by Voss, Deja
He runs his hand all over my body, caressing my breasts, bringing goosebumps to every inch of my skin as he moves further and further down, his mouth never leaving mine.
“You’re so wet.” He slides his fingers up and down my slit, teasing around the outside of my clit as I tilt my hips, aching for more. I gasp when I feel his fingers part my folds, and as he slips one inside of me, I scream into his mouth.
“Oh my God,” I groan as he works his finger in and out of me, filling my insides like I’ve never been filled before. It’s like nothing I’ve ever experienced, my insides clenching down around his finger.
When he grazes his thumb over my clit, I think I’m going to black out. I writhe underneath him, but he keeps me pinned there as he pushes me over the edge, and I shatter so hard, tears roll down my face.
“Fuck,” I groan, “Micah, you make me feel so good.” He rolls me on top of his chest and I lay there, clinging to him, my hair sweaty and my breath choppy. He kisses my forehead and laughs.
“You seriously never got off before?” he asks. “How do you function?”
“Well, don’t make fun of me,” I say. “I thought I had gotten off before, but apparently I was doing it wrong because whatever I was doing felt nothing like that.”
“You’re one of a kind, Amber,” he laughs, wrapping his arms around me tighter. I feel myself start to doze off on top of him again, but snap myself awake.
“What time is it even?”
“A little after noon.”
“Shit,” I stutter. I really need to get back home. The longer I lay here the harder it’s going to be for me to leave.
“What’s wrong?”
“I gotta get home. Like two hours ago.” I rest my head on his chest and pout. This is all so new and exciting, the thought of leaving him fills me with dread. Sure I miss Aunt June and Mama, but up here I feel like a new woman, and when I’m with him, he feels like the only person in the world to me.
“Well let’s get moving then,” he groans, stirring underneath me.
“You’re not going to beg me to stay?”
“Listen, you know I’m crazy about you, but I know you have a life to live. I have some shit I have to get together myself before we can make this work.” He hands me his phone.
“What the fuck is this?” I giggle. It looks like this thing is older than I am. I don’t even know how to work it. “How am I supposed to send you nudes this week?”
“It’s a long story,” he laughs. “You’re going to have to settle for sexts this week, I guess.”
He sits up and I keep clinging to him, not wanting this time to end. He’s right, though. We both have some things we have to take care of if we want to be together. Namely, I have to figure out how I’m going to break the news to my family. I can’t just up and quit my job. I love it. I can’t just abandon Mama, even knowing what I know now.
“Will you call me every day?” I ask.
“As much as you want,” he says, kissing me softly.
I reluctantly get up and stretch, making my way to the bathroom to brush my teeth and pack up my stuff. I quickly dress and take a last look around to make sure I didn’t forget anything, but I’m too enthralled with his perfect body, staring at every muscle, every hair on his flesh as he pulls up his jeans, making sure I don’t forget any single thing about him.
“So are you going to go first or what?” I ask, hugging him around his waist, looking up into his eyes.
“What do you mean?”
“I just thought, well, I don’t want you to have to take any shit from your friends.”
“Anyone who would give me shit for being with you is out of their minds, Amber. I want the world to know that you’re with me.”
“What about Esther?” I ask, worriedly. I know she’s not going to be thrilled with all this. She already warned me.
“I’ll take care of Esther. You don’t have anything to worry about.”
He’s so sweet. I have so much stuff I need to be worried about right now, but he makes it seem like everything is going to be alright. It’s like as long as he’s a part of my life, no matter what happens, I know I’ll be okay.
He carries my duffel bag for me as we walk down the long hallway. The place is quiet and dark, and by the time we get upstairs to the clubhouse, it looks like most of the crew has cleared out. There are prospects walking around with mops and garbage cans, cleaning up the aftermath of last night.
I fix myself a cup of coffee for the road, and he walks behind me, his hand never leaving the small of my back. I know I’m dragging this out as long as possible, stalling, hoping that I can conjure up some sort of excuse to stay. Maybe my car won’t start. I wouldn’t even be mad.
“You heading out?” Esther is coming in the door as the two of us are walking out. I can tell by the expression on her face that she’s not surprised, but also not thrilled. She’s kind of scary this way, and I can see what everyone was talking about. She’s so short, so petite, and so pretty, but I bet that redhead could really fuck your day up if she wanted to.
“Yeah, thank you for everything, Esther. I really appreciate it.”
“Payday is every other week, so I’ll have a check for you next weekend.”
“That would be great,” I say. I reach out to hug her, but she just stands there, her arms at her sides. “See you next weekend,” I shrug, and start the walk to my car.
“Don’t worry about her,” Micah says. “It’s going to be fine. I promise.”
I sigh as I unlock the doors. He puts my bag in the backseat and wraps his arms around me, kissing my head.
“This sucks,” I mutter.
“I’m not going anywhere. We lived how long without each other? What’s a few days?”
I stare into those beautiful blue eyes of his. He’s right. I never even knew he existed until this weekend, but trying to imagine my life without him is hard. I need to slow down here. I don’t want to smother him and make him run away.
“This was the best weekend of my life,” I say, blinking back tears. So much for being cool.
