Saviour: A Devil's Spawn MC Novel (Savior Book 3) Page 19

  Letting out an exasperated sigh he replies,

  “Look I don’t want to be here either, and I’ve got no fucking idea why a kid your age needs a fucking babysitter to begin with, but I’m here to watch you, so if you’ll do me a solid, and go in your room, watch TV, do whatever it is you do I’ll come let you know when I’m leaving. You stay out of my way, and I’ll stay out of yours Princess.”

  Ouch…Turning away from him I do exactly what he asked, heading to my room shutting and locking the door, leaving him standing in the living room. When I lay down on my bed I cry.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Saint

  “I have multiple personalities,

  and none of them like you.” – Tobias’s Truth

  Have you ever noticed that when you try your fucking hardest to stay away from someone life decides to kick you in the balls throwing you together as often as humanly possible? Yeah? Well I feel your pain. When Glock asked me to do him a favour, and go over to his best friend’s house to keep an eye out for him I didn’t hesitate in saying yes. I like the guy, he’s my brother and all, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m going to be seeking retribution for this. Painful retribution at that.

  I had no fucking idea that the best friend in question was Tilly, and if I had known I would’ve told him to go fuck himself. It’s not that I don’t like Tilly, far from it. In fact that’s the fucking problem right there. Tilly is a distraction that I don’t want, or need in my life right now. If ever.

  Tallulah Annalise Walker, or Tilly as people call her, is the most beautiful girl I’ve ever laid eyes on. Scratch that, she’s the most stunning woman I’ve ever seen, and while she’s only seventeen there’s something about her that draws me to her like a magnet. I’ve tried to stay away, I really have. In my defence, because I know it doesn’t look good for a man of twenty-one to be lusting after a seventeen-year-old, she’s very nearly eighteen. Three weeks I think Glock said, and she’s a legal adult. Not that it’ll make a difference because I’m still not going there with her.

  Attraction isn’t the problem, and neither is interest. They don’t factor into my reasons why nothing will ever come of my infatuation with the gorgeous petite brown eyed blonde. Every time I’ve seen her watching me when she doesn’t think I’m looking I’ve wanted to go up and talk to her, and what she doesn’t know is that I watch her too. Not only when she’s at the clubhouse either. I watch her when she’s at the library, leaving school, at the diner with her sister, it doesn’t matter where she is if I can, I’m watching. That might make me sound like a fucking stalker, especially when she’s got no idea I’m doing it, but I swear to Christ I’m not doing it because I’m some kind of creepy pervert, I just like making sure she’s okay. That she’s safe. It’s not my job, and I’m well aware Tank has that shit under control, but it doesn’t change the fact that I feel compelled to do it. Like something deeper is driving me to make sure Tilly’s protected at all times.

  I’ve never felt like this about a woman before, not even my own sister. If you asked me to explain it I couldn’t, and to be honest I don’t want to dig deep enough to give you an answer as to why I feel the way I do. That would only make it all the more real, highlighting that the one person that seems to bring out all my protective instincts can never be mine.

  Before my family was torn apart by my sisters’ death, when I was a senior in high school, I was a normal teenager. Hanging with friends, playing football, going to school, parties, fucking my way through the girls in our year, I was your average, run of the mill jock. That all changed during the last month of my senior year of high school when my sister was killed by a drunk driver leaving a party where she’d come looking for me.

  The guilt I felt, I still feel, over her death ate away at the kid I was, and in its place left a man that’s harder, rougher, and angrier. My childhood came to an abrupt end that night, and I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to forgive myself and move on. If Finley hadn’t come to find me, bring me home because mom and dad were coming home from their weekend get-away early, she’d still be here today. She wouldn’t have been out so late at night. She wouldn’t have been crossing the road after scouring the house the party was being held at in vain. She wouldn’t have been caught in the path of a driver that had drunk his body weight in beer and decided to drive himself home. She wouldn’t have suffered before she died. All this while I was upstairs in some bedroom getting my dick sucked by some trashy whore I wouldn’t remember in the morning.

  I think that’s the worst part, if there can be a worst part when your sister is killed, the fact that Finley didn’t die instantly has plagued my nightmares for years. The paramedics that attended the accident scene said Finley held on for a total of ten minutes before she finally passed. The damage was too severe for her to have survived they said, and they were shocked she lasted as long as she did.

  As soon as I heard the screams coming from the girls at the party I detached the chick sucking my dick, and looked out the second floor window down onto the scene below. I couldn’t see much, just a body lying on the road, a car stopped diagonally in the street, a guy sitting on the curb with his head in his hands, and a fuck ton of raven black hair spread out around the body. I don’t know how I knew it was Finley, but something inside me knew, and it took me less than a minute to get down the stairs, out the front door, and be kneeling beside her.

  Seeing her like that, covered in blood, bruises forming on her skin, her eyes unfocused and heavy, I knew she wasn’t going to make it. It didn’t matter how quickly the paramedics got here, and I knew they’d been called because I heard someone on my way to Finley mention it, my sister wasn’t going to live. I can remember the gut wrenching sorrow that washed over me at the realisation that I was going to lose her. Finley was my only sibling, and even though we fought like cats and dog, we were only year apart in age so we were always close. When I say close I mean, close. She was my best friend, the person I went to for advice, she helped me with my homework, I loved her so much I couldn’t fathom how I was going to go on without her in my life.

