by Lane Hart
When I hear the shower cut off, I shove the papers back into her purse and try to calm my rage. It’s barely in control when the bathroom door opens and Mercy steps out wearing nothing but a towel around her gorgeous body.
“As soon as we catch your fucking stalker, I’m done with you,” I blurt out. “And I’m done sleeping with you. I can’t do this anymore!”
“Abe, what are you talking about?” Mercy asks, coming over to lay a hand on my arm. “Did something happen while I was in the shower? What’s wrong?”
“Everything’s wrong!” I yell, jerking away from her and sitting down on the edge of my bed. “I can’t fucking breathe when I see those fancy dressed limp-dick bastards drooling over you on that stupid show. I thought it would be over soon, but to find out that you’re signing on for an extension, that you’re going to shack up with one of them…”
“What?” Mercy interrupts me, looking over at her purse to see the papers I hastily stuffed in there peeking out. “Abe, that contract is just a proposal they want me to consider. Nothing is set in stone.”
“Then why didn’t you fucking tell me about it?” I yell, standing back up.
Mercy doesn’t flinch or back down at all. “Because of this!” she yells back at me. “Because I don’t know what this is, what we’re doing. It’s one thing to be bossy in the bedroom, but now you’re going through my things? Why would you do that? I’ve had enough violations of privacy the last few weeks without you digging through my things without bothering to try and have an adult conversation about what’s going on between us. Just because we’re sleeping together doesn’t give you the right!” She gets closer to me as her voice rises, struggling to keep her towel on as she stands toe-to-toe with me.
“And what are we doing, Mercy? You’ve made it pretty clear that I’m just the fuck-boy bodyguard that you’re using for a good time, keeping me on the back-burner until your stalker is locked up and you find Mr. Fucking Right on your goddamned show!” I roar. “I know I’m not good enough for you, but I’m not going to stand around and be some pussy-whipped heartbroken runner up. I’m done with this. Go find your Prince fucking Charming and get the hell out of my life!”
“What are you talking about? You are good enough…” Mercy starts, before I turn my back on her and storm over to the door.
“I’m calling Sasha to come pick you up. Go stay with her until our flight to Vegas. You’ll be fine over there. You two can compare notes on your pussy-ass husband candidates,” I tell her, before I walk out and slam the door.
Once I’m outside, I have to lean on the wall in the hallway, waiting for the agony in my chest to ease. It feels like I’m having a fucking heart attack; it’s too tight inside me to breathe. I have no idea what this feeling is, but I’m starting to think that bullet did more than just leave a bruise on me. It feels like my heart is…broken. I shake off that ridiculous thought and stomp upstairs and out the bar, flipping open my phone to call Sasha.
Chapter Twenty
Mercy
After Abe storms out, I finish drying off and get dressed while trying to replay everything he said in my mind. I’m incredibly pissed at him for digging through my purse and frustrated with how demanding the big, sexy brute is being. He knows that I have to work out this show’s contract, or I’ll be blacklisted from any other programs in the future. This extension wasn’t my idea, and I haven’t even had a chance to read over the papers yet, much less discuss it with him.
To top it off, he had to make a crack about being a heartbroken runner-up. He said he never saw that season of King of Hearts that I was on, but to take a shot like that at me…why doesn’t he understand that I can’t just put myself out there for him, after what happened to me before? I needed to know where his heart was, and I guess today I found out.
I go upstairs to the bar, knowing that Abe won’t be there. None of the people who are milling around even pay any attention to me as I walk outside and wait for Sasha. I decide not to call her myself, hoping that Abe didn’t do it and he’ll come back. Only a few minutes later, though, her Mustang pulls into the bar parking lot, and she jumps out to come over and hug me.
“What happened? Abe called and just told me I needed to come get you!” Sasha says.
“I think we…I don’t know. Can you break up if you were never together?” I ask her, hating the knot in my throat and the tears that finally begin to spill down my cheeks.
