Point of Return

by Stacey Lynn

  “Hell yeah, I finished it; about two years ago. We’ll take her out tonight with the top down. She’s beautiful.”

  “I bet she is,” Liv said. Her voice sounded like she was remembering a dream. I hoped she was remembering the night I took the piece of shit ’68 Mustang from the salvage yard. My old man laughed his ass off and told me there was no way it was repairable. Told me if I wanted to work on it, had to be on my own time and my own tools. There’d be no wasting club time, men, or money on her. So I did. Liv sat with me for hours every day while we poured over manuals and parts catalogues before I could even figure out how to begin.

  In the end, I stripped the car to the bones of everything and rebuilt it from the frame up. It took years longer than I wanted it to. But she was done, and like I told Liv, beautiful.

  “I need a nap,” she said again through a yawn.

  I joined her and fixed the pillows behind our heads so we’d be more comfortable. “We’ll take the car to the club when we wake up. I get too drunk to drive and you can drive her home, deal?”

  “Daemon,” she began. I stopped her.

  “I’m not leaving, Liv. I’ve been in a room ten feet away from you for the past week giving you your space to get your head straight. Now it’s straighter, and we’re getting along and shit. Don’t piss me off by telling me I can’t sleep in the same bed that I’ve been sharing with you since I was six. It ain’t happening, and you’ll just kill my good mood. Might not let you drive the car later.”

  She huffed. “Fine.” But I could feel her lips pull into a smile against my chest.

  “Damn.”

  I smiled as my feet hit the last stair to the living room. I stopped and allowed Daemon to look at me as he decided whether to haul my ass upstairs and rip my ‘barely there’ clothes off, or take me out and show me off.

  Falling asleep with his arms wrapped around me messed with my head, even if it was on straighter than it used to be just like Daemon thought. I felt warm and secure being wrapped up in his corded and muscled arms that had always been there for me—until they weren’t. Maybe, I finally got his point about what went down five years ago. Still didn’t mean I wasn’t having a hard time shaking the fact that he might leave me alone again someday.

  Waking up hours later by myself with only the smell of his aftershave on the pillow next to me and in my hair, messed my head up more. The feeling of being alone with only a hint of Daemon around smacked into my chest and made me realize that for the last five years, that’s how I’d been living—alone with only a hint of the reminder of Daemon in my life.

  It sucked. Sucked so badly I had a hard time dragging myself out of his bed and out of his room knowing I’d have to wash off that reminder.

  Daemon wanted me back. That much was clear.

  Didn’t mean it didn’t leave my head swimming in doubts about the possibility of us working out together, though. Not when I was going to be raising a child made with a man he hated.

  What was Daemon thinking, looking at me like he was, when I walked downstairs in my new leather mini-skirt? My three inch heeled black boots with a few decorative buckles on them, a tank top that I knew fit me a bit tighter than normal due to the fact that my chest was starting to grow, and my teased hair and leather cuffs on my wrists? Well, that look he was giving me right then was something I wanted to bottle and freeze, so I could remember the darkening of his eyes and the tightness in his jaw. And when he rubbed his goatee with the palm of his hand just because he had to do something with his hand before he reached out and pressed me into the wall?

  Well, that was just hot. And made my increasing hormones misfire all over my lower abdomen.

  “You like?” I asked, and jutted out my hip, placing my hand on it.

  “I,” he started and stopped. Then he turned from me, flipping his keys in his hand. What the hell? “I need a drink. Let’s roll.”

  And roll we did. I felt like I was sixteen years old all over again when I climbed into his black as night Mustang that he’d pulled out of the garage and parked in the driveway. Two wide, white stripes ran the length of the car, and everything looked exactly how I’d imagined it would the night he had it hauled to his dad’s work garage.

  It was perfect.

  “You keep running your hands along the dash, you’ll leave prints.”

  I took the comment as a joke as it was intended, and then put my hands in my lap because I knew he wasn’t fully joking.

