Dark Oath_A Dark Saints MC Novel Page 3

  “It’s ... it’s okay, Eddie,” Beth said. My heart flipped over. Her voice. I heard it in my dreams sometimes. But she was real, standing twenty feet in front of me. Her brown eyes locked with mine.

  “Come on, Ed, let’s get some food into you.” I’d barely noticed the other woman standing at the end of an access ramp in front of the old farmhouse. She was wide and short. She walked with a pronounced limp, but her grip was strong when she grabbed Edward Albright by the arm and led him into the building. She cast a worried glance back at Beth, but whisked her charge away with swift purpose.

  A beat passed. Then another. Beth stood in front of her truck, gripping her keys between her fingers. She looked exactly the same and yet completely different. She wore a black business suit that showed off her shapely legs in high black heels. Her hair was the same, brown with honey highlights in the sun. She still wore it long past her shoulders with bangs swept to the side. Her eyes still cut through me beneath the thick arch of her brow. Those lips, full and soft in a permanent pout. If I closed my eyes, I could still feel the lingering taste of her.

  I snapped my eyes open and shook off the memory. My body still remembered her. I felt the echoes of her touch. Even now, it made my dick tighten to be this close to her. Her face was different, more mature and beautiful. The youthful blush on her cheeks had vanished, replaced by something even more sensual. Her cheekbones seemed higher. Tiny laugh lines near her eyes made them sparkle even more than I remembered. Jealousy gripped my heart. I wanted to be the one to make her laugh.

  “Danny.” My name quivered on her lips. It was all she’d ever called me. It didn’t fit anymore. I cut my engine and swung off the bike. Her eyes darted over me and her breath hitched as I came toward her.

  “It’s Deacon now,” I said. “Nobody ever calls me Danny.”

  Her eyes went up and up, staying locked with mine. Beth. Sweet Beth. My greatest temptation. My brother’s wife.

  “What are you doing here?” She put a hand to her cheek. “How did you even find me?”

  I watched the tiniest flicker in her eyes as she realized the answer before I gave it. “Is there somewhere we can talk?” I asked.

  She took a faltering step back. We were pretty much out in the middle of nowhere. Crystal Falls itself was a podunk town with maybe one streetlight and an old-fashioned downtown that looked like it had been ripped right out of the fifties and frozen in time. Of all the places Bear and E.Z. could have sent her, I still couldn’t believe they picked this one. Or that she’d agreed to stay.

  No sooner had I thought it, I knew why. She’d stayed here because once upon a time she trusted me. She believed me when I told her this was the only way to keep her safe. I knew now that was only half true.

  She turned and opened the cab of her truck. Gesturing to the passenger side, she climbed in. I did a quick scan of the road. The law offices of Edward Albright were located this side of nowhere. Though I’d have rather parked my bike somewhere less conspicuous, I didn’t figure many people came down this way unless they were looking for the place. But Beth didn’t start the truck.

  Shrugging, I took her meaning. She was right. Her truck was probably as good a place as any to have this conversation. I climbed in next to her and turned in the seat to face her.

  I watched her trying to process everything before I’d even really spoken a word. While she looked so much like the last time I saw her, I knew I looked anything but. Her eyes traveled down, taking in the leather cut, the patch I wore.

  “Club chaplain,” she said, her voice breaking. She reached for me, but it was as if we were separated by glass. In a way, we were. We looked at each other as if we were both museum pieces. Look. Don’t touch.

  “I told you I could never go back,” I said.

  Hurt flashed in her eyes, then was quickly replaced with anger. “Do you blame me for that?”

  Her words reached me with the force of a physical slap. “No!” I said, almost shouting it. “No.” Quieter this time. “Beth …” I stopped. The club had given her a new identity. A place to start her life over. It only now just occurred to me the woman on the access ramp had also called her Beth.

  “I didn’t know you were here until two days ago,” I started again. “I made Bear and E.Z. swear never to tell me. Only that they promised to keep you safe. And you are, aren’t you?”

  There were tears threatening to fall from her eyes. I wanted to reach for her and wipe them away.

