She was crying as she went to him, pressed her mouth to his, draped her arms around his neck and settled high in his lap.
He pushed her hair back so he could hold her face. Then lower: her shoulders, the curve of her waist, her hips, crushing her against him as he kissed her.
He eased her back, finally, their breath steaming between them. “We probably shouldn’t, in your dad’s yard.”
“Ugh. Let’s not talk about him.” She dropped her head onto his shoulder, the warm skin of his neck against her forehead.
“Okay,” he agreed. “Don’t you worry about Ghost. That’s my problem, not yours. I can handle it.”
She blinked at her lingering tears, giddy and exhausted, full of a sudden fire. She wanted to snuggle in and sleep. She wanted to kiss him again. She wanted to do somersaults across the grass. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to pull him down on top of her and feel him drive inside.
Instead she merely existed, breathing in the smell of smoke on his cut, petting the worn leather across his back, wondering at the grace of the universe, that it had brought him back to her.
Thirty-Six
“Your ride’s here!”
“Coming!”
Ava checked her reflection one last time. Skinny jeans, boots, purple V-neck shirt, leather jacket. She ducked into her over-the-shoulder bag, securing the strap across her chest. “Well,” she said with a hitch in her breathing, “I’m back.”
“Ava!”
“Coming!”
Maggie was alone in the kitchen, dressed similarly – because she hadn’t gone off to college and had a dress code identity crisis – pouring coffee in a travel mug. “Your father’s still in the shower. I thought you’d like to leave before–”
“Ah. Yep.” She grabbed a granola bar off the counter, zipped it up in her jacket pocket, and snagged her black matte helmet off the peg by the back door. She’d wrestled the thing out of the depths of her closet last night, once Mercy had decreed her mode of transportation until they could figure out who’d slashed her tires.
“Bye, Mom,” she said, and breezed out the back door, helmet swinging by its strap as her elated, bouncy steps carried her around the side of the house.
She hadn’t been on the back of a bike in years, and the idea was adding to this golden, fizzing sensation that wouldn’t stop building inside her. She had Mercy back, and she wanted, more than anything in the world, to believe him. So that’s what she chose to do. She’d awakened that morning and thought to herself, Stop wondering and asking and worrying. Accept it. Bask in it. You’ve got your man back.
He waited on his ’95 Dyna behind her truck, sans cut, in his plain leather jacket, sunglasses making his face seem narrower, sharper, more sinister.
Littlejohn straddled his own bike alongside Mercy. The question of what Mercy planned to do while she was in class for three hours was answered in part: he was going to prowl around, and Littlejohn would stay with the bikes.
Lord, no one at UT wanted him on the loose on campus.
He gave her a wolf whistle as she approached, and she felt the color come up in her cheeks, a fast press of heat beneath her skin. His grin, the bright flash of his teeth, chased away any doubts she’d had about greeting him in front of the prospect. She laid a hand on his shoulder, leaned in and kissed him.
He tried to go deeper when she pulled back, shaking her head, barely evading him.
“Nuh-uh,” she said with a laugh. “We’re on a schedule.”
“Good morning to you, too,” he said with obvious mock exasperation.
“Morning.” She kissed the slick surface of his hair as she swung onto the bitch seat behind him and buckled her helmet in place. “Morning, Littlejohn.”
He gave her a nod. “Ma’am.”
“You guys sure you don’t mind being up close and personal with education this morning?”
“Careful, fillette, you don’t want to challenge me about education.” His dark chuckle left little to the imagination.
She rolled her eyes.
“You ready?”
“Yeah.” A thrill chased through her.
He reached back, quickly, and squeezed her knee. And then he started the Harley and it leapt to life beneath her, reminding her that she’d been born for this.
Working the register at Leroy’s wasn’t terrible. It wasn’t the worst job in the world. Old Leroy, comfy enough with cash to be able to hire out employees and rest his rheumatoid arthritis at home in his easy chair, was a generous, kind-hearted employer. He loved Knoxville, and he loved giving kids a chance to make a buck. “Just returning the favor given to me,” he’d told Carter when he’d hired him. “Young people deserve to be given a chance to do a good job.”
