CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

“Going back to the past doesn’t hurt, it’s returning to the future without someone you love that does the hurting.” – Ruby

 

 

 

Ruby had to eat crow regarding the Renegade Souls boys. She’d had preconceived judgments about that crew of people simply because they were bikers. They were some of the best bunch of men she’d ever met who had a long reach for caring for their own.

Sweetheart bikers. Now there was an oxymoron.

Maybe it was just the bikers she’d been around that were assholes, and she could attest, she wouldn’t spit on those men her father associated with if they were on fire. Either way, she liked working at the RS. And it wasn’t bad getting to know Zara, either. They'd become friendly in a short amount of time. 

They’d all thanked her for what she’d done for Preacher like she had delivered some big presentation in front of all of them and they’d been impressed with the PowerPoint.

They cared and they cared big and didn’t mind who knew it. Bikers with hearts, it was a thing, apparently.

She sat sideways on the couch, her knees touching Preacher’s thigh. She’d brought home Mexican food, watched him eat all of it, made sure he drank some water, not beer, he looked more rested than he had earlier.

“Can you tell me about what happens to you, Asher? Does your PTSD have triggers?” she’d scoured the internet on her break, reading everything she could, soaking up information and treatments for his condition.

The silence said he was deciding whether to blow her off or not. She let him make that decision, she wanted to know because he wanted her to know, not because she’d pressured him into it.

“It comes and goes, it’s been a while. It can be noises that set it off, like today with that car backfiring. Or it is lack of sleep. I don’t try to get to that point if I can help it.”

“That’s why you won’t sleep next to me? Because of what Red Light said?”

“Yeah.” He gruffed, not meeting her eyes. “Can’t chance I have at attack in my sleep.”

“What if you never do again, we can’t ever sleep together?”

“Maybe. I don’t know, beautiful. I’m trying to manage it, but honestly, I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing.”

“I would never have known you had PTSD, so I think you’re managing it as fine as you can, Preacher. What about this, if we sleep together and it looks like you’re having a nightmare I won’t try to bring you out of it, I’ll go to another room.”

She really wanted them to sleep together.

His head came up, she was pinned with green and curiosity.” You’d take that risk?”

“Yes. I want to be close to you in bed,” she paused. "If that's what you want."

When he only nodded, like words were too big for his tongue to form, she smiled, and leaned over his forearm to kiss his cheek, he caught her face, turned the chaste kiss into something hotter until she was left breathless. She curled her feet under her butt, leaning into his body.

“Will you tell me about Shane?”

 

 

 

******

 

To tell the story of Shane he had to go back to the beginning. "I was eighteen, fresh out of high school, I scraped by with my GED, I wasn’t what you’d call academic so it was funny my parents assumed I would hit up colleges. I was already disappointing them so why not go the whole way right? I enlisted without telling them, they were furious. I think Ma cried for a week. I was a cocksure kid, imagine that huh?” He smiled across to Ruby. “Thought I knew everything, I was untouchable Teflon. My big brother with his idol walk, finished his four years of college, ready to start in the family construction business, what do you know, the jerk enlisted right alongside to watch out for me." Preacher inhaled air into his tight lungs, why the fuck was he telling this story? He knew how it ended, and no matter how many times he said it the ending always gutted him.

Ghosts sat on his shoulder, weighed down his chest as he continued. "Shane was the better soldier, he took to it like he was born to defend the world, he was just that type of guy, everyone loved him, looked up to him, I fucking ached to be like him so I worked my ass off and I got there, after two tours I made rank, had my own men under my command. Youngest officer they’d had that year.

“When we were due to come home I knew I wasn't ready, everything we'd seen overseas, it changes you, no one can understand unless they were there, it’d worn Shane down, he'd started heavy binge-drinking, I wanted him out, and I thought he was, until he discovered I'd signed for another stint." His smile in remembrance was forced, pained, he felt Ruby's hand touch his forearm.

