Page 7 of Hell Bent

“Yeah, he called to let us know he arrived in South Dakota. He’ll be there for a while handling his grandfather’s estate.”

“Did the old man have anything?”

“I have no idea. All I know is there are things in Cree’s life that aren’t my business. He’s been with the club since the Montreal chapter started. That being said, he knows damn well if he needs us, all he has to do is call.” Vicious looked for a way to change the subject.

“You know they’ll have him naked in a sweat lodge doing peyote.” Razor laughed.

“I don’t care, but I wouldn’t mind doing a little peyote myself every now and again, maybe do one of those spirit quests I’ve heard about.” Vicious looked at Razor, who just continued laughing.

Stepping out into the afternoon air, Vicious changed the subject, keeping the conversation light. Heading toward the parking lot, he caught sight of the dark-haired female he’d seen inside. She seemed to be in some sort of distress as she stepped off the walkway.

Tears ran down Sway’s face as her foot slipped off the raised sidewalk, causing her to stumble. Throwing her hands out as she fell, Sway braced herself for the impact that didn’t come. Strong hands grabbed her around the waist, catching her before she face-planted on the sidewalk.

Looking over her shoulder, she saw a man with a concerned look on his face. “Are you okay?” he asked.His voice wasn’t one of an angel, just a saviour, she thought. “Yes. No. I don’t know.”

Vicious made sure the young woman was steady on her feet before letting her go. Glancing down at her feet, he worried she might have hurt herself. “Did you twist your ankle?”

Sway couldn’t help but stare at the man holding onto her. God knew if he let her go, she might end up on the ground. “What?” Drowning . . . she was drowning in eyes of green. Everything about the man screamed dangerous, but Sway couldn’t look away.

“Your ankle. Did you twist it when you stepped off the walk?” Vicious searched her face as she stared at him. Beautiful was the word that came to mind as he looked into eyes that matched a cold winter day.

“No, I don’t think so.” Putting weight on her foot, Sway felt no pain. She hadn’t hurt her foot, but if he’d asked about her heart, she would have said yes.

“Do you need help?”

The question brought her up short. Sway didn’t know what she needed. “No. I . . . my brother just died.” Why did she feel the need to tell this perfect stranger about Tesh? Because she needed to hear out loud that he was gone.

“Shit. That’s gotta be rough.” Vicious wanted to say something to help the girl, but he had nothing in his arsenal to help with grief. “Can we call you a cab?”

“My truck’s right over there. Thank you for saving me from hitting the pavement.”

“I’m glad I was able to keep that from happening.”

“Thanks again.” When the guy let her go, she felt cold. So cold, she almost stepped back toward him to feel anything but. Instead, she moved back. Waving at the two men she hurried toward her truck. She needed to get to the funeral home. To Tesh.

Vicious watched her walk away and thought it was a damn shame that such a young woman had to deal with that kind of loss. “You ready, brother?” Razor asked.

“Yeah, let’s get going.” Vicious walked toward his bike, watching the girl drive by in her truck.Damn shame, he thought.

Chapter Five

Climbing the stairs to her apartment, Sway huddled into herself. She didn’t have the heart to go inside the shop and tell the others that Tesh was gone. She didn’t want to see their friends cry. She didn’t want to feel the need to make them feel better. She just wanted to go to sleep and wake to the whole situation being a bad dream.

She’d called Lottie when she left the hospital and cried all the way to the funeral home. When Lottie offered to come to the apartment, Sway had politely declined. She wasn’t ready to hear how sorry anyone was that Tesh was gone. Not ready for it to be true.

Sliding the key into the lock, she let the door open and stood at the threshold, afraid to step inside. Afraid to be alone with her grief. Until Tesh moved into it, the apartment had not been used since Sway was a teenager. She and her parents had lived a few miles away, and her parents had used the apartment as a parts room for years. When her father died, Tesh cleared out the upstairs and put it back to being an apartment. Sway had used it as aplace to run to when their mother became abusive toward her. Alcohol and drugs had become the woman’s life until the day she died.

Sway wished she could say she missed her parents, but the truth was, she didn’t. Both her parents were abusive. Tesh had been her family, her whole life, and now, she had no one.

When she finally took that step into the apartment, Sway held her grief tight to her chest until the door clicked shut and the lock engaged. Over the past week, the apartment had become her safe haven, her place to hide when things got too real. Two weeks ago, she would have said she was tired of the damn place. Now, she wouldn’t give it up for anything.

Standing in the living room, she looked around, thinking about how it looked when Tesh moved out and let her have it as her own place. Beyond the furniture and decorations, it was still the same place it had always been. The walls were old brick, and some places had been plastered over. In others, it seemed they were whitewashed. The ceilings were at least ten, if not twelve, feet high with exposed rafters. It had a small-to-medium kitchen space with a breakfast counter that separated it from the living room area. She loved the open feel to it.

A small hallway led to a large bedroom with much of the same brick and open ceiling. The electric candelabra hanging over the bed bathed the room in soft light. A jumble of throw pillows adorned the bed, and the floor was wood with a large cowhide rug covering most of it. The bathroom was not huge, but it wasn’t small either. It had a large clawfoot tub that Sway loved.

Even being tired of living above the auto shop, she still loved everything about the place. Over time, it had become her home. Smiling, she remembered how she had started out with wooden crates as her entertainment centre, now having a beautiful oak stand. Lawn furniture used as living room furniture had been replaced with a suede sofa and a set of vintage cigar chairs. She’d come a long way from that seventeen-year-old naïve girl into a twenty-seven-year-old woman who had seen too much of the seedy side of the world.

Slipping off her coat, she tossed it on the chair and did what she always did when something slapped her in the face—she cleaned. She changed clothes and everything from the walls to the baseboards got wiped down. When she stuck her head in the oven to clean it, she actually thought about turning on the gas. She could hear her brother’s voice.Don’t be a coward, Sway.

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