Move the Sun (Signal Bend #1)(56)
losing you. We will find a way out of the mess. I need you to trust me, baby. Please.”
Lilli was tired. She knew she shouldn’t. All of her training, her loyalty, everything told her that it was wrong to bring in anybody else, much less a whole motorcycle club. The greatest risk to a mission like hers was the people who knew about it. The risk increased exponentially with each person. What she should do is eliminate the threat.
What she would do is what Isaac asked. She wanted him. If there was a way that she could keep him, then she’d take the risk and trust him. She sent up a little prayer to a god she’d stopped believing in when she buried her father, asking that if she was wrong, others didn’t pay the price with her.
She shifted on his chest so that she could see his face—his gorgeous face that she’d come to love so much, with his astute green eyes. She ran her finger along the scar across his cheek. “Okay. But tell me where he is.”
“Wyatt and Ray are off on a deep woods camping trip. He’s out of reach, but he’ll be back in a couple of weeks. You don’t have to go anywhere, Sport. He’s still around.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Isaac parked in front of the clubhouse, and Lilli and he dismounted. Damn, he loved riding with her wrapped around him. Even with all the shit going down, what he really wanted to do right now was pull her back into the nearest dorm room and f*ck the sense out of her. Again. He couldn’t, of course; the kind of trouble they had wouldn’t wait any longer. But when she took off the helmet that was now hers and ran a hand to smooth her ponytail, he couldn’t resist dragging her up against his body and kissing her until he felt her almost sag into his embrace.
He had to fix this. He had to find a way to clear a path for Lilli to do what she needed to do with Ray.
He believed her story; the first thing he’d known about her was that she was honest—even while she was secretive, she managed to be honest. So he had no doubt that Ray had done the f*cking awful thing that she said he’d done. Isaac wanted him dead for f*cking with Lilli; he needed no other provocation than that. But it was the squad of lost soldiers that he knew could turn the club to her side. Against one of their own.
Because Wyatt? Wyatt would never turn on Ray.
Wyatt was the older brother. They’d grown up in a tough house, with a hard father and a weak mother.
A lot like Isaac’s house—and not so few other houses in this part of the world. Country life could be hard and austere. Men worked until they were bone weary and drenched in sweat. Then they drank and thought about how they had to do it again the next day. Then they went home angry and spoiling for trouble.
What was different about Ray and Wyatt, though, was that Ray had trouble keeping out of their father’s way. He never seemed to learn when to lie low. Sometimes, it seemed like Ray took pains to provoke their dad. And then Wyatt would step between them and take the brunt. Wyatt always took the brunt. He was offered a football scholarship to Nebraska, but he wouldn’t leave Ray behind, so he turned it down. Ray went to college instead, going ROTC.
Wyatt worked the family farm with his father and lived in a little cottage he built on the property, some short distance from the main farmhouse he’d grown up in. Ray had been in the service for sixteen years, but he’d come home, what, a year or so ago? He’d moved into a ramshackle hut a couple of towns away and kept mostly to himself, making money doing odd jobs as they came up, but mainly letting Wyatt take care of him, seeing to it he had groceries and whatever else he needed. Isaac had only seen him a few times, when Wyatt dragged him to Friday nights to try to get him to have fun. Ray had gotten very weird and twitchy. Everyone assumed it was something that happened in the war. Now Isaac knew that was true.
He took Lilli’s hand and headed to the door. Almost everyone was here; work shifts had recently ended, and the Horde always came together for a couple of drinks, at least, before those who had families went back to them. So Isaac knew he was about to create a stir. Most of the Horde had met Lilli and seen her with Isaac, but it had been at least fifteen years since he’d walked into the clubhouse with a woman. He brought her hand to his mouth and pressed a kiss to her knuckles. She smiled at him.
“It’s gonna be okay, Sport. We’re gonna work this.”
She huffed dryly, not quite a laugh. “One way or another, yeah. We are.”
No. Not one way or another. There was only one way. With them on the same goddamn side. He would not lose her. He never thought to have this; he never thought he wanted it. But he had it, this love, this binding with another soul, and he was not giving it up. Fuck no. He would not betray her.
He could not betray his club, though, either. These men, their families, this town—all his responsibility, and he would never shirk it. So there was only one way. The club had to believe her, and they had to agree that Ray deserved to die.
He gave Lilli’s hand a squeeze and opened the clubhouse door.
When they walked in, heads turned as usual, to see and greet their president. But when they saw Lilli, the room got quiet. Horde, girls, and hangers-on, literally everyone in the room eventually was watching Isaac walk through the room they called the Hall. He turned to see that Lilli was smiling slightly, looking confident. But she was also holding his hand just a tad more tightly. He squeezed back and decided that they wouldn’t walk straight through and get to business. Showdown was at the bar; Isaac led Lilli there. The Horde who’d met her nodded cordially or lifted their drinks her way. Slowly, people turned back to what they were doing.