Rebel Custody

by Sarah Hawthorne

  Rolling down the window, I leaned out and screamed, “If you really loved me, you wouldn’t be telling people I was just a quick fuck!”

  My hands shook as I grabbed the steering wheel. I wasn’t even ashamed that I shouted that last sentence. I had to get the hell out of there. There was only one exit out of the parking lot, and Jean Luc was standing in front of it. I revved my engine a couple of times to let him know I was serious.

  He planted his feet and crossed his arms. Off in the distance, the guys were going nuts. I could hear all kinds of cheers and whistles. They must have been loving this.

  Easing off on the brake, I let the car roll. Just enough for him to get the point. He didn’t.

  He could have told me. If he didn’t love me, he could have told me how he felt. He didn’t have to tell me he wanted to try a relationship and then crush my feelings at a damn biker party. I let my foot off the brake and pressed on the accelerator.

  I was going too fast. I was no longer making a point, but about to run him down. I was angry, but I didn’t want to kill him. I stomped on my brake with both feet. As the car screeched to a stop, I felt a thud.

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Skeeter

  Pain exploded through my foot. It was a party, and I didn’t have a pair of heavy work boots on, so my shoes weren’t much protection from her Mercedes.

  Miri was still in the car, and I bent down to look at my foot. Her car door smacked up against my ass and sent me sprawling. I rolled onto my back and heard her door slam. This whole scene was right out of a fucking Benny Hill episode. I groaned and just closed my eyes. The crowd of guys were probably passing around the fucking popcorn and laughing.

  “Oh God. I didn’t mean to run you over.” Miri knelt down next to me. “Your foot is in pretty bad shape.”

  Pain was radiating up through my leg and ending in places I didn’t know I had. She helped me sit up.

  “I wasn’t talking about you,” I managed to grind out between the shooting pain in my leg. I leaned back against the car. “I was talking about Asia. The hooker. She’s going to rehab.”

  “What?” Miri asked, confused. “A hooker?”

  “I love you. I wasn’t talking about you.” I grabbed her hand, the one not in a cast, and gave her fingers a squeeze. “Fuck, this hurts.”

  “I think we should call an ambulance,” Rip said.

  The crowd made it out to see the show, and Miri’s voice faded away as they all crowded around. Tate showed up and started barking orders. “Get the van!”

  Rip and Roach helped me up and got me loaded into the back of the cargo van. I looked around, and Miri was gone.

  * * *

  The doctor snapped the X-ray onto the lighted display.

  “Your toes are broken here, here, and here.” He circled the areas with his pen, in case I missed the jagged bits of white bone showing up on film. “Usually when someone rolls over your foot, it’s not that bad. But your big toe must have hit a rock or something. It nearly severed the digit entirely. That was the cause of all the blood.”

  Then he went on to give me a speech about how damned lucky I was to still have all my ten toes.

  I would rather have Miri.

  “Once we get your stitches in, then you can head home.” The doc made some notes in his file. “I need to get some supplies, and I’ll be back in a minute.”

  The doc left, and I collapsed back on the hospital bed. Colt was sitting in the corner reading the Wall Street Journal, and Rip was flirting at one of the nurses’ stations in the hall.

  Roach knocked on the door of my room and cleared his throat. “You got a visitor. Should I let her in? She ran your ass over.”

  I wanted to grab his damn prospect cut and shake him. “Yeah, I wanna see her.” I looked at Colt. “Hey, go get lost for a while, okay?”

  Colt rolled his eyes and packed up his newspaper.

  I was all alone, waiting for her. And waiting.

  The door opened slowly, and a yellow bouquet of flowers appeared. Then Miri stepped into my room.

  “Hey.” She held out the flowers. “Um, these are for you.” She put them on the little rolling table next to my bed.

  “Cher, come sit on the bed with me.” I wanted to reach out to her, grab her hand, anything. But the look in her eyes told me she had more to say.

