Forgiving Nancy (Last Hangman MC Series Book 5) (20 page)

Just as I start to black out, the pressure around my throat loosens and he falls next to me, screaming in pain. I don’t know exactly what happened, but I’m thankful as fuck for whoever caused it. I would have hated my last word to Nancy were the ones I said at the safe house and not that I loved her.

I climb on top of him and wrap my hands around his throat as tightly as I can. He’s gasping for air, blood is pouring out of his shoulder and he actually looks frightened. I don’t believe it for one second. This bastard does not deserve to be called a man because no real man would ever do the things he did. His eyes bore into mine and I swear I can see remorse in his eyes.
Too late fucker.
I squeeze as hard as I can and I hear a breathless “I’m sorry” escape his lips as he takes his last breath. I keep my hands tightly wrapped around his neck for a little bit longer for good measure. There is no way I’m risking this fucker coming back to life or tricking me. Suddenly, I feel a sharp pain in my side. My hands find the wound instantly and try to stop the pain, but it doesn’t help. As I remove my hands, I see blood gushing out of a wound. I try to fight through the pain and stand up, I need to find Nancy and make sure she’s okay, but I quickly fall to the ground. I feel faint, I’m losing too much blood and I can’t stop it. I can feel my life slipping away from me once again and there’s nothing that can help this time. The last things I see before slipping into total darkness are people fighting and falling the ground all around me, Lewis collapses near me and Callum rushes to her side as Nancy drops to her knees next to me.

Darkness wraps me in her cold arms and takes me away.

I love you, Nancy.

CHAPTER 27

Nancy

Three
Days
Later

Three days.

It’s been three incredibly long days since Bennett was shot. It nearly killed me seeing his lifeless body on the ground. His eyes had glazed over when I managed to reach but he was completely unresponsive. Panic had set in when I couldn’t feel a pulse and I froze, I didn’t know what to do. Every time I close my eyes I can still see the blood gushing out of his wound between my fingers as I tried to staunch it. I tried my best to get his heart to beat again whilst Ayden called the paramedics. They instructed me on how to perform CPR until they arrived and took over.

I had no idea what was going on around me, Bennett was the only thing I could focus on. From what I’ve been told, is that a couple of the Hangman and Bastards were injured but luckily no one was killed. I can’t say the same about the Infernos, a couple of them, along with Richard were killed. I don’t know exactly what will come out of Bennett killing Richard, but I couldn’t care less about all of that right now. My focus is Bennett and only Bennett.

Everybody told Bennett to stay out of all of this, but Bennett being the stubborn ass he is didn’t listen. At least I finally know why I was taken all those years ago. It still doesn’t make much sense to me that Richard wanted revenge on Bennett as he never did anything, he didn’t even know Richard existed. But then, Richard wasn’t someone you would call logical or sane.

I don’t know how Bennett will feel towards me once he wakes up and it’s terrifying me. I’ve kept so much hidden from him and put his life and his brothers’ on the line and for all I know he might not want to see me ever again.

Three days.

It’s been three long days and I’ve spent every second by Bennett’s side after his life saving surgery. It was touch and go for a while, but he made it through the first forty eight hours that the doctors told me were the most critical so I’m somewhat reassured that he’ll be ok. I just need him to wake up, and soon. I need my Bennett awake and breathing for himself again. I need him to look at me with his bright hazel eyes and tell me that he forgives me and still loves me. I just hope he’ll understand that I kept it from him to protect him.

I’m resting my head on our linked hands, about to fall asleep when I hear someone behind me clear their throat. I groan, not wanting to face any type of reality or responsibility just yet, I just want to spend time with my Bennett. I reluctantly lift my head and turn towards the door and immediately wish I hadn’t.

“Mother, Father. What the hell are you doing here?” I stare at them in shock.
How dare they show their faces here!

“Do not use that tone with us and watch your language, our good Lord wouldn’t approve of that,” my mother scolds me.

“Don’t you dare! You never cared about me or how I felt so why are you here?” I stand and whisper angrily at them so I don’t disturb Bennett.

“We want our daughter back, even if she’s been badly influenced all these years.” My mother glances over at Bennett with a disgusted look on her face.

“Do not look at him like that. He didn’t do anything but love me! Something you never did. The person you should blame for the way I am today is six feet under thanks to this man behind me. My captor might have made me sell my body to the highest bidder but just because I’m not all prim and proper like you two appear to be doesn’t mean I’m not a good person.” I glare at them. My mother has the audacity to look shocked and I chuckle darkly.

