Things have been crazy ever since I’d come home from prison. We’d rebuilt the bar, and I thought it looked better than ever but it was hard on all of us to know that the place that our father’s legacy was had been taken from us when that motherfucker Kevin Samson had torched the place.
With his death we hadn’t been left i
n peace. Samson’s father was some big-shot California Senator and he’d tried to pin his son’s death on us, pretty much accusing us of killing his son. It had taken the local cops as well as an entire federal investigation into everything to convince the man that his son had been a psycho and had been responsible for his own death.
Since then things had calmed down a little, or as much as they could when your life revolved around a motorcycle club. I was just happy to be home with my family and that my sister was happy. It was made obvious to me just how happy she was on a daily basis.
Raven seemed to shine with that happiness. I’d never seen her like that and it gave me a little peace to see it. She was a wonderful mother to Lexa and when her son Max had been born, that motherly shit doubled. Now she was married to the man she loved and settled down.
Even as happy as my sister was I was unable to truly find peace. I haven’t given up the search for Flick. As soon as Raven had come home from the hospital I’d started looking for her. I’d called in favors that I’d been saving for desperate times, burned bridges with people who couldn’t help me because I always felt like they didn’t want me to find her.
It was like she’d become a fucking ghost and had disappeared into thin air. I couldn’t find the one thing I’d spent months dreaming of coming home to while I was behind bars and it was slowly killing me.
Where was she?
Where the fuck was my Flick?
A groan from beside my chair made me reach down and scratch behind Toby’s ears. That dog was the only connection I still had to the woman that fucking owned my heart. I’d given him to her before we’d started fucking around, back when I’d still been trying to hide how I felt for her.
Fuck, I’d been such a dumbass back then. I’d been too much of a pussy to tell that girl how much I really cared about her, and then I had lost her. By the grace of God I’d been given a second chance when she’d told me she was pregnant, but again I’d been a chicken shit and waited too long to make things right between us. I should have asked her to marry me the minute she told me she was going to have my baby. Instead, I’d waited too long—and then a man that I’d thought was my best friend had taken all of that away from me.
Westcliffe had taken more than just my child away the night he’d beaten Flick almost to death. He’d ripped away my last chance of being with the only female I’d ever felt something strong for. The woman I’d loved since she was too fucking young for me to love her, hated me after that. When I’d beaten Westcliffe to death, I’d done it for the loss of my kid, for the pain he’d caused my female, but for me too. With each punch that had caused one internal injury after another, with each kick of my boot to his head that had resulted in a fractured skull that had eventually lead to brain death, I’d done it because I knew that my life was over and I didn’t give a shit what happened to me when I was finished.
While I was in prison, I’d had time to think. I’d made plans and dreamed about getting home to Flick so that I could make things right for us.
And then she’d shown up out of the blue and told me goodbye. She had left me all over again and I’d been powerless to stop her. But now I was a free man and soon my parole was up so I could get out there and search for her myself instead of relying on idiots to do the job for me.
I just had to bide my time and pray that I could find her.
The sitcom I’d landed on was starting to bore me so I flipped it over to the national news channel. A commercial was on and I was about to officially call it a night when the picture showed up on the screen.
At first I didn’t see her. All I saw was a tour bus and cops and a few big men in suits that had to be custom made for them because no way did anyone make suits that big. I saw a small redhead with a phone to her ear, and a guy that I instantly recognized as one of the biggest rock stars in the world because I listened to his music every day. Demon’s Wings’ music was always blaring at the bar. It was one of the few bands that everyone in the MC all liked.
When I saw the rocker, I had to take a closer look because he was carrying one of his kids. A little girl that looked just like the redhead with the phone in her hand…
There.
I hit pause on the remote, thankful for the fucking technology to freeze live television for the first time in my life. I sat forward in my recliner so fast that it made Toby jerk up and bark thinking that something was wrong. I didn’t bother to shush him as my eyes zeroed in on the woman holding a little boy behind the rocker.
Fucking. Hell.
Her hair was different and it looked like she had lost a little weight, but I knew it was her. The angel of that stubborn jaw, the shape of her lips as she smiled down at the little boy in her arms. It was Flick.
I’d found her.
I hit playback and the voice of the anchorman finally registered and I stiffened. “Demon’s Wings bassist Shane Stevenson’s bus was broken into on the band’s latest stop in their summer tour. A source informs us that no one was hurt except for the rocker’s dog, who had to be rushed to the local emergency vet. No word on the dog’s condition, but we do know that he was badly injured. The band’s manager, Ember Jameson Armstrong, has not been able to give us a statement as of yet, but an inside source has told us that the normally emotionless manager was close to tears earlier tonight.”
I’ve found her.