Chapter 42: Wolf.e: Chapter 41

I look up from dropping my bag on the concrete floor. Last one. My ride report for service comes in eight hours. Another tour. The last one was eighteen months. They told me to prepare, to get myself ready.

I told them all to go fuck themselves. Heading to Kuwait doesn’t scare me. If I die, I die. There’s only one person I care about. Only one woman whose feelings and worry matter to me. The only reason I don’t want to go is because I won’t be here to protect her.

I look across the room at my father, sitting under the window smoking his breakfast weed. I’m surprised he’s even alive after last night’s fuck up. My uncle Ray had to go pick him up at the Cardinal Motel on 17. Fucking coked out rage caused him to nearly beat some twenty-year-old girl to death after he fucked her stupid.

My uncle has dealt with this shit before. This is the norm with him, and I’m surprised he hasn’t taken care of my father himself yet. The only reason I can guess that he doesn’t is because my uncle has his own shit to deal with. He hasn’t been well and right now it takes most of his strength just to get out of bed in the morning. But it would be doing the club a favor, because at this point, Dad causes more shit than he’s worth and we all fucking know it.

Especially when we found out the woman he hurt last night is the daughter of a rival club vice president. The Huesos Rosas MC, a major player in Atlanta and Columbus. We’ll be trying to make that right for a long fucking time.

“Better go find your mother. She’s been crying all fucking morning,” he says in between puffs.

I flex my fists. The only reason I don’t hit him is because my uncle told me I couldn’t. It takes everything in me most days.

“We can ride together?” Jake says, patting me on the back, saving me from answering my piece of shit sperm donor.

“Yeah,” I answer.

“She’s at the garden center,” my father adds before standing and stumbling out of the room.

I shake my head. At least I won’t have to see him for the next year. Maybe when I come back, he’ll be dead.

The drive to the garden center my mother volunteers at on Main takes Jake and I less than ten minutes. She sees me and starts waving before I even stop the bike. She’s happier these days. My father doesn’t pay her much attention now that he knows he’s risking death at my hand by going near her. He knows she’s under my protection and my uncle has made sure he won’t touch her physically, at least while I’m gone. The promise of losing his hands seemed to do the trick.

She smiles at me but I see the sadness in her eyes as I approach.

“Gabe. My warrior,” she greets me with a hug when I come to her. Her long dark hair is pinned back for work and the lines around her eyes remind me she’s getting older. I hope to find her this at peace and healthy when I come home.

Jake heads off to talk to the blonde my mother works with, and she and I decide to go for lunch.

“A lot of these guys you’re going with, this is their first tour?” my mother asks as we eat.

I nod and take a bite of my steak. “12th Expeditionary Unit, a lot of them are first tour.”

“You watch out for them,” she tells me.

I smirk, as if I wouldn’t. My job is to work the fear out of them. Take that last final bit of hesitancy from them and stomp it out. They’re there as a machine, not to feel. Then and only then are they ready to front line it.

“Don’t worry about me. Shell and I have each other. As long as we know you and Sean are together, we’ll feel better.” Her voice breaks. I know this is hard for her.

“I’m not even going to be put in harm’s way, Mom, and if I am… that’s my fate.”

“I just hate to see you leave. When you get back, you need to shed some of this anger you have for him and focus on your future. I know I’m not a good example. I’ve stayed with your father through everything.” She reaches over and pats my hand, I know the speech that’s coming. Theresa Wolfe doesn’t let things go, not until she gets her own way. Even now, with no prospects for me, her brown eyes are full of hope. It makes the guilt surface tenfold because I know there’ll never be a woman I settle down with or tie myself to, and that’s what she wants.

“You aren’t him. You need to let that go. Find a woman to be your queen. You’ll be taking over this club one day. A life alone is a hollow one.” She grins “Finding a woman to love is the beginning and end of everything.”

I take a sip of my drink. “Thanks for the Ted Talk and The Great Gatsby quotes.” I smirk, reaching over to put my hand over hers. “I have a woman to love—you. And Jakey will be taking over, not me.”

She smiles and shakes her head. “Darlin’, he barely makes it through the day without making a piss poor decision. He’s more your father than you are. Ray won’t have it. He’s looking at you.”

She smiles wide. “Once you’re president, you find yourself an angel to be your queen. One who will be a safe haven for you in this bullshit way of life. One who will give you sons you can raise to be your legacy. Not his.”

I’m not in the mood to talk with her about things that will never happen. Instead, I’ll leave Mom with hope that it might.

“None of that matters now. If I make it back, I’ll deal with that. Ray will be riding for another couple years at least, and I just don’t see him passing up his own son. Jakey will straighten out.”

“When you make it back,” she says as I pull my hand away to go back to my food, savoring my last lunch with her before I leave.

I take another bite as four things happen simultaneously. Someone screams as a red El Camino screeches to a halt beside us. I feel a sharp pain in my shoulder before I see the gun and hear the invasive, unmistakable sound of gunfire fill the air.

I look at my shirt quickly soaking with blood, and I ready myself to dive on top of my mother who’s sitting across from me, but I’m too late. The car tires squeal, spinning and smoking as it takes off, and my mother—the only woman I’ll ever love—is already slumping out of her chair. What’s left of her short life is seeping out of the bullet wound in her temple.

I didn’t even have time to draw my weapon. I failed her.

I sit up in bed clutching my shoulder. The scar from the bullet I took when she died aches on nights like this. I’m drenched in a cold sweat. The shuffling of feet makes me act before my mind tells me not to. I grab my .45 from under my pillow and aim, watching as the flash of onyx hair darts behind the door with a scream.

Brinley. Not an intruder.

