Fire Inside

by Kristen Ashley

  And what she said tore me apart.

  “Hop and I had a rocky beginning seeing as, when he was with Mitzi, I saw him in his bed in the Compound with a biker groupie bitch extraordinaire by the name of BeeBee.”

  My vision went blurry.

  “Holy crap,” Elvira breathed. “I always liked him. He’s a cool guy. And, never thought I would say this in my whole life, but that badass biker ’tache of his does things to my girl parts. I can’t believe this. He’s a cheater?”

  Tyra nodded and the room started swaying.

  “Tack says it’s none of his business or mine. Boys do what they do. Some of them are true to their old ladies, some of them are, well…” she shrugged, “not. It’s uncool but it’s part of the life. Actually, part of life since cheating isn’t limited to bikers, and Tack’s right, it really isn’t my business.”

  I had the weird sensation of feeling I was going to pass out at the same time I was hyper-alert and concentrating on every word Ty-Ty said.

  “Honestly,” she continued, “no offense to the sisterhood, but after all that went down and things got super ugly with Mitzi, Tack didn’t share any specifics but she came around and was totally a bitch, like, a Naomi bitch, so I have to admit, it was the one time in my life I kinda got it. Though he should have cut her loose before he nailed a biker groupie, especially one like BeeBee.”

  “This is what I don’t get,” Elvira grumbled. “They wanna go lookin’, they want fresh meat, why don’t they cut us loose first? Why they gotta keep us on a string? I mean, haven’t these dudes seen Fatal Attraction? Hope Floats? That shit destroys a woman, both women involved, for God’s sake, and it isn’t like men don’t know it.”

  “Is Tabby okay?” I blurted and both their heads swung my way.

  “Pardon?” Tyra asked.

  “I, well, sorry girls, but I don’t have a lot of time. I need to meet a client. Last minute meeting. But I wanted to stop by, Ty-Ty,” I looked at her and held all I was feeling in by the skin of my teeth. “See if Tab was okay with her Grandma and, you know, everything.”

  “She’s good. They’re heading down for the funeral this weekend. The rest, well, the Club has drama then the Club smoothes out drama, and they tend not to screw around so that’s all good,” Tyra answered. Her eyes narrowed on me and I nodded. “Are you good?” she asked.

  “Yeah, just, I have this client on my mind and, you know, blowout on Chaos, the whole thing with Tabby,” I lied. “But it’s good things are good.”

  “Girl, you sure you’re good?” Elvira asked and I looked at her to see her eyes were also narrowed on me.

  “I just, just…”

  God, I had to get out of there.

  I looked back to Tyra.

  “You know Tack visited me?”

  I saw my best friend’s body go still before she replied, “I know.”

  “I, well, I’ve been thinking about that and I thought I was ready to, um… discuss things with you. So I kinda came here to do that, as well as, of course, checking on Tab. But, being here, I think I need a little more time. Just, I don’t know, a week or, uh… two.”

  Her face changed, went soft, sweet, and last, immensely relieved.

  She loved me.

  She was worried about me.

  She was happy I was there to talk things out.

  So Ty-Ty.

  At least that was a relief, a massive one I unfortunately couldn’t fully feel seeing as my heart was bleeding.

  “You take all the time you need, honey. I’m always here,” she replied.

  She always was. Why hadn’t I remembered that?

  I nodded.

  “Always,” she repeated and I nodded again.

  “Me too, girl,” Elvira put in.

  I looked at her. Her face was soft, sweet, and concerned.

  She’d been worried about me too.

  So Elvira.

  I nodded at her too.

  “I have to go,” I said hurriedly.

  Both of them smiled at me.

  My smile was shaky and I knew it, I knew they saw it but I didn’t have much strength left to hold back all I was feeling so I had to move on before I lost it.

  I did this by turning and going out the door on a vague wave. My pumps clicked on the forecourt as I practically ran toward the Compound. I threw open the door, went through and saw Hop sitting on a stool at the curve of the bar. His eyes came right to me. He caught my expression and worry suffused his features.

  He got off his chair and when I made it to him, he grabbed my hand and murmured, “My room.”

  I nodded.

