Kristen Ashley - Motorcycle Man

Too much.

Little rivers of it.

Rivers of blood.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later…

The ambulance had its lights and sirens on.

There was a black van following it.

An SUV was following the van.

A Camaro was following the SUV.

Beyond that were three Harley Davidsons.

Beyond that were two squad cars, lights on, no sirens.

The convoy drove up to the Emergency Bay at Swedish Medical Center.

Brick didn’t come to a full stop before Tack was out, running to the back of the ambulance where the paramedics were running.

“You can’t park here!” he heard shouted but his eyes were glued to the doors that were opening then the gurney that was being tugged out.

The instant its wheels hit the ground, Tack moved in, wrapping his hand around her throat.

He felt the pulse.

“Sir, step back.”

Tack ignored that too.

Her green eyes came to him and he sensed her hand come up.

He tagged it and squeezed tight as the paramedics gave up on him and started running the gurney into the ER.

Tack ran with it, hand at her throat, other hand in hers, eyes locked.

“Don’t let me go,” she whispered.

“I won’t let you go, Red.”

“Don’t let me go.”

“I won’t let you go, baby.”

“Don’t let me go.”

This last wasn’t verbalized. Just her mouth moved with the words.

Tack didn’t answer because her hand went limp in his as the light flashed out of her eyes.

Fuck him. Fuck him. Fuck him.

She let him go.

Everything he had focused on his hand at her throat.

No pulse.

“Sir! Step back!”

Kane Allen stepped aside and watched them race the gurney through swinging doors that closed behind it, hiding her from sight.

* * *

“It was too easy,” Tack muttered.

“What, brother?” Dog asked from close.

“Redemption,” Tack answered.

“Brother,” Dog murmured then clapped a hand on Tack’s shoulder.

They stood together for a while before he felt Dog move away to give him space.

When he was alone, he lifted his hand to his chest and pressed in. The metal dogtags she gave him were cold against his skin but that cold felt like a burn.

Then her words came to him.

Truth, honesty, perseverance, strength, love of all kinds and forgiveness are all beautiful, Tack. The most beautiful stories ever told are the most difficult to take.

“You were right, Red,” he whispered to the doors. “You were right, darlin’.”

* * *

Gwen

I moved away from the girls in the waiting room and wandered to the hall.

Bikers everywhere. Some had their arms draped around women. Some were alone, standing back to the wall, motorcycle boot clad feet in front of them, heads bent, eyes to their boots.

Two teenaged kids were close to the end of the hall, both on their behinds on the floor, backs to the wall. They both had their knees up. The boy had his arm around the girl’s shoulders. She was leaned into him, her face in his chest. He had his eyes glued to Tack.

My eyes moved to him too.

Amidst the bevy of bikers, Tack stood alone, one hand to his waist, one hand wrapped around the back of his bent neck, eyes to the floor, standing in the middle of the hall just outside the double doors, close to the kids, that, at a glance, I knew were his.

Out of nowhere, I felt a pair of lips at my ear as a hand slid from my waist to my belly.

“Go to him, Sweet Pea,” Hawk whispered in my ear.

I nodded and moved.

I walked through bikers and when I arrived at Tack, I moved right in, sliding my arms around him, pressing my front close to his, my cheek to his chest, closing my eyes, holding tight.

His arms moved around me and held tighter.

“She’ll be okay,” I whispered.

“Okay, Peaches.”

“She’ll be all right.” I kept whispering.

“Okay, babe.”

I opened my eyes and looked down the hall through the bikers.

Standing at the end, Hawk had his arms crossed on his chest, his face blank, his eyes locked to me. Brock had his arm around Tess’s shoulders, tucking his wife tight to his side, her head resting on his shoulder. Their eyes were on Tack and me. Mitch had both arms around Mara, hers were returning the favor and her cheek was resting on his chest. Their eyes were also on Tack and me. Elvira stood beside Hawk. The fingers of both her hands were pressed to her mouth. Her outfit was killer. And her eyes were on Tack and me.

As I watched, Hawk moved to slide an arm around Elvira’s shoulders and when he did, she leaned full body into his tall frame, giving him most of her weight and, as usual with my man, he stood strong and took it.

“Everything will be all right,” I whispered and gave Tack a squeeze.

I knew he’d already lost hope when Tack didn’t squeeze back.

* * *

Tyra

I felt a hand at my throat.

I opened my eyes.

Tack’s handsome face was all I could see.

Weirdly, except his hand wrapped light at my throat, I felt nothing. Not a thing.

Until his rough, gravelly voice came at me.

“Welcome back, Red.”

Then I felt my lips smile.

I stood at the basin in our bathroom wearing my bra and panties, my eyes moving over my body.

Nothing there.

This was because, when I got out of the hospital, approximately half a second after Tack carried me into the house (even though I could walk, just not very fast) and he laid me in bed, he’d started researching. He found the best plastic surgeon in the country and since then I’d taken two trips out to Los Angeles to have procedures to erase the scars from the five stab wounds Grigori Lescheva’s henchman had given me.

“Got that day burned in my brain,” Tack had growled after he’d handed me the plane tickets and explained our destination. “Do not need to look at your beautiful body and have it burn deeper. But you definitely are not gonna live with the scars ‘a that shit in your head and on your body. No fuckin’ way.”

After his explanation, I decided, who was I to argue?

