Andi and Niro

by Gadziala, Jessica

  So the money that came from the fights, that was just socked away in a safe place for an eventual house if or when the time came. Eventually, the numbers of the club were going to keep increasing as the kids of the older members—like me, like Finn, like a few others—got old enough to patch in. They would need places to stay in those early days. Then it would be time to move on. And I was prepared for that day.

  But today wasn't it.

  Neither was tomorrow.

  Or this weekend.

  Whether I won or lost the fight.

  The uncertainty of my unknown opponent was still niggling at me as I pulled my bike in through the gates of the clubhouse.

  It was a low, squat building that had once served as a mechanic's shop back before the father of the current president started the club.

  There wasn't much to note about the outside save for the tall, barbed wire and electrified fences, the trenches, the armed guards—all remnants of all the past wars the club had been through and survived well enough to decide they wanted to make sure it didn't happen again if they could help it. The main feature of the whole place was the glass room up on the roof that could be seen for miles in each direction. The way I heard it, it was made from DARPA glass that was strong enough to withstand any sort of firearm.

  It didn't need to constantly be manned these days like it had in the past, but one of us usually chose to take our guard shift up there when we could anyway. There weren't a lot of places in Navesink Bank where you could get away from it all. And when you were constantly surrounded by your brothers, their wives, even their kids, it was nice to have a place to be alone.

  "Hey," I said, nodding to one of the OG men as he made his way out the door, giving me a strange look I didn't know how to interpret. Maybe it was because I was all busted up again. Though, you'd think at that point, they'd all have accepted that there was hardly a week when I wasn't cut or bruised or icing my ribs.

  But then I stepped into the main area of the clubhouse, hearing the voices of some of my brothers coming from the kitchen.

  The clubhouse had a pretty big common area with an actual bar to the right inside the door—dark wood gleaming, a back bar that was always fully stocked—a pool table to the left, then a living room with a massive TV and various gaming systems in beyond that, nearer to the door that led into the backyard.

  To the side of that TV was the kitchen where the voices were coming from, raised enough to hear every word.

  I could make out Finn, my makeshift doctor, and his older brother—and our future president—Fallon along with Seth, another legacy kid around our ages.

  "Well, who the fuck is going to tell him?" Fallon asked. Even from across the space, the laid-back cockiness was there in his voice.

  "I'm not telling that psychopath shit," Finn shot back, but there was a lightness in his voice, always the brother with a little more levity, a little less intensity.

  Psychopath.

  They had to have been talking about me.

  "Tell me what?" I asked, moving into the doorway, finding the three of them—Fallon, Finn, and Seth—standing around while Malcolm, our current Road Captain's only son, sat at the table nursing a cup of coffee in his giant hands.

  Descended from tall, strong men, they were all tall and fit themselves. But no one was quite as big as Malc, who was a brick wall of a guy with a beard, and a calm, quiet demeanor. His father rarely spoke in full sentences, and while his mother was a chatterbox, he'd taken to silence more, only speaking up when he felt he needed to.

  "Shit," Finn hissed, immediately looking at his naked wrist. "Look at the time. I have to go... be anywhere but here," he said, rushing past me, gaze averted so I couldn't even see what kind of news he might not want to share with me on his face.

  "Pussy," Fallon called to his younger brother, smirking. That smirk was a trademark of his. With a bright future ahead of him, good looks that included black hair and green eyes and that bad guy biker look with his leather cut and an abundance of ink, he was almost always a little cocky. Maybe if I hadn't grown up with him, I'd have found it irritating as fuck. As it was, it was just who he was.

  "What doesn't he want you guys to tell me?" I asked, looking around, finding Seth shaking his head, and Fallon reaching for his phone, pretending the text he had was of the utmost importance.

  In the end, it was the stoic, quiet Malc who stood slowly, moved toward me, and said in that gravelly voice of his, "Andi is back in town," before he headed out as well. Ripping the band-aid off, that was the kind of man Malcolm was.

