Page 10

Gunner

T his time, I’m done.

It might have taken me ten days to get to it, but I’ve got things squared away with Tyrant.

After Archer checked me over and declared me one lucky bastard, I came right back to the club and sought out my Prez. He busted my balls about heading on, but he could see that nothing he said was going to change my mind. I offered him my blood as exchange for breaking my word about Penny, but he just laughed that off. Said I’d bled enough in the past few days. He didn’t require anymore. The club wasn’t built to promote thuggery, and he just slapped me on the good shoulder and told me I was free to go if that’s what I felt I needed to do.

When I mentioned to Raiden this morning that I’d be riding out tonight, he organized an impromptu farewell party. The last thing I need or want, but it would have been ungracious not to attend. These men have been my family for the past five and a half years. I’m leaving Raiden high and dry on the VP side of things, and I know that Bullet and even Smoke—though he’s a newer member who just patched in, joined up from the Berserkers when Ella came—will miss me to some extent.

It’s ten on a Sunday night. Not our usual night for parties, but no one is complaining. The music started hours ago. The air is thick with weed and cigarette smoke. The bass of Wizard’s music twists and thumps through the floorboards. The lounge is packed full, the bar in the corner worked steadily by Crow. The guy hasn’t had a break from pouring drinks in hours, but he likes hanging out back there.

Lark isn’t here because she couldn’t find a sitter on short notice, and a few of the other old ladies are missing—at home with kids—but the club whores came out happily. Their laughter is punctuated by the occasional shout. Darts thud into the boards at the far end of the room and pool balls crash together. The couches in the corners are in full-on sin mode. Bikers know how to party, and after years of this, I know how it’ll go, right down to the predictable blow jobs right there in the middle of the room, men disappearing down the hallways with their woman for the night, or their old lady, wrapped around them. A few passed out on the floor or in chairs or on the couch to wake up late and complain the next day.

I stand in the same spot I always do, in the corner of the lounge, taking everything in, but not participating. I never do. The club whores used to try, but they gave me up for a lost cause long ago. The new ones probably heard from the more experienced ladies not to go near me.

No one offers me a drink or a joint.

Bullet will probably come over and talk guns with me in an hour or so, before he really starts drinking and takes one of the club whores to his room.

Around three or four, when things are starting to reach a pinnacle and winding down, I’ll grab my bag and ride out.

An unexpected knot forms in my throat at knowing I won’t be here tomorrow morning to hear the usual complaining about hangovers, the hushed laughter of women slipping out in the early hours of the morning, the teasing in the kitchen between Raiden and his old lady, the prospects complaining about missing out on the full party because of guard duty.

I reach up and rub my shoulder. It’s doing better, but the fucker has been surprisingly painful, the stitches itching and pulling.

The worst pain I have ever known in my life wasn’t the burns that covered my entire chest and upper arms. It wasn’t the smoke or the stench of gas, the burning flesh, the weeks of recovery that were like being bathed in melted glass over and over again. Worse than all of that is the way I’ve torn Diletta out of my life. I might have blood on my hands, and a soul as black as pitch, but I’ve only ever been an addict for her. The withdrawals are worse than anything drugs or alcohol could manufacture. I never realized, after years of locking down my emotions, just how much I did feel until I forced myself to become a hollowed-out shell.

The worst part?

Knowing that she doesn’t want me to go.

The first day, it was a pineapple upside down cake.

The second, chocolate chip cookies.

The third, red velvet cupcakes.

Then tuna casserole, lasagna, blueberry cheesecake, lemon bars.

There won’t be anything tonight. The prospects at the door doing guard duty were instructed to send her away and refuse the food. Something they’ll find disappointing if she does show up, as will the rest of the men here who feasted on the best baking and cooking they’ve had in a good long time.

Their words.

I didn’t touch any of it. I couldn’t bear to know I’d never taste her cooking again. She asked me to leave her alone and I will. I need to go, even if she begged me to stay I couldn’t. I can’t endanger her any longer. I broke my own rules, punched straight through that barrier I erected. I don’t know why she’s trying to draw me back, but it’s even more reason to leave Hart and never return to a town I shouldn’t have stepped foot into in the first place.

If anyone bothered looking me in the eye tonight, they’d see the same bright, cold blue, but they’d probably note that tonight, they’re not dead and empty. Tonight, they’re broken.

All of this hurts like a motherfucker. It burns like gas and fire and is agony like the aftermath.

I can take it.

There’s no alternative.

I lean a little bit harder against the brick wall than I normally do. My eyes are wet from the smoke bothering them, but I still scan the room, taking in the thick wood beams, the hardwood floors, the bricks, the tables, the chairs, the people. I memorized the details long ago in photographs mapped on my brain, but one last time and all. It’s a real thing.

