“You know it, kid,” she answered without looking up.
“And could you, like, promise to not tell Dad. Or, well—anyone, but especially not anyone in the club.”
“You know I shut up about stuff, honey.”
“Yesterday, Mac kissed me and…” My hands went down to the bottom of my cut-offs, and I played with the loose threads to not have to look at her while I told her. “I kind of froze and…”
“Froze?”
“He was…” I wasn’t sure what to say, and all of a sudden I felt the tears in my eyes and the familiar lump in my throat. “I’m such a fucking baby,” I mumbled, and tears started to roll down my cheeks.
Trixie was there immediately, hugging me. “Come on, kiddo, tell me everything.”
So, I told her all of it. How he said I was beautiful, and kissed me, how good it felt, and the embarrassing fucking moment when I panicked, and what he’d said.
“Oh, baby,” Trixie mumbled against my hair. “That’s not what he said. He didn’t say you were childish. He said you were young, that he was taking advantage of you, and that it was wrong of him.”
“It didn’t feel like he was taking advantage of me. I liked it.” I wasn’t sure if I should admit the next thing, but it seemed best. “I’d never kissed anyone before.”
“Honey, even if it felt good it can still mean he took advantage of you.” Trixie leaned back to look at me, smiled, and tucked a loose strand of hair behind my ear. “I’m not sure what to say. He’s older than you, quite a lot older, and… I’d guess a lot more experienced than you. You didn’t do anything wrong, at all, this is all on him, and he seems to know that. Which, despite what he did, makes him a pretty decent guy.”
“He really is. I don’t think he’d hurt me on purpose.”
She studied me. “Shit—you have a crush on him, don’t you? Since before the kiss?”
It took me a while, and then I nodded. I might as well admit it, and if I was going to admit it to anyone, Trix was the best option.
“He said I was beautiful.” I hadn’t gotten over that part, and I didn’t want to think he said it just to make me feel better.
“Of course he did. You are beautiful, kid. Wish I was that beautiful.”
I stared at her. “You are beautiful! And you’re cool, and I bet you never totally panicked just ‘cause someone…”
“Kidding me?” she laughed. “Those hard-ons can still take me by surprise. But, honey, he’s a lot older and you’re… It’s dangerous, simply since you could push yourself into doing things you’re not ready for.”
“It all felt good. And now when I think about it, the dick-thing kind of felt good too. I think I was mostly surprised.”
“Okay, but promise me you’ll be careful. I don’t want to see you get hurt.”
“It doesn’t matter,” I mumbled. “It’s never gonna happen. It was just a pity kiss or something. He thinks I’m a kid and was trying to make me feel better. Which I guess was kinda nice of him.”
“Just be careful, and talk to me about this. I won’t tell anyone, you know that.”
“Okay. Thank you, Trixie. I don’t really have… anyone to talk to about this.”
“There for you, JB.” She kissed my cheek. “And don’t ever let anyone do something to you that you don’t want to. You hear me? It’s your body, your choice, and no one else’s.”
“Okay. I’ll remember that.” I looked at her. “What if he thought I was a terrible kisser?”
“That boner is an indication he liked it.”
Maybe Trixie was right, maybe he did like it. It would be nice if he didn’t think I was horrible. He’d moaned, that should mean something. I still felt pretty embarrassed, though.
My tit was getting really cold and the bra wet, so I removed the ice pack.
CHAPTER FOUR:
I’m Gonna Put That In My Rub Scrub
-o0o—
THEY WERE MID POST-CHURCH party, and Bear was getting slightly drunk. He was still considering going home after the party, though. The past month, Vi had been acting strange, really introverted. Or rather, more introverted than usual. She hadn’t even been to the clubhouse, and she usually came by at least twice a week. He had no idea what was going on, and he was worried.
It was almost as if she was going back to her old self. The girl she’d been before Wicked Ink. But in other ways it was worse than that, because back then she talked to him about what worried or upset her.
