by Hazel Parker
That thought aside, Nina still found herself wishing for Vance and his bike, to go riding down the highway at 90 mph with nothing but the wind in her hair and her hands clinging tightly to Vance’s body. She wanted the warm, worn leather of his jacket over her shoulders and the feeling that she should be doing anything other than what she was doing, but not wanting to be anywhere else in the world. She forced herself to think about the tasks at hand—working on the insurance forms for the fire on top of managing her normal motel duties. It was exhausting, but at least it got her mind off the things that she didn’t want to think about and the person that she didn’t want to desire.
Adam showed up a bit unexpectedly a little after 5:00 p.m.
“Hey, you,” she greeted as cheerfully as she could, kissing him on the cheek as he looked over her shoulder at the paperwork on her desk. “How was work?”
He shrugged off her question. “Oh, you know,” he replied vaguely, “same old, same old. How are you doing here?”
Nina allowed herself one short groan of annoyance. “I just want to be done with it,” she complained. “Who knew that we had so much crap in that old building?”
“Well, your dad was kind of a hoarder,” he said lightly. “Doesn’t surprise me that he’d keep everything that was ever in or around the motel.” Nina laughed.
“I guess that’s fair,” she admitted. “I’m not sure why I’m even listing all of it. I’m sure it’s got no value.”
“You never know,” he said. “Your dad seemed to think that shed was a goldmine.”
She smirked. “He did,” she said. “He was wrong. It’s all just junk.” Her face fell as she thought back on some of the things that she’d pulled from the ash in the past few days. Those things, all the things that she hadn’t even remembered existed, his things—they were all gone now, burned to a crisp. She could get money for them; she’d decide whether she would use it to renovate the rooms or just pocket the profit, but she knew for damn sure that she wasn’t going to replace even one of those items. It wouldn’t be the same because they wouldn’t be her father’s things.
“I wish I’d been here,” she sighed, leaning her head onto Adam’s shoulder as he wrapped one arm around her back.
“Nina, don’t do that,” he chastised. “It’s not like you would have been able to stop it.”
“Maybe not,” she admitted, “but at least maybe I could have gotten a good look at whoever did it.”
Adam’s posture stiffened against her. “You could ask your friend Vance,” he suggested coldly. Nina frowned.
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He shrugged. “Nothing,” he dodged. “Just… it seems like you never really had a biker problem before you let him start living here, did you?”
“Don’t use your interrogation voice on me,” she bit. This was something that he did sometimes, a habit from detective work; he would drop benign, true statements and ask her to agree with them in the hopes that he could lead her to his own conclusion. “If you have something to say, then say it.”
He shook his head. “I’m not saying anything,” he reassured. He never was, Nina thought bitterly. “Just that maybe this could have been avoided if you hadn’t gotten so involved with that guy.” Nina felt anger prickle inside her stomach.
“It was your idea to turn the Oasis into his own personal apartment complex,” she pointed out. “You suggested that I let him stay long-term.”
“Yeah, that’s not what I meant,” he said. “I said it could be a good idea to be his landlord, not his girlfriend.” For a horrifying moment, Nina had to remind herself that Adam didn’t know about their hookup, didn’t know about their kiss. He was speculating entirely, not to mention that she hadn’t done anything wrong, anyway. They were broken up when Nina had gone to Vance for some physical, rebound comfort. Nothing that Nina had done with Vance had really crossed any lines, and Adam didn’t even know that they’d been intimate. She forced herself to keep her cool as she glared at him.
“His girlfriend?” she asked innocently, angrily.
“You two are always together.”
“He lives here.”
“And he obviously likes you,” Adam continued.
“So?” she asked, not even bothering to deny that accusation. Adam rolled his eyes as if it were obvious.
“He’s a cool, nice guy with tattoos and a motorcycle,” he said. “He’s a picturesque bad boy heartthrob. Girls go crazy over guys like him.”
“That’s what you think is happening?” Nina asked indignantly. “That’s what you think is important to talk about right now?”
“Well, it’s not like you’re going to bring it up yourself.”
“Because there’s nothing to bring up!” she shouted. “There’s nothing to talk about! You do this; you get jealous and you think I’m cheating because you’re insecure. I don’t know how to make you trust me.”
“I only do that because you’re too good for me, Nina,” he said resignedly. “You’re smart and funny and hot and I’ve never understood why you’d want someone as plain as me.”
“Well, that’s not my problem,” she argued. “I’m not responsible for your self-esteem issues, Adam. If you can’t trust that I love you, then it just doesn’t seem like you’re ready to be in a relationship at all.”
Adam flushed bright red. She’d emasculated him a little, she knew, but it was true. If he couldn’t accept her love, especially after the four years that they’d spent together, then how was she ever going to be able to convince him of it? He remained silent, not offering any rebuttal, so she felt the need to continue just to fill the silence, even if it wasn’t something she really wanted to do.
“How are we ever going to be happy together if you’re constantly waiting for me to end this?” she asked. Surprisingly, at that, he looked pointedly at the floor, his expression unreadable.
