Present Day
I looked across the deck of the oil rig. This rig was where I found my solace from the noise in my head that still hadn’t faded after five years. Every two weeks, a knot tightened in my gut when we boarded the helicopter and headed back to the mainland of New Orleans for another two weeks where I’d drown my memories before they ate me alive. The rig used to feel like a reprieve from all my bullshit. Lately, it had felt like a prison sentence.
“Heli’s loaded and ready to fly.” Our rig captain, Tucker, clasped a hand onto my shoulder and gave me a small shove as he hustled by me on his way to the helipad. The sound of the whirring blades almost drowned out his shouts when he yelled at the other men who had been waiting for the final preparations to be made. Gear had been weighed, along with the men. Heli checks were completed, and we were ready to fly.
I followed the rest of the men into the helicopter and felt a forceful breath leave my chest once I buckled into my seat and put my headset on. We were three miles from the rig, still twenty minutes from land, when Tucker’s voice came through my ear piece.
“You coming out tonight or are you headed back to your ball and chain?” He was almost old enough to be my dad, and even though there were eight other men on the bird with us, I knew he was talking to me. A few snickers came through the headset following his question.
“You doing anything different tonight besides pissing and moaning about how much your lives suck while you get drunk?” I asked in order to avoid any questions about Meg.
From across the small aisle, my friend, Pete, caught my gaze and shrugged, giving me the silent answer that he was up for whatever. Besides Pete, no one knew the arrangement I had with Meg. Pete had been friends with Meg’s husband, Byron, long before I met Byron. I showed up in New Orleans with nowhere else to go and got to know Byron well before he landed me a job on his deep sea oil rig along with Pete. Before Byron died, I made promises to him that I could never walk away from.
I had done that once, and I wouldn’t do it again.
Faith.
Bile rose in my stomach like it always did when I thought about her. Five years later and I still wasn’t over the betrayal or the sting of her deception I had witnessed with my own eyes.
Taking care of Meg was easy. It came with no expectations from either of us except for financial support and friendship. Other than that, we were free to pursue whatever we wanted.
Mostly, it was me doing the pursuing. It didn’t matter how often I encouraged Meg to get back out there and find a man who could truly love her again. She always insisted she was fine.
Until the day came that she changed her mind, she was my responsibility. It was the wish of a man who had come to mean almost as much to me as my own brother, Daemon. And since Byron’s death was also due to my incompetence, I would honor my promise to take care of Meg and their little boy, Brayden.
Tucker threw back a laugh, breaking me out of whatever the hell my mind was starting to think about. He was a big guy with a full, closely cropped beard. He had a beer gut the size of Alabama and was as rough as any guy could be. When he laughed, his shaking stomach reminded me of the Santa Claus that Daemon and I used to see at the shopping mall when we were kids.
“You’re such a shit, Ryker. Someday your heart is going to explode from all the stress you carry around with you.”
My lungs began to restrict and my teeth ground against one another at the sounds of the men laughing through their headsets. They had no idea the shit I kept buried inside where no one could reach.
“Sort of like your gut.” I poked my finger toward the old man’s stomach. More laughter rang in my ears, along with the jeering for me to join them before they headed home for their stay.
I narrowed my eyes at the rest of the men. I had only been working on the rig for four years, but we were tight. Spending twenty-four hours a day for two weeks straight with the same, small group of men had turned them into my pseudo-family. Men who worked on oil rigs in the middle of the Gulf of Mexico had a tendency to scatter as soon as we hit the mainland. The men I worked with had wives and families all over the States. I was surprised by the looks on their faces; it seemed like this was a planned invitation and party.
“What?” I asked slowly. A muscle tightened in my jaw as I forced out the one word question.
Pete looked around the helicopter apprehensively while some of the men grinned wildly.
“Bachelor party time, Ryker.”
My lips curled into a sneer in Hunter’s direction. Dumbass men. No matter how many times I told them it wasn’t like that with Meg and me, they never gave up.
“We’re not getting married.”
My shoulders shook when a hand from the seat next to me grabbed it and shoved me back and forth. I speared Hunter with a look that should have had him scared as hell, but he was too crazy to be afraid of me.
Hunter laughed with the rest of the men, except for Pete, whose face went ashen white and his hands curled into fists. “You’ve been banging that woman for two years, Ryker. It’s only a matter of time. Besides, Tucker needs some strippers to keep him company tonight.”
A small laugh escaped my throat before I could stop it. Tucker and his hookers. The man was insane and also recently divorced—probably due to the hookers he couldn’t keep his hands off of.