“Oh Mercy, no…” Sasha says, wrapping an arm around me and pulling me over to her car. “Come on, let me drive you to your house to get packed up for our trip tomorrow, and then you can come stay at our place tonight. Tell me what happened with Abe. What are you fighting about?”
Once I’m in the car, I show Sasha the paperwork detailing the new program I’m being offered. “They want to give me a new show, one where I live with the guy I pick from the Queen of Hearts. I hadn’t had a chance to really look it over or talk to Abe about it before he dug it out of my purse while I was in the shower. Once he saw it, he got so angry, and told me we were done.” I fish a tissue out of my purse and blow my nose, so I don’t sound like I’m sniveling.
“That is one thing about the boys in the MC — they can be the jealous type,” Sasha tells me.
“He said it was killing him, seeing me being pursued by the guys on the show,” I confirm. “Doesn’t it figure that this freaking show is the thing that’s now ruining my love life?”
“Your love life, huh?” Sasha teases me. “So, tell me honestly, what’s between you two? How do you feel about Abe?”
“I…can’t say,” I tell her, looking out the passenger side window so she won’t see the lie in my expression. When I glance back over at her, she is smiling at me knowingly.
“All right, fine. I have…feelings for him,” I confess to her. “But I can’t do it, Sasha. I can’t put myself out there like I did with Blake. He broke my heart, and he wasn’t even…” I trail off as Sasha arches an eyebrow at me.
“Blake wasn’t what, girl? Go on, spit it out.” Sasha prompts me.
“He wasn’t half the man Abe is. In any regard,” I admit. “But that just means Abe could hurt me even worse if I tell him these things and then he keeps acting this way! If he wants me, really wants me, he’s going to have to show me.”
“Give him some time,” Sasha says. “We’re all going to be in Vegas for the next few days, and that city has a way of making wonderful and strange things happen.”
I reach over to turn up her stereo, which thankfully ends our conversation for now. We ride the rest of the way to my house without any further conversation, but do sing along together when a Bon Jovi song comes on.
Once we pull into my driveway, I nervously get out of the car and stand at the foot of the steps leading up to my front door and the walkway to the beach.
“It’s fine,” Sasha assures me, “You haven’t gotten any security e-mail updates since those last photos were captured, have you?”
“No, thank goodness,” I sigh in relief. “He couldn’t have been back around the house. And besides,” I say as I nod to the patrol car that followed us from the clubhouse and just parked across the street, “I still have my escort nearby.”
We climb the steps together and pause by the front door as I fumble for my keys. “My stomach still gets tied up in knots thinking about some freak being in here, digging through my underwear, you know?” I tell Sasha as I finally get the key into the lock.
Before I can step inside, Sasha grabs my arm and points over the long walkway attached to my house, leading down to the beach. I follow her finger and see that down near the outdoor shower, where my clothesline is hanging, are several items flapping in the ocean breeze. “We wouldn’t be talking about those underwear, would we?” she asks.
“Oh no,” I gasp, realizing that the security cameras only cover the corners of my house. The walkway extends almost fifty feet over the sand dune, well out of their line of sight.
“Don’t worry, what’s the wor
st it could be? The freak did your laundry?” Sasha laughs. “I mean, we’ll have to burn them, but at least he brought them back and he’s not in some basement wearing them on his head. Come on, no one is down there. Let’s go take a look.”
I start to protest, but Sasha is already stomping across the porch. Since there’s an officer just across the street, I steel myself and follow her. Sure enough, my delicates are spaced out along the clothesline, my bras closest to the house.
“Oh, Mercy, my god, look at this,” Sasha gasps. She pulls out her phone and points the flashlight on the letters written in bright red Sharpie along the splintered wood of the walkway.
“I CAN SMELL YOU”
“There’s another one down there, by your panties,” Sasha points out, and we grab each other's hand as we take a step over. In the same bright red ink on the rail underneath the rest of my intimates is written:
“I CAN TASTE YOU”
“Oh boy,” Sasha mutters. “If that means what I think it does, I’m gonna be sick.”
