by Lane Hart
“I wish you weren’t.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t know what you’re asking.”
“Yes, I do,” Abel replies.
“Do you know how expensive college is? I can’t ask my sister for another penny.”
“I don’t want to think about you with anyone but me. And Selina.”
“That’s your problem, then,” I remark, knowing it will piss him off. In fact, when he doesn’t say anything, I figure he’s seconds away from hanging up on me. “What’s in it for me if I agree to your demands?”
“Forget it,” he mutters. Yep, he’s definitely pissed.
Sure, I canceled a few appointments after I left Abel’s place this weekend, but that was just temporarily postponing because I wasn’t in the mood to be with anyone so soon after him. Right?
Or was it just that I didn’t want to be with anyone except Abel and Selina?
The fact that he asked means he’s jealous and gives a shit.
The thing is, I’m not used to anyone being possessive of me. I’m just a paid hookup to most guys who have more money than they could ever spend, so it’s no big sacrifice to give me some of it. I’m a way to get off doing shit they like but can’t admit to anyone else. Not only do they know I have other hookups, I don’t think a single one actually cares. At least no one has ever asked me to stop seeing other people, probably because asking these jocks who are living the high life in college to be monogamous is like asking for world peace.
I never actually thought I would be happy with just one man or one woman. But maybe I could make it work with one man who loves sex with women too. Or just one woman – Selina.
That’s why I say something I never thought I would and actually mean it. “I’ll think about it, okay? I still have bills to pay…”
“I’ll give you whatever you need,” Abel says, which is sweet but a big hell no.
“No, thanks. I appreciate the offer, but I don’t want this relationship to be a transaction,” I tell him. Like all the rest, goes unspoken.
“Okay.”
“Okay,” I reply.
It’s more of a concession than I’ve ever given anyone. I just hope I don’t regret it.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Abel
“So, the Cape Cartwright PD seems to have backed off?” Roman asks Nolan during our Thursday meeting.
Nolan shoots me a quick look. “Looks like it. I talked to Reece, who did his IT magic, and the case is showing as closed. Again. They assume he’s left the country or killed himself.”
“Good. That’s great,” Roman replies along with several other men who voice the same relief. Then, our president looks between me and Nolan. “Now, where the hell is Hugo?” he asks.
“No fucking clue,” I tell him. “He won’t return my calls or texts.”
“Mine either,” Nolan responds. “I also had Reece ping his cell. It was last used in the Reedville, Virginia area, which is where he was headed. He also checked their local hospital and jail rosters. No sign of him at either place, which is good news.”
“Yeah, it is,” Roman agrees. “Well, until he’s back, Abel has his proxy for any votes. Let’s hope nothing serious goes down where we need him.”
“Yeah,” Nolan says with a sigh.
“Any other club business?” Roman asks the table as he picks up the gavel, ready to dismiss for the week.
When no one speaks up with anything important or urgent, I decide to throw my question out there. “That safe house where we stayed with Rita, where the prospects and Leo recovered, is it vacant unless the MC needs it?”
“Yeah, it is. The place is too far from the beach to rent. Why?” Roman asks.
“What does everyone think about turning it into a bed-and-breakfast?”
“The more people who know about it, the less safe it is,” Winston remarks.
“True. But what better cover than giving it a name, operating it as a business that’s not connected directly to the MC. No one would know, would they? And if we needed it, reservations could be canceled and refunded.”
“Who would run it?” Cannon asks. “You?”
“No. Not me, but, um, Selina, the woman I’ve been seeing…”
“I’ll be damned.” Roman shakes his head. “Another one bites the dust.”
“It’s not that serious yet!” I rush to add.
“Yet being the key word,” Verek replies with a chuckle. “If you’re going all out like this for some chick, then you’re already halfway to the whipped club. Nice of you to finally join us.”
“Maybe…yeah, maybe you’re right,” I tell him with a smile that makes everyone whoop and cheer.
“Don’t worry, man. It hits us all eventually,” Conrad chimes in with a smirk.
“Are you sure we can fucking trust her?” Nolan snaps over the good-natured ribbing.
“Yeah, we can.” Gritting my teeth, I figure now is as good a time as any to inform the rest of the table about her past. Eventually, it’ll all come out anyway. “Have Reece run a search on her if you want. Yes, Selina had ties to the Rebel Henchmen and their president, but she also convinced the cop to close the case.”
“She what?” Roman exclaims as the room goes completely silent.
“Selina was the reason the detective showed up at my door, questioning Rita,” Nolan tells everyone.
“What the fuck?” Marcus growls, along with a few others.
I hold up my palms to try and do damage control. “Hold on now. Selina was living with the president. She knew how insane and out of control Leroy was. She thought he was still on the loose and wanted the police to find him before he hurt anyone else. She wanted justice for her boyfriend, okay?”
“And now she doesn’t because you fucking told her Nolan killed Leroy?” Roman grits out.
“Basically. I trust her completely, though.”
“And since when have any of you bastards thought with anything but your dicks when it comes to females?” Marcus asks, pointing his finger at everyone at the table except for Leo, who doesn’t have a significant other. Hugo doesn’t either, but he’s MIA. “Every pussy you all can’t live without is just another thorn in the club’s side!”
