I stopped that thought dead . . . because I now knew he wasn’t the only one.
Sia. Motherfucking Elysia Willis.
They hadn’t known I’d been listening. Neither of them had known that I hadn’t gone upstairs into the bedroom; instead I had slumped down against the wall in the hallway and listened to every fucking word. I hadn’t been able to leave them alone. Some fucking internal tether held me close.
I listened to Sia cry. To Cowboy promise her things I wasn’t sure I could ever give. I couldn’t give anyone that anymore. I was a fucking bad omen. Whoever was with me would always be ruined. It had always been that way. I gritted my teeth and tried to shake her from my head.
But she wouldn’t go. I licked my lips, still tasting her on them. I’d heard them fall to sleep. I’d heard the soft breathing coming from her mouth. And I’d had to go. She’d been drinking. Cried herself to the point of exhaustion. But something called to me, compelled me to go into that room, a damn magnet pulling me in. The sight of my best friend and her on the couch hit me harder than I’d expected. Because I should have been there with them. I belonged there with them. Every cell in my body told me so. But I couldn’t do it. She’d been through enough. At some point, whatever gris-gris followed me around would get her too. We could never be together. We just didn’t fit.
I had no fucking idea why Cowboy even stuck around. It was only a matter of time before I ruined him too. More than I already had, that is. Fucker was a glutton for punishment.
People thought that times had moved on. That people were more liberal in their views, didn’t give a shit about race or religion or whoever the fuck you loved. But in our fucked-up world, that was bullshit.
I’d seen it.
I’d lived it.
Fuck, I was a product of it.
Her lips had been as soft as I knew they would be. She tasted just as fucking sweet too. I wanted to wrap her in my arms and tell her that this fucking Garcia would never touch her again. But I’d been strong. I’d stood and turned away before the little voice in my head told me to let her in.
But not before I’d seen Cowboy watching me. I didn’t know if the fucker had faked sleep or had woken up when I came through, but I’d seen the look on his face. He wanted it. He wanted me to just get over my secrets, what forever held me back, and be with her.
. . . and Hush, if he would just let me.
“Fuck!” I shouted into the pink sky, head thrown back and fists clenched. I ran my hand over my arms and saw all the evidence I needed for knowing I couldn’t go there with her. And fuck, another thought clouded my mind. Something I knew one day would come. But that I had dreaded with every fiber of my being.
It was time to cut Cowboy loose.
He was my best friend. He was pretty much the only person I had in the whole world. But I was holding him back. He told Sia that she and I were lonely. And fuck, that was true. But I knew he was too. Years of following me around, fucking sluts with me, never on his own . . . because of me.
Cowboy didn’t need threesomes to get off. Christ, half the time I didn’t even know if he enjoyed them. He did them because I didn’t know who the fuck I was without him.
I saw the way he looked at Sia. It was different. He’d never looked at any bitch like that before. Sure, he’d shown interest in others, but never like this. I knew from the minute we met her at Ky’s wedding that she was a game-changer. There’d been a spark between them.
Fuck, she was different for me too.
But I knew he felt some sense of loyalty to me. One that I selfishly knew he would forgo his own happiness for. It was why he was pushing me so much with Sia. Then he’d get to be with the girl of his dreams and still be there for his fucking headcase of a co-dependent best friend.
The sound of a motorcycle rumbled behind me in the distance. I didn’t even turn around. I knew it was Cowboy. He shouldn’t have left Sia all alone. But I’d checked the perimeters over and over in the past few hours. There was nothing out there. She was safe.
After last night, I knew he’d come and find me.
Cowboy brought the second Harley to a stop beside me. I kept my attention forward, on the sun now almost fully in the sky. My hands fucking shook. Shook at the thought of letting Aubin go. Because that’s who he was to me. Aubin Breaux. The kid I met as a teen, the one who stuck by my side when everything went to absolute shit and life knocked me the fuck down.
“I saw you,” he said, thawing the awkward silence that had built around us. I didn’t say anything. I felt Cowboy pull on my arm. He sucked in a pained breath. When I looked over at him, he was holding the red welts from that fucking bronc rein. They were blistered and looked fucking horrendous. “You listening to me?” he asked, shaking off his pain.