  I'd done a lot of work, a lot of fucking work, to have no reaction to that name. I wasn't even sure I'd accomplished the task on the outside.

  But on the inside, her name just caused a slight twisting in my gut. None of that crushing, overwhelming helplessness that used to be there.

  Or the hopeless, useless love either.

  "What, for the weekend?" I asked, glad when my voice came out casual as I made my way toward the coffee pot, even though it smelled like Malc had brewed it. Which meant it was probably strong enough to float a fucking horseshoe on. Coming from a mom who pounded energy drinks like water, it was somewhat inevitable that her only child would grow up to have his own caffeine addiction.

  Fallon exhaled hard. "The way I heard it, there was a car packed with boxes involved."

  "Who'd you hear that from?" I asked, going for casual even if my thoughts were starting to swirl.

  "My sister," he said. "She found some beaver on her last trip..."

  "A beaver?" Seth asked, snorting.

  "Beaver, groundhog. I don't know. Some fucking furry thing. And she thought its leg was broken, so she brought it over to see if Rey could rehabilitate it. She didn't see Andi, but who else would be there with boxes?"

  That was fair enough.

  Fallon and Finn's older sister, Ferryn, had been away for a good chunk of all of our lives, running off at sixteen. So she didn't know what kind of car Andi drove like the rest of us would. Hell, she probably wouldn't even know her if she saw her. And because she was still working on building up her relationships with her aunts and uncles, including Rey and Reeve—Andi's parents—she wasn't going to ask personal questions if they didn't volunteer information first.

  "But if she's back with boxes, why doesn't anyone know?" Seth asked, shaking his head. "You know how information spreads with the moms."

  That was another good point. It had been one of the few downfalls of growing up in such a tight-knit community. Nothing was ever private. If you got a bad grade, got into a fight at school, cut your own hair with the kitchen scissors, everyone knew about it by the next morning. Which meant everyone would rib you about it as well.

  That said, it also meant that if someone got wind you were in trouble, that you needed a tutor, needed a shoulder to lean on, needed someone to make you chicken noodle soup when you were sick, someone was always quick to step up for the task.

  "Dunno. Guess Rey and Reeve didn't tell anyone," Fallon told me, shrugging. "Fact is, it seems like Andi is back in town. So now I gotta wonder," he said, looking over at me, a dark brow quirking up.

  "No, you don't," I insisted, shaking my head.

  "Yeah, but, somehow, I still do," he told me, lips twitching.

  Because he was a dick.

  "Fallon, don't," Seth demanded, knowing our future president was a bit of a shit-starter, and that I was quick to raise my hands when I was pissed.

  While the OG Henchmen had ironed out all their differences ages ago, we young bloods hadn't quite gotten to that point yet. It wasn't uncommon for there to be a fight here or there. And there were never any hard feelings. Usually we would nurse our wounds together later over drinks.

  That said, it got ugly when it was between two stubborn asses like Fallon and me.

  "Hey, I'm just thinking about the club," Fallon insisted.

  "How's that?" I asked, leveling a hard look at him.

  "You know, morale and shit. If Niro here gets al
l lovesick again."

  "Christ," Seth mumbled.

  I wasn't in the biting mood, though.

  If for no other reason than I didn't want to give Fallon a reason to feel like he got the better of me.

  "That's all in the past," I said, shrugging, as I took a long sip of the coffee, not knowing if the bitter taste on my tongue was from the drink or the words I'd just said.

  "Hm. I guess we will see," Fallon decided, still not believing me.

  "You starting shit again?" Reign, our president, and Fallon and Finn's father, asked as he walked into the room, looking directly at his oldest son.

  "Me? Always," Fallon admitted shamelessly.

  "If you can't learn to play fucking nice, how the hell am I supposed to hand this club over to you?" Reign asked, coming up beside me, looking dubiously at the coffee pot. "That smells rancid. Malc?" he asked.

  "Yep," I agreed, tipping my mug up at him, taking a sip, just barely managing not to wince.

