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Chapter Thirty-Two
War patted Remi’s handswrapped around his waist. He’d been ecstatic when Remi said she wanted to ride with him for the Toy Run. They were outside their last destination—Dodge City. Whiskey’s family had stepped up and was feeding all the riders and helping with the distribution of the toys. One of the security team members was driving a box truck full of toys plus they all had a couple on their motorcycles.
They were fifteen minutes from the bar and his time was up. He’d given himself until Thanksgiving to open up to Remi about the incident but as the weeks passed, he kept putting it off. He’d imagined with the Toy Run the Saturday before Thanksgiving it would be the perfect time. Plus he wouldn’t have to see the condemnation in her eyes.
Bear had called him a dumbass multiple times with Cannon, Scoop and Flick chiming in their agreement. Whether he was a dumbass or not, he had big plans for Christmas with Remington and he needed a clean slate to do that.
Countless times on the ride he’d started to share then paused. Remi loved him and he hoped and prayed this didn’t change her opinion of him.
“I wanted to share something with you, but I don’t want you to say anything until the end.” He paused, waiting for her agreement. Maybe not seeing her face was a bad idea. Her eyes were so expressive, and he couldn’t tell what she was thinking. Her arms squeezed a little, then one hand reached his thigh and patted.
“Okay.”
He swallowed, hoping he could get through this without throwing up. Wouldn’t that be a sight on the Toy Run! The president pulling over to blow chunks on the side of the road.
“You asked about my greatest regret on our first date. I gave you an easy answer. My greatest regret is the day my trainee died. I should have bounced her from the program, but Bear had been her training officer. He’d been hurt. I was worried about him and didn’t want to second guess his opinion. I didn’t know he’d come to the same conclusion. She had family high up in the local government but that isn’t an excuse. We went to a call, and she did herI know betterroutine and didn’t follow orders. She was shot and bled out before the ambulance could get there. I didn’t realize how much her attitude changed how I looked at females in the department and later, in the security company. I want you to know I see you, my warrior woman, and not her incompetence. You and your sisters have shown me I can’t let a horrible incident change my view of all women.”
He'd thrown it all out there. It was up to Remington now.
Her arms hugged him as she whispered, “I love you, War. I appreciate you opening up, but I already knew about the incident. You hold no culpability in her death. She’d been given multiple opportunities. She should never had been assigned a new training officer after Bear’s shooting. Your chief should have put her on leave and at least investigated.”
“How do you know all that?”
He was thrilled Remington didn’t think less of him. He was also positive Bear wouldn’t have broken any confidence.
“War, I deal in security, meaning I have to know any things in a person’s background before I assign them to a detail. Sarah ran deep backgrounds on each of you and when she does a deep dive, nothing is left out. I never brought it up because you didn’t mention it.”
He chuckled. Of course they did deep dives into their security personnel. He’d worried for nothing but hearing Remington’s view on the incident released the last bit of guilt he had. In all the times he’d gone over the incident, he’d never considered the chief shouldn’t have reassigned her.
“If we weren’t on this bike in the middle of all our friends, I’d pull over and show you how much you mean to me.”
Remington’s hands slid down his stomach, one sliding underneath his shirt, lightly scratching his belly.
“Let’s save that thought.”
He turned down the street and followed Winnie’s hand signals directing them to the bike parking in the street. He shut down and waited for Remi to get off the bike. Whiskey was walking toward him with a microphone and a piece of paper. He glanced at the numbers on the paper, cocking his eyebrow at Whiskey.
“These are correct?”
“Yes. We scrambled to get another bin for the toys and Winnie and Sarah confirmed the cash numbers.”
War jumped up on the podium as the last of the bikes stopped and shut down.
“Welcome, Bluff Creek Brotherhood MC and friends.” He paused, waiting for the yelling and whistling to die down. “I want to thank the Nelson family for volunteering their bar as our last stop and coordinating food, drink and drop off for us. When I came back to the MC, I was ready for change. Instead of the worst of humanity getting away with things, I wanted to make a difference. I thought I’d need to change and implement new things but what I found was the foundation was already built. Today, each of you have helped make someone’s Christmas a little better. The current numbers, which could change as we are accepting donations through today, are: one hundred and fifty thousand toys, cash donations of sixty-five thousand, three hundred dollars, and fifteen thousand cans of food. I admit I’m stunned. I don’t know if this is the most we’ve ever done or not.”
“It’s more than double our highest year!” Baron yelled.
