by Ivy Black
We spent the next few weeks working on the club expansion while simultaneously training Seth up on the books. I was impressed with how much Seth was able to take on each day, and the more we worked together, the more it felt like we were working side by side as opposed to me training him in my former profession.
I never heard from Celia, but for some reason, it didn’t make me as angry as it did the first time she ghosted me. Maybe it was because I was operating with the expectation that she would disappear again at some point, but it made me sad more than it made me angry. I wished I could have been the one to break her out of her flighty, commitment-fearing phase, but it seemed it wasn’t meant to be.
“It’s a good thing, you know?” Avery said as we discussed it. “They say some people come into our lives for a short time but to teach us important lessons. She was able to get you to stop seeing women in such a negative light, and the fact that you are able to look back on it openly rather than blame her and shove her into the same box as women from your past is a sign of growth.” Me, Seth, Nick, and Bucky all looked at Avery with our brows furrowed. “What?” he asked.
“Maybe I need to make Bullseye the club therapist,” Nick joked.
“That intelligence is definitely fleeting. I wouldn’t trust it,” Bucky said.
Avery punched his arm. “Fuck you. I’m very smart.”
Avery actually was one of the smarter people I knew, but I didn’t realize he was that insightful. It made me feel better to think that something good had come out of my relationship with Celia. I just wished it was actually her and I being together, not some cosmic lesson that needed to be learned.
Oh well.
“So,” Nick said, redirecting our attention back to the club. “Is it true? Do you really have a number for the expansion?”
“Yep,” Seth replied. “Hoppa’s Construction Company can handle the entire thing as a general manager. They’ll take care of securing all the different subcontractors and help us get this thing built from the ground up. We just have to pick a spot. Based on everything we decided for the blueprint, the contract comes out to two-hundred-and-fifty-thousand with a twenty-percent upfront cost to break ground, so we’ll need to hand over fifty grand to get it started.”
“Do we have it?” Nick asked, looking at me, then at Seth.
“Not quite yet,” I said. “It’d be better if we did it out of our fourth-quarter profits right before flipping over the year to avoid the least damage to our bottom line. We can cut a check sometime in October or later.”
“Still, that’s only a couple months away,” Nick noted. “We have a lot of work to do if we’re going to be breaking ground on a new place that soon. We’re going to have split attention for a while, so we need to lay out a prospect plan for Dynamite to follow and make sure that the border runs are situated, although...” He looked at Bucky. “You’ve been killing those lately.”
Bucky elbowed Avery. “Well, I’ve had some help. Treasurer says that now he’s got two accountants breathing down his neck, he wants more money, so he set up more in-roads. Discreet midnight runs make for fast transportation and I think we’re close to doubling up.”
“It shows,” Seth said, tapping the reconciliation book. “It’s buying our new facility.”
Nick folded his hands together with a smile on his face. “Man. I miss my kids, but if this is what a well-functioning operation feels like, I hate that I cost us this for so long.”
“It’s like you said,” I cut in, “we’re putting that behind us and starting from scratch.”
He nodded. “Right you are. I’m excited, boys. This is gonna be huge for us.”
“By this time next year, we’ll be moving into our own facility, and it changes everything. You three,” I said to Bucky, Avery, and Seth, “are gonna be integral in keeping the members in line as we move forward and making sure to tighten the ranks. The new era of the Steel Knights is going to completely change the landscape of Hoppa, and we can’t let it fall behind us.”
“Hoo hoo!” Bucky yowled. “Now this is what I joined up for!”
Nick smiled at me. “Things are about to get fun.”
Chapter Thirteen
Celia
The pan sizzled as I dropped the eggs in, filling the kitchen, once again, with the smell of spices and butter. I imagined the way Harry liked to make his eggs in my mind and replicated the process because they were so good, but I didn’t like the pit it left in my stomach. It was more than just anger or frustration, it was a longing.
I missed him.
There was more than one reason to stop playing around with him. Getting vengeance for my dad was all well and good, but it wouldn’t mean anything if all I did was fall for the guy and get no revenge and end up getting hurt myself. There wasn’t an actual future for Harry and me—there couldn’t be. After all, once he learned who my godfather was, that the men who were in the car he flipped with his reckless disregard for others were the same ones I’d called “Dad” in my lifetime, all of my lies and deceit would come spilling out.
It was best to go our separate ways. My dad would understand, and my godfather would just have to get over it. It’d been close to three weeks since I last spoke to Harry, and about two since he stopped trying to contact me. It bothered me more than it should, but I just had to remind myself that it was for the best and move on.
“Good morning,” a groggy voice grumbled into the silence.
“Morning,” I replied.
Darrien rounded the corner in his wheelchair and made his way up to the fridge. He opened the door, blocking most of the view I had of him, and I didn’t think twice about it until he shut the door with the orange juice in hand. I was fairly certain that I’d put the orange juice on the top shelf of the fridge, as I often mistakenly did, resulting in his inability to reach it, but maybe I’d subconsciously put it back where he could get to it. The small conspiracy that tried to sneak its way into my brain was snuffed out as Darrien rolled over to just below the kitchen cabinet where we kept the cups and used his grabber to open it and sat struggling for a couple of minutes trying to get a cup down.
