Fire & Dark (The Night Horde SoCal Book 3) (26 page)

And then he did feel a little better.

But as he came back into the moment, as his clenched body began to relax, he realized that he had his hand around her throat. Then he saw that her face, pressed hard, sideways, into the rug, was an angry, dangerous shade of purplish red.

“Jesus fuck!” He let her go and nearly jumped away, pulling out and falling back and away from her. She took a huge, strangled breath and rolled to her side, curling her body into a fetal ball.

He stared down at his hand as if it were a stranger, a parasite attached to his body. Then he looked back at Pilar. She was still in that ball, still taking big breaths.

“Baby. Baby, I’m sorry.”

She didn’t answer or even indicate that she’d heard him.

“Are you okay?”

After a second, she nodded. But she didn’t unfurl her body.

That wasn’t what she’d meant when she’d asked—demanded—that he hurt her. He knew that. He hadn’t meant to do anything like that. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her at all.

But he was a man of violence. He was no hero.

“I’m so sorry. Can I do anything?”

She shook her head.

“Should I go?”

After a beat, she nodded.

Of course he should. He should get far away. He stood and put his cock away.

Grabbing his jacket off the back of her chair, he stopped at the door. Without turning around, needing…something—just
needing
, he said, “I love you.”

And then he left.

~oOo~

“Hey, Mom.” Connor stepped into his mother’s hospital room and shut the door. She was looking better, off the oxygen again. She still didn’t look like herself—she looked old and pale and weary—but there was a light in her eyes he hadn’t seen since before he’d left for Vegas. Three weeks ago. He’d seen her primary nurse at the station outside and knew that her temperature was down, too. “You look good.”

“Liar,” she rasped. But she smiled. “Did you see your dad?”

He nodded. There had been some improvement in his father’s condition since the fire. The swelling in his brain was down. But he hadn’t woken yet. “No change. Faith’s with him.” Though Hoosier was still in the ICU, they’d given up trying to keep visitors to five minutes. Somebody was in his room about twenty hours of every twenty-four. And somebody was in the hospital every fucking second.

She nodded—of course she knew that Faith was with him. Demon was sitting with her now. “Hey, Deme.”

“Hey, brother.” Demon stood up and leaned over the railing to kiss Connor’s mother’s forehead. “I’ll get outta here. You need anything, Mama?”

Bibi put her free hand over Demon’s. “No, baby. Thanks.”

“You bet.” As he headed toward the door, he stopped and put his hand on Connor’s shoulder. “I’m gonna hang out in the waiting room awhile. Can we talk?”

Connor frowned. “Problem?”

“No. Just…want to talk.”

Demon was not someone Connor had heart-to-hearts with. But he gave him a shrugging nod. “Yeah. I’ll come out in a bit.”

“Cool.”

Curious, Connor watched Demon go, then turned back to his mother and smiled. “Hey, Bedelia Beth. You do look better.”

There was an enormous new floral arrangement sitting on the table in the corner next to her bed. “Wow. These are gorgeous.” He checked the card, which read:
Wishing you strength and health. Best regards, Dora.

He chuckled, feeling cynical and tired. La Zorra was sitting pretty after all of this. The Horde had wiped an entire crew right off the map—not only crippled them but taken them completely out. The Fuentes cartel was now beholden to the Águilas cartel to get anything into Southern California—and that meant anywhere north of the border at all. Dora Vega now owned Mexico. Hers was the only game north of Colombia. And even Colombia had to go through her to get the western U.S.

If she wanted, she could declare herself Queen of Mexico, and Connor didn’t think anyone in that country had the power to deny her.

The Night Horde SoCal had been powerfully instrumental in her success, and she was well pleased with them. She had sat down with Bart, Connor, and Muse, and they had formalized the agreement that Hoosier had wanted—they were partners, not employees, and they now had a vote and a profit share that reflected a partnership.

In only two years, the Horde had gone from a quiet, law-abiding club to reclaim the status the members had known as an outlaw powerhouse. They had wiped out a whole charter of the Dirty Rats, an infamous outlaw MC, and forced a truce, and now they had destroyed a decades-old gang and hamstrung the cartel that gang had been allied with.

And the price they’d paid for that power lay in two beds in this hospital.

Connor thought that price was far too high.

When he leaned down to kiss her cheek, his mother’s arm came up and held him close. “I want to be with your dad,” she whispered against his ear, her voice rough and breaking. She let herself be weaker for him than for anyone else.

He leaned back a little and brushed her hair back from her face. Then he caught a tear on his thumb. “I know. So kick this crap out of your lungs, then. You can’t bring your germs around him. He was already sick when all this happened.”

“I don’t want him to die alone.”

“Mom, shut the fuck up. He’s not dying. He’s going to get better. He just needs time.”

She sniffed and nodded, then started on a coughing jag. He held her through it, then gave her some water and her breathing device.

