Saving Axe (Motorcycle Club Romance, Cowboy, Military) (Inferno Motorcycle Club) Read online

  "She likes you," I said. "It looks like you're awake, having a little party of your own."

  He held up the bottle. "Want some?"

  I shrugged, and took it from him, taking a sip and nearly spitting it out. I wiped the back of my hand across my mouth. "God, that's awful."

  Cade sat down on the step. "So what are you doing, sitting out here all by yourself?"

  I couldn't tell if it was just late or his words were slurring.

  "I couldn't sleep."

  "That's what this is for," Cade said, shaking the bottle.

  Yeah, he was definitely slurring.

  "Yeah, that'll definitely help with your sleep," I said, sarcastically. Just because I'd stopped being a surgeon didn't mean I stopped thinking like a physician.

  He didn't notice the sarcasm. "It helps turn off my mind."

  I couldn't help but ask. "Bikers do a lot of ruminating about things?"

  "You have no idea," he said.

  "My mind runs on a loop." Why did I just say that?

  He closed his eyes, silent for a while, and I wondered if he had passed out. "So you came back to West Bend, Junebug. Starting a bed and breakfast."

  Junebug. Other kids had called me Junebug when I was young, and I'd hated it. Then Cade had called me the same thing, and it became my favorite name in the world. "I am. I bought this place. Just need to fix it up a little bit."

  "Returning to a simpler life,” he said. He ran his finger down the neck of the bottle and I pictured him running his finger down the length of me. “Do you remember when we used to plan to run my dad’s ranch?”

  It had been my life’s ambition. I nodded. “Do you ever think of coming back home?”

  “Every day,” he said. Then, quickly, "Not really."

  He looked tired. Sad.

  "You look like you never left," he said. I felt naked under his gaze. Vulnerable.

  I laughed, suddenly nervous. "You mean I look like a local again."

  "No, that's not what I mean, Junebug," he said, his gaze intense. "This place, it looks good on you."

  "Well, you look different," I said.

  Cade laughed. Axe. The name somehow suited his new persona. His biker persona. I'd always thought of him as a cowboy. Even after I’d heard he joined the Marines, I couldn’t shake the thought of him still riding on the ranch, back here in West Bend. "Not exactly what you expected, is it?"

  "I didn't expect you at all," I said. I didn't mention that for years I'd fantasized about running into him. That was a long time ago.

  "I hoped I'd see you again," he said. "But not like this."

  I took a drag of my beer. "What is 'like this' exactly?"

  He was silent, his eyes studying the ground. "I needed to get Crunch and his family out of trouble. It's nothing, Junebug."

  It was more than nothing. I knew that much. "Are you in trouble?"

  "No,” he said, finally making eye contact again. “Yes.”

  “With the bikers?”

  “Probably.”

  What the hell was the appropriate response for this situation? “Well, that sucks, huh?”

  Cade laughed, the sound warm, just like I remembered. “Yeah, it does. You want to join me?"

  It took me a minute to figure out he was talking about sitting on the stairs. No, I thought. That's the last thing I need, to get even closer to him.

  But I stood anyway, moved beside him on the stairs. Bailey harrumphed and moved back up to her spot on the porch. As soon as she moved from between us, the proximity to Cade felt close. Too close. I didn't look at him.

  “So, what’s keeping you up at night then?” he asked.

  What the hell should I say to that? "Well, I'm not generally in the habit of telling all my secrets to every dirty biker that walks through my door."

  He leaned forward. "Well, I'm not just any old dirty biker," he said. "Am I?"

  "No, you aren't." My heart thumped loudly in my chest.

  "Well, I can't promise I'm not dirty," he said.

  I shivered, but not from the cold, biting my bottom lip. No, I'd bet he was all kinds of dirty now, wasn't he? I sat there, feeling paralyzed by desire for this man I didn't know anymore. The man sitting beside me was sexy as hell. And dangerous, I reminded myself.

  And drunk.

