Watching Addison, he barely heard the words that had come out of her mouth. Whisk knew he was trying to hurt her, but he still needed to know why she would do the things she had planned. But watching the remaining light flicker out of her eyes and seeing the devastation, hurt, and anger transform them, he was stuck in a spot he didn’t know how to get away from. Until that day in high school, Addison represented everything good in the world to Whisk. She was light where he was dark, good where he was anything but. Sweet, caring, and loyal. What the hell happened?
He couldn’t leave without paying his respects to Pop. This might not be the right time, but he would do it, anyway. It had been too long already. Turning around and walking to the gravestone, he wasn’t sure how to feel. Standing there in front of it and looking at the carved words actually hurt his heart. Giving himself a second to gather the courage he needed, Whiskey turned his head to the side noticing the grave marker next to Pop. It was a pretty little angel, so he read the plaque and nearly fell to his knees.
Sunshine Frost
Beloved Daughter, Granddaughter.
June 1, 1990
Sleep with the angels my little one,
Our time was too short
But in that time, you stole my heart.
We will meet again.
Mom
Oh, hell no, what the fuck was going on? Aiden had only ever run from a single thing in his life, Addison. He could fool himself into saying it was because her and Tank and everything everyone was saying, but that wasn’t the truth. Addison had broken heart his heart back then. Now, he was running because he couldn’t comprehend what he had just seen. Getting on his bike, Whiskey sped through the cemetery. He would get answers, and Addison was the one who was going to give them to him. How dare she use his name for a child he didn’t create let alone even know about? That was going too fucking far.
As the miles went on the open road, the wind and rumble of his bike didn’t help soothe him. The closer he got to the farm and the answers he sought, the more pissed off he got. Pulling into the driveway at Addison's house, Whiskey noticed her truck wasn’t there. Not taking a chance at her hiding from him, he jumped off his bike and stormed up the stairs. Throwing the old screen door open, he banged on the door. When the little coward didn’t bother to come and let him in, he kicked the fucker down. Addison had a lot to answer for, and he would get those answers once and for all.
Storming through the house, he noticed how empty it was. All the family pictures and heirlooms were gone, the remaining furniture covered in sheets. Damn she was actually planning on leaving. Running up the stairs, he checked all the bedrooms and the bathroom. Nothing. The house was empty. Walking down the stairs, he was trying to come up with a plan. Addison wasn’t here, and he had absolutely no idea where she would have gone. Walking into the kitchen, he noticed a manila envelope on the table, so he walked over and took a look. His name was on it; hell, he couldn’t deal with that right now, so he folded it up and put it in the inside pocket of his jacket.
After hours of driving around trying to find Addison and coming up with nothing, Whiskey made it back to the Clubhouse. Link was just pulling in when Whisk made it off his bike. Before Whisk could even say a word, he said, “Church in five.”
Fuck, he didn’t have time for Church, they had just done that shit. He needed to find Addison.
“Listen up,” Tuck said, “Addy Sinclair dropped off the signed deed to her farm.
“Her name is Addison.”
“No fucker, her name is Addy. She doesn’t go by Addison anymore, hasn’t in a long time. You would know that if you ever got the balls to talk to her in the past ten years.” He and Tank had a contentious relationship; they were Brothers by the laws of the MC, but that was as far as it would ever go.
“No fucker,” Whisk said, “her name is Addison, it’s the one her parents gave her, and you should respect her enough to fucking use it.”
“Who the hell are you to talk about respecting Addy? You were always so stupid, putting her up on some pedestal. What did you say back then? Your last Fuck You to Defiance, defile the town sweetheart, and all that shit. Did you ever once bring your head out of your ass long enough to see what was going on right in front of your face? That girl had problems, but as long as she looked pretty hanging on to your arm or waiting with bated breath for your next words, you were all good with it, right?”
“Shut the fuck up, asshole.”
“You were pretty quick to believe what all those people said back then. Why was that Whisk? Why would you ever take the words of individuals like fucking Val and her troupe of bitches? Christ, a blind man could see how much you meant to that girl. She never even looked at another man, let alone let one touch her,” Tank scoffed.
“Well, considering I saw you rubbing up on her, I guess your self-righteous ass can shut the fuck up.” Whiskey said pushing Tank away.
“What’s the matter, Whisk, things get a little too real for you back then, knocked up your high school girlfriend, and had to run for cover? Seeing things that weren’t there so you could justify being a fucking coward?”
