Page 69 of Caution to the Wind

“I promised Kate I’d take care of her,” Mei whispered, eyes beseechin’ and wide. “Of both of you.”

“Yeah, well, you’re eight years too late to keep that oath,” I snarled. Done with her, done with the way my heart pounded like a fist against my ribs, I tossed Mei’s slight frame up and over my shoulder in a fireman’s carry.

Cleo’s protests followed me as I stalked out the door and down the hall to the staircase because I wasn’t waitin’ for the elevator. I took the stairs down two by two, nearly jumpin’ from step to step. The feel of Mei against me burned through my clothes to my skin and down into my bones.

Later, I’d realized she hadn’t struggled at all. The girl I knew could’ve put up a decent fight, even against my bulk, but she just lay over my shoulder like a sack of potatoes.

A few nurses protested when I reached the main floor and prowled through the admission area, but the second they caught sight of my Fallen MC cut, they fell silent and wary.

The moment I passed the automatic glass doors onto the sidewalk, I dropped her unceremoniously to the ground.

My chest was heavin’, heart racin’ so madly in my chest I had no hope of catchin’ it and wranglin’ it into a steadier pace. It hurt to watch Mei straighten, to see the way she bit at the end of a faintly tremblin’ lip to keep it still. It hurt to watch the familiar old defiance flare in her expression as she set her shoulders straight and looked up to meet my gaze.

It hurt to see my own pain reflected back at me, years of confusion and loss and anger as tangled and deep as the roots of an old growth tree.

“She needs me,” she said, voice strong and sure. “What she just went through…please, Henning, don’t make her recover alone.”

“She won’t be alone.” I felt like hollerin’, like some mournful wolf callin’ for a home that no longer existed. “She’sneverbeen alone. I got her back,always, and now we got a family who’d never abandon us. Not for anythin’. You’re not a part of that, and you never fuckin’ will be again. So leave now before I do somethin’ I regret, and don’t you ever fuckin’ think about comin’ back.”

She stared at me, chin canted at the haughty angle she’d perfected when she was twelve. Only, she wasn’t the same twelve-year-old girl who’d stood broken and bloodied before my dyin’ wife with adaosword in her hand, ready to defend them both.

I had no fuckin’ clue who she was now, and I didn’t want to know. If I never saw her again, it still wouldn’t be enough. I wanted her scrubbed from my brain, her name erased, her presence purged.

I wanted to be rid of the agony of lovin’ and hatin’ her and the confusion that arose in the thin line between the two.

“I’m sorry,” she said, so soft I almost didn’t hear. “I’m sorry for everything that happened. That I was the reason you went to prison and that I couldn’t see you until it was too late, and you’d already started to hate me. I’m sorry for so many things, but most of all, I’m sorry I hurt you. You’re still the best man I’ve ever known, and you deserve a lot more than what I did to you. There hasn’t been one day since I last saw you that I haven’t loved you both from afar. So fine, I’ll go, and I’ll stay away from you, but I can’t promise I won’t be here for Cleo. Not when she needs me.”

“Leave her alone,” I demanded, steppin’ forward, fists curled. “I mean it, Mei.”

Her smile was thin and self-mockin’ as she started to back away, hands in the pockets of that ridiculously oversized leather jacket. “Don’t you remember, Hen? I’ve never been much good at following orders.”

She turned on her heel and jogged lightly around the building toward the side parkin’ lot, a flash of black hair caught in the wind my last sight of her. Still, I stood there for a long time, breathin’ like a stuck bull, tryin’ to exist around the wound she’d reopened at the heart of me. Maybe another time, when my daughter hadn’t been raped and left for dead, I could’ve remained unaffected by the sight of my old friend, my old downfall.

But my armour was in shambles around my feet, broken to bits by my sense of failure and horror havin’ been unable to protect Cleo. So the blade of Mei’s reappearance had pierced me right through my already failing heart, and now, all I could do was stand there in the entrance to St. Katherine’s hospital bleedin’ out with no hope of bein’ saved by the doctors or nurses inside it.

“So that was Mei.”

I wasn’t surprised to hear Z’s rough growl behind me, but I still tensed, an animal response to another predator approachin’ when I was weak.

My only answer was a grunt.

He was silent for a long spell, just standin’ next to me in solidarity. It never failed to amaze me that a man built like a weapon could so often know the perfect way to soothe his band of unmerry men.

“It’s funny,” he said at length, clampin’ a hand on my shoulder. “How our demons can have such pretty fuckin’ faces and cause us so much damn pain.”

“She broke Cleo’s heart.” My voice was weak, stripped bare by the emotion tearin’ me up from the inside out.

“She broke yours, too,” he said, heavy and firm, so there was no room for me to argue with him.

“Not much left to break by the time she got around to it,” I half denied.

Z’s pause was long enough to make me want to squirm like a kid caught in a lie. No one in the club knew anythin’ about my history before I arrived in Entrance fresh from the joint, save Zeus and Bat. I’d never had reason to regret them knowin’ ’til now.

“You got one’a the biggest hearts I know, Axe-Man, so I can’t say I agree with that shit. But sometimes we gotta tell ourselves lies to get through the hard times, so I’ll leave you be.”

“Appreciated,” I muttered sarcastically, even though some of the tension in my shoulders dissipated in relief.

When Zeus wanted to, the man was like a dog with a bone about these things, and I was in no frame of mind to handle probin’ questions about Mei.