Soulless (Lawless #2) Page 13

  It was my turn to laugh.

  “So say you’ll marry me already and stop fucking stalling,” Bear said, looking down to me with a big boyish grin on his face.

  “Yes,” I said, because there was no other answer. There never was.

  Just yes.

  Just Bear.

  Just me.

  Just Forever.

  In that rickety old farmhouse, in my parents’ old bedroom, with my father’s dried blood staining the floor and an open-eyed corpse looking on, Bear had proposed.

  I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

  ’Cause life is just fucked up like that.

  I realized that all my past worrying had been pointless, because not only did I fit into Bear’s world.

  He kissed my temple and dragged me against his chest.

  I WAS his world.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Bear

  “How come I’m not dead?” Thia asked, lifting her sleepy head from my chest.

  “’Cause you’re not fucking supposed to be,” I said with more bite than necessary. My girl was very much alive, in my arms, and full of my cum. Which was exactly where she was supposed to be.

  When I came into the room and saw Ti’s lifeless body on the floor, it was like a switch turned on in my mind. A kill switch. I thought she was dead but I wasn’t going to tell her that. It wasn’t until I saw her peek out from behind the bed when I felt as if I could breath again.

  The second I knew she was alive, I knew that after I put Tretch down that I was going to fuck her. It was a messed up part of me that needed a reminder that we were both alive.

  I meant it when I’d told her it was the best fuck of my life. I’d came harder and longer than I ever had before, and from the way Ti was moving underneath me when she came, the way she tightened around me, I’m pretty sure she didn’t have any complaints either.

  “You know what I mean,” she said, elbowing me in the ribs. Besides the body on the floor, you would have thought we were any other normal couple, laying in bed recovering from intense orgasms.

  But we weren’t normal.

  I fucking loved that about us.

  “Pancakes,” I told her, watching with amusement as her face scrunch up in confusion like I knew it would.

  “Huh?”

  “It seems that your non-dog decided to act like the coyote he is. He tore that massive hole Tretch’s arm before I’d even got here.”

  “My Pancakes?” she asked. I knew she was having a hard time imagining the coyote she thought was a dog, who licked toes and liked to watch us fuck was capable of that kind of violence, but it was true.

  That coyote was the perfect dog for us.

  “Yes, your Pancakes. Unless you know of some other non-dog coyote named Pancakes, hell bent on defending you.” I laughed. “Also, I need to warn you not to freak out when you go into the other room, ’cause our non-dog has blood all over his face and fur, and right now he looks a lot less like a regular dog or a coyote, and more like motherfucking Kujo.”

  “He’s the best dog,” she said sleepily, her eyelashes fluttering against my skin.

  “He’s a coyote,” I corrected softly.

  “He’s the best coyote,” she muttered.

  “He sure is,” I said, kissing her softly on the lips. She moaned and I could tell by the way she was tossing her head around that she was trying to fight off sleep.

  “Did you find her? Your mom?” Ti asked through a yawn.

  “No,” I answered. “We looked in every shelter up and down the coast but there was no sign of her. Stone’s lead turned out to be a dud. We have time to figure out another plan though. Chop and the MC are out on a ride. Looks like they won’t be back for a couple of weeks or so.”

  She opened her eyes, although barely, glancing up at me through little slits. “This was kind of fucked up.”

  “Nah, this was nothing,” I said, waving her off. “If you want to know what fucked up is, you need to meet Jake.”

  “Who’s Jake? Is he a friend of yours?” she asked.

  I shook my head. “Jake is… Jake helped us when Ray was in trouble.”

  “That doesn’t sound so fucked up,” she said, trailing soft lazy kisses all around my chest.

  “No, but that’s why he’s the most fucked up person I know. You never know what side he’s on. Also, it doesn’t help that he looks like sunshine. Blond hair and blue eyes. The kind of looks you’d see on one of them TV shows all the teenagers like these days. But that kid’s got the devil in him. Only human lives he values are his wife Abby’s and now his kid. Jake’s the only person in the world who scares the shit out of me. You know, besides you.”

