Loving Me, Trusting You (10 page)

He doesn't turn to look at us when we enter, just sits there nursing a beer like he doesn't have a care in the world. This early in the morning, he's the only patron. Even the bartender is missing. Not a good sign.

I pause and pull the tire iron out of my jeans, pausing only when I hear the click of a hammer being pulled back.

“Drop the gun, sweetheart,” says a voice from behind and to my left. I don't even look, letting Beck work his magic behind me. As long as there's less than four armed men, we'll probably be alright.

“What the fuck is this shit?” I ask Will, feeling my heart clenching with rage, begging me to charge forward and unleash the pain I'm nursing onto the world. If I could, if I let it go, would that make things different? If I did that, would the weird emotions I'm feeling towards Gaine be able to become something else? Only one way to find out.

I move forward and pause only when Will turns and levels his 9mm on my chest, pursing my lips and barely blinking when Gaine steps up beside me, a gun held out in front of him. Didn't even know he had it to be honest with you. I'm not used to scuffles like this. Triple M pretty much stays on the sidelines. We have minor brawls, fist fights, maybe a swinging baseball bat here and there, but nothing that requires firepower. Can't say that I like it much.

I examine Kelley's metal, a sleek piece of silver that doesn't mean much to me. I'm a bike girl, not a gun girl. You'd think the two interests would go hand in hand, but trust me, there's a difference.

“Now, I'm not here to start shit with y'all. I simply want an answer to my question.” I spit at the floor and bark out a laugh, letting my eyes slide surreptitiously around the room. I want to know how many of his people are here and where they're at and what they're up to. I doubt Austin expected anything to happen to us during a two minute walk across the street. I didn't hear any bikes pull into town last night, so I'm guessing the whole MC isn't here, probably just a few guys. That puts things in our favor. If we're not back in ten, I'm sure half of Triple M will be down here at Austin's behest. I know he wouldn't let anything happen to his precious little Amy Cross. Speaking of which, I glance over my shoulder and find her with a can of pepper spray in hand, eyes narrowed, nostrils flared. She looks
pissed.

“Where's Christy?” she asks, bringing my mind back around to her friend.
Oh, fuck. This could be bad, really bad.
I swing my gaze back around to Will Walker as he rises from the stool with a grunt, leather creaking as he stretches his arms above his head and gives us a crooked toothed smile.
Hillbilly fuck with ugly ass teeth. God, I sure would like to see those yellow monstrosities lying chipped and ruined on the splintery wood floor.
I clench my fingers around the metal and lick my lips.

“Your friend is fine,” Will says with a wink, and I notice that Gaine stiffens, finger tightening like it's having a muscle spasm, going stiff as a board. I know he knows about my past. In a night of blind idiocy, I spilled everything to him. Maybe not the best choice I ever made, but what's done is done. Gaine knows more than anyone else about what I went through back then and vengeance is burning in his blood. Thing is, this vengeance is
mine
for the taking. “She's just hangin' in the back with some of my boys.” My body goes cold then, straight from molten to ice. The transition is so quick that it makes me dizzy, and I almost sway on my feet. Only Gaine's solidness beside me keeps me still.
Why the fuck is that, I wonder?

“You touch her and you can forget shit, Walker. I will cut off your nuts and feed 'em to you, one misshapen, sterile, inbred bite at a time. And then I'll move onto your dick. You don't even want to know what sort of creative ideas I have for that useless piece of hypocrisy.” Will just laughs and shakes his head, secure in his fallacies and his stupidity, his ignorance and all the horrible misogynistic bull that's floating around this community. Biker bitches don't mean shit, not to him, not to a lot of people.

I start to wonder if I was put on this earth to prove them wrong.

“Beck, you okay back there?” I ask, voice neutral, calm. I won't give anything away. Don't have to. Sometimes, when other people think less of you, it's best to let 'em. Then, when it's time to come in and kick their ass, they won't see it coming.
El día que se muere, la tierra va a llorar lágrimas de alegría.

