by Joanna Wylde
—
Fifteen minutes later, I watched as Horse, Becca, and her mom walked out of the house. At least thirty members of the Longnecks MC stood watching, talking quietly among themselves. I kept waiting for one of them to reach for a gun or challenge us, but they didn’t.
No sign of Teeny.
Becca had stopped crying, but her face was still covered in tear-smeared blood, and nasty bruises were popping up all over. Her breath sounded wheezy, too, and I hoped to hell she didn’t have broken ribs.
“I don’t want to go,” she whispered, catching at her mom’s arm. “I want to stay with you.”
“You’re getting out,” the woman replied, her eyes hard and calculating. “Let him cool off, then we’ll talk. Figure something out.”
Becca shook her head, but when I caught her arm gently she let me pull her away.
“You want to ride in the truck or on my bike?”
Becca glanced at the truck, eyes widening at the sight of two Reaper prospects. “I’ll stay with you.”
I nodded and climbed on my bike, eyes alert as I monitored our audience. She climbed up behind me, and then her mother gave a satisfied nod. Becca wrapped her arms around me and I felt her tits press tight against my back. My cock stirred to life. What the fucking hell was wrong with me?
“How old are you?” I asked, my voice low.
“Sixteen.”
Shit.
“Like, you’re almost seventeen?”
“No, I turned sixteen last week.”
Double shit.
Boonie kicked his bike to life, and we followed his lead, pulling away from the house in formation.
So that’s the story of how I committed statutory rape less than twenty-four hours out of prison—on my birthday, no less. In retrospect, I probably should’ve stayed inside, served out my full five-year term. Would’ve been less work for everyone.
ONE
CALLUP, IDAHO
PRESENT
BECCA
“Order up.”
I turned to the window and grabbed the ticket, looking over everything to make sure Blake had gotten it right. He was a damned good cook, but sometimes he was a little loose in his interpretation of an order . . . especially if he was hungover.
And he was definitely hungover today.
In fact, I think he might’ve still been a little drunk when he dragged his ass through the back door at five that morning. I know Danielle was, because she was all giggly and unsteady when she’d started the breakfast shift with me.
“I think I’m going to barf,” she whispered into my ear, leaning against the counter. Heh. Guess someone was finally sobering up. “Can you cover my tables for a few? I can’t let Eva catch me—she said she’d fire my ass if I fucked up again.”
“I got it,” I said, snatching up toast and throwing it onto a little plate, along with a couple of jelly packets. “Go take care of business—she’s talking to Melba and you know how they get. You’ve got fifteen minutes at least, so make the most of it.”
She nodded and ducked back through the kitchen. I heard Blake growl at her for getting in his way and had to smile. I didn’t think it was a coincidence that they’d both shown up looking like hell. There was a story behind that growl, and if I knew Danielle, it’d be a good one.
Loading my tray, I hoisted it up and over my shoulder, carrying it out past the counter and into the main dining room. The Breakfast Table was the heart and soul of Callup, at least in the mornings. Everyone came in to see and be seen, because the food was good and it was cheap. We opened at five thirty a.m. so the miners and loggers could grab a bite before work, and we closed up again by two in the afternoon, although I was only on until eleven. At that point I’d hop in my car and drive over the pass to Coeur d’Alene to spend my afternoon at the beauty school.
Only six more months and I’d be ready to take my boards.
The thought put a little smile on my face as I hauled my tray over to Regina and Earl, an older couple who owned the old building downtown that held my apartment. The smile got bigger when I saw Regina was wearing the blouse I’d made her last week . . .
“Here you go,” I said, feeling all sorts of pleased with myself. “One Belgian waffle with strawberries and bacon on the side. One pork chop with hash browns, toast, and applesauce. You good on coffee?”
“You’re right on top of things, Becca,” Earl said, eyeing his chop with anticipation. He had one every morning. Didn’t seem like such a bright idea to me, considering he’d already had one heart attack, but every time I tried to talk to him about it he blew me off.
