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Vicious Cycle(103)

By:Katie Ashley


At the sight of me, his face drained of color. For a moment I felt that my knees would give way and I would collapse onto the pavement. Alex couldn’t be gone. I couldn’t even begin to imagine a world without her smile, her caring heart, her laughter. It was unbearable, and I fought for breath. It felt like someone had roundhouse kicked me in the chest. I wasn’t a praying man, but in that moment I started begging and pleading.

And then Archer held his hands up to me as if cautioning me not to freak out. He said something else to the officer, and then he strode toward me. “Deacon, she’s fine. A few cuts and bruises, but she’s going to be fine.”

Doubling over at the waist, I braced my hands on my knees and gulped in air. “Thank God you were here to protect her.”

“No, man. She took Sigel out on her own.”

Jerking my head up, I stared at Archer in both disbelief and horror. “What?”

And then Archer began to tell a story that was almost too hard to believe. Before I showed myself to her after the explosion, a plan had been masterminded by Alex to ensure that Sigel would never hurt Willow again. A plan for which she had enlisted the help of both Rev and Bishop, although they’d had no idea what her true intent was. No, only Archer knew the truth. He had risked both his life and his place in the club by helping Alex.

As he talked, I tried wrapping my mind around Alex and Sigel in that stall. How someone like her had managed to take down a notorious MCer simply with a knife and some courage blew my mind. When Archer finished, he shook his head. “I’m sorry, man. I thought it was the best thing for the club and for your family. Even when you came back from the dead, so to speak, it still made sense.”

“It made fucking sense for someone defenseless like Alex to take on someone like Sigel?” I demanded, the blood boiling in my veins.

Surprisingly, Archer didn’t back down. Instead, he narrowed his eyes at me. “Would you let go of your bullshit pride for a minute and truly think? He never saw it coming. He never imagined her capable of it. Any of the rest of us? He would have seen us coming a mile away, including you.”

I still couldn’t wrap my head around it or allow myself to condone what happened. “Where is she?” I demanded.

“They took her over to one of the ambulances.”

Jabbing a finger into his cut, I said, “We are not through talking about this.”

He nodded. “I understand.”

I hated that there was a part of me that could see the reason and brilliance behind Alexandra and Archer’s plan. However, there was a much stronger part that was mad as hell and wanted to take the kid down for his utter stupidity and wavering loyalty. Sure, he’d been brave and done everything within his power to keep Alexandra safe, as well as the club. Regardless of his protection, he had still allowed my old lady to be in danger, and I wanted to kill him for that. And yeah, the fucking irony wasn’t lost on me.

I weaved my way through the crowd of onlookers. Beyond the yellow police tape, I saw the ambulance with its back doors open. Moving around the taped-off perimeter, I came through the other side. With a blanket draped over her shoulders, Alex sat on the floor of the ambulance. An EMT worked on cleaning some lacerations on her face. While she stared straight ahead, her body suddenly tensed, and her gaze jerked from staring down at the pavement to scanning the tree-lined woods. I shouldn’t have been too surprised that she could sense me.

Her brows rose in surprise as if questioning my next move. I couldn’t answer her because even I didn’t know what to do. Finally, I dug my cigarettes and lighter out of my cut and lit up. When the EMT finished, Alex said something to him before rising to her feet. Slowly, she began walking toward me. My feet began to move of their own accord, and I met her halfway.

I winced when I got a good look at her in the light. While Archer had apologetically told me that he’d had to beat her up to keep the cops from asking questions, I sure as hell didn’t like the looks of his handiwork on her face. Her right cheek was turning black, and her lip was busted and swollen.

A million different scenarios had raced through my head about what I would do or say to her when I saw her again. But at the moment, she rendered me speechless. When she reached for me, I took a step back. “If you were a man or one of my brothers, I’d beat the hell out of you right now for what you did earlier.”

“Can’t you understand I had my reasons?”

“Reasons? You handcuffed me to a bed, went behind my back with a club member, and then risked your own life trying to take down my greatest enemy. That seems without any fucking reason to me.”