Still Standing

by Kristen Ashley

  That being falling in love.

  He’d said I took care of his house, his office, his kids, his sexual needs and his towels.

  He did not say I held a place in his heart.

  So to his question, I only had one reply.

  “Nothing,” I whispered, got on my toes and laid another one on him.

  25

  A Man with Vision

  My head jerked around when I heard the crash and Buck’s hand slid down to cup the cheek of my behind.

  “It’s okay, baby,” he murmured. “They’re just gettin’ rowdy.”

  I looked down and relaxed into him.

  More aptly, he meant rowdier, but I didn’t have it in me to correct him.

  We’d just had sex, good sex, amazing sex in his room in the Dive.

  It was good being there with him, even though the room was no less filthy.

  It felt nostalgic in a happy way because this was where it all began.

  This room.

  This bed.

  This was where I started to fall in love with him.

  It had been three weeks since I realized I was taking the fall, the day I’d learned about Tia.

  And in those three weeks, I’d fought it, feared it.

  But I fell.

  It was done.

  A fait accompli.

  I was in love with West Hardy.

  Nothing had happened in those three weeks except life. I did not get kidnapped. No one attacked one of his children. No angry fathers showed up on the doorstep.

  Although Buck had filed custody proceedings and Kristy took her anger about this out on Tatiana, and, I was suspecting (even though he didn’t say anything, keeping a stiff upper lip for his sister and his dad, and me too), Gear, she, nor Knuckles roared up the drive itching for a fight.

  Tatiana and Gear were coping at home.

  Tatiana because, for the first time ever, outside of her brother, she had a listening ear, and in the life stakes for Tatie, I was a double threat. I had the heretofore unknown capacity to talk sense into a sixteen-year-old girl and I had all the time she needed to listen.

  But Debbie, Minnie, Lorie, and Pinky were also checking in, texting her, sending her funny gifs or hilarious TikToks.

  All of this just letting her know she wasn’t alone. She might be far away, but at home, she was missed and loved.

  And lastly, there had been no news (that I knew) about Tia.

  However, I had started my period and finished it. Lefty had told me the delay was likely due to stress. And now I was on the pill.

  But that was all that had happened. The big news in life, a custody feud and the end of a pregnancy scare.

  The rest was just work…food…family…friends…sex…Buck…life.

  And outside of the nagging worry I tried not to feel (and failed) about Tia, life was good.

  Now it was a Thursday, and for some reason the members decided to throw one of their big parties.

  This was, I’d learned from the girls, something they did often.

  The party could be about anything or nothing. It could have a theme, like beer and brats with the old ladies bringing side dishes and desserts, or it could be a free-for-all, like delivered pizza and brothers riding out and bringing back half a dozen kegs.

  Whatever it was, the word got out, and everyone they knew (and everyone who everyone they knew) came, got drunk, ate what was on offer, drank from a keg (or the endless supply of booze from behind the bar), listened to music inside and outside and got rowdy.

  Buck and I had been out there for hours.

  This time, it was about Chap’s “world-famous, double-trouble cheeseburgers,” which probably weren’t world famous, but I’d found they were exceptional. Meat smooshed with Worcestershire sauce, sprinkled with Lawry’s seasoning salt, grilled to perfection, and you had no choice but to have the double. Because one had a slice of melted cheddar and one had a slice of melted swiss.

  The result was sublime.

  I also found that partying with the Aces was brilliant.

  I drank beer, ate a delicious burger, shot tequila, gabbed and laughed with everyone, because I knew practically everyone, and they knew me, and I played several games of pool very badly.

  Sometimes I did this (though not the playing pool part, obviously) with Buck’s arm curled around my neck, my front pressed into his side, my arm around his waist, a beer in my other hand, one in his. We’d sip and chat and laugh.

  Sometimes I was with the girls or the guys, but I’d find Buck, seeing him, tall, strong and handsome among his people—our people—looking both cool and hot, and that warmth would sweep through me.

