Perfect Collision

by Lina Andersson

  Perfect Collision

  Lina Andersson

  Lina Andersson (2014)

  *

  Rating: *****

  Tags: Literature & Fiction, Romance

  Please Note: Though Perfect Collision occurs in the same world as Arrow of Time, this story is a standalone.

  Brian ‘Bear’ Warren, the Vice President of the Marauder Riders MC, is a typical biker. He likes beer, women, and bikes. His only soft spot is his youngest daughter, Violet.

  She’s a shy, careful, and insecure girl, who generally did her very best to be noticed as little as possible. Bear always did his best to protect her, especially from her own mom, but did an almost too good job at it. Because by the time she turns eighteen, she’s still a shy, careful, insecure, and slightly naïve girl. No one could’ve guessed she’d grown up in a biker club.

  He knew Vi’d had a crush on Mac Baxter since her early teens, but around her eighteenth birthday, Mac starts to take notice of Vi as well. As far as Bear was concerned, Mac might be good guy, a fellow member of the Marauder Riders MC, his best friend’s son, and someone Bear’d known since the day he was born—but he still didn’t like the thought of his Vi with a six years older biker. Not at all.

  At the same time, he knew he had to accept that his daughter was growing up. In the choice between Vi with Mac, or Vi with some other guy, Mac might be the better option.

  There wasn’t much Violet Warren considered easy in life. Even just talking to people was a challenge, because she tended to stutter and blush whenever she opened her mouth.

  On the other hand, she didn’t like all that many people. Her dad was one of few people she loved, simply because he understood her. Or at least tried to understand her, as opposed to her mom.

  Then there was Mac… She couldn’t really say she knew Mac, but he’d been around her entire life, since he was the son of the club’s President. She liked him. He was the one who suggested she could become a tattoo artist, an idea she loved, since drawing was one of few things she considered herself good at. Her dad helped her to get a spot as an apprentice at Wicked Ink. That’s when things started to look up, and she owed it to Mac. She wasn’t sure how to thank him properly until he asked her to do a tattoo on him. It sort of went downhill from there.

  Marcus ‘Mac’ Baxter couldn’t really say he knew Vi. She was just the tiny, shy girl who’d always had a sketchbook in her lap. He knew she’d been crushing on him when she was a kid, but he’d never thought much about it. She was simply one of the younger club kids, and not one of those you took notice of.

  When he decided to become a Marauder, he left Greenville, Arizona, to join the Emporia, Kansas charter instead. He wanted to make a name for himself and not just be ‘Brick’s son.’ A few years later he transferred back, and realized Vi had grown up while he was away.

  But you didn’t take advantage of a girl who’d been crushing on you for years, a girl who was the daughter of a fellow member. You just didn’t.

  And you definitely didn’t kiss her. That was insane… But that’s what he did.

  Perfect

  Collision

  Marauders: Book Two

  -o0o—

  by Lina Andersson

  FREAK CIRCLE PRESS

  Perfect Collision © Lina Andersson 2014

  All Rights Reserved

  Lina Andersson has asserted her right to be identified as the author of this book under the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are a product of the authors imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales are entirely coincidental.

  Cover art & Design by Kalle Andersson

  Dedication

  To Bastian

  -o0o—

  Acknowledgments

  I’ve heard it said more than once that writing is a lonely experience. I’ve found it to be quite the opposite. Some of my closest friends, the ones who probably know me best, are people I’ve found through writing. To the ladies of the Freak Circle, thank you for always being there, for accepting me the way I am, and believing in me.

  I also owe a lot of people a big thank you for all their help with this book.

  Danielle Pamaka, Jennifer Leighton, and Jessica Ahlynne Satchwell for all your help, time, and patience.

  Tamas, for patiently answering all my questions and giving me beautiful ink.

  And finally, to a huge thank you to Susan Fanetti. Once again, I owe this to you, and I couldn’t have done it without you.

