Burn (24 page)

             
He stopped suddenly and, to my surprise, threw the gun down on the floor. I looked down at it in confusion before returning my gaze to him. He brought a hand to his balaclava and pulled it all the way up.

             
My terror washed away in an instant, but my surprise only rose. Jaxon’s eyes raked me over slowly from where I lay and then he extended his hand out. I took it and he brought me up on my feet.

             
“What are you doing here?” I demanded. “Do you have any idea what you’ve done?”

             
This was really bad. He shouldn’t be here. There were cameras everywhere. How the fuck did he even get in? I stepped away from him until my back hit the wall next to my bedroom door.

             
“I came here for you,” he replied softly. “I told you I was going to make it right.”

             
“How is breaking into this place making things right?” I scolded him, fighting the urge to push him back at his stupidity. “You shouldn’t have taken your mask off. They’re going to kill you for this!”

             
“I wore my mask in case I didn’t bump into you. Now listen, we have one opportunity, Sara. Decision is yours. Either you come with me, or you don’t.”

             
Come with him? “How are we going to walk out of this?”

             
He smirked coolly. “You gotta trust me on this.”

             
This was crazy. There was no way. “Jaxon–”

             
“Decide now! You’ve got ten seconds, Sara. Do you want me or not?”

             
I felt sick to my stomach. This was too out of nowhere for me. I was just buttering toast, for fuck’s sake! My whole being was cut into half. Smirk long gone now, he put out his hand for me to take. I stared at it, dumbfounded and unsure. While everything in me pushed to take it, I couldn’t. I just stared at it thinking only of Remy and how wounded he would be if I did this. This kind of deception would be irreversible. There would be no going back.

             
I panted hard, resting a hand against my battering heart as he gazed into my eyes with determination. He’d done all this for me. He was risking his neck to have me.

             
“Do you want us?” he asked again. “Because I swear to God, Sara, there’s no going back after this. Once you’re mine, that’s it. So decide.”

             
A few seconds passed. My internal battle had stupefied me into silence. This was my hope coming to life: the decision to choose whether I wanted to stay or go. It was real, and it was happening right now. And yet I was terrified…

             
I couldn’t…

             
I couldn’t just…

             
The hope waned from his eyes and his hand wavered.

             
His next words were rougher than before. “Do you or do you not, Sara?”

Seventeen

Remy watched the footage about a dozen times. How could this have happened five hours ago unde
r everyone’s noses? How did he even get into the clubhouse?
Fucking Houdini.

             
They raked over every frame of every camera taken that morning. Nowhere on any frame did he see Jaxon slip by. The man just emerged out of nowhere on the second floor, as if he’d crept in through hidden places they didn’t even know were blind spots. Not only that, but he knew exactly where he was going. He marched down the long hallway until he was at Remy’s door. He opened it, peered in, and then shut it.

             
He was looking for her.

             
The whole shooting outside was a distraction from a few masked men who were mostly shooting up at the sky. No harm or destruction physically done, and it’d been over in fifteen minutes time.

             
Remy, continuing to watch the footage, gritted his teeth, his anger multiplying faster when Jaxon turned to find Sara running to her door. She fell back, and Remy could only imagine how terrified she must have been.

             
With the alarms going off, he could hear absolutely nothing in the video. He watched Sara take the douche’s hand, and then she was up, looking as if she was scolding him for something. They talked, but about what he couldn’t tell. He leaned closer to the screen, trying to lip read what Jaxon was saying. Shame their cameras were gritty and old. The quality was crap, but it wasn’t as though there’d ever been a reason to upgrade them within the walls of the clubhouse. Everyone here hated them as it was for intruding on their privacy. The only places they weren’t installed in were the bedrooms, and that pacified them just barely enough to be okay with their presence.

             
Remy knew this would change their minds altogether. The unexpected shoot out and Jaxon’s breaking and entering would result in upgrades of every single camera within the clubhouse and, for fuck’s sake, the alarms would not be so goddamn loud next time!

             
Next time, Remy scoffed. That wasn’t going to happen. He was going to sort this fucker out once and for all.

             
He bitterly watched as Jaxon extended his hand out for Sara again. He seemed to be adamant about something. Heart lurching in Remy’s chest, he watched as Sara shook her head. His Birdy shook her beautiful, amazing, faithful head! Looking dejected, Jaxon dropped his hand down, and then he spoke to her again. And once more, his Birdy shook her beautiful, amazing, faithful head! More words, and then Jaxon was gone, moving out of the frames and disappearing. On his own.

             
If Remy had not been around the other members, he might have cried. He’d known she loved Jaxon, and the extent had always terrified him. He always wondered if she would flee to him. Now he knew.

             
Remorse flooded him hard. After what he did to her… He gulped the knot in his throat. How could he have questioned her loyalty? Fuck, he was a piece of shit unworthy of her love.
Love.
Yes, love. She loved him. Loved him more than Jaxon. This footage was living, irrefutable proof of her loyalty.

