“Yep.” Smile, smile at him, she reminded herself. See, you’re not just a scary biker chick.
He studied her a moment, making sure she was serious. Then: “Great.” His shoulders lifted; his face brightened. “I’ll pick you up around eight?”
“Sounds good.”
What did they do now? Feeling awkward and foolish, she shook his hand, and tried to force herself to see him differently as he walked to his Mustang. Nice wide shoulders, narrow hips; nice ass. Blonde-and-blue and worth more than a few fantasies.
Carter Michaels had everything going for him.
Except he wasn’t Mercy, and Ava didn’t how else to measure a man.
Twelve
Five Years Ago
“I think it’s great.” Maggie was using her fake-cheerful voice, the one she used to mask her anxiety. “You need to start spending some time with boys your own age, instead of the club boys.”
Miserably, Ava finished securing her ponytail. “That’s what Mercy said.”
“See? Even he thinks it’s great. You’re not gonna disagree with him, are you?” Maggie turned away from the kitchen counter, heaping bowl of freshly-chopped salad in her hands, her smile one of loving challenge. She’d set a trap for Ava, and knew that Ava knew it.
“No,” Ava grumbled. “Why would I ever disagree with him?”
“She doesn’t need to be spending time with any boys,” Ghost said as he entered the kitchen and laid his new issue of Iron Horse down beside his dinner plate before he went to wash his hands. “Who is this kid, anyway? Have I ever met him?”
Maggie answered him. “Carter Michaels. The one she’s been tutoring. You’ve seen him at the clubhouse.”
Ghost frowned; his expression would have been comical if Ava hadn’t been wrestling a stomach of butterflies. “That little wanker?”
“Someone spent the day going over the books with Walsh,” Maggie said with a snort. “Try ‘fucker,’ baby. You can’t pull off ‘wanker.’ ”
Ghost turned to Ava, hands braced back on the counter, his Dad-face rushing to the forefront. “I thought you didn’t like him.”
“I don’t.”
His brows lifted expectantly.
“Aren’t you always telling me to be more normal?”
“No. That’s your bitch grandmother.”
Maggie paused on her way back to the stove, laid a hand on Ghost’s wiry forearm and tipped a meaningful look up to his face. “She was raised on you calling her grandmother a bitch and Mercy talking about pulling teeth out with pliers. Let her go out with a sweet boy.”
“You’re the one who calls the woman a bitch most of the time.”
Maggie nodded. “Yeah, but the other part’s true.”
Ghost sighed. Ava caught the glimmer of regret in his dark eyes. It was there and then gone again: he hated that she hadn’t had a fluffy pink unicorn girlhood. His club was his religion, but he wished it hadn’t had such a heavy hand in raising his daughter.
“I’m not going to do anything with him,” Ava said, and meant it. She leaned forward and reached into her boot, withdrawing the bone-handled knife from its hidden sheath within the upper of her Durango. Then she showed him her cell phone and pepper spray in the pockets of her leather jacket. “I’d take the gun, but that feels like overkill at a school function,” she said, giving her dad a grin.
He grinned back and nodded toward the door. “Go. But be careful. And check in with your mother.”
She zipped up her jacket. “I’m always careful.”
The hulking profile of Hamilton House blazed against a cloud-packed indigo sky. Set almost a mile off the road, behind overgrown trees and waving seas of fallow pasture, no one would be able to see the jeweled flames of lights in all the many half-boarded-up windows. The front door stood open, light pouring down the front steps onto the scrubby lawn. Someone had wound streamers around the columns. Kegs and coolers were set up on the rotted porch.
Ava stood beside Carter on the sidewalk, staring up at the monolith, wondering which of them would break the awful awkward silence of the ride over.
“Where did you tell your parents you were going?” he asked.
“Bowling.”
A late-season cicada began droning in one of the dead oaks.
“Where’d the booze come from?” she asked.
“One of the cheerleader moms bought it and brought it herself, I heard,” he said. At Ava’s raised-brow look, he said, “All some parents care about is that their kids are popular.” He shrugged. “It sucks.”
