He’d taken a shower. He had tried to read a book. He had even tossed back a couple of shots of whiskey and poked around on the list of old contacts, wondering if there might be someone among them who could make him forget about the ice queen of the business world. No luck. What was wrong with him? No, he thought to himself, what the hell was wrong with her?
The grips beneath his palms were cool from disuse. He tilted one and then the other as he kicked the bike into gear. It rumbled between his legs. He’d ridden a motorcycle before he’d learned to drive a car. His father, if you could call the man who’d taken off on his mother and his sisters a father, had left an old Harley in the garage when he’d gone off to do who knew what. Cody had been young, too young to understand what a motorcycle could really mean to a man, but he’d gone out to the tiny shed where the bike had been stored and spent the next few years taking it apart and putting it back together.
It had been that bike that carried him out of the reservation and on to a different life.
She’d made him think of the reservation again, asking all those questions about it. Maybe he ought to go back for a visit, give his mom some money. Maybe he could finish up his degree and teach there, inspire the kids there the same way that he had been inspired. Yeah, right. That would never happen. Donna was right about one thing: he was a criminal. What right did he have to dream of teaching or having a woman like her?
Cody shifted gears and felt the shudder as the tank pumped more fuel into the engine. The wind whipped along his face, tugging his hair out of the bandanna that he’d slung it into. It was a cool night, with hardly a cloud in the sky. It felt good to get out, to be free.
Instinct, or maybe habit, had him taking the route from his house to the pool hall. It was after three in the morning, and the sign over the door informed him that the place was closed, but Twitch’s car and Hulk’s bike were still parked in the back lot. So were a few other bikes. Looked like the club was hanging out tonight. Had anyone called him? Maybe. He didn’t know. Cody hadn’t looked at his phone since scrolling through the contacts. He used his key to get in.
There were twenty or so people still hanging out in the supposedly closed club. He recognized most of them. A good portion were club members. Twitch and Hulk were taking up a booth with a couple of ladies that Cody had seen before but couldn’t remember the names of. He gave them a wave.
“Hey, stranger,” Hulk’s voice rumbled. “Where you been at?”
There was a chorus of heys and hellos in the wake of Hulk’s greeting. Cody nodded in greeting.
“Aww, you know where homeboy’s been at. You know. He’s been following my old buddy, my old friend, that sweet pretty thing with the red hair.” Twitch bounced up out of his seat and gave Cody a slap on the back. A few eyes turned in their direction.
Hulk smirked and brought a beer to his lips. A few inches disappeared down his throat. “That true?”
Cody didn’t answer at first. Instead he walked around the bar and used the toe of his cowboy boot to tug open one of the minifridges tucked between an ice bin and a wash sink. Seven brands of beer stared back at him, and not a damn one of them sounded tasty. He popped the door closed again and turned toward the bottles of liquor lined up on the wall. With a growl, he pulled down the Tennessee whiskey and poured himself a couple of fingers.
“Yeah,” Hulk said when Cody started to pour himself another glass. “Definitely been sniffing at that Mason girl.”
Cody snorted, in part because Hulk had hit the nail on the head, and in part because he could just imagine how Donna would feel about being called “that Mason girl.” He knocked back his second glass of whiskey—fourth if you counted what he drank while he was still at home—and then grabbed a beer from the minifridge and dragged a chair over to the table so he could see the television too.
“Donna Mason?” One of the girls sitting at the table spoke up for the first time. She was pretty, Cody had to admit. She had hair as black as his own and the kind of curvy body meant for bathing suits and leotards. “I heard she was back in town.”
“You know her?” Cody found himself asking even though he didn’t really want to.
“Tch, yeah. I went to school with her. Me and Twitch both did. Twitch was her friend, though I wasn’t. That bitch didn’t like female friends. Never has. Bet she’s one of those woman haters.”
Cody couldn’t find it in himself to agree with that. Yeah, he was mad at her, but Donna didn’t seem to hate women. She’d spent most of the barbecue talking with Mandy, and there was no one in the world who was more of a woman than Mandy.
“She told me to get lost.”
“Shit, man,” Twitch said with a squeal of laughter before patting Cody on the back. “Man, what did you do?”
“Yeah, how’d you fuck it up?” Hulk asked, turning his dark head in Cody’s direction. “Rumor had it y’all went to some big family barbecue tonight.”
“Jesus.” Cody popped his beer open on the side of the table. Maybe Donna wasn’t completely wrong. Apparently, everyone was related in this damn town. Related enough, at least, that they were yammering about a relationship that wasn’t anyone’s damn business. “I didn’t fuck it up, man. I didn’t do a damn thing wrong. Her mom got involved.”
“Liz Mason is a piece of work,” Hulk said, shaking his head until the short braids on either side of his head clinked against one another.
“Yeah,” Twitch popped in. “But she fucks good.”
Cody nearly spit out his beer. “What?”
Twitch shrugged his skinny shoulders. “Least she did a few years back. I was in the trailer park, visiting my mom when she comes out. It was summer and she was wearing this tiny little bikini thing and just sunning herself. Just flat out asks me if I want some. I wasn’t seeing anyone so I didn’t see an issue with it.”