  Perfect Collision – A perfectly inelastic collision, a plastic collision, occurs when a maximum amount of kinetic energy is lost in the collision, and the colliding particles stick together. Without friction, the momentum of the bodies is conserved and they move forward together.

  -o0o—

  6.

  I walk along half-musing, when something nearly trips me,

  And hold my leg and nips me,

  And pulls my coat before I can flee;

  There’s a fumbling at my pocket as if there were a crab there,

  I snatch at it and sure enough a girlie’s hand I grab there,

  The smallest and prettiest that could be.

  “Marauders” - Gustaf Fröding

  PROLOGUE ONE:

  14 years, 5 months

  -o0o—

  I WAS STARTING TO suspect I would never fully forgive my parents for giving me the name Violet.

  Violet Warren.

  Seriously, who did that to their kid? It sounded like the name of an old hag. An old hag with a pet lizard, because I was pretty damn sure there was some type of lizard called Warren—or something close to that.

  My big sister’s name was Lisa; she looked a lot like our mom. Which meant she was beautiful. She had long blonde hair, nice full lips, almost black eyes, and big boobs. She was smart, always did well in school, friendly, and in general just fucking perfect. She’d moved to California to become a doctor. That’s how smart she was. And Lisa was a good name. It sounded… sexy and cute. Kind of like she was.

  My hair was mouse-colored. I had no boobs, a small mouth, a blunt, chubby nose, and my eyes were sort of beer-colored. I hated school, wasn’t doing well in anything except art, and was in no way perfect.

  My mom kept saying things would change, that I’d open up, get friends, and boobs. I doubted any of that would happen. Lisa’s were a lot bigger when she was fourteen, and I wasn’t sure I wanted friends. It would be cool to have people that, like, got me, but I didn’t think there was anyone in school that could. I mean, if I didn’t understand them, it was hard to imagine them understanding me.

  The fact that my dad, Brian Warren—better known as Bear, was the VP in the local MC didn’t help me get friends at school. It did, however, mean I had club kid friends. Club kids stuck together, like family. I didn’t exactly talk to them. I was sort of the odd cousin in the family, but at least they didn’t bother me.

  Not that other kids bothered me that often, besides, like… existing. They mostly didn’t notice me, and I was fine with that. I didn’t want to be noticed.

  I was sort of the odd cousin when it came to Mom as well. She didn’t get me, and we didn’t get along at all. She always said I’d been daddy’s girl since the day I was born and that he’d let me get away with anything. ‘You’d let the girl get away with murder,’ was what she usually said. He probably would, but he wouldn’t let me get away with being lazy, which is what she thought.

  Dad understood me, what I found hard in school, how I had to close my eyes to be able to focus on the teacher, things like that. He knew why I didn’t like people, or being around people, or just generally talking to them. I always blushed and stuttered like
a moron when people tried to talk to me.

  According to a shrink, I displayed ‘several traits indicating that I was socially awkward.’ That’s the exact quote. He said it just like that, with those words, and he seemed all concerned I’d be upset about it. But really—it wasn’t like I hadn’t noticed.

  At the moment, I was leaning over the edge of the bathtub, rinsing my hair. The water was clear and had been for a while, so I turned it off and straighten my back. It hurt a bit; I’d been standing hunched over for quite some time. I walked over to look in the mirror above the sink, and when I saw my reflection, the word ‘fuck’ came to mind. That was pretty much what went through my head over and over again.

  Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck!

  It had seemed like a pretty cool idea, but when I saw the result it just seemed idiotic.

  When my phone rang, I picked it up from the small shelf underneath the mirror and answered it, still staring at my own reflection in horror.

  “Hello.”

  “Violet, honey. We just came back from the airport with Lisa, but she wanted to meet everyone, so we decided to have lunch at the clubhouse.”

