by Addison Jane
One step back, and her heel caught the side of a large chunk of wood. Her folder went flying and with barely enough room to walk in that fucking skirt, she struggled to find her feet, and soon her ass was landing in a pile of fucking wood shavings as I watched on with a smirk.
“Best you go find some other fucking bad boy to make you feel better about your life because you ain’t gonna fucking get it on my dick.”
Her shriek lit up the whole construction site and had all the boys poking their heads around corners and out windows, smirking at this prim and proper fucking woman who was just sitting in the damn dirt.
“Jesus Christ,” Drake cursed as he came stomping out from inside the hotel shaking his head.
Oh, he was here. Must have been so caught up in my work that I didn’t see him arrive.
Despite the damn temperature, he was in his usual attire. A full suit, long sleeves, and a fancy pair of cufflinks to keep them tight and secure. All because when he was on business, he chose to hide everything about him that linked him to the club. Including his two full sleeves of tattoos.
“Kara,” he stated, holding his hand out to her while I simply leaned my hip against my work table and folded my arms across my chest. She took it, even though her dark glare was still focused on me like she was trying to light me on fire with her fucking eyes. “I apolo—”
She held her hand up, cutting him off before she struggled to get to her feet. “Drake, I know my dad overlooked the fact that you had—”
“Ding, ding, ding,” I called. “I believe that was option number three.”
I’d called it.
She’d been handed everything and expected things—or I guess, men—to just fall at her fucking prim and proper feet.
Her eyes flicked to me and her lip curled in disgust like she hadn’t just been pleading with me to fuck her. “The fact that you had club members working here. But I’m telling you now, you need to make better business decisions because not everyone is willing to work with criminals.”
I snorted out a loud and obnoxious laugh. If she hadn’t already screwed up her chance at working with us, she fucked her chance at working with any construction company in fucking Nevada.
Drake rolled his head to the side. “I’m sorry, I can’t believe I didn’t introduce you to my little brother, Ripley.” He turned his body and held out his hand. I lifted my hand and waved my fingers at her, adding a wink just because I was a fucking petty asshole. When she didn’t respond, Drake cleared his throat. “You can get the fuck out now.”
If there was one thing my brother didn’t take kindly to, it was people calling the club—his family—a bunch of fucking crims. While most of us didn’t give a flying fuck about what people thought of us, Drake was particularly protective of the club.
Yes, he was a member, and he was proud as hell of that fact. But he also was the CEO of the company the club owned, which meant he often had to play a different role, and he made damn sure that people knew if they wanted to work with us, they would respect us just like any other firm in the country.
Bikers or not.
Kara, the interior designer, didn’t even bother to argue. She turned on her pointy damn witch heels and stumbled back across the construction site, mumbling to herself.
“When did you get in?”
Drake rolled his eyes. “Few hours ago. You know I’m gonna have to find a new interior designer, right?”
I turned back to my work. “You can thank me later when she’s not coming to you pregnant in a month claiming the baby is yours, and trying to take you for half your shit because her daddy is cutting her off.”
I heard him sigh as he walked away. “You’re more fucking dramatic than a woman, you know.”
“You’ll thank me!”
DAKOTA
“Honest to God, Dakota,” Meyah cursed as she was almost buried waist deep in one of my kitchen cupboards. “If you don’t have any coffee in here, I’m gonna lose my shit.”
I snorted at the utterly pathetic threat and sipped at my tea. “You should know better than to come around here expecting to find caffeine.”
It was true. I must have been the only college student in history who wasn’t addicted to coffee. Honestly, I didn’t understand how people enjoyed the taste. It was bitter and nasty, but the main reason I didn’t drink it was because I already had issues sleeping at night.
During high school, my parents, at one point, took me to several doctors and even a hypnotherapist or two, just to try and figure out what was wrong with me. Turned out, it was probably something in my genetics that made me this way, and it wasn’t actually as big a problem as everyone was making out.
Which I could have told them in the first place if they’d just asked me.
I didn’t mind being a night owl.
“If I’m going to get this assignment done tonight, I need coffee,” Meyah’s mumbled voice whined from inside the cupboard. “We both know that you have some, so just give it up already and stop making me work for it.”
“Never,” I exclaimed, following it with a cackle of evil laughter.
There was a reason Meyah was my best friend. Because she knew me so well. We were the kind of friends who would push the other into deep puddles and then point and laugh before helping them out.
“You could just go home,” I added, knowing exactly why she was here, but just twisting the knife a little to the left.
“I told you, the boys are having a party, and not only is this paper due tomorrow at noon, but some of the girls they’ve been bringing back to the clubhouse are less than pleasant.” I practically heard her shudder.
Meyah’s boyfriend, Hamlet, was a biker.
Not just a biker.
A tattooed, muscular, rough around the edges, leather and patch wearing biker. Who also happened to be the Vice President of the local chapter of a well-known motorcycle club—the Brothers by Blood MC.
