“Not a good sign that you’re down here when you got that woman of yours upstairs,” Stone observed.
He was right. It was the middle of the night. Avery was up in my room, asleep. Kate and Owen were down for the count as well. After what had happened earlier that day, I got on the phone with Doc. He got on the phone himself, and procured Kate some sleeping pills.
To say it freaked me the fuck out to hand a woman struggling as much as her a bottle of sleeping pills was putting it lightly.
“You sure that’s wise?” I’d asked him, unable to put words to why it wouldn’t be.
I hadn’t been a part of his conversation with Kate about the decision. Doc hadn’t practiced medicine professionally for decades, and a lot of the time that meant his ways of doing shit for us wasn’t the sort of professional standards of a hospital. But one thing he never compromised on was privacy when it was needed—as in, as long as you weren’t actively bleeding all over the fucking place.
“She’s not suicidal, son. She’s experiencing some severe grief and depression, but she’s got not one thought of leaving that boy,” Doc had informed me. I felt an overwhelming relief to hear that outright. I had been trying to figure out how I could broach the topic with Kate myself, but I was terrified of making shit worse.
“I thought that was a concern, no way I’d give her that shit,” Doc had gone on. “Hard to do it that way, anyway. Sleeping pills’ll likely put you under before you can complete suicide, but I wouldn’t take the risk. That’s not what we’re dealing with. Even so, I’m only getting her a small amount. Also talked her into sittin’ down with a therapist. Pills can help her fall asleep, but they can’t rid her of the shit swirling in her head keeping her up. Been wanting to push her that way for a while, but it only works if she’s willing.”
He had been right. I had suggested her talking to someone. I’d brought it up after the funeral, I’d asked again when we got to Hoffman, and I’d mentioned it since. She'd never so much as responded.
Now, she was sleeping, hopefully straight through the night, with the help of medication, and Doc was on a mission of finding her someone to work through her grief with. Still, that shit this afternoon had proven we were nowhere near out of the woods.
“Shit’s just piling on too high,” I told Stone.
I swirled the lowball of whiskey around before taking another drink. It was the only one I was getting. Couldn’t get drunk with all this going on. There was no telling how Kate would handle the pills. I had to be prepared to be up early with Owen. I was going to make sure she slept as long as her body let her.
Stone grabbed a seat at the table across from me, looking like he was sitting down to a meeting. He had that air of authority that didn’t just shut off.
“Jager touched base about the ex,” Stone said. Since I’d asked Jager to do that so I wouldn’t have to add that shit to my plate, I wasn’t surprised. “He give you any updates there?”
“Not yet. Know he’s getting all Avery’s shit locked down while digging into that fucker’s. Asked him to let me know if there’s any change to him being around town. Brother said the prick is staying close, checked in at a hotel,” I explained.
He nodded. “Shit’s fucked. Hate that Avery had to deal with that. She doesn’t deserve that.”
I resisted the urge to pound back the last of the whiskey, and stated, “He took her dream from her. My girl spent her whole life working toward it, and he took it right before she made it real.”
“She’s young. It’s not too late for her to make it happen. Fucking sucks she isn’t already living it, but there’s still a chance.”
Was there? All the fucking money. It wasn’t easy to save that much. The club did well. Businesses we owned—the garage, the strip club, the fighter gym Jager and Ember ran—brothers who worked in them regularly took checks for their time, and profits were split out among all of us. Everything we were running was way in the black. Other sources of cash—underground fights, protection for transport, shit like that—weren’t as steady, but they were nice payouts when they came in. That shit meant none of us were hurting, myself included.
But there was a serious difference between not hurting and having seventy-five thousand free to drop. Even if I did, no way Avery would accept it. She’d made a point of saying she didn't want to be indebted to a bank, but there was more to it. I could tell in the way she said it that she didn’t want to be in any kind of debt to anyone. She wanted her dream, and she wanted to be the one to make it happen. I got the impression if that wasn’t how she got it, it wouldn’t be the dream at all.
“What’s the rest?” Stone asked. I gave him a blank look because I wasn’t following. “Shit piling on,” he clarified.
Right.
