and tried to come with us if we hadn’t pressed Daisy onto them. Having Stone’s dog to take care of gave them a way to help their son, gave them some way to be useful—and as it was, Paul wouldn’t let us leave until he whipped up a few sandwiches and put together a lunch for us to eat on the road.

Then we left her family and headed toward mine—families that are a hell of a lot farther apart from each other than the miles can measure. Still exhausted and looking guilty as hell, Anna curled up in the passenger seat with her head pillowed against her rolled-up coat and her phone in her lap.

I thought she’d go to sleep. Instead she’s looking at me, asking where we’re going. That doesn’t surprise me. What surprises me is,

“You waited until now to ask?”

She smiles faintly. “Before I found out I’d be going with you, I assumed your answer would be ‘club business.’ And after I found out I’d be going…I didn’t want to know, in case I’d have to lie to my parents. I think they’re assuming Arizona. And that’s a hell of a drive, but I guess you can’t fly with those guns.”

No, I couldn’t. With my bike, either. “We’re heading to Santa Rosa.”

“California?” She blinks. “Do you think that’s where Stone is?”

“No. My family lives in the area.”

“Your family,” she echoes and I can feel her astonished gaze without even glancing over. “Really?”

“Yup.”

“And are you going to add anything to that? Or are you going to just drop that bomb and leave it there?”

I’d like to leave it there and never touch it again. Never let her touch it, either. But her response from last night wrapped around my heart like barbed wire. Her response to whether she loved me.

I don’t think I even know you.

I can’t look to a future with her yet. Not until we get Stone back. But in the meantime, I’ll give her enough that she’ll start thinking of me as a future, too. I need to start building that foundation by letting her know me.

But, Jesus. Instead of falling for me, the shit I’ve got to tell her might send her running the other way.

“They’re a motorcycle club—”

“Your
family
is a club?”

“Kind of. And they might have info about the Iron Blood and the Cage.”

She twists to look at the motorcycle mounted in the bed of the truck. “You can’t just visit and ask? Because your bike, all those weapons—it looks like you’re going in for a long haul.”

That’s what it needs to look like to convince them I’m staying. “It might take a little while,” I tell her. “It’s complicated.”

“Do you hate them or do they hate you?”

That came out of nowhere. I shoot her a glance, find her watching me steadily. “What?”

“Well, you never talk about them. And if anyone asks, you change the subject. Plus you never visit them, do you?”

“I try not to.”

“See?
You
don’t like being there. Why?”

I don’t even know where to start. Hands clenched on the steering wheel, I search for somewhere to begin. But there’s nothing I want to share with her. Hell, there’s nothing I want to dredge up whether I’m sharing or not. I prefer to get by not thinking of them at all.

“Zach.” She’s using my real name. Shit. If I don’t answer her soon, I’m going to have a seriously pissed-off Anna to deal with. “You say they are a motorcycle club. You say you don’t like being around them. I imagine you’re going to keep me away from them—”

“I’m going to try.”

“—but I need to know what I’ll be dealing with. Just in case. Because being taken by surprise really sucks.”

She touches the bruise on her cheek as if to remind me of the last surprise she got.

I don’t need a reminder. And she
does
need to know. Not just because I want to build a future—but because even if I try to keep her away from my family, the chances of making it through this without them seeking her out is zero.

Fuck. Might as well just get it over with. “It’s a club but it’s not a normal one,” I tell her. “That’s just how it all shook out after my father started identifying as an outlaw biker about thirty years ago.”

“So what is it?”

“It’s a cult.”

“A
cult
?”

“Yes.”

“You’re serious.”

“Yup.”

“A religious cult?”

“No.”

“Do they think aliens are coming?”

“No.”

“You know, you could help me out here.” Her voice is a mix of amusement and exasperation.

“More like…the Manson Family. If my father was Charles Manson.”

She sucks in a breath. “With his followers going around murdering people?”

“Not quite. But a lot of the same thinking behind it.” Maybe even inspired by Manson. The timing would have been right, and fuck knows my father got inspired—energized—by all kinds of shit. “Believing that the end was coming, that a race war will destroy civilization. My dad wasn’t looking to start that war, though. More like survive it and establish a new world order, populated by a pure race that could live in peace.”

“Jesus,” she whispers.

“Nah. His cult is a lot better than my father’s.”

Her grin flashes. “What’s your dad like?”

“Dead.” Cut down like a tree by his own seed. “In body at least. For my mother, his spirit and his purpose live on in her boys. We all look just like him.”

“You’re kidding,” she says.

“No.”

“That answers every single question I have, then. Like, why would a cult spring up around him? Was he that charismatic? Nope, he just looks like a freaking god.”

Shit. I laugh, shaking my head. Some of my tension eases. My family’s fucked up, but she’s taking it in stride—not running the other way.

“So how many Cooper men are there?”

“I have four brothers.” Still living. “Christ knows how many nephews now, too. But they’re all still kids.”

“Then are your brothers the only members of the MC?”

“No. My father collected followers.” Women, easily. My mother was always the female at the head of the pack, but men followed him, too—partially because the women around my father were available, partially because they liked what he was saying. “He started back in the 70s as the leader of a free love clan—they had a commune on my mother’s family farm—but that era was winding down and he knew he needed to evolve. Then he read Hunter Thompson’s book about the Hell’s Angels and liked what it had to say. About living free and being your own man and fuck the world. So he formed a club and put himself up as prez.”

“It sounds a lot like how the Hellfire Riders started.”

With Tommy Burns and his friends, including Red Erickson and Thorne. “No. They wanted to ride and fuck. It wasn’t about creating a dynasty. The Riders are a brotherhood. The Notorious Few was about my father delivering a new world—and that’s how they talk about it, too. About him predicting the end of the hippie era and having the insight to understand how they had become Lotus-Eaters instead of revolutionaries, and how he envisioned a new path. About the string of coincidences that led him to Thompson’s book and how that’s proof of his destiny. And now it’s about his sons leading the way.”

