Dirty Little Secret

by Laramie Briscoe

  “You know that camp wouldn’t have done shit for me. I was already bad. It at least gave you direction.”

  “Direction I’m not gonna have for very much longer. Covering this shit up, it’s gonna cost me my job this time.” He couldn’t decide if he was upset about that. A few years ago and he would have done whatever he could to keep his job, but now, he wondered what would happen if he left it. Where would he go? His whole life and the open road were completely ahead of him.

  “You don’t have to,” Roni said from where she sat. “It’s high time I pay for my own mistakes. If they want to run DNA on it and they find out it was me, I’ll turn myself in.”

  “The fuck you will.” Rooster pointed at her. “I didn’t spend almost two years in that camp so that you can go to jail!”

  “And I didn’t almost get killed in juvie for you to be paying for this years later,” Liam added. “Why the fuck is this coming up now?”

  “Someone found out about us covering it up, probably from William. And that brings us back to Travis. They want the woman that you have. Who is she and what does she know? Why are they willing to reopen an almost sixteen-year-old murder case?”

  “Can I talk to you, in private?” Travis asked his pres. If anyone would understand why he wanted to keep this a secret, it would be Liam. He had a sister that he had just gone out of his way to protect. He was also scared of what would happen if Jagger found out. It wasn’t too hard to imagine how pissed off he would be.

  “Tyler comes with me.” Liam made it a point to hardly ever make decisions without his right-hand man to help guide him. It was something they had settled on informally, but it had worked to the advantage of the entire club. There was never any one-sided decision made.

  Travis drew in a deep breath. Tyler had already warned him once about being shady, and he was afraid that was coming again. At some point, being shady with this group would mean being dead, and that’s not what he wanted at all. “Okay,” he answered, nodding his head.

  “Can I come?” Rooster pointedly asked his cousin.

  “No.”

  “I’m gonna figure out who it is,” he taunted. “You can’t continue to keep this woman a secret anymore. You’ve got to let her go.”

  “You’ve got to shut the fuck up.”

  Emotions were running high, and Rooster stood to his full height, hitching his chin up, a look coming to his eyes that hadn’t been there since he was a smart-ass teenager. “You wanna make me?”

  “I could. I just put your ass down a few minutes ago.”

  They were walking slowly towards each other. Tyler made a move to stand in between the two of them. “Stop, both of you. Damn, we have serious shit goin’ on here.” Tyler took the moment to do something that he’d wanted to do for a very long time. He shoved Rooster in the chest, making him scramble to get his ass in the chair that sat behind him.

  “Asshole,” Rooster mumbled.

  “Pig.”

  Liam grabbed Travis by the elbow. “C’mon we’ll take this into the office.”

  The three of them walked the short distance, none of them speaking. There, however, was a lot of tension in the air. Travis knew that Liam wanted to ask him what the fuck was going on and Tyler wanted to ask him why he was being shady. When they got to the office and the door was shut, that changed.

  It had been a while since Liam had exerted authority, but that didn’t mean that he couldn’t rock it. He leaned against the desk, folding his arms over his chest, and leveled Travis with a glare. His mouth was set in a firm line, and for the first time in a long time, Travis was a little intimidated by his pres. “I want to know what the fuck is goin’ on, and I want to know yesterday, so you better talk fast.”

  Tyler stood next to Liam, offering him silent backup. Travis wasn’t fooled by the nonchalant posture Tyler had adopted; he could spring at any moment, and then they’d all be fucked.

  “I want you to hear me out,” Travis started.

  “You might want to hurry this up. My patience runs thin these days.”

  “Months ago, I met a woman at Wet Wanda’s. You could tell by looking at her that she didn’t belong there. I befriended her, and I’ve helped her along the way.”

  “That’s all fine.” Liam took a deep breath. “But who is she? Why is someone trying to hold this over you?”

  He swallowed roughly. This was not going to go well. “She’s Jagger’s sister.”

  “No fuckin’ way.” Tyler came off the desk. “He will tear you apart if he finds that out.”

  “I know,” Travis shushed them. “It’s a difficult situation, but I need you to trust that I would never do anything to put the club at risk. I need you to trust that I am the guy I’ve always been.”

  “See, that’s not exactly true,” Liam laughed. “The Travis Steele I know wouldn’t have kept this shit to himself. He would have come to his brothers for help.”

  “The way you came to us for help with Denise?”

  He knew as soon as he said the words; they were the wrong words to say. “Don’t bring my woman into this shit. You know that her situation isn’t this situation.”

  “It’s not, I agree.”

  “What exactly do you want us to do?” Tyler asked.

  “Give me twenty-four hours. I haven’t been able to convince Christine to let me tell Jagger about her yet, and I don’t know why. She’s not real forthcoming.”

  Tyler’s mind was working a hundred miles a minute. “We gotta think about why that is. Is she hiding something?”

