Caught in my moment of painful remembrance, I watched as he opened her door for her and waited until she was back in the position I’d found her in. Shadow waited until the indicators blinked, signaling that she’d locked it before he came and climbed in the passenger side of the van.
“What the fuck was that about?” I snapped.
“Now you’re interested in hearing what she has to say?”
Starting the van’s ignition, I looked away in frustration, not wanting to give him the satisfaction of answering.
The silence deepened and if there was one thing I knew about Shadow it was that he could out silence anyone. Even so, this one felt odd, heavy.
“Beer?” I offered, when we pulled into the autoshop’s parking lot.
“Got shit to do.” Shadow walked away from the van, climbed on his bike and rode off into the night.
The next morning, I woke up suddenly, sensing I was being watched, and I was right. Don’t ask me how I knew, I just knew. “Fuck! You tryin’ to give me a heart attack?”
Shadow was sat in the corner of my room on the chair again. He looked way too comfy to have only just sat down, like he’d been observing me for hours.
“How long have you been there?” I let my head slump back to the pillows, hoping that my heart rate would ease up a little from the scare.
“Long enough.”
Two words.
That was all I got, and instead of finding his lack of chat and information amusing, I found it grating. “Dude, you’re in my room again. You fancy me?”
“You wish.”
“I don’t have the patience to drag it out of you. Spill.”
“Malia stayed at my place last night. You can thank me when you’ve had a shit, shower and shave.”
Before my head exploded, he’d already vanished. Had he not spoken at all I could have convinced myself that he hadn’t been there at all, but now I was pissed off and I’d not even had my morning coffee.
“What the fuck?” I bellowed at the door and launched myself from the bed before nearly taking the door off its hinges and ending up in the main hallway of rooms on the top floor of the compound. “You best come back here and fucking explain!” I shouted at his back as he sauntered away, ignoring me.
“Brother, put your junk away.”
Wolf had stuck his head around his door a couple of rooms down.
“Shadow!” I shouted before he disappeared down the stairs.
“I ain’t fucking around. Put your dick away before my old lady gets here.”
I looked at my president and boss, saw that he was indeed very serious, and by the lack of clothing on his upper body, I knew her arrival was imminent. That pair couldn’t go half a day without getting naked.
“Sorry, Prez.”
He nodded and waited for me to go back into my room before I heard his door shut.
I paced for a few seconds and sat down, then stood up again and grabbed the chair Shadow had just vacated, before hurling it at the wall.
“Fuck!”
I’d done my best to ignore Malia, yet here she was, fucking with my head all over again, only this time she’d dragged a brother of the Black Sentinels into it, too.
Malia
I was shocked when the badass biker who’d ghosted Reef in the car park offered to let me stay at his place.
I was in two minds, but in the end, I only did it to piss Reef off. When I drove out of the car park and saw what was going down at party central, I knew I’d made the right decision. In the end his offer had been a welcome one. I was bone tired and just didn’t have the mental energy to come up with a game plan seeing as Reef had blown my original one to pieces. Either way, staying with his friend just kept me that bit closer to him, even if it was for a short time.
It hurt too much to think that I still needed to find an answer to my problem. I still needed help.
I didn’t know why I expected him to hear me out, but the hope that fluttered when he knocked on my car window felt like a million days ago. When I climbed out of my car, I’d expected him to have had a change of heart and be the kind hearted Reef I remembered. How fucking stupid was I? Did I really expect him to help me when I’d turned up in his life again with no warning at all?
In the end, the hope died in a ceremonious fireball when he turned his back on me again.
Twice in one day.
Three times in a decade
And it still hurt like a bitch.
“It’s not much,” Shadow mumbled, nodding his head at the sparsely furnished house, “but it is clean.”
“This is kind of you. I’m just pleased to be out of that parking lot.”
Looking around, I saw the living room had a TV, two armchairs and an old coffee table.
“Kitchen is there.” He nodded to a corner of the room, sectioned off by a countertop with another old wooden table. “Bathroom at the end of the hallway. You’re on the right. I’m opposite.” As soon as he’d completed his albeit brief but grand tour, he wandered off.
“Do you usually bring strange women home?” I shouted at his back. He stopped, turned around and looked at me with a raised brow. “Sorry, I didn’t mean that. Shit.”
A small smile graced his face but didn’t quite reach the depths of his eyes. “Do you usually go home with strange men?”
“Touché.”
“Bed sheets are in the unit in the room. You’ll need to make your bed.” He disappeared again, and I got the impression he wasn’t big on conversation with strangers, or at all for that matter. If he needed space, I’d be happy to oblige.
I grabbed the overnight bag at my feet and headed to my room. It was as plainly furnished as the rest of the house, and as I started to make the bed, my mind kicked and thought about the predicament I’d got myself into.
I’d run out on Dean with copies of documents I was sure were incriminating.
I’d been burned by Reef. Again.
And his friend had taken pity on me and offered me a bed.
Oh… and Reef and his friends were bikers.
