They could go out the front door. He could hook his arm around her neck and tell her to act like she was drunk and laughing, and they were heading out to fuck up against the wall and the stars, but she was staring at him with growing alarm every second he didn’t make a decision, and she hadn’t been any kind of actress when they were young. Time had passed, but he hadn’t talked about it. Why would he have needed to? There had been no reason. Christ, what was he going to do?
If they went out the front door, they’d bump into the Racketeers, there was no way around it. And if they did, there was a good chance Vanessa would be with them. She never missed a chance to dance and drink, and she was damned good at both. And if she was here, and she made even the slightest comment to Jessie about what he was supposedly doing here in town, the whole operation would be ruined. It was a hare-brained idea as it was, and introducing complications would kill it dead, no question about that.
It didn’t matter, in the end, if his cover got blown. Well, it did, it would make getting them out of here safely harder, but the ultimate goal had to be protecting Jessie. She was innocent in all of this. If his stained soul got dragged down to hell, that was sad, but not the end of the world. But if he had to give his life to keep her safe, he could do that. He could do that much for Danny, and his memory.
He started to stand, ready to take her hand and shuffle them both out the door in the most unobtrusive way he could manage, but he’d been frozen for too long. Even as he stood, the doors to the bar slammed open, and a crew of men in Racketeers’ colors poured into the bar.
A few of them he could pick out from the research he’d done on the club. Rodriguez, Sully, Harsh. None of the brass, from what he could see, just patched members. His heart settled down just a little bit. None of the patches would know who he was. And Jack Pedroza, Pedey, wasn’t among the guys who’d come in. Thank god for that much. He and Danny had hung around with Eddie when they were kids, and his cousin had been a bastard even then, always in trouble with someone, always harassing them for money or get them to steal liquor or cigarettes or prescriptions from their parents. Pedey probably wouldn’t recognize the man from the boy he’d known, but he wouldn’t put it past the bastard. And if Eddie Pedroza’s cousin really was the punk in Racketeer colors who had run down Danny Hendricks all those years ago, Tex wouldn’t put it past him to kill both him and Jessie, if he figured out that they were trying to take him down.
But no Pedey, and no Vanessa. Okay. Okay, maybe this wasn’t as bad as it could have been.
Except that the Racketeers came rushing into the bar like the villains in every shitty Roadhouse-type movie he’d ever seen. Sully pushed a guy out of a chair so he could reach down and throw back the man’s amber whiskey. Harsh grabbed a woman away from her dance partner and smothered her mouth with his. She punched him in the sac, and he shoved her away into the woman she’d been dancing with, then carried on to the bar. Someone else was barreling onto the dance floor, and someone else was pushing the DJ out of the way.
He stood all the way up, and glanced down at Jessie, who was watching all of this with angry eyes and a firm chin. He took her hand and pulled her up, tossed a twenty down onto the table, and then headed for the door near them. Right now, he didn’t give a shit where it went; they were out of here. He could see the bartender, slipping around the corner and picking up the phone. From another set of doors, a couple of big guys were moving out onto the floor of the bar to intercept the interlopers. Another day, he would have joined them, settling down the men and explaining how people acted in public when they wanted to be considered people, and not animals. But today — it made him more than a little sick, but he had something more important to do right now. “Come on,” he said to Jessie.
She all but dragged behind him, looking back at everything that was happening with worried eyes. He understood, but she was tiny and delicate, and he couldn’t stand the thought of her breaking. He pushed her through the door ahead of him. And just before he followed her, the door opened one more time, and Vanessa came in on Pedey’s arm. Their eyes locked across the room, and he froze one more time.
Her lips curled in an angry little smirk, and she was already tugging on Pedey’s arm and pointing as he hustled out behind Jessie. They needed to move.
He found himself in a dark hallway, with illuminated signs for the bathrooms down the hall. He moved quickly in that direct, his grip on Jessie’s hand firm. “What’s happening in there, Tex?” she snapped, but at least she’d stopped pulling on him like an anchor. “Is this some kind of PTSD veteran thing? What the hell is happening?”
“Stop talking,” he snapped, and anger registered in her eyes. He forced himself not to notice it; he forced himself to focus on the assignment he’d been given, getting her out of here in one piece.
He was on the same wall as he’d parked the bike, and he was sure he’d seen the outline of a delivery door when they’d been outside, but whether he could find the storeroom that led to it? About twenty feet past the bathrooms was another door. He judged it to be about the same distance as the delivery door might have been. He needed to move, anyway; if Pedey was like him — and Pedey was often like him — he’d be working his way across the floor, looking to check out what Vanessa was talking about. Maybe to meet their new hard goods man. Find out why the guy was beating feet as soon as he saw the club colors, instead of staying to make some friends. After all, it was custom for all patches to vote on new pledges. He’d need to be known by more than just the club leadership in order to become a full patch. Being invisible would not get him his stated goals.
Didn’t matter. The primary mission was to protect Jessie. The rest of it didn’t matter.
