Tainted Romance
Carter Steele
Contents
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1. Brock
2. Heather
3. Brock
4. Heather
5. Brock
6. Heather
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Savage Redemption
“My life was all about revenge until I met her.”
I want them destroyed.
The Anarchists killed my father, haunt me and my brother, and seek to destroy my club, the Savage Kings.
For years, I have stopped at nothing to annihilate them.
But for years, I also never forgot her.
She was everything to me.
She brought joy to my life.
And I had to leave her without explanation.
But a chance encounter has brought her back to me.
And now, everything has changed.
My life is now all about having her—and nothing can stop me.
* * *
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1
Brock
When I woke up the next morning, it was a new day with the same old problems.
After I confessed that things weren’t done with our rivals, the Anarchists of Death, Heather had pushed me for further detail. She wanted to know what I meant and why I had said it. I didn’t say this out loud, but I had made a mistake.
I had let her in on club business that was supposed to remain club business.
For one night, I could push it away. I kissed her and distracted her with some playful tickling, but I never really fell asleep that night. I suspected Heather did not either. Both of us knew the gig was up.
I headed into her kitchen as soon as I woke up. A part of me wanted to leave. I would leave a sweet note for Heather, telling her I looked forward to seeing her again, and in the process avoid having to explain what was going on.
But after the way we ended a decade ago, with me suddenly ghosting her upon realizing her connections—connections she didn’t even know she had—I figured that if I wanted her for more than just a quick round of sex, I owed it to her to stick around a little longer.
Unfortunately, as soon as Heather emerged from her bedroom in gym shorts and a gray Los Angeles Dodgers t-shirt, I knew immediately I wasn’t getting away from the conversation last night.
“Hi,” she said softly.
“Hi,” I said back.
She looked so fucking cute right there. Her hair partially covered her face. Her long, slender legs seemed to go on forever. I wanted to pick her up, take her to the couch, and just hold her until she was ready to tackle the day. I wanted to be her cocoon that she would evolve into a woman ready for her day in.
Seemingly in line with my fantasy for the moment, she came over, sat on my lap, and put her arms around my neck. She kissed me softly on the neck and buried her head into my shoulder. I ran my hand up and down her back, gently scratching her. It, too, was reminiscent of how we worked ten years ago—we’d go out looking like the prom king and queen of Romara, and then, once alone, I held and comforted her like she was a princess.
“Are you going to tell me about what happened last night?”
And just like that, the cocoon had shattered. I was no longer holding an emerging butterfly in my lap, but a rose comprised of many thorns. And those thorns were getting sharper and more numerous by the second.
“It’s club business, Heather,” I said, kissing her on the cheek. “It’s not anything you have to worry about.”
“I don’t have to, but I do. I care about you, Brock. And if I care about you, I care about the club.”
I kissed her again on the forehead and took a deep breath through my nostrils. Please do not let this morning start like this. Please just let it go, Heather.
“I understand and I appreciate that you have interest in what I do, babe,” I said. “But everyone in that club has a vow to keep things a secret. We don’t let club business spill out into the public—”
“Brock, the explosion made the news.”
I bit my lip. There was no defense for that.
“I’ll bet if I look up the local news from the last few days, I’ll find plenty of articles about that.”
“Please don’t.”
But it was too late. She already had her phone in her far hand, and she was looking through the locals news stations. Her eyes went wide when she saw what she didn’t know before.
“Gunshots heard in East Romara, MCs suspected?” she said, reading the headline as a question.
“Just because things happen doesn’t mean that I want them to happen,” I said.
I was now at the point where I was having to consciously subdue my voice. I really did not want our first morning after as adults to devolve into a conversation about what I did for a living.
“What I told you at Porter Ridge was true. I’m just a simple man, Heather. I want to fix cars, ride my bike, and hang with my brothers. I’m not as smart or determined or sweet as you. I could never be.”
“And I don’t want you to be, but what I want you to be is safe!”
I bit my lip. I was also trying to be calm for the sake of setting the example for Heather, but it didn’t seem to have much of an effect on Heather, whose voice rose with every sentence.
“The past few days… I don’t know what’s going on, Brock. I go to bed Wednesday night thinking that I’m just going to have a normal Thursday. Then, by Thursday afternoon, I’m almost a second away from kissing my high school sweetheart. By Saturday night, I’m having sex with my high school sweetheart. It’s been wonderful and I’m so glad I did it.”
Oh, shit. Here comes the “but.”
“But I don’t know anything about the new you, other than you’re hotter and more refined than you once were. Which is great, but that tells me nothing about the Savage Kings. If left up to me, I’m just going by the rumors from the teachers, which say that you’re just a gang.”
