Dream & Dare (26 page)

Jack pulled an old vinyl and chrome chair from the corner. “Yeah. Way he gets, best not have a girl watchin’ until he’s got his sense about him. Even as weak as he is, he could still do some damage.”

“Yeah, agreed. Okay. I’m gonna pay the doc, check on Blue.”

He went out—and nearly ran into Connor, who stood right outside the door, looking stressed. His son had had a patch for three years—quiet years. This internal strife was the biggest crisis they’d had to deal with since he’d moved into the clubhouse.

“You okay, son?”

“Dad…I…” His voice cracked, and he cleared his throat. “What the hell is happening?”

“You were at the table. You voted just like the rest of us.” Connor had, in fact, voted to take Demon’s patch completely. When Hoosier then had not, his son had gone pale, and regret had warped his face.

“I know. Fuck, I know. But Faith! Dad, she was begging. We hurt her so bad today, and we didn’t even touch her. Why’d they make her watch?” Connor’s eyes brimmed over, and Hoosier reached up and grabbed him by the shoulder of his kutte. His son had about four inches on him, but when Hoosier yanked him into an empty room, he came easily.

He pushed Connor against a wall and closed the door. “Get control of that, boy. You feel it. Feel it all, every bit. But don’t you fuckin’ show it.”

Connor nodded and wiped at his eyes. “I just…I don’t understand.”

“Not for us to understand. This is Blue’s. Deme betrayed a brother. That’s what we voted on, that’s where our say ends.”

“She was begging, Dad.”

Hoosier knew. It had broken his heart, too, to see that pretty little girl, the moppet he’d been shooing out of his station since she was three, weeping and screaming and begging for Demon. God, the whole damn thing turned his stomach. “That Blue’s girl. Not our call, son.”

If it had been his call, it would have gone down another way. But years of fighting with Blue had turned Margot into a hard woman, and Blue—well, what he loved most in this world was his baby daughter, and knowing that Demon had been inside her might well have broken him completely.

Maybe he should have intervened. But how? Fuck, they’d all screwed up.

“Get yourself under control, Connor. What’s done is done. We made the vote. Demon’s out of here as soon as he can ride. Then we get back to normal.”

Connor heaved a sigh and shook his head, but he said, “Okay.”

“You good?”

“I’m good.”

“Okay.” He slapped his son’s shoulder. “Take a minute. Then go home and see to your mom. This has her fried, too, and I don’t want her alone tonight.”

“You’re not going home?”

“Eventually. I need to keep an eye on Blue.”

~oOo~

Blue sat at the bar, drinking Southern Comfort straight from the bottle while Dandridge worked on his hands—which were bloody hunks of raw meat. He’d wrapped chain around them both and then beaten the bejeezus out of Demon. When the pain he was causing himself got to be too much, he’d unwound a length of chain and used it like a whip.

Hoosier had seen a lot in his day. In this club, working hand in hand with a cartel notorious among cartels, he’d seen things he still saw in his dreams years afterward. Gory, sick shit. He’d seen the human body tested to the limits of its endurance and beyond. But what he’d witnessed on this night—brother against brother, a father’s manic outrage against a young kid’s reckless love—it had rocked him to his marrow.

Demon had found Faith again and again, holding her eyes with his, throughout the beating, as long as he’d been conscious. Hoosier thought that stalwart insistence on his love was why Blue could barely get a hand around his bottle of SoCo, and why Demon wouldn’t be standing on his own for the next few days.

He sat at his best friend’s side as Dandridge was finishing up his bandaging. “I need you to promise me this is done. You stay out from the back and leave him be, now.”

Blue only grunted.

“Blue, goddammit.”

“He should be dead. He damn sure shouldn’t have a motherfuckin’ patch. Only reason he’s not out is you’re not the friend I thought you were.”

“You’re not seein’ this clear, Blue. There’s more—”

Blue slammed a bandaged hand on the bar, and then winced. “That fuckin’ psycho with who knows what goin’ wrong in his head had my baby girl naked and spread wide like a fuckin’ whore.
In my house
, even. There’s nothin’ more.” He picked up the bottle in his mangled hand and took a long swig, swallowing again and again. When he set the bottle down, he asked, almost pleading, “How’m I supposed to look at her again and not see that?”

“See your girl. She’s still Faith, same as ever. She’s not a baby, Blue.”

“Hooj, you need to back off.” Blue’s voice now was deadly quiet, and he didn’t look away from the bottle in front of him. “If you say another goddamn word, I will take what’s left of these hands and use ‘em to tear your throat open. You don’t have a daughter. You don’t know.”

Hoosier wondered if the damage done in these past few days could ever be undone. He didn’t think so. They would all carry the scars—on their bodies, on their relationships, on their hearts.

All because a couple of kids had fallen in love.

And it got so much worse.

~oOo~

Connor had spent the night, and Muse’s sister, Carrie, had dropped by. Carrie and Connor were close in age, and Hoosier thought his old lady might have been attempting some matchmaking, because Carrie had been around a lot lately.

All four of them had sat down to one of Bibi’s famous Sunday breakfasts when they heard a bike roar up the driveway. It had come in hot, and Hoosier and Connor glanced at each other and stood, just as the front door burst in.

