by Penny Dee
She scowled as she looked up at me. “You blind? I just did.”
“And you hurt yourself. You gotta line up your jump. Make sure you land on two feet. Not one, dummy.”
“I ain’t a dummy,” she huffed, rubbing her ankle.
I felt bad. Mama said name-calling was for people who didn’t have many words. They weren’t smart enough to get their point across. So they used mean names, instead.
I reached down and offered her my hand. But she ignored it and kept rubbing her ankle.
Feeling bad, I knelt down beside her. “It don’t look broke,” I said softly.
She looked at me again and her face softened. Up close, she was pretty. Real pretty. She had big brown eyes and shiny, pink lips. Her blonde hair was pulled into two pigtails and held there with elastic bands with big, colored-plastic bubbles on them. She was wearing denim overalls and a blue and white striped t-shirt underneath. When she looked up at me again, I noticed her lashes were long and dark.
“I just need a minute.” Her voice was softer than before, but her brows were pulled back as she continued to rub at her ankle. “It will be okay with a bit of rest.”
Still feeling bad for calling her a dummy, I shoved my hands into my jeans.
“I can show you how to climb out your window without hurting your ankle,” I said, and then shrugged. “I mean, if you want.”
Again, she looked up at me. But this time she smiled and my tummy started to hurt, just like it did when I was hungry. She looked at me, her nose crinkled up and her head tilted to the side.
“You have blue eyes,” she said. “Like blue diamonds.”
Again, my tummy rumbled and my cheeks went hot.
“They’re real pretty,” she added, squinting as she stared at me.
“Boys aren’t pretty, they’re tough,” I said.
She shrugged. “They can be pretty.”
“No, they can’t.”
“Yes, they can.”
I rolled my eyes. “You want me to show you or not?”
She climbed to her feet and dusted off her knees. But as soon as she tried to walk, her ankle gave way and she almost fell. I had to move quickly to grab her and stop her from falling to the ground.
“You’re hurt,” I said, holding her up. She smelled like flowers and soap.
Before she could reply, her mama came around the corner.
“There you are!” She threw her hands up in the air. “I’ve been looking everywhere for you.” When she saw I was holding her daughter up, she put her hands on her hips. “Oh, for crying out loud, Indigo Blue! What have you done to yourself now?”
“I’m fine, Mama.”
“Aha. That’s why you’re using this handsome young man here as a crutch.”
I stuck out my hand. “Hello, ma’am. My name is Cade. Cade Calley.”
The little girl’s mama looked at my hand and smiled. She was real pretty. Her blonde hair was piled up on her head, and when she smiled, her blue eyes sparkled like stars. “Well, now, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Mr. Cade Calley. My name is Lady Parrish, and this here is Indigo Blue.”
“But don’t be calling me that,” the little girl interrupted with a frown. “My name is Indy. Only my mama calls me Indigo. If you call me that, I won’t answer, you hear me, Cade Calley?”
“I can see you two have already made friends,” Lady said. “We were just on our way to meet you, Mr. Calley.”
“You can call me Cade,” I reassured her.
Again she smiled. “Well, Cade. Shall we go see your mama? I believe she makes a great cup of coffee and I’ve just baked a beautiful pecan pie.”
“Pecan pie is my favorite. We have a pecan tree in the backyard,” I declared.
“You do? Well, now. I’ll make a deal with you, young man, when you pick the pecans, I’ll make the pie. Deal?”
I nodded. I liked Lady Parrish.
“Shall we go?” Mrs. Parrish asked.
I tightened my grip around Indy and helped her along the side of our house to our front porch. She tried standing by herself, and because her ankle didn’t hurt as bad anymore, she could walk up the steps to the porch. But I walked behind her just in case she slipped. Because that was what a best friend did.
And we were going to be best friends.
Just like Batman and Robin.
CADE
Now
I woke up to blinding sunlight. I was lying across my bed with one arm over my eyes. My throat was dry and my mouth felt like a wad of cotton balls had been shoved into every available space. I hadn’t gotten to bed until dawn thanks to a solid drinking effort in Jackie’s honor, and I’d forgotten to draw the blinds before falling in a drunk heap on my bed, and now I was paying for it.