She wasn’t now. She wasn’t saying jack shit.
He’d tried everything but shaking her to find out what the fuck was going on. She’d been his girl since the day she was born, and she’d never hid shit from him.
He hadn’t been with Ella for long when she told him she was pregnant, but he’d been thrilled. The first time he held that tiny, screaming, and slightly bloody girl in his arms, he thought his fucking heart would burst out of his ribcage—she was so perfect.
She’d been calm already as a baby and generally happy. It wasn’t until school started they’d realized there might be something wrong with that calmness. Or ‘they’—everyone but Ella, because Ella refused to admit there might be something wrong with Vi.
By then, their marriage was going down a slippery slope, and the fact that they couldn’t agree on shit when it came to Vi didn’t help. It wasn’t Vi’s fault, not at all, and he’d never blamed her. He knew she felt guilty about it. Vi feeling guilty was the worst part about the entire fucking messy divorce.
He’d been crazy for Ella, spent months trying to convince her he was serious before she even let him meet Lisa, and then he was all in. It took a year before he noticed things about her that bothered him, but he still loved her, and by then she was pregnant. If it hadn’t been for the way she treated Vi, there would probably be parts of him who still loved her. She was crazy, fun, smart, and like a whirlwind. And the sex, fucking hell, the sex! He still missed it. Although the last year or so, they didn’t have sex—not once. She didn’t even care if he nailed other chicks towards the end, and that’d made him despise her even more.
But for a while there, just after Vi was born, he’d really thought he was the luckiest fucker on the planet. He’d had two perfect girls, a woman he was crazy about, and a club he’d do anything for. He’d had it all.
Brick sat down next to him, interrupting his trip down memory lane, and his thoughts about his crazy ass ex-wife.
“Where’s Vi? Haven’t seen her in a while.”
“Home. Not sure what’s going on.”
Brick sat quiet for a moment and then he took a deep breath.
“Need to talk to you about her.”
“About Vi?” He got worried. Brick’d never talked about Vi. At least not like this. “Something wrong with the ink?”
“No! Hell no! It’s great.” He nodded towards Mac. “Think he might have something of a thing for her. And just hoped you might not kill him.”
“Mac?”
“Yeah. I know she’s sort of, been a bit doe-eyed about him since… I don’t know—for years. I think he just might’ve realized she’s not a little girl anymore.”
It was at times like this he wished Vi had a good mom. Someone who could talk to her about guys. He was really, really shit with that. He’d tried a couple of times and it always ended with her being bright red, and him stuttering. She wasn’t that fucking innocent; she’d been around the club much too often for that. She knew how it worked. Her mom had been a club mama at a strip club for christssakes. But she was still so embarrassed about all of it, and she didn’t have any friends to gossip with, either. He was terrified some ass would come along and take advantage of the fact that she was inexperienced in every fucking way.
Another problem was he felt like such a fucking hypocrite when he started talking to her about respecting herself. And whenever he started up on that talk, she rolled her eyes, and he couldn’t really blame her. She was so smart, and she was growing up.
Apparently, he wasn’t the only one who had not
iced that.
He sighed. “Shit.”
“Bear, you know him. He’s a good guy. He’s not going to hurt her, you know that.”
“I know.” No fucking way would Mac do anything stupid. “Gonna keep an eye on him, though.”
“Yeah. If he fucks up, I’ll make sure he’s waiting in the ring for you. I’ll drag him up there myself.”
He knew Brick would; he wasn’t worried about that. Brick had a daughter of his own, and he understood. But at the same time—that was his baby girl, and he worried about her. He’d always worried about her, since the fucking day she was born.
“So what do you really think is going on?”
“No idea. He’s been off. In combination with Vi not coming to the clubhouse, and the glances when we were at Wicked Ink, I figured it had something to do with that. He hasn’t said anything.”
That’s when it hit Bear that Mac’d avoided him lately. He looked at the kid. If it had been any other member, he would’ve already been heading his way. But this was Brick’s kid.