“I guess we can’t,” he admitted, then looked her in the eyes once more. “But I love you, Nina.” She shook her head.
“I love you, too,” she said, her eyes filling with tears, “but I don’t think that’s enough this time.” Adam shifted his weight from foot to foot. This breakup was unlike any that they’d ever had before. She wasn’t angry with him and he didn’t appear to be angry at her. Nothing had really caused it, aside from one rude comment on his part that normally wouldn’t have resulted in anything other than a minor fight that would have resolved itself by morning. This time, it felt as though they’d finally addressed the elephant in the room, one which they’d both been politely ignoring for want of staying together and for fear of breaking up. Nina had the distinct, sad feeling that their relationship had been founded on more of the latter than the former, anyway. Now, however, though they were, indeed, breaking up, she didn’t feel afraid. Nor did she feel free or excited or angry or any of the hundreds of other emotions that she’d always imagined she might feel if she and Adam were to split. Really, almost alarmingly, she felt nothing. It was as though the camel that had been visibly, obviously struggling just to stay upright, in pain and needing to rest, had finally had the last piece of straw added to its back in order to break it. It felt natural and perfect in its timing. Any earlier and she’d have had too many doubts to stay firm in the decision, but any later, and she might have just ended up marrying him solely because she was too scared of having wasted nearly five years of her life on the same relationship.
“I guess this is goodbye, then,” Adam observed. He, too, sounded rather flat in intonation, like he’d been expecting this—which was, of course, part of the problem—and that it hadn’t hurt him as deeply as she’d thought it would have.
“We can still be friends, if you want to,” she offered. Luckily, he laughed slightly at that. Her fear was that it would have seemed callous or cold and made him start yelling or worse, crying.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Someday.” She nodded in agreement. It wasn’t as though she had a burning desire to be his buddy right now, anyway. As if to sho
w that there were no hard feelings, he hugged her at the door before he left, then drove away, leaving her alone with her thoughts in the office.
That had felt almost surreal. She felt a little like she’d just dreamt the entire fight because it had gone so much better than she’d thought it would. Though more and more often recently she’d been questioning and doubting whether Adam would be the person with whom she wanted to spend the rest of her life, she’d always expected that if or when they did break up, it would have to be something so heated, so fiery and explosive that there was just no coming back from it, and that they’d never want to see one another again. Ironically, it was the fact that they’d parted on good terms this time that made her think that it was going to stick this time, plus the fact that not even a little part of her had regrets or doubts. They could still be friends again someday, so she didn’t really have to worry so much about missing him so much that she’d date him again just to have her friend back, and she was sure in her decision that this had been a healthy choice for both of them. Adam seemed to have agreed.
She took out her phone and stared at the black screen. Though she wasn’t sure what she was expecting, she knew that she wanted to talk to someone, but since she’d moved to Portland, she’d lost touch with her friends around El Paso, and when she’d moved back here, she’d lost touch with her college friends. Now, she was too busy to go out and do the things that it took to make friends, not to mention that she didn’t have any coworkers and the people who stayed in the motel were only ever there for a night or two. Her relationship with Vance was the closest thing to a friendship that she’d had in a while, and even that wasn’t strictly platonic. She could go to him for protection, sure, but comfort? She had a feeling that he might find that annoying, her problems frivolous. Still, part of her just needed to get it out, to write it down, to speak it into the universe and make it real.
“Adam and I broke up for good,” she read aloud as she typed it out on her phone. The message sat in her text bubble, unsent and lurking below the conversations she’d had with Vance. Even when they’d been on speaking terms, they’d rarely texted, but now she hesitated to send this as the first message after over a week of not speaking to him. She didn’t want to give him the impression that all she wanted from him was sex. Of course, she did want sex with him. She wanted it badly, so badly that sometimes she felt hot and flustered just thinking about it. However, there was something else to Vance that she couldn’t ever quite put her finger on, something that felt less like a passing interaction and more like a person who was meant to stay in her life for a long time, possibly even the rest of it. She’d grown accustomed to having Vance be the first person she saw in the mornings as he stopped into her office to fill his thermos. At the end of the night Vance was always sitting outside, drinking or smoking a cigarette or sometimes even just playing on his phone and enjoying the cold night air before he went to bed. Perhaps, she thought now, he’d been waiting for her, knowing that it was one of the best parts of her day regardless of whether she stopped and had a full conversation or she just said “goodnight,” as she walked by him.
She erased the message and instead typed out a different one, a milder greeting.
“Hey,” the text read, “haven’t talked in a bit. How are you?” She waited a few minutes for an answer and got none, but it was still pretty early in the evening and she knew that he sometimes didn’t have his phone on him while he was working. As the minutes ticked by, she got antsier and antsier about whether he’d reply at all, so she decided just to swallow her pride and send the original message telling him that she and Adam were done for good this time. She knew that he probably wouldn't believe it and that it was optimistic to think that he’d even reply, but it felt better than not having said it at all. She turned her phone all the way off to prevent herself from staring at it obsessively for the rest of the evening and decided to go home to cook some dinner—real food, something that she hadn’t done in a while. Her groceries might not be the freshest, but she was sure that she had something that she could fix up into a proper meal. Feeling better about herself than she had in a long time, she turned the motel sign to “closed” and decided to take the evening for herself for once, distancing herself from thoughts of either of the two men that had been constantly on her mind for different reasons for the past several weeks.
