Page 60 of Running on Empty

“You want us to try and channel thisUlfhednarthing,” I drawled with about all the scorn I could muster. Pretending to be wolf warriors from an alleged Norse history was not going to get us through this.

“That’s what you called it,” Blue said, stabbing his finger into the air. “Going running off to your books to try and understand something you couldn’t. Maybe you still can’t.”

I had a smart retort right there, ready to be said. I always did, but right before my mouth moved, I heard that muffled sound. It couldn’t be Stevie, not in here, so it was the memory of it that stopped me.

She was mine. I forgot that sometimes, getting caught up in all the other bullshit, but she’d claimed Ronan now, so there was nothing more to protect her from but the Spencers. My dads watched me look them over, their smiles widening, their eyes gleaming green.

Right along with Jax’s.

“I’m in,” my brother said. “If that’s what Stevie needs then I’m one hundred percent in.”

“Good lad,” Blue said, clapping Jax on the shoulder and he turned to wait for my answer, missing the flush of pleasure on Jax’s face and that’s what decided things for me.

Maybe we needed to bang some drums or do some primal scream therapy, something, anything to make our family realise that one of my pack wasn’t the devil and the other two didn’t have to be angels to make up for him.

Chapter35

Jax

“Where do you keep the piss in this place?” Blue asked, going through the conference room cupboards.

“In the credenza.” Ash watched Dad steadily, and that had my hackles rising. His voice, his eyes were so fucking devoid of emotion.

Something he seemed to work very hard at.

“What the fuck is a credenza? Oh, here it is.”

“Got any whiskey?” Rusty asked, pulling a familiar leather pouch from his jacket. The thick resinous stink of weed filled the air as his hands moved with practised ease, breaking the buds up and then placing the fragments in a line along the rolling paper. “Doesn’t have to be that, but a drop of Jack Daniels would go down a treat.”

“A drop…” Donk snorted. “These two will need more than that.”

“So this is your fucking master plan?” Ash snapped, arms crossing. “Get us stoned, get us fucked up? Why am I not surprised?”

“So why are you carrying on like a whiny bitch about it if you’re not surprised?” Rusty asked, then handed a joint and a lighter to me.

There was an implied challenge there. My dad’s eyebrow rose slowly in question. Was I gonna suck it up or pussy out?

“I managed to rip a ton of data from Snake’s computer. There has to be something in there that will help us destroy the Rush trade and bring the Spencers down,” Ash insisted.

“Then go do that.” The words were out of my mouth without even thinking and when I took the joint, Rusty smiled slowly. “No one’s stopping you.”

“So you’re gonna—?”

My brother’s voice was cut off as I put the joint to my lips, tilting my head slightly to light it and then draw a deep breath in.

Having biker dads meant we had pretty free access to whatever we wanted, which may explain why Ash was the way he was. In the absence of clear rules for us, he made them up himself. But there had been a time, when we were finishing off school, where we’d availed ourselves of our dads’ stash, sitting in the backyard watching the sun set and trying real hard not to jump over that fence… I held the smoke in, feeling the urge to cough, but able to suppress it before letting it all out.

And it felt like something else came with it.

As was often the case when I smoked, it felt like I saw things, perceived things far more intensely or not at all. All the aches in my bones faded away after the second toke, then the third, Rusty watching me the whole time before reaching over and plucking the joint from my fingers. It felt like the rolling paper whispered against my skin, that I could still hear the crackle of the burning joint in my ears, even before my dad took a drag. I watched the smoke spiralling lazily from the tip as Rusty held it between his fingers while divvying up the rest of the joints around the table. My dad cackled when I jumped, a glass brimming with dark golden liquid placed in front of me.

“Drink up, son,” Gun said, then did the same for Ash.

Boom.

I heard my heart beat as loud as a drum in my ears as I reached for it, all the obedience that had been hammered into me making sure I did as I was told. I grasped the glass, smelling the sticky sweet scent cut through with volatile alcohol and then tipped it back and drank the lot.

Only to immediately regret that decision.

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