I shook my head anyway and saw Pete relax. He understood why I took care of Meg, but he wasn’t always happy with the fact that Byron told me, instead of him, to take care of her. They’d all been friends since they were kids; however, Byron understood my past. The asshole probably knew before he died that I would never be able to leave another woman alone again. Byron also understood that Pete had a life to live, whereas my life was solely wrapped up in whatever weekend pussy I could find on our “home weeks” and working on the rig.
“You guys enjoy your own hookers. I’m not interested.” I clipped it out and they knew from the tight expression on my face that I wouldn’t change my mind. The men gave me shit and then went on to discussing sports and something else I started ignoring while the memories that were always on the fringe of my mind fought to become forefront in my head.
I had smelled the blood outside my dad’s house before I hit the front door. The metallic smell had filled the night air, and I’d reached for my gun, holding it firmly in my right hand like my dad had taught me to every day since I was six years old. Our life makes this skill necessary, son, but never shoot unless you mean to kill. There’s almost always another way before it turns to death.
He had been wrong. Because that night, when I had gone to my dad’s in order to convince the club to take care of Faith and her mom, there had been no other way.
When I’d walked up to the house, I saw Cherry, Liv’s mom, lying on the couch, her brains blown all over the place. My dad was on the ground, blood drying from a wound in his head, silently struggling to stand up. Then there was a man with his back turned to me, aiming a gun directly at my brother’s girlfriend, Liv.
There had been no other option in that moment. I had opened the screen door, my gun cocked and loaded. The quick squeak of the hinges on the door immediately alerted the man to my presence.
He turned and aimed his gun at me. We fired simultaneously—but also at the same time, my dad jumped to his feet to save me. Both of our bullets pierced his torso. Distracted over the fact I had just shot my dad, I let the man run toward the back door. He fired one more shot at me, missed, and then took off.
And I had let him go. I had fucked up. I had frozen and stood there while my dad bled out in front of me due to a bullet I had given him. I’d stared at the scene in front of me: Cherry dead on the couch and Liv’s head hanging limply on her shoulder, completely passed out with vomit dripping from her chin and blood draining from her leg. And after Daemon and the other men in the club showed up, they told me to get the hell out of there and let them clean up the mess.
A stronger man would’ve gotten his shit together and cleaned up the mess himself.
Instead, I had gone to Faith. I ran to my fiancée, the woman I needed, the woman I loved, in shock and desperate for her to remove the blood and guilt from my hands, only to find her locked in a kiss with a man wearing a Black Death cut. His hands pressed into her cheeks and her fists gripped his leather cut. They made out like they were lovers while I stared at them from the driver seat of my truck, watching my fiancée making out with a man from a motorcycle club that was an enemy to my dad’s club.
I did the only thing I could think of to escape the guilt, the anger, and the hatred for a woman who would so quickly turn on me. I left town and drove my truck until I hit the coast. Besides my infrequent talks with Daemon whenever he would call, I never looked back.
“Hey, fucker, what the hell’s wrong with you?” The jostling of my shoulders snapped me back to reality. I wiped the sweat from my forehead and blew out a breath, staring at Pete’s face as he bent over, inches from my eyes. “Where were you?”
I shook my head and noticed the helicopter was empty except for us.
“Nowhere, man,” I told him, removing my headset and unbuckling my safety harness. “I need a fucking drink.”
Pete grinned. He took a step back from me so I could stand up and then followed me out of the helicopter. “Let’s go find some women, then.”
Not exactly what I originally had in mind, but I’d take it. Easy women always quieted the nightmares in the darkness of nightfall. That and whiskey. Lots of whiskey.
“Aw man, check her out.”
I almost didn’t look, but Pete’s eyes turned glassy as he checked out someone behind me, and I knew it wasn’t from the alcohol. His lust-filled expression made it too tempting to not take a peek.
Hot damn. Long blonde hair assaulted my vision the second I turned around. It fell down her back to a tiny waist. It was a waist that made men want to dig their fingers into it. Then there were her legs. Legs that seemed to go on forever, even though she wasn’t very tall.
Men fantasized about women like this. They jerked off to visions of women with her Barbie-doll shape, and I wasn’t any different. She was the perfect distraction.
My lip curled, and I took a large sip of my whiskey, the ice rattling against the glass.
