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Also by Winter Travers
Devil’s Knights Series
Loving Lo
Finding Cyn
Gravel’s Road
Battling Troy
Gambler’s Longshot
Keeping Meg
Fighting Demon
Unraveling Fayth
Forever Lo
Devil’s Knights 2nd Gen
Passing the Torch
Riding the Line
Skid Row Kings Series
DownShift
PowerShift
BangShift
Fallen Lords MC Series
Nickel
Pipe
Maniac
Wrecker
Boink
Clash
Freak
Slayer
Brinks
Kings of Vengeance MC
Drop a Gear and Disappear
Lean Into It
Knees in the Breeze
Midnight Wreckage
Thrill Seeker
Powerhouse MA Series
Dropkick My Heart
Love on the Mat
Black Belt in Love
Black Belt Knockout
Nitro Crew Series
Burndown
Holeshot
Redlight
Shutdown
Royal Bastards MC: Sacramento, CA
Playboy
Six-Gun
Sweet Love Novellas
Sweet Burn
Five Alarm Donuts
Stand Alone Novellas
Kissing the Bad Boy
Trapped with the Bad Boy
Daddin’ Ain’t Easy
Silas: A Scrooged Christmas
Wanting More
Mama Didn’t Raise No Fool
Wrecker
Fallen Lords MC
Book 4
Winter Travers
Table of Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Prologue
Alice
“Are you having a gathering at the house?”
I clutched the urn that contained the ashes of my mother to my chest. “Um, no.” There wasn’t anyone to gather at the house. The minister had to see that. Did he think even though no one showed up to the service that they were going to magically appear at my house? No such luck.
The only people who would be gathering at my house were going to be me and the ashes of my mother. A bottle of Jack Daniels was more than likely going to make a special appearance.
“Did you want to come over for dinner, dear? Marilynn and I would love to have you.”
I shook my head and swiped at my eyes. “No, I don’t want to impose. I’ll be fine, Pastor Rye.”
He nodded. “If that is what you want, but just remember, the church is always here if you need us.” He patted me on the shoulder and left me standing by the stairs of the church.
The wind whipped around me, tossing my hair and ruffling the hem of my skirt.
I hated this skirt.
My mother had loved it.
I wore it because I knew it would make her smile to see me so uncomfortable.
My mother was my best friend. She could make me smile, and in the next breath, yell at me for eating the last of the pickles.
Yes, pickles. The spicy ones were her favorite. I learned early on to never eat the last one in the jar. Even right before she passed away, she bugged me about the pickles.
Though it was hard for her to remember she didn’t have pickles in her room. She didn’t have anything in her room besides her bed, a three-drawer dresser, and a small TV.
My mother lived her last days at St. Patrick’s Nursing and Rehabilitation.
She had dementia, and on her good days, she remembered I was her daughter. On her bad days, she thought I was just another nurse checking in on her. I stayed with her the most on her bad days, hoping something would click and she would remember who I was.
The day my mother died had been a good day. We laughed about the jar of pickles I had smuggled into her room, giggled when I tripped over the cord to her TV, and smiled when we talked about moving her home with me.
I lied to my mother that day. Promised that she would come home with me. I knew from the past that her good days lasted only so long before she forgot everything and went back to thinking I was a nurse.
The doctors couldn’t tell me why my mother lost her memory. No one understood dementia and why it affected some people and not others. There were theories, but that was all they were—theories. Theories didn’t help my mother. They didn’t give her back her memory of me growing up.
Theories did nothing but make me lie awake at night wondering if I had done something in the past that had somehow fucked with the universe and punished me by taking away my mother.
But no matter how long I laid awake, I never found an answer.
My mom had dementia, and there hadn’t been a damn thing I could have done about it.
Now, she was gone, and I was all alone.
All the pickles could be mine, and that was the thing that broke me. I was never going to hear my mom yell at me for eating all the pickles again.
Funny thing was, I would give up all the pickles in the world just to have one more second with her. I missed my momma, and I was never going to be okay with her gone.
*
Chapter 1
Wrecker
“I don’t know what to do,” she sobbed over and over.
I lifted her into my arms, stepped into her house, and closed the door behind me. I didn’t know what the hell was wrong or what to do either, but I was going to figure out how to make her stop crying. That was the one thing I couldn’t handle coming from her. The light which normally shone from her green eyes was dimmed by the tears falling.
The TV blared some commercial, and all the lights were on in the kitchen and living room. I didn’t know what to do with her.
