Chapter 11

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Gage let his head fall back and looked up at the starry night sky. He’d just gotten off the phone with the detective in charge of the shooting at his place.

The house was destroyed. According to witnesses, three men on motorcycles drove up and let loose. Every window in the front of the house was broken. The front door was nothing more than a bullet-ridden piece of wood barely holding on by the hinges. Old siding littered the yard from flying debris.

The detective didn't sugarcoat things. If someone had been in the house, there was no way they would've survived. This wasn't just a message; someone wanted to shut Dani up.

He tried to get the detective to confirm that the Hell Raisers were behind the incident, but if he thought so, he wasn't letting on. Fortunately, Bree would be able to hack into the police system and find out how the investigation was going. Not exactly the most legal thing to do, but if someone from the jail was behind the MC having that address, then the gloves were off. Sometimes a person had to play dirty just to even the playing field.

Gage didn't look forward to his next call. He was supposed to be the easy employee, the one Black didn't need to worry about. Instead he was requesting favors left and right.

"Calls at three in the morning are never good. You didn't burn my house down, did you?"

Gage cleared his throat. "Nope, your house is still standing. Mine, on the other hand, isn't. I was wondering if you had a cleanup crew close to Pennsylvania?"

"Ah, so your parents’ old house, I take it?" Black sounded very much awake despite how he answered the call.

"You know about that?"

Do I have any secrets left?

"I'm not the kind of man who hires someone without knowing everything about the person. I knew about Dani, so I had a pretty good idea why you wanted to come back, but I wanted to see if you would tell me. I knew about you buying your parents’ house. I also know you never stepped foot on the property after you bought it. You also didn’t let it go to shit like some people would’ve."

Well, that answered that question. Nothing in his life was a secret. He was glad that Black did a thorough background check on those he employed; still, it bothered him that people knew about that time in his life. All this time he thought he was keeping something to himself but that wasn’t the case.

"Good to know. Someone shot the place up tonight. I need a crew to get it cleaned and boarded up until I can get a demo crew in there. No use salvaging the place but I don't want to leave broken glass in the front yard either."

"Does the shooting have to do with Dani's arrest?"

Gage bit his tongue. What was the point of his texts yesterday if Black already knew what was happening? His boss should've just asked straight out. But he needed Black's help, so he kept his mouth shut for the moment.

"I believe so. That was the address I put on the paperwork at the jail."

"Good thing you didn't put mine down. That house is one of my favorites."

He looked back at the two-story house. It was nice and it would've been a shame to have it destroyed by bullets. At least his parents’ house was old, and he never considered it in good shape. Hell, it wasn't even in decent shape growing up, but it was all his parents could afford at the time and they kept it clean. They were great at making a shitty situation better.

"Yeah, otherwise I would've been working for free for the foreseeable future."

Black laughed. "Nah. That's what homeowner’s insurance is for, and you better believe I have coverage for bullet holes."

"Do you have a crew in the area?"

"I can have someone out there within the hour. Need anything else?"

"Actually, yes." He thought about what Dani said when they were inside. "I need a car picked up and dropped off at the house. I'm assuming it was impounded after Dani was arrested but I need to call the sheriff’s office and ask."

"Don't bother. I'll get one of the guys here to dig up the information for me. It’ll be dropped off in the next few hours."

Black's primary company was located in Boston. When he recruited Daniel to form a new team, he allowed Daniel to pick the location. He chose New Mexico because it wasn't too far from Texas but still allowed them to have a secure location in the middle of the desert. The teams at the Boston office had a technical analyst, just like their team had Bree. From what Bree said, the guy wasn’t as good as she was, but they were no slackers either. It wouldn't take them long to get the information for Black.

"I appreciate it."

"If you need anything,” Black continued, “don't hesitate to reach out. My teams here are closer than yours and I can have them move at a moment's notice."

While Gage appreciated the gesture, he much preferred his own team. He knew those guys. The Boston teams were foreign to him.

"I'll keep you in the loop."

Gage hung up the phone. The call went better than he hoped, but he wasn't done yet. And the next call would probably be the hardest.

He wasn't ready to talk to his parents. Especially his mother. He didn't like that she was keeping secrets from him, but he was also torn knowing that talking to his mother was what helped Dani in the end. It was a double-edged sword and he wasn't sure how to feel about that.

"Son, is everything okay?" His mother's sleepy voice further caused turmoil in his belly. Months would go by before he remembered to call and check in, but not once did she make him feel guilty about it.

"I'm fine. I'm sorry to call so early in the morning."

"Is Dani okay?"

Another kick straight to the solar plexus.

"She is and about that . . ."

His mother cut him off before he could finish his thought, although he had no idea where he was going with the sentence.

"Don't start, Gage. I love you with all my heart even though sometimes I think you don't believe me, but I loved that girl too. I knew from the very beginning the two of you were destined to be together. You just had a few bumps in the road."

Gage didn't bother to temper his snort. "A few bumps? Is that what you call a miscarriage, her dumping me, breaking my heart, and then coming back into my life over seventeen years later to bail her out of jail?"