The job itself had its perks. Discounted sodas. Free subs from the deli for lunch every day. The occasional tit show when a drunk woman on her way home from a party stopped in for smokes and lottery tickets and was too intoxicated to notice her strapless dress had slipped down in front.
But mostly, Carter’s life was a study in failure these days. Not only had he failed to make it pro, earn enough to provide for his father – maybe send him to rehab – but now he was back living with the man. High school all over again, with fewer friends, and zero notoriety.
He closed the cash drawer with a ding and handed Leah Cook her change.
“Thanks,” she said, distracted. She pocketed the coins and opened her Snickers bar right there in front of the register, taking a bite too huge for a girl so little. “So I talked to Ava about it, but she hasn’t gotten back to me yet.”
Carter checked his automatic frown before it could get too deep. “Ava’s worried about other stuff right now.”
“Oh, what, like she doesn’t care?” Leah propped a hand on her hip and lifted her brows as she chewed, challenging him.
Carter thought of Ava in here last week in her skirt and heels, posh boyfriend waiting out by the truck, her bachelor’s and her eventual graduate degree. “Things are going well for her,” he said. “And people don’t tend to worry too much about other people when that’s the case.”
“Ugh. Don’t be an ass.”
“I’m just being honest.” He sounded patient, but was really just tired. He was weary, down to his bones, of everything. “You know I like Ava, but if you’re expecting her to do something about your dad’s shop–”
“Hey.” Leah was growing more defensive by the second. “The Lean Dogs have a lot at stake here. Helping my dad would be helping themselves, too.”
“And they love to do that,” he muttered.
“Dude, bitter much?”
“Realistic.”
“You used to be fun to hang around.” She pulled her orange juice and bagged sandwich off the counter. “What happened to the guy who said ‘bro’ and high-fived, huh?”
He grew up when he tore his knee to shreds, he thought. But he smiled tightly at her. “Fun’s overrated.”
“So say you and my grandmother,” she said with a sigh.
The bell above the door jangled, catching both their attentions. The guy who entered wore pressed khakis with center creases, tasteful plaid oxford, and some sort of gel or paste that shellacked his hair into a side-parted helmet of shiny brown. He smelled like money; he looked like a thoroughbred, one of those carefully-bred Southerners who could trace his ancestry back to colonial times, without a single drop of Irish or Scottish blood in the whole family tree.
“Ronnie,” Leah said, voice taking on that high, bright edge that Carter knew meant she was thrilled about something. “Hi. How’s it going?”
The guy hesitated, and then came forward, his expression cautious. “Hi. It’s Leah, right?”
“Right,” Leah chirped. “This is Carter.” Grand gesture toward him behind the counter. “He went to high school with Ava and me. Carter, this is Ronnie.” Her dark almond-shaped eyes cut over, bright with mischief. “Ava’s boyfriend.”
So that’s why he looked familiar. Carter had only glimpsed him
through the window, as he stood at the end of Ava’s truck and played with his phone, but the hair was unmistakable.
Carter’s first reaction was to laugh. Rude, stomach-clutching, howling laughter. He checked that impulse and said, “Hi. Good to meet you.” But he couldn’t rectify this pretty boy as Ava’s boyfriend. How had Ava Teague, club daughter to her bones, who’d stabbed Mason Stephens in the leg and miscarried Mercy Lécuyer’s baby on the floor of Hamilton House, ended up with some country club tool like this. He himself had been too preppy for her, back in the day. And here she was now with the captain of the lacrosse team, or whatever the hell rich-boy sport this dick played.
Ronnie grimaced in a delicate way and fiddled with the change in his pockets. “I’m not so sure ‘boyfriend’ is the word for me anymore.”
“Oh?” Leah’s crestfallen expression belonged on a stage somewhere. “You two broke up? How awful!”
Ronnie studied the toes of his loafers. “I don’t know what you want to call it. Ava’s going through…some stuff, right now.”
