Jase

by MariaLisa deMora

  “Yeah, home games,” she said, smiling. “Almost every one of them. Some of the away games, too. I was there when you threw down the gloves against that goon from Michigan. I saw the high stick that cost you eight stitches. And, I was at the game the night you got hurt.” She paused and took a deep breath. “Slate was there that evening. He texted me as soon as he talked to the doctor and knew what was going on. Thank God he did. I was hyperventilating in my seat with fear from not knowing what had happened. I knew you were hurt and down on the ice for a long time, but then you sat on the bench instead of going to the locker room.”

  He kissed her hard, hands moving up to cup her face tenderly, pulling her into him. His mouth covered hers, tongue stroking hard and deep as he ate her moans. Slowing, he pulled away, resting his forehead against hers, eyes closed and breathing hard. Pleased surprise evident in his tone, he said, “You came to see the games.” Kissing her again, he lifted his head, asking, “Where did you sit?”

  “Center ice, next to the visitors’ bench, about five rows back from the glass,” she told him. “I wanted to be able to watch you, on and off the ice.” She shrugged. “That seat gave me a great view without putting me so close to the glass you could see me by chance.”

  He pulled in a breath. “That close? God, you were that close, DeeDee?” Pulling away, he turned to face the window, fingers of one hand pushing on his bottom lip. “Right there in front of me every game and I didn’t see you?”

  “I hate that I hurt you,” she whispered.

  “No, baby,” he responded, catching her gaze in the reflection of the glass. “We’re past that. I just didn’t know you had…I knew the one game, but you were at…” He took a breath. “And I didn’t see you. Didn’t know.”

  She moved to him, putting a hand between his shoulder blades, feeling the tension in his muscles. “I didn’t want you to see me, Jase. But, I just couldn’t stay away.”

  “So that night, what did you do after Slate sent you the message?” He was curious, turning to face her and tilting his head with the question, the heat from his fingers sinking into her upper arms where he held her.

  “I went to your condo,” she said quietly, and he shook his head.

  “Pretty sure I’d remember that, baby,” he said again.

  “Oh, I was there.” She bit her bottom lip for a moment and then in a passable imitation of his voice, she grinned and said, “’Beauty. My dick’s broke. Hope nobody’s got no ideas about my dick, ‘cause my dick is full-on broke, eh?’”

  Stunned for a second, he roared with laughter, grabbing her around the waist and swinging her around, holding her close against his body. “God, I love you.” She smiled up at him as he let her slide down to rest her feet on the floor. “You came to see me when I was hurt? Why didn’t anyone tell me?”

  “Threats of death,” she said, a wry smile twisting her lips. “I didn’t want you to know I was there. I had a hard time staying away, and…I wouldn’t...I told them not to tell you. I needed to see for myself that you were okay.” The music changed, and Tove Lo sang about how it felt when you Got Love, DeeDee smiled and reached up to softly cup his face.

  “Baby,” he said, leaning down to kiss her.

  “I love you,” she whispered against his lips.

  ***

  Mason leaned back in the chair behind the desk as Slate entered his office, feeling as comfortable in his suit as he always did in jeans and his leather cut. It had been a hard-won ease for a backwoods Kentucky boy, but over the years, he had found enough reason to court the citizen side of things to make it work.

  He continued talking into the phone, holding up one hand to Slate, finger extended indicating he would only be a minute. Distractedly, he listened as the first strains of Wye Oak’s Civilian rang through the office. Slate reached back and pulled the door closed behind him, turning up the music, but still listening to Mason’s side of the conversation.

  “I want to know the asking price. Get that for me, and I’ll take it from there.” He paused, listening to Myron arguing against the purchase, and he laughed, saying, “I know, but I like the idea of buying that venue. It’s Ohio, which is a known state for us, and we have support clubs in Toledo, Findlay, and Lima. So get the price and text me.” He paused. “Get another message to Donny Baugh; tell him I want Bear to fucking call me.”

  He hung up, tilting his head to look at Slate. The two friends were silent for a minute, and Slate shook his head, pulling a chair over to sit down. “What are we buying now, Prez?”