  Or I’d feel his eyes on me, usually when I was laughing. I’d turn my head to meet his gaze and I’d feel that sweet rush.

  Eventually he found me, grabbed my hand and walked me into the Dive, through the common area where people were talking, laughing, drinking shots, smoking cigarettes (and other things), playing poker and pool, and even though I turned my eyes away, I saw folks making out and also making out, as in, two seconds away from full-on sexual relations.

  In other words, Aces knew how to party, and like their namesake, everyone was flying high.

  Buck had guided me to his room, closed the door and then took me to bed.

  Now we were both naked, Buck on his back, me draped on top, the sheet down to our waists, our legs tangled with each other’s as well as the sheet, and I was happy.

  I worried about Tia.

  It gnawed at me, and I understood even more why Buck didn’t share.

  Because it was always there, that undercurrent of fear.

  Before, the hope I could hang on to was that she was in Seattle, safe and serving coffee drinks.

  Now, Buck was right, there was hope, because we didn’t know where she was.

  But it was harder to get a handle on because where she was (and I had to believe she still was), she was without her purse, phone, car, money and a goodly amount of her blood.

  He’d wanted to shield me from that. And when he failed, not of his own doing, I completely understood why he’d tried.

  I worried about the custody battle.

  Tatie needed to get out of there, and things weren’t all that great for Gear either. It was so bad for Tatie, and Gear was protective, he didn’t talk much about what he was facing. But apparently, Kristy took the unhappy life she was leading out on both her kids.

  And Knuckles was just a straight-up dirtbag.

  But I had money in the bank.

  No bill collectors breathing down my neck.

  And a bottle of bubble bath in Buck’s bathroom (my first purchase that I made just to spoil me).

  Also a soaking tub and now a new vanity. One Buck built himself. A bigger one with a double sink (no Swarovski crystal pulls, but who cared? the new vanity was fabulous and the addition of it made the entirety of the bathroom stupendous) because Buck said we couldn’t have a “kickass” tub without a “kickass” vanity.

  “And anyway, babe,” he’d stated, “you got a lot of woman shit.”

  I did, but not so much there wasn’t room to store it.

  However, I read his meaning.

  Now, I could expand.

  And last but oh so not least…

  I was in love.

  I shifted up Buck’s body and looked down at his face.

  God, he was handsome.

  I lifted my hand and traced the lines coming out of his eyes, then down, my fingers gliding through his beard.

  “Babe,” he muttered, and my attention moved from his beard to him.

  “Yeah?” I asked.

  “What’s in your head?” he asked back quietly.

  I smiled and his gaze dropped to my mouth at the same time his fingers tensed on the cheek of my behind.

  “I figured out one of the MC’s uses for women,” I informed him, and his focus cut back to my eyes.

  “Yeah?”

  My smile got bigger. “You boys have groupies.”


  He smiled back. “You got that?”

  I nodded, moved my face closer and whispered, “Lots of them.”

  “There are some bitches who just like bikers,” he stated.

  I tipped my head to the side, quietly laughing.

  “This I can see,” I told him. “They also like free beer, pot, shots, world-famous, double-trouble cheeseburgers and getting them some. And, as far as I can tell, all those in equal measure.”

  “Can’t live the life without knowin’ how to have a good time.”

  “I see this too.”

  He grinned, lifted his head, and touched his mouth to mine.

  Keeping it there, he whispered, “Like you like this, Toots.”

  “Me too,” I whispered back.

  I pulled up a smidge and brushed the hair away that had fallen on his forehead, then slid my fingers into it at the side of his head. I moved more on top of him and I touched my lips to his.

  Both his hands came up and pulled the sides of my hair back as he took my lip touch and turned it into a hot, heavy kiss, his knee cocking between my legs, his thigh moving up to rest against the heat of me, and I pressed my chest into his.

  “Hot,” he muttered when his lips detached from mine.

  I slid down and rested my cheek against his shoulder. His hand moved to draw random patterns on my behind. My hand came up and I traced the Gear on his pectoral.