  “She is; I know that much. She ran away from someone that she only calls ‘a bad man’. I haven’t been able to get her to tell me who it is yet,” Travis admitted. It hurt—to tell the people that he most loved in the world—that he may have given his heart to a woman who wasn’t telling him the truth. No matter what he said to other people, there was always that place in the back of his head that wondered if she told him the truth. Was this a scheme? Was she playing him? Before, he’d been content to let it sit, let her come to him, but now his back was against the wall, people were questioning his loyalties. His brothers were questioning his loyalties.

  “I think it’s time you get some answers,” Liam told the other man softly. “There’s only so often a man can make a fool of himself. You feel me?”

  “I do, and it’s not like I want to make a fuckin’ fool out of myself. I was just trying to win her trust.”

  “Sometimes you can’t win it,” Tyler spoke up. “Sometimes you gotta take it.”

  “Is that what you did with Meredith?” Travis was interested. He didn’t know how to approach this woman in his life anymore.

  “I didn’t take it. She had been through a lot, but I did explain to her at every turn that I was with her and I understood that she needed time.”

  Maybe that was where he’d gone wrong. They never really talked; he just assumed she didn’t want to. And maybe she didn’t, but maybe she needed to. “Twenty-four hours?” he asked them again.

  Liam nodded. “That’s all you get. After that, I’m putting both Rooster and Jagger onto you. Go out the back, we’ll take care of the rest.”

  Chapter Nine

  Waiting until Christine got off work was one of the hardest things that Travis had ever done. He’d given himself a pep talk about what a pussy he was being, how he needed to man up and tell this woman what he needed her to do. He’d told himself he needed to tell her there would be no more of this secrecy, that she was going to be truthful with him. If she couldn’t be truthful, he was going to cut her loose. That’s what he’d told himself.

  As her car pulled into her driveway, the fight almost went out of him. He had never been the one that all the women looked up to, he didn’t have the air of authority that Liam had, the dangerous edge that Tyler did, the good looks that got Jagger everything he wanted, or the wounded soul that Layne carried around (as he should) like a badge of honor. Travis had always been plain Pete. Nothing was special about him, except for his mind. No
w, he was scared that this woman had used it, not in the way that other people used it, but used it to get to him and possibly hurt the people he cared about.

  “Travis?” she questioned as she got out of the car and shouldered her purse. He looked frazzled and haggard. “Is everything alright? You cancelled lunch and it got me nervous.”

  “Nah.” He shook his head, rubbing his hand along his jaw. Today he wore scruff, he was contemplating letting it grow into a goatee. “Everything’s not alright. I need to talk to you.”

  The way he spoke the words made her blood turn cold. It was almost the way Clinton had spoken to her. She didn’t like it one bit, and it made her nervous. “What did I do?”

  “It’s not anything you did.” It’s what you haven’t done, he wanted to add. It’s what you’ve made me do, the person you’ve turned me into.

  “Can we talk out here, or do we need to go inside?” she asked, her voice shaky.

  “Inside,” the tone of his voice told her not to ask questions.

  She fumbled with the lock after they made their way to the door, and she cursed herself. When she’d left Clinton, she had promised herself that she would not allow another man to make her feel this way again. That didn’t stop her from letting Travis move her out of the way and put the code in to open the door for them. Immediately, she went to the couch and had a seat, pressing her knees together and putting her purse in her lap. She looked down and refused to meet his eyes.

  “Stop,” he told her, breathing deeply. “Stop looking like I’m about to give you a beating.”

  “Isn’t that what’s going to happen here?” she asked, fear that she hated in her voice.

  In this moment, he hated the Heaven Hill MC, he hated Rooster Hancock, and he absolutely hated that he’d been forced to take this position with her. “No, I’m not going to physically hurt you,” he told her, disgusted with himself.

  “Sometimes words hurt just as much.”

  It was that small voice, those words spoken, that got to him. “Then you need to be honest with me, as honest as you’ve ever been with me, because right now I could be in a lot of damn trouble over you.”

  “What do you mean?” she asked, even though she didn’t want to know the answer.

  “Somebody wants you back bad. They’ve threatened the MC over it.”

  She was quiet, her face a mask of shock. There, let that sink in, he thought. Let her see what kind of position she’s put me in. Let her see what kind of mindfuck I have going on over this whole situation. It killed him to be quiet for long moments. Finally he spoke. “Tell me.”

  “I can’t,” she whispered.

  “You will.” His voice left no room for argument. If he wanted to keep the life he built for himself, he was going to have to be tough with her. It was going to be hard on the both of them, but sometimes feelings and the possibility of caring for someone enough to love them wasn’t easy. He wasn’t ready to tell her these things, but he knew which way he was moving, and he didn’t want to give it up.

  She shook her head, her dark hair flying around her head. “I can’t.”

  “Either you tell me, so I can figure out how in the fuck to protect you, or I hand you over. What do you think about that? You’ve tested every piece of me, and I’ve shown you nothing that you can’t trust. I need you to help me now, and if you’re not going to, then I have to do what’s best for me. This can’t be a relationship until you meet me halfway.” He tested out the authoritative tone that he’d rarely ever taken with anyone. Fuck, he rarely ever had to. In his cave, he only had to answer to himself—Liam sometimes, but usually just himself. Now that he was being asked to answer to other people, he wasn’t sure how well he liked that.