The gutting wasn't yet, but this memory always hurt him for the fact he'd misled his brother, the man he worshiped above everyone. Shane had only been in the army, to begin with, because of him, he'd no interest before, and it was destroying him. "We fought that time for the first time since we were boys. He was so pissed, but worse, he was sad, we said some hateful shit to each other. He re-signed up that week. Motherfucker didn’t even want to be there anymore, and he stayed because of me."

"He sounds like quite a guy, Asher. To do that for his brother, so you weren't over there alone."

"Yeah. He was the best. And, a dickhead. Who the fuck does that? He should have been at home, making babies with his girl, settling down, using his Captain America cape for good, not trailing around the desert keeping my ass out of trouble."

"What a jerk." She smiled entwining their fingertips. He grabbed on and didn’t let go.  “I bet you got into a lot of trouble.” Her hand was a touchstone to the present as he let his mind go back in time.

To that Thursday. An ordinary day. Patrol, nothing unusual, when you'd seen it all, every atrocity known to mankind, the cruelty one person could do to another without blinking, man or child, nothing shocked anymore. Preacher's troops were meant to head back to base at six and then they had three glorious days off, there was never much to do, but for the fact, he could sleep was good enough for Preacher. He'd grinned over to Shane in his UCP combats carrying his gun and both men stepped into the street together heading away from the few shacks in the middle of Puli Khumri, if not for the war and the blistering heat that made Preacher think he was being boiled alive every minute of the day, he could have enjoyed the scenery. He was hot, sweaty and tired as fuck, ready for his bed even though it was not quite six yet. "Hold up, I forgot my water bottle," he told his men.

"Asshat, you'd forget your head if it wasn't screwed on. I'll get it, I need a piss anyway." His brother told him. He could still hear the timber of Shane’s laugh.

Preacher counted in his mind the steps Shane took away from him. One. Two. Three. Four. Five. Six and then ... one of the tin shacks no bigger than a post office, a local feed house for the cattle, blew the hell up. It hadn’t even been on the watch list. Who the fuck would blow up a shack full of cow feed? Later, much later, he could only guess it was because of the soldier presence. His entire life changed in that lone second with smoke filling the air.

It all happened so fast, pandemonium came soon after. Those harrowing minutes all blended together as one clusterfuck. He wasn't unused to the unexpected happening, it was what they were trained for, but what he didn't have lessons in was watching his big brother being blown apart. He’d tried to get to him, he’d tried so damn hard, the flames, the carnage, his own body injured from the fallout, the thick smoke, the teammates that were left had had to bodily drag him kicking and screaming away from the area.

Sitting next to Ruby, with her scent enveloping, his chest inflated tamping down the panic he had buzzing in his head, he let it out raggedly, voice flat as he looked at the compassion on Ruby's face as he'd recounted those tragic devastating events. "So, he died. There was nothing left of him, nothing left for me to hold as he died, he was just gone. I fucking hated him for a long time, Rubes. We were all in the wrong place at the wrong time. Why him? How dare he just up and die like that."

"Selfish." Her voice watery, he didn't know he'd twined her fingers until he felt her stroking his. He let his eyes drift to their linked hands, better that than to look in her eyes, he couldn’t swallow pity.

Shane had died. That was that.

"I was discharged with honors not long after."

"Were you injured in the blast?"

"Nah, not really." Only shrapnel, his two knee joints blown out, now replaced with metal plates, all his ribs busted, oh, and the jagged piece of building that had ricocheted in the explosion and punctured a major artery, he'd been told afterward he'd died once on the operating table. He'd wished for a long time they'd left him that way. "Just a scrape or two. Two of my men didn’t make it, though. One died right there, another in surgery.”

“Once I got home, I didn't stick around long after that, couldn't take my parent's grief." Or the way they didn't blame him. Why the fuck not, Shane was dead because of him, HE blamed himself.

