Without Consequence

by Victoria L. James

  I started moving without much thought, taking steps closer towards her. Considering how obvious her hatred for me was, her first comment about making me smile surprised me more than anything else she could have thrown my way. Stopping far enough away from her that she wouldn’t feel too intimidated, I curled my shoulders further into one another and dug my fists deeper into my pockets.

  “You're quite the confusing creature, Ayda Hanagan.”

  “Me?” she asked, an incredulous look flashing before she looked down at her hands again.

  “You.”

  “I’m pretty sure I’m the bleakest person around. I’m an open book.”

  “Is that really how you see yourself?” I asked, my eyes narrowing down on hers as though I was searching for answers to questions I wasn’t even aware I wanted to ask.

  “You said it best at the diner. Work, sleep, repeat. That’s a pretty apt description of my life for the last three years.” She held up her hand and shook her head. “I’m not throwing myself a pity party. I’m just giving the facts.”

  “Hmmm,” I moaned quietly in the back of my throat, unable to say what I really wanted to say to her. Who was I to try and light a fire under this girl’s ass when I could barely reach around to light a fire under my own? “And are you happy?”

  “Tate is. That’s all that matters.”

  “Which is the reason why you’re here trying to be civil…”

  “Mostly, yes. He has to be my priority. When he’s eighteen, I may start to re-evaluate.”

  It was tempting to carry on down this line of questioning, especially when she was working hard on being polite and actually answering my crap without trying to throw any sarcasm into the mix.

  “You should get your things and leave now. I’m sure you have work to do,” I whispered down at her, my eyes locking on the blue of hers. It was a shame she fell into the category she did. In any other circumstance, I would be undressing her with one look alone and imagining all the positions I could get her into before the night was out.

  “Message received loud and clear,” she said quietly, stepping around me and heading toward the bathroom.

  My chin dropped down to my chest and I took a moment to close my eyes and chastise myself for being the asshole she had me pegged as. I could hear her scurrying around in there. I could hear the shuffling of her feet, the heavy breaths she probably didn’t know I was noticing, the clattering of her cleaning stuff and the way she banged into the sink again and tried to cover it up. All the noise had me looking over my shoulder as I waited for her to reappear.

  When she did, she was holding a bucket full of supplies, wearing a blush on her cheeks while a small trickle of sweat dropped from the bead on her temple.

  “Did you want me to wash your, uh, towel?” she asked, holding up the washcloth I’d dried myself with.

  “Sure,” I said quietly, nodding once as my eyes held hers.

  Tucking it into the bucket with the rest of her things, she sped past me, pushing the bottle of whiskey into my hand, her voice quiet as she turned away to reach for the handle. “I’ll bring you some clean towels when I’m through with the laundry.”

  “Ayda?” I rushed out as I spun around to catch her attention one last time and waited for her to turn around.

  “Yeah?”

  “Did he win?” I asked quickly.

  “Thirty-five to seven. They kicked ass.”

  A single nod was my only response as I blew out all the air in my chest and turned away from her as quickly as I could. “Tell Kenny to give you the gate codes so you can let yourself into the yard in the morning. Someone will let you in the hut once they’ve seen you on the security cameras.” I paused, making my way behind the desk I’d not sat behind for far too long, before I lifted my head to look back up at her and gave her my final, quiet warning. “Do not be late.”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Ayda

  The interior of my car felt like a safety zone when I finally climbed behind the wheel to go home. My interaction with Drew had been interesting to say the least, and in all honesty, when it came to him, I wasn’t sure whether I was coming or going anymore. Just when I thought I understood him, he would turn around and do something I would never expect him to. His question about Tate had thrown me for a loop completely.

  It was hard to have a conversation with him and not come away feeling more confused than I had when we started. He never said what I expected him to, and that went in the positive and negative extremes. The questions he asked weren’t the usual kind. They were inquiries that no one else would dare to ask for fear of causing offense. Whereas Drew just shot them off as though they were bullets from a six-shooter – all hard questions but compiled in a way that didn’t give you time to think about the answer, leaving only honest responses to fall free. He was infuriating that way. The moment the words were past my lips, I wound up asking myself why I’d told him as much as I had.

  Drew was a very complex guy, but the same couldn’t be said for some of the men that inhabited the space with him. Maybe it was because they were drunk and in the sanctity of their home that they felt so inclined to get totally shit faced and cast any rules of modern convention aside. When I thought about some of the things I did when I had a rare moment alone in my home, I quickly realized that I was wrong to judge what they were doing. Sure, I’d seen more tits and ass in one night than when I’d gone to Mardi Gras in New Orleans in my senior year of high school, but it was their personal space, they could do what they wanted to.

  I finished the communal bathroom at midnight, my body screaming in complaint as I stood up to look over my accomplishment with a hand on the small of my back. The other wiped the sweat from my forehead, neck and cleavage, and I was pretty sure that the stink had managed to seep into my pores. I felt disgusting, gritty and pretty foul. I’d only managed to get through half of the laundry, but I was going to be there in the morning to finish it, and if the boys wanted clean underwear, they should probably have learned to use the machines themselves. There was only so much I could do in one night.

