Torched: Afterburn (Iron Serpents Motorcycle Club Book 2) Read online

  His eyes narrowed. “What are you fucking saying?”

  “I’m saying if you don’t trust me, there’s really no point in doing this. I want a partner, somebody who has my back just like he knows I have his. I want a man who won’t start resenting me for always having to choose between his old lady and his club. I’ve never given you a reason to think I’d spill your secrets or go over your head. We’re supposed to be in this together.”

  He smirked. “You’ve never given me a reason to think you’d go over my head, huh? What the hell do you call making a deal with the Feds while I was in a coma?”

  I stared at him with disgust. “Are you fucking kidding me? If I hadn’t done that, you’d be doing a thirty-year stint behind bars right now and half of this chapter would’ve been right there with you. Don’t you dare throw that shit in my face and twist it into something you damn well know it wasn’t. And fuck you for using the hardest decision I’ve ever had to make as a cheap shot. You would’ve done exactly the same thing, you are doing the same thing. If you think back, I was the one who told you to do it, to focus on the club and your duty to it. You think I just pulled that out of my ass? You’re acting like I’m asking you to sacrifice something when all I really want is your trust. So, actually… it’s not the same, I had it harder. Fuck you twice, Torch.”

  After a drawn out stare down, an air of defeat came over him and he leaned back on the dresser. “I’m sorry,” he sighed. “You’re right, that wasn’t fair. And I’m sorry you feel like I don’t trust you, because that’s definitely not the case. At all. If I thought for a minute any of this shit was gonna happen, I would’ve made a different call.”

  Finally, a crack in his armor I could wiggle through. I walked over to the bed and sat down. “So make a different call… Who’s Cora?”

  Torch scrubbed his beard and paused to collect his thoughts before explaining. “He’s a loan shark Buddha got in bed with, a mean motherfucker whose crew doesn’t dick around. Insurance won’t cover all of Buddha’s cancer treatment and he didn’t wanna put the club in a bind, so when a buddy in New Mexico offered to sell him some really rare coins at a steep discount, he called Cora to front the hundred grand—”

  “That’s why you rushed a scrap run?” I asked.

  Torch shook his head. “None of us knew about it. Buddha already had a buyer lined up and figured it would be a quick flip, he picked them up in Santa Fe while the rest of us were having breakfast on the way back. Go figure, as soon as we crossed the state line, we got ambushed by half a dozen gun-toting guys in masks who took the stash from Buddha’s bags. Long story short, now we owe Cora two hundred grand with interest and have no way of finding the assholes who stole from us. Our time doesn’t run out for three days, but I guess he decided to give us a friendly payment reminder. The hit-and-run driver admitted to being on Cora’s crew.”

  I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead to quell the headache I could already feel coming on. That’s what the last couple of weeks had been about? Paying back a damn loan shark? Jesus Christ, he could’ve just asked for me the money and he fucking knew it. “Is that everything?”

  “Yeah,” he muttered. “That’s everything.”

  “Did you kill the driver?” I asked.

  “No, we’re holding him for Gauge. He got wronged, he gets the satisfaction.”

  The room went completely silent as I struggled to process what he was telling me. I was pissed. Actually, no… Pissed didn’t even begin to describe it. My lungs felt constricted, my brain muddy, and my heart heavy. But I couldn’t allow myself to blow up, the aftermath would be ugly.

  I slowly stood up from the bed and picked up my bag. “Use whatever money you scraped together for Buddha’s bills. I’ll have Cora’s two hundred for you in a couple hours.” As I turned to walk out of the room, Torch flew across it and stopped me from opening the door. I couldn’t look at him, my eyes fell to the ground.

  “Liv, don’t you fucking shut down on me. You wanted answers, I gave them to you.”

  I clenched my jaw and glanced up at him, replying with all the calmness I could muster. “You did... And now I want some space. Don’t send a tail, I can watch my own back.”

  I reached for the handle, but he clamped his hand down on mine. “Talk to me.”

