Where Souls Spoil (102 page)

My feet have taken off, and I’m halfway down the stairs when I realize I’m in motion. Once I hit the concrete, I’m grateful that even on autopilot I can at least navigate a flat surface. I don’t slow down when I reach him. Instead, I fling myself into his arms. He hauls me up and swings me around in a circle before placing me on the pavement again.

“Holy fucking shit,” I say. I’m almost speechless but not quite. I gape at him for a moment before he places one hand behind my head and pulls me to him, crashing his lips against mine. I’m wrapped up in him, sucked into all that he is and what he’s accomplished. I fell in love with a smart-mouthed boy in a prospect cut, and I continue to sink even deeper in love with this man. There’s so little of the boy left in him now, but what’s replaced the immature antics is a man whose word is his law, and his heart is as beautiful as anything I’ve ever known. But I won’t tell him that. He doesn’t like it when I get sappy and shit.

“When did this happen?”

“Few days after you left town.” The grin on his face is almost unbelievable. I’m not sure I’ve ever seen him look so happy before.

“That was almost a month ago!” I scream, a rabid, angry-woman scream that I didn’t know I was capable of until we got together.

“Had to take care of some shit first,” he says with an attitude that makes me want to beat him with his cut.
I was home for almost a month over Christmas break and that asshole didn’t call me, come see me, or nothing. Fucking dick.

“That’s your response? That’s all you got to fucking say for yourself? Really, Jeremy Whelan? Really?”

“Would you shut the fuck up?” he shouts in my face so loudly that I’m startled into silence. Has he forgotten my dad is on the porch and can rip his goddamn head off for that shit? I slide my eyes to Dad, whose arms are folded over his chest that’s heaving in laughter. No, really? The asshole gets a new patch on his back and suddenly I’m fucking chopped liver?

“You did
not
just scream in my face,” I say quietly, readying myself for battle. Where’s that damn blowtorch when I need it?

“Are you going to shut your trap so I can talk to you, or are you going to keep bitching at me?”

“Which do you suggest?” I say with more sarcasm than should be legal.

“Shutting your fucking mouth. Wanted to get the club’s opinion on something before coming down here,” he says. That cocky grin is back now. “And you’re going to feel like a Grade-A bitch when I tell you why.”

“Well, you picked me,” I mutter and pout like an insolent child. Calming myself down, I place my hand over the new patches on the front of his cut that have replaced the PROSPECT patch. He’s a full member of the club now and is entitled to everything that comes with that. I wanted this for him, even tried to pray for it once, and now that it’s happened, I barely know what to do with myself.

“You deserve this,” I say with a definitive nod.

“So do you,” he says quietly. “That’s why the night I was patched in, I asked your dad for permission to make you my old lady. So don’t you dare fuck this up for us, because you’ve been on the clock since yesterday.”

“You—” I stop. Now I really am speechless. I can’t be angry with him for that. My head spins around to my dad, who smiles down at me. “You did that? They voted on me?”

“Please,” he says with an air of confidence that’s almost suffocating. “Leo told us how you handled him in the woods. You think any of my
brothers
were going to say no to you?”

“But Dad?” I say in a half question, half statement. But
my dad
voted yes?

“Well, yeah. You’re a handful, and he’s got another one on the way. Had to unload you somewhere.”

“Fucking asshole,” I say and grab the sides of his neck and bring his lips to mine.

He’s a fucking asshole, all right. But he’s
my Forsaken
asshole.

EPILOGUE

June

2 months after Mancuso’s downfall

The farther we
get from the city, the hotter the sun beats on my skin. I suck in a deep, greedy breath and revel in the feel of my girl’s arms wrapped tight around my waist. Chey’s been riding her whole life, even in Layla’s stomach before she was born, but her grip is murderous right now. Her tits are pushed into my cut, and her face rests between my shoulder blades. Her body is so relaxed, but she’s squeezing the fucking life out of me. Still, I can’t bring myself to tell her to lighten up. If she needs to hang on to me like this to know I’m here and I’m real, then she can break a fucking rib for all I care.

Because as much as she needs to know I’m real, I need to know she’s real possibly even more.

The last two years have been rough. It seemed like we’d made the decision that she would go to school on the spur of the moment, in the shadows of chaos and trauma, and that after the dust settled, one of us would tell the other it was a mistake. That she shouldn’t go.

“My little girl ran into a war zone today,” Grady said once we’d gotten back to his house that night. “Do the right thing and let her go.”

I looked him in the eye and tried to be as strong as he was when I said, “I can’t let her get hurt because of me. She has to go.”

