Chapter 22: Tirone: Chapter 23

I pulled over at a motel, Ty and Fort parking their bikes ahead of me. I stepped out of the car—which the Night Skulls had fixed in one day—shock subsiding, body starting to shake, a headache slicing my skull in half. “I’ll take care of the rooms. Can I trouble you and ask you to get some medical supplies?” I asked Fort as I nodded toward Ty, who was hunched over his bike in silence. “I need to take care of his injuries.” Then I examined Fort’s face to realize he, too, was wounded. “Yours, too.”

His scowl deepened. “I’ll be fine. It’s that dick that needs help, and I ain’t talking about patching him up, y’all.”

“I can fucking hear you,” Tirone grumbled.

“Good.” Fort took a step in front of Ty, a vein popping in his forehead. “It’s time you got your shit together and got whatever help you needed because the next time you trash our house, attack any of the brothers or pull a fucking weapon on your prez, you’re fucking dead. You hear me, motherfucker? Don’t give a fuck if you’re blood. Dead.”

“Fort, please. Not now,” I asked, too tired and distraught to watch another fight, and Ty was volatile and vulnerable and dangerously violent. There was no telling how he’d react to confrontation.

“Fuck this shit,” Ty rumbled, sliding his feet down and adjusting his fists around the bars. “I’m outta here.”

My skin tingled with dread. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Anywhere but here. I’m not staying at the same place he is.”

“Like I wanna be anywhere near your fucked up shit, but I have to baby fucking sit you because that’s what you are, a fucking spoiled, bratty child.”

“Fort, please!” I begged. I’d expect this attitude from Molar, not from Fort. I chose him to come with us because Furore trusted him with me and he loved Tirone more than everybody else at the club.

Fort spat on the ground and walked away.

“Ty, you have to stay, at least, until I take care of your wounds. You’re bleeding,” I said.

“It’s not the flesh wounds that matter, Jo. The wounds beneath the flesh hurt the most, bleed the most. Can you stop those from bleeding?”

The pain in his eyes was too much to stand. The blame, too. His gaze was saying, “How could you leave me for him? How could you be so blind? Why would you not forgive my sins when they were all out of my love for you? Why would you forgive his when his so called love was nothing but a delusion?”

“I was a defenseless animal. Caught in the lion’s den. I ran and ran but couldn’t find anywhere safe. I finally hid away safe but alone. While the storm rolled in and clawed at my bones. Out in this land it’s hard to survive…with flesh wounds.”

Tears blurred my vision. “You shouldn’t be alone, Ty.”

“I won’t.” Something tugged at my purse before he adjusted the bike’s direction and started out of the parking lot.

“I’m serious, Tirone. You can’t go. Not like this.” I’d be worried sick. He was injured, and he might do something stupid again.

“Don’t worry. I’ll call my girlfriend. Maybe my little faerie will keep me company…like old times.”

My lashes fluttered and so did my heart. Was he saying what I thought he was saying?

“Get your ass back here!” Fort shouted as Ty headed down the road.

“If she doesn’t pick up, I’ll go for a ride near the lake and then come back.” Tirone revved his engine and cruised away.

“I should fucking go after him,” Fort grumbled. “What if he goes back to the compound?”

“He won’t,” I said, too certain, enough to raise suspicions. I cleared my throat. “Even if he does, Furore will never have him harmed.”

“It’s not that fucking punk I’m worried about.” Fort glared at me. “Neither should you.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“It means you should worry about your ol’ man, not the fucker that raised a knife at him?”

“That’s your prez’s son you’re talking about, my student whom I’ve cared about for a very long time before I even met any of you, a troubled boy who’s desperate for a father figure to accept and love him as he should.”

“Rex ain’t your responsibility, Jo. You ain’t his teacher here. You’re his daddy’s ol’ lady, and even if Prez puts a ring on your finger, you’ll never be that boy’s mother because Rex worships Delilah and no one will ever take her place. You’ll still be his daddy’s ol’ lady so get your priorities straight and know your role.”

“After tonight, that glorious title is questionable.”

“What the fuck? Rex’s dickness is rubbing off you?”

“Furore was in love with my mother. He slept with her.”

“That was twenty-three fucking years ago.”

“He never bothered to tell me that truth.” That might make me sound like a hypocrite because I was in love with his son and kept it a secret, too. The difference between us was that I was going to tell him tonight and I never knew he was Tirone’s father when I fell for him. “He knew from day one I was her daughter.”

“So what?”

I scoffed. “Let’s say I’m that open minded to accept to be in a relationship with my dead mother’s ex. How can I trust the feelings he has for me are real?”

“C’mon, teach, don’t be such a chick. You know he’s fucking smitten. He’s never been that shitfaced in love since…” He cut off his sentence and swore.

“Since what? Since my mother?”

He just twisted his lips.

“And why do you think he does?” I cried, pain stabbing my heart. “Because I look like her.” He should have seen the way Furore looked at me when he saw what I really looked like.

“Jo, you’re a smart gal. Don’t jump to conclusions without talking to Prez first, all right? Take the night, blow some steam, but you have to listen to him before you make any stupid decisions. Don’t be a dick like Rex.”

I wiped my eyes, sniffling. “Whatever, Fort. Can you run to the drugstore, please? Let me fix your wound, and I know Ty will be back soon.”

“How do you know?”

“Because his girlfriend will pick up. She always does when he needs her the most. She’d calm him down, and he’d be back before you knew it.”

I marched to the reception and paid for the rooms. Fort’s bike roared in the dark. I headed for my room. Taking a deep breath, I entered, and opened the bathroom window, knowing, without having to take the call ringing inside my purse, whom I’d find waiting outside.