Savage Saints MC Series: The Complete Box Set

by Hazel Parker

  However, the response that he got was not what he was expecting. Instead of hearing Nina shuffling and cursing inside like she’d been startled awake, she opened the door, her eyes red-rimmed from crying. Tear-streaks were still visible on her cheeks, matte where they’d dried on her naturally dewy skin, and she’d already clearly wiped off all the makeup she’d accidentally fallen asleep in.

  “What do you want?” she demanded in a horse, stuffy voice.

  “Shit,” Vance muttered, “I’m sorry. I didn’t know I was interrupting something.”

  She shook her head, not really opening the door all the way but also not shutting it in his face. “You’re not; not really,” she admitted. Vance resisted the urge to glance down at his phone and see how late he was as he forced himself to remain with her until he knew what had happened. The curiosity about where she’d been had started off self-indulgent, but now was more morbid. He told himself that he wasn’t concerned—Nina was a strong girl and she could handle herself… Which is exactly why it was so alarming that she was crying.

  “Are you okay?”

  She huffed an amused laugh and rolled her eyes. “Peachy,” she replied. Vance frowned.

  “I mean, what happened?”

  She shook her head. “You know how Adam said that he’d have this area patrolled because of the robbery?” Vance nodded. “Well, yesterday when I fell asleep in here, I was too tired to get fully dressed, so I just put my shirt on for the walk down the strip. Apparently one of Adam’s buddies happened to be driving by here at the wrong moment, because he saw me coming out of your room holding my bra and told Adam, and he called me.”

  “What did he have to say?”

  She shrugged. “He wants to come over and talk; I don’t know. He just said that he wants me back and that he thinks we need to talk, but I really don’t want to.”

  Vance shifted his weight from foot to foot. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but why does it really matter if he thinks we had sex? It’s not like you cheated on him.”

  Nina laughed again, this time slightly manic and definitely self-conscious. “I don’t know why I’m even upset about it,” she admitted. “It’s stupid. It just—hearing from him brought back a lot of feelings I didn’t know I was going to have.”

  Vance nodded. “That’s not stupid,” he reassured her. “You two dated for a long time. You can’t expect a clean break, right?”

  Nina shrugged. “I guess so. I don’t know. I thought that’s what I wanted—a clean break—but I just don’t know anymore.”

  “Would it help if I—”

  “No,” Nina immediately shut him down. “Don’t do anything. Don’t talk to him or go visit him or even think about him. If he comes to the bar, just pretend you don’t know what he’s talking about.”

  “Won’t that be suspicious?” Vance asked.

  “It’s none of his business, anyway,” she snapped. “What I do is none of his business.”

  “Are you gonna let him come over?”

  Nina sighed. “I… I’m not really sure.”

  “You said yourself that you don’t want to hear from him.”

  “Yeah,” she said noncommittally, “but I guess it’s just… not that simple.”

  “Why not?” Vance asked. However, he could tell by the glare that she shot him that he’d pushed too far into something that was really none of his business, either. “I’m just sayin’, he’s not the only guy out there, Nina. Just ‘cause you’ve had a few good years with him, doesn’t mean they’re worth putting up with a bunch of shit for.”

  If he thought that Nina was going to argue, he was wrong—something that was a consistent theme with her. His normally spot-on people-reading skills were lost on her because she was so complicated, so unpredictable in her every move. When he’d met her, she’d given off a vibe that had screamed safety, the kind of girl that wanted nothing more than to get married to her boyfriend after dating him an appropriate number of years and buying a house and having kids. He believed that’s what she thought she wanted, too, but there was something deeper, something that he was only able to read from the fire that ignited in her eyes when she argued with him or the freedom with which she’d laughed when he’d taken her home on the back of his bike. There was a wildness in her, a flame that she wanted to extinguish but that demanded to be fed, and he was the perfect fodder to turn that candle flame into a full-fledged brushfire, ready to destroy everything in its path. It probably scared her as much as it intrigued her, and that’s why he decided to tear off his helmet and lean in for one deep, passionate kiss before he left. He kissed her hard enough, or so he hoped, to give her something else to think about while she talked to Adam tonight and decided whether or not she was going to go back to him. Vance found himself really hoping that she wouldn’t, even if he knew that just because she wasn’t Adam’s girl, didn’t mean that she was his.