  Mom. Hearing Mom’s voice did not calm me down. Not that it ever did, but this time it was a little worse than usual. Going to the clubhouse today had not been the plan at all. I wasn’t sure I’d really had a plan, but showing up at the clubhouse looking like this would sure as shit not have been a part of any plan I might have come up with. Not in front of Lisa.

  And Mac. He was there as well. I hadn’t seen him much since he left for Kansas, but I knew he was here for Easter. Now I’d have to walk into the clubhouse, looking like this, being yelled at by Mom, while standing next to Lisa.

  “Uh… okay… I need to dry my hair. I’ll be there soon.”

  “I can come and pick you up. Or Dad, that way you’ll get a ride with him.”

  “No!” I almost yelled. “No, that’s okay. I’ll take my bicycle, that’s fine.”

  I knew I was just trying to avoid something that would eventually happen anyway, but I needed to get used to the thought of how much shit I’d get for this.

  “Okay, honey. I’ll see you soon.”

  “Yeah…”

  I hung up the phone, shoving it into the back pocket of my cut-offs while still staring into the mirror, and it hit me.

  I was dead.

  Mom was going to kill me. Maybe even Dad. Or they might just give me to the big, shaved, tattooed, and extremely intimidating Bull and have him do it.

  I dried my hair and tried to straighten it, but that was futile. It didn’t matter what I did, within ten minutes it would have curls again. While looking at my already curly hair a while later, I sighed.

  Yup. I was so dead.

  That’s when I realized I should’ve accepted Mom’s offer to get a ride from Dad, because now I was gonna have to face Mom’s gut reaction at the clubhouse in front of everyone. Which was what I’d been worried about to begin with. It didn’t matter what those doctors had said; I was not smart.

  Dead woman walking, I thought to myself while dressing and throwing my bag over my shoulder. Or, more like dead girl walking.

  Biking, I corrected myself as I sat up on my bicycle and started towards the clubhouse.

  Dead girl biking.

  -o0o—

  Bear relaxed on the couch, and smiled as he listened to Lisa blabbing to Ella. She seemed happy and it was nice to see her. He didn’t think she came home often enough. He missed his oldest daughter and her sunshine mood.

  “Holy mother of god! What the fuck have you done?” his wife suddenly yelled, and when he looked towards the door he saw why.

  Vi, their youngest daughter, was standing just inside the door with her eyes closed. Her long, thick, beautiful hair was… violet. As in purple. He swallowed a laugh when he realized his wife was running towards Vi, and he got up to stop her from killing the kid right then and there.

  Vi and Ella had a difficult relationship, to put it mildly. They argued constantly. Or more, Ella yelled at Vi about everything, and Vi quietly glared at her mom as her only response. Lisa’d been surprisingly easy as a teenager; she liked school, had a lot of friends, and was a generally happy kid.

  Vi, on the other hand, struggled in school—struggled with everything. They’d done some tests a few years back, and she had ADD. According to the docs she was smart, really fucking smart; she just couldn’t focus long enough to use it. To top it all off she had dyslexia.

  The ADD, the kind she had which was without the hyperactivity, meant she never acted out. In fact, she had an extremely even mood. It was sometimes almost unsettling. He’d been worried she was depressed, but according to the shrink she wasn’t. She was just calm.

  Vi was his girl, and he understood her. Even if there hadn’t been any tests or diagnoses for it when he was a kid, he knew she’d inherited her shit from him.

  To save Vi the embarrassment of having the fight in public, something he knew would mortify her, he headed over to his still screaming wife and took Vi’s arm as he looked at Ella.

  “Go to Lisa, babe. I’ll handle this.”

  “Do you see what she’s done?!”

  “It’s hard to miss. Go to Lisa,” he repeated and started walking Vi towards the door. “You’re coming with me, Katze.”

  He didn’t wait to hear his wife’s reply, but simply pulled Vi with him outside, walked her over to his bike, and gave her the helmet he always had with him.

  “Dad, I’m wearing shorts.”

  “We’re not going far, honey. You know that.” That’s when he noticed she looked scared, and he pulled her in for a hug and kissed the top of her now violet head. “I’m not angry.”

