Chapter 4
Brynn
I stood in the middle of my childhood home as tears rushed my eyes. I couldn’t believe it. After ten years of being gone, I was finally home. I drew in a deep breath and took in the familiar smoky scent. I smiled at the idea of my father still smoking cigars in his old age. Sitting on that damn leather couch that had rips and tears in it for days, smoking his cigars, chugging his beer, and holding me close to his side. I looked at the corner where we used to set up our Christmas tree. Every year, three weeks before Christmas, we’d go to the Christmas Tree lot on the other side of town and spend an hour drinking hot chocolate, picking out a tree, and sawing it down. He taught me how to use a saw when I was seven. How to push it and pull it and work together as a team to get what we both wanted.
Then we’d take it home, decorate it, and eat deformed Christmas cookies while the lights twinkled and filled our entire downstairs.
I glanced at the pictures on the wall. Pictures of my mother when she was still alive. She died giving birth to me. Well, me and my twin sister. She went into shock during labor because of a tear in her uterus that caused her to bleed out. I was the first one born, and my twin sister suffocated against the collapsed part of her uterus. In the span of an hour, my father lost his beautiful bride and one of his daughters. Which was why he’d always been so protective of me.
I was all he had left.
It was why he jumped at the opportunity to get me out of town the second he had an opening to do so.
My eyes watered at the picture of my father and my mother together. She was eight months pregnant and his arms were wrapped around her as far as they could go. It was the only family picture we had of all of us. Myself and my sister ripe in her stomach while my father held her close. Not a thing in my childhood home had been changed, or rearranged. Not a thing was out of place or switched up. The couch was still the couch and the television sat where it always did.
It was as if my entire home was encased in a pit of amber. Locked off from the rest of the world and existing in its own singular moment.
Holy hell, I’d missed my home.
I heard the front door open and I went dashing down the hallway. My father opened his arms to me and I barreled into them as tears rushed my cheeks. I buried my face into the crook of his neck as he held me close, squeezing me so tight it became hard to breathe. I collapsed into him. Into the strength of his body. Even at sixty years old, the man was stronger than ever. He buried his face into my hair. Breathed me in deeply as he curled his fingers into my body.
Almost as if he was trying to convince himself I was there.
“I’ve missed you, Daddy,” I said with a whisper.
“You have no fuckin’ clue how glad I am to see you,” my father said.
I stood there for a long time, simply embracing my father. I placed my nose against his leather cut and breathed in the familiar scent. Old rawhide, a bit of sweat, tinged with tobacco, beer, and mint. A unique combination that only my father possessed. In my dark, desperate moments, I attempted to replicate the smell. I went out and bought a black leather jacket like the one he had and smoked my first-ever cigarette while wearing it. I downed a beer and intentionally splashed a little on there, then spritzed some mint on it and went exercising in the damn thing.
It didn’t smell like my father at all, but it was the closest thing to home I had over the past few years.
Until now.
“I got somewhere we gotta go,” my father said.
I raised my head and looked into his eyes as a smile crossed my face.
“A ride on the back of your bike?” I asked.
“If you’ll let me give ya one,” he said.
I threw my arms around his neck and squealed before I reached for my purse. We headed to his bike and I settled onto the back of it like I’d never left. I hung onto my father as we drove away from my home and away from the side of town we lived in. I closed my eyes and took in the familiar sounds. The engine revving. The leather between my legs. The breadth of my father’s body as I hung on as tightly as I could. I pressed my cheek between his shoulder blades, drawing in his scent over and over again. I wanted to cloak myself in it. Memorize every part of it. I wanted to take in the wind whipping through my red hair and the dust crunching between my teeth.
Just in case my father sent me away again.
Just in case I didn’t ever come back.
If I knew my father as well as I thought I did, I knew he would have some plan now that I was here. As happy as he was to see me, I knew he wasn’t pleased. I could see the tightness in his jaw. I wasn’t sure how, but I would need to prove to him that I could handle myself.