  “Do you have a tattoo for Tatiana?” I asked.

  His answer was to lift his right arm. I shifted to look, and using his other hand, he pointed at a coil of barbed wire that started at his wrist and snaked through all the tattoos up his arm to end piercing the tail of the snake.

  “That’s Tatie,” he stated then went back to his random patterns on my bottom.

  I was surprised so I lifted my head. “Tatie is barbed wire?”

  His eyes caught mine. “My girl binds me, keeps me straight, keeps me clean and keeps me loyal to the mission.”

  The mission?

  What mission?

  “Sorry?” I whispered.

  He studied me a moment.

  Then he asked, “You good with the groupies?”

  This question confused me, so I repeated, “Sorry?”

  He stopped drawing with his fingers and cupped my behind.

  “The groupies, babe. You good with that?”

  Something about the way he was looking at me, his hand holding me, the feel of his body under mine, made me understand this was an important question.

  I just didn’t understand the question.

  “I don’t understand what you’re asking me, West,” I whispered.

  “Lotta women, lotta people, Toots, see what’s goin’ on out there and judge. My people like to have a good time and they like to spend their time with people who like to have a good time. No hang-ups. No judgments. Booze, and a lot of it. Food, and they don’t count calories. Shots. Grass. Shouting. Laughin’ hard. Fightin’ when they get drunk and stupid. And fuckin’ anything that presses up against them. You got a problem with that?”

  I did if he was the one that was doing the last and it wasn’t me pressed up against him, but being a full-fledged biker babe now, I knew I couldn’t tell him that.

  I actually couldn’t even think of it, because I was still not at one with it.

  So I was ignoring it.

  Instead, I said, “I might have missed it, but I didn’t see a van filled with bound and gagged groupies who were then forced to smoke pot and drink vodka straight from the bottle. But I was pretty into my cheeseburger, seeing as it was tasty. Did I miss that while I was eating my burger?”

  He stared at me a second before his lips twitched and he said, “No.”

  “Then no, I don’t have a problem with it.”

  He studied me again while his hand came up and tucked hair behind my ear, moving to my jaw where his thumb came out and swept my lower lip.

  And then he said, “I don’t wanna do this.”

  I blinked at the change in his voice.

  That change didn’t bode good tidings.

  “Do what?” I asked.

  “Hand you somethin’, straight up, that might make you stop lookin’ at me like you’re lookin’ at me right now.”

  I felt my body tense.

  “Buck—”

  “But you want it.”

  I wanted it?

  Wanted what?

  “I don’t understand what you’re saying,” I told him.

  “I see it.”

  “See what?”

  “You lookin’ at the pictures in my bedroom, Toots, I see it.”

  What?

  I pushed up to an elbow in the bed, but kept looking down at him, and his hand dropped from my face.

  “Buck, you aren’t making any sense.”

  He ignored me.

  “You’re just not askin’ for it, because you know, I give it to you, it might fuck what we have, you and me.”

  Oh God.

  Somehow the evening had taken a drastic turn.

  I didn’t want to turn with it.

  I really didn’t.

  But I loved this man, I wanted a future with him.

  So I had to.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked.

  He kept talking like I didn’t speak.

  “But I’m gonna give it to you, Toots. Give it to you, but remind you, this is where you are, and this is where you’re gonna be. No matter what.”

  Oh God.

  I was not a huge fan of when he talked like that.

  “Buck—”

  He cut me off.

  And gave it to me.

  “My father’s in prison. Has been, in and out, for decades. Lotsa shit, most of it no big deal, stretches were not long. But it kept happening, which meant he had a record, a long one. So, when the Club got in a situation where the other guys didn’t come out of it too good, he was sent up for a stretch, and now he probably won’t ever again see freedom.”

  My body went solid and I felt my eyes grow wide.

  “What?” I whispered.

  “I go visit him. Even when you’ve been with me. I just don’t tell you where I’m goin’.”

  Oh God.

