Page 83 of Eden's Joker

He peels my hands away from his face, gets up and starts dressing.

“Am I?” I insist, sounding very desperate for an answer. But what do I care? It’s a whole lifetime I’m fightingfor here.

“I have to go now,” he says, heading for the front door.

I’m not getting an answer. I’m not getting our lifetime together. I can ask all I want and it won’t happen.

He turns right before exiting the house.

“For what it’s worth, you’re not wrong,” he says. “But it’s not worth much.”

And then he’s gone, but the winter stayed. I rub my bare arms with my hands, but my skin is icy cold. He didn’t close the door. I could just walk out right now. I wouldn’t get far, but I can leave.

I’m frozen to the spot.

I asked and the answer was no. There will be no lifetime for us. No forever. No happily ever after.

43

Joker

I told the Devils where to find us. Something I didn’t tell Eden when she made that horrible ultimatum: her or vengeance. Not in a million years could I make that choice.

So I ignored it. I deflected. And spent the night with my brothers in the Saloon instead of at the house, in bed beside her, inside her where I wanted to be.

Drinking, playing cards and getting hit on by beautiful women is boring now. Talking about destroying the Devils is hard. But I did both. All night. Until the scouts returned in the early hours of the morning.

I sent them out to watch the Devils and report back when they were on the move.

The sun is rising, but it’s just a pale white shadow above the hills to the east. There are no stars in the sky.No moon. My inner circle is crammed into the small living room of the house Scorpio chose as his own. It’s hard to find an available space to sit, or even just look at, without an empty bottle or a can or some other piece of trash littering it.

“You should have one of the women come in here to clean,” I tell him as I knock some trash off one of the armchairs so I can sit.

“Or five,” Razor says. “How can you live like this?”

Scorpio just shrugs and tosses his empty beer can across the room. It hits a pile of them and for a while the sound of that pile tumbling and rolling around is the only sound in the room. If we survive this, he’s going into rehab.

“So, the report,” I say, turning to Razor. He’s one of the scouts I sent.

“They’re on the move, riding fast,” he says. “They’ll probably be here by tomorrow morning. Though I doubt they’ll just come riding in on the main road.”

The text I sent to Ice telling him where they can find me had a picture of Cherry covered in strawberry syrup and ketchup that looked sufficiently like blood attached. I figured that would be enough to spur Ice and the Devils into action and I clearly wasn’t wrong. All my plans are coming together so smoothly now, just like I envisioned it all. Too bad it’s also leading to a place I don’t even want to think about.

I nod. “They’ll probably try to find a better way in.”

“They’re already doing that,” Manic says. “We’ve been shooting down their drones non-stop yesterday. They’ve stepped up their surveillance.”

“How many of them are there?” I ask Razor.

“At least three hundred. They have a couple of other MCs with them,” Razor says and turns to Scorpio. “Karma’s with them again.”

The look that passes over his face is hard to read. And hard to watch.

“I’d like to keep her alive.” He grins, but it’s a cold thing. “But then again, I’m not making any hard plans to be alive after this.”

It’s amazing how in sync our thoughts sometimes are. I’m not making any hard plans in that direction either. Maybe it’s better I die in battle with the Devils, go out at the height of my glory, rather than die a slow death from Eden hating me afterwards.

“And we’ve got, what, four hundred guys at last count?” I say and look at Sarge.

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