by Raven Dark
“Anne.” I sit up. “Are you going to tell me he’s not being secretive because of some male superiority thing?”
Her eyes twinkle. “Nope. I’m not. It’s one hundred percent an alpha male thing. Boy’s club all the way.”
My lips twitch on a smirk as I narrow my eyes at her. That isn’t the answer I expected at all. “Anne, how can you accept that?”
“I don’t like it all the time. But I accept Vicious. The rules of the club are strict for women, that’s true. But the MC is so much more, Sandra. So much more. There’s a loyalty, a closeness you will never, ever see anywhere else. No one will ever keep you safer or make you feel more loved. And Gar’s one of the most devoted men you will ever meet. He and Vicious are a lot alike that way. When they take something as theirs, it’s all theirs.”
While Anne talks, I get up and pace the room, trying to take it all in. “I want to believe you, I do. But you know what Skeet was like. Everyone thought he was a great guy. My parents, you.”
She nods. “Oh, I know. He had us all fooled.”
“Yes!” I throw up my hands. “He was the golden boy. The perfect boyfriend. I never saw it coming.” Anger races through me at the memories.
“I know. But listen to me.” She stops me from pacing and takes my hands. “Let me tell you something. Judith—Gar and Cal’s mother—got into a horrible accident about three months ago. She ended up with a concussion.”
“Oh, my God. Is she okay?”
“She’s getting there. But she has amnesia. She still doesn’t remember a lot about her life. Or her sons.”
“Oh, wow.” My heart breaks for Gar and his brother. I can’t imagine what it would be like to have your own mother not remember who you are.
“The point I’m trying to make is, after the accident, she was in a coma for two months. And Gar was at that woman’s bedside nearly every second. He wouldn’t leave even to sleep until she was awake, and often not even when she was. She’s old, in her eighties, so she forgets almost everything you tell her now, and he’s so patient. He just keeps reminding her. That man loves with his whole heart, and when you have that kind of love, nothing else matters.”
My eyes well with love for him until a tear rolls down my cheek. I dash it away. I can see Anne’s warm smile through my tears.
“Oh, now, see what you did? You made me cry.”
“Well, whatever it takes.” We both laugh and I hug her again.
“Love you, girl. Thank you.”
“Welcome. And I love you too.”
I draw back. “So, how does this work? How do the ladies handle this whole “club business” thing?”
“Okay, well, that’s an easy one. Easy to say, not always easy to do. When Gar tells you he has to take care of something, if you get the feeling it’s that kind of business, don’t ask questions. Just give him a squeeze and a kiss and tell him to come back to you. He needs to know you can handle it, but also that you support him. Learn how to do that, and the rest will come later. This whole MC woman thing is a process, but you’ll get used to it. And when it works, it really works.”
“And how will I know when it’s just business, and when it’s business?” I give the last word an ominous sound, tamping down the worry and nervousness squirming in my belly.
“You’ll know. You just will.”
I look at the ceiling and blow out a breath. “Okay. I can do this.” Then I step back a pace. “God, this is so weird. You sound like, cool outlaw biker chick.”
She laughs. “I try.”
I look her over, impressed. It’s still an adjustment seeing her with her biker clothes and her rose tattoo. “You look like one, too. It’s hot, you know.”
“Vicious seems to like it. And so do I.”
I shake my head as it hits me what’s happened. What’s become of my life, and the unlikely badass man that is mine. “God, how does this even happen?”
Anne’s smirk is full of understanding. “Trust me. I ask myself that every day.”
When I finish helping Anne pack, I expect us to head downstairs, where I’ll see her and Vicious off on their week-long honeymoon. Instead, after Gar introduces me to some of the guys and the women in the club, Vicious and Gar tell us they have to step out with Devil “to take care of some last-minute business.”
How, I couldn’t say, but Anne was right, I do know. I can see it in the seriousness of his gaze, hear in the way he says the words. I try not to think too much about where they’re going, especially if the Prez has to go with them. Instead, while Anne looks on, remembering her advice, I take a deep breath, hug Gar tight and brush my lips across his. Letting him know I understand, and I won’t ask.