  I can recall her last five minutes like it was yesterday. There are days I wish I didn’t remember, that I could just forget, let it all have been a bad dream. Watching her suffer, and then die like that isn’t something that anyone should have to see, let alone a brother. But then there are the days, and they are the overwhelming majority, that I’m thankful for having the chance to have those last minutes with her. Getting to hold her, comfort her in some way, even if it was more for my benefit than for hers, I wouldn’t trade for anything in the world. But it was what she said to me before she closed her eyes for the final time that would haunt me most. It caused me so much emotional turmoil that I eventually just shut down in order to protect myself from any more heartache. Her words were simple, sweet, like her, but they meant the world to me, regardless of the fact that I hadn’t found a way to live by them yet. “Don’t mourn me, Tobi, live for me. Live for both of us.”

  Maybe that’s why I felt this strange connection to Tilly, because she had someone, or in her case two people close to her die. I know losing my sister doesn’t compare to losing both of your parents, but to me Finley was even more integral to my life than my parents ever were. It’s not that we weren’t close, or that I didn’t love them, I did, but nothing I ever did was good enough for my dad. And my mom, well what can I say? In her own way she loved me, but after Finley died she just shut down. Not like I did, not by locking her old self inside. No, her way was infinitely worse. What she did ended up tearing our family apart, and that was something I wasn’t willing to forgive her for. It was why I left. Why I joined the MC. It was why I wasn’t willing to have my heart broken by any woman ever again.

  It started slowly, so slowly that for the first few months after Finley’s funeral dad and I didn’t even recognise mom had a problem. She began by taking something to help her sleep, and I couldn’t fault her for needing the comfort of unconsciousness because I
did too. But chemically inducing it to the point that she could barely get out of bed anymore? Yeah, I don’t think so. When after six months she hadn’t stopped taking the meds the doctor prescribed, dad tried talking to her about it, all that achieved was a screaming match that concluded with mom throwing shit and breaking down in tears. He never tried again, and I couldn’t be fucked wading in to that shit. I was dealing with enough guilt, anger, and remorse to sink a battleship, I didn’t need anyone else’s problems compounding it. If moms’ drug use wasn’t enough, because at that point that was what it was, the only difference between her and a junkie on the street was she’s getting it legally, it was dad heading in the direction of alcoholism to deal with his daughters’ death and his wife’s addiction issues tipped the scales for me.

  I tapped out at that point. That shit wasn’t healthy for anyone, especially me. I camped on friends couches, borrowed their spare rooms, whatever I had to do to get out of that house I did. I kept working at the grocery store I’d worked at since I was a sophomore in high school to save enough money to get the fuck out of So Cal. How I got here, how I heard about Devil’s Spawn MC are stories for another day, but I can tell you this, I haven’t seen or spoken to my parents since I left home a little under three years ago. To be honest, I don’t know if they’ve even realised I’m not there anymore. Sad but true.

  Another thing that will keep for different day is what the fuck I’m going to do about the growing attraction between me and the gorgeous blonde that’s just taken off running into her room. I shouldn’t have been such an asshole to Tilly, but if brushing her arm has me at half-mast I needed her to stay the fuck away from me, or I’d be liable to do something we’d both regret tomorrow. Oh, I wouldn’t regret it because fucking her would be anything less than spectacular; I’d regret it because Tilly’s an all or nothing, commitment type of girl, and I just don’t have that in me to give her.

  I can see in her eyes she wants to fix me. She thinks she’s doing a good job hiding it, but it’s clear as the cute little nose on her beautiful face that she looks at me like a project, someone to cure of what ails them. What she doesn’t get is that I’m not broken, I’m fucking shattered, and there’s no fixing that. You can’t get out the Crazy Glue and stick that shit back together, it’s just not possible. I want her to find someone that can give her what she needs. Someone that cherishes her for the perfect person she is. She doesn’t need an angry selfish fuck like me in her life. And that’s exactly what I’d be, selfish. I’d take anything and everything she was capable of giving me, all the while knowing I couldn’t offer her the same in return. I can’t do that to her, no matter how much it will gut me having to see her settle down with some other guy, because make no mistake that’s exactly what will happen, it will fucking kill me. Still I can’t take away her innocence, her faith in humanity by introducing her to the dark side that I live on. No, its better this way, and when it’s at its hardest, like today when I have to be around her one-on-one, I’ll have to be extra careful that I don’t give her any signs that I crave her brand of healing. That I crave her.

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Hunter

  Hero – Skillet

  Jones looks ready to dismember me if the set of his jaw, clenched fists, and the vein pulsing on the side of neck is anything to go by. And I think he’d give it an excellent fucking go if Priss wasn’t standing in front of me like a human shield. I don’t need her to protect me from her old man, but her show of solidarity isn’t going to go unappreciated when I take her to bed later, and fuck her into next week. I can’t tell her that now, so I squeeze her hand instead in silent thanks.