  I looked over at him, my eyes wandering from his hands, to the tattoos that snaked across his forearms to his biceps. An image peeked out from under the sleeve of his tee shirt, and I recognized the symbol. I reached over, lifting the edge of the fabric, squinting to see underneath. An Eagle Globe and Anchor, surrounded on each side by an "S." I dropped the sleeve, and looked up at him.

  His expression was curious. "Something interest you there?"

  "You were a sniper," I said. “I knew you were a Marine. I didn’t know any more than that.”

  He drew his arm away from me like I'd shocked him. "Yeah, and?"

  I regretted seeing it on his arm. The way he looked at me just then, it was a mixture of wounded and defiant, like he was daring me to ask him more, but terrified that I would. I hated seeing that look on him.

  "It was a long time ago now," he said. Clearing his throat, he took another swig from the bottle. He was silent for a while. Then, "I was going to get in touch, you know.”

  I nodded, swallowing hard. “Ditto.”

  He took another long swig of the bottle and offered it to me.

  "No, thanks." I shook my head, wondering exactly how much of it he had already drunk tonight. A lot, by the looks of it.

  “I emailed your aunt every so often to see how you were doing," he said. I just never could bring myself to - after what happened, you know?”

  “I never blamed you,” I said. That wasn’t true, not really. After their deaths, I had blamed anyone and everyone, especially myself. "We were just kids."

  "Yeah,” he said. “We’re not kids anymore, though, are we?” I could feel him looking at me, and I forced my eyes straight ahead. Don't look at him. If I did, it would be all over.

  "No," I said.

  "We're definitely both grown-ups now," he said, his voice thick. "And now we're both back here."

  He suddenly felt too close. "Why did you come here, Cade?"

  "I already told you."

  "Not to West Bend. Here."

  “Why do you think I came over here, Junebug?” He looked at me, those piercing blue eyes hooded, then reached out, ran his finger along my arm.

  I bristled at his touch. The nerve of him, thinking he'd come over here and get laid. After all this time, that's why he came over here? And drunk. I wasn't exactly a teetotaler, but when your parents are killed the way mine were, you get a little touchy about booze. Cade should have known better.

  And still, even with all that, his touch made me shiver.

  I needed to get away from him. I stood, leaning against the porch railing. "I hope you didn't think it was a good idea to drink most of that whiskey and come over here for ex sex."

  He smiled crookedly.

  The shithead.

  Then he stood, bottle in hand, stepped close to me, and leaned in. I could smell the alcohol on his breath. "Don't tell me you're not interested."

  "Fuck you, Cade." This Cade, the drunk, arrogant, criminal one, was nothing like the one I'd left behind in high school.

  This one was just an asshole.

  "I'll fuck you when you beg me, Junebug," he whispered. He stepped back and winked, then started down the steps. He turned around, wobbled a little as he walked backwards toward the field. "Don't forget, I know you. I know what makes you beg."

  Fuck him.

  Beg him? He had to be kidding. I wouldn't beg him for anything.

  Axe

  "Uncle Axe!" MacKenzie launched herself into my arms, the way only little kids can do, with no reservation. "Eew!" she yelled. "You're sweaty!"

  I swung her around in circles in the grass, until after a few turns I started to feel nauseous. It had been a couple of days since the last time I'd had som
ething to drink, but I swear I still felt hung-over.

  "Of course I'm sweaty," I said. "Uncle Axe has been working like a dog all day long."

  "Because your dad made you?"

  I looked over at my dad, talking to April on the porch. "Yeah, something like that." My dad hadn't kept up with the fence around the property, and I'd spent all morning since daybreak repairing fence posts. I leaned in close to MacKenzie, and spoke to her in a stage whisper. "But don't tell anyone- I kind of like working here."

  She giggled. "Me too, Uncle Axe! Mr. Austin let me help him feed the horses!"

  "Did he now? You know, when I was a kid, I had to muck the horse stalls."

  Her brow wrinkled. "What's mucking?"

  "Mucking is where you clean all the horse poop out of the stall."

  "Eew!" she yelled. "Horse poop is gross!"

  "It is," I agreed. "Just imagine if you had to clean it out of the barn."

  "Was your dad punishing you?" she asked. "My dad wouldn't make me clean up horse poop."

