She couldn’t imagine what would happen to her father then.
It was all a big risk, no question. Understanding that, Leah tried not to do it too often, but sometimes, she just needed to go.
So she went home and took care of her father, and she waited until he was past noticing what she did, and then she left. She went over to Ashley’s, whose aunt and uncle weren’t churchgoers and left their grown niece to her own devices. They had a finished basement that was like a little apartment with its own entrance, and that was where Ashley lived.
Leah dressed there, and they always took Ashley’s car, so she could leave her own car parked in her driveway at home, where it was supposed to be. They went out somewhere away from Grant and the people who knew her. She got home while her father was passed out, and she got on with the life she was supposed to be living.
The rave she’d seen Max at had been as close as she’d ever been to home. She’d thought it was far enough away that no one she knew would see her, and she supposed that had been true. He hadn’t recognized her then, and, later, he hadn’t known her as the girl he’d fucked at the rave. She was just The Preacher’s Daughter.
Which was what she worked so hard to make true. All the sneaking was meant to make sure no one but Ashley would ever know her as anything but The Preacher’s Daughter. That was the whole point.
Yet she absolutely hated that Max didn’t know her as anything else. She was becoming obsessed with the need for him to remember that night. After she’d known who he was, it had become crucial that he know her as well. She felt a little crazy about it.
Now, parked on the street a couple of buildings down from the Brazen Bulls clubhouse, she felt extra crazy. They were in a crappy neighborhood in Tulsa, and all the buildings were dark and kind of sketchy. There were some apartments above storefronts that had lights on, and some other apartment buildings down the street a ways, but there weren’t any street lights—not working, at least—and the atmosphere was a lot more shadowy and scary than the other parties and raves they’d gone to.
At the end of the block was a gas station, and next to it was the clubhouse. In her mind, she’d conjured something different. Like a VFW post. Her dad had been in Vietnam, and he’d presided over many events at the Osage County VFW. She’d been with him for a lot of them. It was just a nice, plain building, nondescript on the outside, and a bar and some tables and chairs on the inside, just one big room, a couple of smaller rooms to one side, and a couple of bathrooms.
This, though, was a big brick block. It looked like it might have been an apartment building once; there were other buildings like it across the street and also at the other end of the block. She guessed they’d remodeled it. The lot next door was covered in gravel and fenced in with tall chain link topped with barbed wire. Even with all the lights on and music blaring, with people milling around the front laughing and drinking, it seemed foreboding.
The people seemed pretty scary, too. They were a rough group, men and women alike, in denim and leather, with lots of tattoos. The men had wild beards, and the women had big hair. Smoke from cigarettes and probably other stuff hazed the air and made swirling patterns in the glare of the lights on the building and in the street.
Peering through the windshield of Ashley’s old Dodge, Leah decided that a lot of those people probably had weapons on them.
This was a whole lot different from a rave in the country, or a frat party on a college campus.
“Come on!” Ashley complained from the passenger seat. “Are we gonna do this or what? WOO-HOO! BIKER DICK IN RANGE!”
This was the price for Ashley’s agreement to bring her here: Leah was the designated driver, and Ashley got to party. To make sure it went down that way, Ashley had pregamed, downing three shots of Southern Comfort in her little basement apartment, and taking hits off the bottle while they’d driven into town. She had a decent tolerance for booze, but she was somewhere west of buzzed.
Leah’s job tonight was to take care of Ashley. She was scared.
But she’d wanted this. Max was a Brazen Bull. This was the Brazen Bulls clubhouse. They were having a party. Max would be in there. It was good that she was sober, so she would do the things she really wanted to do and not the things that booze and drugs told her were okay. She would stay straight, find Max, talk to him, and watch out for Ashley.
Nothing bad would happen.
“Come on, come on, COME ON!” Ashley bounced in her seat.
“Okay. Let’s go.”
~oOo~
“Hey, sweetheart. Whatcha drinkin’ there?”
The guy who’d come up to her was the kind of no-neck muscular she knew well. She’d guess him for a former football player and farm boy. His brown mullet was another check in the ‘farm boy’ column. Also the ‘football’ column, actually.
Leah turned and found Ashley, at the other end of the bar. She’d caught herself a biker right away, just slithered in and wrapped her arm around a big, handsome blond guy who now had her walled in between his arms, arched back against the edge of the bar, while he ate her face. Every now and then, the guy would back off and pour another shot down her throat.
After asking Ashley if she was okay and being told to fuck off, and having the biker get in her face when she’d tried to push the point, Leah had decided her caretaking extended only as far as making sure Ashley didn’t get gang-banged on the pool table.
Which was a bit farther than the level of Ashley’s caretaking of her, so Leah wasn’t having much of a guilt trip about it.
She was much more focused on the fact that she hadn’t seen Max in here yet. It was crowded, it was loud and rowdy, and she hadn’t given up yet, but she was starting to fret.
