“I’m trying,” I replied in a whisper. “You got me a nightlight.”
“You don’t like the dark,” he replied easily. Within seconds, his breathing had evened out and his arm around my waist relaxed as he fell asleep.
I knew that the next day was going to be pretty horrible, even if it went better than I was expecting. Seeing everyone and being surrounded by the people I’d left behind was going to be hard, no matter how it played out. It always was. Even knowing that, it wasn’t long before I passed out, too, but before I did, I laced my fingers through his. Just to make sure that he’d be in the same position when I woke up.
Chapter 20
Mark
“Why can’t we be in there?” Eli asked, jerking his head toward the room behind the bar.
“Nobody goes in there,” I muttered back tiredly.
“They’re in there,” he pointed out around the toothpick in his mouth.
Swear to God, he was needling me just because he could see how very uninterested I was in dealing with his shit. We were sitting in the empty main room of the clubhouse, waiting for Dragon and the boys to come back out and give us a rundown. I wasn’t sure what exactly they had to discuss beforehand, but honestly, I didn’t really give a shit unless it directly involved Cecilia. Olive had been up repeatedly throughout the morning, and me and Cec hadn’t gotten much sleep. It hadn’t helped that we’d gone to bed as the sun was coming up.
Forrest checked his watch. “They better get a move on, this place is gonna start fillin’ up with women and kids at noon.”
“I’m starving,” Lu said, knocking her knuckles on the table. “I hate waiting on other people to get shit done.”
“The wait’ll be worth it,” I told her with a sigh. “They go all out when everyone’s here for a meal.”
“This place is different from the club down in Sacramento,” she replied. “More family oriented or something.”
“You can thank Brenna for that,” I said. “Callie and Farrah, too. They made it a family meeting place.”
“Brotherhood’s the same, though,” Forrest said.
I nodded.
“I really wanna see inside that room,” Eli said as the door behind the bar opened and the men filed out.
“Don’t even think about it,” I warned, shooting him a look. “At best, you’d have broken bones if you tried it.”
“At worst?” he asked, grinning.
“You been waitin’ long?” Dragon asked as he pulled up a chair at our table.
“Not long,” I replied, hoping Eli would keep his mouth shut for once. I didn’t worry about Lu and Forrest—they were like chameleons, they could read a room and blend in anywhere.
“First off, I wanna thank you for everything you’ve done,” Dragon said seriously as the rest of the men found seats. I braced. If the next words that came out of his mouth were anything close to telling us to leave and let them handle the Free America Militia, we were going to have problems.
“Of course,” I said, realizing that he was waiting for a reply.
“We don’t usually bring outsiders in on shit that’s happenin’ with the club,” Grease chimed in.
“I’m well aware,” I replied flatly. Seriously, if they thought they were going to cut us out, shit was going to get nasty.
Grease’s mouth curled up in amusement.
“With that said,” Dragon murmured, “we realize that this is a different situation—not only because you came through in a big way for Casper. Hell, boy, we raised your ass. You can’t trust your children, you ain’t any kind of parent.”
“Boys have been fillin’ me in on what I missed while we were down south,” Casper said. “I’m thinkin’ that, while we were dealin’ with the head of the snake down in California, they were dealin’ with the rest of it up here.”
I sat up straight as the implications of that sunk in.
“Mack and Rose were kidnapped by a couple of skinheads,” Grease said darkly.
“Excuse the interruption,” Forrest drawled, “but skinheads are a dime a dozen. What makes you think it’s the same group, and not a couple’a good old boys with a flare for dramatics?”
“Two things,” Casper said. “One, that Copper, a former brother and Rose’s ex, is the one who hired them, and two, that FAM had some information on a shipment that they couldn’t have gotten anywhere except from inside the club. The Free America Militia had an inside man up here, an inside man in Sacramento, and a random pair of skinheads kidnapped my niece and