by Anne Malcom
I had my butt in a booth before I rightly knew what was going on. Amy was a hurricane.
She clasped her hands together on the top of the table. Her nails were polished perfectly with the same green as her shirt, and most of her fingers were adorned with tasteful and obviously expensive gold rings. The biggest being the solitaire diamond on her left hand.
“So, Lucy told me to track you down in order to yell at you for not calling her about the accident,” she began. “And sure, I’m happy to yell at people, but ‘people’ usually only include my husband and my best friend when she tells me I can’t put makeup on her baby. And I have a feeling I’m going to like you, so I’m not yelling.” Her eyes twinkled. “Plus, I didn’t come on Lucy’s behalf. That’s just a ruse for me getting the 411 on you and Gage.”
I blinked rapidly at her as Lacey set two mugs in front of us.
“I’m totally naming my firstborn after you,” Amy said to her, snatching her mug.
Lacey laughed. “You already had your firstborn, and he’s not named after me.”
“Well, I’ll change his name,” Amy replied after sipping. “How important is it to have Brock’s grandfather’s name in there anyway? He’s dead. He won’t know.”
Lacey laughed again before walking off.
Amy looked at me over her coffee cup as I was staring at my peppermint tea. “So,” she prompted, “you and Gage. How in the ever-loving fuck did that happen? You are so not what I expected him to go for.” She paused. “Not that that’s an insult. It’s a compliment, since I figured he’d snatch a black widow off death row to marry her.” She screwed up her nose. “You’re not a closet black widow, are you?”
“Well, if I was, I wouldn’t tell you, would I?” I deadpanned.
She stared at me and then burst out laughing. It was throaty and melodic. And contagious, because it was real and true. When someone laughed like that, with a genuine happiness that didn’t exist much in this world anymore, it was something that had to be joined in with.
“I take it back. You’re perfect for him,” she replied, wiping her eye.
I chewed my lip. “I’m not with him,” I hedged.
She waved my comment away. “Yes, yes, he’s a big stupid biker and you’re not letting him boss you around and claim you. All about that life, girlfriend. But we’re all friends here. You can tell me.”
I gaped at her.
“How do you even—”
“Know?” she finished for me after gulping down the rest of her coffee like a frat boy chugging beer. “Oh, there’re no secrets in the club. Especially when Lucky has anything to do with it. He has the biggest mouth of us all. He loves gossip more than Perez Hilton. We’re like a hive mind. It’s a bit crazy, but you’ll get used to it. We’re pretty fucking awesome too, if I do say so myself. And I took it upon myself to be the welcome wagon.” She paused. “And I may be escaping my teething baby and letting my husband deal with it. But I was the one up all night and he was the one away on a run, so it served him right for having those fucking strong swimmers.”
Her phone buzzed in her purse for like the hundredth time.
“Uh, do you need to get that?” I asked, hoping she would so I could escape the situation. Because I feared that this kind, beautiful, and almost definitely a little bit insane woman would yank the truth out of me. The one I’d been ignoring.
She grinned, glancing at her purse. “Oh no, that’ll just be Brock freaking out about what diaper rash cream to use. For a big bad biker, he seems to get pretty stressed about such things. It’s character building. Plus, he’ll be pissed at me when I get home. And that means angry sex.” She winked.
I blushed into my tea. Not that I was a virgin—that had been taken care of with an awkward, fumbling, and painful encounter in college—but I wasn’t exactly open to talking about it in public with a woman I’d just met.
Not that I was judging.
I’d always kind of dreamed of having those Sex and the City moments with my girlfriends in a café, talking about men, supporting each other, and laughing over nothing, crying over everything.
But I wasn’t a woman who had girlfriends. Nor was I a woman who had men to talk about. I didn’t laugh over nothing, and I couldn’t cry, because if I did, I’d never stop.
“So now that we’ve established that I know everything about you threatening to have Gage arrested—absolutely kickass, by the way—him dragging you into his room—that came from Gwen, not Lucky, and she thinks you’re kickass too—and him picking you up and dropping you off at your place of work even though you can almost throw a stone and hit the offices of the Amber Star.” She smiled as Lacey wordlessly placed another coffee in front of her and swept away her empty mug. “Definitely changing Elijah’s name,” she muttered, staring dreamily into the mug.
She jerked after a second of silence. “Where were we?” she asked, not waiting for me to answer. “Right, you were about to tell me about you and Gage. And just to let you know, this isn’t because I’m nosy.” A pause. “Okay, not entirely because I’m nosy, but because I’ve been through this before. And as much as I love my husband, and I really do, it’s a hard road to get used to being an old lady. The title itself almost broke Brock and me. Calling me old. What are they, suicidal?” She shook her head. “But it’s hard, and not something you can get through without emotional support. I’m here for that. And, of course, because I’m nosy.”
She waited expectantly as she sipped more of her coffee.
I watched her, a little dumbfounded, but a warmth had settled around me at her constant and easy chatter. At the fact that she seemed welcome, opening. Not like those women who were polished and intimidating and judgmental. Who lived for pointing out other women’s insecurities just because it made them feel better.
So I told her.
Everything.
