Page 186 of Burning Ember
What doesn’t tear two people apart, binds them together.
MAVERICK
Both of us watch Doctor Alister leave the room. Ember’s sitting in the hospital bed staring at the light blue blanket covering her legs. Something she does all the time now, stares anywhere but in my direction. She’s gnawing on her bottom lip and twisting her fingers together. After a few seconds, she exhales, turns, and picks up the phone.
Up to this point, I’ve put up with her ignoring me, looking everywhere but at me, and treating me like I’m a goddamn ghost.
But that ends today. I’ve been waiting for this. This inevitable fight for over two weeks. I don’t even care anymore that she can have me kicked out, because she’s being discharged tomorrow, so they can only keep me away from her for the night.
Folding my arms over my chest, I growl, “Hang it up.”
Her body tenses at my command, but that’s the only response she gives that she’s heard me.
“Hey. It’s me,” she says softly into the phone.
I move closer until I’m a foot away. “Hang up the fuckin’ phone, Ember.”
Her grip on the phone tightens. “Yeah. Tomorrow. In the morning.”
My body begins to vibrate with anger. I snatch the phone from her hand. “She has a ride and a place to stay,” I snarl before I hang up and slam the phone on the bedside table. Her uneaten cereal from this morning sloshes around and spills. Her water mug falls and bounces on the linoleum flooring.
“You’re not going to Bethany’s. Or with Lil’ or Goose. And you sure as fuck aren’t goin’ home. You’re gonna need constant care for weeks, Ember, until you’re back on your feet and can start doin’ normal things for yourself again. Is that not what the doctor just said?”
When her chin dips and she begins to stare down at her hands, I go on. “Bethany has her hands full with the bar and her two kids, and Lil’ wouldn’t know what the fuck to do. She’d give you food poisonin’ in a week.”
Her emotionless state is one I’m sick of seeing. She barely eats. She wakes from nightmares most nights, and she’s rail thin, even more so than when she came to the clubhouse that first day. The only time her face has any life in it is when Will’s here and even then, her small smile is shaky at best.
“The Greenbacks may have taken the price off your head, but it doesn’t mean your father will stay away. There’s no way of knowin’ what he’ll do now.”
I’m a bastard for saying it, but it’s the truth and she needs to hear it.
“Do you want to put Bethany and the kids in danger?”
I wait. I wait five fucking minutes and finally, she shakes her head.
“Then you’re comin’ home with me, where I can protect you and take care of you. I can work from home, and I’ve already hired a nurse. I’ve prepared a room for you and Will with everything you’re gonna need.” It’s subtle but she stills. “Sunny’s welcome too, if she wants to stay there after she gets out.”
Doctor Alister updated Ember on her sister’s condition a few days after she woke, and every couple of days since. Sunny has suffered permanent brain damage to her temporal lobe. The full extent of what that means for her in the future, the doctors are still trying to figure out; but so far, she’s having trouble with her speech and recalling some long-term memories. Also, she’s looking at quite a bit of physical therapy and plastic surgery over the next few months.
Ember took the news hard. She cried silently for hours until she passed out from exhaustion. And she was completely zoned out from the world the next day.
Though she probably ignored every word I told her, Smoke’s been at Sunny’s bedside around the clock and he’s spared no expense to get her the best care money can buy.
I didn’t tell her the rest.
That Smoke asked the club for permission to stay in Albuquerque. That a few days ago, Pappy sat down with Edge, me, Griz, Dozer, and Smoke. We told him the club voted against granting the Greenbacks permission to move into New Mexico. The vote had nothing to do with Cap’s accident, because now that he’s awake, and we know exactly who’s responsible for gunning him down, we no longer suspect the GBs had anything to do with it. The sad fact is . . . it was one of our own who was responsible.
No, the club vote against the GBs coming here was unanimous because not one brother wanted to do business with, or trust a man who’d betray his VP and put out a hit on his own daughter. By doing what he did, Pappy, himself, proved to the HOCs what I’ve been saying all along. Our two clubs don’t live by the same code. Our priorities differ. And what we value above everything else, they do not.
I also told Pappy that Ember’s my old lady and made it clear that her, her sister, and her niece are under our protection. If anything happens to them, the club will hold him personally responsible. The fucker had to balls to ask if he could speak with her, said it was about her mother, and I almost reached across the table to choke the life out of him. I would have if Edge and Dozer hadn’t held me back. Instead, I growled that if he or his psychotic son ever come anywhere near her, I’d bury them both.
Edge ended the conversation by delivering the news that until we vote otherwise, GBs need to find someone else to run their dope and clean their money.
I could tell Pappy was boiling with hostility, on the verge of exploding, but we didn’t give a fuck. Cap wasn’t making the calls anymore, we were. And unless Pappy wanted to go to war, he’d live with our decision.
Then the HOCs and I moved to another part of the empty bar with Deeds and the other Greenbacks who came with Pappy. We gave Smoke what he wanted. He squared off against his old friend. No question, it would get bloody. But we took bets on whether or not they’d both survive and who’d win. Of course Smoke did, having a good twenty pounds on Pappy, and the wrath of hell driving his fist. It surprised us all though that the Greenbacks and Deeds never once stepped forward to come to Pappy’s aid, and that Smoke left Pappy breathing, and tossed his colors on his unconscious body before walking off.
That’s the kind of shit that Ember never needs to know. That and I suspect Pappy killed her mother and it’s the reason she never came home.
