Floating (11 page)

Tank has managed to share very few personal details about himself, fuck knows how he kept it quiet with the nosy bastards that belong to this club, but he did. Priest, Pipe and Reaper all know the basics and nothing more.

He was a SEAL, specialised in weapons, discharged after his contract was up for renewal the third time. The fact that he’s single was all most people knew. I felt privileged Tank trusted me enough to share the kind of person he truly was, the man behind the façade.

The atrocities Tank saw, while serving his country in Kandahar, turned my stomach. The way he described the violence, degradation, and torture of innocents by the native rebel soldiers, made me question if it was possible to recover from being thrust into that environment for years on end. It didn’t surprise anyone that when Tank came home from his last tour he was diagnosed with PTSD. However, not one to be labelled, he placed it in a box permanently, and discarded it. Tank sought help, doing something that a lot of soldiers were too proud, too stubborn, or unable to achieve.

Part of his healing came in the form of Devil’s Spawn MC. Tank once told me that the togetherness, the brotherhood within the MC was one of the turning points in his recovery. Leaving the SEALs, Tank felt cast aside, no longer a part of a close-knit group of men that had each other’s back and worked together toward a common objective. He was thanked, patted on the back and given his discharge paperwork, leaving him without a safety net of men that understood the trials and horrors he’d faced.  The MC filled that hole, gave him back something he thought he’d never have again and desperately needed. I understood that, Devil’s Spawn MC had done something similar for me, too.

Brothers came from all walks of life: shitty families, abuse, having been thrust into dangerous situations, with very few choices but to do what they had to for survival

We have a hierarchy, certain rules, granted not many, but some, to live by, and consequences metered out with a heavy hand for fuck ups severe enough to warrant intervention.  We live, ride, play and fuck free, it is our code to live by. That doesn’t mean we don’t have strong morals and values, a set of priorities to live by, because we most certainly do. We don’t hurt women or children, this is vehemently upheld, and there is no judgement passed on brothers’ past or present choices.

It doesn’t matter if you have money or you have none, you are educated or barely hold a GED, brothers are accepted for who they are, the strength of their character, and their loyalty.

Tank has one of the strongest characters among us. Irrespective of what he’d seen, done, or been ordered to do, he is loyal, fearsome, focused and has the biggest heart of anyone I’ve ever met. Tilly and Priss are a testament to that.

He may have been originally assigned, not volunteered, by Priest to oversee the prospects maintaining Priss and Tilly’s house, but Tank is now the one that ensures they have all the support and help they ever need, most of which is in the form of Tank himself, without request.

More than once, try multiple handfuls of times, it is fucking hilarious really, how often it happens, Priss summarily dismisses Tank. She tells him she can manage on her own or more specifically to, “Fuck off and die in a hole.” Tank just laughs her dismissal off and shows up again the very next day.

Priss must not be very devoted to the idea of getting rid of him because she never takes it further than to yell at Tank herself. She knows, full well, if she approaches Priest or Pipe, Priss can have one of them tell Tank to back off and let her handle her own business, from now on. They might not agree with her, but they definitely would have had a word with the man.

To be honest, I think it was more than likely, a slightly twisted game of push-pull those two have going on. Tank will do something to piss her off, usually becoming too involved in her personal life, and Priss will throw sass, mouthing off about him being a, “Douche Canoe” or, “King Fucktard”.

In the end, they always find a way to move past whatever shit they have going on. More often than not, that comes in the form of ignoring anything ever happened and they go on about their lives.

I am certain of one thing though; in all this back and forth they have going on, neither of them will do anything to upset or jeopardise Tilly’s wellbeing. Tank is nothing, if not ultra-sensitive to Tilly’s feelings, Priss even more so.

Tilly isn’t high strung or even a necessarily sensitive teenage girl. She is just far too acquainted with loss and sadness that neither Priss nor Tank wants her to feel she will lose either of them if they fight.

It is funny as fuck seeing Tank pander to a little slip of a thing like Tilly. Not that Tilly demands that of him, no, he does that all of his own accord. At five foot three, her body still in that awkward lanky, not quite filled out stage, that all fifteen-year-old girls have to go through, Tilly is delicately built; unlike her sister’s toned, athletic, perfectly proportioned body.

Priss and Tilly shared the same gorgeous, long blonde hair, but where Priss’s eyes are the colour of the Mediterranean Sea, Tilly’s are a deep chocolate brown, just like her dad’s. Where Priss has done years of gymnastics, starting at the age four, and yoga, tends to speak her mind and is strong willed; Tilly has forgone sports, preferring to draw with charcoal and is quiet and reserved by nature.

Regardless of their differences, that is what made Tilly and Priss such a good team throughout all of the hardship they faced. If Tilly had been a difficult kid, rebellious, high maintenance; there would be no way Priss could have kept things together, as well as she had.

Snapping me back to reality and the game on TV, I see Tank making a move to leave. I look at the clock and notice an hour passed while I was wrapped up in my head. Throwing out a brief goodbye, he heads out.

No doubt the nosy bastard will be down at Skin Fusion within the next twenty minutes, pissing Priss the fuck off, ensuring yet another round of her telling him to go fuck himself.

All I can do now is sit and wait. Ronnie isn’t due home for at least another hour and a half. I have fuck all to do today, besides stopping in at the clubhouse a bit later to catch up with Priest.

In the weeks that followed Ronnie’s hospital stay, the club had come to the conclusion that the shooting injuring Ronnie and costing Isabella her life, was solely planned, and executed by Cage’s deranged ex-wife. Unfortunately, the likelihood there was some level of involvement by the Satan’s Sons was high. Something I happened to wholeheartedly agree with.