And I had convinced myself it was nothing.
But I was on my second cup of tea and she was on her third cup of coffee—no idea how she wasn’t shaking—by the time I was finished.
“And now, well, I have no idea what the heck is going on,” I said, glancing down at the lukewarm liquid in my mug.
I looked up and she was gaping at me.
“Holy shit,” she whispered. “I’m gonna level with you here, babe. This is gonna get worse before it gets better. Partly because Gage is a patched member of the Sons of Templar and this courtship hasn’t had so much as a shooting, let alone a car bomb.” The casual and serious way she said that disturbed me slightly, but Amy soldiered on. “But mostly because this is Gage, and he makes everyone else look tame and well-adjusted.” She reached over to squeeze my hand. “He’s a good guy, don’t get me wrong. But he’s fucking insane. The best ones are.” She patted my hand. “I’m never gonna be about judging a book by its cover because I think it’s a total dick move, but I’m gonna take a shot in the dark and say your life has not been about fucking insane but hot-as-balls bikers who like to blow things up.”
I grinned weakly. “Not exactly.”
She smiled warmly back. “But I’m also going to take some more shots and say you’re a good woman. And not because you have some kickass interior decorating skills and somehow manage to look like a goddess at eight in the morning without makeup or coffee.” She narrowed her eyebrows as if that was some kind of crime. “And I also see that you’ve got some darkness in you too. Don’t worry, I’m not going to be nosy about that,” she said, as if she sensed my panic. “But you want to share, I’m always here. Despite how much I talk, I’m a great listener. I’m saying this because not every man can conquer you demons. In fact, no man can. Women are the best at conquering demons, slaying their own dragons and all that. But the right man with the wrong demons can show you that. And the right men don’t always seem like that with their leather cuts, their motorcycles, and their monosyllabic declarations of ‘mine.’” She grinned at me as if we were sharing a secret.
I liked that. Someone relating to me. Having someone to relate
to. Someone to squeeze my hand and let me into a club I didn’t think I’d ever be admitted to. One I’d never let myself be admitted to.
“Do they all do that?” I asked.
She grinned wider. “Oh, honey, I think it’s a prerequisite to patching in. But you’re the right woman, because Gage has been in a downright murderous mood all week. And that means good things. The greatest. Angry sex is the best, after all.” She gave me another wink and her phone buzzed in her purse once again. “Speaking of that,” she muttered, standing and snatching her purse. “I’ve got a husband to let ravage me.” She exited the booth, leaning down to kiss me on the cheek. “We’ll have drinks this week. I’ll invite the girls, have an initiation or something.”
Then she was gone.
But I wasn’t alone in the booth.
No, her words stayed there with me.
“Women are the best at conquering demons, slaying their own dragons and all that. But the right man with the wrong demons can show you that.”
I didn’t go to the right man.
Or the wrong one, for that matter.
And I didn’t go to Gage.
He was separate from the two of those. Because I didn’t know which one he was.
Neither? Or both?
But it wasn’t about him. It was about what he awakened within me. What Amy wore better than whatever couture was on her body.
Strength.
And mine had a darkness to it that Gage woke up.
Which had me in my newly repaired car in Hope, at midnight, on the wrong side of town, looking at my brother’s murderer.
Gage
Gage had wanted to ride out for the contract immediately. But Cade wanted him to wait another day, make sure payment was cleared, that everything was in place.
So he had to stay in Amber another night.
Fucking torture.
Because all he’d wanted was to go over to Lauren’s. To kick her fucking door down if need be. Get rid of his bullshit conscience and do what every one of his instincts—which didn’t give a shit about his conscience—was telling him to do.
Claim her.
Yank her deep down into the pit with him, make it so she would never get out. For all the selfish reasons, like not wanting to walk through the valley of the shadow of death alone.
And because he wanted her.
With more than just his cock—but fuck, did he need to sink inside her too.
That need had driven him nearer to true insanity than he’d been in a long time. So just when he was about to give in to that battle, he forced himself into another one. He drove to Hope, parking his bike outside the dimly lit dive bar in the shittiest part of town where shitty people did drugs.
Where even shittier people sold them.
And he sat.
Stared at the flickering light above the door, illuminating the alley to the left in a barely visible glow. But enough to show him the shadows of bodies. Of movements he knew all too well.
His entire body was wired, as if it could sense the junk, the proximity to near total oblivion. To that blissed nothingness that stopped time and sped it up simultaneously. Because that’s why he’d started doing it. To stop time. To preserve the feeling of the high, the freedom, the nirvana of it.
But in the end, toward the grizzly, bloody, and fucking horrific end, he’d done it to speed it up. To try to hasten the sand in the hourglass, to bring him that much closer to death. To the death he was living but was too much of a fucking coward to make legit.
He wasn’t sure which one awaited him if he crossed the street, made the deal and injected junk into his blood, but he didn’t much care. What came after it didn’t matter. He just wanted to sink that needle in. Fuck the consequences.
His entire body shook with the power of his restraint.
His leg twitched.
Later he’d tell himself it was just that, a twitch. Even though he knew it was really a small movement toward pushing off his bike and back into that sickening and pathetic life he pretended he’d escaped.