“Fuck you!” Nolan shouts at him from across the table.
“Yeah, fuck off, Marcus,” Verek agrees. “If you had ever loved someone more than your own dick, maybe you would understand!”
Furious shouts are thrown back and forth before Roman slams his gavel downs a few hard times to get everyone’s attention. “All of you, shut the fuck up!” he roars. When the room is silent again, he exhales heavily. “Reece will look into this Selina girl, and if there’s anything shady about her, she won’t come within a hundred miles of the MC again, agreed?”
“Fine. Reece won’t find anything, though.”
“If he clears her, then we’ll have a vote about turning the safe house into a bed-and-breakfast for her to run,” Roman says. “The income it could generate would be a nice benefit for us all. There’s no reason to let it sit there empty just on the off chance we might need to use it again.”
“Good. Thank you,” I tell him.
“Meeting fucking adjourned,” Roman huffs before slamming the gavel one last time.
Chapter Thirty-Five
Cory
Abel and I have talked on the phone every day since I left his place.
And I don’t talk to anyone who calls me, preferring they go straight to voicemail so I can find out what they want before I respond by text.
But with Abel, well, I know that the biker doesn’t usually call anyone either, so I answer whenever his name shows up on the screen.
The regular talks are not the only thing surprising about him.
Last night, he told me about his idea to turn one of the MC’s properties into a bed-and-breakfast for Selina if the guys run a background check on her and approve it. He’s planning to tell her when they’re here this weekend.
So while he may act all brooding and detached, h
e’s actually a really sweet, caring man.
And when he remembered I’m getting my business degree, he suggested that after graduation I come to Myrtle Beach and help them run it.
I couldn’t fucking believe it.
It also sounded like he wants me to move in with them, out in the open, not giving a fuck who knows or what anyone thinks.
Which means, I’ll have to finally tell my sister the truth…
How fucking ironic is it that I called out Abel for being a coward, hiding his sexuality, when he’s the one who has the balls to put it all out there like that and I don’t. Not yet.
The truth is, if it were just Abel, I would probably say yes without hesitation.
But then there’s Selina.
I don’t have any problems with her. She’s a nice girl. Hot too. Fun to fuck. Having her encourage Abel and me to not only be together but enjoying watching us like we’re the best thing she’s ever seen is awesome too.
Sharing Abel isn’t an issue. I’m not jealous of her since I know I can give him things she never can in bed.
It’s just, I don’t want to get hurt if or when Abel decides that being with Selina is the more “socially acceptable” thing to do. He may eventually decide to marry her so they can pop out a few kids and kick my ass to the curb.
Then I won’t have one person to miss but two. Again.
And it’s too early for me to put all my trust in both of them.
I don’t have any more time to dwell on it when the doorbell rings Friday afternoon.
Son of a bitch.
Abel and Selina must have decided to come a few hours earlier. I told Abel seven or eight, not three or four. Guess the biker couldn’t wait to get his hands on me.
I yank the front door before checking the peephole, then realize how stupid that was.
Instead of a hot-as-hell man in leather and a sexy woman, I come face-to-face with Hayworth.
“What the fuck are you doing here?” I ask him.
“I thought you were out of town again this weekend,” he says through clenched teeth, sounding pissed that I lied to him.
“Yeah, well, my plans changed. He’s coming here instead,” I say to rub it in his face that I turned him down for someone else. It’s none of his fucking business what I’m doing. I told him I wasn’t going to be around to fuck him, and I’m not. End of discussion.
“You blew me off for some other asshole?” he asks.
“Yeah, I did. This isn’t a relationship or anything else,” I say, gesturing between the two of us. “It’s a transaction – you give me money, and I fuck you. But right now, I don’t want your money bad enough to ever touch you again.”
“Fuck you, you fucking cocktease!”
“Go fuck yourself,” I tell him as I shut the door in his face. Well, I try to close the door.
Hayworth’s enormous mitt shoots out and stops it, though, pushing the door backward along with me.
“Get the fuck out of my apartment!” I shout at him.
“I will, just as soon as I get what I came for!”
“That’s not going to happen,” I tell him.
His fist swings toward my face, but I jump backward to avoid it. It’s followed by another and another as he advances on me until my back hits the living room wall. I duck to avoid the punch to my face, but I can’t dodge the one that lands in my gut, doubling me over.
Chapter Thirty-Six
Abel
“Thanks for stopping. I know you’re in a hurry,” Selina says with a grin when I hand her helmet back to her outside the rest stop.
“Not so big of a hurry that you need to have your bladder burst,” I tell her. “Besides, I needed to stretch my legs, and it’s early. It’s only…” I open my saddlebag to get out my phone and check the time. Instead, I see five missed calls from Cory and three voicemails.
“Shit.” He’s canceling. Why else would he be calling so many damn times in a row?
“What?” Selina asks.