  “Sounds a little like Rage,” Ti said. “And if he saved Ray, then Jake’s okay by me.” Ti linked her leg over mine, her little thigh resting over mine, her knee grazed my cock which should be as exhausted as Ti but was seriously thinking of how hot another go-round would be.

  I mouthed a silent “Thank you” to Tretch as I stroked Ti’s wild hair. After all, it was because of him my girl realized what I’d known all along.

  How strong she was.

  How resilient she was.

  She was going to be a great old lady.

  Ti’s eyes danced behind her eyelids like she was watching a dream unfold.

  In the stifling Florida heat, we only had a few hours before Tretch started to smell, but cleanup could wait for a little bit, while Ti napped.

  I wasn’t anywhere near tired.

  Besides, I had no use for dreams when mine was already lying on top of me, fast asleep.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  Thia

  Rage showed up to grab some of her things and when I said good-bye to her she just shrugged and walked off into the grove. “Where is she going?” I asked Bear. Who ended his call to Wolf and shoved his phone in his pocket. Wolf was going to be the one who was going to be running ‘cleanup’ on Tretch’s body.

  Bear shrugged. “Don’t know. Never do when it comes to her.”

  I followed him over to the truck, “Can I ask you something?”

  “Shoot,” Bear said, hopping in. I got in the passenger side and slammed the door. Pancakes, without having to be told, hopped in the bed.

  “Why her? Why Rage? Why not have some big security dude or big bouncer guy look after me while you were away?” I asked the question that had been nagging at me since the day I’d met Rage.

  Bear started the engine and we pulled out onto the road.

  “Rage doesn’t care about anything but the job. Things, places, people. She’d done a lot of tracking for the club and I thought she’d be the one to best protect you if it came down to it because unlike a bouncer or security guard, Rage wouldn’t hesitate to pull the trigger.”

  “That makes sense,” I said, finally having my answer, but for some reason I’d thought there would be more to it than that.

  A muscle under Bear’s eye twitched.

  “What?” I asked. He waved me off.

  “What?” I repeated, demanding to know what had his face contorted in a way that made me think he was trying not to laugh.

  Unable to contain himself any longer, Bear burst out into laughter.

  “What the hell is so funny?” I asked, growing annoyed as he leaned over the steering wheel, holding onto his stomach with one arm.

  Bear set his hand on my thigh and gave it a squeeze. “Ti, do you really think I’d let a dude stay in the same house with you for one fucking second, never mind six fucking months?”

  And there I had it. The truth behind the truth. Which when it came to Bear, made the second truth make a whole lot more sense.

  We were still laughing as Bear pulled us onto the highway and we headed back to the place where it all started.

  Back to Logan’s Beach. Back to Ray, King, the kids, and back to the apartment I’d grown to love.

  Nobody was home when we arrived and we hadn’t been back for more than a few minutes before Bear had already strip
ped me naked and was on his knees in front of me, worshiping between my legs with my his talented tongue and mouth.

  It must have been the week for people to walk in on us because right after I’d come down from yet another mind-blowing orgasm, I opened my eyes to find King and Ray standing in the living room on the other side of the coffee table. Bear stood up, completely at ease with the fact that he was still naked, although he wasn’t JUST naked. He was naked and very, very hard. His mouth still glistening from lapping up every last bit of my orgasm.

  The solemn look on both their faces made me realize they were there for a much bigger and more serious reason than trying to catch us in the act.

  “You might want to put some clothes on for this,” King said, and suddenly I was all too aware of my nakedness. Bear led me into the bedroom and I was still getting dressed when he left the room after throwing on a pair of boxers, leaving the door open on the way out.

  “What the fuck is going on?” he asked. I looked out and spotted the worried expression on his face and suddenly I was as worried as he looked.

  “It’s Grace,” Ray said, choking out a sob and burying her face into King’s shirt. He held her close by the back of the head and stroked her long icy blonde hair.