  “Thank you for seeing me.” She shook her head and sat down in a chair next to my bed. “I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I just hit you with my car.” Her shoulders sagged. “It’s been a crazy couple of days for me. I think I’m more shaken by the thing with Pete than I want to admit. Then, when I heard you talking about her, I thought I had misjudged you—just like I had misjudged Pete at first.

  “So I’m begging your forgiveness. For running you over, for not believing you, for not believing in us.”

  “Let me be very clear.” I looked into her eyes. “I believe in us. I was talking about a woman named Asia. She is a prostitute. She’s leaving for rehab and wanted to say goodbye.”

  “Oh,” Miri said, finally sitting next to me. She hung her head. “I feel so stupid. I should have asked instead of going crazy. I just assumed, you know? I thought that I had pressured you into something you didn’t want, and because of the thing with Pete, you felt like you had to stick around. I just assumed it couldn’t end with us being happy.”

  “Let me tell you how it’s going to end.” I put my arm around her and squeezed her against me. “There’s gonna be a kid someday with your curls and my freckles. I’m gonna have bad dreams at night, and you’ll be there to wake me up. You’re gonna have your own career and sometimes get mad at me for not doing the dishes. It won’t always be perfect, and there might be a day you run me over with your car, but you’ve already done that one, and I still love you.”

  “Really?” she asked, raising her eyes to mine. “You really love me? Because I love you.”

  I bent my head down and kissed her. Her lips were salty, probably from tears she’d shed earlier. She put her hand on my cheek and started pulling me closer.

  “Ahem.” A man cleared his throat.

  “What?” I asked, pulling my lips away from Miri. I scowled. “Go away.”

  “No.” The doctor rolled his eyes and pulled up a chair at the foot of my bed. “I’ve got rounds to do. Look, you two can keep going at it while I sew your toe up if you want.”

  “Go ahead, doctor,” Miri giggled. Then she leaned over and kissed me.

  I didn’t feel the stitches at all.

  Epilogue

  Miri

  I held my champagne glass up high. There was a huge crowd of people packed into my tiny office, but it was worth it.

  “I’d like to thank you all for helping me through this first year, but most especially Sheena. I know you took a risk by quitting a large firm and coming here to help me, but I’m so glad you did. Thank you, and you’re one of my best friends.” I teared up as I saluted my assistant. “I’d also like to thank my husband. Thank you for all the support, even through the late nights and the working weekends. I love you. Cheers, everyone!”

  Everyone clapped and took a sip of their champagne.

  “You did it, ma cher,” Jean Luc said as he grabbed me around the waist and kissed me. I wanted this moment to last forever.

  The rest of the night was a huge party and blur. People congratulating me on my one-year anniversary of being in business. Leaving my father’s practice had allowed me to go out on my own and build my own life.

  “How are you holding up, dear?” Vivien, my mother’s friend and the office gossip from my dad’s firm, patted my arm. I didn’t remember inviting her. “So much has happened in this last year. Are you afraid he’ll come back?”

  Pete. She was talking about Pete.

  “He’s in
jail, Vivien.” I rolled my eyes. “Just where he belongs.”

  “It’s funny how life ends up, isn’t it?” she asked. “I never would have thought you would be happy with the biker, but here you are, living happily ever after.”

  She was right. A few years ago, the thought of me dating a member of a motorcycle club would have been laughable. But after a year of marriage, there was no one else I’d rather be with.

  When the party began to end, some folks went to Colt and Krista’s to continue the evening, and the others—lawyers, judges, city leaders that I knew—would end up in a bar down the street.

  I sat on the couch in my office, holding the glass of champagne and snuggling with Jean Luc. “You wanna tell me something?” he asked.

  Squirming, I twisted to look up at him. I blinked innocently—hopefully he hadn’t caught on to my ruse.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  He raised an eyebrow and took my champagne glass and drank it.

  “That is awful.” He grimaced. “It’s flat and warm. You’ve been carrying around the same glass of champagne all night. Does this mean what I think it means?”