Mullet Man picked up her glass and took a drink. He made a face like she’d been drinking bleach on the rocks. “Water? No, babes. That ain’t how it works. This is a party. If you’re here, you’re here to party.” He eyed her up and down. “You’re damn sure dressed to party.”
Leah looked down at her black mini-dress. The clingy knit hugged her body everywhere. With it, she’d intended to wear sheer black hose and a cute pair of chunky Mary Janes which were great for dancing, but Ashley had snatched at the hose and made long, laddered runs all over them and then tossed a pair of shiny red Doc Martens at her, telling her if she wanted to be a biker bitch, she had to look the part.
She’d really wanted to wear the same gold sequined dress she’d worn the night of the rave, hoping it would jiggle Max’s memory, but she’d forgotten the stupid backpack behind the box in her closet, and when she’d finally remembered and opened it…gross. All the sweat and makeup and, well, fluids—ugh—had been steeping in that closed space for weeks. Shame; she’d really liked that dress.
Considering her ‘biker bitch’ outfit, Leah felt a thrill of fear. This guy hadn’t been aggressive, but she felt a threat from him anyway. “I’m here with a friend. I’m her designated driver.”
“Very responsible. But like I said, not how it works.” He took her by the arm. “Let’s find this friend of yours and get you both on back to bible study where you belong.”
“Wait!” She pulled back and tried to twist her arm from his winch hook of a fist. He didn’t let her go, but he stopped and grinned a slimy smirk at her. “I know Max. I’m looking for Max.”
“Ain’t no Max…” he stopped, and a glimmer passed through his eyes. Leah knew that he knew Max. When he next said, “Ain’t no Max here,” she knew he was lying. Why would he lie about that? Maybe Max had a girlfriend? Well, yeah. Probably.
“Look, sweetheart. How old’re you?”
Fuck. She didn’t have a fake ID. Usually, being with Ashley and having the door fee was enough to get into a rave. She certainly hadn’t expected anyone to card her at a biker gang clubhouse. “Twenty-one.”
He quite obviously didn’t believe her. She should’ve said an age that wasn’t so on the nose. But she looked her age, maybe a little younger, so she didn’t want to push her luck
and say she was much older.
“Well,” he chuckled. “A responsible young lady like yourself wouldn’t lie, so I guess it must be true. But babes, if you wanna stay, you gotta party. So either you drink, or we find your friend and you both get gone.” His mouth twisted into something predatory, and he grabbed at his crotch. “Or you can drop right here and suck me off. That’ll buy you a seat at the bar, too.”
Unable to decide whether he meant that for real or if he was joking, she pushed it aside and focused on her goal. Max was here. She knew it now more than ever. She just had to wait. Leah sought out Ashley again and found her friend jumping into the blond biker’s arms. When he turned and headed with her toward the big staircase, Leah decided she could have a drink. Just one. She’d nurse it. She didn’t really like booze, anyway, except the stuff that didn’t taste like anything. She didn’t mind that in juice. Or in frat house punch.
“I’ll drink. Can I have a screwdriver?”
Mullet Man laughed heartily and led her back to the bar. “Oh, babes. How about a rum and Coke? I bet we can hook that up for ya.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
“Wally! Get the lady a rum and Coke! And another bottle for me.” He was drinking beer. As a young guy pulled a can of Coke out of the cooler under the bar, Mullet Man hooked his arm over Leah’s shoulders. “They call me Eight Ball.”
Leah didn’t think she’d heard him right. “Eight Ball?”
He nodded. “You got a name?”
It felt strange to think about telling him her name. She couldn’t remember if she ever had said it out loud on her nights like this. “Um…”
Yet again, he laughed at her. “You’re swimmin’ with sharks tonight, ain’t ya, babes? You don’t gotta tell me your name, but if you don’t, I’m gonna make one up. How ‘bout Perky Nips?”
“Leah. It’s Leah.”
He picked up his beer and handed her the glass of spiked cola. “Nice to meet ya, Perky Nips.”
~oOo~
Leah was on her third rum and Coke, and her friend Eight Ball had her up on a bar stool. He stood between her legs and had his thick fingers hooked in one of the holes Ashley had torn in her pantyhose. She’d had no sign of Ashley or Max yet. She hadn’t eaten since lunch, because this dress was tight, and she hadn’t wanted her belly to be poochy. She was pretty sure the guy behind the bar was pouring a lot of rum and not much Coke in her drinks.
She was kind of drunk.
Not that she cared. She was feeling pretty good and couldn’t remember why she’d been afraid to come in here. That had been silly. It was just a party.
She sipped the last of her drink with a slurp—they’d found her a straw—and set the glass aside. Poking her finger at Eight Ball’s concrete chest, she pushed him back as he came in to suck on her neck again. “I need to pee.”
He helped her off the bar stool. “I’ll take you back.”
“Look, Cue Ball, I can pee all by my very own self. Where is it?”
“Straight past the stairs and to the right. And it’s Eight Ball,” he chuckled.
