by Jessie Cooke
Noah’s side was a completely different mix, almost comically so, Collin thought. The only blood relative Noah had was Ciara, and she had been Ava’s maid of honor. She looked so beautiful that Collin could hardly take his eyes off of her even now as he pushed himself to give this speech. He was still a little shocked that Noah asked him to be his best man. They were doing better, but still not where they’d been before. He hoped, with time, they could get back there because now they weren’t just friends, they were family.
Collin looked at Ciara again. Every time he looked at her, he was filled with awe at how far she’d come the past nine months. By all rights she should have curled up in a ball after what she’d been through, and given up. Instead, she was thriving. She had put on weight and her hair was long and silky, and her skin clear and bright…but it was so much more than what she looked like on the outside. Without the drugs to dull her thoughts, Ciara was discovering that she had a thirst for knowledge that she’d never known she had before. Collin had met a biker who was formerly a nomad for the Southside Skulls. They called him Lion and he had recently transplanted to Phoenix with his old lady, Madison. Collin and Lion became friends first, but quickly Ciara and Madison began to bond as well, and Madison became Ciara’s first real female friend other than Ava. Madison worked at the museum just off the Navajo Nation as a botanist, and she got her boss Tommy to give Ciara a job in the cafe there. She’d worked there for four months before Tommy promoted her to manager…and in the meantime she had enrolled in night classes at the community college. She was happy and so was Collin, and as soon as Ava’s and Noah’s wedding was out of the way, he planned on giving her his patch to wear and officially making her his old lady. He was sure his family would want them to get married in the church as well and as long as Ciara was okay with that, Collin thought the more ways he could be connected to her, the better.
Other than Ciara, Noah’s guests had been a collection of mostly cops, ex-cops, and bikers, and their suspicion of each other made that side of the church even funnier, Collin thought. At the reception now, however, with the beer and champagne flowing, they all seemed to be meshing a lot better. Some of Collin’s brothers had been in the wedding as well. Noah had asked Jace and Streak to be ushers and Beck was one of Ava’s bridesmaids. That friendship had surprised Collin maybe the most. It started with Ava coming to the club with Noah and discovering Jace’s and Beck’s baby. Ava loved Aiden, but she’d missed out on so much of his life that Collin suspected she was aching to do it all over again, and this time do it right. In the meantime, she doted on Beck’s baby and the two women became almost inseparable. He supposed that he’d have to admit that his sister and Rebekah Golden were actually a lot alike. They were both women who refused to conform to the “man’s world” they were born into and despite both of their old men being “alpha” males, Collin suspected the pants in each of the families were worn by a blue-eyed blonde and a fiery redhead.
Collin cleared his throat and finally put the microphone to his lips. “I’ve spent a few days trying to come up with a speech. I thought about talking about Noah’s and my days in college and the fun we had being single, and all of the trouble we got into. The Noah Campbell that the world sees, the slick detective, the good-looking ladies’ man, the guy with the great sense of humor…that guy is a blast to be around and I’ve enjoyed almost every minute of it. But, today I decided to talk about the other Noah Campbell, the guy that not everyone knows so well.
“That Noah is a detective who dedicated over a decade of his life to catching one of the most evil men who ever walked this earth. He’s the man who never gives up on people he cares about, no matter how hard they try to make him. He never judges a person by his or her past or by the lifestyle he chooses. When I decided to change my life, there was only one person I was able to talk to it about it at first, and that was Noah. The reason for that was because I knew he’d be honest with me, and I knew he wouldn’t judge me.
“Noah taught me that it’s okay to be who you are, even if it’s not who everyone else expects you to be. He taught me that a man doesn’t have to conform to what society expects in order to be a good man. Noah Campbell loves my sister better than I can imagine any other man ever loving her. He loves my nephew more than if the boy had his blood running through his veins. And he loves me, enough to trust me to love and care for the only person on this earth that he loves as much as my sister. And I love him enough to know that Ava Kelly Campbell is one lucky damned woman to have him.”
