“Pres?”
He got up, staggering a few feet as he made a wide sweeping gesture that nearly floored him. I wanted to drag him away from the fire, but his words were distracting me from his predicament, because I thought he was one of the good guys?
“Micro?”
He cursed. “Always… hated that… name until… until her, Soph. It doesn’t sound like evil when she… says it.” He was slurring badly, and staggered a few steps, landing on his ass. I got up and moved to the bench closer to him, in the hopes he’d keep his damn voice down.
“You shouldn’t be telling me this stuff, man.”
I wanted to know, I mean, I really wanted to know, because if I was backing the wrong guy, didn’t I deserve to know I’d been duped again? I just already liked him, and didn’t want a reason to change my opinion of him. It was selfish, but didn’t we just need someone to trust at this point?
“Tr… trust you… you’re not like them… like him, me. ME! Fucking hell. How am I not dead?”
He was devolving faster than I could keep up with, and I got up again, probably to get him water, or something. Anything to help sober him up, but he gritted out a curse, and grabbed my cut, dragging me back to him.
“They… they trusted me… t-trusted a monster.” Jesus. I sat back down.
“Am I going to hate you after you tell me this?” I asked urgently, seeing the point of no return disappearing faster than the cops when you really open up and tear down the road away from them. Not that I do that. Right?
“You should. They all should… wom… women should be safe. I shouldn’t sh-shouldn’t have done it.”
Now I was terrified of what he was going to say. He’d decimated this club because of men who abused women. If he was about to admit to doing that shit himself, I was going to put his fucking face in that fire, no matter how much I liked him five minutes ago.
“Micro? What did you do to them?”
He lifted wet eyes from the fire, blinking slowly, sluggishly, as the alcohol broke down the last of his defences.
“Sc-scared them. Ter… Terrored… terrorised. Espesssh... ially her… she was so y-young, and vul… vuln… I didn’t mean to!”
I clenched my fists, as he blinked against the tears coursing down his cheeks. Whatever the fuck he did was bad, really bad, and the guilt was destroying him. Did he deserve that though? How the fuck was I supposed to know?
He suddenly lurched toward the fire, and I grabbed him, because that’s what you do when drunk people lurch toward fire, by the way.
“Fuck!”
“Let… I… I don’t deser… I’m evilll…”
Hell. I dug out my phone and messaged Sophie, because I didn’t know what the fuck to do anymore.
Me: Come get your man, he’s so wasted, he can’t even walk.
I tucked my phone away again, and grabbed the front of his cut, dragging him up to face me.
“Did you kill her?”
He blinked blearily at me for a moment. “H… Harley?”
“Did you kill the girl?”
He swallowed hard. “Did bad stuff. So much bad stuff.” And then he haltingly told me everything. I mean, so much of it was slurred, and disturbed by occasional hiccups of grief. He’d terrorised that club, picked on their old ladies, kidnapped one. Kidnapped!
He’d done awful things to avenge a man who didn’t deserve it, but I couldn’t hate him because he was trying to make amends, and hell, even the women he’d targeted had forgiven him, grudgingly or otherwise, so who was I to hate him on their behalf?
When Sophie arrived, and we loaded a practically unconscious man into the front of her van, I asked her about what he’d said, because she’d know, right?
She’d been there for the aftermath, the grief, the horror, and the attempts to do the right thing, which had culminated in this last chance of his. A last chance to prove himself a changed man. A good man. A Phoenix MC worthy man.
AND HE DID IT, didn’t he? He’d been forgiven by his club, given a President cut, and a new chapter. And he was proving himself. He was making a difference. Healing old wounds for him and his club brothers. I was glad I’d alignedmyself with him, or this version of him, at least. Would I have done the same back then? I had no idea.
