Too Wild To Ride (Steel Veins MC Romance, #1) (6 page)

I had hit a deer once in New Hampshire. It went right onto my car's hood and smashed my windshield. Then it limped away with what looked like a broken neck. I think I cried for a full hour. I was terrified at the time and I felt so horrible for the deer. That was an animal, this was human life. Why didn't I feel worse now?

The situation called for it.
Remy's words filled my ears. I glanced over at him but he was still asleep.
The situation called for it.
The words repeated in my head when I looked back at the road. This time they came in the sound of my own voice.
“Welcome home, my love. You've been gone too long.”

Oh God. What was I becoming?

“Slow down,” Remy groaned, waking back up. “..need to be more inconspicuous.”

He didn't need to check the speedometer to know that we were going way too fast. I had been racing my own beating heart and even at around a hundred miles per hour, I wasn't sure that I was winning.

“Star!” Remy shouted.

“Fuck!” My heart in my teeth, I stomped on the brakes. An accident up ahead had everyone stopped but I was too lost in the corridors of my mind to realize until the last possible second. The car swerved, then careened completely off the road. Fortunately there was just brush, dirt and flat land in every direction. The brakes and shocks got a hell of a work out but the car itself was relatively ok.

“Ohmygodohmygod. I'm so sorry!” I was on the verge of hyperventilating. People laid on their horns behind  me. My whole body was shaking violently.

Remy's hand grabbed my knee. It startled me even further. Then he squeezed it, something about the gesture was calming. With deep, deliberate breaths I was able to force my lungs to work and drag my heart back into my chest. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt but had grabbed the Oh-Shit-Handle above the door just in time to keep himself inside the car.

“Are you alive?” He wore that devilish grin in both his smile and his eyes as he looked at me.

“Y-yes.” My breath came in short bursts.

“Then you have nothing to apologize for.”

“Oh God...” I rolled my head backwards and closed my eyes for a moment. I peeled my white fingers from the steering wheel. How I hadn't snapped it in half would be a mystery for the ages.

“Can you still drive?”

“Yes. Yes I think so. I just need a— Just gimmie a sec.” The air flowed a little easier through me.

“You need to drive now or shove over. This isn't your car and the police will be coming to this accident eventually.”

I exhaled several times and put my hands back on the wheel. The car was still on and idling.

“Drive along the dirt, go around this mess. No one will hassle you.” His calm was incredible.

I put it in drive and went around all the traffic. A few daring cars behind me even followed. Soon enough we were back on the road, the traffic long behind us.

“Slowly this time.” Levity crept into his voice.

“Heh, shut it.” I managed a frail smile back at him.

“Stop at the first rest-stop that has a store. Where did you get this car?” He stretched and righted himself in the seat.

“It was in the parking lot of the police station. I found the keys in one of the officer's desks.” I flashed him an embarrassed smile. I'm sure he could see that I was a little proud of myself for it, though.

“You stole a cop's car?” I could tell he was impressed, which made my smile beam. He pointed at a rest stop that was just ahead. The area was pretty big. It had a gas station, food court, maintenance shop and even knickknack store attached.

“Pop the trunk. Lets see if your ill-gotten gains yielded any spoils.”

I complied. Amidst some clutter and trash, the trunk had a shotgun. It also had few boxes of shells. On my way into the building to use the bathroom, Remy stopped me, handed me some money and had me buy a tool kit, some duct tape, and some lunch.

When I came back, Remy had just returned to the car as well. He slightly favored his right leg and one of his shoulders was raised up a bit. He made an effort to not let on that he was sore and you'd have to be really looking for it to know, but I could tell. I didn't see him get thrown into the vehicle but it was fairly obvious from his placement on the ground and the damage to the yellow bus.

Remy drove us behind the building and parked next to a shitbox with similar plate numbers as ours. Remy then switched the plates and wiped off as much of the blood as he could from our car. He then laid on the asphalt and slid underneath. “Hand me the tape.”

“What are you doing?” I asked.

“Taping Rock's handgun to the frame behind the driver's side wheel well,” he grunted. I'm sure after getting beaten up by a school bus, that wasn't the most comfortable position to be in at the moment.