“Are you just going to stand there watching me struggle?” he snapped.
“Sorry!” I yelped.
I scuttled over from my pan and pulled a cup down and set it on the counter, then pulled the orange juice carton from his hand and poured some into the cup. When I opened the fridge door, I started to put the carton back in a spot along the doors where Darrien could reach it, but then stopped and intentionally put it back on the top shelf. Just to see what happened next time he needed orange juice.
Darrien made his way to a spot at the kitchen table against the wall and I returned to my pan to pull out the eggs I’d made. “Do you want some toast?” I asked.
“Sure,” he replied.
I scooped the eggs out of the pan onto a plate and set the plate on the small kitchen peninsula that jutted out from one wall and separated the kitchen from the eating area on the other side where the table was. Then I turned my back to grab the loaf of bread from on top of the fridge and slide two pieces of it into the toaster. I cracked a couple of fresh eggs into the pan to start cooking them for myself, and when I heard the toast pop, I flipped around to grab and butter the slices.
With the toast in hand, I flipped around to drop them on Darrien’s plate, but it was gone. I looked over to the table and the plate was sitting in front of him and he was already working on the eggs. “Um…” I started. “Did you grab that, or did I give it to you?”
“I grabbed it,” he responded. “Why?”
Darrien’s wheelchair wasn’t a quiet device, and more than that, the place I’d set the plate on the island was almost dead center, where it’d be difficult for Darrien to reach from the edge.
Was I losing my mind?
“I didn’t even hear you move,” I said.
His brow furrowed. “How is that possible? I haven’t even oiled my wheels recently.” His words were steeped in suc
h genuine confusion that it was enough to convince me I was just distracted and not thinking clearly. “Is something wrong?” he asked.
“Maybe. Sorry.”
I buttered Darrien’s toast and brought it to him, then returned to the pan to finish my own eggs and put in some toast of my own. When my plate was done, I grabbed a bottle of water from the fridge and went to sit down across from Darrien. He was swiping through his phone, not really focused on anything in particular, but I couldn’t stop staring at him.
There was no way he was able to get out of his chair. I had to change him. We’d paid thousands of dollars ramping his home so that he could get around. The more I thought about it, the more insane the idea seemed. Having Harry on the brain was having an adverse effect on my mind.
“So how’s work going?” Darrien asked. “Any word about that promotion?”
My bosses had been talking about moving me up again for a couple of months now, and I’d made the mistake of mentioning it to Darrien, who never missed an opportunity to remind me how much more money we need coming in to make ends meet. I had about forty grand left of the settlement my dad got for the car accident, but Darrien didn’t like making me use that money on him or anything he needed. Even with that considered, I used the money each month to pay the mortgage and utilities at his house, plus cover my student loan payments each month. The settlement money seemed like a lot but wasn’t for how quickly those things were eating into it.
“Yeah, they are telling me that I’m gonna get it, but it probably won’t happen until after yearly reviews,” I said. “As long as my first review goes well, I should get it and a nice raise.”
“When are reviews?”
I took a sip of my water before saying, “They’ll happen in December, right before the holidays.”
I took a bite of my eggs and was immediately filled with warmth. I’d only gotten breakfast out of Harry a couple of times before I decided to cut him off again, but it reminded me of his smile, and our passionate nights, and his adorable cats. All things that gave me a fuzzy feeling in my stomach that I rarely got. Suddenly, I was playing out the scenario of showing up at the Taphouse again. Approaching Harry and apologizing for going ghost and starting us up again. I could probably get him to forgive me again. To take me back to his place. My skin was already burning, imagining his hands on it, his lips on my neck, his arms lifting me with ease…
“Hey!” I jumped at the sudden yell and looked across the table, and Darrien was glaring at me. “Why aren’t you answering me?”
“Sorry,” I said. “I didn’t hear you.”
“Then pay better attention. I’m sitting five feet from you. Are you sure nothing’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” I replied.
“It has nothing to do with the fact that you haven’t seen Harry in a few weeks?” he asked, and my eyes got a little wider. “Yeah, I know, Celia. I’m not stupid. You’ve been coming right home after work, hanging around here on your days off, plus I can tell that you miss him, even though you swore you weren’t developing feelings.”
“I’m not.”
He rolled his eyes. “Please don’t treat me like an idiot. You know I hate that.”
“I’m not!” I repeated. “I don’t have feelings for him.”
“Celia, you walked around here glowing like the star on top of a Christmas tree, then all of a sudden, there was nothing.” He shrugged. “I suppose it’s better anyway. You clearly weren’t up to the task of doing what had to be done, so I’ll have to come up with something else.”
“I’m not weak just because I don’t want to be heartless with someone. I get that Harry ruined our lives, but…” I stopped myself shy of saying that he didn’t seem like a bad guy. He didn’t, but I doubted Darrien wanted to hear that. “I don’t want to do this anymore. That doesn’t make me crazy.”
“You’re right, I was wrong to assume you’d do anything to honor your father’s memory,” he replied. Rage was burning in my blood. I was a daddy’s girl from the bottom of my heart. He’d raised me alone and losing him destroyed me. “Do I need to tell you the story again?”