Will doesn't think women are worth a damn, so he doesn't think they're a threat to be reckoned with.

“All good back here, lady cakes,” he says, and I smile.

Two steps forward, elbow cocked back, and then I slam the tire iron against the side of Will's face. He doesn't scream, doesn't cry out, just drops to the floor like a sack of fucking potatoes. Shouts ring out from behind the door to the back room where I stumbled upon Austin fucking Amy for the first time. What a momentous occasion that was. I didn't think anything of it then. I just thought she was another random fuck, a girl that would disappear into a history of blurry faces. I wonder sometimes if the most important events in life are cloaked in obscurity on purpose, just to screw with us.

Gaine doesn't hesitate in firing back, one handed mind you which is pretty damn impressive. His other arm comes out and snakes around my waist, pulling me tight against his hot body, the pulsing thrum of energy he carries around with him always. I was immune to it, or at least I thought I was. Until now. Now, even in a hail of gunfire, I feel like I'm bent over the fire, heating back up and rising like steam. That coldness fades away in a split second, retreating back to whence it came, and then I'm just hot and angry again. And compared to that strange coldness, it's a fucking blessing.

“What the fuck were you thinking, Mireya Sawyer?” he says and he sounds like a New Yorker again. He's been surrounded by viscous, Southern drawls since he was sixteen, so it's rubbed off on him pretty heavily, but like me, when he gets stressed, it's back to resting on his laurels. I've got Castilian, and he's got Upstate New York. What a pair we make.

“Screw you, Kelley,” I say, even as we drop to the floor in a flurry of activity. Vaguely, I remember Amy and feel a surge of panic in my chest. I try to check for her, but Gaine's yanking me behind a table and holding me tight against him while the room quiets down and an eerie silence descends. I don't see Beck or Amy, but I pray to God that she's alright. If I were to get her killed, Austin would never forgive me.
I
would never forgive me. I might not like the girl, but I feel responsible towards her somehow. Maybe it's some latent mothering bullshit or something? I don't know. I just don't want her to get killed by a bunch of rapists with guns.

“The fuck is wrong with you? Do you have a death wish or somethin'?” Gaine whispers in my ear while we wait in tense anticipation for somebody to make the next move. Things have got to happen fast from this point on, before the cops get here. Nobody wants to deal with cops.

“Don't talk to me like I'm stupid, Gaine,” I growl at him, pausing my rant early to listen to the sound of a door swinging open. A couple pairs of boots move into my vision and a blonde girl with red eyes and wet cheeks falls to her knees not six feet from where we're crouching.

“Where the fuck is Tray? We want honest answers this time.” My hands clench involuntarily, curling into fists so tight, I feel like the bones might burst from my skin and cut me open.
Mack.
Tray's
other
brother. Unfortunate isn't it that the world seems to breed idiots in excess.

I untangle myself from Gaine's arms, despite his protests and rise to my feet. They won't shoot me. Yet. They want to hear what I have to say. I need to keep it that way until I get the girl back. I may not know her personally, but I know what they'll do to her if they take her out of here. She will be doomed to a short, painful life of hell, and it'll be at least partially my fault. I hope that she's escaped my fate thus far.

I look down at the girl before I bother acknowledging Mack. She seems alright, a little roughed up maybe, but she doesn't have that vacant look in her eye like she's been betrayed.
Got here just in time, I reckon.

My eyes move up a pair of dusty boots, past faded jeans, a red tee and onto a baby face that will never cross over into handsome. I imagine that Mack will always look like a kid, probably right up until the day he gets wrinkled up like a fucking prune. Tray stole all the good genes in this family, the physical ones anyway. There wasn't much else worth having to be found in this lineup. I stare at Mack and try to reconcile what I use to think about him with what he did to me, and what he's doing now.

