Joyride

by DD Prince

  A minute or two later, Shelly went out there with them, lighting up.

  Rider got off the phone and was talking to her, his arms folded across his chest. She was waving her right (working) arm while smoking. Her left arm was now in a sling.

  I sat there, sort of frozen, watching her rant at him while he stared at her angrily. I didn’t know what I was missing, but he looked skeptical. Like he didn’t believe whatever she was saying. And he wasn’t hiding it. He pointed toward the door and turned his back on her and was dialing a number on his phone. She took another few hauls and then threw her cigarette on the ground and crushed this one with her high-heeled black leather boot and waltzed back in.

  She sat down in a chair across from me.

  There were only two other people in the large waiting room and one was near us, the other was way on the other end of the room.

  “They call my name?” she asked me.

  “Not yet,” I answered.

  She made a disgruntled sound.

  “Need somethin’ for the pain. Assholes makin’ me wait.”

  “Do you want something from the vending machine?” I asked. “I have a bunch of change.”

  She shook her head, annoyed, and didn’t look at me. She was looking out the window at Rider talking with the other two bikers.

  “You think you know him? Think he’s the best thing since sliced bread?” She still had her eyes aimed out the window, but she was obviously talking to me.

  “We’ve only been dating a little bit so we’re still getting to know one another,” I said.

  “He’s got a taste for wild. A taste for rough.” Her eyes moved to me and traveled the length of me. “Don’t look like a girl who likes a rough life.”

  I had jeans and a nice top on, a pair of heeled ankle boots. My hair was a bit disheveled since we’d rushed, and I’d only slapped on a bit of mascara and eyeliner in the car on the way to Shelly’s from the cabin, but I’d had a good hair day the day before and it didn’t totally look like bedhead. I didn’t look as rough as the day she met me, but I certainly didn’t embody “Uptown Girl” right now, either.

  “You like gettin’ your rocks off with bad boys? You like bikers?”

  I shrugged. “Never dated a biker before Rider.”

  She laughed. Laughed like it was hilarious and shook her head at me with a snide sympathetic look.

  “You’re in for a rude awakening. These men like to share women. Like breakin’ the law. Expect their pieces to overlook a lotta shit. Did you know this whole war thing started because of his sex drive? Him and his buds gangbanging some ho bag? Doubt you can keep up with him, honey.”

  I gave her a tight smile. “He told me about it, yes. An unfortunate misunderstanding.” I wanted to defend him. I didn’t want to argue with her, though.

  Her eyes narrowed. “You don’t believe me. You’ll see. If you stick around long enough, you’ll see. He tell you about his kid at least?”

  I startled.

  Her eyes brightened. She snickered. “Didn’t think so.”

  His kid? His kid?

  “He tell ya that Lick went to jail for him?”

  “He did, actually.” I replied, shakily. My heart was now racing, and I was in a cold sweat.

  “Oh. He told you he beat that security guard with a steel pipe? Hurt him real bad. Guy had brain damage. Lick went down for that. Did five years. Five.”

  Rider was doing a bro shake with the two guys and then they wandered off in the other direction. Rider had his phone to his ear again.

  “Ride’s ex, Melanie, keeps sniffin’ around with the baby, tryin ta get Ride to buy diapers, but he kept tellin’ her to fuck off. He ain’t about doin’ a test to prove or disprove whether that boy’s his baby. Looks just like him. Spittin’ image. She was over yesterday, lookin’ for him. Askin’ where she could have him served with papers. Asking me for diaper money. My ex cut me off, so I don’t even got the money to buy my grandbaby diapers. Ride’s all about fuckin’, fightin’, and ridin’. He ain’t about consequences of his actions, that’s for damn sure. A high-class rich bitch like you won’t put up with that shit for long. No one can tame that boy so don’t think it’ll be you. He might be enjoyin’ some designer pussy right now, but it won’t last for long. Don’t let yer heart get involved, Jennifer. Enjoy the dick, but keep yer heart outta it.”