  When I said I know seventy-two ways to kill a man with my bare hands I wasn’t kidding. If the Navy taught me anything it was to effectively take a man down with nothing but my hands, because God knows you don’t always have access to a reliable weapon when you’re in the sandbox from hell, and you never know when you’ll need to make use of those skills. Sadly I did have to use them, more than once. So if Jones thinks he’s got a shot at taking me down I’ll leave him to his fantasy since he and I both know he’s got no chance in fuck of it ending any other way but in my favour.

  Hooking my arm around Priss’ waist I manoeuvre her behind me just in case the crazy bastard gets any big ideas, and she ends up getting hurt. I can openly say that if anyone, and I don’t care who they are, father or not, hurt Priss I’d tear them apart without a second thought. Thankfully Jones doesn’t come any closer, but at three feet away he’s still too close for me to safely say he’s not a threat. That coupled with him being a highly trained FBI agent doesn’t have me letting down my guard any, it just has me preparing for the worst.

  Crossing his arms over his chest he stares at me giving me his unspoken warning to stay away from his daughter. It’s been the same thing from the beginning, ever since he noticed my avid interest in Priss, Jones has been telling me to stay away from her, stating the age difference, my line of work, my military background he pretty much used anything he could come up with to try convincing me to walk away, to forget about her. Impossible. At first I tried it his way, I tried to stay away from her. Part of me agreed with the reasons why I should walk away, the bigger part, the one that held my heart and what was left of my soul fervently disagreed, so no guesses required to work out which part me I sided with. Unlike before, today’s show isn’t a friendly warning between brothers, it’s a standoff between the two men that love Priss most.

  Not willing to wait any longer Jones doesn’t hold back when he says,

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing with my daughter? I told you I didn’t want her with someone like you, so you what, wait till I’m supposedly six-feet under and move in praying on her grief?”

  There’s not much that I’d consider stepping over the line, and my patience is legendary inside the MC, but that just pole vaulted the line landing in enemy fucking territory, and has my thin thread of patience for this man snapping. Jones assuming I’d use her grief to manipulate her into being with me is fucked up. I might be an asshole, but I haven’t given him reason to believe I’d be capable of that sort of thing. Priss doesn’t give me the opportunity to respond as she ducks out from under my arm squaring off with her dad on my behalf.

  “What did you just say? On second thoughts don’t repeat it, I don’t want to listen to it, and Hunter doesn’t deserve to be disrespected like that either,” she says propping her hand on her hip. She’s so fucking adorable that I’d kiss her right now if she wasn’t so fired up. “In case you’ve forgotten where we are Hunter has been nice enough to allow you to come into his home so you can get your explanations out of the way. Unless you want me to get back in that truck,” she says gesturing at my truck over her shoulder with her thumb, “I suggest that you apologise to him, and refrain from saying that shit again. And just to clear it up for you, Hunter and I got together recently, very recently. As in today, so for you to accuse him of something like that isn’t only bullshit, it’s ridiculous to boot.”

  Pulling her into my side wrapping an arm around her waist anchoring her to me where she belongs I whisper in her ear,

  “It’s all good Beautiful.” It isn’t, but she needs to calm her shit so we can get this over and done with. I’ll deal with Jones later, one-on-one when the women aren’t around. Placing a kiss to the crown of her head I add, “I appreciate the backup Baby, and I’ll show you just how much later.” I feel a shiver run through her, which makes me smile to myself. My woman is just as easily turned on as I am. Good to know. Addressing the angry ex-Devil’s Spawn brother slash FBI agent in front of me, (at least I assume he’s an ex-brother, but who knows with all the crazy shit going on around here these days), I offer, “Let’s take this inside. Not many people come out this far, but I don’t want to take a chance on it until we know what the story is.”

  I bought this place about four years ago after making the decision that regardless of what happened with the bureau, or the MC I’d be st
aying on in Blackwater. I also bought it with the thought of having a family some day in mind. One I hoped to have with Priss in the not so distant future.

  Being located on one of the only fully operational ranches in the area, well it was until I purchased it, the ranch house that sits off to the side of the sprawling property has been well maintained and updated as the house aged. It’s far too big for just me, but seeing as my brothers’ visit every so often, and I don’t like moving, actually I detest it, I wanted something I, and hopefully Priss could stay in permanently. Something about being in the Navy, never having roots, needing to be available to deploy at a moment’s notice made the prospect of having to move from a house I finally decided to settle in highly unappealing.

  I didn’t buy the ranch with the intention of keeping it active, it just worked out that way. Ken the foreman for the previous owners, is a single guy in his late forties with no kids, and no life outside managing the daily operations of the ranch. I felt sorry for the guy when the owners told him the ranch was changing hands, and that his services were no longer needed. He looked fucking devastated. How I imagined I looked when I was told my services were no longer required by the Navy. So, like the moron I’ve found out I am, I intervened telling him I’d keep him on if he took over the management of the ranch in its entirety.

  There’s no way with my responsibilities to the MC, and the work I still do for the bureau that I have time to add something else to my workload. If anything, dropping the bureau component off my shoulders should free up enough time to learn a few things from Ken that might be useful if he ever decides to move on.