Spring Romance: NINE Happily Ever Afters

by Tessa Bailey

  The station’s parking lot was dead. A few patrol cars were parked along one side of the building as I pulled up along the front curb, shutting off my bike to wait.

  And wait.

  An hour and a half passed while I messed around on my phone. I’m sure the surveillance cameras and the officer watching them were wondering what I was doing, but no one came out. And no one went in.

  Shit. Was she here? I hadn’t checked her parents’ place. Maybe they’d come to pick her up and she’d gone there. I checked the hour on my phone for the hundredth time as the sun began to set, the evening light dimming. I huffed and swore under my breath just as a familiar yellow cab pulled into the space behind me.

  “Hey, Rick.” I waved and walked up to his driver’s side window.

  “Dash. What are you doing here?”

  “Waiting to pick someone up. You?”

  “Same.”

  Rick was likely starting his shift. He ran his own cab company—Uber wasn’t a thing here yet—and he made a decent living hauling drunk people home. Hell, he’d collected me on more than a few occasions.

  What were the chances that there was more than one person needing to be picked up from the police station in Clifton Forge on a Tuesday well before the fun stuff began at the bars? Slim.

  “You here for Bryce Ryan?”

  “Uh, yeah. I think that was the name dispatch called in for me.”

  “Here.” I dug into my pocket, getting my wallet, and pulled out two twenties to hand over. “I’ve got her.”

  He nodded and smiled as he took the cash. “Great. Thanks, Dash.”

  “See you around.” I knocked on the hood before getting out of his way. His taillights were barely off the lot when the front door to the police station opened and Bryce came rushing out.

  “Hey, wait!” She waved for the cab but Rick was already gone. “Damn it.”

  Bryce ran a hand through her hair, her shoulders slumping. They straightened when her eyes landed on me waiting at the base of the steps.

  “I’ll give you a ride.”

  “No.” She started down the steps, her footfalls heavy. “I’ll walk.”

  “Come on.” I met her as she reached the last step, her angry eyes level with mine. “I’ll take you home.”

  “Stay away from me. You got me arrested for trespassing. I was handcuffed. I had to have my mug shot and fingerprints taken. I’ve been in jail.”

  “Sorry.”

  “No, you’re not.” She tried to sidestep me, but I moved too fast, blocking her escape.

  “Bryce,” I said gently. “I’m sorry.”

  “Are you really that afraid I’ll find something?”

  “Yes.”

  My answer—and the truth in that single word—caught her off guard.

  She recovered quickly. “I don’t understand you. You come to my house and kiss me. Then you fix my dad’s press and ask for a truce. We have sex. You kick me out. You follow me to the school and break in yourself. Then you call the cops on me. It’s inferno or ice. I’m done.”

  “Look, it doesn’t make sense to me either.” From the day she’d come to the garage, my brain and emotions had been all twisted. “All I know is I can’t seem to stay away from you even though I know I should.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “Try harder.”

  “Let me take you to your car.”

  “On that?” She pointed to my motorcycle. “No.”

  “Scared?” I asked, baiting her.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Never.”

  “Please. I fucked up earlier. I’m sorry. Let me at least get you to your car.”

  “No.” She wasn’t going to budge, so I decided to appeal to her logic.

  “There’s no one else. You’ll have to walk miles and it’s getting dark. Rick’s probably on his next call already. I’m guessing you didn’t call your parents for a reason. Come on. It’s just a ride.”

  A growl came from her throat. It sounded a lot like fine.

  This time when she attempted to stomp past me, I let her past. She went to the bike, her eyes taking in the gleaming chrome and shiny black paint.

  I met her there and swung a leg over. “Hop on.”

  If she was unsure, she didn’t let it show. She climbed on behind me, shifting back and forth until she was steady. Then she wrapped her arms around my waist, trying not to hold on too tight.

  The way her arms felt around me, the way the inside of her thighs hugged my hips, squeezing around every turn, was nearly as good as it had felt lying on top of her in the garage. The drive to the high school wasn’t long enough.

