Redemption (18 page)

He nodded as he contemplated that, then said,
So will we.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

I got the boys to make the noise

Mathias

“Keepin’ her here, it’s fucking crazy.”

Caspar was always blunt as hell. Normally, I appreciated it because it was close to the way I operated. Now, having to be told the truth I knew from the start wasn’t appreciated.

Bish put a hand on my shoulder, a reminder that talking to myself out loud was a mistake. Caspar could read my hands. We were mere hours post-fight. Keller had left the compound willingly. Easily, and maybe too much so. But we’d thrown down the gauntlet and the next move was his.

Defiance was ready for a fight, but I had an eerie feeling that fighting the way Defiance knew how to wouldn’t be enough this time.

It was Bish who said, “If we let her go with Charlie, we’ll still be in the same boat.”

Rebel added, “Unless we give them back and take no money.”

Charlie will never agree to say we saved them.
Makes him look bad.

Caspar stared at me. “
I
never said anything about giving Charlie back.”

“Shit,” Bish muttered.

So you expect Jessa to go home and keep her mouth shut about that?

Caspar said, “Yeah, I do.”

What about Keller?

“If we don’t move fast, he’ll get to the VP before us, tell him she’s alive,” Caspar reasoned. “If we don’t give her to her family, we give her to Keller.”

You’ve got to be kidding me with that shit.
I flung Bish’s hand off my shoulder as I spoke.

“Not.” Caspar’s eyes were pure ice. “Want you and Bish here. You’re family. You saved Jessa and I get why you did it. But now we’ve gotta figure out what’s best for Defiance.”

“And if we give her to her parents, Keller’ll still be pissed,” Bish said.

“Not if he gets the reward,” Caspar offered. “Everyone wins.”

I
don’t.

Caspar stared at me steadily. “She told Tru she’s not sure about staying here. Not sure about anything.”

She doesn’t know what she wants.

“Do you?” Caspar shot back.

I
know I can’t let her go back
,
for her own good.
Whether she wants to be with me or not is entirely up to her.

Behind me, Bish sighed, but I had to speak the truth. He said, “We’ll leave Defiance with her, if that helps.”

Which it wouldn’t, because of Keller. If we released Charlie, it would mean death for Defiance. We’d have to run. It was all or nothing with the war on Keller.

Giving in to Keller now is only a Band-Aid
, I told Caspar.
You think he’s not going to try this bullshit again?

Caspar considered that, then said, “It’s not the perfect solution, but you’re asking me to risk Defiance for a woman who might not be loyal to us. And for two men who haven’t made up their minds about the MC either.”

That was a blow, one we deserved. I couldn’t argue. You didn’t come into Defiance to save someone else. We’d given a lot to Caspar and we’d never been disloyal. Because of that, we were still standing here in one piece.

Bish ran a hand through his hair and stared at Caspar. “Agreeing now wouldn’t mean a damned thing.”

“Which is why I didn’t bother asking.”

For a long moment, the weight of what we’d learned tonight settled over us.

There was this one guy Bish and I met in the military who swore the Chaos was God’s way of punishing us for our sins—specifically, reality TV and the internet. I never bothered arguing with him, because when someone believed something that strongly, I think you should let them.

That’s not to say that the Chaos didn’t completely suck. I think the worst part of it is the not knowing. Not knowing exactly what was happening in the rest of the world; not knowing when the next storm would hit. Even if the sun came out, would that stabilize the environment enough?

And now, we’d learned that the satellite most likely could’ve come out more often, that the government had been working against the people who were only trying to survive. The people who trusted them.

Of course, conspiracy theories to that effect had abounded, especially in the MC world.

“Lot of guys around here gonna realize how right they were.” Caspar’s words held an anger to them he wouldn’t show to the majority of Defiance. But to me and Bish, there was no reason to hide it. Rebel and Hammer were there too and they both sat quietly, with Rebel shaking his head and Hammer looking disgusted.

“It’s not like we weren’t prepared for anything,” Rebel said finally. “But the rest of the world isn’t. And fuck me, no one should have that much power that they can select whole groups of people to live and die.”

Hammer got up and stared out the window. The stress of the past months, coupled with what had happened to Aimee, had really begun to show. He’d been short-tempered, with everyone but her. It seemed like the better she got, the more he fell apart.

Bish clapped him on the shoulder and Hammer’s tension seemed to ease a little. He asked, “How are we going to let the others know?”

“Don’t know if we should. Not sure what the hell it would change. Gonna cause panic we don’t need. Like Reb said, we’re prepared for anything.”

The thought of being forced underground for the majority of the time though...
What if they find a way to fuck with the tubes?

Caspar stared at me for a long second, and then he smiled. How I’d missed it was beyond me, and I could only blame the fact that he’d kept me and Bish busy enough that we would, but it was clear as fucking day now.

He’d been building another compound somewhere. He’d been disappearing for weeks at a time for years now. Rumors were that he’d been out fighting or whoring or on jobs for Lance, and Lance had let him go. Which meant...
Did Lance know?

“He did. Agreed with it. Might be the only thing we ever agreed on.”

