A minute later she heard the roar of five bikes come to life and haul off down the road. She wondered how many people it woke up, and who might call the police for the disturbance. She watched them from the window, driving off like modern day knights. Not the good ones you saw in movies, who rescued maidens and slayed dragons, but the historic enforcers to some little king’s law. She decided no one was going to call the cops.
The moment they were gone, reality crashed down on her. Her neck hurt, and she was fairly sure she’d wrenched her shoulder flipping a very large man over it. She had snapped at her teen crush. Her father had cancer, lung cancer, and no one had told her. All of her things were in her apartment. And she still had no idea how she was going to pay for next semester.
It was just too much to handle.
Emma felt Kellan’s eyes on her but she didn’t bother looking. Him staying or going wasn’t going to change anything at all. She kept her eyes firmly on the cluttered living room table and wondered what was going to happen.
“Dad…can I get you anything?” Emma turned away from the window.
It was Kellan who answered. “Water. I got a bunch of bottles of it sitting out on the counter. He doesn’t like it cold anymore.”
Emma moved to the kitchen, thankful to have something for her hands to do. She popped open a bottle and brought it back to her father. He wheezed out a thanks before taking a long swig of it.
“Mac, it’s late, or early, depending on how you want to figure it.” Kellan stood up. A nearly asleep Rocco rolled down his legs and flopped to the floor, happy to stretch out over his favorite human’s feet.
“You trying to send me to bed, boy?” Mac asked without any real malice.
Kellan’s lip quirked up into a grin. “Nope. Just pointing out the truth, old man.”
Emma took a deep breath and blew it out slowly. Apparently it wasn’t just Emma who was tired and frustrated. Kellan dislodged his feet and took a few steps around the living room, gathering up some of the garbage and depositing it in a trashcan.
In the more discerning light of the indoors, Emma realized that while Kellan had filled out, he had also lost weight. There was a gaunt line to his cheeks and dark circles beneath his eyes. She had taken care of animals who were in hospice care, and that was hard. She could only imagine that the twenty-four-hour job of taking care of her stubborn father wasn’t easy.
“I know it’s late, and that I have no right to ask anything of you, but what are we going to do?” Emma asked as she tore her eyes away from Kellan.
Mac’s gaze dropped to his barely empty bottle of water. “I have an idea, and no one is going to like it, but I think it’s for the best.”
Emma’s imagination put together twenty horrific scenarios in as many seconds. Most of them ended up with her in jail, but none of them were appealing. “Like what?”
There was another long silence. It wasn’t like her dad to hesitate. None of this was like her dad and it was making her uncomfortable. She wasn’t seeing him as the king sitting on top of biker hill, but like a man who was struggling to hold things together. She didn’t like this.
“Dad?” she asked when the silence continued on for too long.
He locked eyes with her, his dark brown to her crystalline blue, and reached out to take her hands. She couldn’t remember the last time he had touched her. His skin had that particular satin feel that came with old age. Where were the calluses that years of working on bikes had given him? She could feel every bone in his grip when his fingers tightened on hers.
“Emma, I love you. I hope you know that. I haven’t always been good to you, and I haven’t always taken care of you, but I love you.”
Emotions formed a ball in her throat, one she couldn’t seem to swallow or speak around. Once again her vision was blurry with tears. She tried to blink them back, but they came anyway. All she could do was nod.
“I wanna fix that. I wanna make sure you are taken care of.” There was something about the way he said it that gave it weight. He wrapped his fingers over hers and brought them to his lips, planting a paternal kiss on them. “I don’t think Gabriel is gonna stop. He’s got a big problem with me, and now it is gonna extend to mine.”
“Dad, what are you saying?” Her hands tried to pull away from his, but his grip tightened.
“I’m saying this could be a real easy fix.” He was dancing around the subject. The scenarios in her brain were beginning to feel more and more real.
“Could be?” she prompted.
“I just need you to trust me. You gotta know that all I want is to keep you safe.”
“Okay. What do you need me to do?” She kept her voice level and even. She worried if she spoke too much, she might just start to panic. What was he going to ask of her? Take on a new identity? Go live with another group of bikers? What could be so bad that he didn’t just tell her what she was going to do?
He reached back with one hand, motioning Kellan up. The younger man, who had been leaning against the little island that separated the kitchen from the living room, swung himself up and wandered over with more agility than she could have managed. The two men gripped wrists and then Mac tugged Kellan closer. He took her hand and put it in Kellan’s.