“Some might say that’s a real brotherhood. Like, literally one.”

“My family would say it is.” For a long time, I thought it was. “But I’ve been in the Marines and the Hellfire Riders. I know what brotherhood is. I know what a brother is.”

I don’t need to name names. Her smile tells me she knows I’m talking about Stone.

She regards me, her eyes curious. “So if your father’s dead, what’s holding it together?”

“His bloodline—and my mother. It’s a cult, like I said. Those commune roots never went away and my brothers have bought into this idea that a race war’s coming and that there was something special about our old man. That they’ve got a legacy to carry on.”

“So who’s leading them now?”

“My oldest brother, if you ask them.”

Her brows arch. “And if I ask you?”

“My mother.” I glance at Anna. God, the way she’s looking at me, I should have started talking to her like this long ago. There’s no judgment. Only genuine interest, as if I’m the most fascinating man she’s ever seen.

Then again, that’s no surprise. Working the bar, she’s always drawn people in and had them spilling their guts. And it’s probably best I didn’t spill anything before. Because what I’d be spilling was how much I want her lips on mine, tasting her instead of talking. How much I want her sitting on the bar and my head between her thighs. How bad I need to be inside her.

Christ. I shift in my seat, but there’s no position that’s going to ease the ache in my cock.

Talking about my mother might do it, though. “Maybe she was the driving force behind my father the whole time and was just good at staying in his shadow. Or he was the flame who drew all the moths and she was the one who kept pouring in the kerosene. Because she’s still keeping that flame lit—even though, despite all of us looking like him, we’re
not
like him. Aside from our faces, we only got bits and pieces.”

“What do you mean?”

“That charisma he had, it’s a hell of a lot of things—all the traits that draw people in. So he was smart, funny, persuasive, charming as hell. And he was kind, generous—especially if it meant people would feel obligated to him afterward.”

“And let me guess—combined with his looks, that all made him as sexy as fuck?” Anna puts in, her gaze sweeping down my length.

That, too. I grew up seeing the way people looked at him. Seeing how obsessed some of them became. “He drew in both men and women with it. But that charisma’s also all those traits that hold people captive, make them fall in line. The way he could tear someone down, the way he’d threaten and carry a threat through. The way he’d get pissed and rage, and how he had this icy anger that was just fucking terrifying. So my brothers, some have a few of those traits. The others have a few different traits. Like Adam, he’s got the rage. He can be generous. But he’s sure as hell not smart. No one has the whole package.”

Anna looks at me in bemusement, her swollen lips pursed. “You have the whole package.”

Not quite. “I don’t need to be the center of everyone’s attention like he did. And I’m missing the sociopathic element and delusions of grandeur.” My mouth twists into a wry smile when I glance at her again. “Some of my brothers aren’t missing those.”

Her eyes narrow. “You’ve read up on this. This personality and cult stuff. Because you talk about it like you’ve pulled it apart and categorized it all. Like you’re looking at it from a distance.”

Not far enough. But she’s not wrong. “Your mom sent me a package of books after that first visit. They helped me wrap my head around it.”

Her brows shoot high. “Mom knew?”

“You’re really surprised?” Not much ever gets past Clara Wall. When Anna shakes her head, I tell her, “First time she got me alone, I ended up telling her half of all this without even realizing I was doing it. I guess she figured out the rest.”

Anna’s soft laughter fills the truck’s cab, rolls right over my skin. “I bet she did,” she says, then bites her lip.

Which tells me she wants to say more. “Just ask it,” I tell her.

“You eventually left—so what prompted you to go?”

Too many reasons to list, starting with David’s girl being killed. But all those reasons boiled down to one. “I figured out that wasn’t what life should be.”

“What do they think of you going? Did they turn their backs on you?”

If only. “No. They’ve been waiting for me to return. They’ve got plans for me, and they want me to stop dicking around and fall in line.”

Her brow furrows. “So, you’re going to…what? Tell them you’ll come back home if they help you find my brother?”

I nod and try not to feel the sickness rising in my chest. Because they won’t be satisfied with me
saying
I’ll come back.

Her gaze searches my face. “So where do I fit in? What do I need to be to you?”

“Just be Stone’s little sister. It’s important there’s nothing else between us.”

Shrugging, she pulls her gaze away to stare through the front windshield. “We established last night there isn’t.”

It’s true I said that but her shrug pisses me off. “Just fucking listen. You’re important to me. But if I show up with any girl who doesn’t—”

“I get it, okay?” she snaps at me, eyes sparking. “You show up with some girl who isn’t part of their plan and they might not be as willing to help with Stone—right?”

It’s right. It’s not my primary reason—protecting Anna—but it’s reason enough. “Yeah.”

“Because I’m just his sister,” she says flatly. “So when you kissed me in the shower—”

“I shouldn’t have.”

Her breath catches and she looks at me, her expression frozen. “It was a mistake?”

“Not a mistake.” Never a mistake. “I sure as hell don’t regret it. But I wasn’t thinking.”

Because I shouldn’t have done it yet. I should have waited. Not just because of this shit with my family but because I can’t jump the gun with her. Only a few hours before I kissed her, she kicked me out of her life. Said she didn’t just want a fuck. So I’ve got to work up to that. Let her know me first.
Then
kiss her.

Shit. And now I’ve dug a hole because she’s staring out the windshield again, her body tense. “It was a physical response to the stress,” I tell her. “After seeing that picture. Then the relief of knowing you were all right.”

She flicks me a disbelieving glance. “Stone said you were one of the coldest bastards he’s ever known in stress situations.”