Defiance (18 page)

Chapter Eighteen

Tru woke and didn’t know where she was. She jumped up, clawed, trying to untwist herself from whatever held her down. She fell, slamming to the ground on her hands and knees. Terrified, she raced around in the dark, things clattering around from her desperate reach. She could barely breathe.

“Tru, you’re okay.”

The voice made her still immediately. For a long moment, she stayed frozen in the semi-darkness, blinking her way back to sanity. She rubbed her arms, expecting to find her shirt soaking wet.

She’d been dreaming about the flood. The water had gone over her head and she’d had that awful choking feeling, knowing she was about to drown and doing anything in her power to stop it from happening.

“Tru, you’re okay.”

Caspar’s voice was louder, more commanding. He repeated it until she believed it.

She was okay. Not safe.
Okay.

Caspar’d never lied to her before. Apparently, he wouldn’t start now.

“What’d you dream about?” he asked. He didn’t sound sleepy.

A small candle flickered and then another joined it, and she could see his outline by the door. He’d been sitting in a chair, blocking it, a rifle held loosely in his hand.

He’d been guarding her. “How’d you know I was dreaming?”

“You were fighting in your sleep.”

Fighting the rising water, fighting the panic, the lack of air in her lungs. She put her hands out like that could stop the wall of invisible water from closing in on her, but the walls were pushing toward her. The room changed shape, boxed her in. Her breath came in harsh gasps and Caspar was picking her up and walking with her until she felt the cold air hit her skin.

It was raining, but it wasn’t a storm. Not yet. She struggled out of Caspar’s arms, needing her feet to hit land. Her bare feet landed in the soft mud and she kept her grip on Caspar, even as she looked up at the dark sky.

“Stars,” she said.

He looked up and then back at her.

“I know we can’t see them, but they’re there, Caspar. They’re there, right?”

“Yeah, baby, they are.”

“Yeah, they are,” she echoed.

“What the hell happened to you when all this shit started?”

“The water. Near the water. Came up so high, Cas. I didn’t expect it.” She gasped in a deep breath like she was waiting for the waves to hit her, over and over again, the way they had as she’d crawled and clawed her way up the beach toward the parking lot. “I had nowhere to go.”

She heard Caspar growl something to Mathias and Bishop and she saw they were out here too, standing guard.

“Gonna take care of all of it, Tru,” Caspar told her.

“But Lance will know.”

“Yes.”

“No,” she whispered. “No one can know.”

“You defended yourself. No shame in that.”

But they both knew there was more to the story; any woman would react badly to an attack, but to a woman who’d already survived a close call, the trauma suffered would’ve been...

“I wanted to take care of it. I wanted to be able to take care of myself.”

“I know,” was all he said. “It’s all you ever wanted.”

The fact that he knew that, didn’t make fun of her for it, didn’t think she was being stupid or unreasonable made all the difference.

He’d always gotten her, even when he didn’t want to. Even when she didn’t want him to.

“I tried,” she said. “Going to the Kill Devils wasn’t my first choice.”

“Better with them than jail.”

“Not everyone thinks that.”

“I’m the only fucking one who counts, Tru. Don’t forget that.”

God, she liked that, liked how he held her, told her that. Made her feel owned and she didn’t understand why she wanted that. Knew it was only with him.

“Tell me what happened to you, baby. Sometimes telling someone makes it better.”

She squeezed her eyes tight. “It was bad, Cas.”

She’d been staying at the room above the diner—the owners rented it to her and they were a block from the water. The storm came up so fast, no one had time to plan or evacuate. At first, it seemed like a typical summer hurricane storm.

With other storms, there was build up. A feeling of dread. With the Chaos, one night she went to sleep and was awakened by the sounds of rushing water.

She was disoriented. Horrified.

In the space of what might’ve been minutes, everything changed. The meteor that hit caused a chain reaction of environmental events of epic proportions.

After three hours, power went down and she realized it was far worse than anyone could’ve predicted. All night, she’d heard the water crash, the storm’s howl. Her stomach had been in knots, but she had nowhere else to go, no one to call. She had a crank-up radio she’d grabbed from behind the bar. They were suddenly talking about catastrophic devastation.

It was so dark. She didn’t know how long it would be before the sun rose, so she’d conserved her flashlight, burnt a single tea candle as she huddled inside the empty bathtub in her apartment, because the room had no window save for a small round one that she’d boarded up from the inside.