It was too much for my brain, but if there was one thing I was used to in my life, it was sorting shit out myself. No one had ever put me first and unless I did it, it never happened.
“I’m ordering pizza. Anything you don’t like?” came the voice of my temporary host.
“Spicy sausage.”
I waited for an acknowledgement in return and got nothing but silence. Shadow was definitely a case of less is more, but it didn’t matter. I would eat pizza, sleep and hope that a new game plan presented itself before the morning came and I hit the road again.
A little later, I heard a set of knuckles rap on my door. “Food is in.”
“Coming.”
I climbed off the bed and wrapped my mop of curls in a hair tie that always lived on my wrist like a bracelet. I looked out of the bedroom window and saw my rental parked in the drive with a beast of a motorcycle behind it. We were chalk and cheese. If this was the life that Reef led now, that could be the same for him and me, too. All the while I’d followed Shadow on his bike, I’d wondered what I was getting myself into, but something told me I could trust him. If Reef did then I would, too.
The pizza box was in the middle of the coffee table, open, with a slice missing. I grabbed for a napkin and a slice and felt him behind me before I heard him. He had a half-eaten slice in one hand and two bottles of beer gripped by the necks in the other. He slumped in the chair opposite mine and propped a black booted foot up on the edge of the chipped coffee table.
“Why do they call you Shadow?”
“Old military name,” he replied succinctly and then became silent again, completely at ease with the lack of conversation.
“Not because you’re a stalker or something then?”
He chuckled. “No, not the kind of stalker you’d be thinking about anyway.”
“Does Reef have a biker name?”
“Club name, babe,” he chuckled.
“Sorry, not
up on the lingo.”
“Wave.”
“Sorry?”
“His club name. Wave.”
They called him Wave. God, that was perfect. Even without being near the ocean, he still had that connection to it.
“Is he…” I stumbled. “You know, happy?” I took a quick bite, embarrassed.
Shadow glugged what I was fairly sure was half his beer before he answered my question with a question. “In what way?”
“In all the ways that matter.”
I was doing my very best to skirt the obvious question. I didn’t want to sit there asking a million questions about him, but I was feeling that need to fill the silences. I’d have been terrible in an interrogation. The detectives wouldn’t actually need to ask me anything, just sit there and make me feel uncomfortable and I’d sing like a canary just to fill the gaps.
“That’d be a question for him. Only he knows, but he doesn’t strike me as unhappy.”
“He never did.” My reply was maudlin, wistful with memories of the past.
“How’d you know him then?”
“School. Neighbors. One time we were the best of friends.” Now it was my turn to reach for the savior of a beer bottle, anything to put a stop to the truth telling that seemed to be free falling from my lips.
“What did you do?”
“Who says I did something?” He raised his brow again, challenging me. “Okay. I did do something. But if he hasn’t told you, I’m not going to either.”
“Your choice.”
I looked at my lap then went for it. “There were three of us, and I picked the wrong guy.” The shame from my actions of decades ago must have been evident because he didn’t probe any further. I wiped my hands on the napkin and turned my face to his, hoping to hear the right answer to the question I was going to ask next. “Just tell me he’s happy. Tell me when I drive off in the morning, he’ll be happy just carrying on like I never stepped into his life again.”
I watched as Shadow chewed his pizza, waiting with bated breath for the answer. “Sweetheart, you’re fucking deluded. You walking into the clubhouse was like opening a box with a rattler in it.” I went to interrupt him but he continued. “And shutting the lid again is going to be a whole other challenge.”
I had no comeback, so I picked up another slice and chewed just to stop me from talking.
Shadow didn’t hang around long after we’d finished the pizza. He mumbled something about being wiped and left me to it. Because I was a good houseguest, I cleaned up the pizza box and empty beer bottles. It took me ages to locate a trash bag. Every cupboard or drawer I opened was virtually empty. There wasn’t an array of dishes, just one plate, one bowl and two mugs. The cutlery drawer held one of those neat dividers but only a single fork, knife and spoon. Everything that was in here was for necessity rather than comfort. It didn’t take long for my inquisitive nature to get the better of me, and when I saw that his fridge only held milk, water, beer and cheese, I became truly puzzled by this man.
There was nothing of a personal nature in the house.
No photos, no mail left lying around, it was clean, almost sterile.
Just as I was opening yet another drawer, his voice made me jump. “Find what you were looking for?”
“Fuck! No.” Shame crept across my cheeks. “I’m sorry. You’ve been great and I’m proving to be a really shitty houseguest.”
Shadow was stood in front of me wearing just sleep shorts and nothing else. If I hadn’t decided men were the devil, I could definitely have fancied him. His physique was strong, but simple. Defined and tight.
But he was no Reef.
I’d always liked my men with a sun tan and smooth skin, buffed by the swirl of the sand coursing through the ocean. Seeing Reef again had revived all those feelings and emotions, and it still came with a heavy heart that I’d fucked things up, fucked them up again now and was never going to get the man I’d always wanted.