“You cannot seriously be telling us that you’d rather stay with someone like him rather than come back home with your parents. We just want our daughter back and make up for the time we lost.” My mother has the audacity to try and look sad.

“Let me make things clear for you. I love this man; he’s saved my life in more ways than you can possibly imagine. If it weren’t for him and my memories of him, I’d be long dead and you’d have actually had a reason to bury me. He’d give his life for his friends and family without a moment’s hesitation, could you say the same about yourselves?” I give them a second to respond but they just look at me. “Exactly, so how is he the bad one here? If only you hadn’t have been so fucking judgmental, none of this would’ve happened! He’d have been there to protect me and I wouldn’t have been at your stupid country club party in the first place. All of this is on you, not him.” I yell at them.

“How dare you blame us! We looked for you for years!” My father bellows.

“Let’s see, you banned me from even saying hello to them the moment they stepped foot next door. Then there’s the fact that you kept calling them dirty criminals or how about the fact that you accused him of kidnapping me. I mean really? You forced me to break up with him and had you not forced me to go to that stupid party I wouldn’t have been kidnapped. Do you see my point,
Father
?” I glare at them.

“You want to see things that way? Fine, but don’t forget something young lady, we have connections, we know people who could shut
his
club down and put him in the ground at a moment’s notice. He won’t be so lucky next time. The choice is yours. You know where we live.” My mother snarls before storming out the room with my father following closely behind.

Fuck, I really didn’t need this right now. I climb onto the bed next to Bennett and curl into his side. All the stress from these past couple of weeks with people following me, threatening me and my friends and then almost losing Bennett finally hits me like a truck and I lose it. I break down into body shaking cries and climb off of the bed and onto the chair next to it so I don’t disturb Bennett. I hug my knees to my chest and let all of the hurt out.

“Shh, it’s going to be okay, Princess.” I hear Callum say behind me before he places his hand on my back and begins to rub it in circular motions to try and soothe me, just like he did when he’d visit me on a tough day.

“How? My parents threatened to kill Bennett again. It wouldn’t surprise me if they were working with the Infernos,” I cry.

“I know, they’re evil bastards but do you really think they have those kinds of connections?” he asks.

“I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t put it past them.” I try to stop the tears but the dam has broken.

“I’m not going to let anything happen to you or Bennett. Don’t worry.” He kneels down in front of me and takes my hands in his.

“Thanks, Cal. What would I do without you?”

“You two fucked at some point,” a croaky voice calls from the bed and we both jump. Callum recovers from the shock quicker than I do and replies.

“I promise you, Brother. Never touched her that way,” Callum assures him and stands up to face him. “How are you feeling?”

“Rough as fuck.” He winces in pain as he tries to sit up.

“Don’t sit up, Bennett, you’ll tear your stitches.” I sit on the side of the bed and gently push him back down.

“You don’t say.” He sighs as he looks between the two of us.

“I’ll leave you two to it, you need to talk.” Callum says as he pats my back.

“Thanks, Brother.” Bennett nods at Callum once in thanks and it tells me that he’s not mad at Callum from hiding his brother from him, maybe this conversation won’t be as bad as I thought. But then he looks at me and I know that it is going to be as bad as I thought. “We do need to talk.”

“Go easy on her, she just wanted to protect you,” Callum tells him before leaving the room, closing the door behind him.

“Maybe we should get the nurse to check you over first.” I go to press the button that calls the nurse in a desperate attempt to delay this talk but he stops me.

“She can wait a few minutes,” he says looking into my eyes. I can see sadness and anger in his beautiful eyes and I prepare myself for the one question I know he’s going to ask. “Why?”

CHAPTER 28

Bennett

Consciousness hits me like a ton of bricks. I try to open my eyes but the light is blinding. I struggle to keep them open but sleep quickly takes me again.

I don’t know how long I’ve been asleep for, but the next thing I know is that people are yelling and my name is mentioned by a very familiar voice and one I vaguely remember. The familiar voice is defending me whilst the other one is talking shit about me. I try to keep still and not alert anyone to the fact that I’m awake. Something is hurting and the last thing I want is to have to face people right now. What the fuck happened? Am I alive? I must be because I would not be hearing Nancy’s voice if I was in hell. The last thing I remember is strangling Richard to death and then total darkness. I have no idea what happened after I saw the light leave Richard’s eyes or how I got here, wherever here is.