  “Yes,” she said. “I’m safe. And I do have a life here.”

  “But your name.”

  “Beth,” she answered before I could say it. “I’m Beth Kennedy now. Your people said it would be easier, safer if we kept some things the same. It still doesn’t feel right though. I still catch myself when people call me Ms. Kennedy. I have to force myself to answer. Isn’t that funny? I’ve lived as Beth Kennedy three times longer than I lived as Beth Wade. But my married name fit me so quickly. I’ve never been able to figure out why that is. I mean, it’s just a name, right?”

  She was babbling. She did that when she was nervous. My heart warmed that there was at least one thing about her that hadn’t changed. This was Beth. My Beth. That old desire flared through me as I formed the words in my head. My Beth. Except that kind of thinking is what led us both down the path to destruction all those years ago.

  “It’s not so strange,” I said.

  “What are you doing here, Danny?”

  “Deacon,” I corrected her. Her old name may still be more comfortable, but mine wasn’t.

  “I just can’t believe it,” she said. For a moment, it didn’t feel like she was talking to me. It seemed more like she was talking to herself, trying to come to grips with the fact I was here.

  “Which part?” I asked.

  She reached for me again. This time, she ran her fingers over the outline of my patch. “I guess I thought after we ... after I was out of your life, you’d change your mind. That you’d go back. Oh, Danny ... why didn’t you? Father Sanchez would have taken you back. He would have understood. What happened was ... God. They weren’t normal circumstances. You could have continued on. Taken your Holy Orders …”

  When she reached up to touch my face, I closed my fingers around her wrist. “Don’t.” Her eyes widened, then she pulled her hand away from me and folded it in her lap. It took everything in me not to touch her again.

  “I’m not here to rehash any of that,” I said. “I’ve chosen my path. It’s long past time for looking back.” The words came out of my mouth, but I wasn’t sure if I was saying them for her benefit or mine.

  “Fine,” she said, turning cold on me. I deserved that and a lot worse.

  “I came to tell you,” I started again. I’d rehearsed this little speech a thousand times on the ride out here; now that it came time to utter it, a knife twisted in my heart. I’m not sure what I was more afraid of. That my words would hurt Beth, or that she’d moved on to a point they couldn’t.

  “No,” she said. “I’m not going through this again. I’ve already given everything up once. I started over. There was a time I didn’t think I could. It was hard ... Deacon. Harder than you can possibly imagine. I guess you did too, but you got to do it from the comfort of your own home. Surrounded by people who knew you. I was alone. So whatever Sean’s done this time, whatever he’s gotten mixed up in, I’m not going to run from it anymore. I’m through paying for his mistakes. And I’m through paying for yours.”

  The speech I’d planned crumbled into dust as Beth stared at me with those wide, brown eyes. She was right. She’d always been right. She alone had been the innocent in all of this. But she’d been the one to lose the most.

  “So?” she said, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. “Why don’t you just get it over with? Tell me what you came here for. What’s Sean done?”

  I took a breath, squared my shoulders and delivered the news I knew would shatter her hard-won peace all over again.

  “Beth, Sean’s
dead. Last week. Someone shot him in the head. I came to tell you that you’re free.”

  Chapter 4

  Beth

  I couldn’t think. I couldn’t breathe. Danny was talking but it was as if I could only process every third word he said. Maybe even less. I watched him, focusing on the tiniest details of him. His hands were broad and strong, rough and calloused. He was bigger than I remembered. Hard muscles rippled through his arms. He wore a white t-shirt under that leather biker vest. It stretched tight over his biceps.

  I drew in a breath and closed my eyes. Dead. Free. Sean was dead. I gripped the steering wheel. When I opened my eyes, I focused on Danny’s lips. He was still talking, saying words I’d dreamt about once upon a time.

  “It’s over, Beth. He can’t touch you anymore.”

  Touch me? Danny sat just a few feet from me. He draped one arm over the back of the seat, his fingers just inches from my hair. He hadn’t laid a finger on me, and yet his presence touched my very core. How many times had I drawn comfort from those arms, his whispered words against my ear? All those nights when I was scared to death my life would crash around me. It was Danny who held me up and helped me find the strength to keep going.

