Page 97 of Lost Soul

“Mads, you know this is all I can ever offer you, right? You sure it's what you want?” He waits nervously for my answer, but he should know by now that this is all I want.

“I want you, this club is where you belong, and they’re your family. So I belong here too,” I tell him. “Besides, the guys are kinda growing on me,” I giggle.

“I know it’s shit right now, you being trapped here because of the Bastards, but I promise I’m gonna find a way for you to feel safe again,” he assures me.

“I know you will,” I say without any doubt.

“So no turning back?” he checks one last time.

“Never,” I shake my head then lean forward and cuddle into his back.

“You must be fucking crazy,” he shakes his head and laughs as he restarts the engine and takes off up the dirt track that leads to the club. We pass the clubhouse and the garage where Skid lifts his head from the hood of a car he’s working on and nods to us. I cling a little tighter as Jessie takes us further up the track and all the way back to his cabin.

Our cabin.

Our home.

I dare anything left out there to be thrown at us to come and try. I know we will always make it through fighting. Because Jessie and I were two lost souls, and now we’ve found each other, we’re indestructible.

I've never been a religious man. Yet this place has been my sanctuary for the past ten years. Somewhere I could always come to clear my head and think straight.

Before I lost Hayley, I used to admire the beautiful windows. I had an appreciation for whoever put the time and effort into achieving such intricate detail. The people in the scenes weren't just figures on display, each one of them were characters telling a story. But just lately, as the sun bursts through the glass and illuminates the stunning artistry, I’d felt their eyes burning into me. Judging me, and it was becoming suffocating.

Fuck. If Mary-Ann had been right about nothing else it was that Hayley hadn't asked to be born into this life, and she certainly hadn't deserved to be taken from it.

Being a woman in our world was never going to be easy.

I tried for her, and I failed. Thinking about it now it made the decision I'd regretted since the day I’d made it eighteen years ago all the more justifiable. Which has me wondering why the hell I couldn’t just let that shit lie in peace, and why I’d asked Jessie's old lady to dig up a past I swore I’d laid to rest.

I look away from the windows unable to bare the scrutinous eyes any longer. I know I can trust Maddy with my secret. She’s trusted me with hers. The USB stick Maddy had given me not long after Jessie hauled her back here was still sitting in my safe. I’d known as soon as I’d heard what was on it that it was what Chop had been looking for the day he came and killed Carly. I should have shared the information by now, told the brothers what I knew, but I couldn't have my new VP losing his head at a time like this, not when I need him more than ever.

The voices on that recording belonged to men I considered to be my best friends, one already dead, the other about to be dead. What the girl hadn't realized when handing the device over to me was that the information she was giving me wasn't all new to me, just a confirmation of what I'd thought I heard. Chop had mentioned Mary-Ann in the video before he killed Carly, it had weighed on my mind ever since. Not saying Mary-Ann hadn’t gotten what she had deserved, she'd been screwing me over since the day she got knocked up with Hayley. She was never supposed to be my old lady. But learning that Chop had deceived me had been a sledgehammer to the fucking balls. He’d gone behind my back, and I know now that he’d killed my wife and almost killed Hayley in the process.

I've acted like a leader, chosen not to react, and ignored the blood that boils beneath my skin when I heard him mention Mary-Ann’s name. You don’t become in charge of the biggest club in the state by losing your shit on a whim.

Maddy's recording had given me an explanation to why Chop had killed Mary-Ann, and proven that there wasn’t shit wrong with my hearing. In my eyes though, Chop’s death still belongs to Skid. He’d taken away the person he loved.

There was something else Maddy hadn't realized when she handed over her latest evidence against Chop. In doing so, she had brought something else to light. Another action Chop would pay for when we found him. She couldn't have known who the other voice in the recording belonged to, and she’d promised me no one else had heard it. So the secret remained at my hand for now. Only I know that the man who was giving Chop the ultimatum in the recording never made it to Manitou Springs to take care of business that week. That he was found two days later dead in a motel room, and his kid had been unlucky enough to have to witness the whole thing. The hairs on the back of my neck had stood up when I’d first heard the voice, coming at me from the fucking grave. Brian Donavon. Jessie's dad. It’s best for now that this stay hidden. I’m weak, and there’s so much anger within the club I need Jessie focusing on club business, not vengeance.

The knock on the chapel door echoes loudly pulling me out of thought and back on to the reason I came here. I call out for Nyx to enter, and he marches in with his usual bad attitude, his baggy jeans hanging over his bright white trainers. It still surprises me how a lad his age can be so tall and broad.

"You asked to see me." He nods, keeping his shit together as always, though he couldn't help his eyes skating around the room. Prospects are all the same when they have a chance to enter church, no matter how guarded they are. Being in here is a reminder of why they put up with all the shit we throw at them. I’m well aware that a few of the brothers don't like his attitude, reckon him to be too big for his boots. Some go as far as to say disrespectful, but I disagree. Nyx reminds me of myself when I was his age, intolerable to other people's bullshit. Kid has spent his whole childhood in foster care, who could blame him for wanting to prove to the people around him that he has no weakness.

But I know differently. I may not have figured out what his was just yet, but everyone has a weakness, even me. The kid’s about to find out exactly what mine is.

"Yeah." I gesture for him to sit in the space that’s usually occupied by Troj, and he makes himself comfortable slouching back in the chair. His elbow hangs lazily on the arm rest and his hand rests on his mouth. He’s a cocky shit alright.

"You never finished high school. Am I right?" I question him.

"School weren't for me. I dropped in 10th," he replies. I shrug, not many of us here could say we made it through to the end.

"You know a few people around here don't think you’re ever gonna patch in. Think you don't have enough respect." His facial expression may not change, but I notice how his fists clench.

"You’ve been a prospect a few years now. You gotta be eager to make the cut kid?"

"Wouldn't be here if I wasn't," he responds, and it gets a laugh out of me. I can't help admire his integrity.

"See, I think you’re misjudged, Nyx. Reckon you think you have a point to prove. That the day you left your foster home you promised yourself that you would never be walked over again, am I right?" His face remains stone, but the way his eyes swell with recollection and his jaw clenches tell me I’m getting somewhere.

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