And she didn’t know what to wish for, because survival, at least the second time around, seemed out of the ordinary.

The water rushed in. She clung to a piece of the heavy bar and then an old sailboat rudder that came off the wall of the bar where it had hung as a decorative piece. As she got pushed farther down the street, she managed to climb into an empty boat with the oars attached and rode out the waves until she found dry land.

It had been awful.

The aftermath had been worse. She was going to have to share the details of where she’d been. Most of it was innocuous, but some of the ways she’d scrounged...

“Survival. That’s all I need to know,” he told her.

Survival.
That’s what she’d been all about up until this point.

Suddenly, inside her head, something flashed...a memory...hazy and then clearer. She saw running, heard yelling.

She pulled back and stared at him.

“What’s wrong?”

“It’s...” She put her hands over her ears, closed her eyes and she was finally able to access the memory she’d buried for years. “Secrets, Cas. More secrets.”

Chapter Nineteen

Clear as day, standing in the hallway of her house. She’s sixteen. Hugh’s drunk. It’s the night Defiance was attacked by the No Names and she and Hugh are arguing. He hits her, hard. Her head slams against the wall and she’s dizzy as she tries to get away from him.

But she didn’t leave then, which is always what her memory tells her she does. No, because Hugh’s talking to her.

“You’re fucking everything up. Just fuckin’ marry Silas next year and get it over with—what the hell else you gonna do?”

“I’ll tell him what you keep trying to do to me.”

He snorted. “Silas is a pussy.”

“Maybe I’ll tell someone else.”

Hugh’s eyes went black and when he spoke, it was with a barely controlled rage. “What? You talkin’ about that bastard, right? He the one you want touchin’ you? Think I haven’t seen the way you eyeball him? But I didn’t do everything I did so my kid could marry a bastard.”

“You killed because you wanted to.”

“Smart mouth, like your mother.”

“Mom told me what you did. Who you killed to make your name with Lance. You touch me again, I’ll tell everyone.”

Threatening a man who’d made his living perfecting threats and making them promises wasn’t her best move, but she’d been shaken.

“Yeah? What’d Mama tell you? Ever think maybe she threatened me too? Look what happened ta her.”

“Yes, she killed herself because of you.”

But something about the way Hugh looked at her made her stop short. There had been rumblings of what really happened to her mother, of course. There were rumors people tried to shield her from, but of course, she’d heard them. And now, she had a strong feeling they were closer to a truth than not.

She backed away and he followed. “What else you heard I did?”

“A lot.”

And she was back to the regularly scheduled memory reel, when Hugh pinned her to the wall and nearly strangled her. She put her hand over her throat, and looked at Caspar, firmly back in the present. “Did Hugh kill my mother? Does everyone know that but me?”

He stared at her with a pained expression. “Hugh killed her.”

“He told you?”

“Lance did. Took me aside, said he needed my help. Said Hugh was out of control and he needed me to shadow him until I left for the Navy. I never saw what he did to her, Tru. I didn’t have any part of the cover-up. Silas and me, we knew after the fact. And I didn’t see any goddamned reason to hurt you more than you were already hurting.”

He’d been protecting her for years before she’d even known it. “You should’ve told me. Someone should’ve told me.”

“What would it have changed, Tru?”

“Lance and Trixie knew. They let me stay in the house with him.”

“If you hadn’t left that night, if you’d been too scared to go, I would’ve made sure you went home to an empty house.”

“My father hated you. Why did he agree to vote you in as the next Enforcer?”

“Never ask questions to things you really don’t want to know.”

“And if I want to?”

He ran the edge of his thumb over his scar. “Answer me something first—what’d you threaten Hugh with?”

Something she hadn’t thought about in years. Maybe her mind had been protecting her, because revisiting that would’ve made her remember everything. “Hugh killed Abel. Lance asked him to and he did. That’s what my mom told me. It was my leverage. I guess she thought it was hers too, but I didn’t know...”

Caspar stood there, his expression unreadable.

“I know how he’s treated you over the years, but he’s still your father, Caspar, and...”

“Your mother had proof?”

“Hugh told her Lance asked him. He struggled with it, but in the end, it would bring him to a position of power he might not have. Mom said that Abel didn’t like the violence, not the way Lance did.”