Carter didn’t miss the quick wink Leah shot him. He didn’t misinterpret it either; he’d seen Mercy among the ranks of Dogs on bikes that kept parading through town. Ava wasn’t going through “stuff”; she was going through Mercy-withdrawal.
He almost felt bad for Ronnie. Poor dumbass, he thought. She’ll only ever be in love with that walking nightmare.
Ronnie seemed to shake himself off. “I need to get some gas,” he said, a silver money clip coming out of his pants pocket, a fifty peeling off a roll of others just like it. “Can I get thirty on pump two?”
“Yeah.” Carter noted how crisp, green, and new the bill was as he put it in the register.
“Carter, huh?” Ronnie’s voice had that awkward, forced-conversation quality to it. “You played football for KHS. Quarterback, right?”
“Right.”
“Didn’t you get a full ride to Texas A&M?”
Carter nodded. “And lost it, too.” There was a prickling up the back of his neck, an uneasiness. “How’d you know all that?”
Ronnie’s mouth trembled; his eyes widened. There and gone again, anxiety tweaked his face. But then it smoothed over and he shrugged as he accepted his change. “Ava told me.” He looked at Leah, nodded. “Nice to see you both.” And out he went again, bell chiming.
“Okay, what the hell was that?”
Leah shook her head, mouth drawn up tight in excited surprise. “I dunno. She’s totally back with Mercy. I really can’t believe any guy would stick around once he realized he was competing with somebody capable of turning him into a human pretzel.”
Carter frowned as he watched Ronnie pump gas into his slick Lexus. “I swear he looks familiar. What’s his last name?”
“Archer.”
Ronnie Archer. He swore he knew that name. Then again, it wasn’t that unusual; there could be fifty Ronnie Archers in Tennessee.
“Poor Ronnie,” Leah said. “He has no idea that he was the stuff she was going through.”
“Did you see your mother yesterday?”
Aidan took the toothpick in his mouth between thumb and forefinger and flicked it up onto the dash. “For a sec.” He retrieved his smokes from the center console between them, shook one out and lit up, needing that first draw of nicotine before he was willing to go into any detail. “She’s setting us up with a booth at the yard sale?”
Behind the wheel, Ghost nodded and sipped his travel mug of coffee. Aidan knew Maggie had packed that coffee, had made the breakfast sandwiches of toasted rye, sausage patties and cheese, had included napkins and shiny green apples and a fresh Bic lighter for their cigarettes. Just like Maggie, at seventeen, had packed his ham and cheese sandwiches, Oreos and chips and little boxes of raisins in his sack lunches when he was in third grade. Only eight years older than him, and his stepmother had hugged him and done cartwheels across the yard with him and argued with his teachers for him at parent-teacher conferences.
The woman who’d birthed him had bowed out of all that. And yesterday, when she’d approached him outside the bike shop, hands clasped in front of her, keeping her distance like she was afraid he’d get motor oil on her pristine clothes, she’d greeted him with a stiff nod and said, “Aidan. You look…healthy.”
“Do we need her for that?” he asked, taking another deep drag and watching the dead street through the windshield.
“If we applied for a booth, we’d never get accepted. Olivia can set one aside for us, and no one has to know until we’re all set up. We need this,” Ghost added, a heavy, paternal look cast across the cab of the truck at him. “It’s not personal. It’s just damage control.”
“Right,” Aidan sighed, sinking lower in his seat, blowing smoke up at the headliner.
“Hey, here we go,” Ghost said, and the energy in the truck changed completely.
A Knoxville PD cruiser slid past their parking place along the curb and continued down to the charcoal heap of sticks that had once been Milford Mattress, across the street from the Carpathians’ clubhouse. It came to a halt in front of the ruined building, and Sergeant Fielding climbed out to join the loose knot of Carpathians who sorted through the charred remains, looking to salvage God knew what.
“The bastard,” Ghost muttered. “He always was too stupid for his own good.”
They watched, stretched tight and waiting, anticipation building, until Fielding finally got back in his cruiser, turned around, and headed back toward them.