My consciousness returns slowly with each minute and I can hear Nancy defending me to the familiar but still unknown voices.
Oh shit, it’s her parents
. How the fuck did they find her? My heart swells as I hear her defend me and our relationship, at least seeing me kill my brother didn’t change her opinion of me.
Fuck! My brother. I have, well had a brother.
A brother that Nancy knew about. Almost immediately, my blood begins to boil. She’s mine, she’s not supposed to lie or keep things from me. I can understand that it was to protect me but that’s the kind of move I’d expect from my brothers, not from my woman.

I’m still trying to wrap my mind around the fact that I had a brother who I killed with my bare hands. On any given day, I’d feel some kind of remorse but I can’t with him. He took my woman away from me deliberately and pimped her out, how can I feel remorse for an asshole like him? It felt fucking amazing to literally squeeze the life out of him. It might make me sound like a sadistic bastard, but I don’t care. He deserved it.

As I’m wondering whether to forgive her or not, she climbs onto the bed and wraps her small body around my larger frame. I hear her start to cry and it breaks my heart. She moves off of the bed but I can still hear her crying so she must be close by. I want to wake up, but my eyes are being uncooperative bastards and refuse to open. I try to move, but my limbs won’t get with the memo. She cries for a while and I’m struggling to wake up, I don’t want her crying by herself. I hear Callum walk in and start to reassure her. It clearly does the trick because her crying stops and they begin talking quietly. I’m still not sure if they are hiding the fact that they fucked from me or not. I hear her say ‘What would I do without you?’ to Callum and I know it’s time to open my eyes. As my eyes adjust to the light I see them hug and my visions turns red. I want to get up and punch him, but the pain in my side is too much. They jump as they hear my croaky voice before telling me to take it easy. It’s not like I have much choice in the matter. I’m desperate to go back to sleep, but I need to talk to Nancy. Callum understands this and leaves us to it. Nancy tries to prolong the inevitable by trying to call the nurse, but I quickly stop her.

“Why?” I ask as she looks anywhere but at me. “Why, Nancy? Out of all the people I know I thought you’d be the one who’d tell me something like that?” I look at her with hurt and confusion in my eyes.

“I didn’t want to throw this information at you. I wasn’t even sure if you knew you had a brother. Do you think it was easy for me to keep it from you?” she exclaims and tears start to form in the corners of her eyes.

“It looked easy enough, you managed to keep it from me until I saw him with my own eyes.” I scowl at her. I don’t want to be this mad at her, but she kept something so important from me, if she can do it this one time, it’ll be easy for her to do it again.

“It killed me to keep it from you. I was scared that if I told you, you’d think I was making it up to protect someone else or something. The longer I waited the harder it became to tell you and then I started to think that you’d hate me if you found out before I could tell you,” she says and she starts to pace along the side of the bed.

“Were you ever planning on telling me?”

“I wanted to, you have no idea how much I wanted to, but it wasn’t my place. I didn’t know what had happened to him and what made him turn out that way. I just knew that you two were brothers and that he was the President of Satan’s Infernos.”

“Did you know why he took you?”

“No, I only found that out when you did. I really had no idea, up until that point I still thought it was because of my parents and the fact that he was your brother was an odd coincidence. Not all of it makes sense to me, to be honest. There are so many details that are missing,” I say confused.

“You and me both. And it turns out it was my fault, if I hadn’t have chosen the bedroom opposite yours he would never have targeted you. You were an innocent bystander in all of this, you shouldn’t have had that kind of shit thrown at you. You deserved a gentleman who would give you the perfect happy life and instead you got a biker boyfriend whose psychotic, jealous brother decided to kidnap you so he could make money from your body. I’m so sorry I brought you into this life.” My speech comes out in one long ramble and the lack of oxygen makes me feel a little dizzy.

“For fuck’s sake Bennett! This wasn’t your fault; did you know you had a brother? No. Did you know said brother would be crazy and in charge of a terrible MC? No, of course you didn’t, so don’t go giving me that ‘woe is me’ bullshit, you are just as innocent in this as I am. And screw the perfect gentleman, if history is anything to go by, they are the worst kind of man behind closed doors,” she says getting herself worked up.

“I’m no better.” I sigh.

“Yes, you are. You’re the sweetest man I’ve ever met and I know you would never hurt me,” she says in a soft voice.

“That’s because I love you.”

“I love you too.” She walks over to me with hope in her eyes.

“I-”

“Yes?”

“I’m not sure if I can forgive you just yet, Nancy. It’s still so raw at the moment, I haven’t had time to process it all. I don’t hate you and hell, I’m not even mad at you anymore. I just need some time to wrap my head around the fact that the only person I’ve ever been in love with hid something so huge from me. I’m sorry,” I say with sadness lacing my voice.

