Dirty SEAL (A Navy SEAL Romance) (The Maxwell Family)

by Alycia Taylor

  “Oh, Tristan! They’re beautiful!” The ladies told me. I knew that already, but politely thanked them anyways.

  “Tristan, I’m going to ask you something, and it’s okay if you don’t care to talk about it…” I was thinking, fuck! She’s going to ask about my parents or the boy band. Instead she said, “I hear you’re about five years clean and sober now. For some of our young viewers who might be struggling with addiction, maybe you could share your secret.”

  “Honestly, I don’t have a secret. I owe my sobriety to my wife Elly. She’s the one who made me realize that my life was worth more than that. Once I realized it was worth more, I wanted more. I’m a better man, a better human being than I ever was and I owe it all to her.”

  “Well, they say behind every great man is an even greater woman.”

  “That’s my Elly,” I told her, honestly, “Only she’s not behind me, ever. She’s always beside me. She’s my biggest inspiration, my biggest fan, and the love of my life all rolled into one.”

  The ladies at the table were all saying, “Awwwww….” and so was the audience.

  “I have a question,” the lady who used to be a stand-up comedian said. “I heard that you flew out to New York a few months ago to visit a sick little girl in the hospital.”

  “Yeah, her name was Becca and she was twelve.” It made my chest hurt to talk about her. I’d only met the little girl once at the urging of my agent. He was only interested in the publicity it would generate. I saw how brave she was and how beautiful she was and it really affected me. She died about a month later. It still hurt me to be reminded of that. “She loved math and animals and soccer. She was an example of the kind of person I wanted to be. She had acute lymphoma and she told me she knew she was going to die. She passed away about a month after I saw her.

  “That’s so sad,” the news anchor said.

  “Yeah, it was really sad for us as humans because it’s one less good person in the world. In twelve short years I think she had learned more about human nature and compassion that most of us learn in our lifetime, or she was just born with it. Either way, the world was lucky to have her, if only for a little while.”

  “That was a good thing you did,” one of the other ladies said, “You must be one of those good human beings yourself.”

  “I hope so, but the truth is I owe my life to the love of a twelve year old girl.”

  They looked shocked by that and one of them said, “What do you mean?”

  “Elly always tells me she was twelve when she fell in love with me. I’m glad she didn’t know me then because I wouldn’t have been deserving. But she held onto that for a lot of years and that’s why I’m alive today, I guarantee you. So, like I said, I owe my life to the love of a twelve year old.”

  I was glad after they took their break then they said it was time to perform. I joined my band up on the little stage in the corner of the set and I was back in my element. We did one of the songs from the new CD and the audience loved it. After we performed, the ladies had a few more questions for me, nothing major, and that was it. I walked off that stage realizing that this talk show thing wasn’t as bad as I’d been afraid it would be. I knew one of these days someone was going to ask me about my parents….or worse yet, interview them. For the moment, I was just thankful they didn’t.

  Chapter Fifteen

  Elly

  I sat in the green room and watched Tristan’s interview on the TV mounted up in the corner. When they asked about his sobriety, I was nervous for him. I know that he doesn’t like talking about it because he is afraid that it will inevitably lead to questions about his parents. Or, worse yet in Tristan’s eyes, someone will think of him as weak. To him, there would be no worse punishment. I could see on his face through the TV screen that he didn’t really want to answer it. I held my breath, waiting for him to speak. When he did, the tears came gushing out of my eyes so fast that I didn’t realize I was crying until they were rolling down my cheeks. He was saying things about me that he had said to me before….but not so eloquently. I wondered if he’d rehearsed it, if he’d planned on saying all of that. But, I decided that I didn’t care. What he said about a twelve year old saving him with her love, that was about me, I knew that for sure. I cried again when I heard him say that and I’m sure it won’t be the last time. Every time I thought about how proud he seemed to be of me up there when he talked about me and our little family and how he remembered that I was only twelve years old when I fell in love with him, I teared up all over again. All that time I was talking about how infatuated I was with him as a kid when we first got together, I would have sworn he was tuning me out.

  I got up and left the green room. I didn’t like being in there alone and I suddenly wanted to be closer to Tristan. I asked the security officer where I could stand backstage and he showed me. I looked out at the small stage he was on and, just like what he’d said about the babies, I couldn’t stop looking at him. I couldn’t imagine my life without him and I loved him more every day. Even on a tiny little stage in front of a small audience of people, he was killing it. My beautiful husband was going to be immortal. No one would ever be able to forget he existed because his music was going to live on forever.