It wasn’t that Isabella wasn’t capable of carrying it out on her own. Fuck, she did, in fact, shoot my woman, after all. It just struck the MC as unlikely; she would willingly go into a situation that she knew would cost her life. Isabella was nothing, if not narcissistic. It didn’t gel. Isabella made no secret of the fact that she wanted Cage back. For fuck’s sake, she spent the six months prior, sending text messages, making phone calls at all hours of the day and night, and sending naked fucking pictures of herself to Cage’s cell phone, in an effort to entice him to reunite with her. Each time she was met with a, “Fuck No” from Cage. Isabella escalated her attempts until Reaper paid her a friendly visit. At the time, she was holed up in a little town about fifty miles away. After his visit, where he diplomatically delivered the message that it wasn’t going to happen and the consequences, which were many and colourful if she continued to hassle Cage, there had been radio silence.

Connecting all the dots, that message would have been delivered not long before Isabella shot Kendall. Reaper wasn’t unaware of the timeline and the guilt he harboured, unnecessarily, became so overwhelming for him that he snapped about a month back, destroying a pool table and half the fucking bar at the clubhouse. It took three brothers and a visibly distraught Kendall to calm his ass down. Irrespective of the fact, Reaper held no responsibility for Isabella’s actions, I didn’t know if that was something he would ever be able to set straight with himself and overcome. If it had been me, I don’t think I would have been able to, so I completely understood where the man was coming from.

Currently, the club is in the process of gathering information, trying to establish what the Satan’s Sons end game is. There is no way, whatever they had going on, stopped with Isabella’s death and Ronnie’s shooting. They wanted to get to Kendall for some reason. Ronnie was simply collateral damage.

The thing is; we are completely in the dark with all this shit. Devil’s Spawn hasn’t been in an altercation or turf war with Satan’s Sons for fucking years. The two clubs aren’t friendly, the total opposite in fact, however, we haven’t actively done shit to piss them off, either.

Vengeance MC, yet again, stepped up and offered to help wherever they can, seeing as we are sitting around with our dicks in our hands. Boss, Vengeance’s president, and Diesel his VP, are travelling back and forth between Blackwater and Furnace at least twice a week, meeting with Priest, Pipe and Reaper.

Even with the extra assistance, no reason for the unprovoked attacks has been uncovered. Information is scarce, people aren’t talking and the added connection and contacts through Vengeance have yet to turn up shit. We won’t stop digging until we have answers but this is seriously fucking wearing on everyone.

I am in the kitchen, heating up a tray of lasagne Ronnie made the night before, when I hear the front door shut with a bang. Following closely on its heels was a muttered, “Jesus Christ,” signalling Ronnie had made it home in one piece.

Rounding the corner I see her bent over at the waist, collecting the scattered items all over the floor that must have fallen out of her purse when she dropped it. Huh, that explains the curse, then. Crouching down, I scoop up the rest of her stuff and ask, “How’d it go, Sunshine? You in a lot of pain?”

I don’t want to admit I’ve been worried shitless about the amount of pain she will be in while having a relatively fresh scar tattooed over. I still think she should have waited, but her plastic surgeon cleared her to have it done. Kendall had taken a really close look at the scar, assuring Ronnie and me in the process, that she was good to go ahead.

Sighing and shrugging her shoulders, Ronnie replies, “It was ok. Some of the raised bits stung a lot, but overall it was ok, not too bad.” I’m not convinced. The tightness around her eyes, and the pale tinge to her skin tells a different story. She looks fucking exhausted.

“How about you come have something to eat, and then lay down and take it easy the rest of the night. You probably want to stretch out after being stuck in the same position all day, yeah?” It isn’t a question. Ronnie recognises the tone in my voice. I know I am right when she doesn’t argue, following me back to the kitchen, with an audible sigh. She sits at the huge, square, eight-person dining table I have off to one side.

“You want a drink? Probably shouldn’t have alcohol after getting a tat that big though, Baby.” I’ve been slipping up a lot lately with the affectionate nicknames.

In the beginning Ronnie cringed every time I called her Sunshine, Babe, or Baby. She must be getting used to it. The only reaction she gives me now is a flash of sadness that crosses her face quickly and only when I call her Sunshine.

It’d been my name for her for so long before losing her, that as soon as I was reunited with her, it slipped easily back into place. Most times I am not even conscious of the fact I am using it. And I am definitely not sure if the sad look in her eyes is because she remembers better times and places, or if she still feels our connection, as strongly as I do.

Even though I have barely touched her, up until I sat her in my lap only days earlier, our chemistry, the sexual tension we have between us whenever we are in the same room is still off the charts. And if the shiver of awareness that went through her body, when she was sitting on top of my rock hard cock the other day, is anything to go by; there is no way she doesn’t feel it, too.

“What are you thinking about so hard over there?” I turn toward her and notice the arched brow and look of curiosity in her eyes. I honestly have no fucking idea how to answer that. There is no way in hell she wants to know that I have been thinking about fucking her in unconsciousness.

“Nothing much. Just work and shit.” It is a lie and I’m sure she sees right through me; she doesn’t question it though. I am damn glad she let it slide.

“Okay. When do you go back to work, anyway?”

I haven’t been in to work at Chasers since the day before Kendall and Cage’s wedding. I know shit is getting backed up and I will have a fuck load of catch up when I return. None of that mattered when Ronnie was hurt. I couldn’t care less they need me back ASAP and are calling every day to find out when I can come in. Ronnie is more important than some fucking Buick that a little old lady told us was making a “Ting, Ting,” noise.