Collin raised his glass and everyone in the crowded reception room followed suit. As he drank to Noah and his sister and looked around the room, he thought about how much his life had changed in less than a year. His family had grown exponentially, and it was still growing. He felt like he had searched his entire life for the place he really belonged, and then one day he took a bullet to the heart…and woke up just as he was rising from the ashes to become a Phoenix in the Valley of the Sun.
Read Boot’s story soon!
Excerpt from Boots:
Present Day
Boots signed for his belongings and walked out of the jail, squinting at the hot Phoenix sun as soon as he stepped outside. Once his eyes adjusted, he saw his long-haired, tattooed friend, Finn McGregor, leaning into his Harley and watching him. Finn was called “Snake” by most of the guys, and he also went by VP since he had been patched over as vice president of the Phoenix Skulls. But to Boots, at least one to one, he was just his crazy, Irish friend. They’d been through a lot together in the short year they’d known each other, and Finn’s green eyes were some of the most expressive ones that Boots had ever seen. But for the first time since he met the young, friendly Irishman, he was afraid to look into them. It had been one hell of a few weeks…the worst in Boots’ life, and that was saying a lot.
He finally stepped down toward the parking lot, reaching Snake in a few steps. Snake put his hand out and the two men clasped fists and brought it in for a quick hug. When Boots pulled back Snake said, “How bad was it?”
Boots didn’t want to talk about it, and the bruises on his face and knuckles should tell his friend all he really needed to know. If he wanted more of the story, he’d have to see the binder holding Boots’ ribs together and the spaces way in the back where there used to be teeth, before the side of his face made contact with a massive fist. None of that was the worst part, though. The worst scars Boots would carry inside of him, the way he had with everything else his entire life. “Not too,” he said. “But if anyone knows what it’s like in there, it’s you.”
Snake grinned. “Hey, I haven’t been locked up in over a year.”
Boots smiled. “Some kind of record, huh?” Boots had a rough life, but as an adult he’d avoided jail, until now. “Where’s my bike?”
“Prince is on his way to pick you up in the van. I just didn’t want to leave you waiting out here by yourself.” That made sense considering that he was the pariah of the community these days; even in the parking lot of the busiest jail in Maricopa County it surprised Boots that some of the “community” weren’t waiting for him with pitchforks and torches. What interested him the most about Snake’s “answer” to his question was that the Irishman avoided telling him where his bike had ended up.
“Okay, thanks. But where’s my bike?”
Snake grimaced and said, “What’s left of it is at the shop.”
“Fuck.” The sound of the Phoenix Skulls van pulling into the lot sent a jolt of relief through Boots’ body. He was never one to back down from a fight, but as of late he’d had more than his fair share. Just then all he wanted was to be in his own trailer, in his own shower and his own clothes and his own bed. Three weeks in county jail had been a special kind of hell…
“Dax Marshall’s old lady is here.”
Boots took his eyes off the van as Prince parked it alongside them, and looked back at Snake. “Jace asked her to come?”
Snake nodded. “He said he didn’t trust anyone else to de
fend you.”
Boots sighed. “You think that means he believes me?”
Snake, always the peacemaker, nodded enthusiastically. “Of course he believes you. Brother, we all know you and we know there’s no fucking way you’d ever…you know, do that.”
Snake couldn’t even bring himself to say it…what Boots was being charged with. Boots didn’t blame him; the words were ugly, the accusation even uglier. “Hey, man, we better get a move on,” Prince said. “There’s a group of about a dozen people out front with signs and bullhorns and shit. I’d lie down in back if I were you as we go by.”
Fuck. Boots wished he would wake up from this nightmare and find out that it was all just that…a horrible dream. He wished so many things, the least of which was that he’d never laid eyes on Celeste Hall…or Sadie Gray…whatever the fuck she was calling herself these days. Maybe then, he wouldn’t be a walking target, persona non grata in the first place in his life that had ever really felt like home.