He looks over at his brother's crumpled form and wrinkles his nose. The three men behind him keep their eyes on Gaine when he stands up behind me. They just saw me smash Will's face in with a tire iron and they're not taking me seriously. Oh, well. Their ignorance is my bliss.

“If he's dead, you're done, Mireya.” I try not to laugh. Nobody else might've noticed, but I can hear the soft clink of chains behind the bar. Once Beck gets to the other side, these guys are all done for. They may as well kiss the world goodbye. I smile instead.

“I can only hope,” I say, and Mack's blue eyes flick up to mine and hold there with grim determination. Inside, he's a fucking pussy. On the outside, he's playing a good game. I always thought he could be an actor if he wanted, would probably enjoy it, too. And I'm not a hundred percent certain, but I think he's gay as well. Not that it matters to me, but I wonder what his ignorant asshole buddies would say if they found out. “You want Tray back? You're going to have to do an awful lot of traveling to find his ass.”

Mack holds up his gun, points it straight at my face. I hold my hand out to keep Gaine from reacting in my defense. He's always been good in a fight before, always stood by my side, but I don't know if I've ever seen him so protective. I can't tell if I hate it or … No. No. I hate it. I can take care of my damn self.

“And what the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Mack asks, stepping forward aggressively, his shaking shoulders the only indication that he's actually terrified by the situation.

“You don't owe them anything, Mireya,” Gaine whispers, voice so low that I'm probably the only one that can hear it. “Just keep quiet and wait 'em out. I think I hear sirens anyhow.”

I ignore him.

“I mean, if his pathetic, miserable, useless soul is still floating around somewhere, it's buried in the depths of hell. It's going to take an awful lot of good riding to find him down there.”

Beck explodes from behind the bar like a machine, muscles hard as rocks, joints like pistons. He pounds the space between the man closest to him in seconds, slamming his elbow into the blonde's temple and dropping him before any of the others can even turn to look.

I move forward, taking advantage of Beck's movements to cloak the iron in my hand until it's too late, swinging it hard and drawing blood from Mack's forehead as he crumples. Deep down, a monster stirs and kicks, begging me to keep swinging, to destroy this man and all the rest with a pounding beat of rage and violence.
Take that vengeance and destroy them.
There's a good chance that I'll get arrested then, or that I won't be able to stop. My arm draws back and all of a sudden, my hand's missing my weapon. I spin to find Gaine behind me and nearly kick him in the balls when he reaches out and grabs me around the waist, tossing me over his shoulder like a helpless heroine in a romance novel.

“Put me the fuck down!” I scream, but he's already spinning us around, flashing me a quick look at Amy Cross, who's still alive, thankfully, and a panoramic view of the dazed Crows as we sprint towards the front door and burst out into the heat, trailing Beck behind us. He's got Amy's friend scooped up in his arms and is booking it with Amy at his heels.

I hear Austin's voice before I see him, and fortunately for him, Gaine chooses that moment to set me down. He's lucky. I was about three seconds away from tearing out a clump of his hair and then castrating him.

“What in the holy hell of fuck is goin' on in there?”

“Questions later, Pres. We have got to get the hell out of here. Now.”

Gaine tries to take my hand, but I shove him back and throw him the hardest glare I have.

“You pick me up like that again, and I will kill you,” I snarl. He looks at me for a second and then turns away, moving towards the doors of the hotel with a blank expression on his sweaty face.

I watch his strong back, and I try not to think the thought that's swirling around in the back of my mind.

Gaine just damn near saved me from making one of the biggest fucking mistakes of my life. I want revenge, but I'm not an animal.
Somehow, he seems to know me better than I do.

That scares the shit out of me.

I must've been out of my fucking mind to pick up Mireya Sawyer and toss her over my shoulder like that. No shit. I should be dead right now. But I'm not. That's a good thing, right? Is this progress? I want to ask someone about it, but there's nobody to talk to right now, not when I've got Mireya wrapped around me on the open road, making my dick so hard it hurts. I think I'm driving a little crooked, but nobody mentions anything on the intercom.