It wasn’t willpower or strength that stopped him. Not the weight of the chip in his pocket nor the death on his bones.
No, it was catching a glimpse of a flash coming from inside a car parked up the street. One he’d been too fuckin’ fired up to notice on first glance.
But he sure as shit noticed it now.
And the face that was illuminated by yet another flash of a fucking camera from inside the car.
Lauren.
He would’ve laughed if it weren’t so fucking horrible.
Two of the things he craved most within almost equal distance to him. Both of which were already under his skin. Both of which promised pain.
He just needed to choose which kind.
There was no hesitation as he pushed off the bike and strode across the street.
Six
Lauren
I wasn’t going to do anything. Even in the darkest corners of my mind, where the darkest version of myself existed, I didn’t have that hunger for vengeance in my bones. Or at least not the kind of vengeance that would get me out of the car to potentially get myself killed.
Even slightly out of my mind, I had enough self-preservation to realize that even trying on this new assertive and brave Lauren, I didn’t have it in me to face off with a drug dealer. I barely had the stomach to lift my newly purchased phone and snap the photographs of the drug deal.
But I did it.
Because I might not believe in vengeance, but I believed in justice.
And no one was doing anything about the man in the alley dealing death in small vials, preying on people in the clutches of addiction. Yeah, maybe the blame didn’t rest solely on him—addicts still had responsibility—but he was helping feed an ugly and deadly illness.
I wasn’t an investigative journalist. I was barely even a journalist. I didn’t have the hunger or the stomach to go as far as people like Lucy did. To take those risks. I was safe behind my computer, correcting her hard-hitting stories, fact-checking, sometimes doing a feel-good piece on the elementary school kids volunteering at the local retirement home.
But I wasn’t a good journalist. I wasn’t good at talking to people, pushing past their boundaries.
I was too busy trying to protect my own.
And now they were falling down. With comments from a sassy redhead. With glares from a dangerous biker. With words that wormed into those dark corners in my mind. With his scent, my skin pressed against the iron of his muscles, the vibration of his bike underneath mine.
He radiated pure strength, like he would be able to save me from a plane about to go down. But I wanted to be strong too. I wanted to be a person to stop the plane from crashing in the first place.
In order to do that, I finally had to take notice of all those flashing lights and warning signals I’d been closing my eyes to.
Hence me driving to Hope, to the spot where my brother had bought the drugs that killed him. I’d borrowed Niles’s car to do so, and he hadn’t even asked a question when I told him the story, had just raised one bushy eyebrow and given me the keys.
So there I was, taking photos. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do with them. I could take them to the police station, show them to Troy, even if Hope was outside of his jurisdiction. And if he couldn’t help, I’d write an article. Niles thought I was already, but I’d kind of only said that to get his car. Kind of.
I’d already called Lucy about it earlier.
I waited for her to finish yelling at me for not calling her the second I crashed my car.
“I couldn’t call you the second I crashed my car, since my phone kind of shattered on impact,” I replied dryly, liking hearing Lucy’s voice, even if it was yelling at me. I hadn’t noticed how much she’d meant to me until she left. Hadn’t realized that she was one of the closest things I had to a friend, one who never pried too much, who never judged, who just… was.
“Well, I didn’t want to have to find out that my f
avorite and only friend not addicted to caffeine almost died in a car accident from Lucky, of all people,” she hissed. “And that was only because he was talking to me about this ‘sexy librarian’ who almost had Gage arrested for stealing her wrecked car. And I’ve seen the town librarian, in real life and in my nightmares, and I only know of one sex kitten librarian type, and that’d be you. So you’ve been seriously holding out on me, girl. I’m hurt and offended that you decided to go biker after I left Amber. Seriously.”
I smiled at the same time my stomach dipped at yet another sassy but kind woman demanding I tell her about something I’d yet to reconcile in my own head. It should’ve scared me, made me close down tighter than ever. But it didn’t. It was like I’d been crying out for this kind of contact and I hadn’t even realized it.
Which was why, for the second time in twenty-four hours, I spilled the entire story—so far—about Gage.
I expected more yelling from Lucy. Or at the very least a string of curse words. She cursed more than even the bikers I’d come across, but that was probably because she grew up around them.
But there was nothing except a slight crackle in the silence on the other end of the line.
“Lucy?” I asked after a couple of beats.
“No one has ever struck me speechless, but you have just done so,” she said finally. “And I’m feeling like this isn’t going to be the last time you’re going to be popping some cherries. Not that Gage is a virgin.” She paused. “Wait, you’re not—”
“No, I’m not a virgin. I’m not that tragic a case,” I said, my voice a little lower.
“Honey, never in my life have I thought of you as being tragic,” she said softly. “Just because you live life quiet and without caffeinated beverages does not mean your life is not important. That I don’t admire it. Admire You. Always have, babe. Especially after what happened to David.”
My blood froze. “You know what happened to David?” I choked out. I hadn’t realized that Lucy even recognized me from high school, what with being years below her and the fact that I almost sank into the wallpaper. She and Rosie were too busy blowing things up to notice the wallpaper. “Why didn’t you say anything?”