Kings of Mayhem (The Kings of Mayhem Book 1)

by Penny Dee

  Mom smiled. “It’s good having you home, honey.”

  I placed my hand on her arm but said nothing, simply offering her a warm smile and enjoying being close to her. Glancing across at Cade and seeing his back to me, I smiled at my mom again and then turned and disappeared down the hall.

  Walking into my old bedroom was another step back in time. The smell. The same floral comforter on the bed. The same faded curtains hanging in front of the window. My old desk in the corner of the room. I sucked in a deep breath. It was strange how familiar everything was, yet how disconnected I felt from it all.

  I sighed and dropped the McGovern’s bag on my bed.

  Even if my bag hadn’t been lost, I wouldn’t have bothered unpacking it because I didn’t plan on hanging around this place. I would say goodbye to my daddy and be here for my mom. But then I would be gone. I had a life back in Seattle. One that didn’t involve a motorcycle club.

  Get in and get out. No distractions.

  There was a knock at my bedroom door and I swung around.

  Cade.

  “Let me guess, you’re wondering how the fuck you’ve ended up back here?” he said, casually leaning against the doorframe, those two dimples perfectly in place on either side of his mouth.

  I had to look away because those dimples were dragging me back to the past by my hair. Cade was still every inch the handsome guy he’d always been. Only, it seemed the years had given his looks more potency—which seemed a little unfair.

  “Am I that predictable?” I asked, trying to shake off the tingling at the base of my spine.

  His eyes darkened. “No. You’re definitely not predictable.”

  An uneasiness hung between us.

  “I thought I’d come and check on you,” he said. “Make sure you’re doing okay.”

  “I’m fine.” I looked around the room. “It’s just weird, you know. Being back.”

  We had spent our last day together in this room. We’d talked excitedly about college while making love in my bed a ridiculous amount of times. It was the night of the clubhouse party where everything had fallen apart for us.

  “If there’s anything you need while you’re here . . . let me know. Like I said to your mom, I’m here for you both.”

  I nodded at him, wishing I knew how to form words because this was so fucking awkward. But apparently, I had lost the ability to speak like a grown-up.

  “And thanks for what you did for Caveman and Michelle today,” he said. “He’s going to make it because of you.”

  “It was nothing.”

  “Well, he was lucky you were there.”

  “I guess.”

  Twelve years of unspoken words hung between us.

  “It’s good to see you,” he said.

  I didn’t know what to say to that, because I had been prepared to hate him. Or not be affected by him. Or maybe I had simply planned not to care.

  No. I always cared.

  “I guess I’ll let you get back to it.” He nodded to the McGovern’s bag sitting on my bed.

  I forced a smile. “Thanks.”

  With little else left to say, he nodded and began to turn away, but stopped. He frowned as he turned back to me.

  “You know it was the biggest mistake of my life, right?”

  His words took me by surprise and I didn’t know what to say. I looked away because it was unfair of him to bring it up when I was so unprepared. What happened had changed everything. What he did broke my heart and stole our future from us. I felt ambushed by the mention of it, and my feisty little heart decided to tell him so.

  But when I looked up again, he was gone.

  INDY

  Now

  Much later, Mom took a sleeping pill and I tucked her into the couch in the lounge room because she didn’t want to sleep in her bed without Daddy.

  But I was too wired to sleep. Instead, I grabbed another bottle of wine and went outside to the tree house in the backyard.

  I sat with my legs dangling over the side and took a big mouthful of wine. It was crazy how much life could change in the course of twenty-four hours. Yesterday this place had seemed like a distant, bad memory, and now here I was, staring up at a night sky just like I had done a thousand times as a kid.

  I took another big mouthful of wine and appreciated the warmth spreading through my chest. By the third and fourth mouthfuls, my muscles began to loosen up and I started to relax.

  As kids, my brother Bolt and I used to play cards for hours on this very spot. Then Cade had taught us poker, and the three of us had spent hours playing the game using a pouch of old poker chips Cade had stolen from his daddy. Bolt had been a terrible player. He wasn’t one for being able to hide his emotions, whereas, I had a faultless poker face. I was hard to beat. Even Cade couldn’t beat me … and Cade was good at everything.