  I was staring at him, talking on that phone, pacing. He ended the call and then started heading for the door. I didn’t bother to correct her on my name.

  She was sitting, watching me, a smug smirk on her face.

  I swallowed and blew out a breath.

  A moment later, he was coming toward me, a muscle still ticking at the hinge of his jaw. He sat down beside me and threw his arm around me and pulled me close and then kissed my temple. I was stiff. A little bit dumbfounded.

  “Michelle Valentine,” a nurse called out from behind a half-opened door at the other end.

  She got to her feet.

  I got up, too.

  “Be there in a minute, Mom.” Rider tagged my hand and stopped me from advancing.

  “You don’t need to come in with me. Neither of ya.” Shelly informed us. “You watch my purse, though?”

  I nodded woodenly, and Rider reached for it and put it on the empty chair beside him.

  She went in the direction of the nurse.

  I sat.

  “She’s full of shit. Mantis wasn’t at the house last night. I don’t know what the fuck she’s playing at. Don’t know who beat her up or why she’s trying to escalate things with the Jackals like this.”

  I rocked back, confused.

  “Sorry we’re stuck here right now, babe. Gotta stay and see what’s what. We’ll get her home and then drop you at the compound. Then I’ll head back to the cabin, grab our stuff myself and be back to the clubhouse as soon as I can. Gotta get this shit figured out.”

  I opened my mouth, about to reply, when his cell started ringing. He glanced at the screen and I saw it had Spencer’s name on it.

  “Be back.” He headed toward the exit.

  I sat there, reeling. Numb. Dizzy. Emotion making my chest hurt.

  A kid. A little baby boy the spitting image of him. An ex. So much for never having been in a serious relationship. Had he lied to me? If so, what other lies had he told me?

  ***

  I spent the next hour in that waiting room and I’d spent it mute and mostly alone, while Rider was in and out on phone calls, talking to his mother in one of the exam rooms.

  He was striding toward me, looking tweaked.

  “Let’s get you dropped off. She’s gonna be another hour at least. She’s getting a cast on her arm. Just saw a Jackal ride by so don’t like how exposed we are here, especially you. I’ll drop you at the compound, come back, take her to the house, then I’ll run back to the cabin and get our stuff. Here. Let’s drop her bag off to her.” I passed him the purse, then he grabbed my hand and I followed him in through to the examination rooms. He let me go, went behind a curtain and handed the bag off, then grabbed my hand and we left.

  When we were inside the SUV and heading out of the parking lot, he reached across to grab my hand. I pulled it away.

  “What?” he looked at me, confused. I glared at him. He reared his head back in surprise.

  We were at a red light.

  “Who’s Melanie?” I whispered, staring into the intersection, my chin quivering.

  His head jerked in surprise and he stared at me, letting my words register. He shook his head. “That fuckin’ bitch,” he muttered. “Her scam is backfiring so she’s punishing me by sayin’ shit to you.”

  “Huh?” I looked at him.

  “Melanie’s nobody. My mother’s really fuckin’ spankin’ me this time, ain’t she?”

  “She said Melanie was there yesterday. Trying to get money for diapers for the baby boy that looks exactly like you. Spitting image, if I remember her words.”

  Rider’s eyes shut tight and he shook
his head.

  The light turned green and we moved forward.

  “You have a son?” As soon as I said it, my heart started to hurt harder.

  “He’s not mine.”

  “She says he’s the spitting image of you.” I swallowed down what felt like a ball of broken glass.

  “He’s not. He looks like Mel. She’s full of shit.”

  “Did you do a test?”

  “I don’t need to. I know he isn’t my kid.”

  We were quiet. I was aching. He looked like he was seething. He was driving fast. Sort of angrily, recklessly.

  “She’s such a fucking bitch. Jealous. I’m the last of the family, boys anyway, payin’ much mind to her and now she sees you as a threat, so she decided to poison you so that you drop my ass and I’ve got more time for her. Bitch is venomous, Jenna. Don’t take all this shit in.”

  I said nothing. I stared out the window.

  “Jenna?”

  I shook my head.