“I don’t want to hear the story,” I said.
“Your father and I were out running errands, picking up things for your birthday. He was so excited to celebrate his princess turning sixteen in a few weeks and was planning a huge celebration for you,” Darrien started.
“I said I don’t want to hear the story.”
Darrien continued regardless. “We were just minding our own business when Harry came blazing onto the road. He had reckless disregard for other drivers. He was swerving in and out of traffic. Cutting people off, tailgating, driving between cars in nonexistent lanes. You name it. If it was illegal, he was doing it.”
I imagined the times I’d ridden on Harry’s bike, and what I’d seen during the race. What I’d experienced was so vastly different from Darrien’s story. “He’s always safe when I’ve seen him on his bike.”
“Well, I’d like to think so with someone else on it. At least he has a little bit of regard for someone else’s life. Then again, maybe that was just because you were sleeping with him.”
My ears burned, half from embarrassment and half from anger. “No…”
“He just picked us out randomly,” Darrien said. “We weren’t doing anything to him, didn’t even know who he was. He just looked over at me, actually he locked eyes with your dad first. He told me this psycho biker was trying to challenge us, so I slowed down, just trying to get away from him. He wouldn’t leave us alone though. He matched our speed and then when he had a window, he swerved toward us. I had to veer to the left just to keep from crashing with him. He laughed at us! He thought it was funny! He was trying to kill us!”
In my mind, I was seeing a cartoonishly evil version of Harry with a thin, evil guy mustache. Darrien and my dad were sitting in a toy car, and Harry was driving at them like a bullet from a gun, trying to flip it.
It just didn’t seem real to me. “I don’t want to hear the rest,” I said. “I get it.”
“You don’t want to hear the next part?” he replied darkly. “About how he finally got the hit that he wanted? He smacked the side of my car with his back tire, right against your dad’s door. I lost control of the car and it flew to the left and hit the guard rail, flipping up over it. He lost control, too, at least, but I didn’t see what happened to him as my car started to flip and flip—”
“Okay!”
“And flip and flip and flip. It slammed down on your dad’s side every single time it hit the ground again.”
“Okay! Stop!” I screeched. Tears were sliding down my face as I imagined my dad dying and hitting the ground over and over. “Stop. I get it.”
“I don’t mean to upset you, Celia, but this is important. I don’t know how to make you understand. You are the only one who can change things. The only one who can break him so much that he never hurts anyone like this ever again. It’s not just for your father or for me, it’s for every person he’s ever put at risk. Don’t you want to stop him?”
That was the first time Darrien had ever framed it like that. Like we were doing it for the greater good. Was I capable of breaking Harry that much, that he’d never get on a bike again? The women in his past, whoever they were, drove him to hate women just from what they had done. Didn’t that mean I could also exercise that level of influence over him?
“I do want to stop him,” I said. “I want to make him pay for what he did to us.”
“I don’t think you do,” Darrien said. “You’ve told me that before.”
“I swear.” I used the back of my hand to wipe my tears away. “I want to. I won’t give up again. I’m going to do it.”
“This is our last chance, Celia. You can’t mess this up again. If we screw up this opportunity, we won’t be able to get close enough to him again to do what we need to do, and he could get worse.”
That thought terrified me more than anything. Darrien was right. If
I continued to upset Harry, he could have another dark night that could cost someone else their lives.
I didn’t say anything else to Darrien and he didn’t stop me as I stood up from the table, leaving my half-eaten breakfast behind, grabbed my purse and left the house. Without even thinking, I picked up my phone and tried to call Harry, but it rang once and then went to voicemail. I couldn’t blame him for ignoring me. It was going to take a personal visit in order to get him to let me back into his life, and some good coffee never hurt anyone.
There was a coffee shop halfway between my godfather’s house and Harry’s house, so I stopped for a couple of lattés. Coffee made everything better and I was hopeful I could warm Harry’s soul enough to hear me out as I gave him more lame excuses.
“Celia?” I looked over my shoulder, and Laura was sitting at one of the tables with her laptop. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I held up my finger and quickly placed the order for a couple of lattés and then went and sat down across from Laura while I waited. “How are you?”
“Good. I haven’t heard from you in weeks though. I thought you were going through another one of your moody phases. Did you break up with Harry or something?” she asked.
“Uh… Kind of. I ran for the hills and now he won’t talk to me. Hoping the coffee will help smooth that over.”
“Damn commitment-phobe,” she growled.
“I am not,” I said. “It’s just… It’s complicated.”
“It doesn’t have to be. How do you feel?”
It wasn’t that easy. I knew how I felt, but I also knew that I had no business developing feelings for Harry when he was the man that killed my father. Between the pressure from Darrien and my desire to do the right thing, I didn’t know how to describe what I was feeling.
“I like him,” I said. “He scares me.”
“He scares you because you like him,” she replied. “Don’t overthink it. Don’t try and figure out what’s going to come next, just live in the moment. We’re all still young and have time to let the pieces fall into place, but if it feels good, don’t run from that.”