Jaxson (Kinsmen MC Book 1)

by Hazel Parker

  “You should go.” He frowns.

  This time he does let my fingers go, and I am still frozen in place. His scowl only deepens, his jaw hardening as he swallows and stares me down. My chest heaves with the anger in my breath but he doesn’t move a muscle.

  He wants to watch me go.

  I wonder why I even care. Why it matters. Why I’m still standing here.

  And why he even has any control over me as I turn off and decide to leave.

  3

  JAXSON

  I can’t watch her walk away. If I do, I’ll just run and grab her, have her come back. When I finish racking my brain trying to explain it, I walk away before I even see her turn around, hoping she took my word and left.

  Maybe I could have been nicer about it, maybe I should have just left it alone to begin with. But my conscience and the part of me that can’t be held back, didn’t know how else to make myself feel better. I know what kind of women come in here, what kind of women are fit to become old ladies and can live this kind of life. She isn’t one of them.

  Her kind brown eyes should stay kind. Her sweet and innocent aura should stay innocent. This kind of life hardens people. Even Dad said, that as warm and loving Mom is now, it used to be even more when they first met. I almost can’t believe it, but I don’t want to watch it happen either. I know that if it isn’t me, it might be someone else out there. But I saw how she looked back at me.

  I saw how she lost herself in my eyes, even if for only a moment. When I touched her, and her pliable body reacted to mine so easily. I still feel her softness, can still smell her lilac scent and replay her biting her bottom lip. I don’t even know what it is about her. She is very pretty, but I’ve seen prettier women. I haven’t heard more than a hundred words from her. I don’t know anything about her.

  I know that I want to, and I know that I can’t.

  “Prospect,” I deepen my voice, adding a strain to it that I only use when I have to be in a place of authority.

  He turns around, wearing a leather jacket without our cut. He’s young but I don’t know his exact age, sometimes he says stuff and I think he is older than me. Blond hair and blue eyes give him this beach look, but he knows how to ride a motorcycle. As a career, he’s a city planner. So I can’t imagine why he would want to do this. I haven’t really asked.

  “Yeah.” He answers, piking up. I nod for him to follow me and he puts his drink down immediately.

  I find the other one by a table in the back. Talking to a group of ladies, and I immediately know why he wants to do this. He’s never had a real job, I know that for sure. At first he worked the bar here but he wasn’t very good at it, kept flirting and giving free drinks away. Between the two of them, I would rather keep the city planner, so I am. Matthew is taking care of the other three, narrowing it down to two. That way we can keep their fees around for a bit longer before we really have to worry about the costs adding up.

  Dad never did too much of the ‘criminal’ side of the club. Others had their gun runs or drugs, even tax evasion or credit card fraud. We honestly held protection for some town businesses and got paid that way. But after Dad died, some decided they didn’t need us anymore or that we wouldn’t do the job well. Dad’s vice president when he was alive, Burns, started running guns third party. He had guys in on it, they never directly did it but would do more of an escort service, making sure it went smoothly. Then they outright ran them, just for the cash. I know guys that still do it, I just choose to ignore it.

  I’m not ready to admit its why the lights are even still on in this place. And why no one else has left the club. Still, I want Burns out of here. He’s old fashioned and is seconds from starting an anarchy in here. Matthew can be my VP. It was hard enough getting president after Dad passed, luckily I have the guys in my corner. There are thirty of us, give or take a few ten at a time.

  Some live here, others in the big city and come down for meet ups. Prospects come in and out of everywhere.

  “We thought you’d be a good fit for the club. But there’s a bit longer to go. You know, the usual prospect time.” I circle around the wooden table.

  My first prospect, I call him Kev, stares at me with a blank look. Like he doesn’t get what I’m saying. I sigh under my breath and stare at the cracked door where the other prospect, Al, waits.

  “Yeah.” Kev finally says.