  I looked around. Carved into one of the floorboards was my brother’s name. Bolt. On another, Cade loves Indy. I ran my finger over the crudely carved letters and felt overcome by nostalgia. A lifetime had passed since any of this had meant something to me.

  In my teenage years, the tree house had taken on a whole new meaning. It wasn’t the place I came to play with my brother and my best friend. It was the place to escape the grief and arguments that had descended on our family home.

  It’s where I hid out. Where I smoked my first joint. Where I made love to Cade under a star-scattered sky.

  It was also where I decided to escape the club given the first chance I got. I remembered the moment like it was only yesterday.

  I was fourteen and life inside the Parrish home had come to completely suck. My mom and dad fought a lot. Daddy had changed. He’d always been gruff, but his tough exterior had always belied a fun and loving guy who loved his kids dearly. But the fun-loving father I knew left us when I was twelve. He became distant. Moody. Mean. He spent more time on club rides and immersed in club business. By the time I was fourteen, I had ceased to exist, or so it seemed, and our relationship deteriorated.

  Then came the push and shove of the domestic violence kind. When dear old Dad went and hit my mom.

  It was during a club cookout in our backyard, to celebrate the Fourth of July. Cade and I were hiding out in the tree house, watching the celebrations in the backyard as we sipped beers he’d stolen from his daddy. It was dark but the yard was lit up by the flames in the 44-gallon drums they used as fire pits.

  I don’t know how the fight started. Cade and I were drinking and playing poker when we heard the commotion. To this day, I still remember the spread of goosebumps along my skin when I’d heard my daddy’s booming voice. He’d raised his hand and struck my mom to the ground. A hush had descended across the people gathered on the lawn, but then, all of a sudden, everyone was busy again, moving about and talking as if nothing had happened.

  I leapt off the treehouse to get to my mom. She was on her knees, nursing her mouth, while my monster of a father stood over her, cussing at her and calling her names. Even now, sixteen years on, I could still see the look on his face and the meanness in his eyes. In that moment, I no longer loved him. I hated him. So I stood up to him and told him what an asshole he was. But he’d simply shoved me aside and stomped off.

  In a second, my fourteen-year-old self decided to get as far away from him and this fucking MC life as soon as she could. She wasn’t ever going to end up like her mom, on her knees nursing a bloodied lip while people barbequed on her lawn and acted like the nothing had happened.

  Seeing my daddy shove me, Cade went to say something but I begged him not to. When my daddy drank, he turned into a pit bull and I didn’t want any more trouble. Things had a habit of escalating when my daddy was drunk.

  I shook off the memory and took another mouthful of wine. My eyes drifted over to Cade’s bedroom. The shades were open but it was dark.

  I lit the cigarette I’d taken from my mom’s packet on the kitchen counter and drew on it, feeling lightheaded because in the real world I had given up cigare
ttes almost eleven years earlier. But this wasn’t the real world. This was my past. And it was fucking weird being back.

  When Cade’s bedroom light flicked on, my heart knotted. He didn’t know I was there. Didn’t know I could see him. Didn’t know I was watching. He paused and leaned down, resting his hands on the back of the desk chair as he thought about something. Then he straightened, and even from this distance I could make out the broad expanse of his back and the heaviness of his shoulders

  I took a second drag on my cigarette and tried to pull my eyes away from him. I wasn’t a creeper. But my eyes had a mind of their own. They wanted to watch Cade throw his bike keys onto the dresser and remove his cut. They wanted to drink it in as he placed his wallet and sunglasses next to his keys, and then pulled his black t-shirt over his head to expose a body that was nothing but all man. All man. I swallowed deep. This was wrong—all types of wrong, but for whatever reason, I couldn’t look away.