Whiskey turned around and blasted Tank so fast the man never saw the punch coming. Whiskey was so far gone he wanted to kill him. Grabbing his jacket and pulling Tank close, so there wasn’t any mistaking what he said next, “What the fuck are you talking about, I never knocked up Addison. If anyone did, it sure as hell wasn’t me, fucker?”
Tank spit the blood and spit out of his mouth right at Whiskey’s feet.
“Addy hasn’t touched a single man in this room or this motherfucking town, except you. Not back then and not since, asshole. She never wavered in her faithfulness to you, motherfucker, ask around,” Tank said pushing Whiskey back. “Fucking ask Link, he fucking knew it, even back then. The asshole even sent flowers to Sunshine’s fucking funeral marked them from the Frost family, nothing else. You guys should have stayed up in Frankfurt.”
Whiskey watched as Tank stormed out of the room. When he turned around to face his brother, the rage he felt was unbearable. He wanted to kill something, he wanted someone else to hurt like he was hurting, and his big, fucking brother looked like the best person to do that to.
Tuck slammed the gavel down on the table and yelled, “Everyone, get the fuck out now. You two stay right where you are until I get back. Don’t move a fucking muscle or breathe a damn breath. This shit ends now. I’m sick and tired of pussyfooting around all your damn lies, Link,” Tuck said leveling Link with a stare that would scare an average man. Too bad Link was anything but normal. He didn’t even flinch. “One way or another this shit ends now,” Tuck yelled.
Tuck was a big man, six-foot-six, and he had to weigh in around 280 lbs. of pure muscle. The years he had spent away from the military hadn’t slowed the man at all. Tuck was the President of the Ruthless Bastards. No one messed with Tuck and if they tried, he proved why he was named President. The man was ruthless to his core. But one thing was for sure, the Club and the Brothers in it meant everything to the man. Hearing him say he was done pussyfooting around Links lies infuriated Whiskey.
Whisk had thought about those days before he left to serve his country. Link was the one that had pushed him to sign up, spouting shit about serving a term, then coming back to join the RBMC. Back then Whisk hadn’t cared, he wanted out of town, but he wasn’t in a hurry to leave. Talon was still in school, and he would stick around for him. That all changed when he saw Addison and Tank together; he couldn’t leave fast enough. Come to think of it, Link had been the one to get him to go to Tank’s house that day.
Remembering his time in the Air Force was bittersweet. Basic was grueling, but easy. When it came time for assignments to be handed out, Whiskey was approached and asked if he wanted to specialize. At first, he wasn’t sure, but the Officer sent to recruit him said, “Son, we will teach you to walk in the woods like smoke in the air. We are the baddest of the bad; when the SEALS can’t handle their shit, we get them out. When Delta fucks up and there’s no way out, we are the ones that save their asses. Now the question is, do you have the balls to be a part of the team?”
Whiskey’s answer was, “Hell yeah, sign me the fuck up!” It might have fueled his need for validation or his ego, Whiskey didn’t know, but at the time he was all in and ready to go. The training was intense and gratifying. Every rescue fueled his fire. His team became his family and his life until it was taken away. Getting out, he was at loose ends. He could have joined any of the alphabet agencies or law enforcement agencies, but that wasn’t what he wanted. He wanted to be free from the red tape and restrictions that had held him back for so many years. That was the main reason he was back in Defiance and a fully patched member of the Ruthless Bastards Motorcycle Club. The only difference between now and when he was a teen was, this was his choice, Link didn't have a thing to do with his decision. He would live his life on his terms and fuck anyone who thought otherwise.
Watching his brother, Whiskey was getting more pissed by the second, Link just sat at the damn table looking at him like he didn’t have a care in the world. The smug bastard was about to find out that blood and creed didn’t mean a thing if what Whiskey was thinking had happened, did. His brother had a lot to answer for, and Whiskey would make him pay for those things in blood.
In a calm voice that Whiskey didn't feel he looked his brother square in the eye and said, “What did you do, Link?”
The man didn’t even answer him, just stared back. The man Whiskey had always looked up to and went to for advice as a young man and a child. The same man that got him drunk and pushed him into moving on because Addison wasn’t what he thought she was. The same man who just seconds ago, he would have died for, and now he wanted to kill.
“Who is Sunshine, Link?”
Whiskey noticed a small reaction. Link curled up the corner of his lip exposing his eyetooth. Having known his brother his entire life, his tells were easy to spot. A slight shift of his eyebrow or a twitch under his eye. The vein that would pop out and pulse when he was pissed, but that little lip curl meant something different. That curl said he was going to lie, like the taste of it in his mouth was something awful. Before he could even get the vile words out of his mouth that Whisk knew without a shadow of a doubt would break any kind of relationship they had forever, he stopped him.