  I managed to get together a small stack of towels before I left, and on my way out, I took them to Drew’s office with a quiet tap. He wasn’t there so, dropping my things, I grabbed what I could and cleaned quickly, leaving the towels in little rolls on the back of the toilet, which were in reach of the shower, before sneaking out and putting everything away.

  It was the hardest I’d worked in years. I used elbow grease to spit and shine every surface. I felt like the odd man out in the place for most of the night, barely acknowledged until I asked a question. There were moments that I felt like a ghost in there, passing by people doing things normally reserved for a quiet room and locked door. I had to remind myself several times that this place wasn’t held to the standards that the rest of the world was, because in most cases, this was a completely different world, and being a fly on the wall for an evening had been quite the enlightening experience.

  The house was dark when I finally pulled up in my drive, and I sat in my car with the lights off, just staring at the porch lights. I wasn’t entirely sure how I felt about my new vocation. I wasn’t too proud to clean toilets for a living, but if I was going to be doing that on a daily basis, I was going to have to teach them to aim better. I even considered painting little targets on the urinals for them to aim at. Mom had done that with Tate when he was a kid.

  The memory made me smile, and my hand reached for the radio to turn up the song as I let my mind wander. I thought about the questions Drew had asked, my arms encircling the steering wheel. Was I happy? That was the one that resonated with me the most – the one I had the most trouble answering, because I honestly wasn’t sure of the response myself.

  I meant what I said. As long as Tate was happy, I knew I could get by. But what did that mean for me? I’d pushed most of my dreams and wishes aside to make his come true, but what happened after that? When his life was in his own hands and he was old enough to make
his own decisions and mistakes, I was going to be lost. I wasn’t going to know how to live without climbing into bed at the end of the night with the sole purpose of waking up the next day and making sure everything was right in the world for one person.

  How the hell did parents do this?

  Glancing at the clock on the dash and back up at the house, I turned the engine over and backed out of the drive. Just for tonight, I was going to take back an hour and make the most of it, just before I started this shit over again in the morning.

  “Ayda?”

  My hands grabbed for my head to stop the pounding. I felt so dirty and gritty, and yet the voice and banging continued.

  “Ayda!”

  “Fuck. Off.”

  The door was pushed aside as Tate fell into the room, his eyes wide at my state. I’d bought a bottle of bourbon and come home with it, and other than a shower, I honestly didn’t remember all that much. I was in physical pain.

  “What the hell happened to you? And where are your pants? I don’t need to see my sister in her underwear.”

  “Then you shouldn’t just barge in here,” I grumbled, pulling the blankets over my head and burying my face in my pillow. I was trying to remember why I thought partying with Jack (or was it Jim?) was a good idea.

  “You’re gonna be late if you stay in bed,” he said, his hands squeezing my calves and pulling me to the edge of the bed. My hands flew out to catch myself before my head bounced off the hardwood.

  “If I live through this, you’re gonna owe me for the rest of your natural life. I claim your first born, Tate. Don’t make plans for that sucker.”

  “What the hell did they do? Feed you bourbon until you threw up?”

  “No,” I said, covering my mouth and belching. “That was my bright idea after hours of cleaning some pretty fucking disgusting toilets.”

  “So let me do it.”

  It was probably the only thing he could have said that would have got me up off my hands and knees and into the bathroom. There was no way in hell I was letting him into that place, even if I was pretty sure they wouldn’t hurt him. I actually believed he would end up leaving corrupted and deranged.

  “Ayda, come on. Like you don’t have enough to do,” he said through the bathroom door. By the sounds of it he was leaning against the wall.

  “It isn’t so bad. I just had a long night and made a bad judgment call with the bourbon. Kinda like you did last week. Remember that?” I asked with a sarcastic laugh. “You tried to rip off the local MC?”

  “Shut up.”

  “Then don’t judge me.”

  I heard his mumbled response begin, but the words were lost as I stepped under the spray of the shower. I just hoped it was going to chase away the sluggishness that was getting comfortable in my limbs from the work I’d done the night before.

  As luck would have it, I was ten minutes early when I finally arrived at the hut. I swear the sweat was my body pushing alcohol through my pores, and I could smell it on myself even worse after I slipped through the gate and reached up to knock on the door.

  Or maybe the stench was the main room of the hut through the door?

  Either way, it stank. Badly. And my tender, thoroughly empty stomach turned the moment the door was thrown open. I was really starting to regret my stupid decision the night before. When I pulled out of the driveway, I’d been considering sex or alcohol as a way to get my mind off things. But entering the bar and seeing Mr. Lupe’s eyes light up, I went with liquor. A ninety-year-old man that refused to take off his dress uniform wasn’t all that appealing.

  “You look as bad as I feel,” Kenny said, pushing the door closed behind me and shuffling further into the glorious darkness that was the hut’s main room.

  “Just say no toilets today and let me sweat it out in the laundry room.”

  “I ain’t the boss, kid.”

  I waved an arm in his direction and leaned against the pool table, until I remembered what I’d seen happening on the thing the night before and pushed off of it. Wonder what surface was actually safe to touch?