  “You’re not?”

  He leaned back and picked up one of her curls. “Nah, kinda like it.”

  She rewarded him with one of those far too rare smiles, and he hugged her again.

  He took her to their spot. It was along the road, nothing special, just a big tree that gave them some shade. They sat down underneath it, and then he lit a smoke and looked at his daughter.

  She was so much like him, so much it sometimes made it pretty fucking obvious Lisa wasn’t his biological kid. Lisa was his kid too, make no mistake. He’d been her father since she was three years old, and he loved her just like he loved the girl sitting next to him. But it was painful for him to see what Vi was going through. He understood it all too well, since he’d gone through the same thing when he grew up. The same feeling of being an outsider, of not belonging, and not understanding or being understood by other people.

  He thought Ella treated Vi badly at times, but when he brought it up she argued he was more lenient with Vi since she was his ‘real kid.’ He fucking hated when she used that phrase—real kid. That wasn’t it, but he couldn’t figure out why she insisted on comparing Vi to Lisa instead of seeing Vi for the girl she was. He’d tried to ask, but they always ended up discussing him instead, and how he treated them differently. Of course he did! They were different people! Ella was expecting Vi to be something she wasn’t and it pissed him off. More importantly, it made Vi feel bad about herself. Or rather, worse about herself.

  “Drawn anything?” he asked.

  She nodded, searched through her bag, and handed him her black sketchbook.

  Vi loved to draw. When they did those tests, it turned out her sense of pictures was uncanny. Her capability of visualizing, seeing patterns, and remembering what she’d seen was way off the charts. They’d shown her pictures and asked her what was missing in them. She always noticed instantly.

  In a picture full of stuff, she immediately saw the dog missing a leg, the board missing in a fence, or the stairs that were shaped wrong. They’d given her a picture to copy, and then asked her to draw it again thirty minutes later without having the original in front of her, and she did it. Obviously not to perfection, but pretty damn close. She saw patterns where he saw blur. She could see a picture, imagine it in 3D, and draw it from another
angle as easy as breathing.

  That wasn’t from him, and he had no fucking idea where she got it from. Ella said it was the same with him and engines, that he just knew how they worked, and he guessed she had a point.

  He opened Vi’s sketchbook and flipped past the pictures he’d already seen. He knew this was almost like a journal to her, and no one else could look in it. She had other pictures she showed if someone asked, which rarely happened, but never these. It was just pencil or charcoal and no colors; she wasn’t much for colors.

  The first new drawing was a view of the compound. Bikes and people scattered around. She’d been there waiting for him a few days back; this could’ve been drawn then, and he remembered her sitting at a table sketching. He hadn’t reacted at the time since she always did that.

  The next was Mel sitting by her desk, talking on the phone, with Brick standing next to her. Bear’d seen Vi’s drawings for years, but he was still impressed with how it was always so obvious who the people in them were even if it was just simple sketches like this. She somehow managed to catch a person’s stance or just a few things that immediately made it clear who it was. Mel with her curves, leaning her elbow on the table, and playing with her hair like she always did. Brick with his ponytail and big mustache, holding a hand on the backrest of Mel’s chair leaning over her. It almost looked as if he was peeking down Mel’s cleavage, and knowing Brick, he’d probably been doing just that.

  The last drawing was Edie lying on the couch at her and Dawg’s place. Vi had spent the night there just a few days earlier when she and Ella’d had a bad fight. Edie was Vi’s escape, a place where she could go and relax for a while.

  “Did you have a girls’ night?” he asked, pointing at the picture.

  “Yeah. Dawg came later, but he brought pink cotton candy, so we said it was okay.”

  He could’ve told her how fucking amazing the pictures were, but she didn’t like to hear it, and she already knew he thought so. Instead, he pulled her closer and kissed her cheek, then held up a strand of her hair.

  “Wanna tell me what the thought was with this?”