“Surprised today happened is all.”
“Me, too.” Lucie had come back all guns blazing, but she’d shown a side of herself that I hadn’t anticipated. I was grateful for it, but surprised nonetheless. “Glad, though.”
He sighed, pressed his forehead to the glass, and mumbled, “She ain’t gonna let me stay behind these walls.”
I knew he meant metaphorically. “That’s on you. Not her.”
“Bullshit. You know what she’s like.”
“Yeah. I do. I guess I’m glad she hasn’t changed though. Always was a tornado. Always was willing to wreck shit to fix shit.”
Wolfe snorted. “That’s one way of putting it.”
“You okay, brother?” I tried again, trying to get him to talk about the reason he’d barged in the way he had.
“Ama’s messing with my head. Won’t let me get close to her.” He sucked down a breath. “Lucie’s got me all rattled too. Crap used to be simple and now it’s all over the place. Then there’s the shit with the council. We’re behind on too much, need to get on track thanks to those fucking Knights.”
“No point in sweating over it. We’re allowed a personal life, Wolfe.”
“Not in the middle of a war,” he rasped, rearing back to press the base of his palms into his eyes. “Here’s me talking like a pussy.”
“You ain’t,” I assured him. “You called it, Wolfe. You’re talking like someone who’s rattled. She’s shaken us all, man. Stirred everything up until we don’t know what’s up or what’s down. Plus,” I said on a sigh, “there’s the situation with Kid to think about.”
Wolfe’s jaw tensed. “Can’t believe he’s dead.”
“I need to arrange his wake. Can’t believe we’re having to celebrate his life when he was one of the good ones, Wolfe. He should still be around, but he ain’t.” I rolled off the bed and headed over to him.
As we both stared into the darkness, I raised my arm and leaned against the wall. Beneath our feet, the hardwood floor rattled as the party going on down below throbbed.
I didn’t mind the noise, if anything, I was used to it but I knew Amaryllis wouldn’t be. Poor little thing. She’d gone from a regular old house to this madness.
“I’m just glad he kept them both safe,” Wolfe rasped, and I forced myself to focus on what he was saying.
“Me too.”
“We have a daughter, Axe. A fucking daughter,” he breathed. “When the fuck did that happen?”
“When we weren’t looking. I’m grateful she takes after him,” I replied quietly. “That way he’ll live on through her.”
He dipped his chin. “She looks like Tara.”
“That she does,” I agreed, then I cut him a look. “How’s that feel?”
He gulped. “Weird. Hard to believe. Makes me think about how I failed her.”
“Screw that. You didn’t make her get mixed up in drugs.”
“No. But still, makes me think I should have protected her more. Shouldn’t have let her get mixed up in that crowd.”
“Technically, that crowd wasn’t full of bad people, Wolfe. You know that, in the scheme of things, anyone who ran with us was considered the ‘bad ‘uns,’” I told him wryly. Not that Tara’s overdose was anything to joke about, but hell, Wolfe making himself feel like shit wasn’t going to get us anywhere.
“No, I guess not,” he said sadly.
“You know what you need?”
He turned, cocked a brow at me. “To stop being a pussy?”
I snorted. “No. You need to accept Lucie. Stop fucking around with this. Stop fighting it. She’s ours. Just let her have what she wants.”
“The club won’t—”
“The club’ll do shit,” I rasped. “She’s ours. Let’s make her fucking happy after making her fucking sad all these years.”
He clenched his jaw. “I need a smoke.”
I cocked a brow at him but didn’t fight him. He’d only take so much of my counsel. “Thought you quit.”
“I did, but I need something.” He sighed, then shot me a look. “I’m going outside. You coming with?”
“Nah. I got work to do.”
He hitched a shoulder then strolled across the room as silently as he’d come in. I wasn’t sure if that talk had cleared his head any but I hoped for all our sakes it had. Lucie wasn’t going to back down, neither were the rest of us. We knew what it was like to live without her, knew what it was like with her… he had a fight on his hands if he thought any of us were going to roll over and play dead.
❖
Lucie
Being around the clubhouse was confusing.
It hadn’t changed much since I was a kid, but it was different too because I saw things differently now.
Most of the kids didn’t live in, but I had. Wolfe, Flame, Dagger, and Axe had as well because their fathers were all Originals like my dad. When their pops had been shot up in a drug bust that happened when I was eight, and they were on the brink of turning fourteen, my dad had moved them and their mothers into the clubhouse for their safety, but also so he could rear them to take over their fathers’ positions on the council.
Back then, I hadn’t been allowed downstairs on a night, but they had. Though I’d known what was happening, seeing it was another matter entirely. I’d sneaked down and happened to see Wolfe getting sucked off by a sweetbutt one night, while another rode his mouth.
He’d been sixteen at the time, and my heart had nearly exploded in my chest with jealousy at the sight.
I’d only been eleven, but shit like that stuck with a person. We were all used to sex. It was everywhere. Unavoidable. And I’d never had a problem with it until now. Until I was a mother myself.
I didn’t want Amaryllis growing up around this shit.
I wanted her to know the clubhouse, because it was an intrinsic part of the life, but I didn’t want her walking in on shit no child should see.
The common room was a huge space, large enough to fit over two hundred people. It could have been a fucking ballroom if we were the kind to throw galas instead of goddamn raves.
Originally two rooms, my dad had knocked down the connecting wall so it was two rectangles joined together at the top left on one and bottom right corner on the other. One rectangle housed the bar and the pool table. There was the framework of a hog on the wall, and there were a shit ton of pictures of the old days on there. Some in black and white, others in color—anything from past parties to funerals, and even the odd biker wedding.
The floor was gross. My feet stuck to the wooden boards, but everywhere else was kind of clean. The counter was scarred and scratched, behind it were too many bottles of liquor, and three prospects manned it when they weren’t gaping at the strippers who I’d told to fuck off before I’d taken a seat next to Dagger.
In the other room, there was a mass of sofas and chairs. Mostly comfortable, but you sat on them at your own risk. The amount of DNA on there was enough to make me want to puke, but I knew the guys didn’t think anything of it.