  Chapter 13: Nina

  Nina told Adam to meet her at a cafe near the motel so that she wouldn’t have to worry so much about him potentially making a scene. She didn’t think that he was that kind of guy, but lately, he’d been surprising her left and right and not in flattering ways, so she decided that meeting in public was for the best. She had to remind herself over and over that she’d done nothing wrong—even if she and Vance had gone all the way, it was weeks after Adam had cheated on her. Adam was the one who had burned the bridge, so he had no right to be angry with her for moving on.

  She ordered herself a small coffee and sat down to a table to wait for him, and it wasn’t long before he showed. He was dressed in street clothes rather than his uniform, and he beelined for her table as soon as he caught sight of her. All at once, Nina felt a rush of dread for the conversation that they were about to have and, somehow, relief that they were going to talk. It didn’t make sense even to her, but she was a little happy to be able to see him again. He’d been her best and only friend for a while now, and she had to admit that she’d missed him a little in his absence, even if she was still incredibly angry with him. She couldn’t think of a single thing that he could say that would get her to change her mind about her decision to break up and she definitely wasn’t going to let him guilt her about her spending time with Vance, but there were a lot of things she’d been too shocked to say the night he’d confessed to cheating on her and she wanted to say them now.

  “Hi, Nina,” he greeted as he sat down in front of her. “It’s good to see you.”

  Nina shrugged. “Aren’t you going to order anything?” she asked, and he shook his head.

  “Nah,” he denied. “I’m just here to talk to you. How have you been?”

  They hadn’t gone this long without talking to one another in years, so it was strange to talk to him like an old friend that she hadn’t seen in a while.

  “Not great,” she admitted. “You really hurt me, Adam.” He nodded.

  “I know,” he admitted. “That’s what I wanted to talk about.”

  Nina hesitated. “Not the fact that you saw me coming out of Vance’s room the other night?”

  Adam winced, but shook his head. “That hurt, sure, but it’s not why I’m here. You had every right to sleep with him, if that’s what you wanted to do.” Nina didn’t bother to correct him—there was something sort of satisfying about watching him feel just a fraction of the hurt she’d felt when he’d told her about his infidelity, and she didn’t want to take that away.

  “Then why are you here?”

  He wrung his hands together in the way he sometimes did when he was anxious. “I wanted to apologize,” he said. “I didn’t do that when I was at your place a few weeks ago, and I wanted to say it now. I’m so, so sorry for what I did to you. You didn’t deserve that.”

  “You acted like it was no big deal,” Nina pointed out. “When I asked if you loved her—”

  “Yeah, I know what I said,” Adam cut her off, “but I wasn’t thinking straight. I think that I was just so frustrated with not seeing you as often as we should
be—and that’s partially my fault, too—and I just made a stupid, drunk decision. Then I tried to rationalize it by thinking I might really love her, but I don’t. It was a mistake, and it was an even bigger mistake to let you think I could have real feelings for anyone who isn’t you. I’m sorry.”

  Nina sat in silence for a long moment, mulling over everything he’d just said. It was a lot to process. This was more emotion than she was pretty sure she’d ever seen Adam show, but it took something so horrible, so unforgivable to actually get him to show it.

  “So, what?” Nina asked. “You want me back?”

  “Yes,” Adam said without hesitation. “Listen, I understand if you aren’t ready to do that. Hell, I understand if you never want to see me again. But you need to know that nothing like this will happen ever again. If you give me a second chance, I’m never, ever going to hurt you again.”