  “I think I deserve to be handed over to him for making you be this person for months.”

  He shook his head this time. “Not what I’m looking for, Christy. You matter; you’re worth something to me. I’m being a hard ass because I want you to fight with me, not against me. Don’t you see that?”

  “I’m worth a status symbol, that’s all. I’m the one that got away.”

  “I don’t believe that,” he told her.

  “Believe whatever the fuck you want,” she yelled. For the first time, she yelled. “I am the one that got away. Others tried. When they came back, they were taken into the room, and I never saw them again. I know they were killed, I know they were. There was no way they couldn’t have been after the things I heard in that room. We had no voice, none. One by one, we tried to get away, and everyone failed. Everyone but me. Now he wants a second chance. He wants to make sure he keeps his perfect record,” she blurted out.

  “What do you mean ‘all of them’? There was more than just you?” He was finally getting some of the answers that he’d craved so badly for months.

  “Yes! Off and on there were up to five at a time.”

  Now he was even more confused than when he’d started talking to her. In his head, he could hear Tyler telling him to take it. She was offering him a little nugget, he had to take it and run with it. Very carefully, he sat across from her and took her hands in his. “I have done everything I can do for the past few months to protect you. My ability is being tested and it’s being compromised. I don’t want you to go back to this place; I don’t want you to live in fear. I want you to be happy and live the life that I know you can. I want you to live that life with me, but I need to be able to be the man that can make that happen. Help me.”

  She started to interrupt him, and he put his finger to her lips.

  “I know you want that life because you ran. If you were down to being subservient forever, you would have stayed, you wouldn’t have run. You got me? You wanted to do something better for yourself, something you probably didn’t even know that you needed, but you did. If you had that much courage to run, to leave this place that scared you so badly, why are you so scared to tell me about it? Don’t you realize that by not talking about it, you’re giving him power? You’re hiding from that part of your life, and it’s still holding you captive. You talk to me about it…you speak the words. You set it free, Christy. You set that motherfucker free and let it fly like a bird.” Great, now he was paraphrasing Lynyrd Skynyrd, but sometimes you had to do what you had to do.

  “There’s no other way?”

  Travis could see her warring inside herself. The question was in her eyes, and she was swaying, coming around to his way of thinking. He was as close as he had ever been to being allowed in. That trust was amazing, he could feel it, he welcomed it. All she had to do was invite him into her thoughts, into her memories, into her life. “There isn’t. I wish there was. I don’t want to cause you anymore pain, it’s the last thing I want to do. Let me be real honest with you, though. If you don’t do this, if you don’t let me in, Jagger’s going to find out in the worst way about you. I know that you want that on your terms, not someone else’s. Am I right about that?”

  She thought about her brother. He deserved more than to be used in the same game that she was. As long as he didn’t know about her, they could use her as a bargaining tool—on anyone that knew about her. If Jagger was going to find out, she wanted for him to find out on her terms, not anyone else’s. That would require her letting Travis know about her life; that would mean giving voice to things she’d never given voice to before. Hell, some of it she’d never even thought about once it happened and it was over. There was no time to be scared anymore, there was no time to let fear rule her—it could still be there, but it couldn’t rule her. She couldn’t let it rule Jagger or Travis.

  “Okay.” She swallowed to wet her dry throat and licked her cracked lips.

  “You good?” he asked, only halfway believing that she had just agreed to tell him what had happened with her. He ran his hand along her back, daring to touch her, knowing that sometimes you just needed the touch of another human being to bring you back from the brink.

  “I’m not good, but I’ll be honest with you. I warn you, this could ta
ke a while.”

  He sat back against the couch, propping his feet up in a relaxed manner. He put his hands on his stomach and offered her a small smile. “I got all night. However long it takes you, I got the time.”

  And she knew that he did. Whatever she needed. He always seemed to have it. He would need it in spades tonight because she had never told her story to anyone, and she wasn’t sure she could make it through, but for him, she was willing to try.

  Chapter Ten

  “Clinton was a very bad man,” she started.

  Finally, he had a name. Even with just a first name, sometimes he could find out who people were. He was one of the best at what he did, no matter who or what he usually did it for. “In what way?” he asked, even though he had some sort of idea. It seemed like it would help to ask her questions, that way she didn’t have to necessarily offer anything.

  She appeared to struggle with the answer, even though he had provided the question. “He was mean. You know how some people are just evil? That was him.” There had been a glint to his eye, even the first day she’d come to the home. The way he looked at her, it was as if someone was walking on her grave, and at that point, she’d known she was in trouble. She had begged her father not to leave her there, had prayed that Jagger would show up every day, but he never came, and her father never came back either.

  “When did you find out?” He was storing all the information in his head, so that he could access it when he needed to.

  “The first night I was there,” she whispered. “There was another girl who hadn’t cooked his dinner just the way he liked. He backhanded her with a cast iron griddle.”