Fuck, he hated seeing her like this, so wrinkled and weak. Gasping for air, looking like she’d blow away in a breeze. Her brown hair, shorter than he’d ever known it, since Faith had cut it to compensate for what had been burned away, was growing out, showing a line of white along her part. He hated it all, and he hated more that she didn’t seem to notice. She had always cared about her appearance, and the thought that she’d given up now scared the shit out of him.

When she had collected herself, she patted the bed, and he dropped the side rail and sat next to her. He put his arm around her, and she leaned on his chest.

Connor sat like that, holding her, until she fell asleep. This old woman who used to be his mother.

He wanted his family back.

~oOo~

When Connor went out to the waiting room, Demon was sitting alone, staring up at the television on the wall. He stood when he saw Connor.

“What’s up?”

Demon’s face pinked up, which usually meant he was getting angry. Not knowing why he would be, Connor’s adrenaline spiked a little. Had something happened with the club? No—he would know. Wouldn’t he?

“Con, I…uh…fuck.”

“Jesus, Deme. What?”

“Faith…” Demon huffed and started again. “Faith wanted me to talk to you.”

“She okay? The kids?”

“Yeah, yeah. They’re good. She’s worried about you.”

“What?”

“Yeah. You want to sit?”

He shrugged, and they sat.

Demon went on. “Look, I’m nobody to give anybody advice, so I’m just gonna say what she said, and then I can tell her that I talked to you, and you can tell her that I talked to you, and I can stop hearing about how I should talk to you, okay?”

“Jesus Christ. No offense, Deme, but—”

“Yeah, I know. None taken. She thinks that you’re going off the rails and that I’m the perfect person to help you out with that, since, according to my wife, off the rails is where I lived until she fixed me.”

At that, the anger that had been boiling up inside him cooled, and Connor laughed. “She’s right. About you, anyway.”

Demon grinned. “I know. Just…look. If you want to talk, I’m here. I don’t know what I could do to help, but…you know. I’m here.”

Before Connor could get out the ‘thanks but no thanks’ he had cued up, an image of Pilar curled up on the floor filled his head. He hadn’t seen or talked to her since that day. Four days ago. The last thing he’d ever done to the woman he loved was hurt her. Because he was off the rails.

So instead of telling Demon, legendary club psycho, that he didn’t need his help, the words that left his mouth were, “I hurt her. I lost my shit, and I think I really hurt her. I know I did.”

Demon had been looking down at his lap. Now he turned to Connor. There was no condemnation there. Just…understanding. They hadn’t even been talking about Pilar, but Demon was still right there with him. Understanding. “I’m sorry, brother.”

“Sorry for me? Why? I’m the one who did the hurting, not the other way around.”

“I don’t know. Guess I’m sorry because I know what it’s like. It hurts, too, doing something like that when you don’t mean it.”

Connor leaned back in the uncomfortable waiting room chair. “Everything is just fucked. I’m so fucked up. She’s better off.”

Demon laughed at that, his face lighting up with real humor.

Connor was deeply offended. “Fuck you. It’s not funny.”

“No, sorry. It’s just…” Demon made his face serious. “Remember the day I went apeshit at Bart and Riley’s? I went after Hooj and beat the shit out of him?”

“Uh, yeah. Hard to forget.”

“I almost bailed on everything that day—the club, Faith, my kid. Everything. Muse was here—he’d been shot. I came to tell him goodbye. He called me on my bullshit. And he told me that if I wanted to be right, I had to deal with what was wrong. He said I needed to know what I wanted and then do what I needed to do to make it happen. It was good advice. You know, I haven’t lost my shit since. It was a simple thing, but it never occurred to me, that most of what was wrong in my head was the way I thought about things. I never knew that I could fix that.”

“Moron.”

“Yep. But you, too, maybe.”

Maybe so. Leaning his head back against the wall, Connor closed his eyes.

What did he want? What could he do to make it happen?

~oOo~

He hadn’t called first; he wasn’t sure how he’d be received, so he thought it would be better if he just showed up. He understood her work schedule now, and he knew when she was off and when she wasn’t.

So when Connor pulled into Pilar’s driveway, he saw her Element there, as he’d expected.

He hadn’t expected to see Moore’s truck behind it.

But okay. He took a breath. His jealousy was his problem, not hers. Not Moore’s. He had to make it right in his head, because that was the only thing that was wrong about that friendship: the way he thought about them. If he wanted her, he had to get right with her life—her friends, her work, all of it.

And he wanted her.

So he dismounted and prepared to be civil to her best friend, who’d never been anything but civil to him.

Before he got to her porch, though, her front door came open, and Moore charged out at him. He landed a massive roundhouse right in Connor’s face before Connor could even get his hands up. The blow took them both to the ground, and then Moore was astride him, pummeling him, all facial blows, back and forth, right and left, the force of the right-handed blows weakened by his injury.