That hadn’t been in the plan…
“With the main issues being her head, and how hard she hit the grill of that truck, I really think that it would be better for her to stay overnight, but she’s unwilling to stay. And I can’t very well keep her without her consent.”
Dammit.
“I’ll take care of her,” I lied.
I wouldn’t be taking care of her.
I didn’t do taking care of anybody.
That taking care of people thing had ended when I’d “died” about nine months ago now. When Apollo had told me that I was going to have to ‘be’ dead for this to work, that meant leaving the people that I loved behind.
Well, one person.
Bernice.
Every time I thought about her, my fucking heart ached.
She’d done so damn much to get me out of that hellhole, and this was how I repaid her?
I was lower than dirt.
And I didn’t deserve to be happy.
Honestly, the only reason that I did it was because I knew that Bernice wouldn’t stop. She’d fight until her last breath. And to do that, she would put off living.
I couldn’t let her live like that anymore.
Apollo and I had talked long and hard about allowing Bernice to be in on the action, so to speak. We’d decided in the end that Bernice couldn’t come. Bernie had really, really bad asthma. She could barely tolerate Alabama weather, let alone freakin’ Montana. On top of that, she had anemia. Both of those pairings meant that she could not deal with the cold weather. She would literally suffer like crazy up here.
Apollo and I had talked about it at length. We’d contemplated moving the whole setup somewhere else, but we had eyes and ears on this small town. It was safe. And overall, we could do what we wanted when we wanted here. It was also a biker town, and the club that ran it was affiliated with Apollo’s MC.
Dixie Wardens, Sawtooth, Montana Chapter, was fucking awesome. And they’d allowed us to patch in when we got here. They’d vouched for us and ultimately given us an alibi as well as backup if we ever needed it.
They’d come in handy when we were all trying to find places to live and jobs.
Romeo had been the lone holdout in joining the MC. He’d just wanted to go his own way, which was acceptable.
The rest of us had integrated ourselves into the MC, and I found that I liked having them all at our back, even if we were still ‘technically’ prospecting with them. We were considered fully patched members, but they wouldn’t trust us until we put the work in.
Needless to say, Apollo and I couldn’t find the support that we would need to make it look like I’d always existed as Creed Justin Daugherty. A place where I wouldn’t be questioned for just showing up.
And since we’d decided that it was pretty necessary to be in a small town since smaller towns tended to have less traffic, video surveillance, and larger police departments, Sawtooth was where we were at.
Or, at least, Romeo and I were, along with Weaver and Odin. I originally was in a different town, but the Wildlife department changed my assignment, and I wanted to be closer to the job.
Pairing all of that along with Bernice’s notoriety—she’d been a very vocal girl that’d grown into an unforgiving adult that would do just about anything to see her brother free—we just couldn’t see how to get her here without garnering notice.
“Anyway, if you have any questions, you can call back up to the ER and we can answer any questions you might have.” The doctor brought me back to the present. “If you’ll follow me, we’ll get you her discharge instructions while the nurse gets her ready to go.”
I cast a glance at the woman in the bed. My first instinct was to not leave her. But I slapped that thought down.
I followed behind him as he zipped through the emergency room with the type of confidence that only someone that’d worked there for a while would have.
There were so many things going on.
People everywhere. Nurses hurrying in and out of rooms. ER techs taking vitals. Orderlies moving patients. Hell, there were even a couple of janitors cleaning up rooms.
