Rebel slowly shakes his head, a tiny smile playing at the corner of his lips. “No, sugar. We weren’t too late. Your dad’s alive. He’s just fine. He’s waiting upstairs for you now.” He places a deep, slow kiss on my lips, and my head swims. I’m so fucking relieved. I’m ecstatic. My father’s alive. He’s alive, and he’s waiting to see me. I used to resent my father, feel stifled by him most of the time, but right now I’ve never needed him more.
“I don’t know about you, sugar,” Rebel says, brushing his thumb along the rise of my bottom lip. “But I’d like to get out of here before the cops show up. What do you say?”
I manage a weak smile as he helps me up from the floor. “I say I couldn’t agree more. Let’s get the fuck out of here.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
REBEL
Ramirez is dead. Keeler is still sitting on the porch with his head in his hands when we go outside. He informs us that Julio told him to remind me of the agreement we came to, and then he left. Keeler stops talking. He rocks silently back and forward, knees drawn up underneath his chin, and we leave him in peace. Grief is a funny thing. You think revenge will fill in the hole that grief causes inside you, but more often than not revenge only makes the hole deeper. Bottomless, in some cases.
Alan Romera stands like a statue when Sophia steps out onto the porch. His face is carved marble, his shoulders rounded in on his body, as if bowed under a great and unbearable burden. Sophia bursts into tears the second she lays eyes on him.
“Daddy?” she whispers.
“Hey, pumpkin.” The Doc twists his filthy handkerchief over and over in his hands, looking very unsure of himself. “Are you…are you all right?”
Sophia nods. “I am. I’m so sorry. God, Daddy, I’m sorry.”
I back the fuck off. Sophia doesn’t need me loitering on the peripherals as she tries to explain where she’s been for the last six months. He’s going to hate me. He’s going to fucking despise me. Cade saved his daughter in one way, but I was the one who really took her away from him. I was the one responsible for guilting her into staying here in New Mexico.
There’s so much blame to be thrown around, though. So many fingers to be pointed. I’m too fucking tired and worn into the ground to bother with that right now, so I let Sophia tell her father the truth, and I accept how he’s going to feel about me.
At the end of the day, it’s how Sophia feels about me that matters, and I’m hopeful that that won’t be changing any time soon. As she speaks to her father, I see him shaking his head, her bowing hers. At once point, the doc takes her head and holds it in his, and she collapses against him, sobbing silently. I want to go to her and take her in my arms, to comfort her, but it’s not my place. Hard though it may be for me to remember, she was the light of someone else’s life before she was the light in mine. Alan hasn’t seen her in six months. They both need this time together to heal the hurt between them.
I wait twenty minutes; it feels like an eternity. I’d give them even longer, but Cade points out the red and blue flashing lights approaching down the distant fire road leading to the farmhouse and it really is time for us to go. All six of us run over the back fields, heading toward the bikes we left stashed there. Alan makes noise about staying, talking to the cops, explaining to them what happened. It’s only when his daughter tells him how that will pan out for the rest of us that he gives in and runs.
We’re about three hundred meters from the bikes when the loud, crashing sound of another explosion tears through the early hours of the morning. We all stop, mouths hanging open as the farmhouse goes up in flames. Wood detonates in every direction, rocketing straight up into the air, and the night sky is alive with fire and smoke.
“You set your charges,” Cade says, staring back over his shoulder at the inferno.
I don’t say anything. Just nod. It had to be this way. We couldn’t allow the cops to match our DNA with blood spilled at the scene. They’d have found evidence of every single one of us inside that house. We’d all have been fucked.
The police lights soon blend in with the warm glow cast off by the burning building, and we move on. The sound of our motorcycle engines rumbling into life is blotted out by the roar and crackle of the fire at our back.
I carry Sophia’s father on the back of my bike as we head back to the compound, and no one stops us. We travel across the desert, aching in our bones, tired and exhausted, and as the miles pass us by and the stars wheel overhead, I do something I haven’t done in a very long time.
I pray.
I thank the higher powers of the universe, whomever they might be, that we all made it through tonight safely. I show my eternal gratitude for the fact that the woman I love wasn’t hurt, and that she didn’t lose her father. Beyond that, my mind is empty and my heart is full.
Sophia is safe.
The club is safe.
That’s all that really matters.
******