Page 11 of The Biker and the Loner
Of all the brothers in the club, Onyx and I are tight. Trust him with my life, yeah, but he’s no Grunt.
Grunt and Kendra—my adopted siblings—and I have lived the same life. Experienced the same shit. We’ve got a bond that only we understand, that only we share. Being a few years older than them, I’d always felt the need to protect them, provide for them. And that’s what I spent my life doing. They’d been my purpose. Until they grew and became strong and independent. No longer needed me. Left me feeling useless.
Now Grunt is out of the club and living a new life, a better life, acleanlife. Kendra fell in love with a rich nerd and is doing the same.
That leaves Onyx. His devil-may-care personality can be irritating at times, but he's a solid guy. Loyal and dependable.
What I’m not about to tell him, though, is that I haven’t had sexat allsince I left. Not sinceher.
Not that there weren't plenty of opportunities, it just wasn't my focus. When Ididget in the mood on occasion though, all I thought about was her.
She invaded my thoughts, my dreams, parts of me no other woman has ever been. Even when I wanted to die in battle, another part of me subconsciously fought to live so I could see her again.
When I walked out of the airport this morning, although it felt great to see Grunt and Toni there waiting for me, it washerwho I wanted to be there. Waiting for me. With her quiet smile and broken eyes.
Wishful thinking, considering she stopped taking my calls over two years ago.
“Don’t see Ley here,” I say levelly, taking a swig of beer. “She coming?"
Onyx shoots me a knowing smirk and shrugs. "Don't think so. I told you, she doesn't come around anymore."
Before I left, I'd charged Onyx with getting close and keeping tabs on her, and to let it be known that no one, unless word was received that I was dead, should touch her. She belongs to Scratch.
First time I called her was two days before my graduation ceremony when we got our phones back. She picked up. She showed up.
Second time was during my first tour. She told me not to contact her again, that she wasn't mine and didn't want to be.
Goes without saying that I ignored that, because hearing her voice was like balm to my blistering soul. For all her resistance, she picked up ninety percent of the time, and we would talk…and talk. That percentage eventually drop to fifty.
Once, she picked up and told me she was seeing someone and couldn’t talk to me anymore. The rage and fury that vibrated through me when she told me that could’ve rocked the earth. A week later, Onyx confirmed it was a lie.
When I confronted her, she broke down and admitted she’d started to worry and pray for me like an army girlfriend and she didn’t want to be. That she needed me to die and never come back and getting closer to me through our phone talks was confusing her.
About a year and a half before the copter went down, she changed her number on me. When I asked Onyx to get her new number, she refused to give it to him.
During my surgeries in Germany and my rehabilitation in Seattle, all I wanted was to get better faster so I could see her. Grunt and Kendra flew back and forth on the reg to see me, but for whatever reason, it wasn't enough. I neededher. During one of Kendra’s visits, she told me she’d been renting from Leyana, and I managed to trick her into giving me her number. “For emergency reasons.”
I called her. She picked up, heard my voice, and immediately hung up.
She acknowledged none of my texts.
I stopped contacting her.
There was nothing I could do while half-functional and 13,000 miles away, so I channeled all my focus and energy into healing, becoming whole again. Because healed, functional, and whole was the only way I’d be able to get to her.
I don't know what she means to me. I don't knowwhyshe matters. All I know is that she makes me want tolive.
I spend the next two hours downing beers, refusing pussy, and half-engaged in pointless, perverse conversations. My body’s here but the rest of me is elsewhere.
Onyx finds me in the same place he left me an hour ago when he went off with some chick. The satisfied grin he's sporting means the lay was good.
"You okay, man? You haven't moved an inch all night." He pops open a fresh beer. “Cookie told me you turned away the girls she brought for you?"
Before I can respond, a slew of explosions rings out. Quicker than I'm trained to be, I’m off the picnic bench with my Glock out and aimed, crouching. "Get down! Get down!"
Mitchell is sprawled in the dirt next to me, blood gushing from the bullet wound in his neck.
"Michaelson, help me," he gasps out, fear in his eyes. "I don’t…want...to die."
