Outlaw's Ride: An MC Romance by Carter Steele (books recommended by bts .txt) 📕

Knowing what I was capable of, could she ever fully trust me?

“All your friends out here are dead! It’s me or the fire now, motherfucker! C’mon out and face me like a man.” Dreamer yelled from just outside the side door.

Dreamer was alive? I choked on a surprise laugh. Of course he was. Of all of us he would be the one to pull through. My heart leapt at hearing his voice. My brothers weren’t all dead!

“Patrick’s dead!” I called back as loud as I could manage. With the automatic door at the end of the trailer open the smoke wasn’t nearly as bad, but the fire was fast approaching and the heat of it all was becoming unbearable. “We’re coming out. Don’t you fucking shoot us!”

“Wreck? Did anyone else…” Dreamer popped his head into the trailer. His question trailed off when he saw the mournful shake of my head, then spotted the bodies on the ground. He didn’t say another word while he helped me and Sarah down the short ladder. What was there to say?

“You get all of em’, even the guys walking the perimeter?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he replied with a quick nod helping me into the backseat of the car we pulled up in. Dreamer looked utterly exhausted, but the lucky bastard didn’t have a scratch on him. I had no idea how he took everyone else out, but that was Dreamer. He was a resourceful sonofabitch and far better with a knife than Buck ever gave him credit for. Dreamer saw the tension lingering in the air between me and Sarah, and decided to give us a little room. “I’m going to do another sweep just to be sure. Be back in ten.”

“I’m sorry you had to see all that,” I said to her after Dreamer left.

Sarah didn’t reply, instead she opened a first aid kit she’d grabbed on her way out of the trailer and did her best to tend to my wounds. Minutes passed in agonizing silence as she cleaned and dressed the bullet hole in my bicep. I growled against the antiseptic sting and the wrapping of the gauze but felt a little better after it was all over. Swallowing some painkillers helped as well.

“I’m so sorry about your brothers. I’m so, so sorry that I led Patrick here. It’s all my-” She signed, before utterly falling apart again.

“Hey, hey...” I pulled her in close, not caring about my many tender cuts, and bruises. “I forgive you. I now know exactly what that sonofabitch was holding over you. Besides we all got our part in this. You’re no more at fault than Dunk for not taking Patrick more seriously or me for… well for fucking everything...”

You’re going to be what gets us all killed. You know that, right?

Buck’s words haunted me. The sudden loss and failure of it all cascaded over me like a dump truck of wet sand. The heaviness of losing my friends, no, my family was crushing. I stuttered in breath, then like a faulty dam after a structure breach goes critical I broke down completely. The air refused to fill my lungs. My sobbing was a miserable stunted thing. Fuck, the grief was unbearable. I’d lost people before, but not like this. Killing Patrick didn’t change a motherfucking thing. The world might be better off but Buck was right.

Everyone...My whole family is gone.

And it was my fucking fault.

I buried my face in my hands and slunk sideways away from Sarah in shame, all the fight in me had melted away. I was a broken, helpless child. I’d never been this debilitated before let alone in front of someone I cared about. It was awful. My whole world was on fire and all my macho MC bravado couldn’t save me from the overwhelming weakness I felt.

Then something incredible happened.

Sarah wrapped her arms around me and hugged me with all the strength in her small frame. The sheltering warmth in her embrace calmed me down. I felt her lips moving as she noiselessly formed words across my forehead. I didn’t need to know what they were to know that she was trying to console me, and that was all that mattered. It took me a few minutes to realize what she was repeating and that alone almost made me cry again.

“I’ll be strong for both of us,” she said.

When I was finally able to pull away from her, I wiped my face with my good arm and looked at her.

“You’re the strongest person I know.” I gave her an exhausted half-smile and pulled her into me this time. Holding her in my arms made me feel a little a little less broken and I knew right then that I could never, ever let her go.

“Now that Patrick and his whole empire is gone, what are you going to do? Go see your family?” I asked.

“Word will get out soon enough that the person they’d welcomed into their house was a fucking evil monster. And I’m legally dead. They had a funeral for me years ago.” Sarah signed, hesitance and deep pain – deeper than any bullet wounds – settled across her furrowed brow. “Honestly? I think I just need to get away from this place for a little while. I want to see them, of course, but I don’t think I can handle it right now.

“Can I -” She paused, found her courage then continued, “Can I go wherever you’re going?”

“Are you fucking kidding me?” I scoffed, then chuckled despite myself. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’m ever letting you go. I’m sorry but I need you too damn much for that.”

We mostly held each other until Dreamer came back. He had a haunted, verge-of-breaking-down look in his eyes too. Pushing through all the physical – and even some emotional – pain I was feeling, I staggered out of the car and hugged him.

We all stood in that empty lot for