“Yeah.”
Without touching, they started up the walk, the music growing more overwhelming the closer they drew. Ava smelled pot, and piss, and mildew. The house sagged in all its corners, its upstairs balcony dripping wisteria and kudzu.
I’m sorry, she told the mansion as they passed up the steps. What are they doing to you?
“You’re leaving?” In the glow of the dorm room lamplight, Jasmine sat up and pulled her hair over her shoulder, arranging it with her lacquered nails though she was only half-awake. The covers were around her waist and her naked breasts, high and lush – fake, but good fake – gleamed in the lamplight, their dark centers drawing his eyes. Her sleepy eyes held yet another invitation. She’d screamed into the mattress and moaned and writhed, but she wanted more. Jasmine never got enough.
Mercy, already dressed, shrugged into his cut. “Yeah.”
“Oh.” Jasmine puffed out her lower lip in a pretty pout and then reached toward him, arching her spine and moving with practiced, catlike grace, so her breasts and ass and all the naked skin in between was put to the best advantage. She came to sit on the side of the bed on her knees, hair falling around her shoulders. She looked up at him from beneath her lashes as she settled her hands on his belt buckle. “Don’t go. Not yet.”
She smiled and pressed her hand over the fly of his jeans. “Damn, you’re a big boy.” She leaned forward, so her breasts cushioned against his thighs. “Just one more time. Please?”
“Sorry, sweetheart.” He returned her smile as he stepped back. “I can’t start paying special attention to you. The other girls would get jealous.”
“Ugh. Mercy.”
He put his back to her and headed for the door.
The sheets rustled. “Is it true what they say?” she called after him. For the first time since she’d approached him in the common room earlier, her voice changed from its usual saccharine purr to something truer and sharper.
Mercy paused.
“Do you like underage pussy best?” Jasmine asked. “Or is it just Ghost’s daughter you get hard for?”
She was already scrambling backward across the bed when he charged toward her. With a strangled scream, she toppled off the far side and landed hard on her ass. She tried to get to her feet, but Mercy was on the bed and leaning down too fast for her to get away. He put one big hand around her throat and held her pinned to the carpet, not squeezing, just restraining.
He knew what she could feel, though, beneath the calluses on his palm and fingers: the strength. He wasn’t some awkward twenty-one-year-old anymore. He knew exactly how strong he was, and how best to put that strength to use.
Jasmine’s coal-ringed eyes bulged in terror; her mouth was a red hyphen in her now-white face. She breathed in jagged gasps that shook her breasts and bowed her back off the floor. Her hands lay limp beside her head. She didn’t dare move. Mercy could smell the fear in her. It was a good smell: fear. One he knew well.
“Understand something,” he said, voice low and even. “You may be the best fuck in this clubhouse, but that’s all you are. That’s all you’ll ever be. You’re a Lean Bitch. You’re a groupie. You give blowjobs in public. You disgust me.
“Understand this, too: I’d be perfectly within my rights to crush your windpipe right now. My boys out there, they’d help me chuck you in the river and not say a damn thing about it. You do not ever, ever, question a member like you just did. You do not ever suggest what you jus
t did about Ava Teague.” He flexed his fingers the tiniest amount. “Got it?”
She managed to nod and squeak out something that almost resembled words.
“I don’t want to have to tell you that again.”
“N-n-no. Me neither.”
“Good.” He released her and righted himself, moving off the bed. She was still on the floor, gasping, as he let himself out of the dorm and closed the door behind him.
His skin tightened all over. What they say…People were saying it? People had noticed?
He’d known what was happening to him; he even thought he understood it. The way all his affection for Ava was being warped by the way womanhood was taking hold of her. It was twisted, and God knew he’d had enough of that in his life. It had been this darkness in his head, his growing attraction to her.
But he hadn’t thought it was something anyone else could see. He sure as hell hadn’t thought it was something the groupies were gossiping about.