The smoke swirls at the entrance, parting around an apparition. A goddess of leather and lace, knee high stiletto boots and fishnet. A ghost summoned straight out of the sludges of my black sinful soul to taunt and torment me.

I truly believe that what I’m seeing is just for me alone. Diletta. Not the sweet little kindergarten teacher with cutesy outfits, but a sleek, vixen, predatory in her own right. Scarlet lipstick, dark eyeliner, smoky eyes, an aggressive slash of bangs over her sleek bob, curves no longer understated, but aggressively encased in a leather miniskirt, her breasts overflowing from a black lace bra with a fishnet shirt overtop, five inches taller than she normally is because of the boots that climb past her knees and hug her sexy golden legs.

My dark queen.

Mine .

But then, heads turn. Men gape. The women give guarded, wary looks and edge closer to the men they’re with tonight. Darts freeze in hands, pool cues halt mid-shot.

My blood normally runs cold. I don’t have to raise my voice to be heard. I can stop a man with a single, deadly look.

As it slams into my brain with all the subtleness of a car crash that this apparition is indeed real, Diletta like I’ve never seen her or imagined her, a woman bathed in sin, sex, and anarchy, a red haze coats my vision.

Jonathan, who just patched in recently and doesn’t even have a club name yet, happens to be the first poor fucker in my line of sight. He’s gaping at Diletta, practically slobbering. I stalk past him and miraculously, I don’t deprive him of his eyeballs. I do slam my fist straight into his face, knuckles meeting his jaw and sending him sprawling.

I no longer have a cut. Mine got wrecked, no amount of dry cleaning would get the blood out. Tyrant was going to get me a new one, but I told him not to bother since I was leaving. I just have my black Henley on tonight.

The crowd parts for me fucking. Fast.

Men get their heads turned right around or divert their eyes. The other half land on me. I rip my shirt over my head so fast it practically tears, grasp Diletta by the arm, and shove it over her head, covering her half naked body.

“What the fuck?” I hiss in her ear, inhaling her sweet, intoxicating scent. I’m too close. Far too close to this. I’m leaving.

But.

But this is my woman in here, mine, wearing nothing more than a goddamn bra and a skirt that’s short enough to show her round ass cheeks at the bottom. She walked in here dressed like a club whore, which would explain how she got past the prospects at the door. She’s not the sweet girl bearing inexplicable baking. She’s a sexy, sultry goddess who demanded to be let in and they thought, as with the other women, that she belonged. Was invited. There to be taken on her own terms, but taken nonetheless.

More red. The room is painted in it. Drenched. The furniture drips with it. I can’t breathe. I’m gonna stroke out over this. I won’t need to leave because I’ll be dead.

I might not be much of anything anymore, but I do have immaculate control. Usually. It snaps now, an inferno of fire spreading through me, eating at my insides like it once licked over my skin.

The first man to reach me is Bullet. He saw Diletta at the cookout and on her doorstep that morning they picked me up, but I’ve refused to answer any questions. To their credit, no one has asked, other than Tyrant checking in to make sure that I was okay after going AWOL that night.

I’m barely human. It’s not me who grabs Bullet by the shoulder and gets my hand around his throat, driving him into the wall. I squeeze hard against his hot skin, his pulse hammering maniacally against my grip.

“What the fuck! Gunner!” Raiden comes at me from behind. He latches both arms around my middle and tries to haul me off.

It takes Atlas, Decay, Scythe, and Reaper to finally pull me off Bullet and I still come away swinging, a mad beast, gnashing my teeth at all of them. Atlas gets up in my face with his pretty boy mug. My blood surges with violence. I snap my teeth at him, but can’t do much more because my arms are pinned behind my back.

The music cut off sometime during that shit. I don’t know when, but it’s so silent in here that I can hear myself breathing like an animal hunted and chased down. Every set of eyes in the place is on me.

Not just because of my rabid attack on a man I consider my closest friend, if I ever could truly have one or be one, but because I’m stripped right down to my jeans. Every inch of my skin is on display. I have never allowed that to happen. No one here knows that I look like a human candle, melted and lumped back together.

Ella’s reaction from across the room, her hands cupped over her mouth, eyes wide and burning, pretty much says it all.

Everyone knew I was ugly, but now they know .

I’ve always kept a leash on the violence, using it only in favor of the club and for my brothers, but I’m like the dog that turned against its own and needs to be put down.

