Stephanie Tyler - Vipers Run

“How long were you working for Bernie?”

“A little over a year. I came home after Grams died and found out I had nothing left. Only the bit in my checking account. I was so angry. I’d been groomed to be this other persona and now I was left with that sham. Because even though my father’s name got me into those schools, and even though he insisted on paying the tuition, that’s all my mother accepted from him. She’d given me everything else, thanks to the bar, to what she and Grams had worked for. But hey, it’s not the first time a man had taken their life savings.”

I heard the anger in my voice. I’d thought I was over it. “I should’ve gotten to know my father. Not for the money, because that’s been there the whole time. But we missed a lot.”

“It’s not too late, Calla. Last I saw, he was waiting for you. Sounds like he’d do anything for you.”

“Just like you,” I whispered.

“Believe that.”

“Some battles I have to fight on my own.”

“Not this one,” he told me. “Your walls are back up, but I’m already inside. Don’t you get that? You walled us in together.”

The next night, Cage waited until Calla fell asleep and then he grabbed the keys to the door at the end of the far hallway. Behind the door was an entire world he’d tried to ignore, but finally, that night, it became clear to him that in this space he might find the answers he sought.

He hadn’t been here in years. The last time was the week before he’d shipped out for the first time, and when the familiar pull tugged at him, he almost didn’t recognize it.

He made sure to alarm the door behind him so Calla would remain safe in the apartment alone—and the Vipers guys continued to guard the front door to the apartment. Then he took the freight elevator down to the private space on the basement level, but separate from the garage. He was the only one who had access to this space, from above and below.

His hand shook as he unlocked the door and he cursed a string of familiar favorites as he finally got the damned thing to open. And he stood in the doorway, surveying a place where time really had stood still.

Had he moved on? He’d thought so. Thought he’d lost his passion for this. Frankly, it’d been so long since he’d picked up a brush or a pencil to simply sketch, beyond a map of a potential battlefield or LZ that he’d thought maybe he’d imagined his talent.

Fixing bikes or cars was something he’d done most recently for survival, not for joy.

He closed the door behind him, because the thought of anyone walking in right now was unbearable.

He looked at the sketchbook, sitting exactly where he’d left it. He recalled picking it up several times and almost carrying it out the door with him, but in the end he’d left it behind. He ran a finger through the light dust on the cover. Not enough to have collected over the past years. Which meant Preacher had been having the place cleaned.

Scratch that. It meant that Preacher had been cleaning this place himself, because he knew how Cage guarded his privacy fiercely.

And Preacher still believed he’d come back to this room. That he’d come back here, no matter how he’d tried to stay away for a myriad of reasons. He’d tried to escape his Heathen MC past with the Army and then, postenlistment, when he’d realized how bad things had gotten in Heathen territory.

How Eli was no longer unaffected. How he’d known the boy wouldn’t be, because Cage had been ten goddamned years old when he’d left, already irreparably scarred. But Eli’s mom lived off-compound and had promised to keep him safe. Cage even gave her money and a phone number to call if things got bad, and she’d taken it, because she’d realized how deep she was in. Up to her goddamned neck.

You left him in hell.

And maybe Cage didn’t deserve this kind of beauty in his life, not Calla or the art, didn’t deserve the way both made him feel.

Maybe he didn’t, but he wasn’t stupid enough to throw away gifts, not the one in his bed or the one that had been with him since as long as he could remember.

He opened the sketchbook gingerly, like he was afraid to see the past, that maybe it would remind him of the anger and revenge he’d harbored. But it wouldn’t matter, because it certainly wasn’t dead or buried.

And neither are you.

He stared at the first sketch for a long moment before leaving it for the actual bike, the one he’d just gotten a start on when he and Tals decided it was time to follow in the Vipers founding fathers’ footsteps. Enlist, boot camp and deployment. Hoorah Rangers. He had the scars, the ink, the mentality to prove he was enmeshed in two brotherhoods so fully that he’d never fully escape either. And he didn’t want to, but the Army was the only bridge back here.