  My cock swelled as we rode. Another few miles and it would have been impossible to ignore, but we pulled into the school’s lot and the second I stopped, she swung off the bike. The spell broke.

  She went right for the door of her car, digging the keys from her purse and refusing all eye contact.

  “Bryce.” I shut off the bike’s engine so she could hear me, so she could hear the sincerity in my words. “I’m sorry.”

  “You told me not to trust you, and I should have listened.”

  “Here’s the thing. I want you to trust me.”

  “So you can fuck me over?” She spun around, her eyes blazing. “Or just fuck me, period?”

  “So we can find out the truth. So we can learn who really killed Amina.”

  “I. Don’t. Need. Your. Help.”

  “No, you don’t.” I ran a hand through my hair. “But maybe . . . maybe I need yours.”

  That made her pause. Bryce was no pushover. She was tough and dynamic. Unique. She saw through bullshit like a pro, and the truth was, I trusted her. Why? I couldn’t articulate it. But I trusted her.

  Never, not once, had I told a woman I needed help. Yet here I was, offering that to her.

  I kicked the stand on my bike and sat on the seat to face her. I couldn’t go to Dad for information; he was hiding too much. Having Bryce’s fresh eyes might be the only chance for his freedom.

  That meant it was time to lay it all out there. To be real with her. To try and win her trust. So she knew what she was getting into with me.

  “Let’s talk. No bullshit. No ulterior motives. Just talk.”

  She leaned against her door. “Everything you say is fair game for my paper.”

  “Not everything.”

  “Then we’re done here.” She reached for the door’s handle.

  “It could ruin the lives of people who deserve a second chance. You want to destroy me when this is all over? Fine. But for them, I can’t let that happen.”

  Emmett and Leo had risked their lives to stand beside us when we’d closed down the club. They were building good lives. Honest lives. I’d give mine up, but I wouldn’t betray them.

  Bryce planted her hands on her hips. “So where does that put us?”

  “I’ll answer your questions. Some things are on the record. Some are off.”

  “And I’m just supposed to believe you?”

  I nodded. “Yeah.”

  “How can I know you’ll be honest?”

  “Because I feel like shit,” I admitted. “Not many people can get under my skin, but you have. And I feel guilty. For what I said last night. For calling the cops today. This is me saying I fucked up. Asking for one more chance.”

  She cast me a wary glance. “You have to know that I think this is all crap. Just another one of your tricks.”

  “I get it.” I sighed. “Ask me your questions anyway. Just don’t print the stuff that will hurt other people. Agreed?”

  The offer hung in the air, until finally, she gave me a single nod. “Agreed. I want to know why you closed down your club.”

  “On the record, our members decided to go different directions. Dad and I stayed in Clifton Forge with Emmett and Leo. Most of the other Gypsies moved away.” When she frowned, I held up my hands. “I know you probably think of it as this big event, but it wasn’t. It happened slowly. One guy would leave for one reason or an
other. We wouldn’t bring on anyone new.”

  “Attrition. You’re saying you shut down your club because of attrition?”

  “It’s the truth.”

  Jet had prospected the club the same year as I had. He’d moved to Las Vegas after he’d met his girlfriend there and now ran his own garage. Gunner had moved to Washington to live by the ocean with the money he’d stashed away over the years. Big Louie, who was a few years younger than Dad, had bought the bowling alley here in town and met Dad for drinks at The Betsy every Thursday.

  The others had scattered to the wind. Some had even left to join other clubs. Those had stung, but we didn’t fault the men who wanted to keep living the club life.

  “The club changed,” I told Bryce. “We all made that choice together. Unanimously.” I’d always been proud to put on my leather cut with the Tin Gypsy patch on the back. Then one day, I pulled on that vest and there was no pride. That was the day I began to question everything. “What it was, what kind of men we’d become, didn’t hold the same appeal.”

  “And what was it? What kind of men were you?”