  “What the fuck is wrong with Grace?” Bear barked, an angry burst of yelling that I felt deep in my chest.

  King reached out and placed his other hand on Bear’s shoulder, but Bear jumped back like King was trying to stab him instead of comfort him. “Tell me,” Bear demanded.

  I stepped out into the living room just in time to see King kiss Ray on top of the head. He looked back up to Bear when he spoke again. “She’s in bad shape, man.”

  “How bad?” Bear asked, grabbing a pack of cigarettes from the table. He put one in his mouth, it dangled from his lips as he scurried around, searching under couch cushions for a lighter.

  “The kind you don’t come back from.”

  Bear’s cigarette fell from his mouth.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  Bear

  I fucking hate hospitals.

  Always have.

  For good reason, too. Ain’t nothing good ever has come from stepping foot in one of them. Not for me anyway. Actually, the fucking worst always happened. A wave of bad shit, along with the smell of antiseptic and disappointment, hit me in the fucking face every single time those automatic glass doors opened, followed by me frantically asking a million white-coated fuckers where the brother I was looking for was.

  Usually, they were dead.

  It was at that very hospital where we’d come to see Grace, through those very same fucking doors where a white-coated cocksucker came out and officially told us that Preppy was a goner.

  I’m sorry. There was nothing we more we could do.

  I remember everything about that night, down to the pussy-ass yellow smiley face tattoo the doc had on the outside of his hand.

  The last time I was there was when I drove Ray, who was in pretty bad shape after being beat to shit by her fucking ex husband douche-bag, and King, who was all shot up, to the emergency room that smelled of unhealed wounds and misery. My immediate reaction whenever I went to a hospital has been to get on my bike and drive as far away as I possibly could.

  Which sounded pretty fucking good to me as we walked down a sea foam colored hallway, the wallpaper peeling at the seams.

  King and Ray were ahead of us with Thia and I staying back a few steps.

  The last time I saw Grace, she was in better shape than I was. Where I had been wrestling with every demon I’d ever come across, hopped up on so much booze and blow it was a wonder I was even alive, she’d looked as if she could place in a marathon or give that juice guy on late-night TV a run for his money.

  We knew Grace had cancer. She’d had it for years. More than a decade, I think. At one point, her pain got real bad and King gave her some weed and showed her how to smoke it so she could manage it better. For a while that seemed to work. After that she told us that the cancer couldn’t keep her down and that she decided she wasn’t going to die.

  Crazy thing about Grace was that we all believed her. When she said she was going to do something, she did it.

  Why did beating cancer have to be any different?

  But in walking down that depressing ass hallway, looking into the rooms where countless other patience were hooked to tubes and machines of all kinds, I realized that this was different.

  Very different.

  Which was why seeing her in that hospital room with tubes coming out of her arms and a breathing mask over her face, looking every bit the frail woman she never wanted to be with sunken cheeks and deep circles under her eyes, caused me to stop in the doorway.

  The woman lying on the bed didn’t even look like her. The woman I’d known for fifteen years had a fire around her that could make the biggest, baddest motherfucker out there say thank you, ma’am, and wipe his boots at the door.

  “There you are,” Grace said with a low scratchy voice, her chest contracted and she gasped. “I’ve been waiting for my boys. Where is my Abel?” she asked, taking King’s hand.

  “I’m right here,” I said, tugging Ti in behind me.

  “Maybe you should take turns speaking with her,” the doctor stated, without taking his eyes off of his clipboard. “We don’t want to overwhelm her.”

  “Who the fuck are you?” King asked, a vein in his neck pulsed and whatever the doctor said next would determine if he’d still end up a doctor at the end of the day, or a patient. The doc opened his mouth but he quickly shut it. Smart man. He scanned the barcode bracelet on Grace’s wrist with a tool connected to an iPad and made himself busy by checking numbers on the numerous machines and entering them into his tablet.

