Redemption Duet (Aces High MC - Cedar Falls Book 0)

by Christine Michelle

  “Make sure no one gets eager enough to touch my food, honey. I’m gonna go snag us some drinks. You want beer, water, coke, or something else?”

  “Coke’s good to wash the ribs down. Little too early for beer for me.” He gave me an odd look, but went about going to procure our drinks anyway. I never drank early at the few club events I went to. Mostly, I knew that I’d have to pace myself, and stop drinking after one or two anyway, because Walker almost always got out of hand and forgot I was there. I’d have to find a ride home or be the one to drive us home on the days I’d driven my car to the clubhouse because Walker had taken off without me. Most times he’d told me it was because he knew I’d have a bunch of shit to take with me that wouldn’t fit on the bike. It still sucked to show up alone and have to drag my stupidly drunk husband out after he allowed other women to paw on him in front of me without putting them in check. It was definitely making me wonder how long Walker had been messing around behind my back and just being more cautious about who was seeing it.

  Once again, I found myself having to remind myself that it didn’t matter what Walker had done, what I had been ignorant of, found out about too late, or anything else. The only thing that mattered was that moving forward I didn’t have to deal with any of it. It was my past. The speculation could stay buried in the past with all the other not so pleasant memories our separation had allowed to surface. Instead, I decided to tuck into the ribs on my plate, and the minute I did the flavor exploded on my tongue. Ghost had done my recipe proud.

  “Poppy?” A female voice called to me from just behind my shoulder. When I looked I realized it was Sophie.

  “Oh, hi,” I managed to get out as I wiped the sauce off my mouth with my napkin. “Have a seat,” I offered, gesturing to the empty side of the table across from where I was sitting.

  “Where did Smoke get off to?” She asked while eyeing his plate of unattended food.

  “He went to snag us both a drink.”

  “Listen,” she started as she sat down across from me. “I wanted to apologize for being rude earlier. That’s not normally like me. It’s just that I watched my brother with that undeserving skank ex of his for far too long. She dragged him and our brother, Kent, through some shit.”

  “I know,” I interrupted to tell her, because there was no need to hear the story retold again.

  “You know?” She asked surprised. I nodded so she continued on. “The thing was, I watched my brother just getting by with her. He never really seemed happy. The light he usually had in his eyes wasn’t there. It’s almost like he was always on edge when they were together, and you could almost physically see him waiting for the bottom to drop out, you know?” I nodded again, because I was discovering that was what my own life had been like with Walker for more than a few years now.

  “The other guys used to refer to her as his old lady, and while he never corrected them, he never said the words himself. Five years they were together and there were no proposals, and never even a thought about buying a ring to make one either. That said a lot about how my brother was feeling, even if he didn’t realize it himself.”

  I was really beginning to wonder where this was going, but I didn’t bother interrupting again. I just sat there and listened as Sophie went on.

  “I see him with you today, and he’s lit up like the damn Fourth of July.” She shook her head then, as if doing so would lead to understanding. “Saw you guys on TV at the game the other day too. That’s when he first talked to me about you. I had to call him and ask who the woman was. He told me your story about your husband, or at least what he knows of it.”

  “Ex-husband,” I corrected her.

  “Thought you weren’t divorced yet?”

  I shrugged my shoulders. “Semantics. I don’t have the paperwork, but when I left there was no looking back for any reason, other than to sign papers making it official.”

  “That’s what worries me,” she stated solemnly.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re not divorced yet. You were with the man a decade or so right? From what I hear, you were trying pretty desperately to have kids with him too.” That stung a bit, but I just bit off my bitchy response I wanted to lob her way and shrugged my shoulders as if to say… ‘And, your point is?’ She nodded her head. “I worry it’s too soon. That either you’re not really over your ex and just mad that he made some dumb decisions or that my brother is your rebound and he’ll be the one to get hurt either way.”