  He caught me up in a blistering kiss. After we knocked a few pillows off the couch, he came up for air. “Tell me this is what I think it is,” he demanded.

  I nodded. I hadn’t planned to tell him this early, but he guessed.

  “Are you happy?” I asked, biting my lip. “I wasn’t sure you’d be ready. We’re still getting used to things with Christophe.”

  “Words cannot express how happy I am.” He kissed the end of my nose and then slid his hand down my side and over my belly. “I want to do it right this time. I want to be there the whole time. I love you.”

  * * * * *

  Now Available from Carina Press and Sarah Hawthorne

  A man looking for redemption. A single mom trying to get by. One night together as an escape.

  Read on for an excerpt from ENFORCER’S PRICE

  “Mommy, is that the Big Bad Wolf? Is he going to blow our house down?”

  Boom. Boom. Boom.

  “Krista, goddamn it, open up this fucking door before I break it down!” The pounding continued. He’d been at it for at least fifteen minutes, long enough for one of the neighbors to call the cops.

  Not that I especially cared for cops, but at that moment, I would have welcomed anyone who could make Robby stop pounding.

  Becky was starting to whimper.

  “Shhhh, baby.” Maybe if we stayed quiet long enough, he would think we weren’t home.

  That was a pipe dream. He knew we were home. Robby always knew where I was, what I was doing and how to exploit me. I had kicked him out three years ago, but he still kept tabs on me. He used that information to shake me down for money whenever he ran out. Which was often.

  Robby had never paid a dime in child support or spent any time with Becky. I realized long ago that he wasn’t going to help me raise our child. He just looked at us as an occasional source of income.

  The other moms at Becky’s preschool drove shiny new Subarus and worked part-time because they wanted to. They even took vacations. Why? They married rich men or got an education for themselves. But not me. When I was in high school, I was pregnant with Robby’s kid; now I was paying for it. I drove a duct-taped Corolla and worked full-time slinging drinks and turning tricks at a motorcycle club. I’d never been on vacation in my entire life.

  Becky shivered in my arms. “Is the wolf huffing and puffing, Mommy?”

  What the hell should I say to a six-year-old? Yes. No. It’s just your father. How should I explain to her that her daddy was the Big Bad Wolf because he was out of meth? Or, worse, that her mommy turned tricks for the money that kept the wolf at bay?

  The banging stopped and voices began to yell at each other outside. I couldn’t really make out the words, but it didn’t matter. The cops had finally showed. Robby would go to jail and we could go to sleep tonight.

  The yelling stopped and thumping began. I knew a fight when I heard one. Robby and the cops must be getting into it. I hoped the cops had brought backup; Robby was a real asshole and hard to stop when he was itching for another score. I’d been the one trying to stop him a few times—I knew exactly how hard he punched.

  After what seemed like an eternity, the thumping and the voices stopped. It was over. I wasn’t at all interested in opening the door and talking to the cops. If Robby saw that I was actually there and just not answering the door, my life was gonna get a thousand times worse once he left jail.

  “Krista, open up! It’s Tate.”

  “Fuck.” It was my boss. The neighbors didn’t call the cops, they called my boss, the president of the Storm Kings motorcycle club. The only neighbor who could contact Tate was Janice. She got me the job.

  The guys at the club were good to me. They didn’t just treat me right because I was a good whore. They treated me right because I was part of the family. As soon as they learned they could trust me, I started tending bar at the clubhouse and keeping the invoices in order; Tate paid a little more and I learned a lot about accounting. The Storm Kings were the best thing to happen in my life since I’d had Becky. I had more money now, had a regular schedule. I’d even had time to finish my associate degree. Not many girls could say that being a whore was the best job they’d ever had.

  I wished Janice had called the cops. I could hide in my bedroom until everybody just went away. But now I had to air my dirty laundry to Tate and the whole club. I’d made a rule for myself not to involve the guys from the club in my personal life. I had to break my rules and open the damn door.

