by Karen Renee
Inciting a Riot
A Riot MC Novel
Copyright © 2018 Karen Renee
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Cover by 100Covers.com
Table of Contents
Acknowledgement
Dedication
Playlist
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Epilogue
Into the Riot Bonus Material
About the Author
Other Books by Karen Renee
Connect with Karen Renee
Acknowledgements
I said it before and I’ll say it again, without my readers none of this would be possible. So, without doubt all of you get my first and foremost thanks! As always, I give a huge thank you to my mother, my wonderful husband, and my son for their constant support. Thank you to my mother-in-law for your boisterous enthusiasm about this book.
I owe so much to Barbara J. Bailey. Early on, I knew something was a ‘wee-bit’ off about this one. The problem was I also knew it had definite potential to be great, and I waited to share that with you for input. Once I did, you were quick and spot-on in figuring out what was amiss with this work. I can’t thank you enough for that. You are a joy to work with, and if you decide moving to full-time editing is for you, I’ll be one of your biggest supporters! Like I said back in April, your knowledge of the written word seems to know no bounds, and I am extremely grateful.
Thank you to author B.J. Bentley. Your recommendations of my work have been most appreciated and very impactful! Though we’ve never met, I feel like we are kindred spirits and I wish you much success!
Last, but not least, thanks to those who did me wrong. It sounds tongue-in-cheek and snarky, but I mean it genuinely. I’d have no inspiration to draw upon for this story without the bad times, which is not to say there isn’t inspiration in the good times, but growth is primarily found in overcoming adversity.
To Cookie –
Not just for encouraging me, but for saying ‘You can do that’ and/or ‘Then DO that.’ Not just once, but EVERY SINGLE TIME it came up in conversation. Your vision of me, and your belief in me is like no other’s. For that, I am and will be eternally grateful.
Inciting a Riot Playlist
LITTLE LION MAN by Mumford & Sons
TAKE IT ALL BACK 2.0 by Judah and the Lion
CUT HERE by The Cure
MISERY by Maroon 5
SOMEDAY by Harry Connick Jr.
YOU SEXY THING by Hot Chocolate
SATISFIED ’N’ TICKLED TOO by Taj Majal
SUN IS SHINING by Bob Marley
MEXICO by James Taylor
24K MAGIC by Bruno Mars
BODY ROCK by Moby
I’M BAD LIKE JESSE JAMES by John Lee Hooker
I WILL WAIT FOR YOU by Mumford & Sons
CHAPTER 1
No, no. Not again! Those were my thoughts as I wandered around one of my favorite places to spend my disposable income.
Those shouldn’t have been my thoughts as I examined the shiny display of Pandora charms while I stood inside the cool, plush interior of Jared, the Galleria of Jewelry in Jacksonville. Yep, the high-quality jewelry store with the ads proclaiming, “He went to Jared’s!” Well, my now-ex-boyfriend, known as Cheater Number Ten going forward, went to Jared’s. That was how I came to see Bradley, Number Ten, with another woman at the engagement counter!
Men suck. They are the worst. It's too damn bad Lady Gaga got it totally right when she sang “I'm born this way,” because I really wanted to turn to women. But, it just didn't appeal. Besides, women were just as capable of cheating as men, and there was nothing to say lesbians didn't find themselves faced with the ultimate betrayal, just as I did right now.
My real issue was the repetitive nature of this shit. My first boyfriend in eleventh grade was the brashest of cheaters, or so I thought at the time. I would learn later that Ben taking me to prom but spending the bulk of the night slow-dancing, which is to say ‘groping’, with Nancy Blackburn was the tamest of cheating scenarios. No less hurtful, but tame.
College was fun, that is, until the cheating happened again. Call me crazy, but twice does not a pattern make.
I graduated from college, and again found myself on the receiving end of a cheater’s deception. Adulting is hard and cheaters are just more gunk gumming up the works of the machine that is life. I’m not shirking any of my own responsibility in this serial-cheating business. After all, I picked ‘em. Well, in the first three instances, I picked ‘em.