“Jesus, Sasha, the outdoor shower, the stall there!” I squeak, gripping her hand so tightly she flinches.
Sasha immediately ducks down with her flashlight, as the door to the stall doesn’t reach the ground. Releasing an explosive sigh of relief, she says “No feet, don’t worry. No one is lurking in there. Just in case, though,” she says as she marches over to open the door.
“Don’t!” I yell, but she’s already thrown open the door. Sasha’s hand flies up to cover her mouth as she steps back, then she turns to me in alarm. “Get in the house, right now,” she says as she looks around warily.
“What is it?” I demand. Ignoring her order, I take the phone from her hand and move closer to peek into the stall. Written in the same ink, in huge letters that takes up the wall of the stall is the message:
“AND IF YOU LOOK UP…I CAN SEE YOU”
“What?” I gasp, looking around in a panic. “What the hell does that mean?”
Sasha suddenly gasps and grabs my arm, jerking me around and pointing over the rooftops of the nearby beach houses. There, a few houses down, one of the neighboring rentals has a large cupola on the roof of the home. A figure is standing there, only visible as a silhouette in the moonlight. A shimmer of light shines and glints from what I’m guessing are the lenses of a pair of binoculars he’s using to gaze down on us.
Sasha and I both take a few horrified, tentative steps back towards her car, unsure if this is just a coincidence, until the figure raises one hand and gives us a jaunty, welcoming wave.
“Get your things,” Sasha tells me. “I’ll grab the cop and tell him that crazy bastard is right there, only…what is that, six, seven houses down? Go, girl!” she tells me with a light shove to get me moving.
Hair flying behind me, I dash into my house, digging under my bed to grab my suitcase and throwing clothes into it willy-nilly. I’m barely aware of what I’m packing, and I rake my arm across my vanity to dump my make-up and supplies on top of my clothes haphazardly. By the time Sasha runs back onto the porch, panting and out of breath, I’m already heading outside with my roll-behind luggage and my carry-on.
“Let’s clear out of here, now,” I gasp, winded from my whirlwind through the house.
“I’m locking the door. Go, go, go,” Sasha says, shooing me out the door as she reaches inside to kill the lights.
The officer is no longer across the street as we throw my bags into the trunk of Sasha’s car. “I told him what we saw, and he went down the street to check it out,” she tells me. “He’s going to come investigate the scene up here later, then call us. I told him we wouldn’t need him to follow us out to the farmhouse, Chase will be there, and we’ll be leaving soon for Vegas.”
Once we’re in the car and safely away from the house, I manage to catch my breath. “Do you think that officer will be able to catch him?” I ask Sasha.
“I wasn’t able to give a good description of the guy we saw since it was just his silhouette,” Sasha sighs. “The officer said he would check it out, but all the guy would have to do is walk down to the beach and disappear in the darkness. Don’t think about that, though. They’ll call and let us know what they find. Let’s focus on getting out of town and away from all this craziness for a few days! We can stir up our own brand of crazy out on the Vegas strip, away from your would-be suitors and stalkers!”
“I wish…” I begin to say, before choking it off.
“You wish what?” Sasha teases me with a raised eyebrow.
“I just wish this was over, the show, this freak who is out there, all of it,” I lie lamely.
“Uh-huh,” Sasha agrees sarcastically. “Don’t worry, those wishes will come true soon enough. And if you were thinking about wishing for a big, bearded biker-fellow, well, he will be along tomorrow, at the airport. Give him some space so he can get his head straight. Abe’s mom was…not good for him, or his brother. The first woman he was supposed to love tore him apart and ruined his childhood, so he has trouble with all of them now. Kind of like what happened with you and Blake.”
“Great, you didn’t tell me he had mommy issues when you introduced us,” I scoff.
