Page 36 of Fearless

“Call Jackie first. She’ll want to help with the details.”

“Of course.” Maggie rolled away from him, sat up and clicked on her lamp, pulled pen and notepad from her nightstand drawer and began making a list, squinting against the light.

“Do that in the morning,” Ghost said, and she heard the underlying request. He didn’t want Maggie the MC old lady beside him; he wanted Mags his wife.

“I’m afraid I’ll forget,” she said, hastily scribbling a last note. “There.” She set the pad on the nightstand and turned off the lamp, slid down into the covers again.

Ghost turned her into his arms and his mouth sought hers in the dark, the sort of unhurried kiss that was a need for comfort.

When he pulled back, he said, “I’m glad Ava’s home. Even if she’s got shit taste in boyfriends.”

Maggie snorted and snuggled her face into his throat. “She’s trying to be normal. We should probably encourage that.”

“Not if normal means dating assholes like that.”

Maggie sighed against his bristly neck. “Well, you didn’t like it when she tried to do things the MC way.”

Ghost went very still against her.

Maggie bit her lip, not sorry she’d gonethere, wondering what he’d say in return.

When he spoke, his voice was cold and flat. “That’s because it wasn’t the ‘MC way.’ It was just sick.”

In the dark, Maggie rolled her eyes. Ghost’s reaction to Mercy and Ava had been that of a typical father, amplified by the club, amplified further by the fact that Mercy had known Ava since she was eight-years-old. Maggie herself had been horrified, but in a distant, removed part of herself that was ruled by logic. Her heart had understood and asked no questions, even if she should have rejected the pairing with every fiber of her being. Mercy and Ava were connected in a way that Ghost couldn’t comprehend…and that couldn’t be snuffed out by separation. Inhabiting the same city together would have devastating effects, even if the two of them were in denial now.

But she said, “Well, she’s with Ronnie now.”

Ghost murmured something she couldn’t hear, and kissed her forehead. “I oughtta lock her up.”

“Spoken like a true idiot father,” she said, and kissed the side of his throat. “You’ve got bigger fish to fry right now, baby.”

“Yeah I do,” he said grimly. “I just gotta be president first.”

Ava spent almost three hours pretending sleep might come. She heard her father come home, his soft tread through the house, and the closing of the master bedroom door behind him. At five, she listened to the paper hit the front stoop and pushed herself out of bed. In the dark, she found clothes by feel, dressed, and slipped across the hall to brush her teeth and wash her face. Without waking Ronnie – he slept with one leg dangling off the couch, his blanket wadded on top of his stomach – she went into the kitchen and put the coffee on. Barefoot, she disengaged the door locks and stepped out into the black of morning, to retrieve the paper in its plastic sleeve from the stoop. It was a Saturday, and the neighborhood was still deeply asleep, almost haunted in its dark silence. A bat fluttered through the cloud of moths beneath the streetlamp, seeming clumsy, but deadly in his accuracy.

Ava went back inside, into the kitchen again, setting the paper on the table and pouring it from its sleeve, watching the pages rustle, feeling like an intruder in this kitchen in which she’d grown up. It seemed wrong to her, in ways inexplicable, to come back home and ask to be taken in by people she’d left behind. College had always felt like abandoning her family, no matter how insistent they’d been in telling her they wanted her to go. “I never had a chance to go to school for free,” Ghost had said, and stamped her tender feelings about departing with another layer of guilt. Leaving Knoxville had felt like a statement she’d never wanted to make: that the wide world had something better to offer than her people did. That had never been true in her mind, but being back here now left her melancholy, alone like this in the early morning hours.

Because it felt like the charitable thing to do, she rummaged in the cabinets and began laying out the ingredients she’d need to make a big pot of oatmeal. She liked cooking – it was homey and domestic, Southern and comforting, a way to show the men in her life that she cared. Ghost wouldn’t sleep late, she knew, not with what had transpired last night, and this would be a way to earn her keep, making everyone breakfast.

Once she had the oats on, she took a mug of coffee to the table and sat, flipping the paper over idly and scanning the headlines.

The top one caught the breath in her throat, and sent her hurtling back through the fields of her memory.

Back to Mason Stephens threatening her with the impending governorship of his father, all those park bench and bus stop ads.

Back to Stephens’ loss and Mason’s more treacherous assaults against her as they grew older.

Back to a hideous night in which her unswerving love for Mercy had proved her salvation…and damnation.

Back to a vague mention of the mayoral race her mother had made on the phone a few months back.

All the way to the present. To the words before her, and the chain of events they would inevitably kick off.

Gang Violence in Our Own Backyard; Mayor Mason Stephens Vows to Shut Down the Lean Dogs

Nine

Fourteen Years Ago

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