We’re nearing town, having just left Willits, and the road is winding down through Jackson State Forest. The sun is blocked by the hills and trees above us. The memories of how we got here flood my mind. Grady’s given me a wider berth since that day, treating me more like an equal than some punk kid he’s forced to tolerate.

The day the club patched me in, over a year ago now, he said, “Don’t undervalue the gift I’m giving you, son. It’s the greatest thing you’ll ever get.” I remember shaking my head and asking to speak with him privately. When we were alone, I went right for it.

“Proud to have my patch, but I can think of a gift more valuable than your brotherhood.”

He looked away and was silent for at least a solid minute. “You’re doing this now?”

I nodded my head. “I’m not whole without her,” I said. It was the truth then as much as it is the truth now. “I’d like your permission to ask the club to consider voting her in.”

“I fucking hate you,” he said. He didn’t mean it, because he gave me his permission and then called the guys back into the chapel for the vote. It’ll be another year yet before she can be voted in, but she’s earning her place at my side. Hopefully soon she’ll share my name.

“One day, Grady, I’m going to ask her to marry me again,” I told him to prepare him for it. I’ve found that the more prepared he is for something, the less angry he gets when it happens, even if he disapproves. That was about three months ago. He shrugged it off but pulled out his gun and took off the safety.

“One day, Jeremy, you’re going to say the wrong fucking thing and I’m going to lose it,” he had said. But that was it. We didn’t talk about it again until I pulled him aside at the graduation ceremony two days ago.

Preparing Grady for Chey’s return to Fort Bragg hasn’t been easy. First I had to get the whole proposal thing out there for him. Then I mentioned bringing her stuff to my place. That one almost got me decapitated, but eventually he mumbled something about a pool table and moving the kids’ rooms around. I didn’t really follow it, but the following week, her bedroom was cleared out of anything Holly and Elle thought she might want to have around her new home. I drew the line at the shitty girly posters of half-naked actors she professes to like “because of their talent and not their appearance.” Either way, those fucking assholes don’t get to come to the house with us.

As we descend upon Fort Bragg, her grip relaxes some. My stomach muscles have gotten a serious workout this ride—and it was a long fucking ride—but the strain feels good. I haven’t worked out the way Duke and I used to lately. Been too busy getting shit fixed up for my girl to come home. Haven’t shaved properly in a while, but she’s expressed interest in my budding goatee.

I veer off Main Street and head down Sherwood Road in the wrong direction of her dad’s house. She notices immediately and pipes up, but I ignore her. Before we get to Ruby’s long-ass driveway, I slow the bike and cut down a small service road that separates her from her neighbors and turn toward the family cabin. Ian lived here for several years before moving out for a bigger place and offering it up to me and Chey. He’d reasoned that we’d be better company for his mother than he ever was. The only other people to live in the cabin besides Ian and Mindy were Rage and Sylvia before she passed and he retired to Nevada.

“What are we doing out here?” she asks as I bring the bike to a stop in front of the small cabin. This place hasn’t always held happy memories for her, but I’m determined to turn that around. Cutting off the bike and pushing down her kickstand, I pat her thigh for her to get up. She responds and climbs off, then steps back to give me room to swing my leg over. Once I’m on the dirt, I take her hand and lead her to the front steps. She’s acting funny, just like she’s been for months now. It’s my own fault, really. But I want her to have this, so I’ll deal with it for now.

“That’s not what you want to say, and we both know it,” I say. “Go on.”

“Well, you’re an asshole. You barely answer my calls anymore, you go MIA for hours on end, and nobody can tell me where you’ve been. You want me to pick up where we left off like nothing’s fucking wrong, but guess what, buddy? Something is wrong. I feel like you’re hiding something from me, and I’ll overturn every rock in this damn county to find it.”

“That’s because I am hiding something from you,” I admit, feeling rather proud of myself. She does this, sticking her foot so far down her throat she ends up offering to suck my dick on the regular after she realizes she’s been an asshole. My girl’s a little bitchy and a lot paranoid, but she’s mine, and if she didn’t prove that she’s Forsaken-level difficult once in a while, I’d worry I picked the wrong chick.

I pause, waiting for her to start bitching, but she doesn’t. She does narrow her eyes, though, and shake her head. “I’m not going to lay into you like I want to, because I have a feeling you’re setting me up to make me into an asshole.”

“And why would I do that?”

“You like getting your dick sucked,” she says. I try to tell her that she enjoys it as much as I do, but she shoots that idea down pretty quick. “No woman likes sucking dick as much as a man enjoys it, and if they say they are, they’re goddamn liars.”