“It doesn’t mean anything.”
“Fuck off, Val. It means everything!”
I clenched my jaw. Then, feeling my stomach drop, I turned to my best friend. “Aubin.” My mouth felt as dry as a damn desert.
“Val—” Cowboy leaned forward, jumping to help me like he always did. But I held up my hand to cut him off.
I took a deep breath. “I think you should try to make a go of it with her.”
Cowboy’s blond eyebrows pulled down in confusion. “That’s what I’ve been saying. She’d be good for us, Val. She—”
I shook my head. “Not me, Aub. You.”
Cowboy’s mouth worked open and shut, his forehead lined. “I don’t get it.”
“You.” I looked back out over the hills. “You should try to make a go of it with her.” I cracked my knuckles, just for something to do with my hands. “She likes you. Shit, anyone can see it.” I ducked my head. “I see the way you look at her too. She’s different for you.”
“For us,” Cowboy argued.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“For fuck’s sake, Val—”
“It doesn’t change how I feel. I won’t see someone else dragged down by me.” This time I did meet his eyes. His face was red. He was pissed, which for Cowboy was a rare occurrence. “I’ve dragged you down too. I know you don’t see it. Think it’s just because you’re my brother. But you ain’t lived right since that night years ago. Gave everyone and everything up. Your future. Your folks. Your horses. Rodeos. You fuck sluts with me because I never used to dare do it alone.” I huffed a self-deprecating laugh. “Hell, you moved from the state you fucking adored to go nomad, then moved to Texas because of me.” I turned on my seat, staring down at the Austin Chapter patch on his cut. “You even told the club—Styx and Ky—that we went nomad because of shit that went down with you, which we both know wasn’t fucking true.”
“Because I knew you didn’t wanna talk about it. After everything you’d been through, I couldn’t let you explain all that shit with the New Orleans chapter—even though we should have, still should. I mean, how much can a brother have piled on him in a fucking lifetime, never mind in the space of a few years?”
“That’s my point, Aub,” I said. Cowboy folded his arms over his chest. “It’s time you did something for you.” He opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off before he could. “We both knew there’d be a time when you found someone.” The pain I felt in my gut at thinking of Sia with Cowboy alone made me feel sick. “You deserve it.”
“And you?” Cowboy asked. “What do you deserve? To be fucking alone?” He huffed in frustration. “I know you say there’re a lot of reasons not to get into anything with Sia. I get why you think it. But one of them, your condition, shouldn’t hold you back like this, Val. Plenty of people have it and live with it just fine.”
“Not in a biker gang. You know club rules. I’d be grounded. Styx wouldn’t let me close to a bike. His poppa made that an ironclad rule years ago.” I shook my head. “Not gonna happen, mon frère. What the fuck would I be without this club?”
“Could be living with me and Sia? I don’t know . . . maybe fucking happy for once in your life?”
“You think people wouldn’t have
a problem with that?”
“Fuck people,” he muttered, shaking his head.
Coldness infused my blood. “That’s what my parents thought, Aub.” I felt him tense as I mentioned them. Because I never fucking talked about them. “Didn’t really work out for them, now did it?” Sympathy flooded his eyes. I fucking hated the pity from Cowboy most of all. “A white guy, a mixed-race sick guy, and a white rancher bitch shacking up ain’t fucking normal in anyone’s book, Aub. Someone somewhere will have a problem with it.” Just that thought set my anger on fire. “And I guarantee, it’ll be me they’ll have the biggest problem with. It always is.”
“We’re fucking Hangmen! No one will say shit to us.”
“Our vice-prez might.”
Cowboy dropped his head in defeat. “I thought . . . I thought after last night . . . after seeing you with her, you’d changed your mind.”
“I want the bitch, Aub. So fucking much that I can’t stand it. But after everything she’s been through, how the fuck could I put her through any more? I’ll protect her with my life, but she ain’t knowing about my condition. My past. My long list of reasons. I just ain’t going to get with her, period.” I started the engine of the bike. I was done with this conversation.