  “Fuck,” he grumbled.

  We rode in silence the rest of the way.

  He walked me to our room and when he shut the door, I folded my arms across my chest.

  “You never had sex with that baby’s mother?” I asked.

  He grimaced.

  “Did or didn’t you sleep with that baby’s mother around nine months before he was born?”

  “Jenna… It’s not my kid. Just trust me on that.”

  “Did you fuck his mother?” I got louder.

  “It’s complicated.” His phone made a noise. He glanced at the screen and then his face went harder. He shoved the phone into his front jeans pocket.

  “It’s comp---what the fuck? Did you or didn’t you fuck her?” I shoved him. He was grinding his teeth.

  “It’s not my kid. I don’t need to do a test.”

  “If you fucked her… What? Can’t you remember?” I was right in his face.

  “I fucked her up the ass, Jenna. That’s it. Last I heard, a girl can’t get knocked up that way.”

  My mouth contorted with disgust. I stepped back.

  “She’s got mental problems. She’d been stalking both me and Lick for months before I moved. That baby is six months old already. She was hasslin’ us when she was pregnant, too.”

  “Your mother called her your ex.”

  “She wasn’t. We hooked up. Once. My mother doesn’t know dick about my love life. Never has.”

  “You never fucked her the regular way?”

  “Never. The baby is possibly Lick’s. Though it could be anyone’s.”

  “Wh-what?”

  “Yeah. We had a threesome with her. He was in front, I was in back. We were all on E, but she was on other shit on top of it. She was fucked up. We were both gloved and she swears we weren’t and says it was the other way around, that I was in front. Now knowin’ Lick’s dead and she can’t get nothing out of him, she’s probably gonna lay it on thicker. Try to turn the heat up and make it my problem.”

  “Oh my God.”

  “I know. It’s fucked,” he grumbled. “Can’t believe my mother told you about that shit.”

  “You’re the one that’s fucked!” I accused.

  “What?”

  “So many things. First. This problem is a baby. It’s a little boy. A person.”

  He gritted his teeth.

  “Second, an Ecstasy-fueled threesome?”

  He looked at me and rolled his eyes. Like I was ridiculous. How was I being ridiculous?

  No. Fuck this.

  Fuck.

  This.

  “I can’t. I can’t do this shit.” I had handfuls of my hair in both hands. I was shaking my head.

  No. No more of his.

  “What shit?”

  “You have threesomes and gang bangs and rough sex and roll your eyes when I find it disturbing. You carry a gun like it’s no biggie. I’m just … I’m me. I like nice sheets. I like having sex indoors, in a bed, like… 95 % of the time. I don’t think we’re gonna work.”

  “Jenna.”

  “No. It’s better to stop now,” I said.

  “You fuckin’ with me?” he shouted.

  Sadly, I wasn’t. I was not kidding. I was scared out of my mind that if I got in any deeper with him that I would not be able to recover when he walked out on me, when he cheated, or when he gave up trying because I wasn’t truly his type. This was all evidence that it was inevitable. I had to get off his roller coaster. Like now.

  “No.” I shook my head.

  “This is bullshit.”

  “I’m Jenna, the good time girl. Not the crying miserable scared girl. I don’t like what feeling things for you have turned me into! This early on, even. This isn’t me! Unsure of myself. Letting you plow over my walls and decide everything. I’m not good at this. I can’t do this. I won’t.”

  “We’ve just gotta ride out this storm, Jenna. The rainbow’s comin’.”

  “It’s seeming like it’s gonna be a never-ending storm, Rider. Golf ball-sized hail is just pelting me over and over and…I’m done. I have to be.” I wrapped my arms around myself.

  “I can’t fuckin’ do this now. The brothers are pollutin’ the street waiting for me. We need to go and take her back home and then ---”

  “Then go.” I shrugged.

  “I’ll call you later.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “We’re not done,” he informed me.

  I held my lips tight.

  “We’ve barely gotten started. We’re not done.”

  “You’d better go. Stop polluting the earth and all.”

  He grabbed me and pulled me to him and took my face into his hands.