  Nina felt her eyes fill up with tears, which she looked at the ceiling to blink away. “I need you to know how badly you hurt me,” she said, “if you want me to consider taking you back.” That would be her test for him to see if he was really sorry. This was something that he’d always been particularly bad at: listening to her feelings. He always tried to offer a solution or an excuse or some other bullshit when all she really wanted was for him to hear her. If he could swallow his defensiveness and pride as she told him this, though, maybe there was a chance that he was really committed to changing, after all.

  “Okay,” he agreed. “Of course. Say whatever you need to say.”

  Nina took a steadying breath. “When you said that you had sex with that other girl, what really killed me was that you didn’t seem to care about my feelings,” she explained. “All you were thinking about was yourself, so how am I supposed to want to be with you when that’s how you act?”

  “I know,” he admitted. “I was being selfish and stupid. I don’t have an excuse.”

  “When you said that you wanted to meet just because your friend saw me hanging out with Vance, it made me think that you only wanted to get back together with me because you were jealous.” At that, Adam’s face fell.

  “Of course not,” he denied. “Nina, I was only jealous because of how much I want you back. I’ll be honest, I’ve been thinking about you a lot lately. You have no idea how many times I’ve reached for my phone to call you, but I just assumed that you didn’t want to hear from me, so I could never bring myself to reach out. It’s just… when you were with him, I just kept thinking about how I might have missed my chance because I was too scared to apologize. I had to tell you how I felt before you moved on completely. It had nothing to do with jealousy or anything petty like that. I just needed you to know before I didn’t have a chance with you anymore, because to let you slip away would be the stupidest thing I could ever do.”

  Nina felt overwhelmed, a mix between nervous nausea and the brink of tears. She stood from the table and turned toward the door, knowing that Adam would just let her leave—

  —But he didn’t. Suddenly, his hand shot out to grab her wrist lightly, pulling her into him. He stood to take her in his arms and looked her in the eyes pointedly before placing the most passionate kiss he’d ever given her upon her lips. His hands were on either side of her face, his thumbs stroking her cheeks as tears fell down them, and he didn’t let her go for a long moment. Her eyes closed as she melted into the familiar kiss and all at once knew that she was going to take him back no matter how much it didn’t make sense. He didn’t deserve a second chance, but she didn’t really have a choice but to give him one.

  Chapter 14: Vance

  The Rebel Kings always had held their meetings at the Nightcap. Vance had been coming here since before he was even legally allowed to drink, though that hadn’t stopped him from throwing down a few beers with the guys, but now that the bar was his, he felt more a part of things than he’d used to when he was younger. The bar had been closed for an hour already and Sheila and Marcos had already gone home, so Vance was left to man the bar by himself. The bar was always filled with bikers, but it was good to see his own here.

  “Yo, Vance, get me a beer!” John shouted, and Vance filled up a glass. As he did so, Flip hopped behind the bar and took a bottle of tequila and a few shot glasses without asking, taking them back to the table while Vance filled up a few more mugs with beer. Once everyone was sitting down with a drink in their hands, Vance filled his own mug with beer and took a seat next to Flip. The guys had pushed two tables together to accommodate all 13 of the guys who went to the meetings—there were more Rebel Kings, but not everyone was included in the process of making decisions.

  “First things first,” Flip started, “shots.” Aces looked annoyed, but didn’t stop him from pouring out a shot for himself, Aces, for Vance, and for a few others that he lost track of as Flip handed them out quickly. Aces threw the shot back like it was nothing and Vance did the same, finding himself surprised when he didn’t shudder against the burn of alcohol. He took the bottle from Flip’s hands and rotated it, whistling.

  “Did you just grab the bottle on the highest shelf we have?” he teased.

  “Hey, if you’ve got the good shit, you might as well drink it, right?”

  Vance didn’t quite agree with that statement, but he wasn’t about to press it as Aces cleared his throat and sat forward, ready to begin the meeting. The last time they’d all met like this was right after Tank had been killed, so the tone of this meeting was calmer and more like what they’d been before.