He bent down on one knee as he uncovered the bike, like he was begging forgiveness, proposing to work on it again at the same time.

The bike was built from scratch. He hadn’t acquired all he’d needed for it, so he’d have to hunt down the hard-to-find parts. With Tals’s help, because Tals could procure just about anything. He was the juvenile delinquent and criminal of the bunch, and based on the company he kept, that was saying a hell of a lot.

He touched the cool metal, ran his fingertips along the pattern he hadn’t been able to shove from his mind.

He’d promised Preacher that he could restore this. Preacher had never stopped believing in him.

So when had he stopped believing in himself?

He guessed that it didn’t matter, since right now he believed in everything again. He knew he’d have to walk through hell to get there, but he was willing, because he saw his paradise on the other side.

Two hours later, he’d sanded and painted the bumper. At first, he was hesitant, and then the right music, the smell of grease and oil, made his hands take over from his head. He blinked, stepped back as he stared at what he’d accomplished, then stared down at his hands.

“Still here,” he murmured. And then he locked up, showered to get the paint and turpentine off him so he could slip back into bed, one step closer to healing himself . . . and hopefully, by extension, healing Calla.

I’d first called Tenn the night I’d told Cage.

“Do you need me there?” he’d asked, and just hearing him say that was a huge relief. But it was easy with Tenn, because I didn’t need him the way I needed Cage.

“I might.”

“I’m a phone call away,” he’d promised, and when I’d heard Cage leave me after he’d thought I was asleep for a third night in a row, I did call.

Tom was at the door in two hours. Bypassing the alarms. Knocking on the door at the same time he was texting me.

I didn’t know what to say, so I just fell into his hug. He carried me over to the bed and curled around me, asking, “When the hell did you sleep last?”

“I feel like that’s all I’ve been doing.”

I’d sent him the pictures, because I’d wanted him to see what Cage had. I needed his help and I told him that. “How could he see these and ever think about me the way he did before?”

“He can. He will, hon. You’ve got to give him credit. He’s lived through ugly things. We all have.”

“I want to believe you. But I don’t know how to bring him back to me.”

“You don’t need my help, Calla. You know what to do.” He paused. “He wants to make sure you’re okay. That’s what’s holding him back. He doesn’t think of you any differently. You do.”

“Stop being so smart,” I told him. And then I changed the subject slightly, to the other worry weighing on me. “The promise he made to me . . . Now that he knows, what’s he going to do?”

“You know the answer to that, baby girl.”

“Stop him.”

He gave a short laugh with absolutely zero humor behind it. “Yeah, that’d work.”

“You could try, for me.”

“If I thought I could, I’d already have stopped the man from doing other dangerous things, Calla. But the truth is, if he can’t do this for you, he’ll never be able to live with himself.”

“After what he’s found out, he’ll never be able to live with me either. Never be able to look at me again.”

“That’s bullshit.”

“He hasn’t tried to sleep with me, or really touched me since I told him—and that’s a new record for us. I’m not an idiot.” God, I sounded like a miserable fool. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

“Do I look bothered?”

“He left me tonight. Snuck out while he thought I was sleeping. That’s three nights in a row.”

“Could be club business,” Tenn offered. “He’s not going to go far.”

“It doesn’t matter—he might as well be a million miles away.”

“When you first met him, he promised he was going to make whoever hurt you pay.”

“He did.”

“And you believed that.”

I had.

“Let him.”

“Would you?”

“I took care of my own shit, Calla, because I could. If I couldn’t have, damned straight I would’ve let Cage do it.”

Tenn was so calm most of the time—so seemingly easygoing that I knew how deeply his pain had to run. It was always the easygoing ones who held the most pain. “I’m sorry, Tenn.”

“You did nothing wrong.” He paused. “You can rewrite your script, you know. Take control of it. Nothing’s bad if it makes you feel good.”

I stared at Tenn. “How are you so wise?”

His eyes crinkled at the corners as he laughed. “Christ, woman, you’re making me feel old. I’m not wise. Just crammed a lot of life into a small time frame.”