  He led me to his room. I pulled my hand free and walked in three paces.

  After he closed the door, he turned to me and took a step toward me.

  I took a step back.

  His brows shot together and his eyes studied my face.

  “Jesus, fuck, it didn’t go good with Cherry?” he asked with disbelief.

  “I know about BeeBee.”

  I watched his body freeze.

  There it was.

  He’d done it.

  He’d cheated on Mitzi with a woman named BeeBee.

  God!

  “We’re over,” I declared. “Over,” I repeated. “I do not fuck cheaters. I do not look at cheaters. I do not even breathe the same air,” I leaned into him and finished on a hiss, “as cheaters. I never want to see you again, Hop. I never want you to touch me again. As of now, you’ve ceased to exist.”

  After I delivered that speech, I ran.

  I ran out of his room, through the Compound and to my car.

  The problem with this was that I knew he came after me.

  He didn’t say a word but when I started up my car, I heard a Harley roar and I knew it was his. And when I drove, I saw him on his bike right behind me. And when I parked in my garage, he pulled into my back drive.

  So when I hustled through my courtyard, opened the sliding glass door, I couldn’t close it because his hand was on it and I could feel the heat of his body at my back.

  I gave up, rushed in and whirled on him, feeling, actually feeling myself coming apart at the seams.

  He had to go.

  “You don’t get to be here, Hop. You never get to be here again,” I clipped.

  “Cody isn’t mine.”

  My body swayed from an unexpected blow landed so accurately, I had to put a foot back to catch me so I wouldn’t fall.

  “Yeah,” he growled, not missing my reaction.

  “Oh my God,” I breathed.

  “Yeah,” he growled again. “I didn’t know that fucked up shit when I fucked BeeBee and yeah, woman, I fucked BeeBee, but Tyra sharin’ that shit is uncool. She doesn’t know why I did it, she doesn’t know where I was at in my head when I did it, she doesn’t know shit, and she isn’t entitled to know shit because it’s none of her goddamned business.”

  “Hop—” I tried to break in but failed.

  He was angry, furious. His rage filled the room, making it hard to breathe.

  And he was on a roll.

  “But before I’m done with you, you’re gonna know it all.”

  Before he was done with me?

  “We were on a break, Mitzi and me,” he shared. “I didn’t know it was a break then. I thought it was over. Before that happened, she got pregnant with Cody and she didn’t let me touch her. Barely even fuckin’ looked at me. Tried everything, she didn’t let me in. She gave me a son, or I thought she gave me a son. Didn’t know, at the time, he wasn’t mine. Then she had him, I was over the goddamned moon, and she still froze me out. Worse than before, far worse. For me, I had a son, he was fuckin’ perfect, I was goddamned beside myself and my woman? She freezes me out? I couldn’t take it. Tried. Failed. Packed my shit. Got out. I’d had enough. Years of that shit. Years of tryin’ to break through. It wasn’t an easy decision. Molly, so fuckin’ little, Cody, just a baby, but I couldn’t take one more day of her fucked up shit. So I left.”

  “Honey—”
<
br />   “Shut it, woman. You bought this, take it.”

  I snapped my mouth shut.

  Hop glowered at me a moment before he continued.

  “I was stayin’ at the Compound, lookin’ for a place. BeeBee was available. I hadn’t had a lay in nearly a fuckin’ year so I took advantage. None of Tyra’s business why. Tack’s. Yours. Anyone’s. I got off. It wasn’t good. It didn’t suck. What it was was a onetime gig, a man fuckin’ available gash with no strings. I was a free agent so why the fuck not?”

  “I don’t think Tyra knows that,” I said carefully.

  “I don’t give a fuck she does or doesn’t,” he returned.

  I fell silent.

  Hop carried on.

  “Not long after that, Mitzi talked me back. I thought she wanted to give it another shot. What she wanted was someone to help her with dirty diapers and a mortgage payment. She pulled the wool and I wanted a family so bad, to wake up knowin’ my kids were under my roof, I let her. Then, one day, I come home and some woman is sittin’ on our porch. Never seen this bitch before. I get off my bike, walk up to her, she looks me straight in the eyes and lays it out. Everything. Everything I worked hard to get and Mitzi never gave to me. Everything I learned from a goddamned stranger.”