  “Okay. Good.” I adjust my jacket on my shoulders, I’ve never figured out why I’m so awkward when I talk to people. Especially in the club, because I know I have to act like a president, or whatever—but I also don’t want the guys to think I’m unreasonable or a prick.

  Everyone liked Dad. They would bend over backwards for him. I don’t really get that from them now, and I don’t know if I will.

  “The other guy doesn’t know he’s out. So don’t say anything on the way out.”

  For some reason, that makes him pike up more than he was before. He smirks and laughs once under his breath, “got it.”

  He even has a skip to his step when he leaves that he didn’t have before. I’m just about to call the next guy in before I get a weird feeling. I should have known he wouldn’t keep his mouth shut, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. I just hope it doesn’t escalate too far. And at least this way, I don’t have to break the news to Al myself.

  It takes me a minute to figure out what I want to do. If I had it my way, we’d have no prospects at all. But I know we need the money.

  And I know the club needs to grow too. I’m not opposed to it, really. It’s just… a hard fucking time for me.

  “Jax, we’ve got a problem out here.” Nix, one of my club guys, barges in the room with a flustered look. He’s a smaller guy, good for the numbers and shit. He’s the one that always tells me when we’re about to run out of money. And he has been for a while now.

  “What the fuck?” I make my way out, and he semi explains on the way, but it was the two prospects. Well now neither of them are prospects, for tearing up my bar.

  I figure I’m too old to tear apart fights at the bar, I get my biggest guys to do it.

  I walk out to Al and Kev by the bar, I can tell who threw the first punch, Kev is laid out and Al is still going at him. It looks like an ordinary fight of wills before I notice a familiar head of hair by the bar. I’m pissed about the fight and then more pissed that Isabelle didn’t fucking leave like I told her to.

  “Hey!” I take my anger out on Al, grab him by the hard shoulder and land one punch on his jaw that lays him out on the ground.

  “Get the fuck out of my bar and never come back.” I snap. I nod at my guys and they haul them off the ground and out of the bar.

  Once they do, it clears the space and gives me a clear view of Isabell. Shaken up doesn’t even explain it well. The way her shoulders rise up into her neck, her cheeks flushed and not the way they were when we were talking earlier. I see her chewing the hell out of her bottom lip, her chest rising and falling with her rapid breath. And in a few seconds, her fleeting eyes meet mine. I feel them soften as I look at her, but I have no doubt I look as angry as I feel.

  I don’t even know when I made the decision, before I am crossing the now empty floor and making my way to her.

  “Let’s go.” I grab her by her slender wrist, and she doesn’t resist as I pull her off into the distance and out of the bar.

  We step into the bite of the night air. I release her, and spin around so I’m facing her.

  She is still trying to catch her breath, a slight wheeze when she inhales almost makes me want to hold her instead of tell her to leave.

  “I told you to leave.” I don’t intend for my voice to come out like a bark, but it does. She flinches and has started breathing a little easier now.

  “I—you don’t get to tell me what to do.” She says. Her voice barely comes out as more than a whisper. She tried to make herself sound serious, and I know that. But it didn’t come out that way. She seems disappointed in that as she shrugs her
shoulders.

  Her arms come around herself, hugging herself from the cold.

  “I told you it was dangerous. Now look what happened. You were inches away from a fist fight.” I step closer to her, millimeters away from her, feeling her breath fan across my neck as she exhales.

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Yet you’re shaking like a wet cat on the beach.” I retort. She has nothing to say back to that. I appreciate it.

  She seems like she always has something to say and I don’t have any patience for it.

  “I told you this wasn’t the place for you. Don’t come around here anymore.”

  “You can’t—”

  “Did you come here alone? Do you have a ride back home?” I can’t carry on this conversation any longer. Pretend like I don’t blindly care about her. Pretend like I’m not lost in her gorgeous brown eyes right now.

  They’re like chestnuts. Or globes of something pretty I’ve never even seen before, because I can’t even describe it.