“We are not a gang!” I snapped.
Few things could instantly get me angry. Being called a gang was one of them.
“Sorry. But we are a club, not a gang. You want to know what we do? We look out for the town and the people we care about.”
“But to what extent, Brock?” she said. “Violence doesn’t just keep a town safe. It encourages others to rise up and challenge you. Trust me, I studied this at UCLA. It’s why Los Angeles is so riddled with gang violence.”
She was getting academic on me. I couldn’t win such a conversation.
“Brock, please, just tell me. What was the text about last night?”
“Why? So you can stress about it? Do you really want to know? Do you really want to know when we go on runs? Do you really want to know how many AK-47s we have? Do you? Do you?”
I slid away from Heather and put my head in my hands. How could things have unraveled so quickly and so poorly like this? Why did something seemingly so wonderful have to suddenly turn so ugly?
“I’m sorry, Heather, but there’s a reason we keep our loved ones in the dark. Most people can’t handle what we do. They love or hate the motorcycles, they love or hate us, but they never understand what we go through to help them. If they did, they’d either treat us as gods or fear us so much they’d run us out. We don’t want either. I’m sorry, but club business is club business.”
Heather ran her hands through her unkempt hair and let out a long sigh.
“This is just like ten years ago.”
Oh, God, please don’t say that.
“It just feels like… there’s so much going on a
nd I don’t know anything. I never know anything.”
I bit my lip, raised my palms up, and let them fall. What was I supposed to say that didn’t betray club interests?
Nothing. There was nothing I could say.
“I’m going to go,” I said. “I would love to see you again.”
Heather didn’t respond to that. I leaned down and kissed her. She accepted the kiss, but she did so without a great deal of enthusiasm.
“Look, just… I know it’s frustrating, but know there are no secrets between us otherwise. I’ll always tell you how I feel about you. I know it’s weird and different, but I promise we can still be something great. Just think of me as an FBI agent.”
Though Heather nodded, she never looked me in the eye. She was thinking about things without really listening to me. She was in a different world. Anything I really said was just in one ear and out the other.
“OK, Heather,” I said. “Have a great Sunday. Bye.”
Am I saying goodbye for now, or forever?
2
Heather
I didn’t text Brock at all that Sunday.
I didn’t either on Monday.
Brock finally sent a message that I woke up to on Tuesday, one that simply said “Hope you’re doing well. Let’s catch up soon” with a kiss emoji. I responded back with a smiley emoji, but that was only because I couldn’t bear the thought of not responding at all. I still liked Brock.
But I hated what this meant.
Brock’s stonewalling about his work meant that he was never going to change. He was still the guy who, for 98 percent of a relationship, could be sweet, playful, and encouraging, and then suddenly go silent and mute for the other two percent, leaving me to flail in the wind and not know what was going on. Brock had said to treat him like an FBI agent, but he was no government official; he was a vigilante, an outlaw.
Jess had suggested looking up his arrest record. I had refused to do that, but it had nothing to do with privacy. I just didn’t want to know what kind of man Brock actually was. If I had to discover the truth for myself without Brock telling me, then I knew there would be no chance of us ever lasting.
I spent a great deal of time trying to extrapolate things to the future. Was Brock being distant and cold in regards to the Savage Kings because we were so new in the rekindling of our relationship? Or was he always going to be like that?
The answer, unfortunately, was painfully apparent. Brock hadn’t ghosted me after two months of dating, he’d done so after two years. The only thing that I had ever been able to figure out was that maybe it was connected to the death of his father, but that was conjecture; I only knew that his father’s death had made him distant in the last few weeks of our relationship, albeit not to a ghosting level.
He seemed past the death of his father now, but what if his brother died? What if a close friend died? How would I know?
This was why, I realized, I should never have fallen so quickly for Brock. I should have waited at least a few weeks to have sex with him. It was so much harder to be detached and rational as soon as he had gone inside of me.
Why was I so stupid? Why had I made such an awful mistake?
And why was I suddenly so afraid to cut it off?
That was the only logical conclusion. To end it before Brock inevitably hurt me. To be the one to own up to the end of the relationship and not to disappear off the face of the map.
But…
It got to Thursday afternoon. Things hadn’t changed since Tuesday night. If anything, the certainty I had about ending it with Brock had only increased in that time. He hadn’t told me anything that I didn’t already know, and aside from one brief flurry of flirtatious texts Wednesday night, nothing happened. The train of texts came to an end, anyways, when I fell asleep. I’ll admit it got me aroused, but not aroused enough to get Brock to come over.
