by Emma Creed
“Tommy must have been looking for whatever it was Chop wanted… It was the perfect opportunity with everyone down at the lake. He obviously didn’t find it, and that’s why Chop had to come back himself.” Jessie nods as he takes in what I’ve said.
“You know what, darlin’? I got a real bad feeling you might be right.”
We ride down to the club on his bike, and Jessie parks up and takes my hand before leading me inside. I don’t know how the brothers will take to having a girl hanging around the club who isn’t ‘available’. Carly would hang around here sometimes, but she was Skid’s old lady. I’m… well, I don’t really know what I am, which makes things awkward.
“Hey girl,” Squealer tips his head up at me as he walks past, and Jessie puts a possessive kiss just behind my ear. I can’t help but like Squealer. The guy has a sense of humor. I wait for some kind of sexual slander, but it doesn't come, and I put that down to the stare he’s getting from Jessie.
“You good, Mads?” Troj calls over from the doorframe he’s leaning against, he winks before stepping out of the way so Jessie can take me through to the smaller bar room.
The blonde woman behind the bar greets me with a scowl that I choose to ignore, and I continue to feel her eyes burning through me when Jessie sits me down at a table.
“You’re gonna be fine, darlin’, just do your best.” He brushes away some hair from my face and plants another kiss on my temple that I really hope she sees.
One by one the brothers come in and give me any information they think might be useful. I listen to stories Chop has told them, take details of people they know that live in the towns where he’s got offenses. I circle keywords I might use in a search to find him. I get the license plate number from the car that he left the club in when the feds came, and the prepay number he had used to contact Skid a few days after he’d gone.
Hours later, I still have no leads and my head is really starting to ache.
“You look tired, we can try again tomorrow,” Jessie says, moving over to me from the bar.
“I’m fine,” I assure him. “My head just hurts when I strain my eyes. I have glasses up at the cabin, I’ll go grab them.”
“I’ll go. You’re fine here.” His eyes flick back over to the bar. “Mel, make her a coffee or summit,” he orders the feisty blonde. I hear the tut she throws over her shoulder as she makes her way over to the cafeteria and pours me out a coffee. Stomping around the bar, she slams the mug in front of me, sloshing black coffee all over the table as it lands.
“Could I trouble you for some sugar?” I ask her in the most irritatingly sweet voice I can manage. And she actually growls under her breath as she storms back to the bar, grabs two sugar sachets and flings them on to my table.
“Thanks ever so.” I smile sarcastically and watch Jessie’s face crease into a smile.
“Looks like you have things handled here,” he smirks. “I’ll be back in a sec.” He leans down to kiss me, and I grab at his cut and pull him closer. Devouring his lips with my mine, I force my tongue into his mouth so I can lap him up from inside. I don't pull away until I’m sure I’ve made my point. I give the shocked-faced blonde a smile as I trail my thumb across Jessie’s bottom lip and swipe away the remnants of my lip gloss.
“See you in a bit, darlin’.” Jessie laughs to himself as he backs out the bar room, he knew what I was doing, and I’m not ashamed at all. I drink my coffee and continue to work despite the thumping between my eyes, because Chop’s still out there, and I’m determined to find him.
The girl gets my dick constantly hard, and these days the only place I ever want to be is inside her. Day and fucking night. The way she just made a point and claimed me in front of Mel was hot as fuck, and I can’t wait to get her all to myself.
I reach the cabins within minutes. It’s eerily quiet up here, everyone being at the club on Prez’s orders so they can tell Maddy whatever information they have. Even Skid’s managed to haul himself out his cabin and is down at the garage helping out Rogue.
I look around for Maddy’s glasses. They aren't beside the bed where they usually were, nor next to the lamp in the living room where she sits and reads sometimes. Then after searching around the kitchen, I find them on the table perched on the top of some box. I’ve never seen it before and something about it makes me curious enough to open it. The inside is full of envelopes, and even stranger, all of them are addressed to me.
I tip the box out on to the table, some of the ones at the bottom have different handwriting, like a child’s written them. I take one and rip it open, and when I realize who they’re from my heart turns to pulp.
Hayley’s letters change everything I ever thought I knew, starting right from the day I met her to just a few weeks ago before she died.
Our life, written in words that read so unfamiliar.
Words stand out from the letter she wrote on the day of her mama’s funeral...
Who knows, one day if Daddy could see how happy you make me rules could change. Until then I’ll just be yours without you knowing.
Painful truths from the day I told her about Maddy…
You asked me to talk to her. I may not know her, but I can tell already she’s not for you. She's nothing like the women that hang around the club. She’s too innocent, too guarded for the person you’ve become.
You need to see what I would do for you, how far I would go to see you happy, and if getting you a new plaything is a way to prove how much you mean to me then the game is on.
More words from the night I took her to that party…
You took off your cut. For her. You always said you would never hide who you were, but there's something about Maddy Summers that has you going against everything you believe in. I can’t decide if she’s bad or good for you. But I know she's bad for me, for us. Very bad.