  "I guess I'll pass. Who'd you fuck up now?" he asked, brow arched up as he looked at my face.

  "Oh me? Just went a couple practice rounds in the ring," I said, shrugging.

  "Chip off the old block," he mumbled to himself.

  "So, Pops, you hanging back for the party tonight?" Fallon asked, already knowing the answer.

  "Fuck no," Reign said, shaking his head. "Rather be at home with my woman than here watching you jackasses tear it up. But I will be making sure someone with some sense is here to keep an eye on shit."

  "We don't need a babysitter. Let the men have the night off," Fallon demanded.

  To that, his father shot him a smirk that looked even more cocky with the added years, "Oh, I'm not sending one of the men. I'm sending your cousin. She ought to keep your asses in line," Reign said, dealing the deathblow, and clearly enjoying the look of dread on his son's face.

  "Oh, for fuck's sake. Not Chris," Fallon demanded.

  We all loved our cousin—whether we were related through blood like Fallon or not—but she was a stubborn-ass who would make sure that no one got away with anything they shouldn't.

  "You know, I thought that after your teens were over, I wouldn't get so much joy in making your life hell. But, damn, it never stops being entertaining," Reign said, smacking a hand on his son's shoulder so hard that he jerked forward a step.

  "She's not so bad when her man is around," Seth said, shrugging, as Reign walked out. "Maybe someone should suggest he take her on up to the glass room for some privacy," he added.

  "Is your moody ass going to be here?" Fallon asked.

  I wasn't in the mood to party. But when was I ever these days? That said, I had nothing else to do, nowhere else to be. And drinking sounded like a good way to keep my mind from drifting to thoughts of Andi, about why she was back in town, about what had happened to send her home after so long.

  It wasn't my place to wonder about that shit anymore.

  She wasn't mine.

  She'd never been mine.

  She'd never be mine.

  That had been my mantra for longer than I cared to think about.

  It didn't matter that she had left New York.

  The reasons she did so didn't matter either.

  And it sure didn't matter that she was back in Navesink Bank, that I would more than likely be crossing paths with her more than a few times.

  It didn't matter.

  Because I'd spent the last several years forcing any feelings I had toward her away, beating them down, forcing them so deep that they didn't have any chance of coming up to the surface again.

  At least that was the theory.

  Only time would put it to the test.

  I never could have realized just how quickly I would be face-to-face with the woman I had spent more than half of my life in love with.

  Or how having her close again would feel.

  Chapter Four

  Andi

  I was getting preened by one of my mother's macaws when they showed up.

  My cousins.

  By connection to the club, not blood. I only had few actual blood cousins, but it made things easier to just refer to the kids of the bikers as my cousins because we'd been raised much like that. One big, crazy, loud, sometimes dysfunctional, but always love-filled, family

  Gracie and Hope were the closest in age to me. Both had gone off to college at the same time, but had moved back to Navesink Bank afterward.

  Gracie was blonde-haired and blue-eyed with a long, and leanly athletic body, sun-kissed skin, and a big smile on her pretty face.

  Hope was the only daughter of my Uncle Renny—a red-headed, blue-eyed man—and my Aunt Mina who was part Asian, making their daughter come out with medium brown hair with reddish highlights, a somewhat delicate face with high cheekbones, and almond-shaped stormy blue eyes.

  Whereas Gracie had a beachy sort of style, Hope was more edgy with her all-black outfit, double nose piercing, and the smattering of tattoos I could see peeking out of the collar of her shirt and half-covering her arms.

  Much to her profiler parents' chagrin, she hadn't taken her innate skills of observation and pursued a career in therapy or something tame. Last I heard, she was doing a sort of internship working as a private investigator, trying to earn her way into a permanent position.

  "How'd you guys find out I'm here?" I asked, wondering if my mom had slipped.

  "Ferryn saw the car with the boxes."

  Right.

  Ferryn.

  I hadn't even recognized her when I looked out the window when I heard voices out front. The last time I'd seen her, she'd been sixteen with long black hair and a soft sweetness I had always liked, even if I'd always found her a bit bossy.

