by Ada Stone
The quarry was huge. Much of it was underground at this point, but they’d dug and delved into the side of a mountain, leaving a huge cliff face on one side where the road wound up and was generally speaking off limits to the public. Down the other side was a manmade lake where they’d used water to wash out the debris that came out and kept it from seeping up and clouding over the entire damn city.
There were remnants of broken pieces of equipment, including a crane which had been set up years ago and ended up killing at least two men, and a tractor of some kind that was used to dig and haul large quantities of rock and loose earth. There were some scaffolding skeletons and loose two-by-fours lying around from when they were still trying to brace beneath the ground where they’d been digging, but in the end, all of it was half rotted.
It’d been here forever.
I jumped the fence easily because I wouldn’t let anyone call me chicken. Besides, ghost stories or not, I wasn’t afraid of a damn place like this. How many run down hell holes had I seen in my life? Dozens. I’d lived in them, called them home, watched as people too drunk and too high let them fall below livable levels until they crashed into what I fondly called “Desecrated Ground.” If I could survive all of that crap, then I wasn’t going to worry about a little thing like ghosts.
Behind me a half a dozen kids from my school were holding back, leaning against the fence, watching me as I headed towards the belly of the beast as they liked to call it.
About ten years ago, a man had died on that scaffolding up ahead. There was some tragic story about how he had been in love and the love of his life betrayed him or something. Cheated with another man, a friend or a coworker or his brother. Something sort of epic and destructive.
I didn’t care. If the story was true—the death probably was; the girl not so much—then he wasn’t much of a man to begin with. What sort of asshole got all broken up over some chick who clearly didn’t love him enough to not stay faithful?
Loyalty was a big deal to a guy like me and any girl I dated would show it in spades.
There was supposed to be a ladder that led down below to the lake and some of the older pieces of machinery, and as I crept closer towards the edge I noticed it. A shadow in the distance. It was the movement that made me freeze, but it was the taunting voices behind me—“Chicken already?” and “Some tough guy you turned out to be”—that spurned me on.
More determined than ever, I made a beeline for that shadow. I was seventeen and I wasn’t about to be scared of some shadow haunting an abandoned rock quarry.
When I finally got within arm’s length of the shadow, I reached for it, and as my hand wrapped around something solid and clearly not ghostly, I swung the form around. Then I caught my breath.
Even in the dim lighting she was beautiful. She had a sweet face and full, kissable lips. Her hair was thick and wild, falling about her shoulders in heavy waves that seemed to defy gravity, as dark as the night. And her body? Well, that was any kid’s wet dream. Her tits were the size of melons and the urge to reach for them was almost overpowering.
Instead, I licked my lips.
“What the hell are you doing here?” I demanded, glad that my voice wasn’t breaking all the time like it had the previous year.
Jerking her arm out of my grasp and startling me, she folded her arms beneath her chest, causing those damn tits to smoosh together and push up until they looked ready to spill from her shirt at any moment.
Which wouldn’t have bothered me a bit.
“What are you doing here?” she returned back to me. “I was here first.”
At that, I smiled in the darkness, deciding instantly that I liked her. “My name’s Nick Perry,” I introduced, taking a step closer to her instead of offering her my hand.
She didn’t back down. Instead, she lifted her chin and said, “Zoe. Zoe Rivers.”
It had been the first time I’d ever met Zoe, just at the time when my life was finally shifted. We wouldn’t date for another two years—she had always been picky like that; I wasn’t sure what changed—but she was always in the peripheral of my life. Hanging out cautiously on the edges of it, maybe watching, maybe waiting to see what I would do, maybe waiting for me to finally work up the nerve to ask her out.
In the meantime, I started Heaven’s Wrath. It was small and started with only a few guys—Jordan being one of them and Sal finally refusing to be a party to my madness, as he said—but it would grow with time.
And we met here, because that night had been something special to me.
Thinking back on it now, I almost regretted deciding to meet here. There were a lot of memories here and not all of them had to do with the club. They had to do with Zoe on her back, calling out to me as I drove into her, not caring that we were outside or that someone might find us or that she was fucking loud and the place echoed. They had been good memories once, but now it was hard to think of them.