Blue tore through the house and went straight for Hoosier. He looked insane, his eyes wild, and his long, greying hair loose and flying around him. Connor dove between them and muscled Blue to the floor, making the china cabinet rattle dangerously. As the two wrestled on the carpet, Hoosier pushed Carrie toward Bibi and sent them both out of the room.

Then he opened a drawer in the cabinet and pulled out a loaded Beretta. Blue had gotten Connor pinned. Without cocking the gun, Hoosier bent down and put the muzzle against Blue’s head. Both men on the floor went still. “I will shoot you dead right here, Blue.”

Blue let Connor go and sat back. “She’s gone. You know where she is. You or Bibi. I know you helped her.”

Connor stood, wiping blood from his mouth and nose. He shook it off his hand and then stared down at the blood on the carpet. “What the fuck are you talking about?”

Blue ignored Connor and directed his answer to Hoosier. “Faith. She’s gone. She left in the middle of the night. Don’t you try and tell me you don’t know. She wouldn’t know how to run.”

“Fuck, Blue. Jesus fuck. No, I don’t know. What do you mean she’s gone?

He didn’t know. But he understood. What Margot and Blue had done to that girl—he’d tried to tell Blue, and Bibi had tried to tell Margot, what folly it was to force an abortion on her, but neither of them could see past their own panic and rage.

“I mean she’s fuckin’ gone! She packed up a bag and shoved pillows and stuffed animals under her covers and went out the goddamn window. She didn’t even take her fuckin’ cat! Jesus CHRIST, what did we do? JESUS CHRIST!” Blue folded over, tearing at his hair, and simply yelled. The sound of it was so full of pain and fear, Hoosier almost yelled in response.

Connor only sneered down at the older man kneeling on the floor. Hoosier hoped he’d keep his mouth shut. If his son said what he was clearly thinking, this powder keg in his dining room would blow. Connor had made no bones, not to Hoosier or Bibi, at least, about what he’d thought about Faith being forced to have an abortion—and what he thought about his father not stopping it.

But how should he have stopped it? How was that his place? And, if he were completely honest with himself or anybody else, he thought an abortion was the best call. Not forced, no. They should have persuaded her, not forced her. But those two kids had no business being parents, and there was no way in hell Demon could have come back to L.A.

And they’d locked her up in their damn house for months, as if hiding her away would keep her safe. They’d done this. It made sense that she’d run the second she could refuse to come back.

“Connor, go clean up and see to the women.” Connor hesitated, glaring down at Blue. “Go on, son. Now.”

When his son was out of the room. Hoosier stuck the Beretta against the small of his back and leaned down to take Blue’s arm. “Come on, brother. Have a seat, let’s work this through. She couldn’t have gotten far.” Blue came up when he pulled, and Hoosier saw he was weeping.

They’d known each other forty years. Never before had he seen Blue weep.

As he got him to sit at the table, Bibi came in with a coffee mug; there was already a carafe on the table from the breakfast they’d been about to enjoy. “Where’s Margot?” she asked.

And Blue looked even more guilty than he had before.

Bibi blew out a breath. “Shit, Blue. What did you do?”

He dropped his head into his hands before he answered. “She did this. She gets in my head and gets me all twisted up. She makes me see wrong. Fuck…God! Faith can’t be out there by herself! She’ll get hurt. She’s too young. She doesn’t know.”

“Blue!” Hoosier looked up, surprised at the heat in Bibi’s voice. “What the holy fuck did you do?!”

Blue shook his head. “She might need help. She gets in my head and makes me crazy.”

“Goddamn. Goddamn son of a bitch brute of a stupid man.”

Bibi stormed back to the kitchen, and Hoosier heard her grabbing her keys off the hook and telling Carrie she was sorry, but breakfast was cancelled. When the two women left through the door to the garage, Connor came back into the dining room and leaned against the wall, his arms crossed. He was young, but he was big, and he wasn’t somebody to fuck with. The only reason Blue had gotten over on him earlier was that he’d come in hot and unexpected.

“We gotta find her. Sherlock is good with finding things, right? She took her car—it won’t be hard to find it, right?”

“No, Blue. The club won’t help with this. No.”

“
What
? It’s Faith! We gotta find her!”

On this day, Faith had turned eighteen. Hoosier thought she had shown excellent planning. She wasn’t a runaway. She was an adult who had moved. And if she didn’t want to go home, and Blue tried to force her—which he would; Blue only understood force—then she could do serious damage to the club. Hoosier thought she would do it, too. The club had stood by these past few months while the things she loved and wanted had been taken from her. Hoosier didn’t think she’d even blink before she served them up on a platter if they got in her way now.

And he wouldn’t blame her.

“She’s eighteen, and she left by her choice. She doesn’t want to be there.”

Blue stood up, knocking the chair backward. “Fuck you! That’s my little girl!”

“You go after her, you expose the club. No.”

Blue went for him, but Connor was there. With one punch, Blue was on the ground, out cold.

Hoosier cocked an eyebrow at his kid. “I can defend myself, you know.”

Connor smiled. “I know. But I wanted to punch his head.”

Father and son stared down at Faith’s father. “Fuck,” Hoosier sighed. “This mess just keeps getting messier. Keep an eye on him. I’m gonna call Sherlock.”