It took both of them a full half minute to understand.
“Dad, no!” Emma called out, jerking her hand out of Kellan’s. It seemed to burn.
At the same time Kellan said, “I can’t.”
Rocco dashed between everyone in a delirious desire to understand what was going on.
“Can’t?” her dad asked. “Or wont?”
“Both. God, Kellan, say something,” Emma demanded. She hoped Kellan, who her father had always preferred, would be able to talk some sense into him.
“I don’t think this is a good idea, Mac. No, I’m going to go out and say that this is a bad idea.”
“Exactly,” Emma said.
“Why?” Mac demanded, summoning that old boom to his voice. He motioned a large hand in Emma’s general direction. “He marries you, it gives you protection, it gives you stability, it gives you money. It gives you everything you need.”
“That’s not why you get married, Dad. At least not nowadays.” She crossed her arms firmly over her chest. This wasn’t fair; this was not fair at all. She would be lying if she said she had never thought of getting married to Kellan. In her fantasies, however, he wanted to marry her, too. It only took one look at the hard line of Kellan’s jaw to see he wanted none of this.
“You got better reasons?” Mac demanded.
“Yeah, I dunno, maybe love? That seems like a good one.”
“Emma, love doesn’t keep you safe.” He said it so softly, like one speaking to a child who just didn’t understand the way the world worked.
“Mac, I love you like a father, man, you know that,” Kellan stepped in. His voice was surprisingly calm despite the bit of red that was working along his throat. “But you know I don’t intend on getting married to anyone.”
“Yeah, so you’ve said. Well, I’m saying differently.”
Kellan shook his head. “I would do anything for you but—”
“Then do this.”
It was three in the morning, and Emma was beyond tired, and scared. In a better time, she may have been able to argue more. She shook her head and started down the hallway towards what used to be her bedroom. “I am not talking about this right now.”
“Then when, Emma? I don’t have long.”
It was a cheap shot, but she stopped walking. “That was mean. Completely uncalled for.”
“Well, I don’t got time to play nice.”
Emma turned around. Her father looked like a faded memory of himself. She didn’t need a doctor, or him for that matter, to tell her he didn’t have much longer left on this earth. She hated that. “Tell me why I should do this. Why you shouldn’t just keep me safe?”
“Because that’s what I’ve been doing, and it isn’t enough. They don’t believe you’ll be protected. This will make them believe.”
“And what do I get out of it?” Emma demanded.
“What, your life isn’t enough?”
“If I marry Kellan, the life I had is over anyway.” Emma threw her hands up. “I’ll have to come live here, school will be over…all of it.”
“The hell you will,” Kellan put it. “I’ll keep you safe, but I won’t make you give up everything.”
“Oh, well, that’s magnanimous of you,” she sneered.
“Emma…” her father warned.
“Dad.” she retorted.
“I’ve never asked you or anything, Emma. Not once.”
“Funny,” she shot back. “I asked you for everything, but I never got any of it.”
He laughed. It would have been a cheerful sound if he hadn’t started coughing again. He took another sip of water to ease it, not that it did much. “How the hell did I help make you? God, Emma, you are smarter than me by far, all that knowledge up in your head. I’ve known that, I’ve always known that, but now you got all this fire. I don’t know where it came from, but I know you are a good girl, a smart girl. Fuck, I am proud of you.”
She didn’t know what to think of his words, or how to respond to them. It might have come easily or naturally to another girl who had spent years being close to her father. Emma wasn’t one of them. Emma was struck mute by her father’s openness.
“Thanks.” She meant it.
He gripped her fingers, and this time she didn’t pull away. “But I know how this business works, and I am telling you this is the only way.”
“Why? Why is this the only way? I mean, can’t I just go live somewhere else? I could just—”
“Just what?” he demanded. “Run away again?”
It was another cheap shot, and Emma hadn’t been entirely prepared for how much bitterness her father could put into five words. What little kindness he had garnered from her just a minute ago evaporated.
“That’s not fair.”
“Emma,” her father said, “I never said it was. If you go gallivanting across the country, do you think they won’t find you? They managed to find you hours away at college, when we hadn’t even spoken to one another in months. Running away is not the answer here.”
“But this is?” Kellan asked. “I’m sorry, Mac, I don’t understand.”