“I take it that's the rainy day gun?”

“In a man to man fight, the winner is he who has one more round in his magazine.” He put up a hand and I helped him stand. “Hop in, we gotta go.”

We didn't talk much, with all the adrenaline wearing off it was hard to keep my eyes open. It was worried, restless sleep most of the way there. The speed bump of the parking garage woke me fully. “Where are we?” I yawned.

“Santa Fe.” Remy looked exhausted. He backed us into a parking space in an emptier part of the garage. Then he reclined the seat all the way back and covered his eyes with the crook of his elbow

“Are we ok to stay in this car? Shouldn't we abandon it somewhere?” It was a stolen car after all, even if it was the officer's civilian car.

He lowered his arm to look at me.

“They have at least a half a dozen bodies to sort out and bag up. Maybe the owner of this car is in one of those bags.” Remy saw the concern on my face. “Either way, LVPD has a lot more going on than a car jacking, we should be good for a little while.”

The image of the Vasquez family in their gaudy Christmas sweaters came to mind. The thought of them being robbed of their husband and father struck me in a very painful way. I know it wasn't my fault, but I couldn't help but feel for them. Everything that happened lately seemed to have these rippling repercussions like a stone dropped into a still pond. We had no say as to when the stone would drop and who would be affected by the waves.

Did the man I killed have a family? Did he have children and pets in ugly sweaters? Probably not, and if the kill teams were as bad as Remy says then he definitely deserved what happened. I guess it just reminded me how sudden and unapologetic the end comes. It just happens.

Then you're gone.

“Did you know that man. The one that I...”

“Yeah,” Remy interjected, seeing that I was having trouble saying it out loud. If I said it, would it make what I did feel more real? “His name was Rocks. I can't remember his civilian name.”

“Who are these men that are coming after you— us?”

Remy frowned. Those gears inside him no doubt ran through the connotations of the word
Us
in this situation. “Criminals and ex-criminals, mostly. They're the most loyal members in each chapter. Men that we pay a lot of money to do things that need to get done in a very violent way. Hitmen, arsonists and the like.”

“You said that you used to be involved with these guys?”

“I led one of the teams a while ago until Maria convinced me to stop.” That woman again. Who was she? He continued. “We were mostly demolitions. If another club stepped up and needed to be dropped a peg, they were sent us. We'd pop a weapons cache or clubhouse, whatever it took to send a message. We killed when we had to but that wasn't the main goal. Lorenzo's team... that's a different story all together. 

“Is that the team Rocks was in?

“Yeah. Lorenzo and his guys specialize in murder. We never really got along. We did it because we had to. Those sadistic fucks reveled in it.”

“Oh...” If a man like Remy is wary of guys like these, then they really must be bad news. “Do you have a plan?”

“My plan is to put you on a plane back home tonight.”

“No,” I said reflexively.

“This isn't a game, Star. They will kill you. And I promise that it'll be an ugly death. This is serious, you can't be around for this. Maybe after it all shakes out we can—”

I hit him. I punched him in the shoulder. Then I hit him again. My blows were almost completely ineffectual and he grabbed my wrists eventually, forcing them down. “No! You don't get to just get rid of me!” I started crying but stifled it. I needed to be strong.

“Listen.” He spoke with hard edges. “I have a plan but a lot of people are going to die. When you get inundated with this kind of violence it doesn't just wash off. It becomes you. You can't walk this dark path with me without paying for it. If you survive somehow, it'll corrode your soul.”

I turned away.

“Look at me.” Remy shook me, forcing my gaze to meet his. “You need to understand.

“The way I see it,” I spat defiantly. “I've already killed one of them and if I need to I can do it again!”

“It's not just them, goddammit!” I shrank a little at his raised tone. After a moment the anger dissipated and a sadness crept into his voice. “I don't want you to see the kind of man I truly am. I... care about you, Star. These hands—” Remy let me go and held up his strong, calloused palms. “—have taken
everything
from people. Most of them deserved it, but I'm sure some didn't. All those people. That's all on me. Now I have to use them to protect you and I'm afraid. I'm afraid that they wont be fast enough. That indirectly, they'll take the life from you too. I can live with a lot of things but that's just not one of them.” Remy struggled to get the words out.