Aidan and Tango were shooting pool over mugs of Bud in the common room when he entered. Dublin was glued to the TV and the Packers game.
“Beer?” Briscoe called to him.
“Yeah, that’d be good.” He sat on a stool with a view of both the TV and the pool table, in the middle of things.
Aidan lined up his next shot with a dark chuckle and said, “That wasn’t you I heard screaming, was it, Merc?”
“Nah, man. I make people scream. Never the other way around.”
They all laughed at the sinister double meaning.
“Is Jasmine as good as she says she is?” Tango asked with more than passing curiosity.
“Better,” Mercy assured. “Especially if you put a couple drinks in her first.”
Aidan rolled his eyes as the cue ball clacked off the striped three, sending it into a side pocket. “I’m telling you, bro, you can’t keep wondering. Just walk up to her, ask her to go in back with you, and do it. You don’t have to buy her wine and roses.”
“The romantic one,” Dublin said. “Ain’t he sweet?”
“You buy them roses?” Aidan asked.
Dublin chuckled. “No, but I don’t sound like as big an asshole as you.”
“Jealous,” Aidan sang as he went for his next shot. “You old guys are just jealous.”
Good. This was all good. Nice and distracting.
Mercy reached to accept his beer from Briscoe, and the other member said, “I saw a buncha cars turning in up at Hamilton House this afternoon.”
“Kids having a party,” Dublin said. “I give ‘em till midnight ‘fore the cops break it up.”
“Last time they arrested two dozen of ‘em,” Briscoe said. “And we’re the ones they wanna run outta town. Jesus.”
“Drunk puking kids don’t have a new gun shipment coming in next week,” Tango said. “That I know of, anyway.”
“Wait.” Aidan lowered his pool cue. “Ava went out with that little football douche tonight.”
Mercy paused with his beer halfway to his mouth. He conjured an image of Ava bent over the picnic table with the blonde kid. They made a pretty picture, so young and mismatched, so appropriate.
He wanted to throw his mug across the room.
“I bet they went to Hamilton House,” Aidan continued. “Where else does a football douche go on a Thursday night except where all the other douches go?” He grinned. “Props to the little sis for doing something fun for once.”
“Yeah,” Tango said, “it’ll be real fun when your pops is bailing her out later.”
“She won’t get caught.” Aidan leaned over the table again. With a small note of pride, he said, “She’s a Teague.”
Whoever was working the sound system had a thing for Nelly, and the walls rattled with it. Ava couldn’t hear anything save the bass line as it pounded in her ears and throat and up through the soles of her feet. The mansion boasted a wide entrance hall that ran from the front to the back of the house, and that was where she stood amid the jostling crowd, the curving cherry wood double staircases draped with streamers and heaped with students who talked, drank, laughed, and kissed and groped at one another. There were couples everywhere. And clusters of friends. Two buffet tables of snacks had been set up beneath the moldering, frameless mirror along one wall.
Ava held a Solo cup of keg beer she had no intention of drinking, and Carter floated at her side, their elbows bumping as the shifting crowd pushed them.
She felt his mouth touch her ear before he said, “You want something to eat?”
She didn’t, but working their way to the snack table would at least give them something to do. So far, this evening was a massive mistake.
“Sure,” she shouted back.
They worked their way to the table. The spread was Cheetos, two kinds of Doritos, Fritos, M&Ms, and some kind of sandwich that looked like it had a bad case of gangrene.
Sophisticated.
Ava tried to back away from the table, and stepped on someone’s foot. She felt the hard heel of her boot crunch down on something much softer. And then:
“Ow!” Someone slapped at her back. “Get off me, stupid bitch!”
Ava whirled around to find Ainsley Millcott standing on one leg, holding her smashed, sandal-clad foot in one manicured hand, her expression murderous.
“Keep your fucking dyke boots off me!” Ainsley snapped. “And get out of my way.”