Sit down?
Take her to bed?
Leave?
I was surprised leaving was the third thing that had come to mind. I wasn’t one to hang around when there was chick shit going on or there was crying involved. Since I was the only one there, I
didn’t have much choice but to stay and try to figure out what was going on with Alice.
She hiccuped and wiped her nose on my shirt. “I snotted all over you.”
“All good, babe.”
She laid her head on my shoulder and sighed. Her breathing evened out, but I could still feel her tears soaking my shirt.
“You wanna talk about it?”
She shook her head.
“What do you wanna do?”
“Nothing,” she whispered. “Why are you here?”
“Girls were worried about you. Asked me to stop by on my way back to the club to check on you.”
She leaned her head back and looked up at me. “Why were they worried?”
“Hadn’t heard from you in a bit.”
She scrambled off my lap and stood up. “Uh, I had some stuff going on.”
“Why’d you get up?” I didn’t think I had said anything to upset her. She asked why I was here, and I told her.
She brushed her hands down her shorts. “Uh, needed to stretch my legs.”
I quirked an eyebrow at her. “Come again?”
“I wanted to get up.”
I held up my hands. “No problem, babe.”
She bit her lip and glanced at the front door. “Uh, so, I’m good.”
“This is you being good?” Her eyes connected with mine. There wasn’t any light in them. Alice wasn’t in there.
“Yes, this is me being good.”
I shook my head and crossed my ankle over my knee. “I’ve seen you a couple of times at the club, babe. This is not you looking fine.”
She looked down her body. “Is there a problem with what I’m wearing?”
“Not what I’m talking about.” She was wearing a loose shirt with the words “save the chubby unicorns” across her chest and a rhino under it. “Though I have to ask what the hell your shirt even means.”
She scoffed. “If I have to explain it, then it’s not funny anymore.”
“It wasn’t even funny to begin with, babe.”
“Now I see why you came here. You’ve insulted my favorite shirt and made me stop crying.” She pointed at the door. “You can go now. I have plans.”
“What plans?”
She propped her hands on her hips. “Ones that have nothing to do with you.”
“Why don’t you add me into those plans?” I wasn’t ready to leave. Not yet.
She huffed, walked into the kitchen, and started slamming cabinets. “I’m making a drink, and when I walk back into the living room, you need to be gone, Wrecker.”
“I thought you would be much more hospitable than this, Alice.” I didn’t move from the couch. Alice could tell me she wanted me to leave, but I wasn’t going anywhere ‘til I found out why she was crying before.
“Guess I’m just not in the mood for company.”
“And just why is that?” I called. I heard ice cubes hit the bottom of a glass. “Are you making me a drink, babe?”
“No. I’m making myself a drink, like I said. If I tell you why I’m not in the mood for company, then will you leave?”
That was a tough one. I wanted her to tell me what was wrong, but what it was had to be something pretty bad. I had to play this just right. “Tell me.”
“Promise as soon as I tell you, you’ll leave.”
Shit. She wasn’t going to be easy to work around. “I’ll leave.”
“Say you’ll leave as soon as I tell you.”
God damn. “Fine, Alice. As soon as you tell me why you’re not in the mood for company, I will leave.” I listened to her move around the kitchen, and then she walked back into the living room.
She had a glass filled with amber colored liquor in her hand. She took a sip and nodded to the TV. “See that vasey thing there?”
I did. It was light blue with a light-yellow swirl running through it. “Pretty, babe.”
She took a long drink and wiped her mouth with the back of her hand. “That’s my mama. She died three days ago.” Her voice was flat, as if she just told me the weather. “The service at the church was today. I was the only one there.” She drained the rest of her glass and dropped it to the floor. “You can go now, Wrecker.”
*
Alice
He left.
No word.
Just left.
“Good riddance,” I muttered to the empty house. At least, that was what I was going to tell myself. I grabbed my glass off the floor and moved back to the bottle I left on the counter. I heard his bike start up and roar down the street. “Good freakin’ riddance,” I mumbled again.
I didn’t understand why he had even stopped by in the first place.
Why not have Nickel or Pipe come up here? He was worried about me?
Bullshit.
“Karmen and Nikki were worried about me, not Beardilocks.” A laugh bubbled out of my mouth. “Good one, Alice.”
I refilled my glass and grabbed the huge container of animal crackers that was sitting on the counter. “Whiskey and delicious animal shaped cookies. Not much more a girl could ask for.”
I talked to myself. A lot.
All. The. Time.