The first two, I can forgive myself. I mean, eleventh grade; I was sixteen and stupid. We’re talking ‘stupid’ with a capital ‘S’. And for that matter, sixteen. I hadn’t been kissed. I was so shy, I put the ‘shhh’ in shy. I was kind of pretty, and occasionally boys were brave enough to flirt with me. But these boys had girlfriends, so nothing ever came of their flirting. Or maybe the die was cast from that early time period. See? Stupid. I didn’t even think about the fact that I was flirting with taken boys, so even in a minor way I was helping to perpetuate potential cheating. At sixteen! Gah.
Anyway, I asked a boy to prom. Yep. My mother told me not to do it, but my God, it was March and prom was in May. I wanted to go, so badly. So, I picked Ben from the marching band. Asked if he had a date. He said he did not. He grinned at me, but he did not see my asking him to the prom coming his way. Thinking back on it, I don’t know if he said yes because he was surprised or if he was showing me pity. I was just over the damn moon that my gumption had got me a date. Plus, Ben insisted we go out in the month or so leading up to prom, in order to get to know one another better. It also didn’t hurt that I had proved my overbearing mother completely wrong. Being confident and forward enough to ask a boy to prom was the best decision I had made, and I was walking on air in the days and weeks leading up to prom. That air gave way when I saw Ben and Laura on the dance floor groping each other with their heads closing in for a kiss, and it was a rough landing coming back down to the ground.
I didn’t know what my problem was. Like I said, I’m slightly pretty, not stunning. Hell, if I were stunning, then I would have known what popularity felt like. I figured part of my problem was that I was on the fence. I was nerdy, but I wasn’t full-on smart nerd. I was receptive to everyone. I could hang with nerds, dweebs, the stoner set, and on occasion, jocks and cheerleaders gave me the time of day during classes.
I wasn’t fooling myself, though. I was no Renaissance-man social butterfly, flitting between cliques. The stoners and jocks only tolerated me because I was smart and helpful. By ‘helpful’, I mean, if a jock suddenly wanted to sit next to me in geometry in order to peek at my test, I never said boo. I normally tried to forewarn them that geometry was no more my subject of choice than theirs, but I figured it was their funeral for
choosing to cheat from my test. See? I allowed for cheating on tests. I should have known I’d be physically attracted to nothing but relationship cheaters.
In college, the smart boys I hung with were always friendly and funny. A year, two, sometimes even three would elapse before they would build up the nerve to ask me out. I never wanted to endanger our friendship, and further, none of these guys had the physique I was looking for in a guy. So, I’d let them down gently, and we’d remain friends. However, as guys are prone to do, they eventually found girls who were very receptive to their advances. These girls would meet me, “the friend,” and before I knew it, the guys told me they had to focus on their girls. I mean, I know some chicks believe Nora Ephron’s declaration that men and women cannot be friends without sex entering the equation and those chicks believe it as though it is the Gospel. I just don’t buy it. Yet, these girlfriends of my guy-friends saw me as a threat. That much was clear, and subsequently I found myself without some of my favorite guys. I have to admit, though, because those chicks forced me out of the picture, those same nice and lovable guys likely never cheated. Hmmm.
My stupid spell lasted until I was twenty. That was when I stopped pursuing guys.
Cheater Number Three led me to do things sexually that I never knew about. He was only my second sexual relationship, so it stood to reason that I wouldn’t know my legs could be draped over his biceps while he thrust into my sex. It was awesome. Ultimately, Number Three was like a sexual pre-algebra class that prepared me for sexual advanced algebra with Vamp. I suppose if it hadn’t been for my experiences with Number Three, then I never would have been Vamp’s cup of tea.