The door was locked, but the knob felt flimsy under his hand. In movies, guys always slammed into the center of the door, but that was ridiculous; to break open a door, he’d learned a long time ago to put the force of his body right next to the lock. A shoulder slam would snap a chain, but for a doorknob? He drew back, lifted his foot, and kicked hard, ball first, right next to the doorknob. The door popped open with a snarl of wood, the lock tearing free from the jamb.
“What are you doing?” Jessie asked again, but at least this time she asked it in a horrified whisper. Both her hands were clasped around his one now, and he could feel cold sweat in her palms. There was a distant part of his brain that told him he was overreacting, this was not a combat situation, he could stand down, but the part of his brain that had helped him survive in the desert boxed that little voice off, because he was surviving, goddamnit, and he’d be guilty or rationalize later.
“Getting us out of here,” he managed to choke out, because if she would just be quiet, they’d be safer.
He tugged her through the doorway, then pushed the door shut behind them. They were in a dim storeroom, but there was a door down at the far end letting in a little bit of moonlight. This one was shut with a deadbolt, so he could easily flip the lock and let them out. He felt a sliver of guilt at leaving it unlocked, and hoped that the owner wouldn’t lose many goods because of this stunt he was pulling, but the mission was the most important thing.
“Tex,” she hissed again.
“Quiet,” he hissed back. “Bike. Now.”
“Tex, look,” she said, yanking his hands so that he turned his attention to the front of the building.
Pedey wasn’t so much like him as he’d hoped. The man — probably led by Vanessa — had come out of the bar and turned around into the dark side area. They hadn’t seen him or Jessie yet, but it was just a matter of time. He placed his free hand over Jessie’s lips to signal her to be silent, then carefully began taking one step at a time towards his bike, praying her heeled boots wouldn’t make the gravel shift.
They managed to stay completely silent and lost in the shadows right until he turned the key in the bike’s ignition. He heard Vanessa’s shrill shout at the same time he kicked the bike into gear, Jessie clinging to his back like a burr. The bike’s tires slewed t
hrough the gravel, and he felt Jessie shift behind him. For one horrible moment, he was convinced someone had grabbed her, and that in the next second, he would feel a cold brush of wind against his back as she was torn away from him, shattered on the ground, and he would have failed his mission. But no, she was just adjusting, clinging to him more tightly, shifting with him as he fought to control the bike long enough to get up to speed.
None of the Racketeers were behind him as he hit the highway, turning the bike’s throttle as fast as he dared to go on the rapid turns. There was only one place he could even begin to think that he was the slightest bit safe. He could hear Jessie shouting behind him, but the wind stole her words, and the panic attack took full control of him; his heart throbbing in his throat, he drove, his demons hot on his tail.
Chapter Twenty
When Tex finally stopped the bike, Jessie got off so fast that she fell in the sand. She’d stopped crying a while back, a little while after she’d stopped screaming. It hadn’t made any difference. Whatever had taken hold of Tex, it wasn’t letting go yet. He’d driven like a demon, racing through turns faster than he’d ever taken them, shifting with the bike like it was part of his body. She’d thought she’d been getting good at this whole passenger thing, but she hadn’t had a fucking clue. She’d done her best, but she’d been convinced at every corner that this would be the time the bike finally keeled over, taking them both out, and it would be her fault. Completely her fault.
She managed to wrestle the helmet off her head, then stayed bent in the sand, on her hands and knees, waiting to see if she was going to puke or not. Her stomach was almost too tight for her to be sick, twisted and aching. Thank God she’d only had half the beer before — shit – whatever had happened had happened. It had been all too obvious that Tex had been triggered by something, though she had no idea what had done it. A bunch of toughs came into a bar and started being assholes; that wasn’t anything new, even in coastal California. Maybe it was the fact that all the toughs were wearing leather, clearly members of another motorcycle club. Maybe a rival club? Were rival clubs really a thing?
Maybe they had something to do with the Racketeers that Tex had mentioned in passing?
She looked up at him, collecting herself slowly. He was still astride the motorcycle, his hand stroking the throttle somewhere between compulsively and obsessively. His eyes were blank, flat, and he’d chewed his lower lip until it had started to bleed. Jesus. Her anger at the way he’d hauled her out of the bar with no explanation was replaced with fear that something was seriously wrong. She’d been in therapy for years after Danny was murdered, and she’d had some passing experience with PTSD. She knew a lot of veterans came home with mental health concerns, and he’d referred obliquely to his time in the service, but turned away any direct questions. And, from what he’d said, he hadn’t been all that stable after Danny died, though his parents had ignored it.
She’d been on the receiving end of panic attacks more than once, but she’d never been around anyone else who was coming down from — or in the throes of— one.
“Hey,” she said, keeping her voice low and her hands visible, like she would if she were addressing a strange animal, liable to bite. The comparison made her wince, but then, panic attacks were all about the more animal parts of the brain. It made sense. “Hey, Tex.”