Captain of the cheer squad, Homecoming Queen for their sophomore, junior, and no doubt senior years, already a shoe-in for the “best body” Senior Superlative, Ainsley Millcott had the foulest mouth and the ugliest heart of any girl Ava had ever met.
Ava was used to the abuse. She glanced around them, searching for an opening in the crowd, more than ready to escape this nightmare of drunken classmates.
“Did you not hear me?” Ainsley asked. “I said move!” Before Ava could respond, she shoved her, hard, and sent her careening back into the snack table.
The table’s rubber feet screeched against the old hardwood.
Ava caught her balance and tried to blink away the curtain of red that had come down over her vision, but it wasn’t possible. Not this time. She was here tonight because she’d seen Jasmine touching her man – and yeah, that’s what Mercy felt like in her own stupid mind: her man. Because her man didn’t want her – didn’t want to be her man – she was here with Carter for whom she felt nothing, pretending to drink crap beer, suffering hearing loss, and now staring down a rattlesnake in dangly earrings.
“I heard you,” Ava said as she righted herself, her hands curling into fists. “But I don’t think whatever just fell out of your mouth counts as English.”
“Ladies.” Carter shoved his arm between them. “Hey, let’s not–”
The music cut off and the sound vacuum was painful. There were protests and shouts; all the small human noises swelled to an overwhelming level without the music. Then someone from up on the gallery screamed, “Cops!”
Pandemonium broke out. Ava was shoved and jostled; she ducked flying beer cups and got splashed anyway. It was a full-on stampede.
A hand grabbed the sleeve of her jacket and pulled, giving her a direction in which to heave herself. She staggered forward, slapping away elbows and hands, ducking and weaving, towed forward all the while.
Down a side hall, narrow and dark; she felt the lace of cobwebs against her face and neck, pulling at her hair. Then there was a door, a creaking, and night air flooded her lungs as she staggered outside into the overgrown garden.
It was Carter who’d tugged her along, and he released her now, leaning forward to catch his breath with his hands on his thighs.
Ava glanced around their shelter of crowded fruit trees and saw the revolving blue lights of patrol cars toward the front of the house. “You think there’s any chance we can make it to the car?”
He glanced up, grinning. “I’m game if you are.”
Her heart was knocking hard and she felt herself smiling too. “Yeah.”
Four mo
re students came stumbling out of the house, into their hiding place, and Ava’s smile vanished. Mason Stephens, his best friend Beau, Ainsley, and another girl, Megan, also of cheer squad fame.
“This fucking blows,” Mason said. “I swear, if my dad was mayor–”
“But he’s not,” Ava said. “Just like he couldn’t ever be governor, either.”
His gaze snapped over to her, the light in his eyes murderous. He grinned, though. “What are you doing here, Teague? The Pound Puppies let you out of your cage for the night?”
“Mason, shut up,” Carter said.
Everyone present turned to him with obvious shock, Mason especially. It was, Ava realized, the first time Carter had ever questioned his leader. And he’d done it for her, no less.
She felt a small warming toward him, not romantic, but friendly.
“What did you say?” Mason asked, gathering himself and finding his perma-sneer again.
“I said shut up,” Carter repeated. “You’re bugging the hell out of me.”
Mason, auburn-haired and richly-appointed as ever, studied his real Rolex and made a thoughtful face. Ava knew for a fact he belonged in a private school somewhere – mainly so he wouldn’t be able to torture the middle class kids – but that his father wanted to present a family picture that was “normal and down to earth,” as all the failed campaign ads had always said.
“That’s how you wanna play it?” he asked mildly, glancing back up at his friend.
Carter folded his arms and braced his feet apart. There was fear in his eyes, even if he put on a brave front. “Yeah. It is.”
Mason nodded and looked very much like his father had during the locally televised gubernatorial debates several years before. “Okay.” His head lifted and he scanned their small gathering. His eyes came to rest on Ava and she hated the false smile he gave her. “If the cops are breaking this up, I’ve got a better idea of where we can go.”
Thirteen
Five Years Ago
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