“Told you you’d like that,” Pete said, leaning over next to me. The bar we were at was a dump. It was a few streets over from Canal Street—just far enough away from where the majority of New Orleans tourists wouldn’t typically venture. It was where Pete and I hung out for a night or two to unwind from the constant stress of not killing ourselves in the middle of the Gulf. There was a jazz musician on the stage playing his saxophone, and while I hated jazz music—never understood it—he sounded good. “Those legs… those tits… damn. She’s the hottest chick I’ve ever seen.”
I watched my buddy drool over the woman at the end of the bar as she sat nursing a glass of red wine all by herself. She looked like she could be waiting for someone, probably a man, and I wasn’t in the mood for a bar fight. Not tonight.
I wanted to drown myself in my liquor, call a cab, and then head to Meg’s house so I could be there before Brayden woke up the next morning.
“You can have her.” I stared at Pete and watched his eyes practically go cross-eyed as he took another peek at the beautiful distraction.
“Nah, man.” He tipped his beer bottle to his lips and took a slow swallow. “Looks like it’s you she’s interested in. What the fuck is it with women wanting tall, dark assholes like you in their bed?”
I grinned and laughed despite myself. Fuck it. If he didn’t want her, I’d take her. I slapped him on the shoulder and uncurled from the barstool, rising to my full height, just over six feet. “Because women know pretty boys with their preppy haircuts and girly blue eyes are shit in bed.”
“Fuck you, man.” But Pete was laughing as he said it. It was the same shit we always gave each other. Pete looked like he belonged on a billboard modeling Calvin Klein underwear in Times Square, not working on a rig with a bunch of broody, overweight, and bearded men. He turned his back to the bar and surveyed the rest of the decent-sized crowd while I slowly sauntered over to the woman with the wine glass.
I caught her looking at me out of the corner of her eye before I reached her. I knew that look. It was the look that said a woman wanted you but wanted to pretend she wasn’t easy, either.
As I hit the barstool next to her, her eyes darted away from me and down to her almost empty glass. A hint of a smile ghosted the edges of her lips.
“Ryker.” I extended my hand.
She looked for a second, her grin growing slightly larger, but she didn’t take it. I shrugged and put it back in my front pocket. It didn’t matter. I didn’t need to know her name. She was beautiful, and I’d gladly take her to bed for one fun-filled night. A night that included more whiskey and wine, very little sleep, and even less talking.
She looked at me, interested yet hesitant, over the top of her wine glass before finishing it off. “Your mother not like you?”
I grinned wickedly. “Take me to bed or lose me forever.”
Her eyes melted into soft pools of lust right before she choked on her last drink of wine. “Pardon?”
“I’m sorry.” I flashed her a lopsided grin and shrugged. I wasn’t sorry. “I thought we were randomly quoting Top Gun.”
“Funny.”
“And smart.” I looked down at my chest and her eyes followed. “And sexy. At least that’s what the ladies tell me.”
She looked at me like I was trouble. She wasn’t wrong, but still, she smiled. “Arrogant, too.”
“I prefer confident and charming.” I splayed my hands flat on the bar in front of me, slapping it once to get the bartender’s attention, and then turned to her. “Now that we have my positive attributes out of the way, let me buy you a drink.”
“Another for the lady, please.” I raised my almost empty highball glass. “And another whiskey for myself. Two fingers.”
“Elizabeth,” she said slowly, and that hint of a smile returned to her lips. “My name is Elizabeth.” I caught the faint tease of an accent that sounded a bit too familiar. A bit too northern for her to be local. I blinked and nodded toward the bartender.
From the corner of my eyes, I watched Elizabeth’s eyes drop to my glass… and my fingers. A pale pink hit her cheeks as she swallowed slowly.
This was going to be easier than I imagined.
I thought about starting basic conversation while the bartender refilled our drinks but stopped myself. I didn’t need this woman getting thoughts in her head that I actually cared about her. That always made the next morning more of a headache than necessary.
I slipped the bartender a twenty when he slid the drinks in front of us and turned to Elizabeth. Beautiful name for a beautiful girl. She truly was. She wasn’t dressed like she was seeking attention in skinny jeans and a grey shirt that draped off one of her shoulders. Her eyes stayed fixed on her drink as if she really didn’t pick up men in bars often.
I sighed. Maybe I should give her to Pete. She almost seemed too innocent, too kind, to be mixed up with me, but I really needed to forget the memories that were still too close to the front of my mind from earlier.