Cody snorted. He had no right to talk. He’d slept with plenty of married women in his time, but Liz Mason wasn’t one of them.
“Surprised you came out of that alive.”
Twitched laughed. “Yeah, but I came though. A lot.” There was a general titter of amusement between the club and the joke. Encouraged, Twitch went on to say, “But she got more.”
The girl sitting with Hulk and Cody laughed the loudest and bumped her shoulder against Twitch’s. He gave her a grin and waggled his eyes suggestively at her. Cody watched as she leaned over and whispered something in his ear. Twitch’s grin widened and he tossed back the rest of his drink.
“If you all will excuse us,” he said, slipping out of the booth and taking the woman’s hand. She giggled and followed.
Cody shook his head and rolled his eyes before taking the spot the pair of them had vacated. “Well, at least someone is happy.” He glanced around at the group of bikers. Most of them were wearing their kuttes. Some were done in leather, some in denim, but all of them sported the large white tiger with its head tilted back in a frozen roar. The White Tigers of Carson, Nevada, a small club when all things were said and done, but a good group of guys. Even Twitch.
There was Bubba, and yes, that was his given name. The man was nearly seven feet tall and weighed in at just under three hundred pounds, and nearly all of it was muscle. He volunteered at the youth club after school to make sure kids whose parents couldn’t afford daycare still had someplace to go.
There was Carl, a scrawny little dude who used to be an addict until Boss picked him up and helped him to quit the habit. He rode a hell of a bike and played a mean guitar now that his hands didn’t shake so much.
Donna was wrong. These men weren’t criminals; they were rebels. They stood for something. They wanted the freedom that America promised but buried with its rules and laws. Rules, he thought, that were enforced by the assholes in blue who didn’t practice what they preached.
“You gonna listen?” Hulk asked, interrupting Cody’s train of thought.
“Listen? To what?”
“To Donna. You gonna get lost or are you gonna keep going after her?”
Cody shook his head. “Neither. I’m here, and I’m going to be here. I’m going to help her with Kyle and… shit, man, I told her that I’d be available once she gets her head out of her ass.”
Hulk whistled. “Use those exact words?”
“Close enough.”
Hulk’s teeth shone white as pearls against the darkness of his lips. “I thought you were a ladies’ man, Lieutenant.”
“Ladies, sure. But Donna is something else altogether. She’s this… force. You know? You ever met a woman who just gets up in your life and by the very act of being there turns everything upside down?”
Hulk gave him a long look with those liquid dark eyes of his. He didn’t say anything at first; he just watched. Cody let him. Hulk was a quiet man, prone to long introspection. Cody brought his nearly half-gone beer up and took a long swallow.
“Hey, Cody,” a woman said. A soft hand with bright red nails settled itself on his shoulder. The grip was familiar. “Didn’t expect to see you here.”
“Hey, Chastity.”
Chastity was a dark-haired Barbie brought to life. Her long legs were displayed beneath a short fringe of skirt, and she’d forgotten to button the top two buttons of her blouse. The edges of a lacy black bra were visible in the flare of open fabric. She had a nice rack, Cody knew from firsthand experience, but she didn’t have much else going for her.
She sidled up next to him, letting her fingers scratch the back of his neck ever so lightly. She was wearing a perfume that was strong on the vanilla. Not the good, warm kind that went with baked goods or expensive candles, but the cheap, overly sweet kind.
“I’m really glad you’re here.”
She brushed her magnificent rack against his shoulder, and he waited to feel the arousal he was sure should accompany that. He waited and waited as she leaned closer, her mint-gum breath blowing ever so lightly against his neck. Nothing happened, just a sick feeling in his stomach like he was doing something wrong. It took him a moment to realize he was feeling guilt. He, Cody Bannik, who never felt guilt at the touch of a woman, was getting sick at the thought of taking Chastity home and making an irony out of her name.
He gave her a friendly pat on the hip but shook his head. “Thanks, hon, but not tonight.”
She pouted but didn’t push. With a sigh, she slid herself back up onto her stilts and gave Hulk a questioning look. Hulk shook his head. Cody realized that he’d never seen Hulk take a woman home from the pool hall, or from anywhere now that he was thinking about it.
“You in love with someone?” Cody asked suddenly.
Hulk raised a dark brow. “What?”
“I was just thinking that I’ve never seen you pick up a woman, but I’ve seen plenty hit on you.” Cody eyed him. “Was wondering if you’re in love with someone.”
Hulk went very quiet. “Been in and out of love a few times, Lieutenant. None of them were fun.”
There was something about the way he said it that kept Cody from asking anything else. A thought niggled at the back of his mind. He didn’t say it, but he started to wonder if Hulk just didn’t like women for personal company. Cody wouldn’t have cared one way or the other, but he knew that not everyone in the club would feel the same.
“Fair enough,” Cody said. “What’s everyone gathered up for?”
“Boss is coming back.”