  “I understand your concerns and if it were Chief and some woman in my shoes I’d be feeling the same way, so I don’t blame you for it either. The thing is, you don’t know the whole situation, because no one outside of me does. Yes, we were trying to have kids, but the trying part died out a long while back. He gave up, because our failure to have them was his problem physically and he couldn’t cope with that. What I’ve come to realize since our big blow out and the mess that followed was my eyes had been shut for a long time during our marriage. I hadn’t been happy. He wasn’t happy. We were roommates living a lie of a life, and I allowed that to happen, because for a long time I was too consumed by the grief of losing my family to acknowledge the fact that I was lost right along side them.

  “My husband never tried to find me. He never bothered to help me heal, to put me in the arms of others who could help, or anything. He just concerned himself with the club, came home, and had me there to care for him. It took a huge epiphany for me to see that my life was a joke, and that my husband didn’t care beyond my convenience any longer. It took that same epiphany for me to realize I hadn’t been in love with the man in a long time. He was just all I had left since my only other living relative had moved away to be here, and for whatever reason I didn’t think I could leave behind the memories of the rest of our family. I allowed myself to remain stuck for far longer than I should have, but rest assured my eyes are wide open, my heart accepting, and my brain has caught up to everything I was ignoring.

  “My divorce will go through. My ex is just that, an ex. And as far as your brother is concerned, I have no clue where the future will take us. I’m making no promises to him, to myself, and definitely not to you that our futures will be entwined. How could I know that? We’re knew. What I do know is that from the moment I met Smoke he has captivated me. He has shown me some of the things that I’d been missing from my marriage. We have fun together, we have like interests, and we have amazing chemistry.

  “Will that lead us to an amazing future together? All I can say is I hope so. I’m not on the rebound, because I wasn’t looking to begin with. There are just people in this life that you meet and there’s no denying they belong to you in a way. They are meant to be your people. Smoke is one of those people for me. He just clicked into place immediately.”

  Sophie smiled at me, and for the first time that day it was a genuine smile. She looked beyond me, over my shoulder, and a moment later I felt him there. His warmth embraced me seconds before he did as he took the seat beside me, deposited our drinks on the table in front of us, and then had one arm wrapped around my shoulders again. “Soph,” he grumbled out.

  Sophie continued to smile at her brother. “Brant loved the cookie you made him,” she claimed as her smile moved from her brother back to me. “You’ll have to share your recipe with me, because I tried a bite, and it was heaven in my mouth.”

  “Lord, woman, everyone wants your recipes,” Smoke declared. When Sophie sent a questioning glance to her brother he held up one of his ribs. “The sweet ribs Ghost makes are Poppy’s.”

  Sophie sucked in a breath and then grabbed my hand. “You’re kidding?” I shook my head.

  “They’re mine.” I affirmed after I swallowed the drink of coke I’d been taking when she asked.

  “Oh my God, those things are to die for. When Ghost started making that second batch I thought he’d found his true calling. I can see we’ll have to spend a bit more time in the kitchen together. You’re the one that made that choco
late cake Leanne has been going on about for so long then?” I nodded once more. “She’s had us all try so many chocolate cakes it’s ridiculous. I feel like a chocolate cake connoisseur by now, but Leanne says nothing compared.”

  “If I’d known I would have brought that instead of the cookies.”

  “Next time,” Sophie insisted. “You have to make a few of them though, because I promise you that they will be devoured quickly. Everyone has been in on Leanne’s chocolate cake quest.” She laughed and so did Smoke.

  “She is not wrong about that.” Then he grinned at his sister. “Where’s the demon spawn?”

  Sophie sighed. “He had a bit of an accident since he was so excited about the cookie. Bender took him to get cleaned up before anyone noticed.” She whispered conspiratorially.

  Smoke grinned wider. “Poor kid. Though, nothing these morons don’t do themselves during a good party when they tie one on too hard.” He offered with a laugh.

  “Truth!” Sophie stated with an exasperated huff. “Still haven’t forgiven Bender for the time he came to the bedroom and pissed in our laundry basket thinking he’d made it to the bathroom.” She shook her head as my jaw dropped. Then she looked right at me. “It was full of clean clothes too, and my old leather jacket was right on top.”

  “No way!” I cried out in disbelief.