I recognized the pavement of the parking lot as soon as we pulled in. Hornet Central, my father’s club’s bar. I giggled into his back and hopped off the bike, ready to embrace all of the men I hadn’t seen in years. They’d become my family. The people that looked after me once my father and I lost the other half of our family. Brothers and uncles. Men I’d confided in as a teenager when I felt I couldn’t talk to my father about things. They guided me on boys and gave me advice about school. I talked with a couple of them about my passion for cooking and how I wanted to go to culinary school one day.
I even confided in a few of them about Diesel. Though I doubt any of them would actually admit that to my dad. They all knew how over protective my father was.
The second I walked into the smoky bar, people erupted into cheers. Men I hadn’t seen in well over a decade ran up to me and embraced me. Picked me up and swung me around. Danced me around the room and shoved a beer into my hand. They threw questions my way, and before I could answer them more bombarded my ears. They were older. A little grayer. Some were a little more wrinkled than others. And there were a few unfamiliar faces, guys that looked to be close to my age. But they were the men I’d been surrounded with my entire life.
My men.
My family.
Until a voice from my past emanated behind me.
“Brynn.”
I froze in my place briefly before I turned around. And when my eyes took him in, my heart plummeted to my knees. He was taller. Older. With a great deal more muscle than I remembered. But those eyes. Those dark brown eyes with that ring of green around his iris.
I’d never forget those eyes.
“Diesel,” I said.
“Brynn, there’s something I gotta tell you.”
My father’s voice ripped me from my trance and my gaze flickered over to him.
“What is it?” I asked.
“You know I told you that you coming home was a threat. That it wasn’t safe.”
“Yes,” I said. “I know.”
“Well, Diesel’s club is in need of some help, so we struck a deal.”
“Uh huh,” I said as I brought my beer to my lips.
I chugged the entire thing back, knowing damn good and well I’d need the alcohol running through my veins.
“What deal did you strike?” I asked as I tried to prepare myself for his answer.
I felt Diesel’s gaze on my face the entire time I talked with my father. I couldn’t bear to look at him. If I did, I risked jumping into his arms and planting my lips right against his. And I couldn’t risk that. Not with how much time had passed between the two of us.
For all I knew, the man was married.
“You’re gonna marry Diesel so he can keep you safe, and in return we’re gonna help keep his club safe from Rex and his Black Saddle goons.”
I nearly spit out my beer. I was going to marry Diesel?!
“What?” I asked flatly.
“Brynn, you’re really at risk--”
I held my hand up to Diesel, silencing him in his tracks.
“I’m what now?” I asked as I glared at my father.
“If you wanna stay in town, you’re marrying Diesel. It’s as simple as that. Don’t wanna marry him, go back home.”
“I am home!”
The statement came out much louder than I had intended it to be. I felt my blood pressure skyrocketing. I felt my vision dimming. If there was one thing I inherited from my mother, it was her temper. I slammed my empty beer bottle down onto the bar and stormed away from my father. Diesel reached out to grab my arm and stopped me in my tracks, but I whipped around and wrapped my hand around his wrist.
“The next time you touch me, you better be prepared to lose that fucking hand, D.”
I pulled his grasp away from my skin and stormed out of the bar. Marry Diesel? Was my father fucking serious? Was this his way of trying to get me to go back where I came from? Force a marriage down my throat? He knew how independent I had become. Especially after he forced me to leave. He knew exactly how I would react to this deal of his.
I wasn’t a child any more. And I sure as hell wasn’t a piece of property that could just be married off. Rex was a stupid kid. Sure, a creepy fucking one, but a kid nonetheless. I could handle my own if he realized I was back in town. It had been ten fucking years. I doubt he would even give a shit about me anymore.
I shoved the bar doors open and spilled out into the parking lot, but a pair of heavy footfalls sounded behind me.
“Brynn. Wait up.”
I got to my father’s motorcycle before realizing I didn’t have the keys to strike it up. So, I continued walking until I got to the curb of the road.
Then, Diesel’s hand came down onto my arm again.
“What did I tell you about--?”
He whipped me around and straight into his arms. And the second my hands fell to his chest, memories came surging back. The warmth of his hands on the small of my back. His fingers intertwined with mine every Thursday afternoon as we laid out on the football field. His lips pressed into the crook of my neck as he took me against the wall of the school stairwell.