He squeezes my nape, and I can feel the gratitude in his grip. In the way he kisses me. He and the other guys leave, and I turn to Anne.
She gives a nod, and makes an “O”, with her thumb and finger. Perfect.
Yeah, I got this whole biker chick thing down.
While Gar, Vicious and Devil are gone, one of the guys takes Anne and I out to get my stuff. Our escort is Badger, the surveillance expert Gar told me about. He’s the last one I’d expect a blond bombshell like Barbie to be married to, with a thick black beard and wild, curly hair almost to the middle of his back, both of which are threaded with silver. He’s good-looking, in a savage sort of way, and I’m surprised that under his open cut, he wears a shirt that says Big brother has nothing on me. For a surveillance guy, it fits. As we head for the doors, he goes behind the clubhouse bar, opens a compartment behind it and takes out a pistol.
I widen my eyes at the weapon. “Is that necessary?”
He checks the magazine and shoves it back in with a click. “Oh, yeah. You can never be too prepared where guys like Max are concerned.”
I swallow and privately hope there won’t be a need to use it, that there won’t be a shootout in front of my dad’s house. Anne rubs my back, and it makes me feel a little better.
Instead of walking around the bar, Badger jumps over it and grabs Barbie in a kiss. She smiles at us reassuringly. It floors me how easy she and Anne take this whole outlaw thing.
“All right, ladies, let’s get this done.” Badger puts the gun in the back of his pants, under his cut, and leads the way outside. “If you pack like Anne, we’ll have to take a car.” He nods to my car with a grin.
“Hey.” Anne shrugs and puts her arm around me in a show of feminine solidarity as we walk to my car. “It’s not my fault we women need more than soap and a razor for a week-long trip.”
“I’m not as bad as her, though.” I jerk my thumb at her. “I’ll keep it to three bags.”
“Still too many.” Badger holds his hand out to me. “Keys, Madam.”
“I think I can drive myself, Badger.” I take my keys out of my purse and unlock the driver’s side door.
“Nuh-uh. Hand ’em over, kiddo.”
I put my hands on my hips. “Is this because I almost hit Gar?”
“No.” He grabs my keys out of my hand. “It’s because if I gotta ride in this fucking cage, then I drive it. Them’s the rules, baby. Besides, you don’t know how to lose a tail.” He opens my door.
“A what?”
“In you get.” He nods to the passenger’s side.
I sigh, but walk around to the passenger’s side while Anne opens the back.
“A tip, Sandra,” Anne says with a stage-whisper. “Except for Devil, no one argues with the Badge and wins.”
I giggle. Privately, I like the way the men protect the women of the club, and I find that I really like Badger. He’s relaxed and easygoing.
We head out to my dad’s house on the other side of Whiskey. I don’t notice anyone following us, but Badger keeps scanning the roads all the same.
We arrive in the middle of the afternoon. I’m not surprised my parents and brother are all out of the house.
I check the calendar on the fridge where my mom has circled the date with the words home game in big letters. “Oh, they’re at
my brother’s game.”
“What time did the game start?” Anne asks, looking around my mom’s immaculately clean kitchen.
“One, I think. It’s two now. That gives us plenty of time before they come back.”
“Nope.” Badger locks the door and takes up position at the living room window. Keeping a lookout, I realize. “We won’t be here any longer than we have to. You have three minutes, ladies, so get a move on.”
Anne and I race upstairs and start throwing things into a suitcase. Somehow, I manage to keep everything to one bag, though I cheat, putting my books into a large purse I usually keep in my car. The bag had my stripper outfit in it—a sequined bra, panties, a wig of blue hair and green contacts, all of which I dump in the trunk and replace with several schoolbooks, leaving the rest in my bedroom. I wish I could throw that disguise out, but I’m not taking the chance that my dad will find it when he takes the garbage out tomorrow. That’s all he needs.