  “Can’t help myself. I never thought it’d look this good.”

  “Thanks for the confidence.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  We were silent for a beat, before I could tell Daemon was looking at me. “Thought of you almost every time I worked on her. When I finished her, you have no idea how much it took for me not to drive down to the Cities and pick you up. I wanted to show you that I’d finally finished it.”

  “Daemon…” I started, my voice shaking slightly. Then I closed my mouth because I didn’t know what else to say. Sorry? I wasn’t. I wish you would have? I wasn’t going to lie to him. I settled on the truth. “I’m glad I’m in it now.”

  By the way I saw Daemon’s lip twitch, and his head tip down, it was the right thing to say.

  “It’s all original, isn’t it?” I asked, once again admiring all the work that went into this car. When he had it dumped in the garage, it looked like a pile of rust. Over half of the engine was missing and all the windows were shattered. The back row of seats was gone leaving a huge hole into the trunk that didn’t have any of the cloth in it. It was a pile of shit.

  Now it looked brand new.

  Daemon took the subject change for what it was, an attempt to keep my space, and nodded his head. “Took years longer than I thought it would. I had to track everything down from yards all over the world. I’ve got shit in this car that I had shipped from Indonesia or some shit. Every ordered part took months to come in.”

  “It was worth it.”

  We rolled through the guarded gates to the Nordic’s classic garage and clubhouse. The lot was full. Dozens of bikes backed into their spots, all nicely in a row. They looked like dominoes stacked up and ready to tumble if the first was knocked over. When I was mad at my dad as kid, I used to stand at the front of that line, my fingers itching to be the one to cause them all to fall.

  I smiled at the memory as Daemon backed his car into a spot and the motor died, the sounds of the music from the Black Rebel Motorcycle Band dying along with it.

  “You ready?” he asked, nodding his head toward the front door.

  “It gonna get wild tonight?” I asked not because I cared, but because I wasn’t able to say ‘yes’ either.

  Daemon laughed once, “You need to ask that?” I watched his long frame uncurl from the seat and I kept my eyes on him as he walked with his manly stroll to my side and opened my door. I wasn’t expecting it, but I smiled up at him as he gave me his hand and pulled me to him.

  “Your dad’s probably in there.” I watched him look me straight in the eyes, wondering if that’d upset me. It didn’t. I just hadn’t figured out how to avoid him either.

  “I’ll try not to pull a gun on him,” I said, my voice dry and completely serious.

  “He might not let you keep it if you do.”

  I wiped my hands against my thighs and let Daemon lead me into the room.

  Like the last two times I had shown up, and like all the times I’d partied there when I was younger, the music was blaring head banging rock music, televisions were showing a dozen different games and Indy races, men were shooting pool, drinking at the bar, and the women were innumerable. Old ladies either sitting on their men’s laps or talking amongst themselves. All of them looked directly through the club bunnies who were climbing all over the non-taken men and some taken ones.

  This time, I took my time and took in the room. Soaking in the faces of all the men I had loved as a child. They were the men who had taught me to ride, shoot a gun, and change my own
oil along with replacing spare tires.

  The big scary biker men who would patch my skinned knees and kiss them all better, being just as gentle as my mom would have been.

  These men were outlaws. They lived and died by their own set of rules. People who saw them on the streets, crossed it to avoid them.

  This was the family I had been raised in. The one and truly only place I had ever belonged. I had searched for it in places where most people felt more comfortable, and I had felt like the outsider.

  I was finally home.

  And it felt good.

  I took a deep breath and paused just before we hit the main area of the room where I knew eyes would once again be on me.

  “I’m ready,” I said, more to myself than Daemon. His hand flinched on my back and I heard his quick intake of breath.

  He heard me. And he got me. “I need that drink. Come with me.”

  He didn’t give me a choice as he pushed me toward the bar and plopped my butt down into the first open barstool. With his chest to my back, he caged me in by his arms. “Need a beer, Slop. And a bottled water for Liv.”