“These must be some of Honey’s strawberries,” Regina said, popping one into her mouth. “The store-bought ones aren’t as sweet.”
“Yup,” I told her. “Enjoy them while they last—they’ll be gone in a week or two.”
“Order up!” Blake shouted, ringing the bell in the pass-through window.
“That’s me,” I said, leaning over to give Regina an impulsive hug. She’d been the one to take me in when I’d first arrived in Callup five years ago. I’d been bruised, terrified, and so lonely for my mother it hurt. And yeah, I realize it’s crazy to miss someone who treats you like shit, but deep down inside we’re all just babies crying for Mommy, you know? Regina took it all in stride, holding me tight through the nightmares as I slowly rebuilt myself into something human.
It took Teeny six months to “forgive” me after Puck and I rode north. Mom had called all excited, saying I should come back home. Earl declared I’d be leaving over his dead body, and that was the end of it. I’d lived with him and Regina through high school and while I spent a year working and saving up my money. After that they gave me one of their apartments over the old pharmacy building at the friends-and-family rate.
Regina and Earl were the best thing that ever happened to me, and I loved them for it.
“Lookin’ good, Becca,” said Jakob McDougal, settling himself at the counter. Today he had four of his buddies in tow. He was loud, rude, and one time he’d left me a penny underneath a turned-over glass of water for a tip because his breakfast steak was overcooked. (I don’t know if you’ve ever seen someone do that, but it’s a straight-up dick move—one that takes real effort, too.)
Long story short, Jakob McDougal was an asshole.
He also wasn’t real bright, because after pulling that shit he still thought he had a shot at getting me naked, no matter how many times I shot his ass down. Now I resisted the urge to flip him off because I was still six months away from dumping this gig to start cutting hair, and Eva could be a real bitch if we were rude to the customers, even if they’d earned it. (Eva could be a real bitch about a lot of things, which was part of why I was working so hard to get my license and leave the waitressing behind.)
“I’ll be with you in a minute,” I told him, my voice tight, because guys like him pissed me off. Giving him my back, I reached for the next ticket and prepped my tray.
“I’m tired and need some coffee,” Jake said, ignoring the fact that I’d just told him I needed a minute. Dumbass. His friends Cooper, Matt, Alex, and one other I didn’t know laughed like a chorus of braying jackasses. “I was up laaaate last night making Sherri Fields a very happy girl, and I want something to get me up again. I got needs, baby.”
The jackasses grunted and snickered, giving each other high fives. One of them made a slapping noise and another moaned in a way that I suspected was supposed to sound like the unfortunate Sherri Fields in the throes of ecstasy. More like a dying elk, in my opinion.
I counted to ten and stared at the plated food in the window, jaw clenched. Blake caught my gaze, and his eyes narrowed. Uh-oh. Blake wasn’t a big fan of customers giving the waitresses shit at the best of times, and he got mean when he had a hangover. I saw him reach for his big, flat metal spatula with the sharp edge on one side and my eyes widened.
Crap. Did I want Jake and his friends to suffer? Absolutely. But not if it got me fired.
�
��It’s all good, Blake,” I said quickly. He shook his head slowly as Jake and his friends laughed harder. That’s when I remembered they’d gone to school with Blake, over in Kellogg. Seniors together on the football team. Then the other guys got jobs at the Laughing Tess mine . . . Blake had claustrophobia, so he slung hash browns in the mornings and went to community college in the afternoons. He was a smart guy, and personally I thought he had a much brighter future ahead of him than the losers behind me.
I felt his pain, though. Taking the high road can wear a person out.
“We got an issue here?” a deep voice asked, sending shivers all up and down my spine. I closed my eyes, wondering if the day could possibly get any more fucked up. That was the voice that haunted my dreams, although I hadn’t heard it for six months. (Six months and eight days . . . give or take. Not that I was counting.)
The voice belonged to Puck Redhouse.
