I just nodded. I wanted to believe him. I had spent a year of my life with the guy and I didn’t want to think it was all because he had planned it that way, that I was part of his prize for setting up his best friend. What kind of man would that make him? What kind of fool would that make me?
I just kept thinking about the e-mail though “It’s all ready to go” the day before Dax was busted. That was a lot of coincidence for me to take in. I needed to see Dax. I needed to talk to him about what Terrence said. He would either believe it or he would talk some sense into me. Either way, I owed him that much.
Chapter Five
Dax
I had been sitting in the bar all morning listening to the old men shoot the shit. I was sleeping in the back room so I had come out for some of Cookie’s pancakes and found myself surrounded by the old timer’s coffee klatch.
I listened to them talk for a while, but all of a sudden I started to feel like I couldn’t breathe. There hadn’t been a day so far since I got out of prison that I really felt like I was free. I had begun to hate the bar and I really hated the stupid club. That was all bleeding over and I was slowly beginning to hate my life out of prison just as much as I did when I was locked up. At least when I was in prison I felt like I had something to look forward to though…getting out. However, now that I was out I just felt like I had this long, hard road of nothing and more nothing stretched out in front of me and every time I looked at my dad I saw what I was destined to be in twenty years.
“I’m gonna take off,” I told Buster who was bending my ear about something that happened in the 1800’s or whenever it was that he was young.
“Where you goin’?”
“Just gonna take a ride I think. I need some air.”
“Okay, boy, you be good.”
I smiled at the old man. I didn’t know what kind of mess he was when he was young, but he was a harmless old man and he really meant well.
“I’m always good, Buster, even when I’m bad.” Buster was still laughing as I walked out the door.
The day was overcast and every so often the dark sky would drizzle out a little rain. It smelled good. California had barely gotten any rain that year so just a drizzle was enough to excite us all. I took in a big gulp of the cool air that finally had a little moisture in it and put on my helmet and straddled my bike. I really didn’t know where I was going. I just knew it had to be out of there. I thought maybe I’d just ride up to the park and sit and sketch for a while. Just as I got ready to fire up the bike, I saw Olivia pulling into the lot. I waited for her to park and get out.
She came over to where I sat and said, “I really need to talk to you, it’s about Terrance.” This shit never goes away and my head never stops hurting.
“Okay, but I really need to get out of here. This place is killing me. Take a ride with me?”
Her eyes got wide like I had just said, “Let’s fuck.” Not that I would have objected to that either.
“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” she said.
Olivia used to love riding with me. She had grown up around bikes so she wasn’t afraid of them like some girls were. There was a spot at a little park in the foothills a few miles up the road that we used to go to all the time. Most of the time we’d go up there and sit under this tree we discovered where the view was beautiful and we’d just talk. Sometimes I’d draw. Since I was a kid, it relaxed me to turn my thoughts into colors and designs on paper. When I was in prison I learned how to turn them into tattoos. That place was a regular vocational center.
“I’m not going to attack you, Liv. I promise I’ll leave my hands and lips to myself. For old times’ sake, let’s just go for a friendly ride.”
She raised an eyebrow at me when I said friendly, but she relented. I tried to give her my helmet but she said she had one in the car. She went and got it out. It was pink with a black skull and cross bones on the front and a little black bow on the skull’s head.
She climbed on behind me and when I fired the bike up I felt her arms slip around my waist. I actually shivered and I kind of hoped she didn’t feel it. It had been so long since I had felt her so close.
I pulled out onto the road and she leaned into me. The side of her face was against my back. Her leaning into me for protection was a huge turn-on. I wanted badly to stop the bike, pull her off and take her into my arms and kiss her. God, what I wouldn’t give to feel her tongue in my mouth and her hands on my body.
I made myself shake those feelings off. I had promised to be good. But it was so fucking hard. I could see and feel her little hands gripping my shirt, holding on to me, trusting me. Thank God it was a short ride to the park because I already had a bulge in my jeans when we stopped. I let her get off and then waited for her to turn around before I jumped off and adjusted myself.
She took in a deep breath of the fresh air and said, “I haven’t been up here in a really long time.”
“Me neither,” I said with a grin. “I’ve been out of the area for a while.”
She gave me an “It’s too soon to joke about that,” kind of look, and started walking toward our tree. I watched her walk for a minute, her jeans hugging her tightly in all the right places and I had another flash of memory, back to the days when I was allowed and encouraged to put my hands where those jeans were. She started to turn around and I turned quickly toward the bike and reached into the saddle bags so she wouldn’t catch me staring at her beautiful ass. I kept my art stuff in my bags. It was the stuff the bastards had used to try and hide the drugs I got busted with that day.
When I turned back around, Olivia was sitting under the tree. There was a big piece of root that came out of the ground and stuck up about two feet. It made a nice place to sit down. We had scratched our initials into it a lifetime ago.
“You’re still drawing,” she said, more as a statement than a question. She sounded happy about it.