"That's how you met Grinder?"

"Yeah, a couple years later, complete random meet one drunken night, ended up at the Souls after that and the rest is history."

“It’s perfectly acceptable to have survivors guilt, Asher. He was your brother and the worse thing possible happened right in front of you. That’s going to have an effect. But you shouldn’t blame yourself.”

His face became a hard rock. It was the only way he knew how to cope with the enormity of it all. Demons found you, in the dark, in secret hidden places, they found you, it was the reason he'd never took to drinking his problems away, why would he want to be delirious and pounded by demons simultaneously? He took his self-reproach sober straight up with a twist.

“I’m not a good person, Rubes. I all but abandoned my crew afterward, we were tight, best friends, like family really, it’s day in day out drag down bone crushing mind numbing danger with only each other to watch your back. But after I got out...“

Preacher’s breath shuddered hard, stroking repeatedly on his beard. “I just fell off the grid. I got word a few times about my crew that were left were trying to get in touch with me, those shitty reunion anniversaries like I wanted to celebrate anything we did over there, mom would pass on their messages and I’d bullshit and say I’d get in touch. I never did. “

“Why did you push everyone away?”

“The memories hurt, it became too much to even function day to day. They made me sad. Made me angry. I didn’t want it shoved in my face and all anyone ever wants to do is talk about the glory days. Nothing good comes of that except I get hurt, sad and angry all over again until I want to inflict my pain on someone else. He died. What more is there to talk about?”

“Maybe they just missed you, if you were a family like you said. Maybe they miss your brother and teammates just as much and seeing each other is a touchstone to them. I think they miss their leader and friend, Asher.”

“Yeah. Maybe. I was in a bad place back then. From today’s little show it doesn’t look much different, right?” Chancing a glance sideways he found dark eyes on him. He’d already spilled his guts, he didn’t stop there and shared what he’d never said out loud before.

“I can’t seek absolution from anyone when I can’t forgive myself. I don’t deserve it when I know it should be me six feet under and Shane here living a life, being a great dad and adding more to the world than I ever could.”

“Asher…” her face was captivating pinched with sympathy as she rested her chin on his shoulder, her hand rubbing the center of his chest, he felt the warmth of it seep in and stay there. He covered her hand. “I’m glad it wasn’t you. The world would have missed out on your ego, Preacher man.” He smiled. “I’m so sorry it was your brother, but don’t say you wish it were you.”

The quietly impassioned way she said it like he’d hurt her somewhere deep, he had a cyclone of want blustering through his bones. Lifting her hand, he kissed her fingers briefly.

This woman. He was only beginning to understand it, but he felt like he’d never get to the end of her. He wanted to dig up all her secrets, make them his own.

"It was the one time I did something for me, and he was the unlucky shit that gets killed, I can’t see the fairness,” he smiled ruefully, the sadness flowing in and draining deep.

Those decisions you made that fucked you up the most were often the ones you didn’t know were the worst possible decision until it was too late. If only he’d had some warning, an inkling that he was fucking up the future for all his family and that he'd never have a true day’s happiness ever again he probably would have rethought that choice. “I couldn’t even do that right. How fucked up is that, tiny dancer? I’m pissed he died first. I can’t get passed it, it’s festering in here.”

“It’s not fucked up, Asher.” When she covered their clasped hands with her other one he could swear he felt it punch in his heart. He clutched her fingers and didn’t let go. “He died and you have no one to be angry at. That is so unfair. I’d punch him right in the nose if he were here now.”

Preacher snickered then sobered.

“He had more to live for. Should have been me.”

He couldn’t take his eyes off their laced hands, tanned rough scarred and tattooed skin against her gloriously unmarred brown skin.

She was perfection and she didn’t even know it. Ruby grounded him. What he'd found in her was that rare happiness eluding him. All along it was with her, now he didn't know what to do about it.

