by Tia Lewis
Drake wouldn’t fire me or anything—he wasn’t like that. It didn’t matter if the girl behind the bar was pregnant as long as she knew how to mix a drink and keep the bar stocked. But then what about after the baby was born? How would I work? If I couldn’t afford a bigger apartment, I sure as hell couldn’t afford daycare. I shuddered to think how expensive that it would be to factor in expenses for food, clothing and health insurance.
What the fuck was I going to do?
As usual, I had more questions than answers when I pulled up in front of the clubhouse, parking my little Hyundai—that was another thing that I would have to think about, getting a bigger car—and stepping out into the chilly early morning air. I had a lot of work to do, and I couldn’t let the baby, my little nugget growing inside of me get in the way of my goal. I had to get in, get out and get ghost.
2
Creed
I woke up to the feeling of something tapping on my chest. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. One after the other, rapid-fire. Tap, tap, tap, tap, tap. I realized after the fifth or sixth set of taps that it was fingernails. A woman’s nails.
Which woman? Shit.
I had fucked up again, sinking balls deep into some new pussy without considering the consequences. I kept my eyes closed, hoping that she would think that I was asleep, collect her shit and get the fuck out.
“I know you’re awake, you liar.” I couldn’t place the voice. Where had I met her? She didn’t sound familiar—if she knew me, she wouldn’t still be in bed with me. I almost never spent the entire night with a woman after we had sex. It just wasn’t something that I did.
Women always got the wrong idea after sex anyway so why spend the night? I avoided something like that at all cost unless some serious shit had thrown a wrench into my plans. There was no use misleading a bitch into thinking that there was or ever would be something more between us other than a hot, sweaty night in between the sheets.
“Hmm?” I tried to sound as sleepy as I could, which wasn’t tough to do since I was half-asleep. Maybe she would get tired of giving me shit and leave me the fuck alone.
“I said, I know you’re awake.” She drew her face close to me. “And you owe me money.”
My eyes flew open when she mentioned a debt. “I owe you money?”
She smiled in satisfaction. “I knew you were awake. You finally stopped snoring. Yeah, you owe me money. Three hundred bucks.”
I squinted, trying to make sense of her face. Big blue eyes and thick, artificial lashes. A cute little button nose. Full lips. Dark hair. She didn’t look familiar at all. I must have just met her at the bar the night before.
Then it hit me. One of Bobby’s girls at the gentlemen’s club. Oh, fuck. Why the hell had I picked her up? What was wrong with me? I didn’t pay for sex, damn it! I never had, and I always swore that I never would.
“Oh, come on, baby,” I said, putting on my most charming voice. “You mean I don’t get a discount since we work together?”
“Three hundred dollars is a discount,” she said, grinning. She was smart, savvy. She had heard it all in her day.
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Bobby told us we could give you guys a courtesy discount if we ever hooked up.” She sat up in bed with her back to me, the long, lean back gleaming in the light coming from the window. She shook her brown hair out over her shoulders, the tangled curls hanging down below her waist and caressing the two dimples above her ass cheeks.
“A courtesy discount,” I grumbled in annoyance.
Bobby made sure that we paid him for the “perks” even though the club had gone in on his business; we fronted him the cash to put his upscale establishment on the map, so this fucker was the one that owed us money. He had a lot of nerve acting like he was doing us a fucking favor by letting us enjoy some worn-out pussy on his dime every now and then when in reality without us he wouldn’t be shit.
She turned her head until I could see her profile and smiled. “Hey, he has to make his money, right? It’s just business.”
I snorted. She had a point, even if I didn’t want to admit it. “Yeah, it’s just business. My wallet’s in my jeans. I don’t know where they are, of course.” I could hardly remember anything, come to think of it. I remembered going over to the brothel—the gentlemen’s club, rather—to pick up a payment. I had stayed for a drink or two. I had clearly picked her up. Had I delivered the payment? I sat straight up in bed, panicked suddenly.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, sliding her arms into the straps of her bra.
“The money I picked up. What did I do with it?”
She grinned knowingly like she had expected me to ask. “You put it in the safe when we got here. I watched you do it. No worries.” I hoped she wasn’t just fucking with me. She didn’t look like she was the type to play games. I sank back onto the bed with a sigh, while what’s her name came back with my wallet. I took out three hundred and handed it to her, laughing a little when I thought that part of the money might go back to the club once she gave Bobby his cut. I suppose that was my way of contributing.
I waited until she left to even attempt to get out of bed. I felt like a marching band was playing a halftime show in my head. The sound of crashing cymbals, booming bass drums, and stomping feet performing a hectic, choreographed dance slammed into my temples Every heartbeat made my head throb.
I had to get my shit together.
At least I had enough sense to take her to my room, or rather the room I used whenever I spent the night in the clubhouse. I had clean clothes in the drawers and clean towels in the closet. I stumbled to the bathroom to take a shower, praying it would do something to wake me up and make me feel a little more human. I needed all the help that I could get.