“Don’t even think about lying. Whatever the fuck happened back then will come out now, motherfucker, and you will pay for what you have done.” Whiskey threatened, barely holding himself back from jumping across the table and annihilating his brother.
Tuck came back into the room, Tank following close behind. Whiskey wanted to scream and then beat on the fucker some more. What he didn’t want was to talk to the bastard. He may have opened Whiskey’s eyes to things he didn’t really want to know, but that didn’t make him a friend. Brother yes, friend, hell no. What was that saying, you couldn’t pick your family? Whiskey had been learning that lesson his entire life, and he wasn’t all that happy about it.
Tank also made him realize that he was right, Addison was a toy for him back then. She was a good girl he wanted to corrupt. A sweet girl he wanted to make nasty, and he had. On the outside she was perfect, and he chose not to look one millimeter deeper. She represented something that all the fuckers in town thought he couldn’t or shouldn’t have, and he loved rubbing it in their faces every time they went somewhere. He was a Ruthless Bastard even back then.
Whisk wanted to scream and yell for the man to leave, but Tuck stopped him.
“Sit the fuck down. This bullshit all ends now, got me? I’m sick of watching this dissension in my fucking Club. You’ll hear everything Tank has to say, Whisk, and then Link will say his peace. After that, I don’t give a fuck what you three do. Take it to the yard and beat the shit out of each other or turn in your patches. I am fucking done.”
Tank started right in and the words he was saying caused pain so deep in his chest, he didn’t know if he would ever recover.
“How did you not notice how fucking skinny she had gotten back then or, hey, how about the fact that no sixteen-year-old should have dark circles under their eyes?”
“Shut the fuck up and tell the damn story, Tank, and leave your own thoughts and opinions out of it. I don’t expect you two to become best buds or sing fucking kumbaya, this shit is a long time coming, and you two can beat the crap out of each other after it all comes out. Don’t go making accusations when you have no fucking clue what Whisk did or didn’t notice,” Tuck snarled.
“Fine, listen, I found Addy outside of the bank crying; Pop was behind on the note to the farm and she didn’t know what to do about it. She asked me if maybe my Dad would listen and be able to help her out with an extension since he was the President of the bank, so I took her home with me. The bastard didn’t even listen to her. What you saw was me trying to console her, nothing else. I knew what you were up to so I didn’t set you straight back then, but I had no idea Addy was pregnant. When you got early graduation and left, that was when everyone found out about the baby. If I had known, I would have kicked your ass, and made you take responsibility for the shit you left for Addy to clean up.”
Whiskey didn’t like what he was hearing, but he listened. He needed to know it all, and since Addison hadn’t shared any of it with him, he was going to find out one way or another. He still had a question, so he sat there seething listening to Tank’s smug ass talk.
“Addy had to drop out of school because Pop’s health was so bad. It probably didn’t help that the rich bitches were giving her so much crap for being the town whore. But that didn’t stop Addy, she worked her ass off and held her head high. Carri moved in with her after a while, but with all the work to keep the farm going, fuck man she lost the kid and dropped out of sight for a while.”
“Why am I just hearing about this now, it’s been ten fucking years?” Whisk asked the men in the room with a calmness he wasn’t feeling. They had all betrayed him. Ultimately, he was to blame, but damn, someone could have said something in the last ten years. The whole fucking town knew, and he had been kept in the dark. That just pissed him off more.
“Listen, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I can tell you I didn’t say anything to you because I didn’t want you to destroy Addy any further. She waited for your ass, sent letters and called constantly. It wasn’t until Link came back that she stopped talking about you. What happened between them I can’t tell you, but I know for a fact that after that meeting, Addy never spoke your name again. I also know that after that, her problems with the bank disappeared. Why no one else told you, I have no idea. Maybe they thought you were just as much as an asshole as I did.”
“Is that it?” Whiskey said through gritted teeth.
“As much as I know, Brother. You set out to do her dirty, and you succeeded. Congratulations. This shit is a long time coming. Addy is better than you, always has been, and I hope she makes you pay, motherfucker.”
Whisk didn’t even get up from the table to react to Tanks comments. The fucker was right, he deserved everything he got.
“Tank, you can leave,” Tuck said.
That left Whiskey, Link, and Tuck, and he had questions for both of them. Every time Whiskey came back from leave, he came to the Clubhouse, and no one once mentioned Addison or what she had gone through, and he wanted to know why.
“Why?” Whisk said looking right has his older brother.