Then, there was Cary Sullivan. He was a bad-boy at heart. When I met him, he had recently been discharged from the Marines and was a recruit or prospect for a motorcycle gang. They call it a ‘club’, but semantics are meaningless to me. Cheaters teach you that. “We never ‘said’ we were ‘exclusive’, baby.” Cheaters were vocabulary masters when they were caught, though cheaters almost always called it “being found out” or “discovered,” as if they were rare fossils on an archeological dig.
Once Cary was initiated, he earned the road name ‘Vamp’. Short for ‘Vampire’, I supposed; he never said. Of all the cheaters, Cary hurt the most. Not sure why. Okay, that was not true. I was in denial. Truth was….I fell for Cary. Not Vamp. Cary. That road name happened the same day we ended. It wasn't a fizzle. It wasn't a clean break. It was an epic explosion. Nuclear….and I was still cleaning up the debris littering my heart.
I could always remember Vamp was the fourth cheater, because when I caught him, he was with not one, but two other women. At the same damn time! And one of those sorry sluts had the gall to say, “Ooh. She’s hot. C’mon, chickie, there’s room for more. I know I can make it worth your while, even if Vamp doesn’t.” The other woman, who was sitting astride Vamp, looked at me and hollered, “A foursome. Yeah! Get your clothes off!” Needless to say, I did not make their threesome a foursome. For the next six years, I attempted to get back on the dating bicycle. Each time, it seemed I was thrown off, not by a bump in the road, but by a cheater on my road. Bastards. All of them.
Crazy as it sounds, if I hadn’t found Vamp in the throes of a threesome, I think we might have gone the distance. At least I liked to delude myself that way sometimes. I fell for him hard, and I was pretty sure I never got over it. I may not have learned how to spot a cheater from a glance, but I did learn, early on, that a woman cannot change a man. Vamp wanted variety, and he wanted that variety simultaneously. Fine. He’d just have to do it without me in his life. However, even after six years, I hadn’t come as hard as I did with Vamp, not in any way, shape or form. Not from myself, and definitely not from guys like the bastard Bradley. The sex with Vamp was just that good.
Besides the sex, the only other thing I missed most about Vamp was riding on his bike. Oh, the freedom. And the speed. Yum. I missed that so much that I had looked at trikes at the Adamec Harley-Davidson dealership one Sunday afternoon. I knew I wasn’t brave enough to handle two wheels on asphalt. The first time I saw a trike, I thought Now that’s a machine I could handle. But who was I fooling? I didn’t want to drive a trike, and I damn sure didn’t want to drive a motorcycle. I wanted to ride. I craved sitting behind a warm, broad back clad in a leather jacket or leather cut and hugging on that man’s waist with the wind roaring in my ears and my hair stinging my face as it whipped around me.
I had an admittedly unhealthy addiction to the whole Pandora bracelet fad. It was unhealthy because it was expensive. It was made only slightly less-expensive because Diana worked for Jared’s, which meant, during a good month, I could finagle an employee discount from Di. This made me happier than I could state, but it didn’t make my jewelry craving any healthier. As a single gal, it seemed unhealthy because it was a constant mental reminder that only I could buy my jewelry. No special man would do it for me. No kiddos would beg daddy to take them to the fancy boutique where they could find a bauble to add to mommy’s bangle. Yet, that reminder was also a security blanket. I was self-sufficient. If I were pressed, I’d admit that I was even proud that my baubles, bangles, and beads were all acquired by my own doing. Most of the time I thought of it as a wearable little scrapbook that cataloged my life, but standing inside Jared, The Galleria of Jewelry, I really was feeling my mental instability because of high-end jewelry.
I had been debating on which charm I could add to my current bracelet without ruining it or causing a major clash. Before I noticed Bradley, I was torn between three charms: a little pink pavè strawberry charm; a tropical sea-glass charm with swirls of white, aqua, purple, and green; and a Disney charm that said “Believe.”