What would have happened if I had lost the money on the way to the clubhouse? Drake would’ve had my ass in a sling, and I would have deserved it.
What the hell was I thinking?
Easy—I wasn’t thinking. My dick had led me around, and I had accepted its guidance.
I’d been wanting to hook up with one of the girls from Bobby’s club for ages, ever since we’d first partnered up with them. I guessed she had given me the green light, and I’d been all over her before she could blink an eye. Was I that hard up?
I had paid for sex.
I had paid actual money for sex.
Who was I turning into? A pathetic, unapologetic loser who paid for sex. That’s who.
I had never done that before—just being in the club meant all the free pussy that I could ever want, and then some. Back in the day, I had been a pretty decent looking guy, too. Army training will do that to a person. Even if you’re not that great looking, and I was kind of handsome, all the working out will turn you into a man with a body that women drooled over. The uniform was an extra piece of the pie that helped, too.
I looked at myself in the mirror after stepping out of the shower stall, turning this way and that to get a good look at my body. There was still muscle under there. Maybe not as big as it used to be, but it was still there. I had let myself go a little too far over the years. Depression is a bitch, and I’d fallen straight into it when I got home. If I hadn’t had the club to fall back on, I wasn’t sure what would have happened to me.
I might have let myself go, and I might have been depressed for a long time, but I wasn’t so far gone that I had to use prostitutes. And I had never drunk to the point where I couldn’t remember what I did with the money, or any other important task that Drake or Jack had given me. That was a new low. I had hit rock bottom, and I needed to figure a way out.
At least it was early enough that I could get rid of the evidence of my indiscretion. Nobody needed to know about my overnight guest. The clubhouse was dead quiet, so I figured I was the only person who had spent the night. That was a relief, anyway. I wouldn’t have to face any jokes or bullshit from the fellas. They could be a real pain in the ass when they felt like it.
I walked downstairs in my bare feet, wanting
coffee more than anything in the world. Then I paused about halfway down, realizing that I could already smell the coffee. Somebody had already made it. Somebody was in there. Shit. I wasn’t the first one up. That meant that someone would know that I had fucked up.
I couldn’t just sweep this dirt under the rug and hope that it went unnoticed.
It had to be one of the girls since none of the guys would walk in and make coffee. They would probably turn right back around and go two blocks out of their way to buy a cup of coffee rather than make a pot. Who was it, then? Violet? It was probably just Nicole. Drake and Nicole had just gotten back from their honeymoon a few days earlier so it could be her.
Of course, it wasn’t either of them. Because why would God take pity on me on one of the worst mornings of my life? Tamara sat on a stool in front of the bar, her feet up on another stool, sipping from a mug. Staring me down, but she was trying to make it look like she wasn’t enjoying the view. We knew each other well enough that little games like that were obvious.
I didn’t know what her problem was. Ever since Drake’s wedding, she had been a real pain in the ass. No, she had started showing out since before then. I had told myself it was probably PMS before I realized that would have meant a few weeks of PMS. I didn’t think that the intricacies of the female body worked that way.
“Good morning,” I muttered, going to the bar to pour myself a cup. I couldn’t look at her. Because she knew. I knew that she knew, and she was smart enough to put it together in her head.
“Good morning,” she murmured. Yeah, there was that tone of voice. The one that told me that she knew all about my night and wanted to laugh at me but was trying not to make it obvious. She wanted her voice to be heard, loud and clear.
“How are you?” I asked, trying to change the subject.
“Better than you, probably.”
“What does that mean?” I turned to her, deciding that I had to man up. I wouldn’t slink away from her insinuation. If she wanted to talk shit, then I’d let her flap her jaws until she was tired. I wouldn’t slink away. Fuck that.
She shrugged. “I just thought if you had to go after paid pussy…”
“Watch your mouth.” We stared each other down for a minute.
“Or what? The truth hurts, huh?”
“No, it’s just that when you talk that way, it sounds stupid. Like you know the words, but you don’t know how to use them.”
“I know how to use them.”
“Sure you do.”
She stood, smirking. I noticed how slow she was moving like she didn’t feel well. I didn’t ask what was wrong with her because that would have meant that I gave a shit. I wouldn’t give her the satisfaction of thinking that I cared.
Because I didn’t.
She was so damned full of herself to think otherwise.
“Drinking tea now?” I asked. She was the biggest caffeine junkie that I knew. She usually drank coffee all day long.
There was always a pot on since she was constantly brewing a fresh one.
“Yeah. So?”
“So that’s weird for you, isn’t it?”
“Are you gonna write about it in your diary?” she asked. “Yeah, I started drinking tea a little while back. Coffee was starting to make me too jittery.”
“Maybe you should go back on it. You weren’t so fucking bitchy when you were drinking coffee.” I turned and walked away, going to Drake’s office for a little peace and quiet. I almost couldn’t stand being alone with her when she was so set on busting my balls.