The same Puck Redhouse who—in one monumentally fucked-up night five years ago—made me come harder than I knew was possible, poked me in a most uncomfortable place, and then set me up to get my ass kicked when he complained about how bad I was in the sack.
I sort of hated him for that.
The next morning he’d hauled me all the way back to Idaho and deposited me on Earl and Regina’s doorstep like a lost puppy. After that he disappeared into the night. I saw him around on and off, but the guy was mysterious.
Kind of like Batman. On a motorcycle.
In a weird way, I owed him everything . . . the man still scared the shit out of me, though. Scared me, turned me on, you name it, because if there was one constant derailing my quest for happy normalcy, it was Puck Redhouse and his stupid, sexy voice. The man was my own personal North Atlantic iceberg, lurking under the cold waters, just waiting to shred me wide open.
Fucking biker. I’d had enough bikers to last a lifetime—I didn’t need him in my life.
Not that he’d ever said anything to indicate he wanted me in his life. But over the years he’d watched me . . . Sometimes I got the feeling he wanted to do a lot more than watch.
I shivered, because I’d never forget how he’d felt pushing deep inside, stretching and filling and blowing my mind all at once.
Unfortunately, there wasn’t time to give my stupid body the lecture about why Puck was all wrong. I had a feeling we were one step away from a bloodbath right at the breakfast counter. Too much testosterone. I needed to do something—break the tension and smooth things over.
“No issues—” I tried to say, but Blake cut me off.
“Yeah, we got a fuckin’ issue,” he snarled, pushing through the swinging doors from the kitchen into the counter area. “These cocksuckers think you can come in here and treat the girls like shit. Outside, McDougal.”
Across the dining room people fell silent, and then I saw Eva stand up and start toward us, her default scowl growing uglier than usual. Fuck. I was about thirty seconds away from unemployment, and believe me when I say there weren’t exactly an abundance of work opportunities in a mountain town of eight hundred people.
“Blake, please go back into the kitchen,” I hissed, deciding to ignore Puck because I just didn’t have enough space in my brain to deal with him. “Let me get coffee for everyone, and a slice of pie. It’s on me.”
“Can I eat it off you?” Jake asked. Apparently he didn’t have a highly honed sense of self-preservation. His friends burst out laughing as all hell broke loose.
I’m still not entirely sure what happened next.
I do know that Blake slammed his big spatula down on Jake’s hand right as Puck punched him. Jake’s jackass chorus might be idiots, but they weren’t cowards because suddenly they were all up and fighting. That’s when I discovered Puck hadn’t walked in for breakfast alone—nope, he’d come in with two other Silver Bastards (Boonie and Deep), Boonie’s old lady (Darcy), and another girl named Carlie Gifford. Carlie was about my age, and she’d been hanging around with the club for a while, which I knew because I knew everything about Callup. (I might not be a native, but the Breakfast Table was Grand Central so far as this town went—if something happened, I heard about it.)
As Eva started screeching at us to stop, Darcy grabbed me and jerked me out from behind the breakfast bar. Jake was shouting and clutching his hand, which dripped blood over everything. The big plastic sugar container with the funnel on top that I used to refill the sugar jars for the table went flying, showering all of us as Blake hurdled the counter to go after his former friend. Then Coop jumped Puck from behind and something inside me snapped.
This is where it’s worth mentioning that over the years I’ve developed a bit of a temper.
Okay, make that one hell of a temper.
Puck might be trouble, but he’d also saved my ass big-time and I didn’t want him getting hurt. Knowing he was around (Batman!) helped me sleep in a weird way. Nothing scares off a monster like a bigger, nastier monster, and every time I woke up screaming in the night after a dream about my stepdad, the memory of Puck beating his ass helped me keep it together. So long as Puck was in the region, I’d be safe . . . at least, I’d be safe from everyone but Puck.
I broke free from Darcy’s grasp and reached for a glass coffeepot that’d been left sitting on the counter. Then I brought it down over Coop’s head so hard it exploded, hot coffee soaking his shirt and coating his back. He screamed and fell down, so I kicked him in the nuts. Puck stared at me, obviously startled but impressed.
