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My laughter dies out when I realize Lennon isn’t laughing with me. My eyebrows pull together at her odd expression, one I can’t place. “What? What’s wrong?” I start to wipe my face, expecting foam or something from my drink, “Is there something on my face?”
“Uh,” Lennon fidgets in her seat, “do you really want to be set-up with a patient’s grandson?”
I shake my head slowly, unsure about where this is going. “Not really. I don’t think it would be the right thing to do ethically speaking and I love my job. I just thought it was a cute gesture.”
Lennon relaxes, but it’s like I can’t, even though I fake it for the rest of my coffee excursion with my friend. I’m not sure what to make of it.
The hairs on the back of my neck stand up and that feeling of being watched settles over me again. It’s been happening more and more lately. It can’t be him. Can it?
I don’t know whether I even want to know if it is him or not. Something is just on the horizon, I can feel it, and it scares the hell out of me.
CHAPTER 6
PENANCE
Fuck. She’s stunning. I thought she was beautiful years ago, but now she’s even more. Every time I get a moment to see her, even though it’s at a distance, she takes my breath away.
I’ve been trying to balance the karmic scales so I can approach her, but I’m not sure if I’ll ever right all my wrongs. I don’t deserve her, not after the way I treated her and the things I said. I know that. But I also know she’s mine and there isn’t another woman for me.
It’s been that way for the last nine years. If Monk didn’t already have his road name, they could have given it to me. Though, after I prospected for the Devil’s Saints MC and got my road name, they got it right with Penance. I have a lot to make up for and I’ve been trying to do it ever since.
I worked at the club’s garage, Devil’s Wheels which is run by Bronco, while I was prospecting and for a few years after that, but as we started to get more involved in stopping the human trafficking coming through the port, run by the Morozov Bratva family, I found a new calling.
I didn’t have any experience and I had to work my way up, but now I’m near the top at Savior Saints Security. It’s good work and it’s given me the skills and connections to keep an eye on Evelyn, even when she was in New York.
She’s been back in Seattle for around a year now and my need to make sure she’s safe and watch her, if only for a little while, has only grown the longer she’s been back in the city. I know it’s bordering on obsession, but I can’t stop it. Fine, it’s not bordering on fucking anything; she is my obsession.
I’m not going to apologize for it.
She’s so damn close, but I can’t reach out and touch her. I would mar her beautiful skin with my touch. My hands are covered in blood because of the DSMC, most of it righteously, but that’s not why I can’t approach her.
I haven’t earned it yet.
And I’m a fucking coward.
I don’t know if I can ever make up for the things I said, even before she became my stepsister. I can’t change it. I don’t deserve her forgiveness, that is, of course, if she would even give it.
She’s no longer my stepsister.
No, technically speaking, she’s not.
I haven’t been in contact with Mom very much or Jerry at all since I left their house the day after graduation. I was swept up in the offer Bronco made to join the DSMC and I really had no idea what I was getting myself into. I became a prospect that day, well, after Friar ran my background check, and I never looked back. At least, I didn’t look back on the life I had with Mom and Jerry.
I almost constantly look back to the moments I had with Evelyn and all the ways I hurt her. It’s part of my penance. I force myself not to forget or brush it away. It matters. It happened. I can’t ignore it.
My woman is beyond gorgeous. The light catches the blonder bits in her hair as she walks out of the grocery store, and I wish I could run my fingers through it. I wish I could feel her curvy body pressed against the hard planes of my chest.
I know she would fit against me perfectly and it would be like a puzzle piece slotting into place.
When she climbs into her car, I go to start up my bike so I can follow her home, just to make sure she’s safe, but my ringing phone stops me. When I look down at the screen and see that it’s Spark, our chapter’s President, I answer it immediately.
I don’t even get a greeting out before he barks, “Sam is dead. He was dropped off at our gate. Need you at the clubhouse. Church.” He bellows, an agonizing sound I can feel deep in my soul, “Now!”
The line goes silent as he hangs up on me and I start up my bike. I give one more look over to where Evelyn is pulling out of the parking lot before I head in the opposite direction. I didn’t get to see her for long enough, but it’ll have to do.
My gut is churning with the knowledge that Sam is dead. He was a prospect who didn’t have much longer to go until we needed to vote him in or out. He was definitely going to get my vote. Now it’s not possible and it’s eating me up. The rage inside me grows the closer I get to the clubhouse.
I can feel the sadness and anger coming from the prospect at the gate, Ashton. I can’t blame him. The prospects, even if they don’t come in at the same time, get pretty tight because they understand what each other is going through. We don’t treat our prospects like complete shit or anything, but they are given the worst jobs, and we push them to their limits.