He hugs me tighter. “Call me when you get home safe,” he says. “I’ll be thinking about you.”
I get into my car, and as he shuts the door behind me, I feel like I’m about to break down and start bawling.
You’re being ridiculous, I remind myself. You hardly know him.
I pull out of the parking lot, watching in the rearview mirror as he stands there and waves. My heart hurts, even knowing in a few short days I’ll be back here again, and we can pick up right where we left off.
My phone rings in my purse, and I pull over and smile, hoping it’s him calling to tell me to come back, that he doesn’t want to spend a day of his life without me.
Instead, it’s Aunt June.
“Hello? Aunt June? Is everything okay?” I ask, trying not to sound too disappointed.
“Are you going to be back soon?” Her voice sounds tired, and I think she’s been crying.
“A few hours max. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” she sighs. “Everything is the same as it always is. I just miss you.”
There’s a pit in my stomach. We haven’t spent this much time apart in a while, and I feel guilty for leaving her alone with Mama in this condition.
“I’m on my way,” I say. “I’m driving, so I’m going to go, but I’ll call you as soon as I get in town. I love you.”
I hang up the phone and make my way down the mountain. It’s going to be a long drive.
Chapter 22
Micah:
“She’s not dancing here anymore,” I say to Esther as she looks at me in amusement.
“I assumed as much,” she shrugs. “You haven’t changed a bit since we were younger. Always picking up stray cats and trying to save them.”
“Kinda like you,” I tease. “Except you’re picking up all the strays. Cats, dogs, whoever’s willing to flash their tits for a couple bucks. Amber’s not a stray though. She doesn’t need s
aved.”
“I know. It’s fucking weird. I can’t put my finger on it,” she says. Paranoia runs deep in my family, and for a second, she looks so much like my father that I can’t even look her in the eye. It’s how we were raised, though. “I dunno. I kinda like her as strange as that sounds.”
“Me, too,” I shrug. ‘Kinda’ isn’t even the word for it. I’m so head over heels for this broad that she has me acting like a gentleman. I had every chance to take whatever I wanted from her, and I couldn’t even bring myself to do it. She’s not like anyone I’ve ever met. Maybe it’s all the yoga, maybe it’s the fact that she’s so young, but she’s so pure to me, even if she was swinging from a pole the day I met her.
“Can we talk serious, though?” she asks. “I know Dad ran you out of here, but that’s all I know. Or all I knew. You never told me why. Then Gavin told me about Ava and what he did to you two. That’s so sad, Micah. I can’t believe you didn’t tell us. I hadn’t even thought about Ava in years; she was just another one of Dad’s throwaways in my eyes. I just… I never realized you two had a thing. Nobody here did. Then you left, and she was gone, and Dad just said he was sick of her and took her back where she came from. Nobody put two and two together. I mean, why would we?” She wraps her arms around me and hugs me tight. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that, Micah. I’m so sorry that I wasn’t there for you.”
“It’s not your fault, Esther,” I say. “I was the one that betrayed you all by just running off. The fact that you’ll even still speak to me after all these years blows my mind. I didn’t know what to expect when I came back here, but it definitely wasn’t this.”
She sighs so loudly that it sounds like she’s deflating a tire.
“What?” I ask.
“You need to go to my house,” she says.
“Okay,” I shrug. She and Brooks have the master bathroom all ripped up, and he probably needs a hand or something, but she’s being a little dramatic for my taste.
“The guys are all over there.”
“Sure,” I shrug. I walk to the garage and get on my bike.
“There’s some stuff you didn’t know about Ava,” she says. “They’re just trying to help you get some closure, so you don’t have to worry about her anymore. I’m sorry.”
I forgot how fast word travels up here, and that my brother Gavin can’t keep his mouth shut to save his life. It’s almost a relief that everybody knows so that my leaving doesn’t seem so selfish, but I’m good. I don’t want closure. I just want to go about my life here and put all my energy into a fresh start.
I pull into their driveway, and it’s lined with bikes. Brooks is standing on the front porch smoking a joint, and he smiles sadly when he spots me.
“Here,” he says, handing it to me.
“Well, I thought I was walking into an intervention,” I laugh. “I guess not.”
“I wish,” he says. “It’d be less fucking awkward than this.” I take a long drag from the joint, this mountain weed some of the best in the world. Whatever my brothers are about to lay on me, I might as well be nice and numb for it.
“I just want you to know, Micah,” he says slowly, “I had no idea about you and Ava.”
“Why would you? I didn’t tell anyone. If my dad had found out I was screwing his old lady, well… I mean, you heard what happened.”
“Let’s go inside.”
It’s funny how everything can change, but nothing can change. My brothers are all sitting around the kitchen island, talking and laughing, and even though there are some new faces in the crowd, everyone looks the same to me. The same, but different. Fifteen years older and harder, but still the same guys deep down. The men who would do anything to protect their patch and lifestyle here on the mountain. I want to get back there with everything in my being.
“So what’s going on?” I ask, as everyone gets awkwardly silent, trying not to look at me. “Y’all going to jump me or something?”