  “Men who did whatever the fuck we wanted.” If someone pissed me off, I’d knock out some of their teeth. If someone hurt a member of our family, they paid with their life. “We were fearless. Intimidating. Didn’t care much about the law. And we had money.”

  “How’d you make your money?”

  “The garage.”

  She frowned. “Don’t forget who you’re talking to. Fifteen years ago, it was rumored you had at least thirty members. Your garage might be nice, but it wasn’t supporting that many people.”

  No surprise Bryce had done her research. The woman who’d completely thrown me off guard, who’d seized my attention, was sharper than the knife tucked into my boot.

  We’d actually had more like forty members back then. About fifteen had been guys Dad’s age and nearly all of them were dead now. Life expectancy with the club didn’t exactly fit a standard bell curve.

  Even though we’d been small compared to other clubs around the nation, we’d been powerful. Dad had wanted to grow and expand all the way through the Northwest. He would have done it had we not decided to disband. But his ambition had made us targets.

  Made our families targets.

  “Off the record?” I waited for her to nod before I continued. “Money came from drug protection. Sometimes we smuggled the drugs ourselves, but mostly we made sure mules made it to their destination safely. Kept trucks from getting hijacked from either the cops or another dealer.”

  “What kind of drugs?”

  “Meth mostly. We ran whatever the suppliers cooked in Canada. Some pot. Some cocaine and heroin. I don’t know what else there was, but does it matter?”

  “No.” The disappointment in her eyes made my stomach fall. “I guess it doesn’t.”

  For her, I wanted to be better. Do better. Why? It was the question I’d wrestled with since the beginning. But there was something about her, this woman, that made me want to make her proud. And I’d give all the money in my safe not to see that look on her face again.

  “That was how we made most of our money,” I said. “It was easier years ago before border patrol started cracking down. We could slip through the cracks because Montana has a big border and they can’t watch it all.”

  “So you worked for drug dealers?”

  I nodded. “Among other things.”

  “What other things? Be specific.”

  “Protection. A business in town could hire us and we made sure they didn’t have any trouble. We made sure their competitors did. We had an underground fight circuit too. Got to be pretty big. We’d have fighters come from all over the Northwest. We’d organize it, some of us would fight, and the club would take a rake off all the bets. Made damn good money too.”

  Had Emmett and I had our way against Dad, we’d still be running the fights. But Dad had insisted it all had to stop. He’d been right. It was better this way.

  “It doesn’t make sense. If you made good money, why quit?”

  “Can’t spend money in prison, Bryce. And turns out, we make damn good money on custom cars too.”

  She studied my face. “That’s it?”

  “That’s it. Sorry to disappoint you, but we closed down the club for noble reasons. It wasn’t worth putting members or their families in danger anymore.”

  “In danger from whom?”

  “Rival clubs. Old enemies. And my guess is one of those enemies is Amina’s murderer.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Bryce

  The urge to pinch myself was overwhelming. Part of my brain was sure I’d fallen asleep on the rock-hard cot in the jail cell and this was all a dream. I couldn’t believe I was standing across from Dash in his high school’s empty parking lot as the sun faded from yellow to tangerine in the distance. The cool Montana evening breeze blew a strand of hair across Dash’s forehead. The green treetops that bordered the school rustled in the distance.

  It was almost too serene. It was nearly too pretty to be real. But if this was a dream, I wasn’t ready to wake up.

  Hungry for more, I stood still, watching as he sat propped against his motorcycle and told me about his former club.

  This might all be a lie and another betrayal. While I was still livid at Dash for the past twenty-four hours, I wanted the story badly enough to listen and pretend that, as his eyes brightened, it was from honesty.

  God, I was stupid. But did I leave? No. True or false, I licked up every one of his words. Questions popped into my head faster than a string of exploding Black Cat fireworks.

  “So you think one of your club’s former enemies killed Amina?”

  He nodded. “They’re the most likely. Someone is looking to take revenge against Dad. They waited until we let down our guard. Got comfortable. Took a chance to set him up for murder.”