  When he stopped speaking and didn’t seem like he was going to go on, I prompted, “What did you learn, honey?”

  “I learned why Mitzi was such a cunt. A spoiled rotten, worthless piece of shit who I wasted fuckin’ years with. The piece of shit who was the mother of my children. Or, I found out that day, my daughter. Not my goddamned son.”

  I was trying not to hyperventilate and had to concentrate so much on this, I only had it in me to nod.

  “She was a cheerleader,” Hop announced and I blinked.

  “What?” I forced out.

  “This bitch. Blonde. Blue-eyed. Perfectly honed body. Goddamned ponytail in her hair. She was the kind of cheerleader who was gonna hold onto that shit, the glory days, until she fuckin’ died. Or she thought she would until Mitzi blew her life apart.”

  I didn’t get it.

  Hop didn’t make me ask for an explanation.

  “See, back in the day, Mitzi had a thing for the quarterback of her high school football team. She wanted him. Problem was, he was dating the head cheerleader. But Mitzi, Mitzi wanted what she wanted, so she gave it her all to get it. In high school terms, that means she put out. This fuckin’ guy took what she gave, kept her on the side and went to homecoming and prom with his good girl. This was the beginning and until that day on the porch, it didn’t have an end. Mitzi fixated on this guy. He was all she wanted and, way that bitch told it, she went all out to get him. The shit she said, she was not fuckin’ jokin’.”

  I kept deep breathing.

  Hop kept telling his tale of treachery.

  “He went to college, his girl went to the same college, but he still kept Mitzi on the side. And she stayed there, givin’ him what his cheerleader couldn’t or wouldn’t. They graduated, got married, he got a job, kept Mitzi and his wife until his work transferred him to another state. That’s when Mitzi realized it might not ever be her so she had to have a plan B. He took his wife, said good-bye and didn’t look back.”

  Hop paused, I nodded again and Hop kept going.

  “That’s when I came into the picture. That’s why she never let me in. Pinin’ for that guy. Still in touch with him. Holdin’ a torch, holdin’ onto hope. She led me into a life together knowin’, she got a shot, she’d cut me loose and go for him. He got transferred back to Denver after we had Molly and they started up again. Good news for her, she thought, when she found out his wife couldn’t have kids. She and me, things not good, I wasn’t hankerin’ to make another baby with her until I was sure we were solid and it didn’t look like that would happen, so I was surprised as fuck she turned up pregnant since she was on the pill. But shit happens. I got my son. I rejoiced even if Mitzi was a bitch. My son’s my son, so who wouldn’t rejoice?”

  “No one,” I whispered.

  “Damn straight,” he bit off. “But, see, this bitch on my porch, she tells me that Mitzi went to her husband and threatened to tell her their history and the fact that Mitzi had his kid if he didn’t break it off with her. To cut her off at the pass, this guy told his wife the whole fuckin’ thing. Feelin’ like spreadin’ that joy, the bitch comes and shares it with me. Shit blows sky high, as it fuckin’ would, tests are performed, Cody isn’t mine.”

  My heart clutched so hard, the pain excruciating, all I could force out was, “Hop.”

  “But he fuckin’ is,” Hop snarled. “That motherfucker didn’t hold Mitzi’s goddamned hand in the delivery room. That motherfucker wasn’t the first human being to wrap his arms around my boy. That motherfucker didn’t give him his first bottle, change his first diaper, sit with him in a rocker until he fell asleep. I told all of those assholes, they’d see a courtroom before they took my kid. The guy talked his wife around, got another transfer, happily told me he was good with me raisin’ his son and they took off. Mitzi saw that she threw her hail Mary and the guy let it drop. He was done with her, and in her twisted, fucked up head, she blamed me and laid a pile of shit on me so heavy, it’s been years and it’s a wonder I can breathe after that stench. Then she woke up and saw me with her kids, saw what she had and threw away, tried to sort shit with me. I told her I was so far from interested in that, it wasn’t goddamned funny, and further, she pulled any-fuckin’-thing with me or my kids, she wouldn’t like my response. And here we are.”