“They went after her because they thought she was without protection. That she had no connections to us or the club. It wouldn’t be anything but attacking a dying man’s daughter. But you aren’t a dying man, Kellan. You are young and strong and they know it. If she is with you, if she has your name protecting her, they will think twice.”
It was a point she couldn’t argue, even when she wasn’t sleep deprived. “You know what? Fine. Fine! No one but one of you was ever going to date the daughter of the criminal anyway, right?” She stormed off and fell into the first bed she could find. What hurt the most, she thought as the first wave of exhaustion swept over her, was that it was true.
# # #
Kellan Mathers watched the retreating back of the club president’s daughter and knew damn well he was in for it. Her blonde ponytail danced with every angry movement and he couldn’t help but stare at it. He loved a woman with fire in her blood, and if Emma Ketchum could simmer with it at the worst hours of the morning, he could only imagine what she would do with it
He didn’t know where it all came from. When she’d been little she’d been this scrawny little nerd with glasses and knobby knees and braces who couldn’t put together five words. As a door slammed open and shut he decided he was going to have to reevaluate who Emma was now.
“You think she knows she went into your room?” Mac asked.
Kellan snorted. “You wanna be the one to tell her?”
“Hell no.”
“Me neither, old man, me neither.”
There was a long silence as Kellan wheeled Mac down the hall and into the master bedroom. They went through the actions of caregiver and care recipient as Kellan got him ready for bed. Rocco bounced around the bedroom, happy to get in the way.
“You mad at me?” Mac asked as he slid against the covers.
“Nope. I’m pissed.”
“Wanna be more specific?”
On the outside Kellan knew he looked calm, cool, and collected. They both knew better. Kellan could look as cool as a winter lake right before he pulled a trigger. It was what had always made him a good enforcer, and a good club member. He knew how to shut it all away and pretend like he was fine. He knew better than most what it meant when you lost control. He had the scars on his back to prove it.
“You shouldn’t have sprung it like that on me. If you wanted your daughter to become my old lady, you should have given me some kind of head’s up.”
Mac took his time crawling into his bed. Kellan waited.
“Could be that I didn’t think about it ’til I saw y’all two wrestling with that mutt in the front yard when she pulled up.” Mac smirked.
“Bull.”
Mac pulled his covers over his skinny legs. His arms shook with the effort. It was a sad thing to see a man who Kellan used to think of as a mountain become a sand dune. He was wasting away, and nothing short of a miracle was going to stop it from happening. Silently, Kellan was praying to all the gods that had ever had a temple.
It wasn’t that Kellan didn’t think death wasn’t coming to everyone, it just seemed to be coming too soon for Mac. Kellan wasn’t ready to put the old man in the ground.
It wasn’t just the emotional craziness of losing a person who had meant a lot to him for the better part of his life. It had more to do with the fact that everyone seemed to agree that when Mac died, it was going to be Kellan taking over. Hell, for the past six months he had basically been running the daily operations. It wasn’t hard. Move guns or electronics from point A to location B, and shake the local businesses for protection money, keep the right palms greased. That was the easy part.
It had all pretty much been easy until Gabriel stuck his nose into their territory. Ashland was Beasts territory, and everyone along the western seaboard knew it. Kellan didn’t know what wild hair had crawled up the Cuban’s backside but it was causing more problems than he wanted to deal with.
Then they had gone and attacked Emma. Everyone knew Emma Ketchum was off limits. She wasn’t part of the game. She wasn’t a criminal; her record didn’t even have a speeding ticket on it. She didn’t take part in any of the business. So what had that bastard been thinking?
“That’s some face you got going on there,” Mac said. “You gonna tell me what that’s about?”
“Thinking about bashing in some tatted up Cuban face.”
Mac chuckled appreciatively. “You’re gonna have to table that for the moment. You are gonna have a lady to think of.”
It took a great deal more control to not yell this time. “Mac, you know I got nothing but love for you, but I think this is a stupid idea. This is…this is like ten kinds of stupid.”
Mac’s head slumped back against his stiff medical pillow. “You’re ten kinds of stupid.”
“Don’t play with me like this, Mac. I’m not an idiot.” He managed to keep his voice steady, but barely. “Tell me. Just friggin’ tell me what the hell made you think hooking me up with Emma, with your goddamned little girl, was a good idea.”
Mac did nothing but incline his head. It was a slow movement, but it had that kind of weight to it that someone only got when they knew they had all the right on their side. Kellan had seen it from time to time and he knew he couldn’t fight it.