We make the peaceful two-hour drive back out of Whiskey and return to the clubhouse, pulling into the drive at a little after four. Inside, Badger heads straight for the kitchen with Anne, rubbing a growling tummy. Anne laughs at something he says as I make my way toward the main room of the clubhouse, determined to show Gar that I’ve brought only two bags, not enough to clutter up his manly room, the way he joked about before he left.
The pleasant sound of his laughter drifts through the room, along with those of Barbie and some of the other guys. Barbie is belting out the lyrics to Let It Go, something Anne has told me is a habit of hers. The sound makes me smile. Some of the guys are teasing her, growling at her to shut up, and I hear Gar shouting about his brain melting through his ears. Cal says something about Barbie being a princess. Barbie gives a loud squeal.
As soon as I reach the couches, I freeze.
Gar is sitting in a loveseat someone’s told me is usually reserved for Devil. Cal is chugging back a beer near them and laughing.
And Barbie is planted right in Gar’s lap.
Gar catches my eye and his go wide as the blood drains out of my face. My heartbeat hammers in my ears, and my fingers have gone numb.
Without a word, I run from the room.
9
Shattered
“Fuck,” Gar growls behind me as I march for the clubhouse doors. “Barbie, get off.” I hear the chair scrape the floor.
I walk faster. For the second time in as many days, I can’t seem to breathe, and I feel like I’m going to puke.
It’s not what it looks like, the rational side of my mind screams as I continue toward the entrance. There’s a rational explanation. Except I’ve gone through almost this exact scenario before. Replace that chair with a bed, and it’s the scene with Skeet, when I came over to his house that night to study. It’s the same scene all over again.
“Sandra, wait. Shit,” I hear Barbie say.
“Sandra, chill out, we were just having fun.” Cal.
Fun? He takes relationships that lightly? I cover the sob that tries to escape and race toward my car.
I’m half aware of Gar’s footsteps pounding through the clubhouse after me.
“Sandra, get the fuck back here. It’s not—”
I run, throwing open my door, tossing my bags in. My open book bag spills onto the seat, but I hardly notice. I throw myself into the driver’s side, starting the vehicle. The engine drowns out Gar’s angry shouts. I don’t want him touching me, can’t even look at him, and I definitely don’t want to hear what he has to say. I’m getting the hell out of here. I’ll try to pick up the shattered pieces of my life, and my heart, later.
Barreling down the clubhouse’s long, dirt drive, I can feel my world spinning out of control. I’ve fallen for a man I hardly know within days of meeting him. A man who belongs to an outlaw motorcycle club where sharing women is the norm and faithfulness to a woman is an exception to the rule. It’s happened all over again. I’ve fallen for the wrong guy, and he’s done the same thing, only this time he’s a bad boy, the kind I should have expected to break my heart.
The whole thing makes Barbie’s choice of song hugely ironic. I’ve seen Frozen a hundred times with Anne, thanks to her obsession with Walt Disney films. That’s the one about the girl who falls for a prince within a day of meeting him, only for him to turn out to be the villain. Doesn’t another character in the movie tell her she can’t fall in love with a guy within a day?
My mistake hits with the force of a cartoon anvil now. I feel stupid. I feel incredibly naive and silly, and I want to cry like a baby in my dad’s arms and then curl up in bed with the biggest, softest pillow I can find for a year.
I tear down the road, ignoring Gar’s shouts for the guys, and the rumble of bikes, both of which fade as I leave them in the dust and head for home.
And that’s when I see it.
The envelope, sitting on the passenger’s side, half hidden by a few odds and ends that were in my bag. I snatch the envelope up and open it, pulling out three photographs. They’re professional, glossy and blown up.
My heart leaps into my throat.
One is of my brother, outside my dad’s house with two of the guys from his team. The second is of my mother, bending over her front garden, pulling weeds. The pictures look like they were taken from the bushes in the front of the house, but it’s the third one that guts me.
The third is of my dad, sleeping in his bed with his breathing apparatus for his apnea covering his face. It’s dark, but I can see him clearly. The angle of the photo says it all. Whomever took the pic was standing right at the foot of his bed while he slept. Whomever it was had been in the house, a foot from him, down the hall from my mother and brother, who’d probably been watching TV, never even aware he was there.