  His jeans were the next to go, and then his boxers, and finally—finally, I looked away. I crushed the half-smoked cigarette against the wooden floorboard of the treehouse. I drank back more wine. A few hours in Destiny and it was already fucking with my head.

  The light went on behind the little window next to his room and I heard the faint sound of a shower.

  I lay down and stared up at the starry sky, breathing in the night air tinged with the subtleness of soap. It was weird knowing Cade was only meters from me, naked and showering. Two days ago, he was a memory I didn’t visit. Now I was trying not to picture him lathering soap all over his mountain man body.

  A few minutes later, the shower switched off and I refused to think about him standing in his bathroom toweling off. I was an all-or-nothing kind of girl. I either held my feelings close to my chest and stayed focused, or I opened the floodgates and let everything tumble out.

  And I had no intention of letting anything tumble out while I was in Destiny.

  After a while, Cade’s bedroom light switched off, and I heard the squeak of the screen door, and then the rumble of a Harley as it bit into the evening.

  Feeling empty and strange, I sat up and watched him roar off into the darkness.

  CADE—Aged 7

  Then

  “Who do you think would win a fight between Spiderman and Superman?” I asked Indy.

  We were playing jacks on my driveway, sitting on the warm concrete. It was the beginning of summer break, and the days were long and hot.

  Indy thought for a moment. She twisted her head toward the sun and bit her bottom lip, frowning a little as she contemplated what I’d asked her.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Spiderman, I guess.”

  “Spiderman?” I repeated, astonished. “Why Spiderman?”

  “Because Superman is from outer space.”

  “Yeah, so?”

  “So . . . Spiderman is from Earth.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Annnnnnd . . .”

  “Earth is his home planet. Superman is on a strange planet. Spiderman has more friends here.” She picked up the jacks and threw them up in the air.

  I shrugged. “That’s crazy. Superman would win. He’s the man of steel. Spidey just throws his webs around.”

  The sound of a motorcycle pulling into her driveway turned both of our heads. It wasn’t one of the Kings, and it took me a few minutes to work out who it was because it was a face I hadn’t seen in ages.

  Uncle Calvin.

  I looked at Indy and saw her back straighten. Her eyes narrowed and her dark brows pulled in as she watched him pull up to the garage and climb off his bike. He walked over to where we were sitting and bent down so he was eye level with her. I saw her clench her teeth and her nostrils quiver as she breathed through her nose.

  “How’s my special girl?” he asked, wiping a lock of her hair away from her eyes. “You got a hug for your uncle?”

  She didn’t want to hug him. I could tell. And so could he.

  “What? I’ve been away for a year and you ain’t got no hug for me?” His voice was lighthearted, but there was a mean gleam in his eyes. I didn’t like Uncle Calvin.

  Indy rose to her feet and he scooped her up in his arms and held her against him. He was bigger than before. Like he had grown even taller and wider while in the Army.

  “That’s my girl,” he said, planting a kiss on her mouth.

  I stood up.

  “Hi, Uncle Calvin,” I said. I didn’t think it was right him kissing Indy like that. “Welcome home.”

  He let Indy down and smiled at me.

  “Hey, little dude.” He gave me his hand to shake. He had fat fingers with dirt under his nails. “You keeping my girl here out of trouble?”

  My girl?

  “We’re playing jacks,” I said.

  Calvin huffed. “Sounds like fun.” He stretched and yawned. “Well, I’m going inside for a beer with your mama, Indy. I think you should come in and spend some time with your family.”

  “Okay. I will be in soon,” she said, scuffing her tennis shoe against the concrete.

  When he disappeared inside, we resumed our game. But Indy’s mood had changed.

  “I think Superman would beat Spiderman hands down,” I said, throwing the jacks up and letting them scatter on the concrete in front of me.

  “I don’t care,” Indy said. “Superheroes are stupid.”

  I looked up. “No, they’re not.”

  “Yes, they are. They’re always getting into stupid situations. And the baddies are always coming up with dumb ideas.”

  “Batman is not stupid.”

  “Batman is the worst!” she said, deliberately trying to make me mad because she knew Batman was my favorite.