  I buried my face in my hands. It was all just too much. Sean was dead. My husband was dead. Danny said I was free. Finally, I got my head clear enough to ask the questions I knew he expected.

  “How?”

  Danny’s eyes flickered. Maybe he’d already told me that. I don’t know. Everything was just so jumbled up inside of me. “Somebody shot him in the head, Beth.”

  I nodded, then rubbed my hands down my skirt, smoothing out the wrinkles. “Was it the cartel?”

  Danny rubbed his chin with his thumb, considering his answer. I knew even now he was trying to protect me.

  “He was still knee deep with them, wasn’t he?” I asked. Tears stung my eyes. Even now, after all these years, it was hard to admit in words what Sean was. He was a drug dealer. My tormentor. For years, I hadn’t wanted to believe it. I’d been so naive. We were only eighteen when we got married. I had stars in my eyes over him. I saw Sean in my mind’s eye as he’d been that day he drove me to the courthouse. Strong. Handsome. Virile. He’d made me a thousand promises. He had money. Security. He’d offered me a lifeline out of the hellhole I grew up in and I grabbed it with both hands. I just didn’t know at the time I was stepping into a different one.

  “We hadn’t talked in over a year,” Danny said. Danny. Deacon. I couldn’t stop staring at the patch on his leather vest. Danny was a Dark Saint. I still wasn’t sure I believed it. I could blink my eyes and still see him wearing church robes and ministering to the sick on Sundays. He wasn’t ordained, but one night long ago, I’d made him hear my confession. Neither of us had ever been the same since.

  “But yeah,” he said. “He’d been moving up the ranks over the years. We chased him out of town at least half a dozen times but he kept turning back up. A few months ago, he tossed my mom’s house.”

  My stomach flipped. “Was she hurt?” No. God, no. I couldn’t bear to hear it. We’d made so many sacrifices to get out from under Sean Wade’s dark choices.

  “She wasn’t home,” Danny said. “She’s not ... she’s got dementia, Beth. I’d made arrangements to move her into a home. Sean caught wind of it and got into the house.”

  It was involuntary. If I’d taken half a second to think it through, I never would have reached for him. But I did. I pressed my palm to Danny’s cheek. Electric fire sparked between us and he squeezed his eyes shut, bracing through it.

  He brought his hand up, gently circled my wrist, and drew my hand away. His eyes glinted with pain as they met mine. It was still there. The pain he’d endured all those years ago when he came to me one night in anguished despair. It hadn’t left. Being near me brought it all back up.

  I folded my hands in my lap and leveled a hard stare at him. “Was this retaliation then? Did the club take care of him?”

  Danny’s eyes narrowed. In the span of a second, he became something else. It was as if the man I used to know faded away and now I could only see the man he truly was. It was just like he said. Danny was gone. He was Deacon now, member of the Dark Saints, M.C.

  “No,” he said. “I did not have my own brother killed. Though it’s not like I hadn’t thought about it a hundred times over the last ten years. But no. This wasn’t the Saints.”

  “So it was the cartel then? Sean finally bit the hand that fed him, or whatever?”

  Deacon shrugged.

  “What aren’t you telling me?” I asked. Ten years. He was a different man than the one I knew. I was a different woman too though, wasn’t I? And yet, I did know this man. I knew the pain in his eyes. I understood the hardness. I’d witnessed the things that put it there.

  “Deacon,” I said. The sound of his new name coming from my lips seemed to startle him. Then he settled into it, lifting his eyes to mine.

  “I’m telling you everything you need to know, Beth. Sean is dead. Whatever ties he had to you are gone. You’re safe. He can’t hurt you. He won’t come after you. The cartel has no reason to do it either. I just wanted you to know that. I wanted to answer the questions I knew you’d have. I wanted you to hear it from me. So that I could tell you …”

  “Tell me what?” My tone turned sharp. A flood of emotions poured from me. I couldn’t sort through them. Anger. Relief. Sadness. Grief. I settled on a kind of rage. Even if Danny didn’t deserve to bear the brunt of it, it gave me a sense of control I desperately needed.