  “Concert venue and bar in Ohio. It looks like a good investment, and it’ll give us another business that could run a fuckton of cash through the till. I’m merely looking ahead, brother.” Mason tucked a finger into the knot of his tie, loosening it around his neck. He leaned the leather chair backwards, pulling out a drawer on which to prop his legs, getting comfortable for a conversation with one of his most trusted brothers. “The manager has good connections. I think if we keep him, we can play those connections off to book more bands into Marie’s, too. Win, win.”

  He looked at the door quizzically as it remained shut. “You look good. Georgia must have agreed with you. It’s been a pain in the ass couple of weeks here with Bear taking off like he did. I thought you were bringing Jase with you, man. What happened?”

  “Shit, you haven’t heard? Hoss said he talked to you.” Slate leaned forward, elbows on knees, and scrubbed his face with his hands. “Our dancer at Slinky’s, the one whose ex-husband beat her all to hell? She’s Jase’s sister.”

  Mason’s breath caught in his chest. It hadn’t been characterized as a beating when the news was relayed to him a few days ago. “I knew we had a dancer get smacked around—” he started speaking, but Slate interrupted him.

  “Beat her all to hell,” he clarified, emphasizing every word. “Goose said it was the worst he had ever seen, man or woman. When I first called you about the problem, I didn’t know how bad it was, or that it was our man’s sister. Hell, no one knew until later that night, when Jase identified her. She was using her married name, and our background check only covered her time in the US. We didn’t go far enough back to pick up the Canadian connection.”

  Beat all to hell? Why didn’t anyone bother to fucking mention that detail to me? he thought. They didn’t even have her ex contained anymore; he had somehow gotten away from the clubhouse, with the entire member roster on alert. Mason set his feet on the floor and stood abruptly, ripping the tie from around his neck, shrugging out of the jacket and tossing it onto a nearby chair. Turning to face Slate, he was trembling with barely contained rage and his lip curled up into a snarl. “What the fuck are you doing here in Chicago then, Slate? Brother. Shouldn’t you be home taking care of your chapter’s garbage?” Civilian swelled in the background, the tense qualities of the song feeding his nerves.

  Slate pulled the back of his neck with one hand, the other still slowly rubbing his forehead. “Gunny was supposed to have taken care of it, same day. I’m on the beach, got the call, and was told he cleared the trash, that he got the gal’s shit back, and warned the asshole off with significant emphasis.” He shrugged. “But then, once he saw how bad it was with the gal, he changed his mind, wanted us to scoop the ex-husband back up. We did, and then held the bastage for a few days, waiting on Gunny to get back to the clubhouse to finalize what he wanted to do.”

  Slate cut his gaze up at him, narrowing his eyes cautiously as he finally realized what kept Mason quiet was an overwhelming anger. “I told you this part already, Prez. Pie wasn’t paying attention; he got sloppy, because the guy, Elkins, was hurt. He hadn’t been moving around much for a couple of days, so Pie moved his watch post inside the room. Elkins knocked him cold with a chair and managed to make it out of the clubhouse without anyone seeing him. Birdy found Pie unconscious in the room, raised an alarm, but the motherfucker was long gone. I was on the way home, but didn’t get back until the day after. Now, here it is, the day after that, and I’m in Chicago by
your orders.”

  Mason ground his teeth together in frustration, stalking around the desk to lean against the front edge. Piebald was a long-term prospect, recently bounced from Chicago to Fort Wayne in the hopes a new sponsor would make a difference, but the man just kept fucking up. With this most recent round of fuckupism, Mason would personally make sure he wouldn’t be patched in anytime soon, if ever.

  “Gunny’s still with the gal. They are bunked up over at DeeDee’s, which is how we found out she’s Jase’s sister. Small fucking world, yeah?” Slate leaned back, throwing an elbow across the back of the chair next to him. “Pie fucked up; he’s on prospect probation and knows it. This Elkins guy, her ex, he isn’t the sharpest crayon in the box, Prez. We’ll scoop the guy again.”

