Chapter Six:
present day
Jesse
I woke to the cold silence of an empty home, and even before I was fully awake, I knew that she was gone. But what was worse was that I knew I deserved it.
I lay on the floor, the smell of her still clinging to my skin like a taunt, and I stared up at the cracked ceiling and felt empty—dead and empty like there was no meaning for anything anymore. And there wasn’t, not without her. She was all I’d ever wanted, all I ever really needed, and now she was gone.
It was for the best, I tried to tell myself. It was for the best.
But it didn’t feel like it. Not even a little bit. It felt like acid, wrapped in hell and then shoved down my throat. My chest hurt with every breath I took, my lungs wanting to give up on life. And maybe I should have. Maybe that was it—the solution to the fucking pain and misery. But I knew I couldn’t.
Highwaymen weren’t made that way, though I wished we were. It’d be a hell of a lot easier than trying to survive.
I lay there for what must have been hours, listening to the occasional car door slam somewhere out on the street and the sound of voices fading and then disappearing completely. I lay there stewing in my own self-pity and wondering what I did to deserve such torment as the light of day faded into night. I wasn’t a good man, not even close, but I must have been real fucking bad in a previous life, because all this life had shown me was misery with the occasional splash of hope thrown it to tease me.
The sound of my cell ringing from somewhere in the living room roused me from my dark thoughts and I somehow found the energy to get up off the bedroom floor and go retrieve it. I grabbed my jeans and stepped into them as I walked down the hallway. It was the club phone so I knew I couldn’t just ignore it, no matter how much I might have wanted to, but I take my time, my thoughts still drowsy from my Laney hangover.
The sun had long since set, so everything was dark, barring the glowing of my cell on the coffee table. I picked it up and checked the screen, seeing that it was Hardy, and I took a deep breath before I took the call because it was never a good thing when Hardy called me.
“What?” I said, holding the cell to my ear and sitting down.
“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for hours! Where the fuck have you been?” he yelled down the phone at me.
“Must have been on silent, what do you need?” I replied, not having the energy to deal with him right then. I pushed my hair out of my eyes and sat down on the sofa, my body feeling almost drunk with weariness.
“What do I need? What I need, you little motherfucker, is for you to pick up the fucking phone when I call! That’s what I need! You hear me? I’m your president, and when I call you stop everything to take my call. If you’re in the middle of taking a shit, you answer your phone. If you’re fucking your woman—you take my damn call mid-thrust and tell that bitch of yours to hold off on the orgasm she’s got building until I say she can fucking have it, you got it?”
I pinched the bridge of my nose and tried to control the rage I felt burning inside my chest. “You wanna tell me why you called, Hardy? Or you wanna keep riding my ass?” I growled out, the words almost sticking in my throat like razorblades. The line went silent for a moment and I could only imagine that he was working out which way he was going to kill me. “Can we just get on with it, Hardy?”
Finally, he went on speaking like I hadn’t even spoken. “Listen here, and you listen fucking good. There’s a deal going down in Atlanta tonight, and I need some eyes on the situation,” he said, and I could tell he hated asking me to do this for him. “As you know, Gauge and I are out of town dealing with the shitstorm that Skinny has caused, so I can’t do what needs to be done. And Rider took Axle down to Charleston to deal with the Blood Bastards situation.” He sighed heavily. “Shit is getting more fucked up by the second.”
Skinny was one of our nomad members. He drove trucks for us, moving shipments across the country—only the poor fucker got caught a few months back and he ended up in the DOC. If that weren’t bad enough, brother got mixed up with another club and their dealings while he served his time and ended up losing an eye in the process. Hardy and the others had gone to clear the air and try and sort some kind of truce out before Skinny found himself losing even more body parts.
My forehead scrunched up in confusion and I brushed my hair out of my eyes again, wondering what was going on. Hardy never asked me for anything—any orders I got came from Gauge or Rider—and it was obvious by his tone that asking this of me was definitely fucking painful for him.
“Intel good?” I asked, because for another club to try and cut us out of business was bad fucking news. For them, at least.
The sound of a motorbike in the background had Hardy cursing down the phone. “Yeah, the intel is solid. Look, I gotta go, I can’t get there in time myself and I’m pretty sure they knew that when they arranged the meeting. I need to know that the Highwaymen are getting their cut outta the deal and someone isn’t trying to screw us over. And if they are—”
“It’ll be the last thing they do,” I cut in, almost eager for the fight.
“Exactly. But I need this on the down low for now. Last thing the club needs is someone getting wind that another club is getting brave and trying to cut us out. Loyalties get tested, and brothers come out of this worse off. You hear me?”
“I hear you,” I replied. “Who’s the other club?”
“Not sure, but you’ll know when you get there, I’m told. I’ll be back tomorrow, and I’ll see you then. Remember, keep this shit quiet.”
“I’m on it,” I said, trying to wake my damn mind back up. Because if he was asking me to do this, then shit was serious and I needed to be ready to do what needed to be done, or risk getting killed. I stood up and rolled my shoulders, the scratches on my back from the bitch in the bar last night reminding me that Laney was gone. And for good that time. It didn’t matter though; I could feel sorry for myself when this was done. Right then I needed to get my head in the game. “I’ll call you when it’s done,” I said, readying to hang up.
I heard Hardy sigh down the phone, and I was about to hang up when he said my name. “Jesse?”
“What?” I barked down the phone, my tone cold and hard.
He was silent for a moment before replying. “Thanks, son.” And then he hung up.
I pulled the cell away from my ear and stared at the screen that had gone black, even more confused than before. Hardy had just called meson, something he’d never done before. Just when I thought my life was fucked up enough, it went and got even weirder.