“Yeah, I don’t have much else to do with my shitty life these days.” Instantly I realized how pathetic what I said made me sound. I didn’t want her to think I was a wimp. “I was actually thinking about turning it into a job. I could be a tattoo artist with my felonies. People who want tats don’t give a shit.”
She laughed and said, “Yeah, if you’re good enough they don’t care who you are or where you come from. I think you’d make a great tattoo artist. Did you design all of your own?”
“Yeah,” I told her with a grin. “In another place where I had a shitty life and too much time on my hands. I haven’t talked to her about it yet, but I was hoping maybe my mom will help me rent a place and I could start my own parlor. Anything to keep myself from working for the club. My dad just keeps putting that idea out there about putting me on the payroll. I can only slap it down for so long before I start going hungry.”
“Your mom would never let you go hungry, but I know what you mean. The tattoo parlor sounds like a great idea. You’re really talented, I’d let you give me a tat,” she said, looking genuinely enthusiastic for me.
“Good, start saving your money. I’ll be open soon,” I said with a grin. I’d love to tattoo her body… Okay, I needed to change tracks. “Yeah, I think being self-employed is going to be my best bet.”
“I hate to bring up all of this again, but I talked to Terrance this morning. I hope you’re not upset. I confronted him about the e-mail. I hadn’t been planning on it. It just came out.”
I wasn’t upset with her, but I hadn’t been sure what to do with the information yet, so I was disappointed. It didn’t really matter, what was done was done.
“What did he say?”
“He denied it all at first, but I pressed him and he finally admitted that he thinks you were set up. He said it was most likely your father and that he had nothing at all to do with it. He swears to me that’s the truth.”
“You believe him?” I asked her.
I wanted to know what she thought before I opened my mouth. I could tell that she wanted to believe him and I knew it h
ad to be hard on her. The selfish part of me wanted her to be on my side though and I couldn’t help thinking about the time I needed her to believe me and she had chosen not to.
Finally she said, “No, I’m starting to think he had to have something to do with it. I don’t know if he thinks we’ll never prove it or that I’m so easy to manipulate that I’ll forgive him when the truth does come out, but I think he’s lying either way.”
Sadly, that was what I wanted to hear, but I wanted it to be her decision and not something I forced her into thinking or believing. I thought there had been way too much of that going on lately.
“I don’t believe him either. The day before I get busted he sends the e-mail. I guess it could have been about something else, but I really doubt it. It would be a big coincidence. Then, there’s the tape where my mom is confronting my dad. It all makes me think Terrance and my father both had a lot to do with it.”
“I wish I knew what was in it for Terrance. What does it take to sell out your best friend?”
“He got you and don’t doubt that he got handsomely compensated by my father.”
Olivia was silently lost in her own thoughts. I started sketching a picture of the landscape. There were some wildflowers growing across the hill we were facing and the whole thing was bursting with this amazing carpet of color. I tried to do it justice.
When I finished Olivia looked over my shoulder and said, “That’s really good. You’re really talented, Dax. I still have all of the stuff you drew for me…all of the pictures you drew of me.”
“Thanks,” I told her with a smile. I didn’t know if she knew how much her praise meant to me or the fact that she hadn’t just thrown it all out. Her opinion and my mom’s were the only ones that really mattered to me any longer. “Are you going to go back to school soon?” I asked her.
“I hope so, the sooner the better,” she said. “I feel like I’m going out of my mind sometimes here with nothing to think about but the motorcycle shop, the bar and the club. None of those things would have ever been on my list of things to think about before and now they consume me. I wanted to go back this semester, but Terrance didn’t really want me to. He said it wasn’t a good time, financially. So, we compromised on the next one.”
I had plenty to say about her letting Terrance tell her what to do with her life. I kept it to myself.
Instead I said, “Do you think I should just come right out and ask Terrance about the e-mail?”
“Yeah,” she said. “But I don’t think he’ll tell you the truth. He looked me dead in the eye and swore he didn’t know anything. Then he changed his story mid-conversation.”
“I don’t expect him to just tell me the truth,” I told her, “but I know him well. I can tell when he’s lying and he knows it. He’s not a great liar. I guess that at least says something about his character. I think I can wear him down. I’m going to try and finish going through the tapes first and see if there’s anything else there. If I have enough evidence, it would be really hard for him to blame what we have so far on coincidence.”
“I guess it’s our best shot at this point,” she said. “Between him and my dad, you’ll definitely get further with Terrance.
I smiled at the way she said, “our” best shot. I liked that she was thinking of us in terms of “us,” if only for a little while.
I sketched a picture of her under the tree and then one of a bird that kept landing above us while we talked. We avoided the deep topics after talking about Terrance. I told her about learning to give tattoos and about a book I had read on the subject while I was locked up.
“Is all the equipment expensive?” she asked. “To get started.”
“It won’t be cheap,” I told her. “But I learned how to make a gun out of an insulin needle and the shell of an inhaler.”
She looked at me with wide eyes for a second before she figured out I was kidding…sort of. I’m sure she would have been blown away if I told her about some of the things I had learned to make in there.