  Mason found he still couldn’t speak, but Slate seemed comfortable enough that he didn’t feel the need to fill the silence, so he sat there looking up at him. The music of Wye Oak had changed over to The Veer Union, Crispin Earl’s voice soaring over the swell of Ryan Ramsdell’s riffs and the pounding drums and bass on The Antagonist. Clearly clueless about Mason’s growing rage, with warring emotions on his face, Slate finally asked, “What are you thinking, Prez?”

  Mason’s anger exploded. He found himself leaning forward, threateningly invading Slate’s space as he shouted, “I’m thinking that woman was an employee of ours, under our fucking protection, and someone let her goddamn ex get close enough to her to fuck her up. You need to thank fuck Gunny was on the fucking ball enough to see what was going down when she got to the club, or who the hell knows what would have happened? She works for us, then she’s ours, motherfucker. We always protect our own.

  “Now, here you sit in fucking Chicago, while our own is fucking at risk from that motherfucker being in the wind. After escaping from your fucking clubhouse, while being watched by one of your goddamn prospects. That’s what I’m thinking, brother. I want to know what you put into play to keep the rest of the girls safe. What about Ruby, DeeDee, Eddie…fuck, what about Willa? You got a watch on our women, brother?”

  Slate had flinched back in surprise when he first began to yell. Now his tone was contemptuous enough to cause angry color to rise in Slate’s cheeks, as he called the man’s motivation, loyalty, and dedication into question in a way he would never accept.

  Mason’s resolve wavered, seeing the pain on his brother’s face, but before he could say anything else, Slate stood abruptly, shoving the chair, pushing it aside when it crashed noisily backwards onto the floor. The two men were inches apart, close enough Mason could feel the heat boiling off Slate’s skin in his rage.

  “Ruby is my old lady, my wife, the woman carrying my child in her belly. Yeah, I got fucking eyes on her, brother. Gunny’s got DeeDee, along with the gal, and when he doesn’t, then Hoss does. Birdy has Eddie in hand and, goddamnit, Tug is on Willa as well as Maggie, Mason. He’s pulling in other brothers as needed. So, yes, I have my shit in order. Yes, I thought about all this fucking shit long before I slung a leg across my goddamn fucking bike to come up here and talk to you by your damn order. I even covered the fucking prospect you shoved down my fucking throat, so he would know how bad he fucked up.”

  He raised a clenched fist, crashing it down on the desktop. “Don’t you ever question my loyalty to the club. You fucking know better, Prez. And my woman? Fuck you, Davis Mason. She’s my whole fucking world; you know that. I’ll take no motherfucking chances with her after what happened. Demon took her right from my fucking side…right from beside me. You think I want a repeat of that goddamned hell?”

  Mason set the heels of his hands against the sides of his head, pressing hard as he wheeled, shouting wordlessly and kicking his chair out of the way as he stalked across the room. Fuck. He overreacted. He knew he overreacted, but even now was still having trouble controlling himself. Willa. It could have been Willa. His Willa, best friends of Eddie; woman was a little kooky and he liked her that way. Willa. Her face flashed before his eyes like a warning, and he imagined it bloodied and bruised, marks from another man’s hands on her skin, letting loose another growling roar.

  “Goddammit. I knew this was going to fuck me up. Knew she would.” He turned back to Slate, thumping his fist against his heart, speaking with anguished emotion in his voice. “I know you hold the club first, keep your brothers safe, have our backs. You are my brother, and that’s no fucking joke, Slate. I was out of line just now.”

  Nodding, Slate glared at him, snarling, “Goddamn right you were out of line. What the fuck is going on? Something has your ass twisted tighter than I’ve ever seen it, even with Mica.” A small measure of the tension left his voice, “Talk to me, brother.”

  “You think lightning ever strikes twice?” This cryptic question had Slate frowning, and Mason laughed humorlessly at the look on his face. “I remember the day I first met Mica. She was moving into the house next to mine, and with a single look at her across that alley, the woman took my breath away. Then I got close enough to really see her…and she knocked me for a fucking loop. It took me years to get my feet back underneath me. Now, we’ve finally settled into a friendship that I treasure, like I still treasure the woman, but it’s with the knowledge that she will never be mine. I will always love her, but I know…have always known she’s better off with Daniel. And now she’s had Jon, her family is complete.”