I sat up and the bedsprings wheezed and groaned beneath me as I rubbed my eyes. I looked around. I wasn’t in my room at the clubhouse, I was in my bedroom at my mom’s.
I sighed, trying to shake the fog that filled my head from lack of sleep and too much damn bourbon. The smell of bacon hit me and I groaned. No matter what happened, today was going to suck.
I pulled on jeans, a white tee, and a flannel shirt, then clipped my wallet chain to my jeans and shoved my wallet into my back pocket. On my way to the kitchen, I stopped quickly to brush the taste of hangover out of my mouth and wash the sleep out of my eyes, then headed downstairs to face the day.
Not surprisingly, my mom’s house was already full of people. Mom and Red were busy fixing breakfast, while at the twelve-seater dining table, Lady—Jackie’s widow—was being comforted by my younger brother Caleb and his girlfriend, Brandi.
Lady’s head was in her hands. I gave her a comforting rub on her shoulders as I walked by, and she looked up at me with eyes that were raw from crying. At the end of the table, my cousin Isaac’s son, Braxton, let out a loud giggle. At four years old he was the spitting image of his father with his blonde hair, blue eyes, and dimpled chin. He was playing with his cereal while his mom, Cherry, tried unsuccessfully to convince him to eat it and not play with it.
I sank down in the chair next to him. I love kids. I wanted a whole tribe of them. But I was nearing thirty, and so far kids hadn’t even come close to my radar. There’d been no one serious to have a family with. Besides Indy, there’d only been one other girl I’d considered getting serious with. Krista. Dark and beautiful. We had dated for almost a year but it just didn’t work out. Why? Because no matter how hard I tried—no matter how hot or beautiful the chick was—my heart still belonged with the girl I gave it to when I was five years old.
Braxton looked at me with his big, adorable eyes and when I winked at him, he winked back. So, with a jerk of my chin, I gave him the biker’s nod, and he gave me a tough biker’s nod back. I snarled my top lip and growled, and he snarled his right back. I couldn’t help but grin and he burst out laughing, Christ, the kid was so damn cute. Grinning, I ruffled his hair.
“What are you up to today, big guy?” I asked him.
“I have swimming lessons.”
“You do?” As I replied, my mom sat a cup of black coffee in front of me. I smiled up at her but kept my attention on Brax. “You’re doing pretty well with those lessons, huh, buddy?”
He nodded proudly. “I’m the best in my class. I can almost swim the whole pool.”
I looked at him, impressed. Damn. The little dude was a freakin’ fish.
But when I looked at his mom, Cherry, she shook her head with a grin and mouthed, “No, he can’t.”
I couldn’t help but laugh as I turned back to my cousin’s son. “Sounds like you’re kicking some butt.”
Red put a plate of bacon and eggs down in front of me. “Small man got some ribbon at school for runnin’, too, didn’t you, Brax?”
I gave Brax a big grin. “You did? Dude, you must be amphibian.”
Brax looked at me like I’d spoken alien.
“That means you can easily get around on land and in water,” I explained to him.
Apparently, I w
as still speaking alien because Brax just stared at me with those wide, blue eyes.
Red walked back over with a frypan full of hash browns. “You want hash, Cade?” He scooped a couple up but as he let them slide onto my plate he let out a loud, “Mother. Fucker.”
To which Braxton quickly copied. “Mudder. Fucker.”
I fake-frowned at him, “Oi!” But I had to force myself not to laugh. I shook my head and took a sip of my coffee. “Amphibian, he can’t say. But mother fucker he has no problem with.”
“That’s my boy,” Isaac said, sitting down between Cherry and his son.
I dug into my bacon, eggs, and hash browns. Being six foot and pretty much hard-as-fuck with muscle meant I could eat whatever the hell I wanted. But the biker lifestyle was hell on the body. Booze. Drugs. Cigarettes. Partying. No sleep. Women. Lots of women. It was a combination just waiting to take you out with a heart attack before you hit fifty. I didn’t plan on being a statistic, so I countered my booze and hard partying ways with daily, hard-core weight sessions at the gym.