I laughed and said, “Seriously, I think I could swing it. I have a little money and I’m hoping that my mom will help finance the rest. Either she can be my silent…untattooed partner or I can pay her back. Hey, maybe I can convince her to let me pay her back in tattoos. I think my mom would look pretty good all tatted up.”
She smiled and then giggled. My mom wasn’t the tattoo kind of girl. “It sounds like you’ve thought a lot about this,” she said.
I raised my hands up and said, “Nothing but time on these.”
She laughed, but neither of us really thought it was funny. The state that my life was in was actually sad…but I wasn’t going to sit back and just accept it. I was going to clear my name if I could, start my business and move forward, leaving the club in the past where it belonged. I looked at Olivia and wished I could take her with me.
“Well, if I don’t get back in school or find a job that doesn’t include motorcycle clubs or motorcycle parts, maybe you can hire me. I wouldn’t mind getting paid in tattoos,” she said with a grin.
I had the vision again of her lying on my table…damn.
The ride back to the bar was even better than the one to the park. Olivia seemed more relaxed and her body was fluid against mine instead of rigid like it was on the way up. I was tempted when I saw the sign for the bar to just keep on driving and go as far as the gas would get us.
I didn’t though.
I took her back to her car and I fought the urge to ask for a kiss.
Chapter Six
Olivia
Dax dropped me off at my car. I was shaking when I got off the bike and walked toward it. I would have liked to blame it on the bike or a bumpy ride, but that wasn’t it at all. Holding on to Dax, being that close to him brought back a flood of memories and emotions. We had been so happy together and so hopeful for the future. It was funny and sad how things changed so quickly. I thought I knew who I was going to be with forever. Sitting behind him on the bike was a treat. I wish I knew how things got so screwed up.
I got home and went straight into the bedroom. I opened the closet and took out a file box that I kept a big folder in. Inside of the folder were all the pictures that Dax had drawn for me. There were probably over a hundred of them. I used to tell him I was saving them so when he got famous I could sell them and get rich. I never sold them though. They meant way too much to me. He used to carry his sketch pad and his charcoals and pencils everywhere we went.
I guess he still did. When we were together if I ever saw anything that I said was pretty, other guys might have taken a picture of it, but not Dax. Dax would sit down and draw me a sketch of it. It didn’t matter what it was or where we were. I had sketches of trees and flowers and lakes, sometimes even a building that I liked or a car that I had pointed out. They would all end up the subject of one of his sketches. He would tear them out and give them to me when they were finished. I loved and kept them all.
As I sat there with them I realized that the bulk of them were sketches of me. It was funny because I didn’t even like photographs of myself, but for some reason when I looked at a sketch Dax did of me, I thought that I looked beautiful. There was something about the way he captured me, my eyes or my hair, even my lips, that made me look almost angelic. I guess it was because we were in love then. Not only was I glowing from it, but he could see nothing but the good in me. God, I missed those days.
I thought back to that day that changed our lives. The day he had called me from jail and told me what happened. He was upset and my heart was breaking for him at first. He kept saying that he didn’t do it and like with Terrance earlier that day, I had wanted to believe him. I asked what happened exactly and he told me that he was on a ride with the guys. They were supposed to be on a joy ride but they had gotten pulled over and the police had done a search. They found drugs in his saddle bags. It was a lot of heroin.
He swore to me he didn’t know it was there and he didn’t have anything to do with drugs at al
l. While he was telling me, the only thing I could think about was my dad. I remembered hearing him deny it over and over and listening to him get upset about it. It was all bullshit. One day, he suddenly admitted to all of it. It was because of a deal he was offered. I couldn’t stop thinking that Dax was trying to bullshit me too.
I was angry and cold. I had told him straight up the first day that I didn’t believe him. I had said something to the effect of the police and the district attorney and everyone else involved could not be wrong. I could hear the pain in his voice as he begged me to believe him, but still I didn’t.
He had to go into that cold place with those awful, scary people without even the warmth in his heart of knowing that he was loved enough for someone to believe him. He had to think there was no way I really loved him. When you really love someone you stick by them. I had just told Terrance that this very morning. What a hypocrite I was.
Tears ran down my face and I had to close the folder to keep them from ruining the sketches. What kind of girlfriend promises to be with her man forever and then walks away at the first sign of trouble? The worst part was that his arrest was literally the first sign. It was the only sign. He had never gotten into trouble. He never treated me bad…he had been perfect otherwise.
I used to tell my friends at school that I was just waiting for him to turn into a monster because he was just too perfect. It was supposed to be a joke, but when he was arrested I was content to tell myself that was it. That was the one thing wrong with him.
God, what had I done? I pushed away my love, my soulmate…my very life and now I suddenly wanted to believe him. What if it was too late?
Chapter Seven
Dax
A few days after Olivia and I took our ride, I woke up knowing that I had to talk to Terrance and I had to do it that day. I felt like my life was just standing still and I couldn’t stand it anymore. I woke up and did the same thing every day and none of what I did amounted to anything worthwhile.
Dirty SEAL (A Navy SEAL Romance) (The Maxwell Family) Page 78