“There he is!” Before Boots could even react to the loud voices, Snake and Prince had their hands on him, pushing him into the van. His first impulse was to stand his ground, and fight, no matter how tired or outnumbered he was. But there was still a part of his brain working rationally, and he knew they were right and he had to get the fuck out of there before things exploded and he ended up right back inside the cement building that loomed behind him.
He was practically shoved into the van by his brothers, and the door was slammed shut, but not before he heard the ugly accusations being hurled in his direction. He’d heard it all before he was locked up, and again while he was inside for three weeks, awaiting his bail hearing…but it never got easier. Hearing it still made him sick to his stomach and although he knew it wasn’t true, it still made him loathe himself.
Prince jumped into the driver’s seat and Boots sat on the floor of the van with his back up against the side. He covered his ears with his hands and they were a mile away in sixty seconds, but Boots didn’t uncover his ears. Even over the noise of the van’s V-8 engine and the stereo that Prince had cranked out, he could hear it…the ugly, hateful word they’d labeled him with…the word that had not only taken up residence in his head but seeped into his soul. For a few seconds he believed that he just couldn’t take it any longer. He had to make it stop. He pulled his head forward, and then slammed it back into the side of the van, and it worked for one blessed second. But then they started again…slowly, and in a whisper. Before long the single voice turned into a collection of voices, voices he recognized. They were the voices of his community, the voices of his brothers and sisters in the club, his new family. They were the voices of the very people who taught him the true meaning of love and respect and family. They were the ones that spoke up for him when he was first accused, the ones who professed to always have his back. But Boots had seen the change in them all…he’d watched as the doubt had seeped into their eyes. And now their voices were in his head, and collectively they were whispering one horrific word. In the past three weeks he’d even considered taking his own life, before someone else did. The only thing stopping him was his fear that when he was dead and gone, that one word would define him forever…maybe it would even be etched into his gravestone. One word, one lie he feared everyone else believed…
“Pedophile.”
Boot’s story is coming soon!
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Books by Jessie Cooke
SKULLS MC Romance
Dax: (Southside Skulls 1)
Cody: (Southside Skulls 2)
Gunner: (Southside Skulls 3)
Zack: (Southside Skulls 4)
Levi: (Southside Skulls 5)
Kat: (Southside Skulls 6)
Hunter: (Southside Skulls 7)
Garrett: (Southside Skulls 8)
Wheelie: (Southside Skulls 9)
Jigsaw/Rusty: (Southside Skulls 10)
Chopper: (Southside Skulls 11)
Ryder: (Southside Skulls 12)
Wolf 1: (Westside Skulls 1)
Wolf 2: (Westside Skulls 2)
Bruf: (Westside Skulls 3)
Ash: (Westside Skulls 4)
Sledge: (Westside Skulls 5)
Maz: (Westside Skulls 6)
Doc: (Skulls The Early Years 1)
Coyote: (Skulls The Early Years 2)
Beck: (Westside Skulls 7)
Rise of the Phoenix: (Phoenix Skulls 1)
Jace: (Phoenix Skulls 2)
Finn: (Phoenix Skulls 3)
Tse: (Skulls The Early Years 3)
AJ: (Phoenix Skulls 4)
Hawk: (Skulls The Early Years 4)
Lion: (Southside Skulls 13)
Collin: (Phoenix Skulls 5)
Coming Soon…
30 - Boots: (Phoenix Skulls 6)
31 - Crimson: (Southside Skulls 14)
Bad Boys Series
Jake: (The Lion)
Brock: (The Rock)
Jagger: (The Musician)
Kyle: (The Rock Star)
Blake: (The Cowboy)
Billionaire Romance COLLECTIONS
Just like Grey: Series ONE Complete Collection
Just like Grey: Series TWO Complete Collection
Coming Soon…
3 - Just like Grey: Series THREE Complete Collection
Copyright © 2019 by Jessie Cooke
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Acknowledgements
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and events are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to people, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.