  “Who?”

  “Probably another club.”

  “But there is no such thing as the Tin Gypsies anymore. Unless that’s a lie.”

  “No, the club is over.”

  “Then without a club, you aren’t a threat anymore.”

  He shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. Vengeance doesn’t care if we’re wearing patches or not. Someone wants it bad enough, they’ll wait.”

  This was true. When revenge consumed people, it was amazing the incredible patience they could summon. If Draven was being set up, the person responsible was smart. They’d waited, like Dash assumed, until the Slaters were unprepared to face a threat.

  “So you suspect it was another club. Which one?” I’d caught some names in my research. There were a surprising number of motorcycle gangs, or members at least, who were in Montana.

  “Our biggest rivalry in recent years was with the Arrowhead Warriors. They weren’t as big as us but their president was and still is ambitious. Not afraid to pull a trigger. For a while, he made it a habit to go after our prospects, promising them money and power. He’d manipulate the weaker ones. He convinced younger guys to join his club instead of ours.”

  “You probably didn’t want them anyway.”

  He chuckled. “No skin off our nose to lose guys who weren’t loyal.”

  “What else?”

  “The Warriors ran their own drug routes but we had relationships with the bigger dealers. They did whatever they could to ambush us, hoping the dealers would see us as weak and change business partners. We’d retaliate. They would too. By the end, it was hard to know exactly what one thing had started it all.”

  The hair on the back of my neck stood up. “Do I want to know what retaliation means?”

  “No.” The hint of malice in his voice made me shiver. “But the turning point was when they went after my sister-in-law.”

  “What?” I gasped. “Is she okay?”

  “She’s fine. They tried to kidnap her but we got lucky. Local law enforcement stopped it before things turned bad. But it was a line they never should have crossed. Members were fair g
ame. They knew the risks from day one. So did their wives and girlfriends. When shit got bad, we’d lock everyone down. But Nick, my brother, has never been in the club. Emmeline should never have been in danger.”

  It was interesting how these men, these criminals, lived by a code. They had boundaries. Though I guess since Emmeline had been threatened, those boundaries weren’t exactly solid. Would this attempted kidnapping have hit the news? I made a mental note to check the archives when I went to work tomorrow.

  Dash’s eyes lowered to the asphalt. “Dad was the president then. Something about Emmeline’s kidnapping flipped a switch in him. I think because he saw how much Nick loved her. He didn’t want to cost his son his wife. Not after he’d already cost us our mother.”

  “Your mom?” My heart stopped. In all the news articles I’d read about the club, Draven and Dash, only a few had mentioned Dash’s mother. According to the stories, she’d been killed in a tragic accident at home. There had been no mention of the club’s involvement or the details around her death. “How?”

  Dash gave me a sad smile. “That’s a story for another day.”

  “Okay.” I wouldn’t push this one. Not now when it would clearly bring him pain. Or when it would risk the conversation ending.

  “Timing was everything,” Dash said. “Dad approached the club after Emmeline’s threat and asked all of us if we’d consider getting out of the drug business. The year before, every person at the table would have said fuck no. But border patrol had tightened. A handful of guys had been busted and were either serving time or had just gotten out. And at the same time Emmeline was kidnapped, one of our oldest members, Emmett’s dad, was murdered.”

  I tensed. “Murdered? By who?”

  “The Warriors. We’d been fighting for over ten years. This wasn’t the first death, on our side or theirs. But it was the final straw. They came to The Betsy where we were drinking a beer, watching some playoff game. Stone, that was his name, got up to take a piss. A couple of Warriors were waiting. Hauled him outside and before any of us even knew he was gone, they shoved him on his knees and put a bullet between his eyes.”

  I flinched, the mental image impossible to ignore. And, my God, poor Emmett. My stomach twisted into a tight knot. Did I want to know more? I knew this violence Dash spoke of wasn’t confined to only the Arrowhead Warriors. I was sure it extended to the Gypsies as well—and Dash.