  I listened to the words of the song he was singing. It was one I hadn’t heard before and it was about a “bad boy” who fell in love with a “good girl.” The chorus of the song talked about her being out of his league, the way Tristan had said it earlier about me. It’s a sweet song, but absolutely untrue where Tristan is concerned. I had problems and faults just like he did, or anyone else for that matter. The difference was that I’d had a great support system and Tristan had pretty much crap. I was glad we found each other so that I could be there for him, but I wasn’t taking credit for all the hard work he’d put in and all the growing up he’d done himself. He’d turned into a fine man, and since he’d had so many odds stacked against him, I thought he deserved extra credit.

  He finished his song and then went back to talk to the ladies. They asked him some more questions about his record label and he talked some more about the babies, then they said good-bye and let him go. I was waiting for him so that as soon as he walked off the stage, I could tell him how much I appreciate him saying such nice things about me. He didn’t give me a chance. Instead of walking up to me, he walked into me. He walked up; put his hands on my hips and his face down close to mine. After shooting me another grin he put his lips against mine. He kissed me softly with his lips first all over my mouth before I felt the sliver of his tongue slip through. My own tongue didn’t even wait for directions; she hurriedly tangled herself up with his.

  As we kissed, deeply and passionately, I lost all conscious thought of where I was or who I was with, except Tristan. He wasn’t the only one in the room…he was the only one in every room. When he broke the kiss he looked down into my eyes and I said, “Thank you for all of that out there. You know though that no matter who it had been that encouraged you to go to rehab, you did all of that work and you’ve stayed sober yourself.”

  “I know. I’ll give myself credit for that, but I meant it…I think I would have died if you let me continue down the path I was on. If I hadn’t died, I’d at least be living on the streets, maybe banging on my guitar to get people to throw money in my case. I was an alcoholic, a drug addict and an all-around lousy, miserable person. By all rights, you should have run as far away from me as you could get…but you didn’t. You stuck it out and you saved my life.”

  “I saved it for me,” I told him with a grin. Brandi was right not to argue with him, he never let anyone else win.

  “I will never be able to tell you how glad I am that you did. I love you, Elly.”

  I kissed him again and said, “I love you, too.”

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  RUINED

  THE COMPLETE MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE SERIES

  By Alycia Taylor

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright 2016. All rights reserved.

  PART ONE

  Chapter One

  Dax

  “I’m gonna hope we don’t see you again,” the property officer said and handed me the last of my things.

  All my pitiful possessions collected over the past two years in a cardboard box.

  “I’m not in any hurry to see your ugly face again, that’s for sure.”

  This officer was one of the good guys. Some of the correctional officers had something to prove and some of them came in every day and did their job. Hernandez had worked in the prison system for twenty-four years. He didn’t have a damn thing to prove and even after all of those years in service, he remembered that although we may be the dregs of society, we’re still human; at least most of us are.

  “Somebody coming or are they driving you out to the Amtrak?”

  “Nah, my mom’s coming,” I told him.

  My poor mom. I had put her through some serious crap over the years and she was still the only one who made the trip up to Pelican Bay to see me every Sunday. Most of what was in the box I held came in packages she sent. I left a lot of it for my cellmate. He was still looking at another ten years. I was coming out after two. I didn’t know if I would survive if I had to go another eight.

  Hernandez turned serious and said, “Next time you think about doing something stupid, give a thought or two to how hard this had to be on her…and she stuck by you too.”

  “I know H—Thanks! I won’t be seeing you, so take it easy.”

  I stepped into the sally port with the transportation officer, Collins. Collins didn’t like his job and he really didn’t like inmates. As far as he was concerned, paroled or not, I was still an inmate. He treated me like one as he loaded me into the van. The only difference was he wasn’t allowed to put the waist chains on me. I think that pissed him off.

  I, Collins and another parolee named Simons drove in silence to the gates. It was overcast, but that was the normal weather there. I was actually looking forward to getting back to the heat in the valley. Crescent City might be a nice place to visit, but I didn’t want to live there any longer.

  My mother had to wait at the little “friends on the outside” trailer to pick me up. They couldn’t release me inside the prison gates to her. Simons was heading to the Amtrak. He was worse off than I was, not even his mother wanted to pick him up.

  I saw her blue Saturn parked as we approached. She had an SUV, but she refused to drive it up there. She said it ate too much gas. It wasn’t like my father couldn’t afford it, but Mom was never one to spend frivolously.

  She got out when she saw us and opened the trunk. Collins stepped out of the van, opened my door, handed me my box and gave a curt nod in my mother’s direction. Then he climbed back into the CDC van and headed out to drop lonely Simons at the train.

  “Hey, Dax,” my mother said.

  She was pushing fifty, but she was still a beautiful woman. She had light blond hair and it was natural, not from a box or a bottle. Everything about my mother was natural, she wasn’t into the big fake boobs or any of that like a lot of the “old ladies” at the club were.

  “Hi, mom, how are you?” I gave her a kiss on the cheek. She always smelled good too. She had worn the same perfume since I was a baby. I didn’t even know what it was called, but whenever I smelled it, it reminded me of her.