“Listen, man, she was trying to trap you. I made sure that didn’t happen, and I won’t apologize for it. You were a fucking kid. You both were. I gave her the money to get it taken care of and left. Not my fault she didn’t take my advice.”
“Dude, what in the hell is wrong with you? You can sit here at this table and tell me you paid Addison to get rid of my kid when I didn’t even know the kid existed? What about all that shit about her cheating on me with Tank, and how I was better off? Fuck how did you even know the two of them were together that day or what I would see? Did you know about Pop, too, and everything that was going on with the farm?”
Link got up out of his seat and leaned over the table. For someone else, the stance might have been intimidating, but this was his brother, the same man he had been fighting with his entire life, and Whiskey was too pissed off to think about anything else. Link had known about his daughter and kept it to himself. Shit, so had everyone in this damn town.
“Who didn’t, fucker? Everyone knew Pop was losing it both mentally and physically. Shit, you were there all the time, how the hell didn’t you see it? And what the fuck, you couldn’t get out of here fast enough. You want to put this shit on me, fine, but let me ask you this. How many times have you come back to Defiance through the years? Ever once think about talking to Addy?”
Whiskey went to get up and get right in his brother's face, but what he said next stopped him.
“The answer is you didn’t. You left, and until recently, you never looked back, not even once. You put that girl up on a pedestal and never let her down. You wanted that illusion, and I let you keep it instead of seeing her for the lying, manipulative, little bitch she really was. I fixed it just like I have fixed everything, that is my job as head of this fucked-up family, and yeah fucker, I would do it all again.”
Link stormed out of the room, and Whiskey was left there sitting with a quiet Tuck. Shit, that was just another slap in Whiskey’s face; he hadn’t known or cared to know about anything back then or since. The real problem was he didn’t know if he would have changed anything that had happened if he did. He wasn’t the same man back then he was now. Tuck let him stew for a few minutes.
“Listen, things are hardly ever the way they seem. Addy is good people, don’t let Link’s issues with women taint what you are feeling, but you need to come back into the reality of things. Addy is in trouble, and you need to decide what you are going to do about it because the Club’s hands are tied. The rules are clear if she isn’t one of us then she is on her own, her being an ally only goes so far. Laying this shit on our doorstep without warning or cause puts her in a dangerous place. If this is Club related, I guarantee we will take care of it, but if this is shit that Addy brought on herself, unless you or someone else makes a formal claim, we have to leave that shit at the door. Get what I am saying?”
“Yeah, I get it. Fuck, Tuck, why didn’t you tell me? Why did everyone keep this from me? I have been a part of this Club since before I left for the service. Not once in all these years has anyone ever spoke about this why?”
“Shit, brother, wasn’t my or anyone else’s place. You made your intentions towards Addy clear, and as much as you don’t want to hear it, Link is right, you never looked back. It’s been ten years, man, lots of water under that bridge.”
Tuck got up and left the room, and Whiskey was grateful for the reprieve. He needed a couple of minutes to himself because his thoughts and feelings were consuming him. Addison had been pregnant with his child. Shit, he had only fucked her once, and it was all of two seconds in his old, rusted up Ford. He hadn’t even given her a good first experience, just pushed her down on the cracked, rough seats, lifted the skirt of her dress, pushed her underwear to the side, and ripped her innocence away like an animal.
He never once thought of how she felt or offered her any kind of softness or sweetness. She had deserved that much. Now here he was thinking about the past and realizing all those thoughts and dreams that helped him get through the hard times had to be nightmares to Addison. Did he really have the right to demand anything from her after the way he had treated her back then and since? Did he really have the right to be pissed off because Sunshine had been kept from him? Did he even deserve to know about the little girl who would never be a part of his life because he had been too selfish and hurt to look back and try to fix things with Addison? Would things have been different if he had?
Shit, the questions just kept on coming. He remembered the last time he spoke with Pop. Hindsight is twenty-twenty they say, but at the time Whisk had been so pissed that he didn’t take the time to pay attention to the little things. The man was frail, unkempt, and sickly, but he still had the balls to ask him one question?
“Are you going to do right by my girl?” His answer and been no, and all the old man said was, “Okay, then don’t come back, you made your decision. Addy said there was something more to you, but I guess she was wrong. Leave her be and leave Defiance behind. You serve your time and do well, stay safe, but Aiden, this isn’t your home anymore, you destroyed that all on you own.”
Damn, Whisk had been so mean that day telling Pop to fuck off, that Addison had been the one to destroy anything they could have had by spreading her legs. Pop just laughed and waved him off like he was an annoyance only further adding to Whiskey’s mood. Shit, he had been so stupid.