  "Nope, it was just part of growing up with horses on a ranch. But you should go tell Mr. Austin he was punishing me, making me do all those chores," I said. "He'll laugh." As she scampered off to talk to my dad, I stood there and drank it all in. I was sweaty and covered in muck and grime. My shoulders ached after hours of digging holes in the hard ground, and my back kept reminding me I wasn't twenty years old anymore.

  Despite all of that, I could feel this place beginning to permeate me, eating away at all the shit from Los Angeles, the shit from the club. It had been a long time since I felt alive. More days than not over the past year, I'd felt dead.

  I watched MacKenzie tug at my dad's sleeve as he stood there, talking to April. I should feel happy, watching all of them relaxed, having fun. But I didn't. Instead, a feeling of fragility washed over me, this sense that everything could change in a moment. One extreme meant the pendulum would inevitably shift.

  Crunch caught my eye from the other side of the field, and walked over to where I stood. "Man, you look as bad as I do."

  He was right. He was covered head to toe in dirt. But he was standing there with a stupid, shit-eating grin on his face, and that made me smile.

  "You look like you're having fun," I said.

  "It ain't bad, you know? I could get used to this." He stopped and dropped the spool of barbed wire he was carrying for the fencing. "Look at Mac and April over there. I don't think Mac has been this happy in ages."

  "The country is good for kids."

  "Yeah," he said. "It's not just that, though." He kicked up a dirt clod with his boot. "It's just that- I'm grateful for what you did for us, for April and Mac."

  "Not a thing," I said. That was exactly the opposite of what it was.

  "No, I want you to know-" he stopped. "I don't know that I would have done the same as you, if the tables were turned. I probably would have shot first and then asked questions later."

  I shrugged. “Maybe, but I doubt it. You’d have done the same, I think.”

  "Sometimes I wonder if I have it in me anymore," he said. "I'm tired of all the shit, you know?"

  Did I ever know. I was exhausted.

  "Does your dad know what's going on?" he asked.

  "I told him some of it."

  "I feel bad," he said. "Putting him in danger by being here."

  "We don't know that we're even in danger."

  Crunch laughed, the sound harsh. "We're in danger. I'm sure of it."

  “We’ll get in touch with Blaze. As soon as we can.”

  “You think we can trust him? He’s the Veep,” Crunch said. “He and Mad Dog, they have to be tight, right?”

  “I know Blaze,” I said. Or I used to know Blaze. “Blaze will be with us. I know he’s not okay with this play by Mad Dog. He doesn't want this kind of life, all the cartel trouble."

  I thought about the conversation we’d had right before the cartel vote.

  ~ ~ ~

  I walked up to Blaze, sitting back behind the clubhouse in his usual place, the garage. The mechanics bench was where Blaze was at his best. The guy could tool the nastiest knucklehead back into existence. When he was with his wrenches, we usually left him alone. He preferred it that way. He’d hang out by himself when he wanted to get away from all the club chaos. Nights like this, two in the morning on a party night, we should be shithoused or buried in pussy. But lately Blaze had been more and more detached from the club.

  At first, I cut him some slack since he was all about Dani, this college student up at Stanford, and I could remember how it felt to be crazy that way about someone. Of course, my point of reference was high school, so it was hard to compare. I mean, high school hormones make you fucking batshit, right? I couldn’t imagine feeling that swept up in someone now. I was a goddamned adult. And Blaze was acting like a fucking adolescent.

  So maybe I wasn’t cutting him that much slack, actually.

  Blaze was sitting back, his head against the wall, eyes closed. I wasn't sure he was awake but when he saw me, he looked up.

  I turned a bucket over, took a seat on top of it.

  "Rough night?" Blaze asked.

  "Not bad," I said. "You just get back from seeing Dani?" All that fucking riding up to Stanford wasn't good for him. Or the club.

  He shook his head. "She's back here now, at my place. Not at Stanford. Graduated last week."

  That's right. I was a shithead, forgetting that. Had he invited me to her graduation? Fuck. I couldn't remember. Everything had been a haze lately, drugs and pussy and booze. No, I'd remember if he'd invited me. I hadn't seen him here a hell of a lot lately. Not like I used to, back when we were tight.