And from when she brought Maddy here to the club and I got so mad at her…
Okay, it was a mistake to bring her here, although I probably won’t apologize to you for it. Maybe the fact that you cracked a piece of my heart tonight without even knowing it may bring you comfort, but I will forgive you. I will always forgive you because that’s what you do when you love someone.
I read them one by one, losing all sense of time. My tears splash on the pages as I read through them. Torn up between heartache and anger at myself for not seeing the way she’d been hurting for all those years.
I think back to her lying in my arms, her blood coating my hands and the words that she’d fought so hard to say. “It would always have been you.” It had made no sense back then, I thought she was talking nonsense, but now it sliced at my heart like a jagged knife, and I tortured myself by opening another letter and continuing to read.
I know if I stand any chance, I’m gonna have to tell you how I feel soon or lose you forever. Then, I suppose I could lose out to worse people than Maddy Summers, at least she's not Melissa, who by the way is a dog-rough whore… Just hold on a little longer before you let go of me completely, Jessie, I just need a little longer to find the courage to tell you.
The door opening pulls me away from her words, and I quickly wipe away any tears to save face.
“Hey,” Maddy says cheerily as she steps inside.
“You were gone ages I got worried.” She closes the door and hangs up her jacket. “Nyx brought me up. I was done for the day. Managed a few leads but nothing solid…” I hear her, but I don’t take a single word in. My eyes are still fixed hard on Hayley's letters.
“Jessie… you okay?”
“She loved me.” Those are the only words my mouth seems able to form, and I hear how hoarse and weak they sound as they come out.
“Hayley loved me,” I repeat still in shock.
“Of course she loved you. You were like her big brother. She thought the world of you.” Maddy twists my hair around her fingers as she speaks.
“No,” I shake my head. “No. She loved me. Not like a brother. More than that. These are all letters
from her. She wanted me and her to be together, for all that time. I used her,” I admit suddenly feeling sick. “I fucking used her to get what I wanted…To get you.” I don’t mean for it to sound so bitter but that’s how it comes out. “I broke her heart and I never even realized, ‘coz I was too fucking selfish to see it.”
Maddy's fingers stop moving and she looks down at me confused.
“She never said anything to me, and we talked about everything.” She sounds betrayed.
“It’s here in black and fuckin’ white.” I push the table away as I jump to my feet. Grabbing a handful of letters, I slam them against her chest. “Every word, every feeling since she was ten years old.”
Maddy scoops up the letters, and as she starts to read her face grows sadder.
“What does she mean, you asked her to speak to me?” she asks, sounding hurt. “A new plaything? Jessie what is this?” Her eyes glass over, and I take in a deep breath before I tell her something I know will shatter her.
“I asked Hayley to start speaking to you,” I admit. “I’d noticed you months before, and had no clue how to talk to you myself. I wanted to know more about you, so I asked Hay to find out about you.” Maddy chokes on her tears as she hears my confession, and when I reach out to comfort her she smacks my arm away.
“So you're telling me that my friendship with Hayley. The only friendship I’ve ever had, was something you fabricated so you could fuck me.”
As well as all the sadness there’s so much anger in her beautiful eyes, anger I’ve never seen before. It doesn’t belong there and turns me inside out.
“No, it was nothing like that. Hayley had the idea to become your friend, said she could find out more that way. But in the end it was real, look read on she says how much she likes you.” I scramble through the letters trying to find the one I had read earlier about her starting to like Maddy. But she’s already starting to back away from me.
“Is that what I am? A plaything, Jessie.”
“Fuck no, nothing like that. Mads, you fucking mean everything to me. That’s why I wanted her to talk to you. I had to know more about you, and yeah, Maddy, I let her become your friend when I shouldn’t have. But I ain't sorry for it, ‘coz I got you now.”
“You’ve got me?” She fakes a laugh that tells me I chose my words all wrong. “So that makes it okay that you used someone to become my fake friend. Had me believe I finally had someone who cared about me…” I get a horrible sense that she’s gonna run and that’s exactly what she does. She slams the door behind her so hard that it shakes the whole cabin.
I want to chase after her, to make all this better. But she needs her space, and being honest, right now, I need mine too.
Hayley must have been hurting so bad. I’d spent all this time thinking she wanted me and Mads to be together. Hoping she’d be looking down at us, proud of me for getting it together. Or is that just what I’d wanted to believe. Reality is, I’d spent the final months of her life breaking her heart and being insensitive.
I clear away the letters, placing the lid back on the box. There are still so many unread, but I can’t face any more guilt. Not today.
This really is all on me, Hayley would still be here if I hadn’t asked her to speak to Maddy. Maddy would still be hacking for the Bastards, she’d be safe from them and still have a life beyond the confines of this club.
I was bad news for both of them, and hell’s fucked if I’m gonna let Maddy end up the same way Hayley has.
Best place for her is as far away from me as she can get.
I don’t give myself chance to talk myself out of doing what I have to. Pulling out my cell I make the call. The call I should have made the day we brought Maddy back here, but had been too damn selfish to.
Yeah, it’s gonna kill me, but it has to be done. I owe it to Maddy to make the right decision for her this time, and I owe it to Hayley to keep the girl who had become her best friend protected.