  Christ. It was just an order for drinks to the club member the guys called Sloppy, but I felt goose bumps show up on the back of my neck as his deep voice rumbled over me and through me. At least I was wearing my long brown hair down and he couldn’t see them.

  “Thought you’d need somethin’ a bit stronger when you finally made your way back here, baby girl.”

  I smiled as I watched Sloppy open up my bottled water. He was almost as old as my dad was. Got the name Sloppy because he never had an old lady, never wanted one, and didn’t have any problems picking up the men’s sloppy seconds. His brown hair was pulled back into a short ponytail at the back of his neck and he was clean-shaven. A rarity, but his look was masculine enough on his own, with a scar over his right eyebrow and another on his left cheekbone that he didn’t need to look any tougher than he simply was.

  He had also always been one of my favorites. I smiled at him fondly, genuinely.

  “Good to see you too, Sloppy.” I took the water and gulped. The tip of the bottle shook against my teeth because Sloppy was right. A shot or four would have helped make feel better. “I’m good, though.”

  “You look good.” With a hand slapped to the bar, it signaled that was the biggest welcome home I was going to get from him. He helped himself to a beer before he walked to the end and started shouting at the Indy race that was on one of the TVs.

  “That wasn’t so bad, was it?” Daemon’s voice in my ear made me jump. His hand on my waist made me freeze.

  I spun around in my stool, facing him, which was amazing and a mistake at the same time.

  Perfect because it put me inches from Daemon’s lips and I could smell the fresh beer on his breath and his body wash from the shower he must have taken when he snuck out of his bed.

  It was a mistake for those exact reasons, and then some. His dirty blond hair fell in front of his face, shielding him from everyone else. His eyes were dark and full of the promise of hot mad sex. His arms protected me on the sides and I could take in his body with a simple look. I scanned the tattoos along his arms and a scroll that I knew spanned across his chest, just below his collarbones. He was menacing.

  He was sexy as hell.

  I gulped down my lust, and slid off the stool so I was standing in front of him. It made it worse because I was closer and my chest brushed against his. It made it better because his arms fell to his sides so I wasn’t caged in.

  “I’m going to find some girls to talk to.”

  His eyebrows pulled in. “You goin’ to be all right?”

  “In this place?” I asked with a slight hint of a smile on my lips. “I think I can handle it.”

  I walked away from him, hoping he liked the sway in my hips and went to find Switch’s old lady, Marie. Other than my mom, she had been the woman I had been closest to in the club. She was more like an aunt. And the only person who tried to keep in contact with me when I left.

  I didn’t talk to her for a year and then I was forced to when she showed up at the University Campus. She stood outside my door, looking all biker chic, and waited for me until I got home from class.

  I wasn’t very nice to her, but I did start occasionally taking her calls after that day; and she took me out to lunch a few times, trying to explain the same thing Daemon had been telling me for weeks.

  I hadn’t been ready to hear the truth then.

  But I was ready to apologize to her now.

  So when I found her in a darkened corner, curled up on Switch’s lap, looking exactly as I remembered she did when I was a kid, I wasn’t surprised that the first thing she did after her jaw snapped closed was to jump off her old man’s lap, and wrap me in her arms.

  “’Bout time your butt is back in this place.” She was shorter than I was so I leaned down and returned the hug, feeling the first sting of tears in the back of my eyes.

  “Yeah,” was all I got out before she pulled me down next to her. I got a chin lift from Switch that I assumed meant the same thing, but he never talked much so I could only infer from the fact that he wasn’t looking at me like he wanted to slit me straight open.

  I spent hours watching Liv work the room like she owned it and had never left. The nerves she had shown when we first pulled into the Nordic’s lot had long since disappeared. We didn’t talk much. I spent the time with Finn and Jaden mostly, or a few prospects, and kept my eye on Liv almost the whole time.

  She felt it too, because every time I pinned her with my eyes when she wasn’t looking, it didn’t take long before her eyes met mine. I was given a head nod from her in recognition, a few times I saw her cheeks flush before she looked away and went back to talking to whatever old man or old lady she’d been talkin’ to.