  “What’s there to talk about?” I asked. “Dana and Gauge just lost their baby, which is totally on me because of the way I took her down—”

  “Babe, that wasn’t your fault. You saved her life.”

  “I still have to live with it,” I snapped. “And now I find out it happened over money. Money, Torch. I made it pretty fucking clear that all you had to do was ask if you needed any. And the coins? I could’ve written an algorithm in five minutes to continuously scour every auction site and store website in the country. I could’ve looked for video to find out where the guys who ambushed you went. Why the hell wouldn’t you talk to me? What’s the point of even being married if you can’t trust your wife to have your back?”

  “I wanted to,” he insisted, “I brought it to the table but it was a split vote. I didn’t know if you had enough, but I figured between what you did and the bikes we restored, we could pull together the whole thing.”

  “Yeah? So why did you get shot down? Because the guys didn’t wanna ask a woman for help? Or were they just worried about an outsider asking too many questions?”

  “Sweetheart, you know I can’t tell you what gets talked about in church, all I’m gonna say is that’s not how we operate. We all pitch in, not stick our hands out. And you’re not a goddamn outsider.”

  I paused to collect my thoughts. He didn’t get it, he didn’t understand that his actions had been speaking for him loud and clear. “I don’t need you to tell me anything, the fact that you even had to bring it up in church tells me we’re not seeing eye-to-eye in this marriage. Babe, I can give up everything I know to be with you, I can share you with the club, I can deal with any kind of fallout, all I’m asking is for you to find a place for me in your life where I can contribute something. At the very least, a place where I don’t feel like I’m sleeping next to a goddamn stranger. Unconditional love and loyalty, Torch, that’s what it’s about for me. I would’ve gotten you the cash no matter what you needed it for and freed you up to handle the men who ambushed you. There was absolutely no reason to ask for a vote, all you had to do was say you were putting up your own money and no one could’ve said shit.”

  “Liv—”

  “Please, just stop,” I begged, “I need some room the breathe. The longer you keep me here, the more of a chance you’re giving me to say shit I won’t be able to take back. I need to go cool off.”

  He closed his eyes and shook his head, but begrudgingly conceded. “Okay. But keep your eyes open and your piece close. I love you.”

  I didn’t return the sentiment, I couldn’t, my mind was already trying to reroute to something else so I didn’t have to deal with the senselessness of it all.

  He kissed my forehead. I twisted the door handle. And without another word or glance back over my shoulder, I walked out.

  : 16 :

  | TORCH |

  He lit a cigarette and watched the water rush below his feet. Just a few miles north of Linwood ran the South Platte River, and this particular spot along the bank was his thinking oasis. Depending on how much rain they got in a given season, the river could go from calm and low to a gushing force of nature. A couple years back, it had flooded half the county after the clouds opened and pissed on eastern Colorado for two weeks straight.

  He’d always considered rivers to be a metaphor for life in their unpredictable nature. Water was a necessity for survival, but too much of it could have the opposite effect. Today, the current was running strong, and listening to the sound of it thrashing against rocks and branches provided just the kind of white noise he needed to get his head on straight. He’d been sitting there for a fucking hour, thinking about Buddha, Cora, and Liv.

  Mostly Liv tho
ugh.

  He’d promised her things, vowed to never keep her in the dark, and proved his own words worthless before the ink on their marriage license had dried. She was right to be pissed, it was one thing to respect Buddha’s privacy when it came to his health, but the other pretty much fell under the concessions he’d agreed to.

  He knew she’d get over it, Liv wasn’t one of those people who held grudges over relatively minor shit, but if they couldn’t figure out how to navigate through this kind of terrain, they’d never make it. There wasn’t a doubt in his mind this wouldn’t be the first or only time his equally-divided loyalty to his woman and his club would lead to a power struggle.

  He wanted them to make it, he needed them to make it. But what was a proud outlaw to do when his other half was just as headstrong and stuck in her ways as him? There was only so much room for compromise when it came to the day-to-day shit.

  It would be their downfall, he could just tell. And fucking hell, he was at a loss over how to prevent it without pushing her away long before they even got to that point.