Well, seeing another fine-ass example of a damn cheater, my mind was made up. “Believe” it would be. I didn’t care if it violently clashed with the poinsettia charm, the coiled sparkling snake with green eyes, and the vintage silver ‘F’ charm already in place on my open-clasp bracelet. I needed that charm to remind me to always Believe. Not believe in Disney-style fairy-tales of goodness, but in the inherent bad within all men.
But, back to Number Ten, the guy at the diamond counter. I learned a long time ago that, nine times out of ten, trying to do a sister a favor, and inform her about the cheater on her hands, backfired. Just because I had learned the rules didn't mean I still didn't break them, though.
My cousin Diana also agreed with not telling a woman her man was a cheat. Diana managed to get off the cheater merry-go-round when she married her husband, Duane, but she was cheated upon plenty during her high school years and into her twenties, much like me, though neither of us seemed eager to admit to such a thing. In fact, Diana said to me, “Better to let them dig their own grave, and then watch them trip into it face-first.”
I told Di why I wanted the ‘Believe’ charm. Given Di’s disdain for cheating, she had her own ideas for digging a grave which Bradley could trip into face-first. Her impromptu plan against the latest cheater seemed to be not only genius, but flawless.
It was Saturday morning, working toward noon, and customers were streaming in and out, more streaming in than there were streaming out. Even so, Diana had eyes and attention only for me, and I gave her a grin. Diana winked and said, “Talk is cheap, actions speak.” She moved to the end of the Pandora counter and said, “Follow my lead, Cuz.”
Diana left the separate Pandora counter space and authoritatively prowled into the area housing engagement rings, anniversary bands, and anniversary jacket bands. She semi-crouched in order to open a locked drawer located in the middle of the space, and withdrew a small plastic bag with a white piece of paperwork that looked like a restaurant order slip stapled to it.
She straightened herself, tossed her dirty-blonde hair over her shoulder while casting a surreptitious look at Bradley, and then practically threw her voice his way as she said, “Yes, Ms. Ingram, here’s your engagement ring. Newly-sized and everything.”
From the corner of my eye, I
saw Bradley give me a deer-in-the-headlights, but still very pissed-off look. Tee-hee. Before I could thoroughly congratulate myself, I heard an all-too-familiar voice from my past say, “Well, congratulations, Rainey.”
SHIT!
The mention of the name ‘Rainey’ set my blood to boiling. The person saying that name was the ultimate catalyst: Cary Sullivan, or, should I say, Vamp. Little did he know, the moment he became Vamp and engaged in three-way sex was the moment I dropped Lorraine, or Rainey, as he liked to call me. Yeah, ‘Rainey’, short for ‘Lorraine’; every bit of it screamed ‘innocence’ to me. Nothing about me was innocent after Cary became Vamp, and for that matter, I didn’t want to be innocent after Cary became Vamp.
Of all the ways for a genius plan to go wrong, this had to be the worst. Vamp and I had more baggage than the Las Vegas airport and more unresolved issues than both houses of Congress combined. Truly.
I managed to get him and his buddy Cal to the sidewalk outside of Jared’s in record time. Don’t ask me how, because God knows that when Vamp and I were involved there was a snowball’s chance of me corralling him to a place I wanted him to be, but miracles can happen. I had just opened my mouth to explain the matter when the thick double door to the jewelry store swung open fiercely.
Bradley stomped toward me with fire in his beady blue eyes. In an effort to head him off at the pass, I said, “I’m not engaged, but you’re a goddamned cheater! You colossal asshole.”
Bradley had narrowed the gap between us and said, “You’re not engaged? I’m supposed to believe that shit?”
I poked a finger into his chest. “You don’t have to believe jack. No wonder you always had to cut and run from my place around eight-thirty or nine. Early morning meetings and driving in from the beach taking too long, my ass. You left me to go to her place or maybe some other unsuspecting woman’s place.”
A female voice said, “Ohmigod! I’m sloppy seconds?”