  “Beth …”

  “No! Tell me what? Exactly what am I supposed to do with this?”

  “Beth, I’m trying to …”

  I slammed my palm against the steering wheel. The horn gave a sharp blast, drawing Darlene to the front window. She’d probably been watching the whole time. Nervous laughter bubbled up inside of me. What in the hell was I going to tell her?

  “Fine,” I said, trying desperately hard to hold on to my anger. I didn’t want to show it to Danny. It had taken me ten years to form a hard, protective shell around my heart. I couldn’t afford any cracks in it now.

  “You’ve told me,” I said. “Thank you. But now, what do you want me to do with it? Sean can’t hurt me anymore. Can you honestly sit there with a straight face and tell me this ends things? I haven’t seen Sean in ten years, but I don’t need to know he never changed. If the cartel killed him, it’s because he owed them something. It didn’t seem to take you much to find me after all this time. What makes you think they won’t be next?”

  Danny’s face turned stone cold. For a moment, all traces of the man I used to know vanished. Gone were his kind eyes, his warm smile. Something hard and dangerous rose up in its place. Even now, I wanted to reach for him and run my fingers through his thick brown hair. The new style, shaved on the sides, made him look rougher, meaner, and yet still devastatingly handsome.

  And there was still enough of Sean in him to make my heart skip. Years ago, I told myself that’s what drew me to him at first. I truly loved Sean Wade once upon a time. Then he hurt me and warped my love into a weapon he used against me. In Danny, I could almost see the promise of what could have been. Where Sean was hard and evil, Danny was pure and good. Only Sean had twisted that goodness too.

  Danny reached for me. He grabbed me by the shoulders, his skin searing mine. He turned me to face him. “No one is going to hurt you. Not ever again. I made you a promise ten years ago. I told you to trust me. I’m telling you you still can. You are under my protection. The cartel knows that. And no one knows where you are except for two other men I trust with my life.”

  I blanched. “And you trust them with mine?”

  Danny swallowed. A vein jumped in his temple. “Yes. God ... Beth ... yes.”

  A single tear fell from my eye. Danny watched the track of it down my cheek. “So now you take the Lord’s name in vain, Deacon Wade?”

  He didn’t move. Not even to breathe. “It’s the l
east of my sins, Beth. You of all people know that.”

  His words cut straight through me. The thing is, I could believe he hadn’t meant to hurt me with them. But the moment they took to the air, he saw my pain reflected back at him.

  “So that’s it, then,” I said. His hands still burned through me where he gripped my shoulders. A different kind of heat melted my insides. Ten years. Ten minutes. It didn’t matter. Danny “Deacon” Wade still had the power to turn my world upside down.

  “Fallen angel,” I said, hating that I wanted to hurt him with my words now too. “Is that it? Yes. We both know I’m your greatest sin.”

  A storm swirled through my heart, threatening to rip it in half. I’d dreamt of this day so many times. What would it feel like to be close to Danny again? Surely the years and distance should have given us both perspective. We’d both been so lost the last time I saw him. He’d lost his father. I’d finally understood how dangerous Sean really was.

  “No,” Danny said, his eyes cold as ice. “You’re many things to me, Beth. But you are not my greatest sin.”

  In that moment, I believed him. Pain etched deep lines on his face. God help me, but I wanted to try and kiss them away. One desperate night a million years ago, I had. My body still ached from the memory of the pleasure we took from each other.

  “Danny,” I whispered, touching his cheek. For a moment, he sank into my touch, his eyes squeezing shut. Then they snapped open and the ice came back. We let each other go.

  “Deacon,” I said with cold resolve. “So you made your deal with the devil, is that it? You finally realized the church couldn’t save you so you traded in your collar for that cut?”

  I traced the outline of the white patch at his breast. Deacon reached up and pulled my hand away. “I wanted to make sure you’d be okay.”

  I wasn’t sure if he meant now or then. Was he telling me he joined the M.C. for me in some twisted way? I wasn’t sure I could hear the answer just then. It was all too much.