  Groaning to himself in exasperation, he dropped his head between his knees and cursed under his breath.

  Goddamn Buddha. He loved the man, but fuck if he hadn’t made a righteous mess for the rest of them to clean up.

  The sound of roaring Harley pipes overpowered the air and Torch looked back over his shoulder to spot Zed coming his way. He stubbed his cigarette out and went back to staring at the water.

  “Hey, brother,” Zed greeted, taking a seat on the ground next to him. “How long have you been out here?”

  “An hour.”

  Zed reached inside his cut and pulled out a joint. He gave himself first honors and passed it over. “You tell her everything?”

  Torch inhaled the thick smoke and let it percolate inside his lungs. “Yup,” he choked out.

  “And since you’re out here brooding like a little girl, I guess she didn’t take it too well?”

  Torch shot him a sideways scowl. “I’m not fucking brooding, dickhead.”

  Zed laughed and took the joint back. “Yeah, alright. What’s the problem then?”

  “She’s got the money to pay off Cora and wants to do it.”

  Zed nodded. “Honestly, I don’t think we have a choice at this point. You’re the one who pushed for it in the first place, so what’s with the sour face? We’ll get Cora off our ass and pay her back eventually. Liv to the rescue again, right?”

  He exhaled. “It’s not about the fucking money, I was ready to swallow my pride as soon as I knew we were in ass-deep with Cora. What I’m trying to figure out is how the fuck to balance my wife and my club. She knows how to turn shit back on me like nobody else, I don’t know how to protect her without pushing her right out the goddamn door. When I fill her in, she ends up in jail, when I don’t, she almost gets taken out in the street. I’ve got no idea how any of this is supposed to work, Z, it’s fucking embarrassing. Gauge, Biff, Jet, Toto… they know how to draw the goddamn line—”

  “And look at all the fucking stress they have,” Zed croaked out, passing the joint back. “Christ, look at all the stress you had trying to go by the book, and that was just a week and a half. You think that shit’s sustainable? I can name ten divorced brothers in our chapter alone who’ll tell you otherwise. Hell, you’re one of them.”

  “I got rid of Penny because she trapped me with a kid that ended up not being mine,” Torch pointed out.

  “Either you’ve got amnesia or you’re trying to rewrite history, the paternity test didn’t happen until after you filed for divorce. Yeah, you married her outta obligation but you got rid of the bitch because she was a crazy, selfish, lying, cunt. And those are the nice things I have to say about Penny.”

  “Yeah, that too.” Why the fuck were they even talking about the nutcase anyway? “I’m just saying, there wasn’t a fucking ounce of love there, it was easy to be a dick and intimidate her into staying out of my business. But Liv… Fuck man, I don’t wanna do that shit. She’s had enough assholes treat her like garbage and I’m not gonna be one of them. My woman deserves better, she’s earned it.”

  Zed nodded in understanding. “I know, that’s exactly why I think you’re looking at things all wrong, brother.”

  This he had to hear. “Yeah? Elaborate.”

  “Patience, grasshopper,” Zed mocked with the tone of an old man. “Look, all I’m saying is you’re trying to stuff your old lady in a box we both know she’ll never squeeze into. The bitch is over six feet in heels for fuck’s sake.”

  “You’re an idiot,” he smirked.

  “You’re the fucking idiot if you blow it. You’re chasing your tail trying to make sense of something that doesn’t make sense to start with. Liv’s not your typical old lady, she never will be, and you knew that before you married her. Hell, it was probably the biggest reason you did. She’s an asset and you shouldn’t waste it.”

  “Assets are people you use,” he pointed out, “I’m not fucking doing that. And I’m sure as shit not gonna willingly put her in the line of fire.”

  “Semantics, brother, she wants to be use-ful. Liv didn’t come into this blind, she tied herself to the likes of you and the club partly because it’s comfortable. You think you’re doing her a favor by trying to protect her from the chaos, but chaos is all she’s ever known. She thrives on it. She might not have the strength of a man but she’s lived an outlaw life since she was what… seventeen? Seriously, the only fucking difference between you two is the way you conduct business and get what you want. You use brawns, she uses information. You’re the only one with this problem because you’re the only one dealing with a woman who totally embraces the life. She gets it.” Zed paused and rubbed his jaw. “I mean… I don’t know if you know this, but Buddha asked her to help him die if the time comes. And she agreed.”