“Don’t say that, darling. We all have something to live for even if we don’t recognize what it is. Everyone’s life is precious. Yours included. Your brother would tell you the same. Think of those prized years you had with him, those were good times, right? it's more than some get, you had this great hero in your life, but don’t ever doubt you are a hero as well.”

“He’d tell me to stop having a pity party unless I brought some seventy-proof booze. Then he’d tell me to yank my head out my ass and stop fucking whining and get on with life before I was in a pine box next to him.” Ruby chuckled and he found himself smiling for real this time. Shane would absolutely kick his ass over his self-imposed guilt. His family didn’t blame him, but he couldn’t seem to stop. If he stopped what would he have then?

“Will you tell me a story about Shane that has nothing to do with the army? Something only you’d know.” He took her hand back to his chest again, left it there over his thumping organ she’d brought back to life, her free hand came up around the back of his neck, stroking.

If she kept touching him, he’d tell her anything she wanted.

He remembered a story, smiled and began. “My whole life I wanted to be exactly like Shane, it was just us for the longest time, Tyler was a make-up baby. Shane was the bravest, toughest kid, great at everything, got all the girls and grades, I should have hated him, but I didn’t.

“Me, I was dumb as a rock, my dyslexia hadn’t been diagnosed at that point, so I couldn’t change that, but I did everything he did and he never seemed to mind I followed him around.”

“I think I would have liked big brother. Was he handsome with your same eyes?” Head reared up, eyes narrowed to see her teasing. “Pushing it, tiny dancer, I’ll put you over my knee.”

“Big tough bully.”

“I got the looks in my family if you must know. He was pig ugly, so is Tyler, so don’t think you can corrupt him either, cougar, you’d eat the boy alive and leave him hollow.”

“I can only deal with one Priest at a time, you men are wearing on a girl,” she said it as a joke but he took it as absolute gospel and damn him if he didn’t like the compliment. He was getting to the tiny dancer with more than just sex.

“Get to the story.” She nudged.

“Well, this one time, I was maybe thirteen, fourteen, Shane a few years older, and he had about five girlfriends at the time.”

“Romeo.”

“Oh yeah.”

“Now we know where you learned it from,” Preacher smirked and went on. “See, I was an early starter with the ladies.”

“Shocker.”

“But I didn’t have Shane’s game, not then. But I wanted one of his girls, she was gorgeous, had real nice tits as I recall and was mysteriously older. Anyway, so I seduced her, she gave me my first blowjob.

Shane beat ten bells of shite out of me when he found out,” the memory brought a grin to his craggy face, he settled into it, let the images play out, damn, that had been a wild summer of discovery, Mel…nah, Marnie, maybe? Yeah, Marnie sounded right, she had an expert tongue on her and he’d fancied himself in love for all of five minutes.

“Then while I was bloodied he told me you don’t steal women from each other and he would have given her to me had I told him I liked her.”

Ruby laughed, pressing her forehead to his arm. She wore her usual vanilla scent, she was conditioning him to get hard every time he fucking smelled it.

“Nice brother. Chauvinistic, but nice.”

They were silent for a few minutes.

“I feel fucking ancient some days,” he admitted lying his head back on the couch.

“What are you, forty-five, fifty?” The light in her eyes was the only indication she was joking or Preacher was going to put her over his knee and wallop fifty fucking spanks on her gorgeous ass.

“Nearly. Thirty-three, recently actually.”

“We should get a cake.”

“Is that so?”

“Absolutely. It was the only good thing my mom ever did, she said we always needed a cake for birthdays and no matter how stoned she was, we had cake on our birthday. No presents, but still, a cake. It was nice. Always buttercream frosting. Rita liked that hard icing kind, me, I liked the frosting.”

“Damn, baby.” His chest ached for another reason, to picture a smaller Ruby with no one to make her birthday special. Leaning over, he kissed her forehead, knew he’d embarrassed her when she roughed his shoulder with hers. He’d get her ten cakes every birthday.