3
Tamara
I took a deep, shaky breath when Creed locked himself in Drake’s office. Once he was out of the room, I could think straight again. I could relax. I leaned on the bar, wishing I knew what to do about him. I couldn’t spend the rest of my pregnancy pissed off. He would want to know why I was so moody and hostile. I could hardly explain it to myself, so there wasn’t much chance in hell of explaining it to him.
What was it that made me want to antagonize him? It wasn’t in my nature to be combative or confrontational. I got along well with all the guys in the clubhouse, all the time. Drake was practically a brother to me, even though we’d had an on and off sort of relationship for a while. That had been years earlier, though, and once it had died off we had become close friends.
I loved all members of the Blood Riders Motorcycle Club and got along with everybody. We’re a family.
So why did I need to piss Creed off all the time? Why was I always trying to get under his skin? Maybe because it was his fault that I was in the situation that I was in.
No.
That wasn’t fair, and I knew it even as my mind conceived the thought. It took two people to get pregnant, and I could have been more careful, too. I had to take responsibility for my reckless actions.
It was my choice for the two of us to stop enjoying guilt-free sex. It was both of our choices, but I had decided first. Creed wasn’t the type of person that a woman could depend on to hang in there for the long haul. He was more the type to run away at the first sign of anything real. Deep down he was a scared little boy at heart, and nothing more. I needed a man in my life if I were ever going to have anybody at all.
I was just fine without a man, too. I had never been in a relationship for more than a few months. One thing many of the people that I grew up with had in common was the way that we didn’t go for relationships. I’d had at least five or six “uncles” when I was a kid, My mother’s revolving door of boyfriends showing them in and out faster than I could learn their names. Even when I was old enough to know who the men were, my mother still called them my uncles like I was too naive to understand that they were the men that she was sleeping with. It was all so fucking stupid.
So, I didn’t exactly have a healthy view of relationships. I had never seen one up close and personal. Lord knows that my parents hadn’t had one. I had never seen them in the same room, at least not when I was old enough to know who my father was. I might have met him once or twice as a kid—I remembered a man holding me on his lap, looking down at me in a sort of special way. Hugging me a little tighter than people usually did. But I had never seen him again. He was as good as a stand-in for my father as anybody.
I was lost in thought by the time the door opened, and Nicole walked in. She was a sight for sore eyes. I hurried out from behind the bar, throwing my arms around her.
“You’re tan and gorgeous, you bitch.” I held her at arm’s length, and she laughed.
“I’m always tan,” she reminded me.
I gave her another hug, happier than I had been in weeks. We weren’t the most likely best friends, but over two years she had become beyond important to me.
When she pulled away, I could tell she wanted to ask about the baby. She was the only other person who knew, except for my doctor. I shook my head when I saw Drake enter out of the corner of my eye. He also was tanned and looked handsome as always.
“Look at you!” I gave him a hug, and his sheepish grin told me I still knew how to embarrass him. It was one of the perks of years of knowing each other. We had never been together in that special way, not once, and I was glad for it. Not that he hadn’t tried for a long time since I was the only woman involved with the club who hadn’t fallen under his spell. He saw it as a personal defeat back then.
“How was your trip?” I asked.
“I would love to tell you all about it, but I can almost feel the weight of everything I have to do crushing me.”
Drake look stressed, his eyes troubled. I knew why. With Jack in hospice—without much life left to live—the club was solely on Drake’s shoulders. None of us looked forward to the call that Jack had already passed away. I’d already decided that as much as he meant to me, I couldn’t be there in his final moments. I’d said goodbye to Jack at Drake and Nicole’s wedding reception. It probably wouldn’t be good for the baby for me to be at the hospice. I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to handle it.
“I’l
l need you to tell me all about it,” I said to Nicole.
“And I will, as soon as I get settled in. I probably have a million emails waiting for me.” She promised to come back as soon as possible before hurrying to her office.
I wondered what it would be like to have something real to do with my time, the way they did. I wasn’t a stupid person. I read more than just about anybody I knew, trying to make up for never going to college. Even when I was in high school, I never had time to spend on my homework, always watching my younger brother and sister. Sometimes the older brothers and sister, too. I was the middle child who had to wrangle the other five. It wasn’t fair. I was never able to be a teenager, and college had been a distant dream that I knew would never come true.
So, I read everything that I could get my hands on. My apartment was stuffed full of books, and I still brought more home all the time. Reading behind the bar had become one thing I could do to pass the time when things were slow—it wasn’t like the guys drank constantly, and even when I organized the upkeep of the clubhouse I still had a ton of downtime.
The more I learned, the unhappier I was with sitting behind a bar. It had been a great job when I was eighteen and not even old enough to legally drink. It had paid well, gave me money for a place of my own— and that had been a godsend since my mother’s house was practically a prison for me. Ten years later, a lot had changed. Except for the job, of course. It was the same thing, day in and day out.
What would it be like to have a million emails to answer? To have something a little bigger than making sure we were well-stocked on whiskey to think about? I was sure it would be a pain in the ass after a while, but at least it might be a challenge. I hadn’t been challenged in so long.