  Nothing about her is anything I’ve ever seen before.

  “I came with a friend.” She crosses her arms, brushing against my chest in the process. I ignore the tightness in my chest that I get from it, and the glistening in her eyes, too.

  “Good. Tell her to come outside.”

  She frowns, her brow turning down and the corner of her lips tightening. I can tell she is trying her hardest to hold a glare at me, but instead she fumbles for her phone in her purse. I assume she sends a quick text to her.

  I wait in the pressing silence, still breathing the same air as her until I hear the door swish open.

  “Tonight could have been a lot worse. Just remember that.” I don’t even see her friend. I just make sure the look in her eyes is as serious as it should be, and that she heard me; before I turn on my heel and get the hell away from her as fast as I can.

  4

  ISABELLE

  I hate how I cry out of frustration, because this is in no way making me sad. I wish he hadn’t done that. And I wish I didn’t care, or that I ever even met him.

  “Who the hell was that?” Riley asks me.

  I force myself to turn and look at her, crawling out the confusion that was in my head from before. I feel trapped, recalling the fight over and over.

  One minute, I was by the bar, and staring after Jaxson after he so rudely told me to get out. The next minute, some dude is bragging about being ‘picked’ and another is pissed about it.

  Whatever that means.

  They start throwing punches right in front of me and I’m just frozen on the spot. It wasn’t even from watching the fight. I had just literally never seen one in person before, and I never planned on it.

  Plus, it kind of made Jaxson right. About the club being dangerous. But jeez, he didn’t have to be so mean about it.

  “Let’s go.”

  “What about—”

  “Nothing. Can we just go, please?”

  She doesn’t ask any more questions. Only gives me a sad confused look before we head to the car and leave. I stare at the bar and all the bikes, drifting off into the distance.

  I still feel his hands on me. His breath in my ear. Everything about him that makes me crazy. His voice was so stern, his eyes matching the intensity of them. I have never heard a deeper, sexier, meaner voice in my life. But there he was. Pining me down with cold brown eyes and a smolder I don’t think I will ever forget.

  I just keep imagining him saying I don’t belong there. Telling me to leave. Looking at me like he wanted me but then telling me to go.

  “What happened? Please tell me.”

  Riley pleads with me once we are back in the house.

  “It was nothing. He got all… weird with me.” I take off my shoes and she follows me to the bedroom. I collapse on my bed and she follows suit.

  “He told me to leave. That I shouldn’t come around anymore.”

  “What the fuck. What an asshole.”

  “I know.”

  “I’m sorry I dragged you out.”

  I smile at her. “That’s okay. I just want to go to sleep.”

  She nods and rubs my hand. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  Riley leaves and I’m alone. I change and shower before I head to bed, thinking it will be a nice escape from the shitty night that I had. But all I do is drift back to Jaxson. Back to the way he held me.

  Back to dreaming about him again.

  I WAKE up in an unsurprising cold sweat. Maybe from my heated dream, or the furnace being on too hot last night. I must have done it and forgotten because I was lonely. I do that alone.

  Siting up in my bed, I toss the heavy red comforter off and swing out of bed, standing up to stretch out like I always do. It’s only then that I remember what happened at the club last night. I should not have even gone. It was my greatest mistake of the past few months, for sure.

  Just so some sexy, intimidating biker dude could tell me that I don’t belong at the bar and that I should never come there again. Like he’s the fucking sheriff. I shake my head at the memory and falsely promise myself not to think of it again.

  That only lasts through me doing my normal morning tasks and then he is on my mind as I pour cream in my coffee. Jaxson…whatever his last name is. Probably prick or pompous ass.

  I make it through one hot cup, and am about to pour the second, before Riley comes waltzing in. She looks happy as ever in her work clothes, which is just jeans and a decent tee shirt. With her hair up in a respectably messy bun.

  “Morning.” She says, chipper as I imagined.