  “Yeah, I know all that shit. Kinda lived through a lot of that hell with ya, Prez,” Slate said, sarcasm thick in his voice.

  “I know you did, brother. More than most, you know the toll my obsession for that woman took on me. Took on you, hell…took on our entire fucking club. You know, even understanding the cost…you know I’d pay it twice over to get her to the point where she is today. But there was a hell of a price for us all.” He paused, waiting until Slate nodded.

  Reaching out to grab the back of the chair, he rolled it back over towards the desk, sitting slowly as Slate bent over, righted his own chair, and sat back down. He refused to look at his friend as he confessed, “Willa is everything, Slate. From then to now, I can’t get her out of my mind. Lightning struck again that night at the River Rider’s clubhouse, the first time I saw her. You weren’t there, but I couldn’t get over to her fast enough. She drew me in, was all I could see. She owned me, man. Still does, owns me body and soul.”

  He rubbed his hand across his scalp, unbuttoning his shirt slowly. “The thought of someone getting his hands on her pushes me beyond reason. You saying our stripper was ‘beat all to hell’ flew all over me, because suddenly all I could see was Willa’s face, brother. Snap, crackle, pop, there’s that fucking lightning again. Owned.”

  They both took a deep breath as the energy between them began to bleed off, dissipate. They had been friends too long, been through too much together for an argument to have any lasting effect. Slate traced the inside of his front teeth with his tongue, and then deliberately changed the subject by asking, “What’s with the monkey suit today, Prez?”

  “Had a City Council meeting this morning. There’s talk about rezoning some of the wards. I’m trying to slow things down until I can get a read on what that would mean for us.” Mason rolled his head side-to-side, stretching out his neck. “They won’t be hard to stall; those political motherfuckers are all about the talking without the doing.”

  He removed his cufflinks, rolling up his shirtsleeves, exposing the phoenix tattoo that rose from his left hand up the arm, feathers and flames wrapping around his forearm in striking reds and yellows. Blended into the tail feathers were words in a script so elaborate it was difficult to separate from the flowing lines of the rest of the tattoo. I choose to become.

  “It still boggles the mind that you got roped into this. Do they know much about you, past the business owner façade you put on for these meetings?” Slate snorted a sharp laugh, leaning back and resting his heels on the edge of Mason’s desk. “It’s a good smokescreen; I’ll give you that,” he said, flicking a glance at the suit jacket. “You clean up
nice, Prez.”

  “Naw, it ain’t no big thing. When McDaniel’s wife got sick, he came to me and asked me if I’d accept the remainder of his term. He’s been a good friend to the club, and it’s not a tough gig. We’ve now got better and deeper ins with the city than we ever did before, which is good for us.” Mason gestured towards his clothing. “They don’t look past the surface much, so they don’t see the man, only the suit.” He shrugged. “Even if they did, we’ve worked hard to build a club that we can all be proud of. The public face of the Rebels is one of power and authority; they don’t need to see beyond that.”

  His phone buzzed with an incoming text and he pulled it out of his pocket, looking at the display. “Red said he’s got news for us on the Jase front. Reach back and open that door, would ya? Let’s hear what he found out about our man.”

  ***

  “Jase,” the cautious voice came over the line. “How’re you doin’?” Trying to place the voice’s owner, he was coming up blank until the man spoke again. “This is Red from Chicago. Mason asked me to call.”

  “Hey, Red,” he responded pleasantly. Along with Birdy, the man had helped teach Jase to ride, and he had seen him around Jackson’s often enough before moving to Fort Wayne. “It’s good. Everything is lots better. What can I do for you?”

  “Mason said you were interested in going back to school for a business degree. Is that right?” The man didn’t beat around the bush, asking his question straight out.

  “Yeah, talked to a couple of guys on the team who went that route, and DeeDee agrees it seems the smart thing to do. I know I won’t be able to play forever, and right now, I don’t have anything lined out for after. Why…what can I do for you?” He restated his previous question, still unsure of the reason for the call.

  “We’ve got a proposition for you, if you’d be interested in hearing it.” He was hedging now. It sounded as if he chose his words with care.

  “What’s the proposition?” Jase asked.