Vice

by Elana Johnson

  Felicia Cheswick could not handle stressful events. It was why she worked in the back of a supermarket, on a shift where there weren’t many people in the store. In fact, the store closed two hours before she finished work.

  She liked being in the store without all the chaos, and she enjoyed making sure every aisle was stocked and ready for the following day.

  She normally liked a man with a little bit of ink on his skin, and Jordan Waterhouse had caught her eye the very moment he’d walked through the back door of Market Fresh, that delicious leather jacket on and his hair all whipped up by the wind.

  Right now, she watched as he leaned forward, his fists at his sides, as if he was really going to stop the freight train of a man barreling down on him.

  The cops shouted, and Felicia had time to wonder if Jordan was going to be seriously injured before the other biker—Popeye—was upon him.

  Jordan yelled, a primal, guttural sound that filled the air, and he actually dove for the biker with the scary patch on his back.

  Her heart pounded, and she screamed. She didn’t handle conflict well at all, and she’d enough fistfights in her life to make her stomach squeamish. But Jordan didn’t straddle the other biker and keep hitting, and hitting, and hitting.

  She blinked.

  He wasn’t her step-father.

  The man on the ground wasn’t her mother.

  The cops arrived, with Brit yelling instructions as they got the handcuffs on Popeye while Jordan fell back. Faded away. Felicia watched as they hauled the guy to his feet, blood dripping onto the asphalt from the guy’s nose.

  When Felicia looked away, Jordan was gone. She turned back toward where she parked her car, and she found Marc and Dante there. But no Jordan.

  Marc lifted one hand and pointed toward the store, and Felicia spun back that way. Jordan was just disappearing into the store, the white-stitched cross on his biker jacket imprinting on the backs of her eyelids when she blinked.

  “What’s he doing?”

  The cops were still working to secure the crime scene, but Jordan didn’t seem to care about that. Felicia watched a lot of police procedurals shows on TV, as well as cold case files, and forensic case documentaries. She loved the idea of forensic science telling a story, and if she had the money and time, she’d go back to school to be a footprint analyst or a crime scene investigator.

  Two more police vehicles pulled up, lights flashing, and Felicia didn’t dare move to follow Jordan. He reappeared through the door anyway, carrying a box she knew would have dented cans in it.

  “Hey,” Brit called, and Jordan looked up. He did not look happy. In fact, the anger on his face was clearly illuminated by the outdoor lights on the back of the grocery store.

  Brit stalked toward him, and Felicia had the insane desire to dart over there to make sure Jordan wasn’t accused of something he hadn’t done. Why she felt so connected to him, she wasn’t sure.

  Yes, you are, she thought. The man made her feel safe for the first time in her life. His hands were big and warm, and she’d loved tucking hers into them. She loved the way he cradled her face as he kissed her, and she’d enjoyed every moment of their time together.

  It was the moments he wasn’t with her that left her a pool of nerves. That left her worried about where he was and what he might be doing. The Sentinels were not an outlaw motorcycle club, and they did amazing things around the community of Forbidden Lake.

  Felicia knew this; she’d seen Jordan’s actions first-hand. She knew.

  And yet…. There was always that yet in the back of her mind that had prevented her from truly letting herself fall in love with him. So after the dangerous ride up to the rival clubhouse in Grand Central, almost two years ago now, she’d broken up with Jordan. He’d respected her wishes, but he hadn’t left his club. Felicia hadn’t asked him to. She couldn’t do that to him.

  His membership with his brotherhood was as important to him as her safety and completely mundane life was to her. They simply existed on two opposite ends of a spectrum, no matter how many times her heartbeat skipped when he entered the store or looked her way.

  Brit and Jordan talked, and it seemed like an amicable conversation. They shook hands, and Jordan stepped away from his motorcycle. He looked lost for a moment, and then his gaze swung back toward the back of the parking lot, where Felicia still stood with Dante and Marc.

