Nolan by Lane Hart, D.B. West

Chapter Twenty

Nolan

Sitting at the bar of the clubhouse, I nurse one glass of beer for hours, wanting to make sure I’m ready to fight if and when the Rebel Henchmen show up. God knows they will eventually, and we’ll be ready.

In fact, I’m looking forward to whooping some ass, anything to distract me from what I know it means when Jake and Lucas come strolling into the clubhouse that night.

They come over, and unnecessarily, Jake tells me, “She’s gone.”

I nod since I know she would’ve had to have left since they’re here. Abel and Hugo come in right behind them, giving me a nod of their chins. The four of them wouldn’t be here unless Rita had hit the road after I dropped off her new SUV.

“Any sign of the Henchmen?” Lucas asks when he takes a seat on the empty stool next to me.

“Not yet,” Leo says from the other side of the bar, jerking his head toward the screen on the wall with four boxes on it, a security camera on every side of the building. The system has been in place for years just for occasions like this. Every Savage Kings chapter has the same one, a requirement for clubhouses after the original Kings’ hangout was ambushed. At least they had a heads-up that shit was going down, but it still ended up with good men from the Charlotte chapter dead.

“Maybe he’s too stupid to realize she left with you,” Lucas says, making me snort.

“No one is that stupid.”

Roman’s office door swings open as our president comes storming through it. “They’re coming,” he says in warning to the room.

Around the room, guns are brandished, clips checked, and safeties are clicked off.

“You got some kind of early detection monitor?” I ask Roman.

“Yeah,” he answers. “Marcus has been sitting under the overpass, watching the highway juncture where every major road from Cape Cartwright leads into town.”

“Smart,” I tell him. “How many?”

“Eight,” he answers, which is a relief. It means they don’t have any other chapters or at least haven’t called them in if they do.

“They’re coming here?” Jake says, his young face looking terrified as he glances between me and Roman just as Winston comes out of the chapel with an arm full of vests – not leather ones but bulletproof ones.

“Yep,” I answer for Roman since we knew this was the obvious place they would start looking for Rita since it’s where Leroy found me the other day.

“Should we call the cops?” Lucas asks. “They probably all have warrants and shit.”

“Nah, we don’t need the police,” Roman answers as he pulls on his vest. “We’ve got backup on the way.”

Abel and Hugo come over once they’re suited up, offering me a vest as I chug my last sip of beer.

Hopefully it won’t literally be the last sip of my life.

“I still don’t get why you don’t let the redheaded bitch fight her own battles,” Hugo mutters. I consider ramming my fist into his face, but know we need shooters more than unconscious men. And then I remember that I haven’t had a chance to tell my boys the whole story.

“She never knew I went to prison,” I tell them after putting on my vest and checking my own gun. “Her dipshit brother hid the search warrant and never told her what happened.”

“You’re fucking kidding,” Abel says.

“She’s lying,” Hugo huffs.

“She wasn’t lying! I heard her chew her brother out on the phone after I told her. The woman thought I just up and left town, left her and never came back.”

Abel shakes his head. “That is seriously fucked up.”

“It is. For both of us. I was pissed at her for not coming to see me or writing me when I was locked up, and she was left hating me, thinking I ghosted her. If not for the giant motherfucker pressing up on her, I might not have ever learned the truth, so at least there’s that…”

“Damn,” Hugo says as he stares at me. “You weren’t angry-fucking her. That racket you two made was both of you working off five years of frustration after being fucked over.”

“Something like that,” I tell him with a grin.

Hugo’s never thought about a woman for longer than he’s inside of her, so he wouldn’t understand loving one, being apart for years and never being able to forget her no matter how pissed I may have been before learning the truth. I’m starting to think he’s better off for it since it fucking hurts, worse than a bullet or a beating. There’s nothing the Rebel Henchman can do that will come close to causing me as much pain as letting Rita go.

* * *

Rita

I drive southfor three hours in the Honda Pilot Nolan gave me before stopping to grab some dinner.

He went too far. Not only did he give me new identification using my actual picture so no one will ever question it, he left twenty thousand in cash in the glovebox of a car that looks and smells brand new.

And what did I leave him? A huge bloody mess to clean up.

“Could I get another cup of coffee?” I ask the waitress the next time she walks past me.

“Sure thing, hon,” the middle-aged woman says with a smile.

It just doesn’t seem fair – not leaving Nolan behind to deal with my enormous problem or walking away from him after finally finding out that he never left me like I thought he did.

He gave up his freedom to keep me and Cory out of prison.

He loved me. Loves me in the present tense maybe? I don’t think any man would go to so much trouble for a woman if he didn’t have some feelings involved.

“You okay, honey?” the waitress asks, snapping me out of my thoughts when I glance up and see her standing with a worried expression on her face, the coffee pot in her hand. I look down and realize my mug is full again and didn’t even remember seeing her fill it.

“Ah, yeah. Just sort of feels like I’m at a crossroads in my life, but I don’t want to go in either direction,” I admit as I pick up the mug to take a sip.

“Sometimes when there’s no good option, all you can do is make a U-turn and go back home.”

A bark of laughter escapes me as a tear spills free from my eye. “I don’t have a home. I’m not sure I’ve had a real one in eleven years, not since my childhood home burned down with my parents in it. Everything I own worth keeping is packed out there in one vehicle.”

“Well, that’s just the saddest thing I’ve ever heard,” the waitress says as she slides into the booth across from me. “Go on, you can’t leave me hanging here.”

“I gave up my life to raise my little brother when our parents died, and then I recently find out, or admitted to myself that he’s turned out to be a selfish little shit. Man, I really want to smack him for everything I sacrificed for him, working two jobs to keep a roof over our heads and then to pay for him to go to college. And how does he repay me? He let the one man I’ve ever loved go to prison for him and didn’t tell me! He just let me think he up and left me without a word, never to be heard from again.”

The waitress gasps. “You’re kidding.”

“Nope.” I take another sip from my mug as more tears fall. “This is great coffee, by the way, so at least I have that going for me.”

“You know, I’ve never had a man give up his jacket for me, much less his freedom,” she says. “He sounds like a real keeper.”

A sob escapes before I can smack my palm over my mouth. “I can’t keep him! That’s the problem.”

“Well, why ever not?” she asks in that slow southern accent.

“People would’ve died if I didn’t leave him. They still might...”

“Die?” she asks with a shocked gasp, and I nod my head to confirm. “But why should you have to sacrifice anything else if it all might end the same?”

“Because if I’m not there, the crazy man after me might give up and go away.”

“Well, that’s just a real shame that other people keep coming between you and a good man,” she says.

“You’re preaching to the choir.”