Cody blinked and plunked his drink on the table. “It’s about damn time. When?”
“Tomorrow, maybe the day after if they stop up north and gamble away some of their share. Got the call around midnight. Tried calling you but…” Hulk shrugged one massive shoulder.
Midnight. That was when he’d been arguing with Donna. Had he just not heard the call? Had he been that mad? Probably. He was still mad. It wasn’t as hot and bitter as it had been, but he could feel it like water on a low boil.
“That’s about the time that Donna was telling me to fuck off.”
Hulk took a deep breath and wrapped both hands around his drink, his fingers interlacing over the label. “You love this woman.” It wasn’t a question; it was a statement. Cody had been thinking something along the same lines, but he found himself wondering why Hulk, who Cody hadn’t been spending too much time with the past few days, had come to the same conclusion. “It’s easy to see. Not just because you sent Chastity off, or because you came in here looking like someone had run over your favorite pair of boots. It’s the way she makes you mad.”
“You lost me.”
“Do you ever get mad if the Anaheim Ducks lose the Stanley Cup?”
“No. Why would I?” Cody responded, his thumb beginning to scrape away the ring of paper on the neck of his beer.
“Exactly. I mean, it’s pretty obvious when you think about it. You haven’t much cared when other women turned you down. Or tell you that they aren’t interested. You just move on. Didn’t happen here, did it?”
The ring of paper fell on the table in small strips. “No, it didn’t.”
“Well, that’s because it matters. It matters a lot, doesn’t it? It matters what she thinks about you and why she thinks it. It matters not just because she turned you down to start off with. It matters because you legitimately care what she thinks. Her opinion is one that you value and respect. That’s love, man.”
Cody shook his head and started working on the label of his beer, letting those glue-caked strips join the first as he thought about what Hulk was saying. “What about all the fire? The passion?”
“Pretty sure y’all have that. But that’s not love, Lieutenant. That’s just interest. That big flare of look-at-that you get all messed-up with in the beginning. Right? Love is something else. It’s what happens when you think about the other person when they aren’t there, and not just about what’s in their pants. When you think about what they’re doing, how their day goes, and if they are doing all right. That… that’s love. That’s real caring.”
“Well, she doesn’t feel that for me.” Cody shoved his bottle away. It wavered on its side but didn’t spill.
“I can’t say one way or the other on that. I don’t know her that well. But, well…” Hulk trailed off again. Cody found himself leaning in, wondering what the big man was going to finish that sentence with. “Well… here’s the thing. She told you that you two weren’t right for each other, right?”
Cody felt the dull boil of his anger go up a few degrees. “Yeah. She did.”
“Well, that means she’s been thinking about a future with you, right? She’s wondering how you fit into her world, and if it would make sense. Now, some women, they might try to make it fit. They’d cut away pieces of you or pieces of themselves in this struggle to finish the puzzle that is their lives. But Donna Mason? Naw, she’s played that game before. She tried to make herself fit here all of her young life, and it just didn’t happen. So instead of forcing it, she told you to get lost, because after evaluating her life, she said that it wasn’t right.”
“And that’s… a good thing?” Maybe it was the liquor, or maybe it was the fact that he couldn’t imagine Donna picturing them together, but Cody wasn’t sure he understood what Hulk was getting at.
“Shit, man, that’s the best thing when it comes to a woman like that.”
Cody frowned and dragged a hand through his dark hair. “I don’t think I’m following you, teacher.”
Hulk laughed, a great big barrel laugh that burst out of his lips and rumbled across the room. “You can be really dumb for a college graduate, you know that? She wants you to fit, and she respects you enough not to demand that you cut away parts of yourself.”
“Huh,” Cody said, laying his chin on the top of the beer bottle, feeling the lukewarm kiss of glass against his skin. “Guess I hadn’t thought about it like that.”
# # #
When Cody woke up the next morning he decided that he wanted to fit into Donna’s life too. He hadn’t understood everything that Hulk, the love guru, was saying, but it had all stuck in his head. Donna Mason wanted
someone that she could count on, depend on. Fair enough since she hadn’t been able to count on anyone but her own damn self as far as Cody could see. If she needed that in a man, then he was going to be that man.
He was at the shop by eight, despite getting to bed at five in the morning. He started looking through money, going through some much-needed inventory. He threw himself into his work and began to understand why Donna found it comforting to turn to business when life was being too difficult to handle. With work, everything was laid out in a nice neat list. Life wasn’t half so easy to handle.
He hadn’t called her, though after a few more beers with Hulk he had begun to think that it might be a really good idea to do just that. It had been the larger, more level-headed man that interceded. It was for the best, though Cody hadn’t thought so at the time. He’d been too drunk to sit on his bike. He hadn’t wanted to go home anyway—the couch probably still smelled like her. Instead he had slept it off at the pool hall and walked into work this morning thinking the brisk morning air might clear his liquor-soaked brain. It had. Well, that and two bottles of Gatorade, some Pepto-Bismol, and aspirin.
BAD INFLUENCE: A Dark Bad Boy Romance Page 22