“It’s fine. I get it.” She nods and pinches her lips together, no doubt trying to hold back the tears that have resurfaced in her eyes.

“Please don’t cry,” I beg her.

“I’m not. I’m fine” She tries to force a smile on her face, but a single tear rolls down her cheek.
Fuck, I can’t bear to see her cry.

“Come here.” I hold my arm out to her, she takes my hand and sits on the edge of the bed. “You’re going to have to work with me here.” I let out a tight laugh as I drape my arm around her back. She leans forward and we hug awkwardly. Not because the situation is awkward, but because the tube in my hand and the wound on my side are making it very difficult and painful to hug her properly. “You’ll always be my Gorgeous Girl.”

“Fuck you, Bennett.” She chuckles but it comes out as a sob and she starts crying.

“Oh, fuck me indeed.” I chuckle before wincing in pain. “Fucking hell, what happened to me?” I ask before kissing her shoulder.

“One of his minions shot you. They nicked a lung but the surgeons managed to fix it. You won’t have any long term damage,” she says trying to reassure me.

“Did he mess up my tats?”

“Seriously? That’s what matters to you?” she asks with a shocked expression on her face.

“What? Getting your side tattooed is fucking painful, I don’t even want to imagine what getting a scar covered up is like.” I physically shudder and wince again as the moment threatens to rip a stitch. “Fuck,” I mumble.

“That’ll teach you.”

“No being mean to the injured soldier. Were you hurt?” I inspect her carefully and see no obvious marks or bruises.

“No, Ray pushed us outside when the shooting started and Ayden called 911.”

“Poor doctors are going to be sick and tired of having to save one of us every couple of months.”

“Well, that blonde nurse was really happy to see Ryan.” She shrugs.

“Ah, Nurse Charlotte. I’m sure they’ve fucked.” I snicker.

“Like me and Callum?” she asks and raises her eyebrow at me.

“You have to admit that your relationship is weird.”

“I guess so.” She shrugs.

“This is your one chance to get a free pass and confess to any funny business. Speak now or forever hold your sin.”

“Fine. One kiss.” She sighs.

“Okay…”

“And it was fucking awkward. He’s like my big brother, that’s it, I promise.”

I nod, finally accepting what she’s telling me. “Why wouldn’t you two tell me that you two kissed?”

“Because you kept asking if we fucked?” She grins, looking quite proud of herself

“I also asked if anything had ever happened between the two of you.”

She sighs, sounding frustrated. “Really? I’ve done worse with other men.” She gasps and I can tell that she’s regrets saying it as soon as it’s out of her pretty mouth.

“Thanks for the reminder, but those guys aren’t any of my best friends.”

“Fair point. Can we stop now? I don’t want to fight.”

“Neither do I. How long have I been here?” I ask. I have no clue what day it is or how long I’ve been out.

“Three days.”

“Seriously? Fuck.” I frown.

“Yeah, you had me worried sick, you wouldn’t wake up.”

“I’m sorry. How come I don’t have a tube down my throat and all that?”

“They removed it this morning. Apparently your lung wasn’t as damaged as they initially thought and you could breathe on your own. They were surprised at how quick you’ve been recovering.”

“Not so bad then,” I say and let out a long yawn.

“Am I that boring?” She chuckles lightly, trying to lighten up the mood.

“Cut me some slack, I was shot three days ago.” I narrow my eyes at her before grinning.

“Oh you’re going to be such a pain in the ass to look after, I just know it.”

“How dare you!” I fake being shocked even though she is right on the money with her assumption.

“Because I know you.” She looks at me with a serious expression.

“Fair point. I’m going to take a nap. I feel drained. Are you staying with me?” I ask her and I can see the cogs turning in her head. Even though I can’t forgive her just yet, I still need my Gorgeous Girl by my side.

“Of course, Bennett.” She smiles and pulls the chair as close to the bed as she can. She sits in it and hugs her knees to her chest with one hand as she holds my hand with the other.

“Thank you, my Gorgeous Girl,” I say with a smile.

I close my eyes and let myself fall into a deep sleep.

I smile as I wake up. I’m not in as much pain as I was before which gives me a more positive outlook on my recovery; for my physical recovery as well as my relationship with Nancy. I look over to the chair and my smile falters, Nancy isn’t there.
Maybe she went to get a coffee
. I have no idea how long I was asleep for, but it can’t be that long because it’s still light outside. I press the red button to call for a nurse; I need to fucking pee and more importantly I need to know where Nancy is.