“Not living in her basement, or not being able to cook or do his own laundry type issues,” Sasha corrects me. “From what Chase has told me, she was a drug addict who left Abe and his brother alone when they were tiny, for days at a time before she overdosed and died. Abe would have to go out to neighborhood stores and steal anything he could to feed them. The only reason he’s a felon is because he kept getting caught.”
“He’s a bit too big to be much of a thief,” I agree. “Not really the profession for a man of his stature. Abe’s not exactly inconspicuous. But wait, you don’t get felonies for shoplifting, do you?”
“I dunno about that, but Abe did mention to me once that he got locked up for grand theft auto,” Sasha informs me.
“Wow.”
“Yeah, later on when his little brother was in middle school, Gabe showed a real talent for art. They needed clothes, supplies, you know, normal teenage stuff,” Sasha tells me. “Abe already had a juvie record and couldn’t even find a fast food job, and he didn’t want Gabe following in his footsteps. He fell in with a group of guys who boosted cars, guys he had met while in the detention system. If his mother and her ‘friends’ hadn’t constantly stolen from him, he might have been able to just do a few small jobs and get out, but he kept needing more cash. His luck finally ran out when he was eighteen, and he ended up doing some real time. He met Chase while he was inside.” Glancing over to me she says, “Hey, don’t let Abe know I gave you his sob story, okay? He wouldn’t like it if I was telling you his business, at least not right now.”
“Of course,” I reassure her. “I’m glad you told me. It kind of explains, well, everything about him. I just can’t wait to see him, though. Tomorrow can’t get here fast enough.”
“I’m with you there,” Sasha agrees. “I’ve been waiting to marry my man for over ten years. This is going to be a great week, girl, for both of us. You’ll see.”
Chapter Twenty-One
Abe
The roar and vibration from my Harley feels like it’s going to crack open my skull when I roll into the airport the next morning. Once Chase confirmed that Sasha had picked up Mercy, I went back to the bar and crashed in the corner, drinking and smoking until my guts started trying to crawl up my throat. A couple of my brothers tried to come talk to me and find out what had put me in such a dark mood; but after I sent a few scampering away with their tails between their legs, the rest understood I wanted to be left the hell alone.
The truth is I’m not entirely sure why I’m in such a shitty mood. Mercy has been nothing but an angel to me. And if it wasn’t for this damned show she has to finish and the men she has to be seen with, I think I might have a chance with her. I know she’s acting this out and has no real interest in any of those guys. The problem is that I just can’t completely trust any woman not to destroy m
e. All the women that have ever come into my life have wanted to use me in one way or another, and the idea that she truly likes me for just being myself is hard to wrap my head around.
I leave my bike in the underground long-term parking lot and double check the straps on my carry-on, cinching it tightly to my back. Everything I need for a few days rolls up nicely into a backpack. I spot Dalton on my way into the terminal, and damn if that idiot isn’t sitting on a big ass piece of luggage with wheels on the bottom, riding the damned thing into the airport.
“I like your new ride, little D,” I yell at him. “You decide to bring that leaky-ass knucklehead engine of yours on vacation to try to replace the seals finally?”
“Hey, Abe, you’re alive!” Dalton yells. “I was sure you were going to miss the flight after the night you had,” Dalton waves at me cheerfully as he kicks his new ride along the sidewalk towards me. “Ha-ha, knucklehead. For your information, some of us need more than one pair of underwear and our teddy bear for an event like this.”
“I didn’t pack any underwear,” I tell him solemnly, sending him into a cackling fit.
“Hey, man, if you can go commando in the Vegas heat, more power to you. You probably tuck that hog leg into your socks anyway, so it won’t sweat too much.”
As I turn to go inside, Dalton’s cackles grow louder. I just grit my teeth and keep going, knowing full well what he saw that got him so tickled. It wouldn’t fit all the way into my pack, so peeking out of the top is the head of what is obviously a rather large stuffed bear.
Thankfully, we get separated once we’re inside, as his trusty steed is too big for a carry-on. While he’s checking in his bag, I get through security and head on down to the boarding area. By the time I get there, they are already letting my brothers on the plane.