  “Let’s hope there’s mercy to be had,” I whispered, almost biting off my tongue when I looked up to see Drew at the bar with a coffee and a smirk. I wanted to know his secret. He’d obviously polished off his bottle of whiskey and then some, yet looked…

  “Umm, morning?”

  Once again, I wished I’d kept my mouth shut. There was going to be no mercy today, no easy menial labor for this girl. He was going to have me jumping through hoops. I just hoped that he wasn’t a complete bastard and would, at the very least, supply me with the tar they were calling coffee.

  He did, and although it tasted like raw beans boiled and strained, it actually helped the hangover quite a bit. For a while, things seemed to be going well. We were holding a half decent conversation, about caffeine of all things, and I actually managed to make Kenny snort once.

  Of course, it was inevitable that I would end up sticking my foot in my mouth. That opportunity came when I saw a picture behind the bar of a younger version of the man who stood next to me, his arm around a slightly older boy, but the reverence was there, shining through.

  “Is that a younger you in that picture there?” I asked, my elbows planted as I leaned forward.

  Drew's eyes followed mine to see what I was staring at, although something about the way his body tensed beside me told me that he already knew. He didn't answer for a while, and the stony silence was so thick and so powerful, I felt like it was choking me, until he finally cleared his throat and mumbled, “Yeah.”

  “You were a cute kid. Is that your brother with you?”

  “No,” he answered sharply as he pushed his hands against the edge of the bar and rose to a slow stand. “No, it's not.”

  The calm man I’d been speaking to had disappeared by the time I turned to see why he sounded so clipped. In his place stood a man with the color and light drained from him, his jaw set in a hard line filled with anger and an emotion I couldn’t quite place. With a growl that I should 'get to work' he stalked away, gripping his mug with such fury, I feared it wasn’t going to last long, while I stood there in stunned silence.

  “You want a survival tip, kid?” Kenny asked quietly, leaning into me. “You don’t ask Drew questions about anything or anyone unless you know the story behind it. Maybe not even then.”

  Oh and wasn’t that a lesson I could have learned ten minutes earlier?

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Drew

  Considering the amount of whiskey I drank the night before, even I was surprised by the good mood I'd woken up in. But as with everything when Ayda was around, nothing ever stayed the same for long.

  When Pete stared back at me from that picture behind the bar, I knew I had to get out of there. It was either that or stick around and risk exploding on her tiny little ass. And that just wasn't an option, given I'd made a deal with myself to try and make it through the day without getting lost inside my own head. It was already way too early for me to be pacing, yet here I was, and there was only one person to blame for that yet again.

  Her.

  It always seemed to be her. Maybe that was because in the few days since my release, she was the only non-MC person I'd allowed myself to talk with, and the truth was, anyone outside of this club just didn't have a clue how I worked or the shit I'd been through. I wasn't about to let her piss me off before the sun had even had a chance to warm the concrete. Not today. I just wanted to be able to breathe without seeing ghosts and regret splashed across every wall.

  That left me with only one option for the remainder of the day while she was around.

  I had to get out.

  Snatching the keys from my office, I threw a hoodie over my white t-shirt before gliding past the cut hung up on the back of the door as though I hadn’t even seen it. I wasn’t denying who I was. I wasn’t about to walk away from the one thing I had left in this world that meant anything to me, but for now, I needed to ride alone. A
nd riding alone with my club patch strewn across my back could only lead to one of two things: cops or enemies. Today, I just wanted to be free.

  My feet pounded heavily back through the bar area, and I didn’t take a second to glance around and see who was still in there. My eyes were fully focused on the door as I started to move closer towards it.

  “Where you going?” Slater shouted in his low, deep voice from somewhere behind me.

  “Out,” I answered flatly.

  “Alone?”

  “Looks that way.”

  “You want company? Harry said you shouldn’t be left alo-”

  “Fuck Harry. I don’t answer to him, Slater.”

  “Okay, man. I was just asking.”

  “Keep the girl busy,” I called back out over my shoulder, stepping out through the doorway and into the bright sunshine of the morning. The warmth of it wrapped itself around my face and instantly made my shoulders relax. If I hadn’t wanted to get away so quickly, I know I’d have remained standing there for a while longer. But the sound of Jedd’s voice calling out for me at the far end of the bar had me bouncing away quickly and walking like fuck over to my Harley.

  Grabbing my helmet from the back, I swung my leg over my seat and began to fasten the strap under my chin. Pulling my shades out from the pocket in my hoodie, I slid them on and literally tuned the whole fucking world out, unlocking the deadlock before backing my neglected baby out of its parking bay with my feet.

  Before I had time to start her up, I saw Jedd’s tall frame move to stand in the doorway as he watched me. I didn’t mean to do it, but as he started to take a step forward, then another and then another, I threw my head back with laughter and started her up. As soon as I felt the vibrations beneath me and heard the roar of my bike come to life, filling the air with the most beautiful sound on this earth, the tension in my spine started to roll off of me even more. If I could do this and keep a good lifestyle all around me, riding was the only thing I would do from the moment I opened my eyes until the moment my head fell against the pillow again at night. I was born to be a biker. I was born into this world and it was in me.