He blinked. He blinked, and his hands slowed. He went painfully still for a long moment, then finally kicked the bike down and dismounted. He took two steps, then went down into the sand. He threw up violently, heaving like he was coughing up something very dark and dangerous, more bitter than stomach bile. She moved close to him, and put her hands near him, but she didn’t touch him. Not yet. When someone had touched her too soon, it was like being stabbed with a thousand needles, and it made everything so much worse. She could wait.
He was muttering something, quiet and soft. She moved a little closer. “What’s wrong, love? You can talk to me.”
He turned blank eyes to her, then blinked, and it was as if his soul came back from wherever it had been wandering. “Jessie?” His voice was both hopeful and afraid.
“Yeah,” she said. She put her fingers right next to his, and when he shifted to cling to her hand, she felt gratified. Like she was doing the right things, and they were moving in the right direction. Like he would be okay. “Yeah. I’m here. Tex. Can we talk about what happened?”
He shook his head. “Not much to tell. Saw the Racketeers, knew I needed to get you out. Instincts…took over. I’m sorry. It got bad for a minute.”
It had been bad for a lot longer than a minute, but pointing that out felt like very much the wrong move. “It seemed like it was pretty hard.” Validate and normalize, that was what her therapist had taught her to ask for. Agree that whatever feelings the person was expressing were real, and don’t make it a big deal. Don’t add to the guilt and shame the person is already feeling.
He was quiet for a long time, clinging to her hand. “I was on meds for a few years,” he said, after a while. Jessie made a non-committal sound. She was still on one, managing the ongoing anxiety that she’d never been able to shake after her rocky childhood. “I could hold down a job, but I was a fucking zombie. Vanessa convinced me to quit them, tried pot instead. I guess it works for some guys, but it made me a zombie who couldn’t get an erection.” He gave her a smile that was shaky, but wry, and she loved it. She squeezed his hand gently. “So I quit both, and things got really bad for a little while. Doctors just wanted to give me more drugs, but I couldn’t get an appointment to see a shrink anyway, so what was the fucking point? I just stopped. And things were okay. Everything’s been fine. I haven’t had a…bad time in more than a year.”
“But tonight, seeing the Racketeers come into the bar?”
He shook his head. “Whatever. I would have helped the bouncers take care of them. I was worried about you.”
She felt her brows climb towards her forehead, and anger bubbled up through her filters again. “You were worried about me? Excuse me?”
“I didn’t want you to get hurt.”
“You didn’t—” she forced herself to take a long, deep breath, count to 10, and then tried again. “So instead of telling me what was going on, using your goddamn words, you kick down a fucking door, shove me on a bike, and peel out of the parking lot before I even get my damn helmet fastened? Yeah, great job protecting me, tough guy.”
In the moonlight, she could see his expression had twisted and sickened. “I—oh shit.”
“Yeah. If you’d dumped the bike on one of those corners, I’d’ve been toast.”
She saw the tear before he wiped it away, but he didn’t do anything else. She wanted to growl, wanted to hit him, wanted to make him listen. But none of that would make any damn difference. She stood up and walked away from the little cabin on the beach, where he’d fucked her senseless that first time, where he’d driven without even really thinking. “Come on,” she said, fishing her helmet out of the sand and settling back onto the back of the bike. “You’re taking me somewhere.”
“Jessie, I—”
“Quit your bitching and get over here.”
“I don’t know if I can right now.”
She waited for a little while, until he lifted his gaze back to her. “Ready?”
“Yeah,” he said. He stood on legs that were shaking, but by the time he mounted the bike and put his own helmet back on, he was moving steadily. He carefully stepped them out of the sand and then put the bike back into gear.
“Head south,” she said. “I’ll direct you as we go.”
Chapter Twenty One
He realized where they were headed long before they got there, and his heart started to pound. He hadn’t even driven by the old house, not since he was a kid and he and his parents had moved away, and certainly not since he’d been in Castello. He’d been so happy to find out that Jessie’s place was on the other side of town, and that to get there from Delilah’s Do, they didn’t even ne
ed to go past the streets that led back to the house where he’d grown up.
He’d thought about it often enough. About going back, meeting whatever family lived there now. Maybe there would be a kid, about his age, and he’d befriend the kid, and lead him through all kinds of life-trials like some kind of made for TV movie that would end with him finally redeeming himself for whatever horrors he’d experienced as a kid himself. But he’d been forcing himself to grow up these past few years. That kind of shit only happened in movies, not in real life, and after all, the crap he’d done as an adult was vastly worse than the small league shit he’d done as a kid. Because Jessie was right. Danny’s death was the fault of Pedey, and whoever had ordered the hit. No one else. And they were going to sort this fucking mess out. After what had happened at the bar, things weren’t going to go according to the smooth plan he and Eddie had laid out, but he was going to figure something out.
Possessive_A Bad Boy Second Chance Motorcycle Club Romance Page 14