“You’re right. It’s my little girl and I am asking you to take care of her.”
“Exactly, man, she’s your kid. She’s—”
“All. I’ve. Got.”
Each word was a bullet, fired right into Kellan’s guilt. All his careful cool calm shattered. He grabbed the closest thing to him, a long empty cigarette tray, and threw it across the bedroom. It didn’t even give him the satisfaction of shattering. It just made a dent in the wall and clattered to the floor.
“You finished?” Mac asked.
Kellan let out several impressive curses before he slapped himself down in the chair next to the bed. “I don’t wanna get married. I don’t wanna be anyone’s man.”
“I get that.”
“Mac, you know what my life was like. You know what my father was.” His eyes were fixed on the dent he had caused in the wall. Yeah, it was a wall and a cigarette tray, but what if one day it wasn’t? What if one day it was a pretty girl’s face, or even a kid. “I don’t want to be that.”
“Your father was a mean damn drunk,” Mac snorted. “And you are nothing like him.”
“You don’t know that.”
“Who better than me, kid?”
Kellan raked his hands through his hair and set his palms against his eyes. “You know how it was for me.”
“Yeah, kid, I do. I also know that same shit’s been following you around since you were a kid. And I also know it’s gotta stop. In no time at all you are gonna be putting my president patch on your kutte and you know what that means.”
“It means I gotta step up.”
Mac snorted and shook his bald head. “Easy words to say, Kel. But what does that mean?”
“Apparently it means I gotta marry a hot blonde who hates me, hates you, and hates everything I do with my life.”
Mac nodded, already beginning to drift off. “If your wife doesn’t hate something about you, shit, man, you are doing something wrong.”
Kellan left the old man to get some sleep and wandered the house. It was a good deal nicer than the trailer his family had. How they’d managed to shove four adults and twice as many kids into a doublewide, he’d never know. It was all held together with hunting, whiskey, and rage.
What was he going to do, pass that on? What happened the first time Emma nagged at him to give it all up? He remembered clear as day what his dad used to do to his mom when she came at him with everything he’d done wrong. It didn’t seem to matter what words she’d used or how right she was, his father would haul off and knock her around.
Kellan found himself in front of the liquor cabinet. It wasn’t locked, it wasn’t like there were kids about, and it wasn’t like Rocco had a taste for top shelf whiskey. Kellan plucked a bottle up and poured himself two fingers before knocking it back, enjoying the burn that went from his tongue to his belly and then everywhere else. He took another two and then wandered back down the hall.
He was standing in the doorway to his room before he remembered she was sleeping there.
She looked like an angel. He knew lots of guys said that about chicks, but when it came to Emma, it was true. She had that long blonde hair with just a little curl. Her face was all these soft angles that had just a hint of pink to keep her from looking like a piece of copy paper. She was beautiful in an untouchable, unstained way, and here Mac was shoving a piece of crap like him at her.
And she’d said yes.
He cursed and swallowed his second drink. The burn shook him all the way down to his toes.
Emma Ketchum said she’d marry him. That was the craziest part of it all. Yeah, sure, it was said in frustration, but it had been said. He hadn’t expected that. Moreover, he certainly hadn’t expected to feel good about it.
He shook his head and wished he hadn’t left the bottle in the living room.
She looked good. Even in that ugly sweater and ill-fitting jeans she looked like a million bucks, which was too expensive for him to put his ugly hands all over. No, no, marrying the collegiate princess was a bad idea for a million reasons.
A small whine drew his attention away from the girl and down to a mutt.
“Go on,” Kellan said, motioning with his chin. “No need for us both to be sleeping on the couch.”
Rocco needed no more encouragement. He prowled into the room and jumped up on the bed. Half asleep, Emma rolled over and wrapped an arm around the beast. She made a small sound that made his stomach do a flop as she curled into a tighter ball.
She looked small. It struck him hard. When she was up and moving around and shouting at everyone she seemed twice as big and ten times as tough. Her dad had the same quality. It gave a person a certain kind of glow that you wanted to follow and protect.
He could protect her a whole lot better sharing that bed with her. It was just a little too easy picturing climbing into that bed and wrapping himself around her like a snake. Would she be the kind of girl who whimpered and trembled, or the kind who moaned and demanded more?
He was a snake. Kellan felt his pants go tight where they had no business doing so, followed by a wave of disgust.
“Shit,” he snapped, and shook his head. Firmly he shut the door behind him.