I must have walked the entire perimeter of the compound twice, and to say I never thought about running out of it would be a lie.
I stick to the perimeter and walk until my feet ache as much as my heart, and even then I still don’t stop. Darkness creeps in, and the noises that come from inside the woods sound scary, but not nearly as much as the thought of going home and facing Jessie.
I’ve been stupid, how did I not notice that Hayley had loved him herself. I thought we’d been so close, that she told me everything, but everything had just been an act.
If I’d have known how she felt about Jessie, I’d never have spoken about him to her the way I did. She must have hated me for it. And if I’d any clue this was all part of a well thought out plan, I would have avoided them both. I wouldn’t be feeling like my heart had been ripped out of my chest due to the loss of so many people.
Everything that is left for me to live for is all based on lies.
The evening pulls in fast and the chill in the air plummets, forcing me to make my way back to the cabin and face my problem. When I get back, the place is empty, There’s no sign of Jessie, or Hayley's letters.
Just empty space and silence.
The hollowness I've been feeling in the pit of my stomach spreads further without him here. Confirming how much I’ve grown to need him.
Regardless of how I’d come to know him, I’ve fallen in love with Jessie. Never have I felt more safe or protected than I do with him. Somewhere on my way back here, I’ve decided I want to hear him out and give him the chance to explain. I don’t have the strength to lose someone else who I love.
I just hope Jessie feels the same way, that he meant what he said and that I wasn’t a plaything to him.
I try to distract myself by reading while I wait for him to come home. I don’t think this cabin had ever seen a book before I came here, but as soon as I told Jessie that reading was something I enjoyed it’s seemed like I have an endless supply of them.
When it passes midnight and he still doesn’t come home. I give in to my heavy eyes and pull a blanket over myself. Hoping that when he does come back, he’ll wake me and we can sort this mess out.
It isn’t Jessie that disturbs me, it’s the rays of sun that creeps through the curtains and warms the skin on my face. Standing up from the sofa and taking a glance around the room there’s no sign of him. Nothing to even suggest he’s been home.
Trying not to think about the reasons why, I busy myself by tidying up the cabin, then I take a shower. I’m making myself a coffee when the door opens, and Jessie stumbles through it.
His feet move faster than his body can keep up with, knocking over the kitchen chair as he stumbles towards me. The closer he gets to me, the heavier the stench of alcohol becomes.
“You want some coffee?” I ask. Instead of an answer, he walks straight past me, slamming the door to his room after him. A loud thud follows which I assume is him landing in a heap on the bed.
My mind goes into overdrive inventing all the possible reasons he didn’t come home, what he could have done while he was in such a mess, and the more I think, the sicker I feel.
I picture him letting the blonde bitch from down at the bar touch him, imagine him touching her back, and it’s all too much.
What I need is a distraction. Jessie will be out of it for a good few hours, and instead of feeling sorry for myself I could make good use of the time and use some of the information I’d gotten yesterday to chase up some leads on Chop.
I start up my laptop then delve through my purse, my head is still thumping so I’ll need my glasses, and while I’m searching for them my fingers stumble across something I wasn’t expecting, and I pull it out for a closer look.
Staring at the USB stick in the palm of my hand triggers a memory, one that makes my chest heavy as it plays out in my head.
Carly smiling, asking if she could use my laptop to see what was on the drive. Her handing over the USB. The USB that she’d had found in Chop’s trunk.
Shit.
This co
uld be what Chop had come back for, and I could have had it all along.
Wasting no more time, I connect it to the USB port in my laptop and open the file. It’s an audio, and despite being petrified of what I might hear. I turn up the volume and hit play regardless.
At first, all that can be heard is background noise, clinking glasses, and muffled voices. But then a voice comes in over the sound.
“Whatcha here for, Chop?” a man asks in a rough, unwelcoming tone.
“I needed to know everything’s cool between us,” the voice that I assume belongs to Chop replies, which picks up my full attention.
“It will be as soon as you’ve told Jimmer you been fucking his old lady,” the first voice threatens. Shocked, I sit back in my chair and wait to hear more.
“You know it ain't that easy. I got a kid to think about. You know how it is, if anything happened to me, he has no one.”
“Your brother seems a good kid, he’d step up if he needed to,” the cold voice responds.
“Yeah, well let’s hope it doesn’t come to that.” Hearing the snigger in Chop’s voice makes me hate him even more, if that’s even possible. The guy is pure evil.
“Every day you don’t tell him puts me in danger too. Just knowing this shit could get me buried right alongside you… You know club rules, Chop. What the fuck were you thinking?”
“Yeah well, I wasn’t thinkin’ with my head, was I?” is Chop’s cocky response.
“I’m giving you a week, one week to tell him yourself or I’m gonna have to. I’m heading up to your Charter on business next Friday, I ain’t gonna lie to his face. Jimmer’s the closest thing I got to a real brother, and it’s only ‘coz I know how much you mean to him that I’m giving you a chance to tell him this shit yourself.”
“It ain't that easy, brother.”
“I never said it would be, but then that ain’t my problem. I ain’t the one who’s put my dick over the club.”