“Speaking of sucking dick,” I say, trailing off and placing a kiss to the shell of her ear.

She shakes her head and pushes on my chest. “Nuh-uh.”

“Fine, I’ll just have to give you your real gift.” I lead her up the steps to the front door. Pulling out a set of keys, I hand them to her and step back. A sheepish grin appears on her face as she draws her bottom lip into her mouth. Swiftly, she gets the door open and steps inside with a gasp.

I’m no expert with making shit look good, but I know several women who think they are, and they did a damn good job helping me out. The cabin had never been updated from when Rage built it, and while it was functional in a utilitarian kind of way, it wasn’t what I wanted to bring Chey home to. Now, after months of work, the wood floors shine with fresh sanding and a slick polish. The walls have been patched where needed, and each room is painted a different color that Chey loves. I managed to veto hot pink from the design team, who almost went rogue and did it behind my back anyway, but almost everything else was a go. I don’t give a shit that the walls are violet or that the sofa’s gray fabric has a tiny bit of sparkle to it. Not that it’s going to matter in a few months anyway. That shit is going to get so worn out the sparkle will be forgotten.

“Is that the rug Holly and I spotted in the city?” Chey asks, pointing at the black and white rug that sits in the center of the living room. Holly called it a chevron rug, but I think she’s lost her mind. That rug doesn’t look like it belongs in a gas station. Again, another piece that looks good now, but who knows how it’s going to wear. More hard-earned money spent on shit I don’t care about. It’s my fault really—I told them to do something that would make Chey happy. And judging by the happy tears, it worked.

She walks around the corner to the kitchen and reaches for my hand. She gives it a squeeze and thanks me about a hundred times. I’m glad she likes the updated and extended countertop and the new appliances. It’s just stuff, but it makes her happy, so it’s worth every dime. She leads me by our joined hands into the bathroom where she giggles over the rainfall showerhead and the makeup station.

“But all of this looks like this place is for me,” she says. “What about you?”

“Baby, as long as I get to fuck you on that pretty couch and under that fucking shower head, I don’t give a fuck what any of this shit looks like.” Because I don’t.

We walk into the bedroom, and she eyes the king-size bed. With a happy sigh she says, “There’s your influence,” in response to the framed mirrored headboard I had made in exchange for a new strain of bud we just started growing.

She turns around and places a soft kiss to my lips. Unable to control myself, I grab her by the hips and buck into her. A breathy groan escapes her, urging me on. I do it again, which earns me a desperate plea. “Make love to me in our bed,” she says. Like she even has to ask.

We undress one another with frantic movements, pulling and shoving nearly to the point of ripping everything in the process. Soon I’m without my shoes, pants, and boxers and am left with my top half fully clothed. Her chest rises and falls in desperation as she gently removes my cut and tosses it at the foot of the bed, but once that’s out of the way, she nearly chokes me trying to get my red shirt off. Her hands trace the outline of the tattoo I’m having done. Just three more sessions and all the tiny details will be complete. It’s the scene from that fucking van, in that fucking moment when everything changed. But I didn’t want faces because those distort bad as you age, so instead the van is empty. There are no people crying, and no blood—just lines made up of names and dates that I can’t ever forget, no matter how hard I try.

“It’s almost done,” she whispers as she slows down her movements.

“Yeah.”

Chey leans in and places a kiss over the lines of the names of each of the men we’ve lost. She doesn’t cry about it anymore because my girl knows it doesn’t do us any fucking good to think about that shit. Instead, she does the best fucking thing she can—she honors our losses by making sure we all fucking live for the ones who didn’t make it.

I’m slightly less rough with her as I free her of every one of her articles of clothing. When we’re both naked and my dick is throbbing so hard it’s almost painful, I lay her down on the bed so that I can see us in the mirror.

Yeah, this view is totally fucking worth the bud I had to give up for this.

She parts her legs, welcoming me in. I could slam into her right now, especially with how much I need this. But I’d rather not hurt her. She needs to enjoy this as much as I do, and with finals and all the bullshit with graduation and finishing the house, it’s been almost a month since I got into her pussy. Almost a month would have been a godsend back when she first left for school. We were lucky if we got together every other month. But after her being gone so long and once I’d earned my top rocker, we made it a point to see each other more often. Come hell or high water I’d see her every other weekend at the very least. Sometimes on a transport down south, I’d sneak away and we’d have a quick fuck at her place. It was always too short and made me feel like shit for running in, busting a nut, and running out. When it upset her, she’d say it—loudly and until her throat went hoarse—but that was rare. Now, though, I’m not letting her get so far away.