  Jordan walked her way, and her heart did that skipping thing again. She cleared her throat, suddenly so thirsty. She thought of the work that still needed to be done inside the store, and she wondered how long it would take the police to release the crime scene.

  “You’re limping,” she said to him, moving forward to intercept him before he got too close to the other two men.

  “Yeah, well, that guy weighs two hundred and fifty pounds.” Jordan rolled his shoulders too, a wince of pain sliding across his face. “Brit asked me to go to the hospital.”

  “You should,” Felicia said.

  Jordan looked at her—really looked. She’d seen this expression on his face before, and wow, her stomach started fluttering as if it had grown wings and wanted to take flight.

  “I have to work in the morning,” he said.

  “Still at the law firm?”

  “Yes.”

  She nodded, because she really liked that Jordan had a real job, in a real office building. True, he was just a personal assistant for one of the paralegals who assisted a huge lawyer at the firm, but Felicia knew there was no “just” about it.

  Jordan was a good man, with a good job, and good morals.

  “I don’t think you’re getting back in that store tonight,” he said. “And Brit told me we can’t move our cars or my bike until all the photographs have been taken.” He turned as another vehicle pulled up, this one a big, black SUV that men and women spilled out of with kits and bags.

  The crime scene team. Sure enough, one of them had a professional camera, and he started taking pictures almost immediately.

  Felicia fell back to the other two men. “What are we supposed to do then? Stand around out here?” She didn’t even have a coat—or the keys to her car. She could probably sit inside it to get out of the wind, and she might even have a blanket in the backseat. She glanced over at the nondescript dark blue sedan but didn’t step that way.

  “He said we have to be interviewed, and he wants me to go to the hospital so there’s no question about what happened.” Jordan stepped right next to her, his body heat melting into hers he stood so close.

  Her cells vibrated and heated, and when he slipped his hand into hers, sparks flew through her bloodstream.

  “Are you okay?” he asked softly, inclining his head toward her to keep his question from the others. “I know you don’t like stuff like this.”

  Emotion filled her throat, and all she could do was nod.

  “After they interview us, could you maybe give me a ride to the hospital?” He took a couple of steps back, releasing her hand to do it, and leaned against the tailgate of the truck they’d crouched behind earlier. “I don’t think I can handle my bike to get there.”

  “Yes,” she said, because Felicia wanted to help him. Not only that, but it would put him in her car—and maybe right back into her life.

  Do you really want that? she asked herself as he pulled out his phone and started tapping. She wasn’t entirely sure, but she knew no one else in town had attracted her attention at all, despite several attempts to find a new boyfriend.

  “Hey, Mav,” Jordan said with a sigh. “You’re never going to believe what happened tonight….”

  She listened to him start to tell the tale, only distracted when someone said, “Ma’am? I need to ask you a few questions.”

  Felicia focused on the police officer and his partner in front of her, a petite woman who couldn’t weigh more than Felicia herself. They asked what she’d seen, what she’d heard, to describe the man who’d come in, to detail the threats he’d made, all of it.

&n
bsp; She told them as much as she could remember, her exhaustion increasing with every sentence she spoke.

  Finally, they finished up, and she learned they indeed would not be allowing anyone into the store that night. Probably not even tomorrow until noon, Brit said. If then.

  Marc got in his truck, and Dante walked over to his SUV. Jordan straightened, his phone tucked away now.

  “Ready?” she asked, running her hands up and down her arms.

  Jordan’s skin didn’t hold much color, but he nodded. “Do you have your keys?”

  “One of the cops went to get them,” she said. Sure enough, she turned, and the officer was walking toward her. She took her keys with a smile and turned back to the man that hadn’t left her mind though she’d broken up with him.

  “Ready.” And Felicia wondered if she meant she was ready to drive Jordan to the hospital—or ready to let him back into her life.

  The next morning, Felicia’s eyes felt like someone had rubbed sand in them. But she tiptoed out of Jordan’s hospital room, where she’d spent the night, and headed to Sunrises. She loved the breakfast sandwiches there, and she happened to know Jordan did too.