“I might just fucking tell her about you myself. Then you have no more excuses.”
His threat ran off my back, because when I said to him, “No, you wouldn’t. You ain’t built that way,” I knew it was true. “Get with her, Cowboy. And when all this Garcia shit is done with . . .” I took a breath and just let the fucking next words spill outta me. “I’ll leave. Time for you to have a fucking life, free from my baggage.”
*****
As we walked into the open-air rodeo in Marble Falls a few days later, I felt completely out of fucking place. Cowboy still wasn’t speaking to me much—which was new. He only threw me a few words here and there. It felt fucking weird. In all the years I’d known him, he’d never kept his distance from me. I hated every minute of it, but I knew it was for the best.
Sia was giving me a wide berth too. She stared at me a lot. I wasn’t sure if she remembered me kissing her the other night. Maybe she thought it was just a dream.
“We’re over here,” Sia said and went to register. She was barrel racing today, some amateur competition she did for kicks. Cowboy had been helping her train over the last few weeks. With his arm still pretty bad, he had helped her more in the past few days than help me. I had the perimeter covered. I’d met Smiler and Bull on the main road in my truck, them in theirs, to check in. No news had been brought to our attention by the Diablos’ prez, and Garcia had gone quiet.
I didn’t regard that as a good thing.
So we were here today. I hated fucking rodeos. Too much bad blood had gone down in Louisiana at these fucking things. One time especially . . .
As if he sensed me thinking of that time, Cowboy moved closer to me. He didn’t say anything, but his arm brushed against mine. He never could stay pissed at me for too long. Though this time had set a new fucking record.
Sia walked to a table a few yards away and started filling out some forms. She looked fucking incredible. Her sparkly jeans and pink shirt fit her figure so fucking good I’d almost smiled at her when she came out of her room this morning. She was so fucking stunning, her long curly hair falling down her back, a white Stetson on her head. Instead, I’d ducked out and made sure our journey to the rodeo was safe.
That was my new plan. Avoid her at all costs.
Viking, AK and Flame would be circling the area too. I glanced down at what I was wearing: a plain white shirt and jeans. Of course, Cowboy completely looked the part, dressed in a red plaid shirt, jeans, his cowboy boots and a brown Stetson.
“You look like the old you, dressed like that,” I said and watched a smile pull on his mouth.
“Thought that this morning when I got dressed. Weird to be without a cut, huh? It’s been so long you could almost pretend the years before the club weren’t real.”
I could never think that, but that’s because those years were permanent tattoos on my brain.
“Yeah.” I opened my mouth to say something else, anything else, but Sia came up to us, papers in hand.
“All signed in,” she said. “‘Helen Smith’ is ready to ride.” She laughed and shook her head. “Yee-fucking-haw!” Then she rolled her eyes.
Helen Smith. Her pseudonym. Ky, years ago, had gotten her a false identity after Mexico. The deeds to her ranch were in that name, and she competed under that name too.
Sia rocked on her feet awkwardly when I didn’t laugh. When neither of us did. It wasn’t just me Cowboy had been distant with. Since our little talk a few days ago, he’d pulled away from Sia. He was still all smiles—that’s just who he was—but the flirtation had stopped. I hadn’t seen him take her hand. He barely laughed at her jokes, or engaged in their usual back and forth. I could see it was fucking killing her. I could tell that she missed him by the way she waited for a reaction every time she said something he’d normally find funny.
And I got what he was saying. We were both in this or neither of us were. The prick was so fucking pigheaded. But a better friend there never was.
“So, cher, when you up?” he asked.
“In an hour. I’m one of the last.” She looked toward her horse trailer. “Clara will be warming Sandy up for me.”
Cowboy nodded. “Then let’s get you to the training ring.” I trailed behind Cowboy and Sia, searching the faces at the rodeo. People had started coming in. The bull riders and broncs would pull in the bigger crowds later.
