She was just a kid.
If anyone needed to apologize it was me, for not protecting her from a world she obviously was not ready for. I looked over at Ham and I knew he could see it too. He wanted to hold her, protect her, but this life we lived, it was serious. Sometimes bad shit happened. Shit that none of us had any control over.
It took strong women to love men who lived in the world that we did. And I knew in that moment, Meyah just wasn’t there.
Not yet.
“I’m going to ring Deacon and let him know what happened,” Optimus said, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Blizzard, ring your woman and tell her not to bring the girls back until we’re done. The police are gonna be here asking questions. Eagle get me the security tapes. They’re gonna wanna see them to prove our story.”
My brothers rushed off to their duties.
I sat down next to Hadley, placing Meyah between us. We both wrapped our arms around her, surrounding her with the safety net she desperately needed right now.
After a few tense hours with the police interviewing Hadley and Meyah and Kev, they finally left, Deacon reassuring us that from what he could see, Hadley acted in self-defense.
With Carly blowing up my phone, I knew it was finally time to take Meyah home. She argued, saying that she wanted to stay with us. I knew she was scared, but I reassured her that there was nothing else that could hurt her and that if it made her feel safe, I’d station a man outside her house during the night until she felt better.
As Op waited out front, watching the cop cars pull away, Hadley and I led Meyah outside to the truck to take her home. Before we could climb inside, there was a squeal of car tires, which had both Optimus and I reaching for our weapons.
When Carly jumped out of the car and begun stomping toward us, I knew this was bad.
“Mom!” Meyah yelled, running over to her.
Carly wrapped her up in her arms, tears shining in her eyes as she glared at me over Meyah’s head. “It’s okay, baby. We can go home now,” Carly told her, patting her hair softly and placing a kiss on her forehead. “Go get in the car.”
“Mom, please,” Meyah pleaded, turning to look at me with sad eyes, knowing that this wouldn’t be good.
“Get in the car, Meyah,” Carly ordered sternly, holding her daughter’s face in her hands. “Please.”
Meyah swallowed the lump in her throat. “Bye Uncle Leo.”
“Bye girl. You remember what I told you.”
She nodded before jogging out to the road and climbing into the front seat of Carly’s minivan. Op moved closer to us, standing with me, offering me his strength.
Carly stormed closer. “How could you let this happen?”
At this stage I wasn’t even sure how she found out or what exactly it was that she had heard. But obviously, the news had already spread.
Tears sat at the brim of her eyes, threatening to fall at any moment. “You’re meant to look out for her! She won’t be coming back here,ever.”
“Carly, listen—”
“No! This stupid club and everything it stands for, you bring trouble and death, and I won’t have my daughter anywhere near this environment. If I had it my way, Macy wouldn’t be here either,” she screamed, her face going red in anger.
“This wasn’t anything to do with the club,” I snapped, the need to protect my family and stand up for the people I cared about was stronger than anything else. “This was a crazy fucking asshole with gambling issues. When the court saw through his bullshit and refused to give him custody of Jayla, he took it to the extreme. This was not an attack on the club.”
She scoffed at my words before turning her attention to Hadley who stood at my side, holding my hand in support. “You will never be Kim. She would have never let this happen! I trusted you with my daughter—”
“She stood in front of your daughter, ready to take a fucking bullet for her if she needed to,” Optimus cut in, agitation clearly evident in his voice. “Before you come in here, running your damn mouth and making accusations, you need to think. We all loved Kim, any fucking one of us would have traded places with her if we could have if it meant that you and Leo and Macy could have kept her in your lives. But she’s gone, and we all live with that fucking pain. Right here is a young woman, not asking for anything. Not asking to take her memory away, but to join in our memories of her and support her man and his daughter in remembering her, and be willing to take a fucking bullet for Meyah because of how much she means to Leo. Maybe you need to start taking a look at yourself and open your eyes to see that you should be happy that he’s found someone like her.”
I let Optimus say his piece. It wasn’t often that he got involved in family matters, but when it came to standing up for the club and for its members and women, he was the first man to have your back.
As much as I understood Carly’s frustration and knew that she had every right to be angry at me for promising to look after Meyah, and then finding her in a situation like this, Op was right.
Carly had been through a lot, but losing her sister was the thing that almost broke her. Her kids and Macy keep her going.
“Hadley is going to be in my life forever,” I told her simply as I watched tears drip down her usually strong face. I slowly walked forward, seeing the pain in her eyes, seeing her mind clicking over, wondering what she would do if she’d lost Meyah. “She would do anything for these kids. She loves Macy and Meyah and Denver. You have to realize that the club isn’t the enemy, and if you would let us in, we could be there for you.”