I shook my head. “No.”
“We’re done talking ‘bout this.”
“Scott—”
“Look, we got a load more mentoring shit to get through yet, all right? So no more of this bull. Clear?”
“Crystal.” I leaned forward, lowering my voice, as I told him, “Just know there is peace for men like us, the things we’ve done, the horrors we’ve seen. I doubted it too, but Ashley’s my living proof that it’s possible.”
He stared at me for a long while, my words clearly affecting him and striking deep into the heart of him.
“I hear you,” he finally spoke. His eyes strayed to Dani who was absorbed in her work, serving an old timer who’d just walked in. “Maybe,” he murmured. “We’ll see.”
I smiled.
That was a start.
We finished up our drinks, then headed on out of the bar, making our way around the corner to the small parking lot.
As we approached the truck we’d driven downtown in, I held out my hand to Scott. “Keys. I’ve had one drink. You’ve had three.”
He nodded and pulled the keys out of his jeans pocket, then tossed them to me.
The second I caught them, my hand started trembling violently, making me lose my grip.
“Come on!” I muttered, as they clattered onto the concrete.
As I went to reach for them, my hand locked up, pain shooting through it.
“Son of a bitch!”
“Finn, it’s all right,” Spartan said, scooping up the keys for me.
But it wasn’t all right. I didn’t want him picking them up for me. I didn’t want to need that from him, or anyone. I was supposed to be the invincible, unstoppable machine. It was why I’d been called in here, why the club was so happy to have me as a part of their brotherhood, why they’d accepted me so eagerly.
A war was coming, for fuck’s sakes. I couldn’t be like this. I had to be at my best. I wanted to be at my best. I wanted to be like I had been before the injuries, before all the hell I’d gone through.
I didn’t want this version of me to be a reality.
The brutal truth of it, the weight of everything… it all had me snapping. Agitation escalated to white-hot rage in a matter of seconds.
Before I could get a handle on it, I was spinning around and smashing my fist into the rear wall of the bar, my knuckles scraping across rough brick.
“Fuck!” I roared, rearing back and smashing my fist into the brick again, punishing my screwed-up right hand. “Piece of shit! Work! Just fucking work!”
Strong hands grasped my shoulders and forced me away from the wall, the power behind it making me stumble a little.
I rounded on Spartan, demanding, “Why? Why did you call me in here? Look at me! I told you that I wasn’t the man you remembered! Your faith in me, Ashley’s faith in me, had me believing I damn well was. But I’m not! You just saw it! You saw!”
“Everyone has their limitations in some way or another, brother,” Scott returned calmly. “It’s how you work around them that shows the measure of a man.”
I scrubbed my hand over my face. “No.”
“It happened during your battle with the Rogues at the safehouse and you worked around it.”
That pulled me up short. “Ashley told you?”
“Yeah. I asked what went down. She told me how impressed she was. She’d never seen nothing like it.” He gave a wry smile. “Not even from me.”
I took his words in.
The facts were the facts.
Cold, hard logic couldn’t be denied.
I knew he was right.
Despite what had stood in my way, I’d still come out on top.
I’d been working around the injury for a while now.
I’d thought I’d made peace with it too.
So, where was this rage at it coming from?
“Okay,” I murmured, looking around at a loss. “Yeah, I don’t know why--”
“Why you lost it outta nowhere?” Scott cut in. “I got a damn good idea.”
The grave look that came over his face had me tensing. “What are you getting at?”
“Ash ain’t the only one I asked about your takedown of the Rogues.”
I narrowed my eyes. “You’ve been checking up on me?”
“You’re one of my club brothers now. I gotta keep an eye on everybody. Now you’re a part of all that. Needed to know where your head was at when it came to Ash. I wanted to make sure being with her weren’t compromising your judgment.”
“It’s not.”
“Yeah, I know. She ain’t. But something else is.” He folded his arms across his chest. “I talked to Jesse. He told me exactly what he walked into when he did both those cleanups. You let the monster out. You crossed that line.”
“If I hadn’t, both me and Ashley would be dead.”
“Finn,” he pressed.
That wasn’t something I was willing to get into, or to deal with.
Not right now.
It had to remain compartmentalized.
“We’re at war.”
My attempted deflection didn’t fool him for a second. He knew me too well. “Don’t bullshit me, Finn. You think you can bury that, compartmentalize it, we both know it’s the one thing you can’t.”
“What do you want me to say, Scott? You know it’s an issue, yet you still called me in here. You still wanted that from me.”
He shook his head. “Nah. I called you in for your skills, your security know-how, the trust I got in you. That other part of you can’t be in on none of this. Taking out them enforcers who went after Ash at her work was enough of a strain on your ability to keep that part of you checked. But the fight at your place was a step way too far. It reopened that door, let it breathe. I can see the signs, see you’re struggling to keep it leashed, to ignore its craving for blood and pain. I ain’t gonna let you lose it like that. You don’t hold it back now and you ain’t gonna get a solid handle back on it. And then that thing’s gonna rage and destroy you again.”
“Fuck,” I muttered,