“So we’ve got an out,” Bish said.

Reb smiled and shook a finger at Caspar. “Tricky fucking bastard—glad you’re on my side.”

Caspar smiled—Reb was probably the only one who could call Caspar a bastard and get away with it in one piece.

“There’s a lot more to this than uprooting the entire compound,” Hammer pointed out and Caspar acknowledged that with a nod.

“What do you think we should do then?” Caspar asked. It wasn’t a challenge—not really. But in some ways, it was a way to force Hammer to step up.

And he did. “Defiance has never run. We stay and we fight.”

“We don’t know what we’re fighting,” Reb pointed out. “Could be bombs. Or lack of sun.”

“Or it could be an army of men sent to take us out,” Hammer said evenly. “Maybe we should find out before we think about cutting and running.”

Caspar was silent for a long moment, an icy look settling over his face. Then he held his hand out to Hammer and said, “Welcome back,” when Hammer shook it. Then he said, “Got a source on some of this. I’ll confirm when I can.”

* * *

“Think it’s Kian?” Bish asked me later over take-out burgers on the hill overlooking the compound. His rifle was slung carelessly behind him, the burger loaded with everything he could possibly fit on it and still bite into it.

I chewed my own burger for a few minutes before shaking my head.
Caspar would’ve said it if it was.

“Don’t know about that. Icy bastard still plays it close to the vest.”

It wasn’t a defamation—Caspar had to, for his own survival and security. Being president of an MC was a lot of moving chess pieces on the board—and he knew he was the most important piece of all. He always needed to be in play, always looking over his shoulder.

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Watching the world wake up from history

Jessa

I knew the next twenty-four hours would make my head spin. I paced inside the guesthouse, wondering when and how I’d run. Wondering how easy it would be for Keller to come for me.

Wondering how close the Secret Service might be to Defiance. If they were even coming.

A knock on the door made me jump. I went to it, uneasy, prepared not to open it until a familiar voice called in.

It was Tru. I let her in and she closed the door quickly behind her.

“Everything’s okay. The guys are just meeting.”

“What about Keller?”

“He’s not on the compound anymore. He left almost immediately.”

So Mathias had told the truth about that. I let out a sigh of relief. “I still can’t believe he was let in here.”

“It’s a calculated risk.”

“I don’t understand your world, Tru. I’m not you.”

Tru nodded, like she’d known she’d be walking into this. “This world is so different, Jessa. I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. But I think you’re grasping so hard for the old ways that you don’t see that these new ways aren’t so different. But it’s easy to run and hide and rebel when you’ve got a place to land.” Tru paused. “The thing is, you do have a place. It’s here, with us. Maybe we can’t change the world, but we can stick together. Do what’s right. Try to have a life.”

“Mathias doesn’t even know if he wants to stay here,” I blurted out, but it was obvious that I hadn’t told her anything she hadn’t already known.

“Everyone has to make their own choices,” Tru said. “We don’t keep people against their will, unless they’re a threat to the club. And I don’t think you are.”

Tru had grown up in the MC. She told me she’d run for years, and she’d come back for one single reason—the man she couldn’t get out of her mind.

She’d given up the outside for love. “And we’re not all that different inside Defiance than out.”

But for the outside world, Defiance was putting on a show. The fact that women actually did things here was a trade secret. And women still didn’t have a vote on major MC issues. When I pointed that out, she was quick to say, “That couldn’t work.”

“For our protection, right?” I asked semi-sarcastically.

“It’s more the guys’ hang-ups than yours. Women around here respect that.”

“Some women.”

Tru was watching me carefully. “Don’t, Jessa.”

“Don’t what?”

“Sit there and judge us. I can’t imagine you had that much of a say in your family, or with Charlie, right?”

I wanted to say it was different, except at that moment I could neither explain nor discern how. “You’ve been good to me. I don’t want to judge. I want to understand.”

“Sometimes, things can’t be explained or understood up here.” She tapped the side of her head. “Sometimes things just need to be felt.” Her hand moved to cover her heart. “I feel Defiance. And Caspar. And that makes everything else, including the despair of the Chaos, fall away.”

“You’re all prepared to go to war for me.”

She gave me a small smile. “You just made the inevitable happen sooner. You can’t make a decision about staying here—or about Mathias—out of guilt.”

Chapter Twenty-Nine

I drew a line for you

Jessa

I’d been singing when Mathias finally came to see me again, the next afternoon. I’d refused Tru and Amiee’s offer to go to the diner—or anywhere else—because I didn’t want to bear the weight of Defiance’s disapproval yet again. I didn’t want to hear anyone tell me that I should’ve spilled my secrets earlier. Now, I’d let everything out, and my leverage was gone.

I was strangely okay with that. Maybe I always would’ve been here.

I finished the song before I took the headphones off. Mathias had stood, watching me, his eyes in a faraway place. Bishop was with him, but the man was doing his usual fading into the background while he translated, which meant Mathias was about to have a serious conversation with me. I focused only on Mathias and asked him, “Is everything okay?”