Bullet is getting his shit together over at the wall. He’s retching and gasping, rubbing at his throat, but he’s already straightening and coming right for me. The three men holding me tighten up, but Bullet doesn’t take a swing at me. He doesn’t pummel his revenge into my unguarded face and torso.

I have never considered any of these men blood until I watch him shed his cut and t-shirt in front of me. “Let him go,” he rasps through his bruised throat. “Now.”

As my arms are free, he passes his t-shirt. We’re not the same size, but it’s cover, and I’ll take it. Anything to get the heat of all those eyes off me.

I’ve never known greater shame than the silent forgiveness of a good man who I just tried to kill for no reason other than he was in the line of fire.

“Gunner.” The quiet, trembling voice behind me freezes that heat inside of me. My blood goes from fire to jagged ice crystals in an instant.

I can’t look at her. I can’t move. No one is holding me down now. It’s just me in a sea of men who don’t really know me because I’ve made it that way. Men who were borderline afraid of what I could be before, and that’s before I just assaulted one of our own.

“We good here?” Tyrant walks over and puts a hand on Bullet’s shoulder.

“It’s my own fault,” Bullet admits, even though he’s done nothing wrong. “I was looking at his woman.”

That causes a low murmur to rush through the crowd. “For fuck’s sake, turn the music back on,” Tyrant calls out and a few seconds later, some nineties rap song drowns out the hushed mutters. He lowers his forehead to mine, getting closer than most people would dare. It smacks down hard and then his back hand clamps over my shoulder. “You can’t try to kill your own brothers, Gun, whether you’re leaving or not. You have something you want to have out, you do it fair, you got it?”

“Prez, it was my own—”

He shoots a hand at Bullet, cutting him off. He hovers like an anxious old lady at my shoulder. I still can’t see Diletta. All I heard was her soft whisper at my back.

“You feel me?” Tyrant grinds out again.

“Yeah. I- don’t know what happened. I just blacked the fuck out.”

“It’s not the first time and it won’t be the last time we’ve had a fight in here.”

I’m let off far too easy. Our Prez steps back and it’s over. By rights, Bullet should beat the shit out of me. His mercy feels far worse than a thousand blows. I’ve wronged him. We don’t have a law about that like some clubs do, but in my books, he has every right for retribution.

“She really your old lady?” Tyrant asks, staring at someone behind me.

Fuck. The red rises up again, the haze coating my vision. I half want to rip his face off. Tyrant. My Prez. A good, honest, salt of the earth man who would die for this place and any one of us in an instant, which would be a thousand times more than a fucker like me deserves.

I clench my hands into fists at my side and breathe like a stampeding bull, but I keep myself under control. Music or not, everyone in the room is still studying me. The heat of all those eyes pierces through my skin and bone like sharp knives.

I turn around slowly, meaning to take in Diletta’s soft gold brown eyes, to beg her forgiveness with a single look before I claim her, at least in front of these men. Once I do that, she’s mine. Off limits to anyone here. Respected in an entirely different way. As part of the club, she’d have the safety and status as belonging to it, through me.

I’m leaving.

Now. I need to get my bag.

She’s mine…

The word is right there, mine. the first letter ready to roll off my tongue.

“Yes!” Diletta surges forward and crashes into me. She throws her arms around my shoulders, her small frame trembling violently. “He belongs to me. He’s mine.”

Mine .

She claimed me. Publicly. Those words are like a sacred oath, and if I was cut to ribbons before, I’m obliterated now.

Before I can do something like cave in and have a meltdown for this whole room to see, I let out a growl and scoop her into my arms. She twists her arms around my neck and clings to me, face tucked into my shoulder.

Despite the wild show I just gave them, the room bursts into loud applause and stomps of approval.

Tyrant spoke true. There’s been far worse in this room. All-out brawls. Pool cues snapped over backs. Guys knocked out. A few of the club bitches once had a catfight that involved beer bottles getting smashed over each other and bloody claw marks raked into skin. Once, in the time of Zale, a man even drew a gun and fired into the ceiling. He was ousted from the club. You don’t bring your damn weapons to a party when you’re surrounded by your brothers. Fist fights are acceptable, but bullets, tempers, and alcohol don’t mix well—Zale might have been a loose cannon, but that was one of his rules that we stuck to.

I might be leaving.

I might stay.

Either way, those loud hoots and hollers, the boots banging against the hardwood floor, and cheers from the women, follow me down the hall to my private room.

I set Diletta down carefully inside, then storm over and slam the door closed, leaning against it with my arms crossed.

We’re having this out and we’re having it out now. It won’t be tender. It sure as fuck won’t be sweet. She thinks she’s a match for me, but she has no idea what kind of man I am. It’s time to set her straight.

I owe her the truth.