“Cory’s been trying to reach me,” I say as I press the button to play the first voicemail. “Probably canceling on us…”
“Abel, this is Kenny, Cory’s roommate,” the frantic voice on the recording begins. “Can you come down here? Cory’s a mess. Call me back on his phone when you get this. Okay? Ah, thanks.”
“Cory’s a mess?” I repeat.
“Huh?” Selina asks, but I hold up my finger as I go on to play the next message. She leans closer to listen.
“Hey, it’s Kenny again. Cory said you’re on your way down. How much longer before you get here? He needs to go to the emergency room, and I can’t carry him to the car alone. Call us back soon, man!”
“Did he say Cory needs to go to the emergency room?” Selina asks, and I nod as my stomach clenches in worry. I want to hop on the bike and haul ass over there as fast as possible, but I still have one more message to listen to.
“Dude, Cory’s coughing up blood! He’s fucked-up bad. I’m calling an ambulance. Meet us at the hospital in Smithfield if you’re still coming. If you’re not coming, then, well, you’re a dick because he’s really messed up.”
“Fuck,” I mutter as I toss the phone back in the saddlebag and close it. “Let’s go.”
As soon as I’m straddling the bike, Selina climbs up behind me. “Cory’s in the hospital?”
“That’s what he said.”
“Jeez. I wonder what happened?”
“We’re going to find the fuck out,” I tell her before I crank the bike and take off.
Selina
Cory and his roommate, who brought him in the ambulance, apparently told the doctors that Cory was in a car wreck.
But Abel and I both know that’s a big, fat lie.
The guy looks awful, though, like he was thrown from a car and run over by it.
Abel and I barely get a moment to see him lying in the hospital bed, unconscious with cords coming out of every direction and machines beeping, before a doctor comes in and asks us to leave so he can put a chest tube in to drain the fluid from his lungs.
Abel’s been pacing back and forth in the hallway ever since. If he had long hair, he would’ve pulled it out by now. “God, Selina, seeing him so fucked-up, it’s tearing me up,” Abel finally says when his feet come to a stop in front of me.
I take his hand, intertwining our fingers. “I know. It doesn’t make sense. Why would someone hurt him so badly?”
“I know exactly who probably did this.”
“You do? Who?”
“One of his fuck buddies. And it’s all my fault!”
“Abel, that doesn’t make sense. How could you have anything to do with Cory getting hurt?”
“Because I told him I didn’t want him with anyone else. That had to be what happened – he said no, and the asshole got angry and went off on him. Just wait until I find that fucker!”
Abel starts to pull away, so I drop his hand to grab the sides of his cut to get his attention. “The last thing Cory needs is for you to get your ass thrown in jail for beating up some college kid, okay? We don’t even know who it is, so try and keep your cool. Please?”
He just stares at me with rage nearly overflowing from his army green eyes. Finally, he nods in agreement, but it doesn’t make me feel very confident that he won’t seek revenge.
The Abel before me may look vulnerable, but I know the Savage King in him is simmering right below the surface, ready to bust out like it did the night we met.
“Why were you fighting with Cory after the wedding?” I ask him since we’ve never talked about it since.
“I don’t know.” He sighs heavily. “I was drunk off my ass, and he was…he called me out on all the things I had been hiding from my entire life, since I was sixteen and was accidentally outed.”
“You were?”
“Yeah. And the beating Cory got was about as bad as mine. Except, nobody came to see me in the hospital.”
“What about your parents?”
“Fuck no.”
/>
“Why not? You were their son!” I exclaim.
“My father was a preacher. My mother was one of his sheep. When I came home…they said they would rather I be dead than gay.”
“Jesus,” I whisper in disbelief.
Abel chuckles. “They said some shit about him not approving of it too, that God wouldn’t ever forgive me for that particular sin.”
“That’s ridiculous. But you didn’t know that at the time…”
“I was just a lost kid. I didn’t have anywhere to go. The only thing I owned worth a shit was my Harley, and I refused to give it up. Good thing too, because it took me from biker bar to biker bar until a mechanic named Mike took pity on me. He gave me a job in his bike shop, even though I didn’t have much experience or a high school diploma. A few years later, I met up with some of the original Savage Kings at a rally. The rest is history.”
“And Cory was the first man you’ve…cared about?”
“Yes.” He glances back toward his room. “He was also the first person who saw through my bullshit. That’s why I tried to fight him that night. Because I hated that everything he said was true, no matter how much I wished it wasn’t. Now…now I realize I was no better than the asshole who put him in that damn hospital bed!”
“You were drunk, Abel. I was there, remember?” I tell him. “And I’m not sure if you ever hit Cory. Mostly you were swinging and missing.”
He starts to grin at that. “You’re probably right. He could’ve hit me back, but he didn’t.”
“No, he didn’t. Cory cares about you, Abel. And if you feel the same, then you need to calm down before you do something you’ll regret.”
Chapter Thirty-Seven
Abel
I sit in the hard plastic chair next to the hospital bed, watching Cory sleep in silence while Selina ran downstairs to get us both some coffee. I’ve been trying not to breathe too much in case I disturb him while at the same time wishing a marching band would come rolling down the hallway so he would wake up and I could talk to him.