  “I’m good now. I haven’t slept in two years, but tonight I’ll sleep like a baby.” She smiled. I believed her when she said she hadn’t been sleeping. She was a great mom and she wasted a lot of time worrying about me.

  I gave her a hug and asked, “Want me to drive?”

  She laughed and said, “Get your ass in the passenger seat.” She was a sweet lady, but when she told you to put your ass somewhere, you did it.

  My mom made small talk on the way home. She was spouting a bunch of bullshit about all the people who were going to be so happy to see me. They all knew where I was the last two years. Yet it was only my mom there to visit on Sundays and holidays. If they had missed me even a little bit, they would have at least sent a letter or a card. I just let her talk though. It helped her to believe what she was saying. It helped her to believe there was some good left in my father and the rest of the “family.” It was delusional, but I wasn’t going to be the one to take that away from her.

  “Have you heard from Olivia?” my mom asked suddenly.

  “Nope. Last time I heard from Olivia was just before I went into court for my sentencing. What I heard from her was, ‘Dax, I don’t ever want to see you again.’ I have to give her credit; so far she’s stuck to her guns.”

  “She was scared, Dax. You were both so young.”

  “I haven’t heard from her. Not a word. She didn’t even come inside for the sentencing.”

  “Did you reach out to her? Did you try? You could have written to her or called her. She really loved you, Dax. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you. I’m sure that whatever changes she’s made in her life could be…readjusted.”

  “I’m not the same kid who went in. I was a thin, fresh-faced, respectable looking little kid back then, back when she told me she didn’t want to be with a guy who was doing time. She didn’t want to be with a felon. I look like an inmate now or at the very least, a hardcore member of the MC. Whether I was guilty or not, I’m a convicted felon and that will be with me forever. She’s not even going to see the same guy she used to see when she looked at me. She’s going to see a guy who did hard time every time she looks at one of my tattoos.”

  “It’s the man inside that counts, Dax.” My mother truly believed that and she must have seen something in my dad that I couldn’t see or she would have left him decades ago.

  “Let’s change the subject,” I told her.

  It was hard for me to think about Olivia. When I first got locked up it was all I did. I drove myself crazy thinking about her, wondering what she was doing…if she was moving on with her life.

  I fell in love with her the first time I saw her. I literally bumped into her my first day in college. I knocked her down, but she dusted herself off and laughed. After I helped her up, I realized how pretty she was. She had long, thick dark hair that hung down her back and big, deep brown eyes that a guy could get lost in and I did. I got lost in them and stayed lost in them, right up to the day she told me she wasn’t going to wait for me. That she didn’t want to be with me any longer.

  “How’s dad?” I asked, desperately reaching for anything that would make me stop thinking about Olivia. The days of us being two carefree college students were long gone and we would never get them back. I learned the hard way that wishing things were different was never going to make it so.

  “Oh, well, you know your father,” she said. I had to smile. That was what she said every time I asked about him.

  Yes, unfortunately I did know my father. He was the president of his motorcycle club. I’m not talking about your Sunday afternoon guys who wear suits all week and need a little adventure type of club. I’m talking hardcore, we own and operate a bar up front but we deal in drugs and guns and anything else illegal but profitable in the back kind.

  The club members called themselves The Smokin’ Jokers and their “territory” stretched for miles along the northernmost part of Central California. I had grown up with it, around it, but once I was old enough to choose I had refused to take part in it. I had gone to college li
ke my mom urged me to my entire life. She wanted me to move on, to get out. She didn’t want me to live my life the way my father did. I was searching for a better life for myself, but the fact that I was the son of the president got in the way of that…as it had countless times before.

  “Is he at the clubhouse right now?”

  “Probably. It’s a little after four; the bar will be getting busy for happy hour at five.”

  “Will you drop me there?” Don’t ask me why I wanted to go there, why I wanted to see him. I couldn’t have explained it if I tried. It must have been some weird DNA pull or something because there was really nothing about him that I liked or respected.

  “Dax, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I was hoping you would come to the house with me and we can talk about what your plans are now. I got a catalog from the college and fall classes just started. I’m sure you could still get into one or two. I can take you there tomorrow; we can make a day of it.”

  “Mom, I do want to go back to school and we’ll talk about it. But not tonight, okay? I turned twenty-one in prison, tonight I’d like to walk in that bar and have a beer and see my dad and the guys.”

  If anyone understood the pull of that man, my mom should have. She was just afraid that my intentions weren’t entirely pure I’m sure.

  “I don’t want you to get in a fight, Dax.”

  I laughed. “I’m not going there to confront anyone. I really just want to see them. I’ve been gone for two years. Don’t you think I missed my father…who by the way, never visited me, not one time? I’m a big enough man to get past that without punching him in the face.”