Ghost climbed from the truck and Aidan scrambled less gracefully after him, so they were both standing in the middle of the road as Fielding was forced to come to a halt, nose of the cruiser dipping down toward the asphalt.
“A word, sergeant,” Ghost said, when Fielding rolled the window down.
The cop sighed, but he humored them, parking across the street and coming to sit in the back seat of the truck, elbows on his knees, expression weary.
He’d been busted, and he knew it.
“What?” he asked, not willing to sit in suspense. “You’ve been following me?”
“Nah,” Ghost said. “I’m too busy for that shit. I just figured you’d turn up, since you like to do that so much: only, I’m guessing it wasn’t unannounced in this case.”
“You hate us that much?” Aidan said. “You’d actually work for these dipshits?”
“I don’t work for anyone but the city of Knoxville,” he shot back.
Ghost smiled. “And the man who runs Knoxville. Are you the one who’s been threatening shop owners? Or does he have someone better-dressed than you do it?”
Through the rearview mirror, Aidan watched Fielding’s shoulders slump. “No, it’s not him,” he said to his dad. “He hates it, what’s happening. Don’tcha, Vince?”
That earned him a sharp look, but it was followed by a deep sigh. “It’s not Stephens.”
Aidan felt his brows go up, saw Ghost’s do the same. “How could it not be?”
“All the shops on Main and Market are leased storefronts,” Fielding said, tone defeated. He was, at his core, an honest man, and the subterfuge was taking its toll on his conscience. “Someone came in with some muscle and bought them all up. Not a big deal, on its face: what buyer wouldn’t want to keep on business that paid the rent on time? But whoever it is, he’s squeezing the owners, all of them, telling them to cease doing all business with the Lean Dogs, or he’ll evict them.”
“Can he do that?” Aidan asked.
“Technically, no. But someone with that kind of money could steamroll any local if anything ever went to court. This guy’s attorney would know all the tricks. Someone like Ramona Baily doesn’t have a prayer of fighting someone like that.”
“How could Stephens not be involved?” Ghost asked.
“I didn’t say he wasn’t, I just don’t have anything concrete,” Fielding said. “I tried talking to Ramona, and Alan Cook, but they won’t say anything.”
“They’re scared,” Aidan said.
“Wouldn’t you be?”
They both nodded in the front seat.
“So that turns the city against us,” Ghost said. “And the Carpathians are here to clean us out.”
Aidan felt a shiver deep in his belly, something a lot like fear.
“Who’s backing them?” Ghost asked. “All their bikes and the cash and the cuts – who paid that tab?”
“Nothing ties Stephens to it,” Fielding said. “So my guess is that whoever’s buying up commercial space is footing their bills too.”
“Does Larsen know he’s somebody’s bitch?” Aidan asked.
“My guess would be yes, but he doesn’t care.”
“He wants revenge,” Ghost said. “And he doesn’t care whose hand’s up his ass while he’s getting it.”
Fielding nodded.
“What were you doing here?” Ghost asked, tone sharpening. “Are they paying you off?”
The cop bristled again, insulted. “I’m trying to convince that stupidass Larsen that burning down his own buildings as a way to frame you guys is an idiotic move.”
Ghost smiled faintly, and glanced over at Aidan. “See? He does care about us. Huh, Vinnie?”
Fielding tugged in vain at the handle of the rear suicide door. “You guys need to lay low. There’s no way to help yourselves right now. Just keep out of the headlines and this’ll blow over.” He sighed. “Let me out.”
Aidan opened his door, allowing the sergeant to exit, and smiled broadly in response to the final look of warning sent his way before Fielding headed back across the street to his cruiser.
He closed the door. “Next move?”
“You up for a little espionage?”
Every time Ava let her mind wander, her thoughts went back to Mercy, to the picture of him in the slanted morning sun, one boot on the pavement, long legs holding up his matte black bike, little smirking smile under his black shades. He was gorgeous to her, mostly because he was hers, because she knew that when she walked out of this last class, he’d still be sitting there, waiting for her.
She was in serious danger of dissolving into a smiling idiot right here in her plastic chair.
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