  “You’re wrong!” I stood up. So did she.

  “Everybody knows they’re stupid,” she snapped. “With their stupid capes and their stupid costumes. I think they’re the dumbest thing ever!”

  Anger made my cheeks hot and my fingers curl into a fist.

  “Because you’re a stupid girl—”

  “And you’re a stupid boy—”

  She made me so mad.

  “I don’t know why we’re even friends sometimes,” I huffed.

  “Neither do I.”

  My eyes widened. “Well, maybe we shouldn’t be.”

  Indy folded her arms across her chest. “What do you mean maybe?”

  “Fine.”

  “Fine!”

  She turned away and stomped off. So, I picked up my jacks and shoved them into my jeans pocket before trudging off inside my house.

  I spent the afternoon angry at her. I didn’t know why, but Indy was able to get me more worked up than anyone I knew. Even over dinner I was mad at her, stabbing at my carrots and peas with my fork, and gulping down my milk like I was mad as hell at it.

  My mama was going over to Lady’s to play chess, but instead of going to play with Indy, I told mama I was tired and wanted to go to bed.

  “You and Indy have a disagreement?” she asked, standing in the doorway of the bathroom as I brushed my teeth.

  “No,” I mumbled through toothpaste foam.

  But my mama was no fool. She raised an eyebrow at me and folded her arms as she said, “Cade Calley, I’ve known you your whole life. And the only time you don’t want to visit with Indy is when the two of you are fighting. I’ve seen you stay up hours after your bedtime just to see her when comes home from visiting her Grandma in Jacksonville.” She knelt down in front of me. “Is there something you want to tell me?”

  I thought of Indy and our fight. “No. I’m just tired is all.”

  She let it go. But not before she raised her eyebrow and gave me a knowing look.

  While she went next door to play chess with Lady, she had our babysitter come and stay. Her name was Cilla and she was married to someone in the club. We loved it when Cilla came and sat with us because she always brought brownies and ice cream. But tonight, instead of sitting up with her and my brothers, I went to my bedroom and sat in t
he darkness, hugging my knees to my chest and feeling angry. I watched Indy’s window, waiting for the light to come on. When it did, I turned my light on, too, and we both stared angrily at each other.

  Finally, Indy stomped toward her window and slammed it down. Well, it was more an attempt at a slam because it got stuck a couple of times and she really had to force it down. To show her I was just as mad, I did the same thing, I slammed it down so hard the glass rattled in the pane. Indy crossed her arms and poked her tongue out at me, so I crossed my arms, too, and pulled a face. She stormed off in a huff, and I saw the main light of her room snap off. So, I turned mine off, too.

  But I didn’t go to bed. I sat at my window and stared up at the full moon. I thought about climbing out and sitting on one of the branches of the sycamore tree, but I didn’t want Indy to think I wasn’t mad at her anymore. And, boy, was I mad. I didn’t want her coming out to see what I was up to and make me forget about our argument and want to make up. Because then she would think she had won.

  I shoved my arms across my chest again and set my mouth.

  She would have to apologize first.

  A sudden band of light appeared in Indy’s room and I realized someone had opened her bedroom door. From where I stood, I could make out a silhouette. It was her Uncle Calvin.

  Panic suddenly flared in my stomach.

  “Turn and walk away,” I whispered, untangling my arms from my chest and pressing my fingers to the window glass. “Turn and walk away. Turn and walk away.”

  My heartbeat picked up when he didn’t. Instead, he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

  Instantly, I knew Indy was in trouble.

  I didn’t wait. I climbed out the window and raced across the lawn, and around the side of Indy’s house. I knew my mama would be playing chess out on the patio with Lady. When Daddy and Jackie Parrish were away on rides, Mama and Lady spent a lot of time on the Parrish patio playing chess and drinking from fancy glasses.

  Feeling my heart pounding I unlatched the gate and ran through to the side garden until I reached the tiled patio. My mama and Lady were laughing but when they saw me, their smiles faded.