A lot of my brothers did. Including Isaac.
“How you doing this morning, Lady?” he asked as my mom placed his breakfast in front of him.
Lady looked up from the coffee in her hand gave him a small smile. “I’ll get there, babe.”
Isaac winked at her. “Indy will be here soon.”
And just like that, the activity around the table stopped and all sets of eyes fell on me. Even Lady gave me a concerned look. It was because everyone seated at that table knew that the infallible Cade Calley had one huge motherfucking Achilles’ heel and her name was Indigo Parrish. I had lost my shit over her once and everybody wanted to know if I was going to turn psycho again when she returned.
“I’m looking forward to meeting her,” Brandi said. “What is she like?”
Caleb’s girlfriend was new to the club and I didn’t think she’d be around long. She was nice looking, had a decent set of tits and some serious come-fuck me eyes, but Caleb wasn’t known for his commitment to the opposite sex. He had a limited attention span and would grow tired with the same body in his bed night after night. Plus, Brandi had a serious case of the I can’t shut the fuck up in every situation.
“You’ll meet her soon, babe,” Caleb replied.
“She’s a bit of a legend amongst the ladies,” she continued, missing the prompt from Caleb to stop. “I’ve already heard stories about her. Boy, she sounded wild.” She glanced at Lady. “And very beautiful. I’ve seen photos of her in the showcase at the club.”
Again, a strange vibe hung in the air. Yep. These motherfuckers were all walking on eggshells.
“You’re right,” I said, and as soon as I opened my mouth, again, everyone looked at me. “She is very beautiful.” I looked at Lady. “When are you expecting her?”
“She’s on a plane from Seattle now. She’s going to pick up a car at the airport and drive herself into town.”
A familiar sensation tightened in the pit of my stomach at the thought of seeing Indy again, and I forked more hash browns into my mouth to ignore it. Just like I had drunk it away the night before with too much bourbon.
I tried not to acknowledge that it was a two-hour drive from the airport to Destiny. That in a couple of hours we would be standing in the same room as each other for the first time since she ran.
I frowned and jabbed a forkful of eggs and bacon into my mouth.
“You ready for hurricane Indy?” Isaac asked, grinning.
I glared at him. The motherfucker loved drama.
“As ready as I’m ever going to be.”
He looked at me and his smile faded. “Can we talk?”
“Sure.” I looked at him over my bacon. Grease dripped over my fingers. It was pure heart attack material, but damn it was doing my hangover some good. “You need to talk now?”
He nodded and something about the way he looked at me concerned me.
Outside, he lit a cigarette and squinted in the early morning sunlight. “You’re going to be voted in VP.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I suggested it.” He looked at me through a furrowed brow. “Not one person has disagreed. Bull thinks it’s a good idea.”
I shook my head. Holding any kind of rank within the club was a responsibility I wasn’t sure I wanted. It came with a shit load of obligation and little room to fuck up.
“We need to leave this until after we bury Jackie,” I said.
He nodded. “Yeah. But think about it.”
I put my hand on his shoulder. “I will. Thanks, brother.”
Isaac was my best friend. While I was close to my brothers, Chance and Caleb, Isaac and I were the same age, born two days apart, so we’d grown up close. We were like brothers. I could read him like a book so I knew something was gnawing at him. It didn’t surprise me when he changed the subject.
“Hey, I gotta talk to you about somethin’ else,” he took a deep drag on his cigarette and looked worried. Something was obviously troubling him.
“Is everything okay?”
His brow creased again. “I did this deal.”
Already, I didn’t like where this was going.
“Deal? What do you mean?” I studied his face. This wasn’t good. If he was setting up deals without taking it to Chapel first, then it was the last thing the Kings needed. The club had had a run of bad luck lately. A lot of good, solid deals had fallen through. The last thing we needed was for one of our members to do rogue deals.