  There was no one who had ever done it for me the way Liv did. She could hold her own in a room with a bunch of scary ass vigilantes. She could hug, cry, and laugh with any woman who was hurting or in pain. She refused to kill any breathing thing, but understood deep down the life she’d been raised in, often required killing a living thing. She could work on a bike or a classic car getting grease under her fingernails and then clean up and dress in something that showed off her hot little bod and long, sexy legs.

  She had always known who she was growin’ up. She might have hid that part of her for a while when she talked about leaving, but now I was getting to watch her gain that confidence and sass back.

  And I was eatin’ it up. So much so that I had no idea what Finn and Jaden were bitchin’ about until I felt a sharp sting on my shoulder.

  “The hell?” I growled at Jaden.

  He just shook his head, his brown hair shaking with him. “It’s been years since I’ve seen you so wrapped up in some chick.”

  “It’s Liv.” I frowned. I’d always been wrapped up in her, so I didn’t understand what he was getting at. Or that he referred to her as some chick like she was some random hook-up.

  “Stow your attitude, brother.” He smiled but it didn’t reach his brown eyes. I didn’t think Jaden had smiled for real since Scratch had died. “Just sayin’ it’s weird is all. You aren’t even listenin’ to what we’re talking about.”

  I took a pull from my beer and from the corner of my eye, I caught Liv reaching over to hug Pappy. Pappy was old. He smelled bad, his grey beard was disgusting, and he had a glass right eye. No one woman liked Pappy. But that had never stopped Olivia, or Jules for that matter, from being kind to him. “Start talkin’ about somethin’ worth listenin’ to, then.”

  Finn slapped me on the back, smiling and not sayin’ a word like he usually did.

  “What’s so important then?” I asked, still not really caring.

  Liv was getting closer to the corner where Missy was playing around with some prospect. I didn’t want anything being said to either of them. I didn’t think Missy would make a deal out of what happened between us when Liv walked in, and I knew Liv would igno
re it, but you get drunk chicks in a room, and there was bound to be some drama.

  “Nothin’,” Jaden said, as soon as a large, firm hand clasped my shoulder.

  I knew without turning around that it was Bull. I looked anyway and tossed a head-nod toward Vicki who was hanging on his arm with hair that looked freshly fucked. I hated thinking of some guy older than my old man having sex, but those two were constantly going at it anywhere they could find a spot. Didn’t matter if there were eyes on them or not.

  “Prez.”

  He didn’t look at me. His eyes were trained on Liv laughing as Pappy introduced her to a couple of prospects. I fought the urge to go over and mark my territory. Pee on her leg or stick my tongue down her throat just so they knew who she belonged to.

  Christ.

  “I like the way that looks. Way she looks in this space.”

  I agreed with a nod.

  “Bring her to my room in ten so I can talk to her. Don’t want to make another scene out here in front of the men.”

  “You mean you don’t want to end up with the barrel of a gun in your gut again?” He sneered at me and I grinned widely.

  He dragged his beer bottle to his lips and tipped it back. When he pulled it from his lips, he smiled slightly. “That too.”

  I heard Vicki laugh softly next to him.

  “Will do. She had some trouble earlier with Larson, so go easy on her tonight.”

  His eyes went narrow and his shoulders rolled back. “Trouble?”

  “We’ll be there in ten and she’ll explain it all then, but I gotta let you know, when you find out, it’s not changin’ our plans any.”

  He nodded his head and headed back to his room. I gave Liv a few more minutes of chatting because I hadn’t missed the way she’d watched her dad and me talking when she didn’t think I was looking. I didn’t want to make her feel like he had come out just to summon her, when in fact, it’s exactly what he did.

  But regardless, when my beer was gone, I went to her and wrapped an arm around her waist, pulling her to my side like she’d been there every day of my life. She only hesitated for a split second before resting against me.