“So,” I started to say, but was interrupted almost immediately by the buzzing of my phone. “Sorry.” I apologized and watched her take a deep breath. Gaining courage or relieved she had a break from me? Whatever. I shrugged my shoulders and pulled my phone out of my back pocket where it was vibrating away.
I expected Meg. She almost always called to see if our helicopter landed safely.
I didn’t expect it to be Daemon. It’d only been a few weeks since I talked to him, but I knew he was freaking the fuck out now that his ex-girlfriend, Olivia, was back in town and knocked up by a cop they had all been friends with years ago.
Sighing, I knew I had to take it. He’d hound me until I picked up.
“What’s up, brother?” I asked as soon as he growled my name. Instantly, I knew something was wrong, but I smiled at Elizabeth anyway. She watched me with nerves written all over her face and a slight trembling of her hands while she clutched her wine glass with her long, slender fingers and perfectly manicured nails. Damn, she was really gorgeous. If Daemon fucked this up for me, I’d strangle the asshole.
“I need you, Ryke.”
My heart skipped a beat. No.
I quickly took a swig of my whiskey, draining the entire glass. Something was wrong. Daemon’s voice sounded full of pain and desperation. That was the only way he’d need me anyway—if he were desperate.
I looked at Elizabeth. Her brows were pulled together, concerned about whatever was showing on my face. “I’ll be back in a few minutes, yeah sweetie?” I smiled, trying to make it sound friendly and genuine. Based on her frown, I failed miserably.
Blackness… pressure was pushing down on me and stealing the breath from my lungs. Whatever Daemon had to say to me was going to fuck with my head. I knew it.
I told him to hold on before I pushed through the doors to the jazz bar. The summer humidity in New Orleans slammed against my chest, making it hard to breathe while I began pacing the sidewalk.
“What’s up, D?”
His voice was shaky as it came through the phone. Shit. My brother was losing it. “I need you, Ryke. I need you here.”
No. Fucking. Way.
My feet froze on the cement and I collapsed against a brick wall. The cement dug into my back through my thin black t-shirt. Back to Jasper Bay? The man was fucked outside his head if he thought that was going to happen.
“What the fuck, Daemon?”
“Liv’s been shot.” Blood poured down her legs as vomit dripped from her lips, Cherry’s brains splattered all over the couch. I gasped for breath as the night almost five years ago flashed in my mind.
My dad jumped. Guns went off. Two bullets fired right before my dad collapsed to his knees, sinking to the floor.
My free hand gripped my hair before I smacked my head against the cement to get the pictures out of my head. Blood. All that damn blood.
“She okay?” I asked. Maybe? Something came out of my mouth, but it felt filled with cotton, so I couldn’t be sure. Olivia shot? Again?
“No, Ryke. She’s not. I need you, man. I’ve never asked you for a single fuckin’ thing. But this? I need you. Shit isn’t good.” Daemon was impatient, angry even. I could tell he was tense and scared. Shit…
I had left him alone to deal with this once before.
But still… I couldn’t.
“I can’t, Daemon. You know I can’t go back there.” I couldn’t stop the memories. Bullets. Blood. Black Death MC Member with his lips on Faith’s. Fuck!
He growled at me, using the name brother in a way that meant something deeper between us than just our blood. Damn it. “My girl’s been shot and she’s lost her kid. And we have problems in the club that are bigger than any shit we’ve ever seen. I need you.”
No way. There was no way I could do what he was asking. I had Meg to take care of now. Another promise made to a woman who lost her man, another death on my hands.
Jasper Bay was my past. One I couldn’t return to.
New Orleans… Meg… Brayden… those were my priorities now.
But I couldn’t stop remembering. Olivia, eighteen years old and tied to a chair with blood everywhere. It seeped from her legs and trailed down her cheeks. She reeked like piss and vomit, and her head was flopped to the side, unconscious.
I was so screwed.
I inhaled a deep breath, my eyes closed, and the heat beat down on me in the New Orleans night. My hand ran through my hair again, and I scratched the back of my neck until I hurt.
Finally… slowly… I breathed out my acquiescence. It was going to kill me to go back, but shit, Daemon was right. I had left him alone to deal with the fallout from the shooting five years ago.
I could never forgive myself if I let it happen again.
“All right, brother. I’ll get there as soon as I can.” Daemon breathed heavily through the phone, as if my willingness to return home allowed him to dispel the weight on his shoulders. “I’m not stayin’, though. One week, that’s it. I can’t be there for longer than that.”
I ended the call, snapped the phone closed, and slipped it back into my pocket before he was done talking again.
This wouldn’t end well.