             
Unable to hold back, he hurried out of the surveillance room, ignoring everyone’s calls. He rushed to where his Birdy was, sitting in the bed, wrapped in a ball. He approached her slowly and hesitantly. When her face came into view, he was delighted to find she wasn’t crying. Because crying might have meant she regretted not taking Jaxon’s hand. Instead, a look of fortitude adorned her face.

             
When she felt his presence, she looked at him. There was relief in her eyes when they connected with his, and that was his undoing. He collapsed to the ground and wrapped his arms around her waist, bringing her out of her ball and to the edge of the bed. He sank his head into her lap and shook with the happiness and gratitude he felt for her.

             
Always he’d been alone. Until her.

             
Her hands raked through his thick hair and then she held him for dear life. After some time, he looked up at her, hardly able to control his emotions when he stated, “I love you more than anything in this world.”

             
Her lips quivered and a single tear fell from her eyes. “I-I love you, Remy.”

             
He wiped the tear before it reached the bottom of her face. “I’m so sorry for questioning you. For–”

             
“Don’t,” she whispered with a shake of her head.

             
“It couldn’t have been easy for you saying… saying no to him.”

             
“Sometimes the pain is worth enduring,” she responded quietly.

             
He took her face in both his hands and kissed her. These were the lips he could never grow tired of. The lips that he now knew cherished him as much as he cherished her. The lips that belonged to a woman he would love until his last breath. He was going to marry this woman and, fuck, as much as he hated kids, he wanted them with her. He wanted a dozen little Sara Nolans running around with pouty lips; who cried at the drop of a hat; who poured out their every emotion because they sucked at hiding them; who watched shitty movies and listened to even shittier music. He wanted it all. Enough to walk away from the fucking Jackals and move someplace quiet to start over again. Because what kind of father and husband sold drugs and killed druggies? He wanted to change. She made him want to be a fucking superhero.

             
“He’s going to start a war,” she then said. “He said he’s going to burn down the bar first tonight.”

             
He gripped her tighter. “Why did he tell you that?”

             
“Because he wanted me to come with him before it happened. He wanted to put me in one of their hideouts. Of course he trusted me enough not to tell you this…” Her words trailed away. He watched her with sadness. It wouldn’t have been easy at all selling Jaxon out like this.

             
“Please be careful,” she begged him, voice breaking. “I don’t want anything bad to happen to you. Just take care of yourself.”

             
She shouldn’t be worried about him. Remy was good at dodging death and putting the fuckers into the ground. They didn’t call him Reaper for nothing. He was more than capable of stopping this kind of retaliation and defending his club.

             
“You don’t have anything to be worried about, Birdy,” he reassured her.

             
He kissed her again, and she held him tighter to him as she tenderly stroked his lips. Her love for him was leaking right out of her and it wrenched his heart again. For a moment, she couldn’t stop herself. She hugged him so hard and kissed him so deep, he felt drugged by the intensity of it.

             
“I gotta sort this thing out,” he murmured to her, brushing his nose against hers. “I’ll be back sometime tonight. Stay in the room and keep the door locked. Just in case. Okay?”

             
She nodded her head. “Okay.”

             
He kissed her hand and got up, drinking her beauty in one last time before he walked out of the room. Now that he was away from her his anger resurfaced. How could they fucking think they could start a war? Where had this even come from? The Scorpions were dumber than he thought. All that talk from Fritz was starting to make sense. They had to end this shit once and for all. These fuckers had uprooted into their neighbourhood and now enough was enough.

             
He barged into the surveillance room and laid down the actions for tonight. Then they unloaded a damning amount of guns from the artillery room and climbed on their bikes, each carrying a duffel bag on their back.

             
“Stop drinkin’ yourself to death,” he scolded Fritz on his way out. “So fuckin’ sick and tired of you being a useless asshole when we need you. Lay off the fuckin’ booze tonight and keep guard. The slightest noise and you call me.”

             
Sober Fritz was a man that you could depend on. Drunk Fritz was a useless piece of shit that deserved a beating. At the moment, he was in between, so the bastard needed to lay off the alcohol for one goddamn night.

             
“What do you intend on doin’ to Jaxon?” Prez asked Remy before he climbed on his bike. “Because that’s the real problem here –
not
the Scorpions.”

             
“That douchebag dug his own grave,” Remy replied. “For now we wait and see how the night goes and if he will actually be stupid enough to set fire to our shit.”

             
“So you trust your girl’s word?”

             
“You saw the tape yourself, Manny.”

             
Prez nodded. “Yeah, well, I had my doubts. Good to know she ain’t sellin’ you out.”

             
Remy owed her big for doubting her, too. He’d be forever indebted to her and he had a lifetime to make up for it. But now he had to sort the douche out and, to his surprise, he didn’t know what he was going to do about it. If it were up to him, he’d kill him. Removing him from the picture would smoothen out a lot of complications in his life. Forever he’d been in that man’s shadow.

             
The reasonable Remy didn’t want to cause more heartbreak to Sara. It was one thing to walk away from someone she loved. How would she react if he’d been killed in the hands of the man she chose to be with now?

             
That was a predicament he didn’t want to experience.