Shake was his road name, it’s what most people called him, but I refused. To me he’d always been Hamlet or Ham. It was a part of the relationship we had. He made fun of how short I was, and I gave him shit about how his name was a lunch meat.
Meyah’s uncle was a part of the club in Alabama where the both of them had come from.
Her father was also the president of a notorious outlaw club up in Las Vegas called The Exiled Eight. So leather and asphalt practically ran in her veins. Not that you’d guess because she was such a sweetheart.
I placed my mug down on the table and folded my arms across my chest. “So tell them to take a hike.” While I loved to torment her every opportunity I could, I was also extremely protective of her. Not just because I loved her, but because of the shit we’d been through together and the times she’d had my back.
“Ah huh!” she called, the celebration followed by a bang that made me cringe. I held in my laughter as she slowly crawled out of the depths of my cupboard holding a container of instant coffee and rubbing her head. “I am a lot of things, Dakota, but a cockblocker is not one of them.”
She made quick work making herself a coffee. I was surprised she didn’t just take a spoon to it and eat the grinds straight from the container. “Those boys love you, Meyah. If you tell them the bitch they’re with is being a pain in your ass, they are gonna toss her out on her ass without a second thought.”
It was true. And it wasn’t just because her man, Hamlet was the Vice President.
She’d earned all of their respect and bought a lot of business to the club. With her Dad being the president of another MC, and The Brothers by Blood being the new kids in town, the clubs had come together pretty quickly to make the most of the situation. They already co-owned the biggest nightclub in town and were right now looking at opening another to fill the demand.
“Thank you, Lord,” Meyah murmured as she finally took her caffeine hit and joined me at the tiny kitchen table where we were studying. “I don’t even care that this tastes like absolute shit, it’ll do the job it’s made to do.”
I
took another drink of my tea and raised my eyebrow. “You have major psychological problems. You do realize this, don’t you?”
Her hand shot up, her palm just a couple of inches from my face. “I need you to shut up now while I get in the zone.”
She was right, we both had assignments to write. They were for the same class, but where Meyah was already halfway through hers, I was just about to start. That was how I was wired—I guess you could say that I worked better under pressure. And an empty page less than twenty-four hours before a deadline was about as pressure-filled as it could get.
We were three cups of tea, two mugs of nasty coffee and three too many pieces of chocolate mud cake deep in our assignments when Meyah’s phone began to vibrate across the table. I shuddered at the noise and screwed up my nose.
Meyah looked down at it, her face tightening. She picked it up and turned it over before turning back to her computer screen like nothing had happened.
I knew who it was instantly.
She was a shitty actress.
Her eyes focused intensely on her laptop screen like her phone wasn’t buzzing across the surface of the table in front of her.
I rolled my eyes. “Will you just answer it?”
She looked up again and shrugged. “Answer what?”
“Your obnoxious brother’s phone call,” I told her, looking pointedly at the offending object. “We both know when he wants something, he’s a persistent bastard, so you may as well just answer it now.”
The phone stopped buzzing, and her shoulders slumped in release.
I knew Ripley though. “Three, two, one…”
It lit up again, vibrating across the table, making a god-awful noise. Like some kind of dying cow imitation.
I rolled my eyes again, this time for dramatic effect. “Jesus Christ,” I groaned, snatching it off the table and flicking my thumb across the phone to answer the call. Meyah’s mouth dropped open as I held it to my ear and grinned. “Satan’s Whorehouse. You got the dough, we got the hoe. How may I help you today?”
Unfortunately for me, Ripley was almost as quick on his wit as I was, and he didn’t miss a beat. “Maybe you can help me find this one girl,” he started, his voice rough like sandpaper. The way it came through the line instantly made me regret answering the phone and had me suddenly wishing I was alone. In my room. With my favorite toy. Goddamn this sexy asshole.
“This girl, she’s short. She’s stout. And she has this spout that just spews fucking words out all over the damn place like—”
“I think you’re looking for the little teapot,” I clipped, firing a sharp look at Meyah who frowned in confusion. “Your brother just called me fat.”
“Oh God,” Meyah groaned, shaking her head.
I swear to God if I’d put the phone up to my eye in that moment and looked down the line I would have been able to see the smirk on Ripley’s face. He knew he’d got me this time.
“I said stout,” he argued.
“Same thing.”
“And what made you instantly think I was speaking about you? Just because I said she was short?” I wanted to punch him in his stupid, arrogant face. “Plenty of things are short, Dakota. Sleeves can be short. Relationships can be short. Grass can be short.”
“I’m about to cut your life really short if you don’t stop saying short,” I threatened, feeling my blood pressure start to rise.
His amused laughter only forced it higher. “Children are short.”
“But I bet you wouldn’t call them fat.”
“Stout.”
“I hope you step on a Lego.”
“I really enjoy these chats of ours.”
“Drink bleach,” I chirped happily before finally pulling the cell away from my ear and handing it to Meyah.
She pinched the bridge of her nose and squeezed her eyes shut as she held it to her ear. “Do you have to push her buttons like that?” she asked through the phone as she slid her chair back from the table and made a quick exit out of the kitchen. It wouldn’t matter, though. My apartment was so small you could basically spit from one side to the other.
