KIWI

After my shower, I catch the clock, it’s about eight-thirty and I know Piper is up because I can hear her laughing at something. It’s Saturday morning and she’s probably watching cartoons.

I leave my bedroom and find her doing exactly that, curled up on the couch. She looks past me. “Where’s Loki?” she asks.

I give her a mock glare, teasing her, “What am I? Chopped liver?”

“Eww, mommy, that’s gross,” she laughs and scrunches up her nose.

“Sorry to disappoint you, sweetheart, but it’s just me.”

“Not a disappointment, unless you’re not gonna watch cartoons with me.”

I laugh and round the couch, plopping down next to her and she curls up with me and we watch some weird cartoon she laughs at repeatedly. I don’t get it, but if it works for her, I’m good with that.

Emily brings me a cup of coffee. “Thanks,” I tell her as she hands it to me.

“No problem. Thought you could use it. You got home late.” I smile at her and notice the excitement in my eyes and her eyes roam over my right shoulder. “So that’s what you got?” she asks as she looks at it.

I smile wider. “Yup.”

“He branded you?” she laughs. “That was fast.”

“Get used to it around here, sweetheart. Men don’t waste time when it comes to what they want, they do and they miss out,” I tell her.

“Good to know.”

“How’s the school search going?”

She gets animated as she tells me what she found out, including financial aid and the likes. She says there are a few grants she wants to apply for so I don’t have to handle the full burden. I don’t bother arguing that it’s not a problem, because it’s futile.

Emily’s been through a lot of shit in her life, and she deserves a break and a chance to find some real happiness. Her intention is to go to school for early childhood education and it warms my heart. She loves kids, not just mine.

All three of our heads turn toward the front of the house when we hear a bike roaring down the street. I get up and go to the window. Piper follows me.

“Loki,” she squeals as she goes to the door.

“Pipes,” I tell her, but she flat out ignores me as she goes bolting down the steps.

Loki is barely off his bike when she plows into him. I follow after her. “Hi, princess,” he greets her with a smile.

“We go for our ride now?” she asks.

“Not right now, I need to talk to momma.”

“Fine,” she huffs.

“I promise, we will ride soon,” he says before he kisses her cheek.

“We better,” she sasses and Loki laughs.

She goes running back into the house and I meet Loki halfway.

He wraps his arms around me, lowering his face to mine before kissing me senseless. All too soon, he releases me.

“I know your brother taught you to shoot. You got one?”

Where is this coming from? I nod to him.

“You need to go get it, get changed and I’ll be back in five minutes,” he says in a way that isn’t meant to be argued with, so I turn for the house. I turn to my left so he gets an eyeful of Loki branding on my arm and he whistles. I roll my eyes and head into the house.

Within five minutes, I’ve changed my shirt from the t-shirt I had on to layered tank tops, thrown on my shoulder holster and put my cut on over it, swapped my Chucks for boots and I’m waiting outside for Loki.

I’m barely there a minute when he comes roaring down the street. He stops at the curb and I climb on. I’m barely situated when he takes off down the street toward the diner we ate at yesterday. I expect him to turn left toward the club but instead, he turns right.

“Where are we going?” I ask him.

“Pyro’s, he has something we need to see.”

I nod against his back as he continues down the street. My heart starts pumping a little faster as he’s weaving in and out the cars. It’s Saturday morning in Roswell so the traffic is thicker.

It takes about ten minutes before we’re pulling up to a nice adobe style home. The yard is cleaned and maintained, the garage door is open and there are two bikes inside. The one I’ve seen Pyro riding and another one that looks like it’s in pieces. The image reminds me of home. Kellen always had one bike he was working on and then the one he rode regularly. The one he worked on was usually vintage in some fashion or another, but this one, though not new, looks like it’s seen better days.

Loki leads me into the garage and I get a better look at the bike.

My heart freezes in my chest. I’m looking at a nineties version of a Heritage Softail like my father used to ride. In fact, the coloring is very similar to it and it sends my mind into a tailspin, back to my dream, and the videos. Kellen is alive, somewhere. And Kellen loved dad’s bike. He spent days out in the garage working on it after dad’s death. Eventually the bike disappeared; he’d told me he sold it.

“What’s wrong?” Loki asks.

“The bike.” I jerk my head in its direction. “Dad used to ride one just like it.”

I notice Loki stiffen slightly. “You remember that?” he asks.

I nod. “There isn’t much about them that I’ve forgotten,” I share with him. “Kellen said he’d sold it years ago.”

“There’s a lot of bikes out there like that,” he says.

I frown but shrug it off. It’s not possible.

Loki leads me into the house. I hear voices, several of them, some louder than others. They obviously match the bikes out in front of Pyro’s house.

“What is she doing here?” Pyro asks.

“This is club business, Loki,” Sticks snaps and I glare at him.

“She has a right to know,” Loki states vehemently. I feel slightly championed and at the same time, I want to leave the house immediately.