He didn’t look surprised, but rather resigned. Like she’d unlocked the door to a long-held suspicion and deemed it truth.

“Caspar, you knew.”

“Yes.”

“For how long?”

“Feels like forever.”

“You think Lance did the right thing? Or you’re protecting him because he’s your father and—”

“No.”

The word was so low, couched with anger and maybe even relief. For a second, she didn’t believe he’d actually spoken the word out loud. She took his face in her hands, stared into those icy blue eyes that had never seemed cold to her.

“Lance. Is not. My. Father.”

“Then why pretend? Why come here and put yourself through all of this? For the power? The position?” she asked, confused, because that didn’t sound like the Caspar she knew at all.

He shook his head. “I came back because Defiance is mine, Tru. My legacy. I have rights to the MC. According to the bylaws, I should be in goddamned charge of this place. I was just waitin’ until I knew I could do the job well.”

Her mouth opened and she knew exactly who his father was. “Abel,” she breathed and he nodded. She went on tiptoes and he bowed his head—she put her forehead against his as she absorbed the news. His arms went around her and he’d just trusted her with everything, put it all in the palm of her hand. “You’ve always known?”

“Yes.”

It changed everything. Everything. “What you lived through here...”

“Could say the same about you.”

“You knew I couldn’t come back here until Hugh died. Did you know where I was?”

“Yes.”

“How?”

“Kian took a run here. Told me about it.”

That made sense. Kian didn’t live at the Kill Devils compound, had only stopped in after his road trips. “Did Padraic know Kian told you?”

When Caspar shook his head no, she continued, “Did you mastermind all of this? I know Hugh was sick, but you...once you knew where I was...”

“I put Hugh out of his misery, yeah.” He ran two fingers down the scar on his cheek. “You were the only one who never underestimated me.”

“And I never will.” She stared at him as everything became clear. “If you’d killed Hugh earlier, I’d have to come back sooner. Didn’t you want that?”

“You know good and well I did. But I also knew I might not survive it. Bringing you back before I could help you wouldn’t have done any good. Knew you were safe.” He paused. “The only thing that stopped me from killing him sooner than later was because I knew, no matter where you were, that you could leverage him to keep you safe.”

“You didn’t know if I’d survived.”

“Did you ever doubt I did?”

“Never.”

“Same.”

He believed her. Trusted her. He believed in her and she’d gone out of her way to undermine his position as a man in the MC.

In this club
,
in life
,
perception is everything.
Doesn’t matter what’s real as long as you know
,
so you can’t care what people think.

She repeated those words back to him and asked, “Abel?”

He nodded. “I have his journals. My mom used to read them to me when I was little. By the time I could read them myself, I’d pretty much memorized them.”

“I’m sorry for not trusting you.”

“You did as much as you could.”

“It wasn’t enough.”

“Then I guess you’ve got some making up to do.” His grin was insolent. Lazy. Old Caspar’s grin.

“You’re impossible.”

“Wouldn’t have me any other way.”

She ran a hand through his hair. “Who else knows?”

He jerked his head toward their constant companions when they were outside Caspar’s main dwelling. “Abel served with their dad.”

“So we really can trust them.”

“I’ve trusted them with your life. So far, I haven’t been disappointed,” he said.

“Just one more question. How did you get Hugh to back you?”

He considered not answering her. But if all the shit was coming out, might as well bring it all the way out. “You had cameras in your house.”

Her eyes widened. “When you had me wait in the truck while you...you went back to my house to get the tape.”

“The MC’s okay with violence toward women in a lot of different ways. Trying to rape your own kid isn’t something they’d stomach. So I leveraged your pain, Tru. Yours and mine in order to get Defiance back. Having that evidence was what made me return. I was born to this life. It’s part of me. My blood. There is no walking away. Never really was.” He stared at her. “You gotta figure out if it’s in your blood strong as it is mine.”

“It doesn’t matter. You’re in my blood. With that, I can do anything.”

He blinked, hadn’t been expecting that answer at all. “Always could.”

“It’s better with you. So much better,” she told him.

“Let me get you through what’s coming next.”

“You have to tell me things. Have to.”

“Will. And you gotta play your game in public till all the shit finishes.”

“I can do that.”

“No can. Have to. Means your life. Means mine. And, Tru, in case you don’t know it yet, you’re my life. Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she murmured back.