Well, I did want Brock to come over, but I kept enough of my head to make sure I didn’t do that.
As I sat at my teacher’s desk, the room emptied of students, leaving just me, I pulled out my phone. I knew what I had to do.
“Brock,” I began writing. “I appreciate everything that happened last weekend. It was wonderful and it was just like old times. But I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to get back together. The same issues that broke us apart last time are just going to continue. I hope we can still be friends.”
I stared at that message for what seemed like eons. I couldn’t bring myself to hit Send. Surely, in some way, Brock would start to tell me more, right? At some point, Brock would tell me what was going on with the club, right?
When? When it’s been three months? Three years? Three decades? Never?
Maybe he’s changed as an adult. You were both teenagers back then. Maybe…
Stop it, Heather. Just send the damn message.
I hit the blue arrow to send the message before I could overthink it.
And just like that, I’d cut off a potential reunion at the knees before it could grow roots once more.
Immediately—and I mean that literally—Brock called me. I hit the lock button to silence the ringtone, but I still stared at my phone until it went to voicemail. But as soon as it did that, after just a couple of seconds, the phone started ringing again.
Again, I ignored it.
I put my phone in my purse and headed to my car, ignoring the constant, unending vibrations from the phone. I bit my lip as I tried not to show personal frustration while still at my job. I tried like hell not to cry.
Why? There’s nothing to cry about. You made a rational choice.
A choice that pushes away the one guy that truly made you feel like a queen and wonderful. A choice that may not have been the right choice. A choice…
I threw my purse with some disgust into the passenger’s seat. The goddamn phone was still ringing. Brock really didn’t get the hint, did he?
I got all the way home before I decided to see just all what had happened. I had eight missed calls from Brock. I had six texts from him.
“Just like that? Call me.”
“Babe, call me please.”
“I think this is something we can figure out. Let’s not jump to conclusions, OK?”
“Please call me.”
“Heather.”
“Is this how it’s going to end? With a text?”
I wanted to respond to him. It felt like the fair and right thing to do.
But fair and right wasn’t much good when I knew Brock would charm and persuade his way right back into my good graces. We’d be naked even more quickly than we had this past weekend, and this whole process would start all over again. Sometimes, the right choice was the hardest one.
Or maybe that’s just a sign that you made the wrong one…
3
Brock
I lost.
I couldn’t fucking believe it.
Just like that? After one bad fight, Heather had broken up with me? And for what, because I wouldn’t tell her what the club business of the Savage Kings was?
This was some bullshit. The rest of that afternoon, I read the message multiple times.
“Brock, I appreciate everything that happened last weekend. It was wonderful and it was just like old times. But I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to get back together. The same issues that broke us apart last time are just going to continue. I hope we can still be friends.”
Still be friends. The same issues that broke us apart are just going to continue. Bullshit.
If we stayed friends, we were going to be the most sexually active and romantic friendship that humanity had ever seen. As for the issues that broke us apart… that was nonsense. The issue that had split us apart… well, that issue was still out there, still doing work with the Anarchists of Death. But Heather wasn’t an easily manipulated and influenced 18-year-old. She wasn’t a kid who needed help paying her tuition or rent.
She was a woman. A strong woman.
She didn’t need a man in her
life, especially a man who worked for our rivals.
But as soon as I told her that, as soon as she learned the truth about her uncle and his connection to me, then we’d really be done forever.
I guess that if we had gotten serious, it was bound to come up sooner or later. It might have taken years and years of awkward conversations and “missed family events” to realize, but still… she’d find the truth eventually. And how would she react then?
Well, if we stuck it out, maybe we’d know.
But instead, we were doing this bullshit.
* * *
“Y’all ain’t possibly gonna believe that the Anarchists are just sittin’ on their asses,” Parker sad. “Just cuz they ain’t strike at us yet ain’t mean that we’re off the hook.”
“For the last goddamn time, Parker, no one is suggesting that we’re off the hook,” I said, running my hands through my hair.
“Read the text one more time, would you?” Landon said, referencing the one I’d gotten from an anonymous number.
I nodded, stepped outside the door to the basket of cell phones that we had, grabbed mine, and pulled up the message.
“It says ‘We’re just getting started with you. You think you’re safe, but you’re not. And neither are your loved ones.’ That was sent last Saturday night.”
Everyone knew about that message within minutes of me receiving it, but this was the first time we had discussed it in a group setting. Everyone had gone to the effort of giving their girlfriends or wives a pistol and advising them to stay alert, and everyone knew to keep an eye out for suspicious vehicles and arrivals to the repair shop. But knowledge only went so far—sometimes, concerns just had to be aired out like so.
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