  One of his ribs had been reinjured as he’d thrown himself at the other biker, and he’d been in so much pain by the time they arrived at the hospital, that they’d wanted to keep him overnight.

  She wasn’t sure why she hadn’t just gone home. Jordan had a wallet, with his ID and his insurance card. He didn’t need her to babysit him or answer any of the nurse’s questions. In fact, Felicia had been surprised by some of the answers. After all, she didn’t know he was allergic to penicillin or that he’d missed his last three physical therapy appointments.

  The doctor had told him he needed to go to those if he wants his back and core to heal properly, and Jordan had reluctantly agreed to set up the appointments and stick to them.

  “I’ll have the Lakeside Lounger,” she told the girl taking her order at the breakfast sandwich shop. She loved the bacon, egg, and tomato sandwich on an English muffin. “And the Cherry Picker.”

  That one was Jordan’s favorite, and included sausage, egg, and cheese on a biscuit. She much preferred muffins over biscuits, and a smile touched her lips as she thought about Jordan’s reaction when she’d told him that.

  “Nine fifty-seven,” the girl said, and Felicia handed over the money.

  Twenty minutes later, she crept down the nearly silent halls in the hospital and back into Jordan’s room. His eyes were closed, and Felicia took a moment to simply admire him. He had a strong jaw, and a long, perfectly sloped nose. When he smiled, he had straight white teeth. All of his tattoos currently sat beneath sheets and shirts, but she knew the curved lines of them across his shoulders and down his arms.

  As if summoned to consciousness by her thoughts, Jordan’s eyelids fluttered and opened.

  “Hey,” she said, lifting the brown bag with the easily recognizable orange sun on it. “I brought breakfast.”

  “Bless you,” Jordan said as he tried to sit up. He groaned, and a flash of pain stole across his face.

  “Let me help you,” she said, setting the bag on the rolling tray and moving to the side of the bed. She had no idea how to help the man sit up.

  Thankfully, he said, “I got it,” and adjusted the bed with the remote and then putting a pillow behind his back. “I’m starving. We usually eat at the clubhouse in the middle of the night.” He reached for the bag and pulled out the two sandwiches. “You got me the Cherry Picker.”

  Their eyes met, and an entire fireworks show exploded between them. He had to feel those sparks, and Felicia could see that he did right there in his expression.

  “I know you like that,” she managed to say.

  “Thank you.”

  He took her sandwich from him and started to unwrap it. “How long do you think we’ll be here this morning?”

  “No idea,” he said. “You don’t have to stay. I called Mav last night, and he’ll come get me.”

  “Does he have a car?”

  “No, but his wife does.” Jordan took a bite of his sandwich too, another groan coming from his mouth. “I love this thing so much.”

  Felicia giggled at how he spoke around the food in his mouth, and she took a bite of her sandwich too. The salty bacon and cool tomato made her taste buds rejoice.

  “I don’t mind waiting for you,” she said. “If it’s not going to be forever.”

  “Let’s ask the nurse,” he said, reaching for the call button. He pressed it before she could tell him that the button was for emergencies.

  She also hoped she hadn’t given away too much of how she felt, but with the breakfast sandwich and the sleeping in the armchair thing, Felicia had likely laid everything on the line.

  “Good morning, Mister Waterhouse,” the nurse said. “What’s going on?” He wasn’t hooked up to any machines, so she had nothing to check.

  “I was just wondering when I can go home,” he said.

  “Doctor Partridge said he’d be back this morning to check on you,” she said. “And your chart says you need three physical therapy appointments set up before clearance can be given.” She looked up from the clipboard. “Did you want to set those up right now?”

  “Yes,” Jordan said quickly. “Yes, I would like to set those up right now.”

  His eyes glittered at her, and she’d definitely seen that look before. He was a complicated man, and he didn’t want to make her wait any longer than necessary, but he certainly didn’t want to miss his opportunity to get a ride home with her.