“No, son,” Heat says. He’s starting to look so old and fragile, but there’s still a spark in his eyes. The man has always been charismatic and kind. The man we all needed in our lives, especially my siblings. “You know I’ve been hanging on to this for a long time. I was hoping the day would come where I’d get to give it back to you.”
He passes me my leather cut, the one I dropped on the table in front of him all those years ago when I bolted.
“Might be a little tight in the back there,” he chuckles. “You’re not some lanky little young buck anymore.” I run my hands over the leather, bring it to my nose, smelling it, taken back to that bittersweet time in my life where me and all these guys thought we had life figured out. We thought we had the world by the horns and we could fight and fuck our way out of anything that came our way.
“Thanks, Heat. This means a lot.”
“It’s good to have you back, brother,” Brooks says. “And I hope you’ll stay after what I’m going to tell you.”
He grabs this red leather backpack from the counter and holds it up. I feel like I’ve seen it somewhere before, or I should know what it is. When he hands it to me, it all starts coming back to me. The first time Ava showed up on this mountain on the back of my dad’s bike, she was wearing it. I feel so cold all of a sudden, touching something that was hers.
“Where’d you get this?” I ask.
“I can’t fucking do this,” Brooks says, cupping his head in his hands.
“Oh, you can and you will,” Esther says, walking into the kitchen with a couple boxes of pizza in her arms. “You’re the president, babe, and you’re not keeping secrets from these guys. Besides, you promised me. I swear to God, I will make you sleep outside if you pussy out now.”
“She will,” Gavin shrugs, with a smirk. “That’s our sister.”
“I know,” Brooks says. “I just feel like a fucking tool. I always thought of you like my own brother, Micah. I should’ve known better, but I didn’t know anything. I was so young and dumb back then.”
I unclasp the top of the bag and pull the drawstring open. I’m hit with the smell of her, a smell I was once so addicted to now turning my stomach. Roses and wine and tobacco, it smells like death to me. I set it down on the countertop like it’s full of anthrax as my chest starts to tighten once again.
“Why do you have this?” I ask.
“It was her getaway bag,” he mutters. “Her and I were getting ready to run away together.”
“What?” I stammer. It doesn’t make any sense. My throat feels like it’s going to close up and I grab the nearest bottle off the counter and begin to chug. Her and I were getting ready to run away together. “She was pregnant with my kid, Brooks.”
“Well apparently she was pregnant with my kid, too. We both got played, brother.”
My ears are ringing, trying to put two and two together. I take a deep breath, trying to make sense of it all, trying to figure out how I was too blind to see what was happening in front of my face. Every single snip of conversation I’d played over and over in my head while I was overseas, every time I got so angry I cried, that face that’s been haunting me all these years, that girl who made me flee my home and cut myself off from my family wasn’t who I thought she was. She didn’t love me like I loved her. Hell, she might not have loved me at all.
“I’m not even mad at you,” I say. I can’t be mad at the guy. He was in the same boat I was, wrapped around Ava’s finger. “She was fucking hot, and she talked a good game. We were young and dumb and easily manipulated. The logistics, I mean, obviously we were all covering our tracks so that my dad wouldn’t find out what was up. There would’ve been no way you would’ve known.”
“I’m glad you understand,” he says. “I mean, if you want to beat me up, you’re more than welcome.”
I laugh. I have no desire to beat him up, but this does change a lot of things. Obviously, the woman did not deserve to die. She got tangled up in a game that she thought she could win, but didn’t understand that when you add
Moses Boden into the mix, nobody wins. I don’t feel jealous at all, just confused. Confused about what the end game was for her.
“I might beat you up,” Esther says. “Why’d you even keep this bag of shit in our house?” She pulls open the backpack the rest of the way and starts to dig through it. “I don’t care who or what you did before me, but hanging on to her stuff?”
“I guess I just thought maybe she’d come back some day and want it. I don’t know,” he shrugs. “It doesn’t mean anything to me. It’s not like I’m sniffing her panties and crying while you’re at work.”
“She’s dead, Brooks. That’s not appropriate,” Esther says, scowling at him.
“Is there panties in there?” Austin asks, poking around in the bag. “I used to be an ‘anything with a pulse’ kind of guy, but my standards are flexible.”
“Gross,” she quips.
It’s strange seeing her stuff laid out like this after all these years. I remember that floral tank top with the lace trim, the ripped-up jean shorts she seemed to live in before she started putting on weight with the baby.
“What’s that?” I ask, eying the little leather-bound notebook.
“It’s her journal,” Brooks says.
“Did you read it?”
He nods and slides it across the counter to me. “I hadn’t gone through this stuff until yesterday. I honestly forgot all about it until Gavin said something.”
“What’s it say?” I ask, flipping through page after page of scrawled cursive writing.
“It says that her and your dad were probably a match made in hell.”
I slip it in my back pocket.
“Are we good?” he asks.
“Why wouldn’t we be?”
“What I don’t understand,” Gavin says, clearing his throat, “is why either one of you guys would run away from the club over a woman.”
“Shut up, college boy,” Brooks smirks. “You ran away from the club for a piece of paper your wife doesn’t even let you hang on the wall.”