I swallowed, unsure what to do with that new development. On one hand I should have been glad; it was about fucking time he showed me something other than disdain.
But on the other hand, whatever relationship I ever could have had with my father was long since dead.
Or maybe I was reading too much into it. Could have just been a slip of the tongue. Maybe he forgot who he was talking to and thought I was Butch. Hardy fucking loved Butch. Brother couldn’t set a foot wrong in his eyes. It was my turn to sigh then, already wishing I could go get drunk in a hole somewhere because I was fucking over this day—this week—this month.
I pressed some buttons on my cell and called Casa. He picked up on the second ring and I heard him lighting a cigarette and the sound of Casa’s footsteps as he starts walking.
“What’s up, brother?” he said. “You get shit off Laney about last night?” he chuckled.
I shook my head, not wanting to go into details about how fucked my relationship was right then. Casa and Laney had never been each other’s fans—mainly because she thought he was a womanizing pig, and well, because Casa was in fact a womanizing pig. He couldn’t understand why a man would ever want to stay with the same woman for the rest of his life when there was so much pussy out there, but he was a good man. Reliable, loyal as hell, and he had an evil streak you could see from space. A pretty face didn’t mean he was pretty on the inside, that was for damn sure.
“Never mind that, we got business to take care of,” I snapped.
“Yeah? What’s up?”
“Someone’s pulling a meeting while Hardy is away. He wants me there to make sure the Highwaymen get their fair cut.”
“Well that’s…surprising,” he replied, and the sound of his footsteps stopped. He was either in as much shock as I was or he was sitting on his bike and ready to roll out.
“Ain’t it just, brother, ain’t it just.” I paced the room, my muscles feeling wound up tight. Something was definitely off about the whole thing, but I couldn’t figure out what.
“So who the fuck is it?” he asked.
“He doesn’t know. Intel only gave him so much, but he’s out of town dealing with the Skinny situation so he asked me to go check it out—keep it quiet too.” I grabbed one of the half-empty bottles of beer off the table and took a long drink of it. It tasted disgusting, the beer warm and flat, but I needed alcohol in my system regardless.
“I’ll reach out to Dom and Pipes, get them down there with us, okay?” Casa asked. “They’ll keep this shit quiet, and no one should be going into that meet alone.”
“I agree. Meet me at the Clubhouse—we’ll be rolling out in thirty.” I ended the call and slipped the cell into my pocket.
The house was quiet and far too empty without Laney filling the space. The sound of her feet padding over the carpet. Her humming coming from the kitchen. The sound of her calling my name as she walked into the bedroom, smiling at me because she knew exactly what I wanted.
I turned in a circle, looking at our things: the furniture that we’d picked out together, the cushion covers she’d chosen to match the rug—or was it the curtains? Fuck, I couldn’t remember. It hadn’t seemed important at the time, yet now it seemed like the most important thing in the world. I pinched the bridge of my nose again, thinking of her face and letting the scent of her fill my lungs.
She’d squealed when she saw the cushion covers—that was what I remembered—and then she’d thrown her arms around my shoulders and kissed me long and hard before telling me how perfect everything was. And then we’d fucked for what felt like days, right here on this fucking floor. And in-between the fucking, we’d talked about us.
How we would be happy forever.
Always together.
She was my old lady and we were going to start a family together.
Everything was fucking perfect, just like she’d said.
But neither of us had a fucking clue that months later our whole lives would be fucked up forever, and I would be here all alone after pushing her away.
The now empty bottle of beer was in my hand, my palm wrapped around it tightly, and I let out a guttural roar and launched it across the room. It smashed into the wall above the fireplace, and splinters of glass littered the carpet.
I didn’t know how I was going to cope without her. She was the only thing keeping me grounded, holding me in place when all I wanted to do was float away into misery. My life had been a series of horrors and misfortunes, and Laney had been the only good thing in it. Now she was gone and that left me with nothing. What would anchor me in place now? What would keep me from spiraling down the tunnel to hell and ending up like my own fucking mother?
I needed to get the fuck out of there before I tore the place up, or burned it to the fucking ground. I reached for my T-shirt on the floor, pulling it over my head, and then I put on my cut and rolled my shoulders. I stalked to the front door, catching sight of my reflection in the hallway mirror. I was a fearful fucking sight. Built like a tank, thick muscular arms covered in tattoos, with shoulder-length dirty blond hair, and a scraggly beard that was two days past needing shaving. But it was my eyes that held the true darkness. Where normally they were a clear dark blue, they were instead red-rimmed and looked almost black, as if my very fucking soul had been sucked out of me and replaced with the devil himself.
I pulled open the front door and stepped outside before slamming it closed behind me. The echoing silence taunted me. I walked to my bike and straddled it before pulling on my helmet and setting off for the clubhouse.
Regardless of what was happening in my personal life, I needed to pull my shit together for that meeting. If not, I probably wouldn’t make it out of the meeting alive, because if there was a meeting being held without the Highwaymen, that meant someone was trying to cut out the middleman. And when he saw us pull up, expecting our cut of the action, it could likely start a war.
A war that Hardy was sending me right into.
I arrived at the clubhouse ten minutes later. Casa and Pipe weren’t there yet, but Dom was. I’d mostly avoided him the last couple of months, making sure there was never any time for us to talk, but sooner or later we’d have to—that much I knew.