  “Oh yeah, he ended up buying me a new one the next day, because I refused to wear the jacket he pissed on ever again. Taught him a lesson, because the replacement was not cheap!” She offered as she snickered.

  “Tell me you are not extolling the virtues of me watering the laundry again,” Bender said as he found his way to the seat beside his wife and tucked in along with his son and a plate of food.

  “Oh yeah, I did.”

  “Jesus, woman. You ever gonna let me live that down?”

  “You still tell people about the first time I farted around you when we were dating?” Bender started chuckling immediately, and looked guilty as hell while doing it.

  “That’s what I thought,” Sophie scoffed.

  “Babe, it wasn’t just a fart. When you go all in, you go ALL in.” He glanced my way, eyes crinkled with mirth as he explained. “It was a full-on shart. Didn’t stop laughing about that shit for a solid week.” Sophie’s face was buried in her hands as her shoulders shook.

  “You’re an asshole,” she grumbled from her hands.

  “Babe, it was epic. One minute you’re talking to me as we step off the curb to cross the street to the movie theater, next thing I know a liquid rumbling is coming from your ass, and you got this look on your face.” He had to stop because of his laughter at that point. Smoke was belly laughing with him. Obviously hearing this story retold was still just as funny as when it first happened. Probably not for Sophie, but she seemed to at least be able to laugh about it now.

  “Her hands clamped down on her ass like something had just been shoved up there, then she started hopping around like a lunatic, before she dodged back into the restaurant we’d just come out of and then she refused to come out of the bathroom.” Bender was still laughing as he finished telling this story, but then he pointed at Smoke. “This one shows up fifteen minutes later with a backpack on his back. Looks at me, breaks out laughing for a solid five minutes, and then heads into the restaurant. Sophie called him to bring her a change of clothes and barricaded herself in that bathroom until it happened.” He was shaking with laughter at this point. “Damn woman refused to talk to me for two weeks after that. She left with her brother that night. They snuck out the back and left me high and dry standing on the curb.”

  “I texted you,” Smoke put in.

  “Yeah, but I didn’t realize that until after I heard your bike start up and watched you pull away from the curb with my woman on the back of your bike.”

  “Oh my God!” I hissed out amidst my laughter. “I’m sorry, Sophie, I don’t mean to…” I couldn’t get the rest out through my laughter.

  She waved me off. “Don’t worry about it. Everyone here knows the damn story, and every single one of these fuckers laughed their asses off about it too.”

  “Dees fuffers,” Brantley put in, causing us all to laugh even harder.

  “That’s a bad word, Brant,” his father corrected.

  “Whats is bad? Fuffers is bad?”

  “Yeah, bud,” he told him while trying to hold back his laughter.

  Brantley shrugged his itty-bitty boy shoulders and glanced around the table. “Mommy says fuffers.”

  “Mommy’s gonna get a spankin’.” Bender told him while winking at his wife.

  Brantley’s eyes grew wider. “Oh, mommy youz in tubble.”

  “Christ!” Sophie muttered. I just giggled while hoping that some day I had a kid as cute and unassumingly hilarious as her son. For the first time, in a long time, that didn’t seem like an unattainable goal either. Maybe it would happen with Smoke, maybe not. I just knew that I was in a position to make it happen finally, since I got clear of my ex who did everything in his power to make sure I didn’t have options once he realized it wouldn’t be an easy thing to accomplish.

  “Popwee?” Brantley called out from across the table.

  “Yeah, buddy?”

  “Youz cookie was good. You not gon’ get spankins like Momma.”

  “Good to know!” I told him. He then looked at his uncle.

  “It was a voom voom bike, Unc Moke.”

  “I know bud, I saw it.”

  “You did?”

  “Sure did. Poppy showed it to me.”

  “Popwee is good,” his nephew told him, making both Smoke and me smile.

  “Yeah, she is bud.” At least I knew I’d earned the approval of the toddler in the bunch. “Momma, you like Popwee too?”

  “Sure do, Brant,” Sophie told him softly as she glanced back to me with a smile.

  “She not get her spankin’. You gets a spankin’.” He reminded her.