I wanted to strangle Ripley at the best of times.
We didn’t speak often.
The times we did, it often consisted of me asking him loudly in the middle of a group of women how his rash was clearing up and whether the cream helped. Or him constantly asking me to hand him things from shelves or places he knows I wouldn’t be able to reach.
We teased each other.
We took cheap shots.
We tormented.
We never sat down and actually talked.
Never made casual conversation.
And I knew why.
Because neither of us knew what would happen if we did. I don’t think either of us was completely oblivious to the sexual tension that radiated around us. We were like two kids on the fucking playground. Pushing each other over. One teasing the other about having cooties.
Acting like we hated each other so no one would notice the ridiculous amount of chemistry swirling in the air around us.
We pretended there was nothing going on.
And there wasn’t because we both thought we were doing the right thing by Meyah. She’d been through enough shit recently as it was. Having her bestie and her brother banging on the side probably wasn’t exactly high on her list of things she’d like to deal with.
At least, that was the excuse I used.
RIPLEY
“Momma?” I called as I wandered inside from the backyard.
She’d sent me out to play a long time ago, and I was starting to get hungry. My stomach was grumbling and growling, and I was pretty sure it must have been lunch time by now. I pursed my lips, holding my breath as I walked on my toes into the living room. Noticing that it was empty and quiet, I made my way through into the kitchen.
There were dishes sitting in still murky water in the sink, with a few stacked in the rack to the side, like she’d gotten halfway through washing them and been distracted. The soapy suds that I liked to pop while helping my brother Drake clean up after dinner were long gone, and when I dipped my finger in the water, it was cold.
You couldn’t wash dishes in cold, un-soapy water.
I licked my dry lips and stepped back out of the kitchen and into the foyer.
The only other place that Momma could be was upstairs.
My hand grazed the banister, my foot hovering just slightly as I thought about taking the first step. I hesitated though, reminding myself about how angry she got if I interrupted her having a nap, or if I walked in on her in one of her… Drake called them ‘moments.’
She would cry, and cry, and cry.
Sometimes I wondered if she would ever stop.
She would break things too.
She’d throw things across the room, and they would hit walls, smash windows, and when Dad was home, she’d sometimes even try to hurt him too.
Or herself.
She told him all the time that she would.
I never really understood why she would ever want to hurt herself. I didn’t like getting hurt. I’d fallen off my bike plenty of times and skinned my knees. One time, I even fell off the playground at the clubhouse and hit my head. That hurt really bad, and I needed stitches.
Dad held my hand while they put them in, and I didn’t even cry. He said when I was older that girls would dig the scar it left across the top of my forehead.
Mom just shook her head when we got home. She didn’t hug me often, but I was sure that was going to be the one time where she would.
One step at a time up the staircase, and my heart began to pound. I didn’t want her to get angry at me. I only ever wanted to make Momma happy. She always seemed so sad, or angry. She never laughed, smiled, or talked in anything other than sharp orders.
She was different from the moms I saw picking up their kids from school or the old ladies at the clubhouse. They were hard and kind of scary, but they still kissed and cuddled their kids.
She never kissed us on the cheek and asked how our day was. She never pulled us close, never threw back her head and laughed at our jokes—no matter how lame they were. She didn’t even tuck us into bed at night or tell us stories.
Dad said it was because she was sick.
Drake said it was because she didn’t like us.
But I loved her anyway.
One day when I was older, I’d become a doctor, and I’d help find some medicine to fix her. I’d help make her better again.
I got to the top of the staircase and leaned forward, peeking into her bedroom and looking around, but she wasn’t there either. Then I heard water running and looked over to see the bathroom door open just slightly.
Tiptoeing over, I twisted my hands together knowing I should probably just leave her alone. But my stomach was really getting sore now, it was twisting and turning and begging loudly for food.
I took a deep breath and pressed my mouth to the crack in the door. “Momma… can I make a sandwich, please?” I was used to making my own food, but I would get in trouble if I just helped myself and didn’t ask first.
My body hunched over as I expected a harsh or sharp reply, so I braced myself for its impact and got ready to run.
But there was no reply.
I chewed on my lip and tugged at the hem of my shirt, waiting and waiting. “Momma?”
When no reply came again, I began to wonder what she could be doing. What if she was sick? What if she’d fallen asleep? What if the shower overflows like Dad did to the laundry downstairs that one time?
Puffing out my chest and drawing back my shoulders, I decided I’d need to be brave. To make sure she was okay, and that Dad wouldn’t be angry when he got home because Momma had forgotten to switch off the tap.
So I pressed my hand against the door.
And I pushed it open.
My body jackknifed in the bed.
My heart racing.
My stomach twisting painfully.
Sweat beaded at my hairline, a few stray drops sliding down my face as I fought to catch my breath. I knew it would pass quickly. It was a dream I’d become pretty fucking accustomed to. It played over and over again, not every night, but more often than I’d fucking like it too.