“Behind you!” I shouted, catching Alex lunging out of the corner of my eye. Puck ducked and spun around, punching the other man in the gut. Darcy caught me by one arm and Carlie grabbed the other one as an entire rack of clean water glasses crashed to the floor. Eva was shouting in the background and to my shock, I saw Earl lumbering toward the fight, a maniacal grin on his wrinkled face.
How did things get out of control so fast? And more important, where the hell was I going to work now? No fucking way Eva would keep me on after this.
Normal girls don’t start fights in restaurants! my brain hissed. Crapsicles. This was exactly the kind of shit my mom was always getting herself into. Generally I tried to look at any given situation, figure out what she’d do, and then do the exact opposite. My theory was that this would turn me from trashy to classy.
Someday I’d be classy if it killed me—probably not today, though.
Pisser.
The fight was spiraling out of control as a body hit the hostess table, sending it crashing over with a splintering, cracking noise. Jake and his friends were tough, no question. The mountains bred hard men, and the mines tempered them like steel. But Puck, Boonie, and Deep were hard men, too. And Blake? I had a feeling this wasn’t his first run-in with the boys . . . I’d always known he was a big, tough teddy bear, but suddenly he’d turned into a grizzly.
The crack of a shot cut through the air, followed quickly by a second and third. People started dropping to the ground and I heard Regina’s voice ringing through the room.
“You boys settle right the hell down! This is a restaurant, you idiots, not some damned bar where you can tear things apart and nobody even notices because it’s such a dump!”
Everything stopped, and I cautiously raised my head. Regina stood on a table in her purple track pants, chunky plastic jewelry, and tennis shoes, every gray hair on her head aligned perfectly. She looked like any other sweet old grandmother, but her eyes were like chunks of obsidian, sharp and brilliant.
Wowza.
“Now get out, all of you,” she said. “Boonie, Eva will be in touch about the damages. I’m assuming the club will be good for it?”
“But they didn’t start it!” I piped up, outraged. “Jake and his friends—”
“Let it go,” Darcy said, pulling me to my feet. I looked at her, startled to see her eyes were dancing with laughter. How she could laugh I couldn’t imagine. I was fucking pissed.
“It’s not fair!”
Boonie came up behind me, his hand coming
down on my shoulder with a thump. I jerked—startled—and then the anger drained out, replaced with that old fear I felt whenever I got too close to one of the bikers. What was I thinking, arguing with these people over the damages? I needed to get out before Puck cornered me—I couldn’t deal with him. Not today.
“We got this,” Boonie said in a low voice. “Jake and his boys’ll pay, don’t worry.”
That sounded ominous. I swallowed.
“Go outside,” he said over my shoulder, talking to Darcy. “I’ll meet you in a few. Make sure Eva doesn’t follow her, got it?”
I closed my eyes as the full ramifications of the fight hit me.
This is what happens when you let your temper take over. I could actually hear the high school counselor’s words in my head, along with the smug, prissy tone of her voice. She’d been lecturing me about the way I’d coldcocked a guy who tried to cop a feel, but the same principle applied.
Hitting people rarely solved things.
I had a problem, but at least I’d stopped feeling sorry for myself over the years . . . Earl insisted this was a step in the right direction. Healthy, even. Looking around the trashed restaurant, I had to wonder if maybe he was full of shit.
So much for my job—I’d lost it for sure, or at least I would once the dust settled. Fucking sucked, because despite Eva’s nasty personality, I had the perfect schedule, allowing me to get in a full shift every day and still go to school.
School was my future—normal girls go to school and support themselves. I couldn’t afford mistakes like today, not if I wanted to make something of myself.
“This sucks,” I muttered, following Darcy out to the parking lot, where at least half the residents of Callup were milling around, anxious to see what the fuss was all about. Now that the fight was over, they weren’t leaving. Nope. They were standing in little clumps to whisper and point at me, and more looky-loos were pulling up to join them every minute.