He shrugged as he sat down across from me on the bed, mirroring my cross-legged seated position. Then he reached for my hands and I let him. And then he turned my wrists over to expose the scars I’d never hidden and he studied them, the way he had when he’d been preparing to tattoo me.

“Pre-Chaos, I’d have been taken right to the plastic surgeon,” I said dryly. “Since there are no more newspapers, there’s no worry they’ll be spotted.”

He tilted his head and mouthed something and I didn’t need to understand all of it. He wanted to know about my suicide attempt. In the past, I would’ve done anything to avoid going back to that dark place, but now, I wanted it off my chest. The past was an anchor and talking about it was the key to freeing myself.

“I tried to kill myself more than once, but this one, the one that left these scars, that was the most serious,” I admitted bluntly, relieved not to have to couch the words. “I was trapped. The doctors didn’t understand. They kept saying, ‘You feel trapped,’ but that’s something so different. I was trapped, really and truly. There was no way out of my world. And I wanted out so badly. I’d grown up in that fishbowl. There was no escape. I couldn’t do anything, because there was always someone willing to take a picture of it and sell it. Even my own classmates. The ones who pretended to be my friends.”

I gulped a deep breath. “The Chaos took all that away, but it took away any chance of freedom I had. And Charlie pretended he understood, after I cut my wrists. He was so nice to me.”

He’s a politician—they’re never nice
,
Jessa.
You knew that.
Lied to yourself because it was easier.

“Fuck you, Mathias,” I said, mainly because he was so damned right. “He seemed different. He was concerned when I told him what our fathers were doing and now suddenly, I find out he’s no different than the rest of them? Well that’s bullshit—he told me he’d go with me and we’d find someone to listen to us, someone to make it better.”

Mathias shook his head, looked at me like I was the most naive person he knew.
You know this world’s different.
There’s no more hiding.
No more couching.
You do what needs to be done.

“You agree with him?”

I
agree with doing what it takes to survive.
Just like you’re doing.

“I want to do more than survive. But that might be all there is in this world now.”

Bullshit.
You don’t believe that.
I
know you don’t.

“I don’t know what to believe. I’ve tried, Mathias. I tried to do what they wanted but it didn’t work.”

So what do you want?
What do you want to be?

I stared into his obsidian eyes—endless, they seemed. “Whoever I’m supposed to be. Whoever I want to be.”

There’s a big difference between living and living free.
You finally realize that.

“Yes.”

Mathias smiled and I always wanted to be the one who made him smile. It didn’t happen often but when it did, it was real. And it made me alive inside, for maybe the first time ever.
It’s not me
,
Jessa.
It’s the freedom.

“That’s not true.”

You’ll see that it is.

He was using my own freedom to push me away and maybe I should listen. Take my freedom, throw off every ball and chain I’ve ever had.

But the man in front of me was my wings. And I finally had something—someone—worth fighting for. Mathias only saw Jessa the good girl. He had no idea what he was up against.

Mathias was right—I’d never lived for me. But that didn’t mean I didn’t want him for him.

As odd as it sounded, post-Chaos, I had opportunities I wouldn’t have before. The world was open to me. But my parents, and Charlie’s and the Secret Service, they were all specters in the background. They would come for me at some point.

And if they didn’t? Would that make me feel better or worse?

I refused to think about them again. They’d been in the way of my decisions for the last time. But I had to be able to do things for myself. And not because Mathias wouldn’t take care of me, but because he would. I knew that. But I needed to know I was with him because I wanted to be, not because I was scared.

I’d always been on the outside. Here, I could be free. And that’s exactly what Mathias was worried about, that I loved the freedom, not him.

Why couldn’t he understand that I loved both? When I told him all of this, he typed,
You’ve never been free
,
Jessa.
Never been on your own.
I
think you need that.

“I probably would’ve if I hadn’t met the one guy who gave me more freedom than I’d ever had, all while staying right by my side.”

Mathias’s cheeks flushed.
I
want to believe that.

“Then believe it.”

I
want you to be happy.
If that means finding yourself...or finding someone else
,
you deserve it
,
Jessa.
I’d never want to be the one to hold you back
,
ever.

“We’ve barely started. I’m not letting this end now.”

A
short story’s no less epic.

“I’m not letting you push me away. I know you won’t even teach me signs because me learning would mean you’d have to let me in. You couldn’t keep things from me.”

I’d hit it on the nose. His expression didn’t change but that’s how I knew. He put up a wall whenever he didn’t want to talk, went into soldier mode.

“Fine. If that’s the way you want to play it, then fuck you. We don’t need to communicate at all.”

Let me go

Mathias

Jessa turned away from me then, and since I’d gotten what I’d wanted, I walked away. I looked back at her once, because I couldn’t help myself, but she hadn’t.

Fucked that up good.

“On purpose,” Bish agreed, and I shot him the finger. He’d walked out ahead of me, maybe hoping I’d change my mind. “If you don’t want her, you don’t want her, right? S’cool. But if you do, you’ve got some serious romancing to do.”

I’ve got something else in mind.

“Better not be what I think it is.”

I didn’t bother answering him.