“Kate’s not coping. Not surprising. I’ve got a slippery grip on coping. She’s the only person on this earth who loved him more than me. Understanding doesn’t make it better, though. She’s struggling at best and I can’t help her. Owen’s caught up in it. I gotta take care of them both for him, and today it was made entirely too fucking clear I’m failing all around.”
“Shit goes wrong, brother. Doesn’t mean you’re failing,” Stone insisted. “I know that struggle. Feel it anytime shit goes wrong for this club. Crap that went down with Ash that got Ace hurt, that shit with Jager and Ember, even little shit. Anytime things don’t run smooth, I feel that. Means the fucking world to me you all want me to hold the gavel, but it’s a heavy burden.
“You're my brother, but it ain’t a secret you’ve avoided that kind of shit. No old lady, no kids, nothing. Suddenly, you’re running Candy Shop, you got Avery and this shit that’s plaguing her, and taking care of your family, and it’s not lost on any of us that you’re shouldering all this on top of losing Joel. What you’ve got to remember is you’ve got that patch on your back. We’re your brothers. You don’t have to tackle it all alone.”
That was all he had to say, which he made plain by getting up and walking out—but not before dropping a hand to my shoulder as he passed.
Stone didn't mince words. He didn’t tend to speak much, but he had something to say when he did. Right then, he'd come to my side because he had words he needed to give me.
Words I needed to hear.
“And, brother,” he called, and I turned to see him at the doorway of the kitchen. “I get what you're feeling about what that fucker did to your girl. Not fucking right. She’s one of us now because she’s yours, but she was under our protection even before that through working for us. I won’t order you not to take your retribution. I know that burn is hard to resist. What I will say is, you did five inside already. You get popped for something, they'll come down hard. You start to succumb to the heat, remember the bodies sleeping in this house and think about how it would feel to get locked away from that.”
Fuck.
Yeah, when Stone gave you his words, he didn’t mince them.
I downed the rest of the whiskey. The burn felt good, but didn’t last nearly long enough.
Knowing there was nothing for it, I stood and headed to bed.
Avery was asleep on her side, facing mine. Even in just the bit of light coming in from the hall around the edges of the door, she looked fucking beautiful. Twenty or so odd years, I’d been appreciating the variety of ways first girls, and then women, could be beautiful. What fucked with my head was Avery seemed to be damn near all of them.
I knew Stone was right about that shit he’d laid out, but seeing her right there and having the painful knowledge of what that fucker had done, that logic made me feel fucking useless.
Climbing into bed beside her, I couldn’t even bring myself to pull her in close.
Stone was also right about how I should have been asking for help when I needed it. Another fucking failure on my part. Instead of having the mind to reach out to my brothers and their women, besides asking Jager for a hand with his computer expertise, I’d been letting Kate suffer through waiting for me to figure out what the fuck I was going to do alone.
I lay there for a while, stewing in my own self-loathing. It was an unfamiliar sensation, to be so fucking pissed at yourself. I’d never been there before. I was the one who went with the flow. Even getting thrown in prison hadn’t hit me all that hard. Mostly, I just hated being confined and without pussy or good food. But it never turned inward. I never got upset over landing myself there.
Life was life. Shit happened, you moved on.
But the shit happening now felt like shit I was supposed to be preventing, fixing, what the fuck ever.
I just had no damn clue how.
I was about to get up and find something to keep myself occupied rather than lying in bed stewing all fucking night, when Avery pressed in at my back. Her arm went around my waist, then crossed up over my chest. I didn’t move or speak, not wanting to wake her. She nuzzled into my back, her warmth seeping into me.
Maybe it was subconscious, or maybe she woke enough to read the tension in me and wanted to offer me her sweet brand of support. It didn’t really matter. All that was important was the way her touch made all that shit fade away. My body relaxed, and it was like she’d magically brought that sleep that had seemed impossibly far away right into reach.
Fuck it. I’d been pussy-footing around the thought for too long. It was time I at least admitted it to my own fucking self.
I could fall in love with this woman.
Could? Joel’s voice was back, and maybe it was that soothing feeling of Avery spooning my back, but it didn’t freak me out this time. I got news for you, dumbass. There’s no fucking could about it.
Christ, even in my head, he was a dick.
But maybe he wasn’t wrong.