“Fuck.” I lower my gun. She fell asleep on the couch in my living room and I just covered her and let her stay there.

“You cannot sneak up on me,” I tell her, my tone angrier than I am.

She doesn’t answer.

“You’re safe,” I say, forcing myself to sound less aggravated.

“Flashback?” she asks without coming back into my doorway, obviously terrified. I blow out a breath and run my hand through my hair.

“Come here,” I tell her.

Normally, I sit in this haze, remembering how I found the fucker that killed my mother and slit his throat just an hour after she died. The memory of his life slowly draining from his eyes usually soothes me back to sleep, but as Brinley comes forward in just my t-shirt, the haze of that day starts to fade.

“From your time overseas?” she asks quietly in the dark.

I take a deep breath and lay back in my bed, allowing her to climb in beside me, pulling her close because fuck, I just want to.

She fits under the crook of my arm like the space in my body was carved out just for her. I breathe deeply, her jasmine scent blends with the scent of me in her hair, on her body and I can’t decide which one I like the idea of better.

“My mother died in front of me. The day I left for my last tour in Kuwait. My father was a piece of shit. He beat her, fucked around on her. He was uncontrollable from the day she met him. The night before she died, he fucked and beat the wrong girl. She was the daughter of a rival Puerto Rican gang. An eye for an eye, they said. My father didn’t have a daughter, so they killed her. He killed her.”

“Jesus,” Brinley breathes out, lightly tracing the ink on my chest. “Layla told me how much you loved her. She says Ax talks about her all the time.”

“She was like his mother too.”

“You didn’t kill him after? Your father?”

I smirk with the knowledge that she knows me already. “I tried,” I admit. I really fucking tried. “The thought of killing him is what got me through sixteen months of duty. Any second of free thought I had was spent plotting how I would kill him for her death.”

“But you didn’t.”

“When I got home, my uncle was really sick—his illness was rare and came out of nowhere.”

I set my jaw. Talking about this usually brings up the kind of anger I find hard to control. I let out a breath, instead of flexing my fists like I’d normally do, I run my calloused thumb over her soft cheek, down over her shoulder, back and forth up and down her arm as I talk. It settles me a little.

“He asked me not to kill him. Told me it was his final wish. He wanted me to keep the peace and said if I killed him, I was no better than he was.”

“Your uncle was better to you than your father?” she asks softly.

“Yes, in a hundred different ways. He taught me to think clearly, be patient, be centered,” I say honestly. “He said to kill my father would be the easy way out. He wanted my father to suffer until his last breath. And he did…”

“How?” she asks, turning her pretty face up to mine. I can’t resist kissing her, I’m totally fucking obsessed with this woman.

“Before my uncle died, he pushed his nomination forward to have me take over his chair. I thought my cousin would be angry he wasn’t chosen, but he was pretty fucked up during that time. He was in his experimenting era. He’s settled down a lot since then.”

“Was it a condition of you taking over to keep your father alive?” she asks, her warm body shifting against me already has my cock stirring.

“No, it was a request. You don’t fight the request of a dying man. You respect it.”

Brinley doesn’t speak as I continue to stroke her hair and skin.

“A year after I got back, he’d missed two meetings. I decided I better see if he was alive. So, I went to his house. He’d been dead about eight days, give or take, when I got there, the coroner said. Went on a bender, they assumed, and choked on his own vomit. They had to cut out part of the floor where he’d started decomposing. He was alone. Not one fucking person in the world cared to check on him.”

“Sorry you had to see him—’ she says. I pinch her and she yelps.

“Don’t waste the word sorry and him in the same breath. Shamus Wolfe was let off the hook too easy, as far as I’m concerned. My mother, she was incredible. She always kept her hope and positivity in any situation. She never complained and she did everything to shield me from him. It wasn’t possible but she did her best. There was always a spark of life in her eyes, like she was always waiting for something great to appear around the next corner. My mother dying for no fucking reason is how I know there is no higher power watching over us. If there was, she would be the first person saved. People live and people die. It’s all by chance. So I live how I want every fucking day, with the possibility of knowing death is always at my door.”

“That’s a realistic and pessimistic way to look at things,” she says in a tired voice. “You don’t believe in destiny at all either? Right place, right time?”

“No,” I answer, almost still sure.

“I do,” Brinley says, and I almost feel a bit of envy at how sure she is.

“Maybe your mother watched over you in the Middle East while you were gone. Maybe you were meant to run this club. Meant to do better than your father did. You already are.”

“Or nothing is meant to be and I just make better choices.”

Brinley yawns and snuggles in closer to me. “Possibly. It’s like you don’t want to let yourself feel, but I’ve watched you with your club. You do feel.”

“Argh,” I grunt, she’s pressing out into the unchartered water of the things I don’t discuss with people. “I don’t have the liberty of being able to feel, doing what I do. Anyone I care about has death knocking at their door too.”

“We all have angels watching over us, even you. Maybe you’ve just been riding faster than yours can fly. Maybe it’s time to slow down a little.” I feel her smirk against me. “Let them catch up.”

My chest cracks wide open and I almost feel my heavy heart start to beat as I remember my mother’s words… Find yourself an angel to be your queen, a safe haven.

I kiss her forehead, knowing I’m holding the closest thing to an angel in my arms right now.

My thoughts overwhelm me briefly.

Fucking Christ, it’s like I don’t even know myself anymore.

“All right, enough of that,” I grumble. “I want the taste of your cunt on my tongue. Spread these thighs, now.”

I flip her over and pull my shirt from her body as she gasps, and I show her until the sun starts to wake just how much I feel for her, with my cock buried as deep inside her.