What the actual fuck?
I glared at Phoenix, but he refused to look at me. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Nothing had happened that day. The two Saints had talked shit to us, smashed a glass, and then gone on their way. Nothing more had happened, and no real fallout had come as a result. What the…
Phoenix wouldn’t have told Lane. Phoenix may have forgiven Lane for what he and the rest of this club did to his father, but that didn’t mean he trusted him more than me. But... Butch…
He and Butch had tried hard to make amends. Maybe he’d said something to Butch, and Butch, dutiful as he was, had reported the incident to Lane.
“Cole, Phoenix. Do you two know why they came?”
Oh, sweet fucking Lord. I was going to be under the gun in front of our own clubs. Just because he wasn’t trying to be a dick to me any longer didn’t mean that there weren’t some difficult moments.
“Why would I know?” I said, trying my best not to sound confrontational. “If I knew how the Fallen Saints operated, I’d do something about it. They probably know now that the Gray Reapers are in Ashton, and so they decided to try and confront us. I think they got the idea, though, that doing so in broad daylight was a bad idea.”
“And it’s not like that bar operates like Brewskis did,” Phoenix added. “It’s not a late-night dump. It’s a community spot. I’ve met the owner; he’s a great guy. It’s not a place that only the degenerates of society go.”
Lane looked at us with something resembling friendly doubt, like he thought we were full of shit but didn’t want to make a scene of it in the meeting.
“I see,” Lane said. “And they didn’t say anything to you revealing why they’d come?”
I shook my head.
“You know how it is. Called me a midget. Said some things to Jess. They didn’t say anything to Phoenix, but they knew he was there. Never did they think they’d get a clean kill off.”
Nor did they ever know Lilly was there. And neither will anyone else in this room if we can help it.
“OK,” Lane said.
He said nothing more, which told me he had so much more to say. He changed the subject to a discussion about bringing in the DA’s office through Angela to apply some political pressure on the Fallen Saints, the better to recreate the feeling of a war on all fronts, but that never got far; there was an understanding that when the government got involved, it didn’t discriminate as to which bikers were safe and which ones wound up in jail, especially if anyone above the local level got dragged in.
Lane ended the meeting a short while later, but he did so looking at me. I knew there was no point in even pretending to think I could go. Lane was not going to be as merciful as he was the last time he’d talked to me after our meeting.
And frankly, in his shoes, I probably wouldn’t be either. There was just too much history between us for this to feel like a safe space for arguing, though.
“Cole, I don’t want to be a dick, but I know you’re hiding something.”
Well, here we go.I took a deep breath to steady my nerves, but history suggested that the second Lane’s accusations came, my defenses would rise, and neither of us would listen to the other.
“I want to believe what you said last week was true. But this is the second meeting in a row that you’ve hemmed and hawed your way through a conversation. Forgive me, but what the fuck is going on?”
This was, I recognized, an enormously critical moment.
It was a moment in which I would decide where I put my loyalties. Would I put them with my brother, the man who had tormented me and been a fucking nightmare up until the last few weeks? The man whom, even if I was not sure I would ever have a truly loving relationship with, I needed to help in this battle?
Or would I put them in a woman I had met barely a week ago, a woman that could be the key to defeating the Saints... but a woman who represented something that I had never before had—a woman that would stick around in my life for the long run?
In short, would logic or my psychological needs win out?
“Cole?”
If I betrayed his trust, all for a woman... and that woman just wound up moving to New York or New Mexico in the next few days... everything derisive and derogatory that Lane had ever said about me? Completely justified.
And yet, I couldn’t pretend that those psychological scars weren’t real. I couldn’t act like I wasn’t affected by everything that had happened. I couldn’t pretend I didn’t have that need to not have a woman die because of me or leave because of me.
“Cole, man, the fuck—”
“Lane,” I said with a sigh. “I…”
“What?”