  There they were and, truthfully, I was surprised Hop had it in him to give that woman the courtesy of ignoring her and finding a chair far away from hers at their daughter’s dance recital. I didn’t know what he would do besides, not with his kids involved. What I knew was that was a further insight into the character of Hopper Kincaid that he’d breathe her air at all.

  For his kids.

  For both his kids, even when one of them was his by claim, not blood.

  “Does Tyra know any of this?” I asked.

  “I don’t know. I don’t give a fuck. For Cody, I didn’t spread that shit around. As far as anyone’s concerned, he’s mine every way he can be. If someone looked at him and guessed, they kept it to themselves. That isn’t what’s important right now, Lanie. What’s important is, I don’t know what shit Tyra spouted or how it came out, you took that shit in, came to me and didn’t let me say a goddamned word before you tore us apart and tore outta there.”

  Unfortunately this was true.

  “I actually didn’t have a chance to share anything with Tyra and, in her defense, Tyra didn’t want to share but when I walked into the office, she and Elvira were gossiping, you know how Elvira is, and it came out. She doesn’t know about us. She didn’t share it vindictively, Hop. It just…” I paused and finished lamely, “came out.”

  “That’s good, babe, that ticks one thing off your list. You don’t have to share ’cause now, this shit, there is no us she needs to know about.”

  I felt my eyes get wide and my stomach plummet.

  “Hop, I—”

  “Save it,” he clipped. “I don’t wanna hear it. You said what you had to say, you made your fuckin’ judgment which, Lanie, you seem to do a lot of judging even gettin’ pissed that I’d think you would. You’re the master of the backtrack. I spend a lot of time listenin’ to you do it, even gettin’ maneuvered into fuckin’ apologizin’ to you about it and I do not need that shit in my life.”

  “That isn’t fair,” I whispered.

  “No, what isn’t fair is you bein’ with me, you knowin’ exactly the man I am, and you walkin’ into my room and layin’ that shit on me. You fuckin’ know, woman, fuck me, you goddamned know I am not that man. And you got such a loose hold on your drama, you laid that shit on me. Well, I’m done with your goddamned drama, Lanie. All day, worried goddamned sick about you, goin’ into battle with that monster, goin’ to have words with Cherry, then you lay that on me? You
jump to conclusions, tell me to my face you never want me to touch you again?” He shook his head. “No. You don’t want my hands on you, woman? You got it.”

  I stood frozen in fear as he turned to the door and he had it opened before he turned back.

  “You breathe one word about Cody to anyone, so help me God, you’ll deal with me. That’s mine to share. Nothin’ about me is yours. Not anymore.”

  And on that, as every word he said drove home, slicing through me, he moved through the door, slid it closed and prowled away without even a glance back.

  I stood, immobile, trying with difficulty to manage the pain and staring at the door thinking how hard that had to have been for Hop to share. How difficult it must be for him to wake up every day and know his woman cheated on him, gave the son he wanted to another man. How he didn’t care and went to the mat to keep a son who wasn’t his but who was. How lucky it was that even though Cody Kincaid’s biological father was a total dick, God saw fit to insert Hopper into his life. How I really, really needed to learn how to get a handle on my drama and not blow things out of proportion.

  How I now knew the definition of a cunt.

  How I’d just hurt my man, forced him to share something in anger when he wasn’t ready.

  And last and most importantly, how the hell I was going to get him back.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Come Inside

  The next day…

  “Hop, please call me. I was an idiot. I shouldn’t have done what I did. I promise I’ll get a hold on the drama. I promise, Hopper. Swear.” I took a deep breath. “We need to talk this out, honey. Please call me,” I begged into my phone.

  I’d given it the night but this was my third voicemail that day.

  I put my phone on my desk, ignored the cautious vibe coming from the staff in my office that I knew was caused by me, and tried to get to work.

  But I couldn’t stop thinking about Hop. What I’d done, what he’d said, how to make it better. Needless to say, I didn’t get anything done.

  Hours later, I called him and left another voicemail.

  Hours after that, before going to bed, I called him again but since he didn’t answer, I hung up.