We watched Sia train her horse for a while before her name was up. Cowboy put his hand on my shoulder as we moved to the side of the main ring to wait for Sia to ride. I looked up at my best friend and saw his eyes were bright with excitement.
He used to live for this shit.
The announcer called for “Helen Smith.” Sia held Sandy back at the gate as she waited for the signal to go. As she set off, ducking around the three barrels that were arranged in a clover shape, I fucking held my breath. Cowboy whooped and hollered as she cut up dirt, fucking riding like a bat out of hell. When she began sprinting for the finish line, her legs kicking and reins snapping from side to side, I looked up at the screen to see that her run had put her in first place.
“Fucking A!” Cowboy shouted and turned to go meet Sia. We found her as she dismounted. “Cher!” Cowboy picked Sia up and held her in his arms. My throat tightened at the amount of relief I saw on Sia’s face. When her eyes met mine over Cowboy’s shoulder, I held her gaze. I was fucking proud of the bitch. I nodded, much to her obvious surprise, letting her know it.
The smile she gave me in return almost knocked me on my ass.
“Don’t let Ky see you holding his sis like that, man.” I turned my head to see AK and Viking walking toward us. Flame followed behind, black eyes skitting about the place. All three were dressed in jeans and shirts. No trace of Hangmen allowed—Styx’s orders.
Cowboy released Sia. “She just fucking nailed the race times. Ain’t no one gonna beat that. That deserved a fucking Cowboy hug.”
Sia held up her hand to the trio. “Hey, guys.”
Viking stepped forward. “Bitch, that was one good motherfucking ride.”
“You saw?” she asked, beaming.
“Sure did.” Vike cocked his head to the side. “Inquiring minds wanna know if you can ride that well on other things?”
“Vike,” AK warned.
“What?” Viking complained, arms wide. “Just wanna know if she likes mounting things . . . hard things . . . preferably big wild beasts.”
“Vike,” I heard myself warn as well.
“I do,” Sia said, making my head snap in her direction. Her arms were folded across her chest as she stared Viking down. Or up, considering the massive height difference. “But I’ve never ridden anything yet that’s managed to unseat me.” Her eyes ran up and down the length of him. “Never had anything
strong or big enough to overpower the grip of my steel thighs.”
Viking looked at me, then Cowboy, and pointed right in our faces. “We’re swapping duties. Right the fuck now. I’m going home with her. You two are done.”
“Nah,” Sia said, nose-scrunched, looking all kinds of fucking beautiful. “I like these two. They keep me on my toes.” Her blue eyes sparkled, and for a second she reminded me of Ky, all blond, blue eyes, and a fucking cocky attitude to match. But I almost fucking choked when she said, “The two of them together . . .” She shook her head. “Shiiitttt . . . best damn ride of my life.”
My eyes widened. Cowboy burst out laughing. Viking’s mouth dropped open, the brother working it like a damn fish. “They fuck each other, not bitches!” he said, sounding really fucking confused. I rolled my eyes at hearing the same line spill from his mouth as I’d heard a million times before.
Sia walked to Viking and tapped his ’roided-up chest. “Keep believing that, big boy. Whatever helps you sleep at night.” In that moment, I realized just how much Sia had let her guard down around us. She was fun, a fucking spitfire at times. But to me and Cowboy, she’d also shown when she was scared. She’d cried, and she’d been vulnerable.
I thought back on how she was at the club; this Sia, the one who had Viking hounding Cowboy for details on our apparent daily orgies, was what she wanted the brothers to see. A woman not damaged by her absent father and life kept away from the club. Or the woman not so fucking ruined by a man named Garcia that she hadn’t let anyone near her in years. No one was allowed to touch her. Hell, from what I could tell, she had no friends but for the girl she paid to work on the ranch.
Watching her now, strutting past Viking, curvy ass swaying, left eye winking, you’d never know she was so fucking alone.
My chest tightened. Just like me and Cowboy.
I sighed, and then seeing Cowboy was busy shooting the shit with the Psycho Trio, I fell into step beside Sia. She had clearly not expected it to be me, because when she turned her head to face me, she stumbled. I reached out and helped her right her feet.