I was also funny as fuck.
The talking to myself out loud and being crazy funny went hand-in-hand. “Totally funny as fuck.” I plopped down on the sofa in the spot Wrecker had vacated and twisted off the blue lid to the animal crackers. I dug around for a cute little elephant and bit off its trunk. “Sorry, little dude.” I popped the rest of him in my mouth and reached for the remote to change the channel.
Before Wrecker had arrived, I was in the middle of a mental breakdown while trying to find something to watch. A pickle commercial had come on, and I seriously lost it. After I came home from the service, I had baked a frozen pizza, eaten half of it, fed the other half to the stray dog that hung out under my back porch, then tried to find something to watch on TV. In my quest to find something to entertain me, I had stumbled upon the fact that a pickle commercial was now a trigger for me.
“Loser,” I whispered. I sipped on my drink while flipping the channels ‘til I settled on some cold case show.
My night was going to be watching mindless TV where the only thing I had to think about was who done it and whether I should move the bottle of booze into the living room.
I hopped off the couch, popped two more ice cubes into my glass, and grabbed the half-full bottle of whiskey. My ass wasn’t going to get off the couch anymore.
Whiskey and animal crackers were totally going to be my dinner.
Three hours later, after watching three cold cases get solved by DNA that had been collected at the scene but couldn’t be used ‘til they fast-forwarded twenty or thirty years because we developed fancy-dancy machines to solve shit like that, I shook my head. Where the hell was I going with this thought?
I unfolded my legs from under me and stretched them out.
I lifted the bottle of whiskey to my lips and grimaced. “Way better cold.” I leaned forward to set the bottle on the coffee table, and my world tilted on its axis. I slammed my eyes shut and tried to calm the rolling of my stomach.
Well, I was blitzed.
Mission. Accomplished.
All depressing and crippling thoughts I had about today were replaced with a feeling of floating and the craving for a cigarette. I only smoked when I drank, and didn’t you know, I was a drinkin’.
I shakily stood up and tried to remember where I hid my cigarettes. About five years ago, I had been a heavy smoker but had given it up in exchange for ding dongs and any candy bar I could get my hands on when the craving for one would hit.
“Tree stump,” I muttered. At least, that’s where I thought I hid them. “Only one way to find out.” I stumbled over to the door and leaned heavily against it. Next time I hid them, I was going to at least make it a place inside. Trekking to a tree stump in the backyard when I was a half way into a bottle of whiskey was not ideal.
I threw open the door and swayed as the fresh air h
it me. “That’s up me sobered.” I titled my head. “That’s not right,” I slurred. I really needed to stop talking out loud to myself. “Makes ya look crazy, Alice.”
“Babe.”
I jumped, the living shit scared out of me, and fell flat on my face on the porch. I could barely stay on my feet when I was sober, so when I had a few in me, I met the ground quite often. Also, someone calling me “babe” when I had no idea there was anyone there surprised me. “Wrecker?” I looked up and saw him sitting in the rocking chair I had tucked away in the corner of the deck.
“Yeah.”
I pushed off the floor and sat up. “What are you here?” It was like I knew what I wanted to say, but it seemed to get lost in translation from my brain to my lips. “You left.”
“I did.”
I looked around, thinking maybe I had somehow been transported when I fell out the front door. Kind of like Alice in Wonderland, but I was still lying on the floor of my porch. “You’re gonna have to explain to me more. You are drunk.” I shook my head. “Me.” Damn, it was hard to talk.
“You are definitely drunk, babe.” The glow from the streetlight barely illuminated Wrecker’s face, but a smirk spread across his lips. Such a sexy smirk tucked into his beard. I normally wasn’t a beard chick, but there was something about Wrecker’s that made me want to reach out and run my fingers through it.
“Why are you here?” I demanded, happy I had managed to talk without sounding drunk.
He stood up and walked the few steps over to me. He crouched down and brushed my hair from my face. “You shouldn’t be alone right now.”
“Pfft, I’m fine. More than fine, Beardilocks. I am a-okay.” I made an “o” with my thumb and pointer finger and looked through the hole at him. “See, so okay I can see you through my hole.”
He grabbed my hand and pulled me up off the ground. “What were you doing coming outside? It’s half-past two.”
I struggled to stand and had to put a hand on his shoulder to keep myself upright. His hand was on my waist, and I leaned into him. “I smoke when I drink. Guess what?” I leaned close to his ear. “I drank.”
Fallen Lords MC: Books 4-6 Page 1