  There was no more of that softness after many years away. And she'd cut almost all of her hair off.

  I hadn't spoken to her, but I guess I should have figured she would know that the car and my boxes were out of place.

  "So does everyone know now?" I asked as we made our way out of the bird room, heading into my old childhood bedroom where we'd spent so much of our youth.

  "By now? Just everyone our ages probably. Once the moms find out, it will be out, though," Hope said, dropping down on my twin-sized bed, running her hand over the light-yellow wildflower comforter.

  "It's like a time capsule in here," Hope said, tossing a few of the stuffed animals off my papasan chair before sitting down.

  "Why is it a big secret anyway?" Hope wondered, looking a little hurt that I wanted to keep my presence a secret from her.

  "I just needed a couple days to decompress. I was planning on texting you after this weekend. It's nice to see you guys, though," I said, smiling. The last time I'd seen Gracie was when I'd been home for Christmas, but she'd been all over her boyfriend at the time, so we hadn't had much time to catch up. Hope, to everyone's disappointment, had been working out of town the entire week of Christmas and New Year's. "How is John—"

  "Nuh-uh-uh," Hope said, giving me wide eyes that said I shouldn't even say his name.

  "Uh oh," I said, wincing. "Sorry."

  Gracie raised a hand like it was water under the bridge, but she'd sat up straighter. "It's okay."

  "And by 'it's okay,' she means it took me three months to even get her to come out of her apartment to get coffee with me."

  John had been Gracie's first serious relationship. I definitely remembered the devastation that followed the falling out of mine. I was sure I'd have been in my apartment for months too, if not for Niro.

  "But that's why we are here," Gracie said, forcing a bright smile. "We are dragging you to a party with us."

  "A party?" I asked, shoulders slumping. I'd never been much of a party person. I'd certainly tried while away at college, but I just never felt like I fit in. I usually just hoped there was a resident animal of some sort that I could hang out with until my friends got drunk enough that they didn't notice—or wouldn't care even if they did—that I snuck out to go home and paint the terra cotta plan
ters I'd bought for one of my many houseplants.

  "Oh, you're coming," Hope said, shaking her head.

  "You guys know me. I'm not a drinker. Or a dancer. Or a..."

  "We are going to meet up with Luna and Billie," Gracie tried, dropping names to more of our cousins. Luna, a quiet, bookish one that I had always gotten along with well. And Billie, the wildcard, the unpredictable one, the one who might be in bed by eight with Sleepy Time tea one night and breaking a couple of laws the next.

  "And you can cut out anytime you want," Hope added, giving me the out she knew I needed.

  "Alright. Well, what kind of party? What should I wear?" I asked, looking down at the black leggings and my father's old oversize t-shirt I was wearing.

  "We're going like this, but that shirt is tragic," Gracie told me. "I'll find you something," she decided, moving off toward my closet, finding a mix of my old clothes from high school and the slightly more mature things I had picked up during college, usually at the insistence of one of my friends. Fashion had never been something I'd had any talent with or even any interest in. Gracie was always the one dressing me when we were younger. "Here. This," she decided, grabbing a simple yellow flower sundress.

  "A dress? You guys are not that dressy."

  "Yeah because Hope thinks leather pants are formal wear," Gracie teased, getting a shrug from Hope. "And because I had nothing else clean. But if it makes you feel any better, I will steal one of your skirts."

  It did.

  So she did.

  And about an hour later after I made sure Nugget had eaten, had a short walk, and was settled down with a treat with his doggy friends, we were off.

  "Wait," I said, stiffening as Hope pulled her black Mustang into the lot of the Henchmen compound. "You didn't say the party was at the clubhouse."

  "Where else would we party these days?" Gracie asked, eyebrows pinching as she looked over her shoulder at me, not understanding why I was suddenly so tense.

  And, yes, of course. I really should have thought of that. It wasn't like we were in high school anymore. No one had house parties. Hell, most of us didn't have houses, just apartments.