  “Alright,” he started, “so y’all know we got problems with the Devil’s Disciples.” One thing that Vance always liked about Aces as a leader was that he always got straight to the point. Even just mentioning the name of the Disciples put the group on edge and dramatically changed the mood from one of jovial playfulness to dead serious.

  “They ain’t gonna get shit from us,” Flip said sternly. “I don’t give a fuck what they want.”

  “They want Agua Dulce,” Vance supplied. “Apparently they got it in their heads that it’s not our land, and they want to claim it.”

  “Bullshit,” Aces rolled his eyes. “They know good and well that’s our turf. They just want to take it because it’s good sellin’ area.”

  That’s something Vance wasn’t really concerned with, as treasurer. Where they sold their product wasn’t his business, not really: he only liked to deal with the money afterward. However, when someone threatened the club, no matter what the dispute was about, that was everybody’s business. He took another long sip of beer from his mug as he listened to the small arguments that broke out, mostly just different guys rambling about hating the Disciples. Vance agreed but didn’t feel the need to add to the chaos.

  “Alright, alright,” Aces shut everyone up, “quiet down.” He paused and waited for the group to do so before he continued. “Question is, what are we gonna do about it?”

  “I say we send ‘em a message,” one guy, Trevor, a much more junior member of the club than Vance, suggested. “You don’t fuck with the Kings.”

  Aces rolled his eyes. “Yeah, okay,” he accepted with a bit of mockery in his tone, “and when they get pissed and pop a cap in the messenger's ass, what’s your plan?”

  “You don’t just talk to a club like the Disciples, kid,” Flip explained a little more kindly, just as Vance could remember Flip doing the same for him when he’d been a fresh new face in the club and had been full of dumb questions.

  “I say they’re all bark and no bite,” an older man named Titus offered. “This happens all the time. They gotta come in here and beat on their chest a bit to show us they’ve got balls, then they’ll learn their place.”

  “Problem is that they think their place is Agua Dulce,” Vance reminded him. “I think they’re gonna fight harder for that turf than you’d think. It’s personal.”

  “Best thing to do is just show ‘em we’re not backing down,” Aces decided. He often answered his own questions like that: he knew best, but he still wanted t
o make sure everybody got to speak, even if he wouldn’t listen to a damn word of it, anyway. He’d been part of the Rebel Kings since his granddad had helped found the club and he’d helped grow pot after he’d quit school. He might not be cut out for anything else, but he was a good leader and that was what was important.

  “How do we do that?” Flip asked.

  “More guys on the streets in Agua Dulce and more days of the week,” he replied simply. “Increase our presence; probably double it.”

  “It’s two fuckin’ hundred miles from the greenhouse,” Flip lamented. “We’ve gotta have somebody out there twice as much as we’ve already got?”

  Aces shrugged. “You and Murphy stayed in some motel nearby there, right? Ain´t you still staying there, Murphy?”

  Vance hesitated. “Well, yeah,” he admitted, “but I don’t think that having a bunch of bikers in the same place is gonna be the best idea. The owner isn’t gonna like it.”

  “We’ll pay her good,” Flip offered, but Vance shook his head.

  “Her boyfriend’s a cop,” he said, “so the second she senses something’s up, she’s gonna have law enforcement on our asses.” Though Nina and Adam were technically broken up, Vance was pretty sure that Adam wasn’t gonna stay gone for good. Even if Nina rejected him, he was confident that he wouldn’t stop trying to win her back. Not to mention, if he was jealous of Vance or mad at him for whatever he thought had happened between them after he and Nina had broken up, there was a good chance he’d do whatever he could to get Vance out of the picture. Bringing more guys into the mix, some of whom weren’t as careful as Vance always tried to be, would be the worst move. Plus, Vance just didn’t want to drag Nina and her motel any further into this mess than he had to. All of that together added up to the conclusion that having any more Kings than Vance at the Oasis motel was just bad news.