Bear had met Brick when he was on the road, just a chance meeting, and they’d continued together. Within weeks, it was as if they’d known each other forever. The kind of connection you find with a person once, maybe twice, in your entire life—and that’s if you were lucky as fuck.
They’d picked up odd jobs or jumped small scams when they came their way as they continued through the country. Eventually, they’d ended up in Greenville.
The Marauder Riders hadn’t been the first club they’d hung out at, but they’d both liked it. When Brick’d met Donna, Mac and Mitch’s mom, Bear had known he either had to continue on his own or stay there with Brick. He’d decided to give it a year to see if it was a temporary lay for Brick or the real deal. During that year, the two of them decided to prospect into the club, and that was it. Bear had never thought about leaving since then.
When Brick a few years later, told Bear about his plans for the club, Bear had decided to back him. It honestly hadn’t been much to think about to him. When the shift of power eventually came, there had never been a question of which one of them should be president. Brick was the brain, the one who could reason, see the long-term plan and who had the big ideas. Bear was his support, the one he liked to reason with, and the one who could pull Brick down when his ideas were a bit too far off. Because they sometimes were.
Bear would’ve loved to have sons of his own, and Mac and Mitch had been his substitute sons. When the pink shit, periods, and the girl talk at home became too much, he’d taken Mac and Mitch out for a fishing trip.
That wasn’t the only reason he was backing off, though. If it had been Mitch he wouldn’t have been as calm. But this being Mac—in combination with Brick having the balls to bring this up with him—he was going to take it easy. For now.
“I’m keeping a close eye on him,” he said.
“If he does something, think you can talk to me before you kill him?” Brick said.
Bear laughed. “Unless he knocks her up, I’ll talk to you first.”
“If he knocks her up, I’ll hold him down while you force feed him his dick.”
“We have a deal.”
They sat in silence for a while and then Brick looked at him. “He wouldn’t hurt her.”
“Can we stop talking about my seventeen-year-old daughter and your twenty-four-year-old son?”
“She’s almost eighteen, and he just turned twenty-four. It’s six years.”
“Wow, thanks, bro, that makes me feel so much better!”
“Go get laid. You’re less of a bitch when you’ve gotten some pussy or ass.”
Bear looked around and saw Samantha, one of the strippers, standing by the jukebox, and when she noticed him looking she winked.
“Yeah, I’m gonna go get laid.”
-o0o—
As far as Mac was concerned, Mel was the best fucking cook there was. He’d missed her food when he was in Kansas. He ate at his dad’s place most days. No one minded, especially not Mel, because she loved having a full table. It wasn’t uncommon that one, or a few, of the other members were there as well. But tonight it was just the family, including Mitch.
They ate, talked, and laughed, just as usual. This was when Mac felt better than okay. It was all good—really good even. That wasn’t the case most of the time.
He hadn’t seen Vi in a month, and the others had started talking about her, and that she hadn’t been to the clubhouse in a long time. He’d overheard Wolf asking Bear about it, and Bear admitting he had no idea what was up with her.
He, of course, knew why she wasn’t at the clubhouse. She was avoiding him, and in the process she avoided the entire club. He hated that he’d fucked that up for her. He knew how much she loved being at the clubhouse, how it was a second home to her. He knew it, because it had been the same for him. And he’d taken that from her.
After dinner they hung out in the TV room, and when Eliza asked him to read to her, he agreed. And once he got into her room, he was surrounded by Vi. The walls in Eliza’s room were filled with pictures drawn or painted by Vi. They were all brilliant.
One was a beautiful redhead in a forest. She had a light green dress with golden patterns and was holding a hand on a tree while she seemed to be on her way down into a stream. She was looking at something to her right, outside of the picture.
“That’s new,” Eliza said when she came in and noticed what he was looking at.
“What story is it from?” He didn’t recognize it, and he usually did.