  Warmth filled her, and she wondered if she’d be able to keep him company at home too….

  Chapter Three

  Vice sighed as he sat down on the couch in his house, very aware of Felicia right behind him. It felt nice to have someone doting over him, taking care of him. And doubly nice that it was Felicia Cheswick. Perhaps Vice would tackle more rival bikers if it would keep her in his life.

  But he knew rival bikers were the reason he’d lost Felicia in the first place.

  “Thank you,” he said. “For everything. You really didn’t have to wait.”

  “It was only a couple of hours,” she said. “And we were right in the middle of that game.”

  He smiled at her, but he knew she hadn’t stayed to finish their friendly rivalry over an online game they each played on their phones. They could’ve done that from anywhere, but Vice hadn’t said anything.

  “You’re okay here?” She asked.

  “I’ll be fine.” He didn’t want to move. Didn’t want to breathe too deeply, just in case it hurt his chest and then his ribs.

  And he’d just gotten the ribs feeling better.

  He needed to get back to Ruby’s and the Sentinels, but he knew he wasn’t going anywhere that day. His boss had been accommodating, which wasn’t surprising given that Vice literally never missed work.

  But he was definitely not in good enough shape to be working behind a desk today, and tomorrow might be out too. He could get to the painkiller, and he could order pizza for dinner later.

  Right now, he just wanted to sleep, which made no sense as he’d slept all night already. His lifestyle usually had him awake for at least half the night, and then he slept for five or six hours before work. He always laid down at five o’clock when he got home, and he was over to Ruby’s by eight at the latest.

  “I’ll call you later,” she said. “Just to make sure you’re alive.”

  “Thanks, Felicia.”

  She left, and Vice stayed on the couch, unable to get himself up and down the hall to his bedroom. The couch was just fine, and he’d spent many nights on it. One more day wouldn’t matter.

  His eyes drifted closed as he laid down on the couch, and he thought about Felicia for several seconds, the way he always did as he went to bed and started to fall asleep. This time, though, he actually thought he might have a chance to get the beautiful redhead back into his life.

  Smoky began to bark before Vi
ce could hear anything. “It’s probably just Mav,” he said.

  Sure enough, two knocks sounded on the front door, and then it started to open. Smoky did not stop barking, and in fact, increased the volume of his voice.

  “Enough.” Vice got to his feet as quickly as he could when Maverick Malone walked through the door. “Hey,” he said, his heart swelling at the sight of his mentor, father figure, and best friend.

  Mav chuckled at the dog, who finally stopped making a racket, scrubbed him behind the ears, and looked up at Vice. “You okay?” Mav wore concern in his eyes, plain to see. Vice liked that he didn’t try to hide it, and he embraced his friend.

  “The one rib is out of place again,” he said, wincing in pain at lifting his arms. The air caught in his lungs too, and when he stepped away, he couldn’t take a full breath. And exhaling was even worse.

  “You don’t need to come in tonight,” Mav said. “House can run church just fine.”

  “I know,” Vice said, catching Smoky’s tail as it whipped around. They hardly ever had visitors, and Mav was the second one that day. “But I’m going crazy here.” He wasn’t one to sit around and do nothing, and that was exactly what he’d been doing since Felicia had dropped him off at home hours ago. “Can’t I just come and sit in the back?”

  “Yeah, sure,” Mav said. “I brought Karly’s car.”

  Vice nodded and turned toward the kitchen table. His house was small; nothing to write home about. But the fact that he had a home someone could write about at all was amazing. Vice had spent eight months on the street, homeless, and he’d take his two-bedroom, box-style house any day of the week.

  He worked hard to keep it clean and nice, and he hadn’t missed a single mortgage payment in the five years since he’d purchased the home.

  His wallet lay on the table, and he reached to put it in his back pocket. Pain flared down his right side, and he groaned.

  “Vice,” Maverick said. “Just stay here tonight.”

  Vice panted for a moment, and then glared at Mav. “I’m coming.”