So I didn’t.

It was just over nine months since that day and all physical remnants of it were gone.

My man saw to that.

I shifted so my back was to the mirror and looked down. Above my hipster panties was Tack’s dragon. His tattoo artist was just that, an artist. The tattoo was the… freaking… coolest. All in black, its wings spanning the small of my back, the tips skimming my hips, spiky head turned to the side, the dragon’s body curled up as if to attack with its feet, its talons pointed to my behind.

It hurt like hell to get but Tack was right, it was worth it. I liked having his mark on me.

I liked how much he liked it more.

And boy did he like it.

These thoughts made me turn back around. I leaned into the counter and both my hands slid along my belly, my eyes dropping there and I caught sight of my rings.

The second day I woke up in the hospital, I did it with a huge-ass diamond ring on my left finger. It was a raised princess cut diamond, two carats with smaller round diamonds surrounding it, more diamonds set in the gold in the rise up to the bigger one.

The minute I saw it, regardless of the drugs pumping numbness through my system , I smiled.

Pure Tack.

The biker boss to end all biker bosses, his woman was unconscious when we officially became engaged. He did what he did and got what wanted however that had to come about.

I didn’t argue about that either. When Tack walked into my room five minutes later, I just lifted my hand (albeit weakly), wiggled my fingers and whispered, “I accept.”

Tack had just smiled back, came right to me, bent in and kissed me.

It kind of sucked that our engagement kiss was soft, gentle and brief seeing as I was highly drugged, had five stitched holes in my body, IVs and was recovering from an alarming loss of blood.

But none of that made that kiss any less sweet.

We didn’t have a huge-ass wedding and we didn’t delay in that either.

Lying in a hospital bed, my dream changed. After what I endured, what Tack endured trying to find me and the fact that my heart had stopped beating for one minute and forty-six seconds, my priorities changed.

Live life. Do not delay. Ever.

That didn’t mean our wedding didn’t kick ass.

It so did.

The minute I was up to it, Tack put me on the back of his bike and we lucked out that the weather was good the whole way as we rode over the Rockies and into the Napa Valley.

It was a long ride.

I loved every fucking minute of it.

Everyone met us there, Chaos, Mom and Dad, Aunt Bette and Uncle Marsh, Tabby and Rush, Hawk and Gwen, Brock and Tess, Mitch and Mara, Elvira and even Tack’s Mom.

I discovered that Tack’s Mom was not surprisingly beaten looking. But she was also friendly and loved her son if in an unusual distant, hesitant way I didn’t exactly get and I didn’t like all that much. But that distance meant she went right back to San Diego and kept distant. We rarely ever heard from her. Tack was used to this and it didn’t bother him so I decided not to let it bother me.

As for my Mom and Dad, they had met Tack when they came to Denver after my incident. While I was drugged up, Tack left Mom with me and took Dad for a cup of coffee. There he laid it out, all of it about Chaos, the Russians and how that made me a target. There he also laid it out about the fact we loved each other and he intended to spend the rest of his life with me and make a family.

This was also very Tack, up front and honest and apparently my father appreciated it.

I knew this when I was less whacked out and more lucid and I approached my father about his talk with Tack hoping to head him off the path to judgment.

I shouldn’t have worried (though I didn’t know that).

“Honey, God makes those decisions, I don’t,” Dad shocked the shit out of me by saying. “I just know it wasn’t him who stabbed you with a knife. I also know it was him who nearly got riddled with bullets to get you out. And I know he got you out alive. And last, I figure the path to redemption is thorny but I’m guessing that man will make it through mostly because he’s got a strong woman at his side. And I know that because I raised that woman.”

Seriously, it sucked I was laid up in a hospital bed because that meant I couldn’t give my Dad a big hug.

And, for your information, bawling while recovering from stab wounds hurts like a bitch.

I didn’t know if Mom and Dad came to Denver with open minds. I just knew they respected Tack’s honesty and they saw how Tack, Tabby, Rush and Chaos treated me so if their minds didn’t start out open, they ended up that way.

Tack and I got married in a vineyard.

I was wearing a simple but kickass ivory dress and not simple and more kickass ivory spiked heels. At my side was an immensely sad but faking it for me Lanie. Tack wore jeans and an unbelievably cool ivory shirt with subtle western-style stitching and not subtle totally kickass rocker-biker black embroidery across the upper chest and his shoulders at the back. Through the nuptials, Dog stood by his side. And when we were pronounced man and wife, a collective biker howl split the air that made me laugh and cry at the same time.

After I slid my wide gold band on his finger, he slid the thin, diamond-imbedded gold on mine, we partied hard and long and, as it raged on, rowdy. The owners of the vineyard luckily were game and joined in rather than taking the alternative of calling the cops.

Everyone left but Tack and I stayed a week for our honeymoon. Then we extended our honeymoon and rode the coastal road of California.

Only after we’d done that did we go home.

It wasn’t near enough time riding the roads with my man with the wind in my hair. But it still was time I savored.

Every second.

Both Lanie and I missed Elliott’s funeral because we were both still in the hospital. But she waited for me and my moral support and I took her to his grave when Tack and I got home from our honeymoon. I also held her while we stood at his grave and she sobbed in my arms. Not long after, she moved back to Connecticut to be close to her Mom, Dad and sister. I missed her every day but I understood her play.