“Remy, I know what you are. I've seen you. What you're capable of. Jesus, what you did to Rio...” Remy grimaced and pulled away but I caught his hands and pressed them to my chest. “—was necessary. I want you, Remy. Scars, dirt, blood, tattoos and grease. I want all of you.”

“Star...” He looked back at me with softened features.

“You are the reason I’m alive. I owe you everything. You saved me.”

“Star, I had my guys search the back of the garage when I saw that
fuck
with you. I didn't save shit.
I
dragged you into all this.”

“When I said you saved me... I meant that you saved me, not just from the bikers, but from my old life.”

“What?” The confusion in him was apparent.

“I was sent out to live with my aunt and uncle, not just because of college, but also just to get me away from New Hampshire. There was a professor at my old school. Professor Jonathan Jackson. He was handsome and smart and kind.

“I would stay after class to talk with him. Eventually he invited me to a bar and we kissed. We started actually seeing each other. He was adamant on keeping it quiet because he was my teacher and could get in trouble.

“One night I texted him, he said he was feeling under the weather and wanted to cancel on a movie we'd made plans to go check out. I picked up some soup and went by his house just to make sure he was OK. Before I walked in, I heard noises and peeked through his door window. Jonathan was fucking a classmate of mine on his couch. It all started clicking. The excessive secrecy, even at his home, the occasional evasiveness, his weird after school tutoring sessions.
”

This happened awhile ago, but my face got hot and my stomach turned like it did then, right before the fire. It felt like I was tearing fresh stitches open. It was so difficult to say this out loud, to face it so nakedly. “I was so blinded by rage that I hurt him the only way I could think of.”

“You kill him?” Remy's eyes opened a little wider in suspicion.

“No! Jesus, Remy... I didn't kill him!” I reflexively glanced at him in disbelief. Nothing in his expression showed any embarrassment at such an extreme assumption. Remy just patiently waited for me to resume the story. I swallowed hard and continued. My throat was sandpaper. “He had this beautiful, cherry-red Mustang. He loved that car. I would come over just to help him wash and wax it sometimes.

“I was just going to key the side of it but when looking inside, I started thinking about all the other girls he probably fucked on those black leather seats. I pried open his gas tank and lit a rag on fire. He rushed to the window when the real love of his life exploded. He saw me there in the street looking back at him while the rest of his neighbors watched the blaze. He knew it was me that did it.

“There was a trial. He told everyone that I was a crazy stalker. That I was mentally ill. Being that I had no history of any of that shit and there were no witnesses to actually see me do it or any other evidence, the charges were eventually dropped. My parents took it the hardest. The local media had a field day with us. 'Scorned student exacts revenge on adulterous teacher.' Guilty until proven innocent. No one looked at me or my family the same after that.

“In the end he really fucked himself over the worst. By going public with it, the university found out that Jonathan was sleeping with his students and he was let go from his job. I think he got off on it, you know? The power. He had all these girls swooning over him. I heard he even approached some of the girls that were failing his class and offered to bring their grades up for sexual favors. A real topnotch scumbag.” God, I felt so dumb that I let Jonathan hurt me so badly. I had to look away.

Remy did bad things because he needed to, or because he felt they were right or necessary. I was manipulated like a fool and just lashed out blindly. In truth, I just got lucky. I could've easily been caught. I'm still glad I burned his car—his baby. I really am. He deserved so much more.

“I have my own demons, Remy.” My upturned, watery eyes met his briefly before turning away again. He listened keenly, his dark gaze hinted at compassion. “I've always had this venomous capacity in me. I went to therapy for awhile and was able to force it all down, but I've always felt it there. This shadow-self, boiling just beneath the surface. But it's not a shadow. It's the real me! The vacant, shallow college girl is the mask. And I don't want it anymore.”

“Arson, huh? You probably would've been in my team.” Remy cracked a thin smile.