Chapter 24: Vance
When he first opened Nina’s text, Vance had wanted to ask a lot of questions. He wanted to know what had happened, if she were okay, why she thought that this time would be any different than their first breakup. However, he stopped himself in his tracks. Nina had asked him to get out of her life, more or less, and to insert himself back into it now would be potentially to take advantage of a moment of weakness that she’d regret later. And, honestly, it wasn’t good for him, either, to allow her to take him and leave him as she saw fit. If there was one thing that Vance hated, it was indecisiveness. That was something that could get people killed in a biker club, and even though Nina hadn’t at all chosen that path, he still found himself sometimes irritated that this seemed to be the one area of her life where she couldn’t make a decision.
Nina could afford to change her mind as many times as she wanted. She said they were splitting for good last time; then she was back with him a week later. It was exhausting, at best, to try to keep up with, and Vance didn’t have time for that kind of thing. Nina was great—she was passionate and driven and kind and strong and funny and definitely sexy, but none of that mattered, since there was nothing that he could really do about it, anyway. Since Vance wasn’t about to give up the life he’d made for himself with the Rebel Kings, not now and not ever, he’d be better just to ignore her before he fell even further for her. She already had an almost magnetic charisma, the kind of siren charm that could lure men into danger for her, and Vance dealt with enough problems of his own that he didn’t need something to raise the stakes. The closer that he got to her and the more she meant to him, the more danger she herself would be in. The only way to eventually get her out of harm’s way was to cut her out of his life entirely.
He’d been sleeping at the bar for about a week and he knew that his employees had already figured it out. He’d made up some lie for Marcos about how his apartment was being fumigated, but he suspected that it hadn’t convinced him for a minute. He’d been taking his showers at a gym down the street, which he’d already had a membership to, since he did like to work out before work a few times a week.
Soon he’d have to start finding a way up to the greenhouse again to get the money. After last week’s issues, Aces had decided to send a runner to get the money to Vance instead of him going out for it, just to throw off the Disciples, but that wasn’t something that they wanted to make a habit of, simply because Vance was the only person in the club who really had time to do something like that every week or two. The runner that they’d sent, James, was busy with his own work, running a secondary laundering business in the form of a mechanic shop a few towns over, on the other edge of the Kings’ turf. Coming to the Nightcap had been pretty out of his way, which wasn’t a good thing when he was carrying such an incriminating amount of money and was trying to stay under the radar of the police. It wasn’t something that Vance could ask him to do again unless it was really necessary, so he’d have to find a way to get out of here and make sure that he wasn’t still being followed. They likely would have figured out by now that he knew about that, so he’d have to be extra careful this time. The Devil’s Disciples might not be as good at what they did as the Rebel Kings, but they weren’t stupid—at least, not all of them—and he wasn’t so naive as to think that he wouldn’t have to put any effort into outsmarting them.
There were very few ways, unfortunately, to get to the desert from the bar. It wasn’t like a big city where he could take side streets to throw off anyone who might be tailing him. There was the one highway and that was pretty much the only way to get anywhere around these parts, which lef
t him vulnerable to any jaded ex or angry rival who wanted to wait on the side of the road to jump him. That was part of the job, he knew, and he accepted that danger, but that didn’t mean that he wasn’t going to do everything in his power to avoid running into them. The safety of the club was his first priority and he’d made sure he’d protect it with everything he had.
Finally, he worked out a plan that he thought might actually do some good. He’d leave in the evening the night before he was expected at the greenhouse, then rent a motel room overnight in a town a few exits further than he actually needed to go. That way, he’d be coming from a different direction, so even if someone was out there waiting for him every morning, which he really didn’t doubt that there was, he likely wouldn’t cross paths with them at all. It was still risky, but it felt like his best bet. He was only ever “mostly safe” at best, so it didn’t bother him to know that he was taking a risk now.
As he closed down the bar, pouring himself a short shot of whiskey just to help him sleep, he couldn’t help but think about how much easier things had been for him before he’d met Nina. The bar had just been somewhere fun to hang out while the others worked and he observed and learned the business of the club; he’d not had anyone to think about protecting but himself. However, for all the ease that life had entailed, he didn’t really think he’d trade it for what he was doing now. He loved the bar and he loved the long rides into the desert, even if they did mean that he was sticking his neck out to a large group of people who would love nothing more than to slice it through. Mostly, he missed Nina. He loved to know that she felt safe, that she was safe as long as he had his eyes on her. It was the only thing that really mattered to him. Everything felt like it had more of a purpose now, like he was hustling for more than just his own safety and for that of the guys, who could handle themselves: he was doing it for Nina. She could handle herself, too, of course, but perhaps not from the kind of dangers that he’d brought into her life. Those were his messes to clean up, and he couldn’t ever be truly done with her until he was 100% sure that she would never be bothered by anything or anyone from his past ever again.