  “Okay, one-track,” his dad called out to him. “Let’s go grab you a cupcake before they’re all gone.” The little squirt did a fist pump with a solid, “YES!” hissed out as he squirmed from his mom back to his dad and then slipped through his grasp and took off like a rocket across the deck to get to the food. Yup, one day, I hoped like hell I had a little boy just like him.

  “It’s moments like those that keep me from trying for another one right now,” Sophie stated to no one in particular. I didn’t bother telling her that her moment of cautionary tale was the opposite for me. I just smiled and went back to tucking into my food while being thankful that Sophie and I were able to have our little chat. It left me feeling far better about things than our initial meeting had.

  Chapter 10

  Smoke and I left the party for a bit in order to go see to Bubba, and our insatiable need to get one another naked. We actually ended up staying locked away at my house long enough that we had to see to Bubba one more time before we left again to head back to the party.

  By the time we returned the barbecue was over, family time had come and gone with the old ladies and the children retiring to their homes for the rest of the night. The women who were able to find babysitters, or didn’t have younger children to tend to, found their way back to the clubhouse for the late night festivities. I was surprised to see that there didn’t appear to be many club whores hanging about so I asked Smoke why that was.

  “Jewel, the girl who asked if you were my new woman when we got here earlier?” He asked to see if I remembered who he was talking about. When I nodded my head he continued. “She was a club whore for a short time before it came out who she really was. Hopper had a thing with one of the club whores back in the day after his woman left him and took his son to South Dakota to be with another man in the club. The whore he had a fling with got herself knocked up, but she never told him. Jewel comes of age and heads to the club to be a whore, at her mom’s behest, in order to help pay the bills since the girls who lived on site got a financial stipend.”

&nb
sp; My eyes had to be bugging out because I had never known that was a thing. “Each club runs that shit differently. The club up in the Dakotas actually pays college tuition for some of their girls. The one in Charleston doesn’t fuck around with whores in their clubhouse anymore at all after some shit went down there that got a club member killed. The guys in Georgia don’t allow them to stay overnight, and that’s mostly because they’re top dogs have women in the S.H.E. MC and from what I’ve heard those girls don’t tolerate the whores’ attitudes too well. They just show for parties and whatnot. Here, we had a few that lived at the clubhouse and earned a stipend for being on call all the time.” I didn’t have anything to say when he paused so he continued on with his story.

  “Well, we were on the verge of kicking Jewel out because she refused to be with any of the older guys, and wouldn’t give a reason why. Finally, she mentioned her mother told her not to ever have anything to do with any of the guys over 40. We asked who her mom was and all hell broke loose, because everyone knew she used to be one of the club’s whores, and considering Jewel’s age, any of those older guys could have been her daddy.”

  “Jesus, are you kidding me? That woman sent her daughter in to be a whore where her own father could have… where he could see things… what the hell was she thinking?” I gasped all that out, completely astonished that a mother could put her own daughter in that position or that she would put the father in that position.

  “Yeah, it was fucked, because Hop had seen his little girl getting banged on more than one occasion. Lucky as fuck he never got a hankerin’ to participate. Then again, Hop has a good woman, and isn’t one to run around on her.” He shook his head back and forth with whatever memories were running through his head then. “Jewel ended up catching the eye of Phoenix, one of the club’s nomads. They’re still together, but after everything came out and it was made clear that Hop was Jewel’s dad, he lost his shit a bit. When I say he saw her in the middle of doing some things, I mean he got the full view, and he was not happy to find out that was his daughter afterwards. He pushed to have the whole practice of keeping whores at the clubhouse abolished. He also pushed to keep the guys from having sex in public spaces. We have wild throw downs and sometimes you’ll see some heavy make out sessions. Tonight, you might even witness a blowjob in the corner or something, but it’s rare here now. Hop was obviously torn up about his daughter’s situation, but the other guys were just as disturbed, especially the ones who were with Jewel when Hopper saw. It caused a lot of friction in the club, so when the vote went up it was damn near unanimously passed. Didn’t hurt that most of the guys are settling down with women of their own now anyway.”