“Whatever. It’s a dumb name.”
“Yeah, well, so is Perky Nips. Don’t throw stones.”
“But…” deciding an argument about who’d named her Perky Nips wasn’t worth her time, she left her sentence unfinished and walked away to navigate herself through a twisty, biker-lined path. She got turned around twice and had to ask “Bathroom?” but people redirected her toward her target.
Once she got there, the bathroom was…well, best not to think of it. There was a toilet, and that was what she needed. She tried to squat over the ring without touching it, and she managed that okay.
But she couldn’t get her stupid pantyhose back up. Every time she pulled, they tore more. Fucking Ashley. Finally, as somebody started pounding on the door, she gave up and unlaced the red Docs so she could just toss the hose. She wasn’t wearing underwear—the dress was too tight and would have shown panty lines—but who cared.
She got rid of the hose and put the boots on over her bare feet.
More pounding on the door. “Let’s GO! There’s a line out here!”
“Hold your water, asshole! I’m almost done!”
After she washed her hands, she checked the mirror. Her makeup was holding up okay, but her lip gloss had worn off on her straw, and on Cue Ball’s mouth. So she pulled the tube of bubblegum gloss from her little bag and shined her lips back up.
With a smack of her lips and a quick toss of her hair to fluff it back up—and then a moment with her hand on the sink waiting for the room to settle back down—she unlocked the door. “Have at it,” she said to the hefty woman at the head of the line, which was only three people deep and hardly worth the woman’s temper tantrum.
“Cunt,” Tubby Tina muttered.
Leah spun back around, ready to give that bitch an insult right back, but then an arm was around her waist, pulling her away. “Nope, nope, nope. Bad idea, sweets. Cheryl will snap you like a breadstick.”
When they were a few feet off from the bathroom line, the arm let her go, and she turned around to give the interfering jerk it was attached to a piece of her mind.
It was Max. Standing right in front of her, looking completely freaking hot. Right in front of her. His arm had just been around her.
As she tried to make her head understand that fact, his eyes widened like he’d figured out who she was.
“You’re Max,” she finally said. “I’ve been looking for you.”
“Leanne? What the fuck are you doing here?”
He still didn’t know her. He didn’t even know her right as The Preacher’s Daughter. She was such an idiot.
She slapped at his chest. “Oh my gosh, it’s Leah! Leah! Not Leanne! Why don’t you remember me?! You know what? It doesn’t matter. Fuck you. I’m going to go find Cue Ball and have him buy me another drink.” She pushed past him, trying to swallow around the stupid lump in her throat.
But he grabbed her arm. “Hang on. You mean Eight Ball?”
“Whatever.” She tried to work herself free of him.
“No.” He pulled her back, so hard that she lost her balance and fell into him. As his arms went around her to steady her on her feet, he said, “Not Eight. You need to get out of here. Come on.”
He got her all the way through the room and out the front door before he stopped. She’d fought him the whole way, but he hadn’t seemed to notice her struggles. Once outside—there were a lot fewer people outside now—he stopped. “Where’s your car?”
She gave another yank, this one as hard as she could manage. He’d loosened his grip on her, however, so when she put her weight into the motion, her arm slipped immediately from his grasp, and she came off her feet, landing hard on her ass. The concrete sidewalk did nothing at all to cushion her landing, and her tailbone screeched in pain. So did she. She sat there with her legs splayed and tried to catch breath that had fled the pain.
“Fucking hell! You’re not wearing underwear? What the fuck are you trying to get done here? Get up.” He bent down and shoved his hands under her arms—one hand had some kind of a brace on it—and heaved her up.
She was in his arms again, and she’d been thinking about that for weeks. For weeks. It was finally happening, but everything about it was wrong. This wasn’t at all the way it was supposed to go.
He pushed her back and reached down to pull her dress down to a more modest length. “If this is some kind of daddy-issue thing, where you’re trying to get his attention or show him he’s not the boss of you, this is not the way to do it, Lee—Leah. This is not a place for a girl like you.”
The lump in her throat swelled to a boulder, and her eyes and nose started to itch and burn.
“You poachin’ my catch, Gun?”
Hearing Mullet Ball’s voice, Leah wheeled around. At the same time, Max yanked on her again, drawing her behind him, and she almost lost her balance again. She would have, except that her flailing hands caught Max’s shoulders.
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“I know this chick. She’s from home,” Max said. “And she’s just a kid.”
“I am not! I’m a grownup!” She peered around Max’s arm and glared at Mullethead. “And you said you didn’t know Max. You’re totally a lying dirtbag!”
Mr. Mullet barked a laugh and threw up his hands. “Get her out of here, Max.” He turned around and went back into the building.
Max turned and took hold of her arm again. He scowled at her. “You’re too damn drunk to drive, aren’t you?”
This was all just too, too much to take. The threatening storm of tears finally arrived, and it was massive. “Why is everybody trying to get rid of me?” she wailed.
Twist (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 2) Page 8