I couldn’t be stood here ogling his best friend. I’d already done that to him once before. The guilt from back then had taken a lot of swallowing, so much so it had never really disappeared. In all honesty, in that moment, I’d have moved heaven and earth to avoid that gutting, guilty shame again.
Shadow stood in his usual comfortable silence, watching and waiting for me to work through my inner diatribe. “Good night, Shadow, and thanks,” I muttered, feeling like a shithead for snooping when he’d been nothing but kind. He didn’t return my goodnight, but I did feel him follow me back down the hallway to the basement.
The next morning, Shadow was once again stood in silence, leaned against the kitchen counter top, drinking a mug of coffee from the one mug I’d found in my search last night. Funny thing was, I didn’t remember coming across a coffee maker, but there it was on the side bubbling away.
“Sleep okay?” he enquired.
“Yeah, thanks again.”
“Wanna cup?”
My intrigue told me to say yes, just to see where he was going to magic extra crockery from, but I didn’t. “I should probably get on the road.”
I watched as he walked to the sink, dumped the dregs of his coffee, washed the mug and placed it on the side. Well, that solved that mystery. We were sharing mugs. He then collected his leather cut that was draped over the kitchen table and shrugged his arms into it. The creak of the leather didn’t sound harsh, but soft and comforting. It looked heavy and expensive, and a complete contract against his white t -shirt. “Any chance you can hang for a bit? I’m expecting a delivery.”
I looked around at his place, wondering what could possibly be coming. There was so much furniture missing it could have been anything. “You’re gonna leave a stranger in your house?”
“After last night’s search operation?” He smirked. “I think you already know I have nothing worth taking.”
“What if your delivery is worth stealing?”
“Then have at it. Give me a couple of hours. The remote for the TV is on the floor by the side of it. Just to save you the trouble of having to hunt through my stuff for it.”
Before I could argue, he’d grabbed his bike keys and was heading out of the door. I followed his movements from the window as he climbed on his bike, got it started and then roared off up the street.
Guess I wasn’t leaving just yet then.
Wave
“Fucking calm down!”
I couldn’t calm down. I felt completely out of control, having some kind of out of body experience. I had just one thing on my mind: make someone else hurt as much as I was right now.
Wolf had heard the commotion from the common room and was the only thing stopping me from throwing my fist through Shadow’s face.
For the first time ever, I’d got the drop on him, a fact he wasn’t overly impressed with.
After he’d dropped his bombshell in my room, the fucker just sauntered off and by the time I got to him, was tucking into a bacon sandwich like he hadn’t just handed me a hand grenade. The only thing I regretted, right in that moment, was doing all of this without checking who was here. Gigi had been the one to make him his bacon sandwich, and the shock on her face at my violence told me I’d lost control and she was scared. Gears was beside her instantly, making sure she was in one piece, and somewhere in my brain I wanted to kick my own ass for probably making her remember things that hurt her.
“If I move are you gonna kill him?” our president asked Shadow, not me. He knew who the real threat would usually be in this scenario. Shadow, apart from the smallest clench of his jaw, didn’t move a muscle or reply. There was also a large smear of ketchup on his white t-shirt along with a bit of crispy bacon that had become a victim of my anger.
“What the fuck has gotten into you? Wave, there’s old ladies here.” His eyes pierced mine, demanding an answer.
“He’s fucked me over.” I raised my pointer finger and got it as close as Wolf would allow me to Shadow’s face.
“What’s going on?” he repeated.
/> The peanut gallery around had all gone completely silent, apart from Gears who was shushing a teary Gigi. I ignored all that, though, when I sensed Wolf’s temperature lower a little more because he’d been ignored.
“I won’t ask again.” Wolf’s tone was lethal, and I knew I was riding my luck, but I wanted Shadow to answer. I wanted him to say out loud, in front of his brothers, that he’d broken the most sacred of rules. He’d slept with another brother’s girl.
Or was my girl… once. I mean, fuck… no, she wasn’t.
Still there was a code of conduct and a Black Sentinels bylaw that covered this shit in order to prevent the bloodshed that I was intent on meting out.
“Gears,” Wolf muttered in a tone of voice only the most unfortunate of us would have heard. I looked at my friend, the only prospect I’d been responsible for back in the day, and braced. He hadn’t shouted for Gears’ attention, but he got it immediately. “Get your woman and Angel and take them to the shop.”
“Thinking I should stay here, Prez.”
Wolf’s head spun to a near impossible angle. “Won’t ask again. Get the old ladies out of here now.”
Wolf was still the only thing separating the two of us, and whereas my rage quota was still flowing, Shadow looked like he was bored to tears and would rather be trimming his toe nails. When the place was clear of people who didn’t need to be involved, he turned to Shadow. “You seem calm considering your brother just got the drop on you.”
Shadow shrugged. “He thinks he did. I’m just letting him live a little longer.”
“The big question I still want answered is why?”
“Prez,” I started, “got respect for you, but you don’t need to be involved in this.”
Saying it, pointing it out, was as good as a double bluff. I may as well have just told him to fuck off out of his club common room.
“Talk,” he growled.
Malia: A Black Sentinels MC Novel Page 12