  “Brantley my dear. It’s fine,” Grace said, tugging on King’s hand to bring his attention away from the doctor and back to her. Ray kept her hand on the small of his back, using her own method of calming him down.

  “You guys go first,” I said, tugging Ti back out of the room without waiting for King to respond. “Doc, can I see you for a sec?”

  I needed a minute to think, plus the last thing Grace needed was to witness King beating the life out of her doctor, if that’s the route he decided to take. Ti and I sat in two lone chairs in the middle of the empty hallway. I don’t mean there weren’t people in it. I meant that besides the two chairs, there wasn’t a single picture or painting anywhere I could see.

  The doc followed us out, still punching the screen on his tablet. His sneakers squeaked against the dull linoleum.

  Ti squeezed my hand, reminding me that I wasn’t alone in this. “How long does she have?” she asked, and I’m glad she did, because although that was my question I don’t know if I would have been able to say the words. Also, there was a part of me. A big part. Who just didn’t want to know the answer.

  Actually, none of me really wanted to know.

  “Are you family?” the doc asked skeptically, pushing his glasses up his nose seeking answers from his tablet. His fingers flew over the screen. When he came to a stop he squinted down, his mouth moving as he read.

  I stood up and crossed my arms over my chest. I towered over the little pale-faced doctor and stepped close enough to him to make him feel how incredibly inadequate he would be in this fight not worth starting.

  Because if he didn’t stop looking down at that fucking thing and answer my girl’s question, there would be a fight.

  “We are as much family as she’s got,” I said. “You gonna fucking tell me what me and my girl need to know or what?”

  The doc cleared his throat, his face paled. He looked down at his tablet one more time. “Um… Actually, are you by chance either Mr. Abel McAdams or Mr. Brantley King?” he asked, pushing his glasses up his nose for the millionth time.

  “He’s Abel,” Ti chimed in. She stood beside me, and again I reached for her hand and was glad when I felt hers slip into mine.

  “Well then, you are her nex
t of kin, according to her paperwork, so I can certainly share her status with you. Is Mrs. Jeffries your mother by chance?”

  “Yes,” I said, without hesitation. She was the closest fucking thing I’d ever had and if this motherfucker delayed one more second, me kicking his ass would wind up being my first positive hospital story.

  “Well, Mrs. Jeffries cancer has spread, as you probably know. Brain. Lungs. It’s terminal. It’s been terminal. Last year we’d told her she only had weeks left, if not days, but she defied us all by lasting a heck of a lot longer. You should be proud of her. I’d never seen anything like it,” the doc said that like that bit of information was supposed to somehow make me feel like she wasn’t laying dying less than twenty feet away.

  “Doctor…” Ti said politely.

  “Reynolds” he finished. “Dr. Reynolds.”

  “Dr. Reynolds,” I said, rolling my eyes. “You didn’t answer the question. How long does she have now? And don’t bullshit me.” Ti squeezed my hand. I gave Ti’s hand a squeeze back, looked over at Doogie Howser, Asian MD and said the one word I rarely used, “Please.”

  “Not long. Due to her current condition, I would normally say only hours. But honestly, in my professional opinion, due to her rate of deterioration, it’s probably less than that. All of her major organs are shutting down.” He looked like he wanted to run as far away as possible and honestly I didn’t blame the little cocksucker.

  “Thank you,” Ti said. The doctor nodded and scurried off down the hall, clutching his stupid tablet, like a mouse released from a trap.

  We sat down again in the same two chairs, only to stand back up a few seconds later when King and Ray emerged from the room. For most people, I could see how King was hard to read. Especially because he never felt the need to fill the silence with words like Preppy always had. Seeing the solemn look on his face made me feel like I didn’t need to talk. Maybe a little bit of King had rubbed off on me.

  Ti embraced a crying Ray. King came up to me and lowered his voice. “She keeps passing out. Her breathing sounds like she’s been smoking a carton a day for the last fifty years.” He paused, running his hand over his face. “This is it, man. You need to get in there.”