The opening of the sliding door interrupted us, and my mom stepped out onto the porch. “There you are.” She took the cigarette from between Isaac’s lips, sucked down a toke before handing it back to her nephew. “We need to get going. They’re expecting us at the funeral home in half an hour.”
I looked at my cousin. “You okay to finish this later?”
He hesitated, but quickly relaxed and nodded. I watched him drop his cigarette to the ground and grind it out with his boot.
“Yeah. This can wait.” He smiled broadly and patted my back. “Come on. Let’s go make sure Jackie gets sent off right.”
INDY
Now
I hadn’t been back to Destiny since the day I had walked away from the club and my family twelve years earlier. Now I was in a rental car with the air conditioning cranked up to high and the familiar landscape of small town Mississippi scrolling past the window. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird” filled the car and despite the air conditioning, I had the window wound down as I sped toward the town I had desperately run away from as an eighteen-year-old girl.
The past was already coming back to claim me, filling me with familiar sounds, smells, and memories I hadn’t thought about in years. I sucked in a deep breath of the warm spring air to settle the butterflies taking flight in my stomach.
I was sad about Daddy. I was sad that he was dead and that I’d never had the chance to say goodbye. I was sad that we hadn’t spoken in several years. I was sad he was such a monster and that I wouldn’t miss him. He had been a mean sonofabitch and we’d both let go of each other a lot sooner than the day I left town.
Despite my hesitations about returning to Destiny, my head was surprisingly clear and it actually felt good to breathe in the familiar smells of the place I had once called home.
Since finding out about my daddy, my head had been filled with a million thoughts of the past. Thoughts about my childhood. Of my family. Of growing up in Destiny as an MC kid.
Of Cade.
I sighed. I wanted to see Cade about as much as I wanted a hole in the head. From what I’d heard, he was neck deep into the club now. According to my mom—on the rare occasions that we talked—he was a popular member of the MC and there was an expectation that he would rise through the ranks to be president one day.
Not that I was worried about seeing him again. I wouldn’t be hanging around long enough for it to matter.
Get in and get out. No distractions. That was the plan.
/> I’d be there for my mom, bury my daddy and then get the hell out of dodge.
The truth was, I didn’t need Cade Calley getting into my head. It had taken a lot of time and a lot of tequila to get over him.
A lot of tequila.
As I passed the timber-carved sign welcoming me to Destiny, Steppenwolf’s “Born To Be Wild” filled the rental car, and I experienced a fractured moment where the years peeled back and I was an eighteen-year-old MC kid again.
My eyes shot to the black script on my inner forearm.
Yeah, darlin’, go and make it happen.
I’d gotten the tattoo the day before the party at the MC clubhouse in honor of Cade’s heroism during the school massacre. The day before everything had fallen apart.
I tugged the sleeve of my shirt down to hide the tattoo and changed the radio station. I wasn’t that girl anymore. I didn’t need to travel down memory lane and rehash all the gory details of some guy doing wrong by me and breaking my sorry teenage heart.
Okay, so Cade was never just some guy. At one point in time the asshole had been everything to me. My cocky, beautiful MC man with the confident, manly swagger and piercing blue eyes that defied Mother Nature.
And I had another tattoo to prove it.
My eyes shifted to the elaborate daisy on my ring finger. It hid the fine black script underneath that simply read: Cade.
Yep. Like a prized fool I’d gotten his stupid-ass name permanently inked on my ring finger. Not hard to do when you are eighteen and raised in a motorcycle club full of tattoo artists. It was the one time my mom got pissed at me about my ink. But at the time I had truly believed Cade and I would be together forever, and that I’d never have a reason to not have his name on my finger. It was ironic, really, that four days later we broke up and I walked away from him for good.
Sometimes it was funny how things worked out.
My cell phone rang, and with one tap I put it on speaker.
“Hey, beautiful, are you in Mississippi yet?” It was Anson.
“Yes. I’m in the car heading toward Destiny now. I got in about half an hour ago.”
“Any hiccups?”