“Ancient history.” The smile didn’t reach her eyes. She tried to pull her fingers away and he wouldn’t let her, instead, he brought them to his lips, nibbled along her index finger. “So, cake?” she prompted.

“Sure. Not much of a sweet eater though, but I'll feed you the cake. After I’m done fucking you.”

“Cake is my reward?”

“The fucking orgasms I’ll make you shake with are your reward, Rubes. Cake is a bonus.”

“Wildman promising cake and sex.”

“Sex first. And I used to be wild, beautiful, didn’t you hear that girlfriend stealing story?”

Ruby scoffed, he arched a brow over her knuckles he was still nibbling on. Her skin was the best flavor; salt, tart, sweet, fucking addicting.

“Used to be wild? Preacher man, you were banging anything in a skirt just a few short weeks ago.”

“I’m a changed man.” His smirk wicked, promising more than cake and orgasms that was for sure.

“Mmhm, of course, you are. A pervert doesn’t change his kinky spots.”

“Beautiful, that little darling you have between your legs, probably not encased in underwear and I don’t even want to know right now or it’ll drive me fucking nuts, is all the sweetness I want. You sick of me already?”

She chewed on her lip, met his gaze head on. He loved when she did that, no avoiding the emotions on her face, clear as day. “I think you have a few more turns in you, old man. I mean, Preacher man.”

Sassy girl. He bit gently into her palm, her gasp was his green light to flick his tongue after it. He wanted to be licking more than her hand.

Something sweeter he was damn addicted to swallowing, feeling it bloom and swell against his tongue until she gushed her pleasure down his throat. She did wonders for taking his mind off the bad and focusing the good.

He was doing the same as he used to when his PTSD was at its worst, he could feel it in his gut, in his head, he was hiding behind any good thing he could get his hands on; sex and booze. Never drugs, but he’d thought about it on dark lonely days when he couldn’t see the end in sight, he’d sat and thought about it.

Ruby was more dangerous than any hard narcotic.

For a while sitting there recounting good stories about Shane he forgot his buried anger and allowed himself to feel what he was feeling; missing his brother.

He was no hero, but sometimes it was good to pretend. Ruby made it easy as she stayed at his side, holding his hand, laughing at the right things, asking him for another story, he felt like the hero.

He understood better than most the desire for anonymity, he’d found it in the Renegade Souls. No one cared who he was before, just who he was to his club brothers now.

He was an outlaw. Not a nice one either.

He was doing shady shit even before Rider recruited him into the club. He didn’t mind getting his hands dirty, the only thing he refused to do anymore was to use his military sharpshooter skill. He'd bluntly told Rider before patching in that was off the table. He had no interest in being an enforcer, just as well the club had two on staff with Hawk and Lawless, those two crazy fucks would toss a coin to see who got to do the murdering.

Rider needed a guy beat down; Preacher could do that. They needed someone leaned on for info, Preacher stepped in. He had contacts all over the country for their shady dealings that came in useful.  He could easily give his road captain position to another member more suited, but he enjoyed it, the organizing rides for the brothers, the freedom, being the man in front when they went out in force together. An adrenaline rush no drug could touch. Same as his military days.

Fuck. he was a dick for leaving his team in the wind. No man left behind. And he’d walked away without a backward glance. Shane. O’Mara. Denby. All lost their lives that day. And Preacher had walked the fuck away from those who survived. Cunt move.

His chest felt lighter somehow. An hour ago, he would have thought it impossible to ever feel that way again. A smile cracked up one side of his face as he coasted his free hand over the shaved part of his skull, it felt a little long, he needed it clipping again. It flashed a memory that made him grin. “Did I ever tell you, baby, about the time Shane said he’d give me a cool as fuck haircut and I ended up with a sideways mohawk? I was the most badass five-year-old at kindergarten.”

Ruby’s giggle was a goddamn balm.

Preacher talked for another hour.