Sticks, Big Daddy, Whistler, two guys from Tucson I don’t recall ever meeting, Sticks’ right hand man Pixie – yeah, we’ll discuss that later – and then Cowboy. The last one surprises me.

“Where’s Opie?” someone asks.

“Opie is no longer a part of this circle,” Loki says. “The night of the funeral, I caught him conspiring with Rooster and Gunnar.”

“About what?” Sticks snaps.

“Me,” Loki states simply and my heart sputters.

“What about you?” I ask and he looks at me, sadness in his eyes.

“They we’re trying to use Stoney to get to me, to make me vulnerable.”

“Who’s Stoney?” I ask, my blood pressure rising.

“This isn’t relationship counseling, darlin’,” Big Daddy says and I let it go.

“Stoney is a stripper at Cottontail. Gunnar and Rooster had set her up to attempt to set me up. When I shut her down, Gunnar, being the prick that he is, pounced on her. Only he didn’t make a secret of it and I caught them.”

“They didn’t know we were there,” Pyro adds. “But the long and the short of it is they were going to move on to Taz, to see if she could get to Loki because they’re planning something.”

“My best guess is they’ve found out I’m trying to make a move for Pres,” Loki says and I stiffen.

Big Daddy’s words come back to me in a rush, ‘you just handed him the club.’ “He knows,” I add.

Nine pairs of steely biker eyes glare at me. “Yesterday, after the funeral home service, I was swapping shoes by Loki’s bike and Gunnar came up to me. Said he knows who I am. I didn’t buy it for a second until he called me Kiwi.”

Nine pairs of eyes start shifting around the room. “How would he know it’s you?” Big Daddy asks.

I shrug, but then reality dawns on me. “Loki colored me, claimed me as his old lady. Why on earth would he do so fast if there wasn’t a history between us? Couple that with the fact that I brought Piper around. You saw them the other night. They knew instantly that Piper is Loki’s. If he managed to gauge her age, or overheard anyone asking how old she is, he may have been able to put two and two together. If Gunnar and Rooster know who I am, that means they know I never died in that crash.”

“The only way they could know that is if they…” Pyro stops talking for a heartbeat. “Motherfuckinggoddamnsonofabitch. I fucking knew it.”

“Care to enlighten us?” Sticks asks him. His patience is wearing thin, I can tell by the tone of his voice.

“The only way they’d know I didn’t die in that crash is if they caused it to begin with,” I breathe.

Loki’s arm comes around me, holding me to his side. “That was ten fucking years ago,” Big Daddy sputters. “You were a kid, what, twelve, thirteen? How the fuck would they even put two and two together after all this time?”

“I colored her,” Loki breathes. He brings it back around to what I was saying before. He walks away from me to start pacing the living room.

“What the fuck does that have to do with anything?” I growl.

“Because,” he snaps at me. “Because you showed up, in town, with my kid, who looks exactly like me, precisely long enough to be gone for her to grow up. When Tryke died, I handled the house. I took care of it, but there was one thing that wouldn’t go down in the flames.”

“The safe room,” I mutter and Loki’s eyes meet mine.

“I made sure the inside was torched, that I could do, but the shell of it remained.” Loki’s irritation rises.

“I should’ve just run when I had the fucking chance,” Pyro mutters.

I look at him, his eyes are on me and they’re filled with a range of emotions- sadness, anger, frustration, longing. He pulls his hair back, making it appear shorter, then he turns to the side, showing me his scar free side and he closes his eyes.

Three things happen at once. I see a hidden tattoo behind his ear, one he’d gotten after mom and dad died. It’s a tiny lily. The profile of his features and then his hand is at his eye, pulling down his lower eyelid and his finger is poking it. The light behind him is such that I can see the curve of a contact lens.

My breathing stops.

My mind races at a thousand miles a minute.

Before I even know what I’m doing, I pull my gun from my holster and I’m charging toward him.

He drops his hair and his hands as he falls to his knees. “You god damn son of a bitch,” I growl as I put my gun to his temple.

“Kiwi,” Loki snaps at me. I turn pointing my gun at him. He puts his hands up in surrender.

“Don’t you fucking start, asshole! You knew, you fucking knew he was alive. You knew he was here, and yet you acted as if he were dead.”

“I had no choice,” he says with regret.

Pain, anger, frustration, fear. It all consumes me. My heart pounds in my chest like it’s going to explode.

Anger drives me.

I turn back to Kellen, my mind still in overdrive as I press my gun back to his temple.

“All this fucking time?” I shout. “All this fucking time I thought you were dead, all this time I’ve been here, you’ve been here, you’ve known who I was and you couldn’t even say anything to me. You left me, left me when I needed you most.” Tears are streaming down my cheeks, all the emotions filling me up and spilling over.

“Lily-bean,” he breathes.

I can’t stop the sob that wells from my chest. My hand starts shaking and the next thing I know, Loki’s arms are wrapping around me. He disarms me and I sink to the floor.