  “Hey.”

  “Sheesh, we didn’t drink that much.”

  I smirk a bit, I hadn’t realized my voice sounded so groggy. In fact, I sound like a chain smoker. Maybe it’s the alcohol or lack of sleep.

  “I know.” I sit at the high counter with my second cup of coffee. I need at least two. I often talk about weaning myself off it but that never happens or works.

  “So are you ready to tell me what that guy wanted last night?” she giggles to herself, pouring herself tea for the morning. She’s one of those people.

  “He was no one.”

  “Okay, Jaxson Kinsmen isn’t no one.”

  “Oh is that his name?” I roll my eyes.

  She only laughs in response.

  “What happened? I thought I left you with a nice hot guy to take home. I left to have my fun and then I come back to a bar that’s been ransacked and Jaxson looming over you like a silent protector.”

  “He’s no protector, he’s an asshole…and where the hell did you manage to hook up with someone?” I make a face at her, that she only returns with a giggle.

  “There are rooms in the back or something. It was just some guy I may or may not have lunch with today. He was hot though. They all are.”

  “Yeah well, Jaxson was a prick.”

  “What did he do? Tell me in literally three minutes because I have to go.”

  She stands and gives me a sweet, begging smile, and I do my best to tell her everything. Minus the part about how I think he’s the hottest man I’ve ever seen, and dreamt about riding on the back of his bike.

  Riley leaves for work and I finish my coffee. I tell myself I am tidying up but I am just avoiding the rest of Sunday. The part where I have to review my notes and mentally prepare myself for class and teaching. The education track isn’t the easiest, so I got to avoid that and focus on my classes, with little training to be able to teach basic courses.

  In my daily wallowing, I realize I have never even finished a play before, yet I am in a program for an MFA in it. Of course I am working on one, and have to graduate with it, but it may not even be the one I champion or want to be adapted to screen. I also don’t want it to just be my thesis, a requirement for graduation.

  Last night was supposed to clear my head and let me have one last bit of fun before the new semester started. All it did was stress me out and have me thinking of Jaxson. I could tell myself he really
was just being protective, or maybe even liked me, and that was his way of showing it—but I could never be that vein. I’m not the prettiest girl in the room at any point, I’m not the thinnest, just not the overall best choice. So there is no way I drove him that out of his mind.

  Halfway through my relaxing day on the couch, I realize I can’t avoid Monday any longer. But in all that time I realize I haven’t gotten any basic supplies like pens or paper or pencils. What a good teacher I’ll be.

  It’s my first semester, so maybe I’m just being overdramatic, but I’m off the couch in seconds and dressed to go to the store. I don’t know anyone here, so it doesn’t matter that I’m dressed in faded jeans and a gray wool sweater coming apart at the ends.

  The drive is fast, everything is close in this small town. I’d rather live here than in the city though. It’s quiet. Aside from asshole bikers. Jeez I have got to stop thinking about Jaxson…I even roll my eyes at myself as I drive.

  I find a good park right by the door, skip inside a little too. I’m excited about the semester starting. It’s something to do. And someone will finally teach me how to really write a play. I taught myself, had fun adding lines in high school plays but never acted. And now I’ll get to be in workshop, learning from other writers like me too.

  “Hello, can I help you find anything?” the store associate, who looks like a high school girl, smiles at me warmly. Everyone is surprisingly nice here, or maybe I’m giving her too much credit. It is her job after all.

  “No, thanks.” I smile back.

  My sneakers squeak across the linoleum and I find my way to the school supplies section. I see a mom with her kids, one boy and a girl about a year apart and no older than five. It’s cute, really. I crouch down to look at the notebooks when I hear their voices slowly die down.

  I don’t even look up to see, but I hear the mom hush them and then the patter of their feet. After that, heavy footsteps and a cloud of familiar hardness dashing over me, and I have no choice but to look up and follow it from the ground up.