“One we came up with together about a princess. Her dad wants her to marry a prince, but she doesn’t want to, because she thinks love is stupid and runs away. She crosses a river, and meets this guy and they fall in love. Then she finds out it’s the prince!”
“Nice.”
“I know, I came up with it.”
He chuckled since it was a very typical Eliza comment. He read the story she’d asked for, and she fell asleep while he was reading.
Then he lay there, looking around her room at Vi’s paintings. One of them was Eliza and Vi as fairies. It looked exactly like them, and he wondered how she could paint herself and not see how beautiful she was. With a sigh, he got out of Eliza’s bed and snuck out of the room to find Mitch on the deck.
“Where’s Dad and Mel?” he asked, and Mitch rolled his eyes. He knew what that meant. “Fucking rabbits. Wanna head up to the river?”
Mitch nodded as he stood up and put out his smoke in the ashtray. “I was gonna suggest it.”
They made sure everything was locked up and the alarms turned on before they left. Their dad and Mel tended to not come back down once they’d gone to bed.
Mac enjoyed the ride out to their spot. They’d gone there often. It started when they were kids, when either their dad, Bear, or both of them took them there. Once they got older, they caught a lift with anyone who had the time and spent the night alone. The last few years, they rode. Often taking long detours.
Once the campfire was lit, they got down next to it, and Mitch handed him a joint. They lay in silence and watched the stars as they took the first drags.
Mac needed to talk to someone, and Mitch was the natural choice. There was no one he trusted more. Mitch wouldn’t tell anyone else, and he had a way of looking at things the opposite way of how Mac did. He needed that at the moment, since he was stuck in his own train of thought. He needed a different perspective.
“I kissed Vi. About a month ago, when she did my ink.”
Mitch looked at him with a raised eyebrow. “Really?”
“Yup.”
“Was wondering what crawled up your ass. Since I haven’t seen you with two black eyes, I’m guessing no one else knows.”
“Not unless she told them.”
“And she obviously didn’t tell Bear.” He laughed and shook his head. “Shit, bro. Now what?”
Mac sat up and leaned his elbows on his knees. “She’s so much younger. She’s… fuck! She’s Bea
r’s daughter and… it’s not going to happen. I don’t see how it could.”
Mitch looked at him for a while, meeting his eyes and then he smiled. “You’re a total goner.”
He rubbed his hand over his face with a sigh. He already knew that.
“Doesn’t matter. It’s not gonna happen. I can’t do that. It would fuck up the club, I’d piss everyone off, and I can’t fuck her up.”
“Jesus, Mac! What is it with you and that head? Don’t you think you’re overthinking this a little? I mean, she’ll be eighteen in… what? Just over a month? ” Mac nodded; he knew very well when Vi turned eighteen. Mitch continued. “She’s not jailbait, and she’s smart, calm, and all the shit you are, and I’m not. If it’d been me going after her, it sure as shit would piss people off, but not when it’s you. You’d treat her right, and Bear would know that, too.”
“Okay, maybe I’m overthinking a little, but you’re not thinking enough. It’s not that easy.”
“I never think enough,” he smiled. “Is this about her crushing on you?”
“Yeah. That too.”
“So you think because she’s been crushing on you, is younger, and very innocent—you’d be taking advantage of her?”
“Something like that.”
“That’s bull and you know it. You’d figure out pretty fucking fast if it’s still just a schoolgirl crush, but I don’t think it is.”
Mitch was one of those people who slid through life and got by through pure fucking luck. There wasn’t much he took seriously except the club and his family. He’d been much more sure than Mac about becoming a Marauder, too. He hadn’t hesitated for a second, and definitely didn’t see any point in doing it anywhere but home. He’d been a prospect by the time he was twenty-one and was already close to patching in. They were different in many ways, but at the same time there was no one who knew Mac better. No one he was closer to.
“Wanna tell me what happened?” Mitch asked.
“I kissed her when she inked me, then I freaked her out, and that was pretty much it.”
“Freaked her out?”
“I shoved my dick against her.”
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