  “What?” Torch hissed through clenched teeth, trying not to let his rage loose on the messenger. Why the fuck was he just hearing about this now? “Did she tell you that?”

  “Nope. I tried to see if she’d spill today, but your woman knows how to keep her mouth shut.”

  “So who told you? Buddha?”

  “Yup. I brought him some pot cookies last night and he got a little loose. Said it was the only reason he agreed to keep going with his cancer treatment and let us try to find a donor.”

  Torch picked up a rock and threw it at the water as hard as he could, fucking done with Buddha’s shit. He knew there was more to the sudden change of heart, but this? Where the fuck did he get off? This was the same guy who’d been adamant about not taking money from Liv to pay off Cora because she’d already done too much. But asking her to put him down like a dog and then live with it, that wasn’t asking a lot?

  “Son of a bitch,” he huffed. “What the fuck, man? Buddha’s the one who didn’t want her doing dick for the club, but then he goes and asks her to do some shit like that?”

  Zed cocked his head and shrugged. “That’s why you don’t let anybody inside your marriage except you and your old lady, brother. Buddha’s running on fumes, his head’s all off kilter—”

  “Yeah, well, hers isn’t. She’s pissed at me for keeping shit from her and she’s doing the same goddamn thing—”

  “Her shit wasn’t a sure thing,” Zed pointed out. “She was probably just waiting and hoping the situation didn’t manifest, which is also probably the same reason she agreed to it in the first place. A transplant is Buddha’s one shot. Maybe we’ll get lucky, maybe not, but she did what it took to make him keep going and you can’t hold that against her. And Pres didn’t think she’d actually go for it—”

  “Of course he didn’t, he doesn’t know her like I do. She’d do whatever it takes.”

  “Exactly my fucking point, why the hell did you even listen to him?” Zed asked with an air of exasperation. “And back to what we were talking about, it’s like this… You found a fucking lake in the desert. But instead of drinking from it, you’d rather just s
tand on the shore and admire it for its beauty like an idiot. Does that make any goddamn sense to you either?”

  Well, no, not when he fucking put it that way. Torch frowned and asked, “So you’re saying I should just pull her into our shit, full stop?”

  Zed groaned like he was dealing with some dipshit kid who couldn’t grasp what he was getting at. “I’m saying you’ve got it made and can’t even see it, you don’t have to live a double-life like your brothers do with their women. You do illegal shit, she does illegal shit, nobody’s turning. And that sassy mouth you say you hate but you actually love? She keeps all that behind closed doors. She keeps everything behind closed doors because that’s what she knows. Torch, your woman’s as smart as she is tough, if something happens to her it definitely won’t be caused by her own stupidity.”

  “Plenty of enemies make for plenty of other causes,” Torch argued. “How the hell would I live with that?”

  Zed smirked and squeezed his shoulder. “Assuming you’d be the one to survive? I don’t know, man, I get the feeling we haven’t seen shit from Liv yet. I do know there’s nothing in the bylaws about a situation like this, according to those it’s up to a member how much he wants to tell his old lady. As long as she’s not making decisions or stepping out of line, there’s nothing wrong with bringing her into the fold and letting her help when she can. You’re standing in your own way. Look, I know none of us wanna think about it, but Buddha’s probably on his way out. Even if he makes a recovery, he might still wanna step down. I know you won’t deny him a well-deserved retirement by voting against it and it’s no secret you’re next in line. Those are big shoes to fill, use every advantage you got. You and Liv are both forces to be reckoned with on your own, if you play off each other’s strengths instead of battling it out at every fucking turn, you’d be unstoppable.”

  He let his best friend’s words sink in for a minute. Zed the fucking Love Guru, who would’ve thought? Maybe he really was making this shit a lot more complicated than it had to be.