His mother sighed. She was always the dreamer, while he was more of a realist like his father. How his father kept up with his mother was beyond him.

"You weren't prepared to be a teenage parent. Believe me it's hard, and Dani knew she couldn't be who she needed to be for you. Don't fault her for putting her needs first and wanting to grow up some."

He no longer blamed her and that was what was fucking with his head. He wanted to blame her. Letting go of anger after so long was hard. He knew that he was being stubborn about it, but that was just who he was.

"I didn't call you to talk about Dani and what happened. I wanted to let you know that the house was shot up tonight. From what I'm being told, it wouldn't be worth saving."

His mother stayed silent. For a solid two minutes she didn't utter a peep. She also didn’t ask what house he was referring to. Somehow she just knew.

"You know I never liked that house. I could never understand why you chose to buy it."

"Because it was my childhood home," he bit out. "It had to hold some kind of sentiment." He did his best to never admit that house meant something to him. It was a reminder of why he always needed to work so hard.

"Oh, Gage. That house represented everything I didn't want for you. Your father and I did the best we could. We had you young and our parents didn't support our decision to keep you. That house was the best we could afford but we wanted better for you. Every spare penny we made went toward giving you a better life. When the time came, we left it in the dust. We had hoped you would eventually do the same."

He suddenly felt like an ungrateful asshole. Neither of his grandparents participated in his life. They sent Christmas and birthday cards but otherwise they couldn't bother with him. Both of his parents came from money but were cut off when they decided to get married because of the pregnancy.

They struggled for years, but as a young child, he never knew it. There was always food on the table and a loving environment to come home to. They supported every interest he had as a kid. And when he played sports, they were sure to show up to every practice and they cheered him on every game. When he wanted to take an old motorcycle and fix it up, his father was right by his side learning as he went. He had it better than most, even if the small house had seen better days. His parents might have been young, they might have had to give up their dreams to have him, but maybe that was their way of making sure his life didn’t turn out the same way.

And it almost had if it weren’t for the miscarriage and Dani leaving him.

"I'm sorry I didn't realize that earlier."

"You don't have to apologize. We all cope differently. I just don't want to see you hold on to this anger forever. Maybe this shooting was a blessing. A way for you to move on from all that."

He didn't fully subscribe to his mother's way of thinking but she might've been on to something. If he wanted any hope of a future with Dani—holy shit, this was the first time he thought that—then he needed to find a way to move on from things.

The conversation with his mother went on until the first glimpses of the sunrise started to peek over the horizon. It was the longest he had spoken to her since leaving the Army. He made a note to do it more often. Talking to her was soothing.

After he got off the phone, he went in search of Dani. He didn't have to look far to find her curled up in the library with a blanket and a book.

"I see some things never change." He leaned his shoulder against the doorjamb and crossed one foot over the other.

Dani looked up at him with a confused expression. "What do you mean?"

He nodded to the book in her hands. "You still love to read."

She used a section of the blanket to mark her page before gently setting the book down on the large chaise lounge. The chair was ginormous and looked to be super comfortable. He could see why it was put into the library. No one could turn down spending time on that thing.

"You remember that about me?"

He pushed away from the frame of the door and took a seat at the bottom of the chair. The fabric was as soft as it looked and he wasn't ashamed to admit he took an extra few seconds to rub his hand back and forth. The person who came up with the idea was a genius.

"It feels amazing, doesn't it?" Dani smirked at him.

"I need to ask Black where he got it. I want one for my house."

The smile was whipped off her face instantly.

"House?"

He wanted to kick himself for bringing that up. He wasn't ready to dive into his life before she came back into it. Now he had no choice.

Gage cleared his throat. "Yeah, I have a house in New Mexico. It's located right behind where I work. Our team leader had a cul-de-sac created for those of us on the team. A little strange to others but it makes sense for us. We work in the middle of the desert, so the commute would be a bitch if I lived anywhere else."

Now he was just rambling; caught off guard by the fact that he started to overshare and didn't know how to stop the flow of information.

"Wow, a house. You really do have your life figured out."

Gage knew where this conversation was going and he needed to put a stop to it before it spiraled out of control.

"No, I have a house because the thought of living in one of the tiny apartments inside my place of employment didn't appeal to me. They’re no bigger than a hotel room, and while some might think that would be ideal for a bachelor, I felt claustrophobic, so I chose one of the houses. It's four sides and a roof. It's not a home. There's no decor. Nothing personal. I haven’t changed a single thing from the cookie-cutter build. I sleep and eat there. That’s it."

It had the potential to be the house they dreamed about as teenagers but he never made the move to make it feel like a home. He didn't have anyone to share it with and he never invited his co-workers in.

The house was nothing more than a shell of its original creation.

"That's sad."

"It is, but it's all I wanted." He stood up quickly from the lounger. He needed to get out of the room before he said more than he was ready to.

Gage was almost to the door when he realized he never answered her original question. "I remember everything about you and our time together."

Then he fled like the flames of hell were nipping at his ankles.