I gazed up into his eyes as my entire body trembled at his touch. But I couldn’t become weak again. I couldn’t allow him to rip away all the progress I’d made in order to stand on my own two feet. So reluctantly, after feeling his touch for the first time in a decade, I pulled away from him.
“I can’t marry you,” I said.
“Then you can come live with me. I can probably talk your father down to an engagement or something,” Diesel said.
“I’m not getting engaged to you, either,” I said.
His eyes held my gaze with that piercing stare as I drew in a deep breath.
“I can’t do any of this. All I wanted to do was come home and be with my father again. Be in my home again. Ten years, Diesel. It’s been ten fucking years.”
“Trust me, I know,” he said.
“I can’t marry you.”
“Brynn, this isn’t exactly what I wanted either.”
Any warmth that I felt being back in Diesel’s arms vanished. That was all I needed to hear to know how he felt about me. I quickly stepped away from him putting distance between us.
“I’m not marrying you,” I said flatly.
“You don’t have a choice here,” he said.
My eyes hardened on him as I balled my hands into fists.
“What do you mean, ‘I don’t have a choice’.” I said through gritted teeth. Who the hell did Diesel think he was?
“Look, this is the only way your father is going to let you stay.”
“Let me stay?!” I yelled as anger bubbled up in my chest. “I am a grown ass woman, Diesel. I can decide for myself where I live.”
Diesel just stood there. He knew exactly how fucked up this conversation was. No one was going to force me to marry anyone. This wasn’t the middle ages. Women didn’t just get married off for protection. I turned around and started to walk down the road back to my childhood home.
“All I want to do is open up a damn restaurant in my hometown. Why is that so much to ask!?” as I threw my hands up in the air in frustration. I could feel Diesel walking behind me, but I refused to turn around and face him.
“Brynn, I know this is fucked up.”
I let out a laugh. “Says the man that is telling me I have to marry him.”
“I told you this isn’t exactly what I want either.”
“Yeah you made that pretty clear,” I said as I started to walk faster. Diesel reached out for my arm again.
“Brynn, you aren’t understanding everything.”
I stopped walking and turned back to face him.
“What part am I not understanding? The part of my father being paranoid? Or the part about where you are completely on board with this?” Diesel’s face softened.
“The part of why I am on board. Rex is out on bail for murder.”
“He what?” I asked as I wrapped my arms around my chest. I stared into Diesel’s eyes. There was a sadness there that he was trying to contain.
“He’s out. And he is out for blood. Please Brynn. Right now, I am just trying to keep you and my club safe.”
“Diesel, keeping me safe doesn’t require you --.”
“Brynn. I visited your grave every Thursday for ten years.”
I swallowed thickly as Diesel took a step towards me.
“Ten years, grieving you. Ten years, wasting away behind a bottle of beer and analyzing people. Making sure I could keep my club safe. Making sure I could keep anyone around me safe. Because I couldn’t keep you safe, Brynn.”
“That doesn’t mean I’m going to marry you, Diesel Just because we had a thing in high school doesn’t mean--”
His arms wrapped around me and pulled me closer to him. So close I felt his rapidly-beating heart banging against my chest. His heat drew tears to my eyes. His words felt hot against my ears. But none of that required marriage.
My being protected didn’t require a lifelong commitment.
“I’m not going to be forced to marry you,” I said as I flattened my hands upon his chest.
“Then here’s my compromise,” Diesel said. “You allow me to protect you, and you can stay. If you don’t, you’re gone.”
“You don’t have that kind of control over me.”
“Watch me,” he said.
I shoved him away from me as I stumbled onto my feet. I didn’t want to hear another word of what anyone had to say. If they thought for one fucking second I was going along with this asinine plan, then they were wrong. If they thought for one fucking second that they could control my actions any longer, they were sorely mistaken.
I was shoved out of this town against my will once before. I sure as hell wasn’t going to let that happen again.
So instead of saying so many things I knew I would regret, I turned and began walking down the road.
Walking back towards the only place that ever really felt like home.