  “Loved him,” he stated. “Still do. Good man, great fuckin’ dad. Taught me everything I needed to know. Led me to me. He was Aces. And that was because his dad was Aces. Granddad was one of the founding members. I grew up in the life, never knew a time when I ever questioned the life was for me. I had a dirt bike when I was twelve. Got my first Harley at seventeen. Big family, with the Club, Mom, my sisters, brother, it was good. Knew where I was goin’. Never had a time when I didn’t know who I was gonna be.”

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  “Then Dad went down. War between MCs. Stupid-ass shit, but it happens. Happened more back in the day, but still happens. Dad took a hit for the Club. Not sayin’ he didn’t do what he had to do to protect his Club, just sayin’ he didn’t do what he went down for. But that’s what you do. You take your hit if you need to protect the Club. The family splintered. Not the Club. My family. My brother lost it. Didn’t get why Dad went down for his brothers. Took off. Lives in Utah now. Found God. Used to hear from him, he’d spew shit about Dad, Mom, my sisters, our lives, how much he thinks we suck, Dad and Mom suck forcing him to live that life. How we’re sinners. Goin’ to hell. Shit like that. Don’t hear from him anymore and like it that way. He’s a dick.”

  He sounded like it.

  I didn’t share I felt that way because Buck kept going.

  “I took off. Dad and I were tight, and I couldn’t be where I was when everywhere I turned, I remembered how much better it was when he was free. Went to Flag. That was when I met Kristy.”

  He stopped speaking.

  So I said encouragingly, “Okay.”

  And he started again.

  “Fell in love with her. We were ready to start a family right away. Knew the only way to do that was to come home. Home here, Phoenix. Also
home to the Club. Came back from Flag. Tied myself to Kristy. Built my life here. Liked it. One of my sisters, she got in the life, but a different one. Has a man who’s a brother in a Club up in Denver. Good Club. Called Chaos. My other sister…”

  He shook his head.

  I waited.

  It took a bit, but he started again.

  “Both of my sisters were tight with Dad too. Neither really survived the splinter. But only one of them took Mom down with them.”

  Oh no.

  This did not sound good.

  He stopped again, so I prompted, “She took your mom down with her?”

  He nodded, but he only nodded once.

  “I’d barely left when she went off the rails. Why I can be tough on Tatie?”

  He asked this last as a question, and even if I didn’t quite understand it, I said, “Yes?”

  “That was how Meg was. ’Cept a lot worse. Booze. Pot. Harder shit. For Meg, life was just a good time. And for the most part, I agree. It is. But that doesn’t mean you don’t gotta do what you can to get by the best you can for yourself, your family.”

  I agreed with this, so when Buck went silent again, I nodded.

  And he kept talking.

  “For her, it was just finding good time after good time. Brought that shit home to Mom. Fucked it on the couch while Mom was upstairs. They fought. Mom’s shit got stolen, hocked. Mom’d kick her ass out, my sister would break in, take more shit, crash in the bathroom, puke all over the kitchen. Get lit. And that was it. One time she broke in, got lit. Drunk, high, lost, whatever she was doin’, caught the house on fire. She was so out of it, she went up with the flames. Smoke got Mom before she went up in them too.”

  “Oh my God,” I whispered, horrified at what he was telling me.

  Horrified and hurting for him at these terrible, awful, heartbreaking things he was sharing with me.

  “Yeah,” he agreed. “My brother, he said they got what they deserved. Said God had a hand in the cleansing. Told me that shit, said it right to me standin’ by their fresh graves. Then I gave him what he deserved for spewin’ that. That’s when I quit hearing from him. Makin’ matters worse, shit was gettin’ fucked with the Aces. Life was changin’ here. Turbulence. Then more. Aces changed focus. It wasn’t about the life and livin’ it the way we wanted it to be. It was about money. We didn’t have the store, just the contracting business that, at the time, was all brothers and it was small. The Great Recession, no one building, no one doing improvements, a lotta guys had time on their hands and needed cash. So they got tied up with some shit, started running protection. Drugs and guns.”