  “We don’t say bad words, Mommy.” Becky’s eyes were big and staring at me. I had been trying to be better about the swearing in front of her. “Can we go say hi to Mr. Tate? Did he scare away the wolf?”

  I nodded. We didn’t have a choice. He probably knew I was in here anyway. I stood up, taking Becky with me, and headed for the front room. At least she knew Tate. I’d taken her to work a few times when all the guys were gone. He’d bring her butterscotch candies while I cleaned the clubhouse.

  “Krista?” Tate called through the door. “It’s safe, open up.”

  I stood in front of the door. I knew I had to open it, but god, I didn’t want to see Robby. I just couldn’t. It would just make things worse.

  “Is he gone?” I asked through the closed door.

  “He’s unconscious.” The voice that answered back was rough, unfamiliar. It wasn’t Skeeter or Rip. It wasn’t any of the guys who crashed at the clubhouse—I would have known their voices.

  I unlocked the door and opened it, still carrying Becky. She twisted in my arms, trying to see what was going on.

  My front porch was in utter chaos. The two plastic chairs, the flowerpots with my marigolds and the birdfeeder had all gone through a blender. There was a new crack in the stucco near the window. But the windowpane wasn’t broken and the railing was still intact. At least the landlord couldn’t kick me out. After a second of searching, I saw Robby slumped in the far corner with a big, scary-looking biker standing guard over him.

  After two years of working at the clubhouse, I’d seen more than my share of big, scary guys in leather. But this guy was different. He didn’t have that frenzied look like most guys who just finished a fight. Usually you can see the adrenaline and testosterone reflected in their eyes. But not this guy. He was cold as he stared down at my ex.

  The scariest part about this guy was his vest. It was the standard-issue black leather biker vest, but the patches were all different. The patch that indicated where he was from only said “Berdoo.” The Storm Kings were only a single-Chapter club. Whoever this guy was, he wasn’t part of the family.

  “Is the Big Bad Wolf gone?” Becky’s voice quivered and her eyes darted around the p
orch, stopping on Robby’s unconscious body. “Daddy?”

  “Your daddy is asleep,” Berdoo said kindly, and instantly. “He worked real hard to protect you from the wolf.”

  I gave him a small nod of thanks. I wasn’t ready to explain to Becky that her daddy was an asshole.

  “Look, we’ll deal with him.” Tate stepped up next to my side. “But you can’t stay here tonight. The cops will be here real soon. Pack your things. You’ll be at the clubhouse tonight.”

  I nodded again. I didn’t want to stay there anyway. At least, with Tate’s permission, I could bring Becky to the clubhouse instead of a motel and save some cash.

  Becky and I went back into the apartment. I threw clothes into a backpack while she put a few toys into her lunchbox.

  “Go put on your sneakers, baby,” I instructed her. “There are broken things outside and I don’t want you to cut your feet.”

  She went to go put on her shoes and I threw toothbrushes and deodorant into the backpack. We were done packing in about three minutes.

  Grabbing Becky’s hand, we joined Tate and Berdoo out in the apartment parking lot. I stood in silence for a moment, surveying what was left of my car. Every single window was gone. I had no car.

  My car was just a hunk of machinery that took me places, but it was also freedom. It helped me escape Robby when things just got too bad. It took me to the courthouse for the restraining order. It allowed me to take Becky to school and dance lessons. It took me to school so I could get a real job. Tonight I had planned that it would take us to the clubhouse where we would be safe.

  But it was shattered. Windows gone, glass everywhere, my stuff inside had been thrown around. There was no way I could drive. I couldn’t get to safety.

  “My car...” I reached out to open the door, but a hand grabbed my wrist. Berdoo.

  The slumlords who owned my apartment complex never bothered to replace the bulbs in the floodlights, so the lot was dark. I tried to peer into the stranger’s face. He was a big shadow looming next to me. I should have been scared of him. But Tate was there and I was mostly just numb.