  "Sorry, man," I said. "I didn't realize she was back in town."

  I sat there in silence, digging the toe of my boot into the cement. Dani was a nice girl, don’t get me wrong, but when you start to get so wrapped up in a piece of ass that you forget where your priorities lie, that’s a big fucking problem. And I was worried that Blaze had forgotten his priorities.

  “You ever think about having a family?” Blaze asked, his eyes still half-closed.

  “Used to,” I said. “Not anymore.” Once, though. A long time ago. There was this girl, back then...

  “Because of the club?”

  That ship had sailed for me.

  I shrugged. "I don’t know. It’s not like you’re ever going to get the white picket fence and shit, doing this.”

  “You think you can have both?”

  “I don’t know, man,” I said. “People in the club have families, keep them separate.”

  “You think it’s possible to keep them separate?” Blaze’s eyes were open now, but he was staring off into the distance. I wasn’t comfortable with wherever the fuck this conversation was headed.

  “You having some kind of personal crisis or some shit?” I asked.

  Blaze was silent for a while, and when he spoke, I didn’t believe him. “Of course not. It’s not like I’d ever leave the club.”

  “Does Dani want you to leave?” Dani had never seemed like the type to want to be part of the MC lifestyle, even if she’d proven she had the balls to handle it. She had an air of being above all this shit.

  “No, man,” Blaze said. “She’d never ask me to do that. She knows it’s been part of me forever.”

  “Then what?”

  “I don’t know. It’s all going fine, the gig with Benicio and shit. It’s sometimes I just get to thinking about where we’re headed, what the long term plan is.”

  ~ ~ ~

  Where we were headed is that I knew there was going to be a vote on the cartel thing, but I didn't tell him. I wanted to see the look on his fucking face when he showed up for church and found out just how much he'd been missing by visiting Dani all goddamn year.

  I was pissed off at him for neglecting the club.

  It was petty, especially in light of what was happening now.

  Crunch's voice jolted me back to the present.

&n
bsp; “You ever think about coming back here?” he asked.

  “I used to,” I said. Not anymore.

  “This place is a fucking trip,” he said. “Maybe because I grew up in the city or whatever, but holy shit, it’s small.”

  I laughed, wiping my palm on my jeans. “You think this is small? It’s huge now. It was an event when we got a traffic light here. The newspaper covered it.”

  Crunch laughed. “No shit?”

  “Not only did they cover it, they sent out a reporter to stand by the side of the road, interview people after they went though. Caused a traffic jam.”

  "Guess you knew everybody here, huh.”

  "Everybody knew everybody," I said.

  Crunch nodded. "You and June seemed like you knew each other pretty well."

  I groaned. Not this. I didn't want to talk about June. I didn't want to think about her.

  My dad saved me, waving at us from the porch. "I think we’re wanted up there, man,” I said.

  "So I'm not going to get the story on June, then."

  "Not on your life," I said. I glanced behind us, over toward June's house. I hadn't seen her, not even run into her, since the night I'd gotten back here. I'd drunk too much, gone over there thinking I might get lucky. Like she was a club whore or something.

  It was stupid, and I deserved worse than I got from her that night.

  We walked toward the house. "How's Mac doing with all of this, anyway?" I asked.

  “She’s an easy kid,” he said. “Been taking it in stride. She thinks it’s a big vacation.”

  “That’s good.”

  “We probably need to get them out of here.”

  I nodded. “I think it would be for the best.”

  “You think shit’s going to hit the fan out here?”

  "Not yet," I said. "You been working on getting us any intel?"

  Crunch nodded. "Seeing if I can get anything through the medical examiner's office, newspapers, that kind of thing. Doesn't look like the ME's office has anything I can hack into though. Might all be old school."

  "Can we get them back with your mother-in-law?"

  “Yeah,” he said. “That’s how we had planned it anyway. Should we get them set up?”

  "Let's wait, see what intel we can get," I said. "If they think we're dead, at least right now, we may be able to buy some time, get in touch with Blaze."