I cover my mouth, breathing a sob into my hand. I don’t even have to think to know who took the photos, or at least who had them taken. If not Sinclair himself, then he had one of his goons do it. He must have had someone walk by the car and drop the envelope on the seat without anyone noticing. The pics could have been taken at any time.
I start to turn the car around. Gar might be a cheating, lying bastard, but I’m not about to handle this alone. I don’t know how to handle a gun or face down a guy who’d do this. My family is in danger. I may want to kill Gar, but Vicious and Badger are good guys, and they know how to handle this.
I don’t even have the car completely turned around before my phone vibrates. I jump.
Assuming it’s Gar, I pick up. “Just stay away from me, Gar. I—”
“Hello, Blue.”
I nearly drive right into the ditch. The quiet, almost pleasant voice is unmistakable.
“Sinclair,” I croak out. Somehow, I right the car before it goes off the road. He knew to call me just as I was getting in my car. I glance around, looking for another car down the road, someone watching my every move, but I don’t see anyone.
“Got my message then, did you?” His voice cuts into my thoughts.
How I keep calm, I don’t know. I feel like I’m lost in some sort of half-real dream-state, where everything moves in slow motion and every sound seems like it’s coming through thick cotton. My hands are shaking as much as my voice. “What do you want?”
“I want what’s mine, Blue. I’m at the Rusty Stool. Do you know where that is?”
“Yes.” It’s a dive tavern just outside of Whiskey, an hour away. A thought stabs through my panic. My parents and Kyle might not have been at his game after all. Oh, God, if he has them… “Sinclair, if you’ve gone near my family—”
“Let’s not waste time with threats. Your family is fine, for now. You have two hours to get what’s mine and bring it to the Stool. Come alone. I see any cops—or a biker’s cut—and they’ll all end up at the bottom of Tanner Lake.”
The phone goes dead.
He said my family is fine for now. Does that mean he has them, but he hasn’t harmed them yet? Or is he planning to nab them if I don’t do what he wants?
&nbs
p; The obvious solutions—going back for the guys or calling the cops—aren’t options. I know he means what he says. If I bring either, my family is dead.
I speed-dial my dad, but he doesn’t pick up. My mother, but she doesn’t pick up either. My brother. Nothing. Shit. Shit, shit, shit. There’s a possibility that they aren’t answering because they’re so involved in the game, which would be very loud. But it’s also possible that they can’t answer because Sinclair has them tied up somewhere.
I slam on the gas and tear down the road toward the Rusty Stool alone.
Bike engines roar in the distance behind me, getting louder as they close in. I gun the gas, but the car won’t go any faster.
“Shit.” I wipe away a tear. I have to get away from them, and it has nothing to do with what Gar has done.
A minute later, the motorbikes pull up alongside, Gar on one side, Vicious on the other.
“Sandra, pull over,” Gar orders.
I shake my head and floor it again.
He curses. Then his bike, along with Vicious’ swerves in front of me, blocking my path. Gar swings off when I halt the car. He marches around to my door. I stab the automatic locking mechanism, and the doors lock. I back up, but jerk the car to a stop again when I see what’s behind me. Badger has pulled in, close to my rear fender.
They don’t know. Gar thinks I’m just running off because I caught him with another woman.
Shaking with terror for my family, I unlock the door. He jerks it open.
“Get out, now.”
I choke down a sob and climb out, my head spinning, my heart going so fast I can’t think. If Sinclair is watching and he sees Gar…
Gar grabs my arms. “Sandra, what the hell were you thinking? It’s not safe—”
I shake my head, clutching at his cut, my eyes blurred and hot with tears.
“Fuck, it wasn’t what it looked like. I—” He pulls back, takes one look at my face and grabs it in his hands. “Baby, what is it?”
I half cover my mouth. “He said to come alone… He said…” It’s all coming out jumbled, but I can’t think past my panic.