  “Let me go.” This was killing me. My hands went to his wrists and I tried to pull his hands away. He didn’t let me, yet still managed to hold my face tenderly. His eyes. His proximity. The way he was holding me. This was killing me slowly.

  “Not happening.” He kissed me. A bruising, punishing kiss that wasn’t gentle, though his hands still kind of were. “You’re mine.”

  “Yeah, well you’re not mine,” I returned, bitterly. Pain twisting something in my chest up tight.

  “I am,” he insisted.

  I shook my head and tore my eyes away from his. “Go.”

  “Don’t do this.”

  “Rider, please.”

  “Jenna.”

  “Go.”

  “I’ll be back soon, baby.” He caressed my cheeks with his thumbs.

  “Don’t.”

  “You’re just scared. I’m in this. For the long haul, Jenna. I’m not giving up on you. Fuckin’ forget the bullshit about before we met. I don’t want that life, don’t need it. Been there, done that, and I want and need you. You.”

  Ouch.

  I think my face betrayed my emotions. He kissed my lips, my forehead, and then he gave me a look. A look of depth, of promise, of warning all at the same time. And then he was gone.

  And I was gutted.

  ***

  Two Days Later

  He wasn’t just gone. He was gone, gone. It’d been two days. Two long and excruciating days. He hadn’t shown up. He’d left me at the clubhouse and sent not a text, not a single word. Forty-eight hours to marinate and stew in my pain.

  A few hours after he’d left, a knock on the door brought my bags via Bronto, so I knew he’d already taken his mother home, made it to the cabin, came back, and then what?

  And now, out of nowhere, forty-eight hours later, he was approaching me in the TV room. Looking tired, worn out, wearing jeans and his leather jacket.

  My eyes met his and I immediately looked back to the television.

  “Joelle, give us a minute?”

  Jojo got up and left the room. I’d been sitting, cross-legged on a recliner. We were watching a Tiny Houses marathon.

  Jojo was in slightly better spirits today. She knew her mom had been beat up and was all riled up about it, but not in a ‘Who hurt my mom?’ way, more of a “What the fuck is she doi
ng now?’ way.

  Good that Jojo was in slightly better spirits, but I wasn’t. I’d been faking it, though. I didn’t want to stress her out. I didn’t want to add to her mourning process by telling her that I wasn’t going to be her future sister-in-law, that I wasn’t joining the Dominion Sisterhood. I was biding my time until this crap was over and then I was going to see whether my parents had sold my salon or not. If they had, I’d leave town. To where? No idea yet, and I couldn’t think that far ahead. All I knew was that inside, I was destroyed.

  I’d given up on the possibility of any sort of ‘us’. There was no Jenna and Rider. There wouldn’t be. It was bad enough what his mother had said to me. Okay, maybe he wasn’t that baby’s dad. Maybe Melanie was just a hook-up. And he’d already told me he fucked up and felt all sorts of guilt about Lick doing time when it should’ve been him. And he was a stupid teenager. Teenagers fuck up.

  It wasn’t just what Shelly had said. It was adding all of it together, all of it, the gang bang, the attitude at the beginning, the telling me I was bad in bed, the games he tried to make me play at the cabin because… would I have to change who I was to fit him and his sexual appetite? And to top it all off, knowing what I’d said to him after the hospital and then vanishing for two whole nights and not even texting me once. Not once. I hadn’t seen him in 48 hours.

  To me, those actions spoke louder and clearer than any words would’ve. I’d always ended things at the first sign of alpha-hole-ism and I’d let things go on way longer than a sane me would’ve. Way longer.

  And now here he was, squatting in front of me and putting his warm strong hands on either side of my face. He looked deep, impossibly deep, straight into my eyes with those green-blue eyes of his.

  And my heart seized. I was gonna drop dead from a broken heart right here. Dead. Gone.

  “How you doin’?”

  I blinked. I blinked again. My lips parted in surprise. No. in shock.

  Was he really saying this to me? After a two-day disappearance right after I told him we were over?