Harder still because my body still responded to them physically.
I needed to get laid, I decided, and was starting to think it didn’t matter with who. I had almost decided that I would just call the damn waitress when everyone really started to arrive.
I spent the next twenty minutes getting reacquainted with those who had remained loyal and true to the club. I was pleased to see who I had left, even if some of the absences disappointed me. When it looked like everyone was here that was going to be here, I started.
“I don’t know what the fuck is going on,” I began in a harsh tone that had people cringing as they heard me, even Jordan, “but it’s got to change. Fifty? Really? Fifty of you assholes managed to get their shit together and be a true rider. The rest run scared.”
There were murmurs around the club, but no one outright said anything. Which was fine; mostly, this was for show. This was about explaining to them that I was pissed—and that I was grateful.
“Well, fucking good. Good, because I’m not interested in dealing with any half assed wannabes. This is about the people who are. The fighters, the powerful. This is about the guys who are gonna follow me when I lead them into danger, because, damn it, that’s what we do! And if you’re not interested in that, then you’d best leave now. And I’m not just talking about the club or the quarry. Get the fuck out of town and get the fuck out of my way, because I don’t have time for the likes of you.”
There were murmurs that once again rippled through the semi-circle of riders surrounding me. There seemed to be hesitation, even fear, but no one made a move. No one spoke out. They were holding fast as I hoped they would.
“Good. Because I’ve got a plan and I need some goddamn warriors to carry it out. Are you warriors?”
There wasn’t a pause this time. No hesitation as a roar went up and echoed through the walls and across the surface of the water. I knew then that the quarry had been a good choice, regardless of the connotations for me personally.
After my little speech, we broke it down. Not everyone needed the specifics yet, but I needed a few guys on my side who knew the intimate details of just what we were getting into.
“Sal?”
It was Bob, Jr. who spoke, who wasn’t really a junior at all. He was roughly my age with noticeable facial hair and some scars from a bad car crash he got years ago smearing his otherwise good-looking face. He was pretty quick on the wit and reckless as hell, especially when coupled with Bob, Sr., who was in no way related.
They just happened to have the same name and were generally regarded as the Bobby Boys because where one was, the other wasn’t far behind.
Bob, Jr. straightened, folding his arms across his chest and shaking his head. “Why the fuck you wanna go messing with Sal? I mean, the Vengeful Gods are a bunch of flashy assholes, but ain’t no way we can win a war with them. They’re like four hundred strong now!”
I raised an eyebrow at him. I’d known that the Vengeful Gods had grown in size, but I was surprised by how much. That didn’t mean I wanted them to know I was surprised. Part
of being a leader was keeping your cool even when things didn’t go your way. This was definitely not going my way.
Bob, Sr. snorted. “So what the fuck ever? We’ll cut ’em down no problem.” When Bob, Jr. sent him a dirty look, Bob, Sr. just shrugged. “What? They’re a bunch of pansies.”
Bob, Sr. was old enough to have gone half gray and have leather for skin. His face crinkled up in a strangely pleasant way when he smiled, but otherwise he was a sight to look at. Like some kind of pirate cast in the wrong movie, he almost looked like he needed an eyepatch across his face.
Before the Bobby Boys could start arguing—as inevitably they would—Schumacher spoke up. “Senior’s got a point. Sal’s got the numbers, but they’re jittery, nervous. They aren’t ready to go to war for him.”
I thought about that. Not ready to go to war for him. That, at least, was an advantage. I didn’t have near enough men to go head on with these guys, but if I could scare enough of them off, there was a good chance for us.
“Alright,” I told my small group. “We fight this smart. I want dirt on Sal, as much as you can dig up. And I want to know what he’s doing at all times.”
I was going to make Sal pay, and in that moment, standing with a group of ruffians in the place where I’d first met Zoe Rivers, I realized the perfect way to do it. I was going to seduce Zoe all over again.
Chapter Four
Zoe
I wasn’t going to admit it to anyone—not to myself, not to Nick, and sure as hell not to Sal—but I was in a tizzy after seeing Nick. It wasn’t like I didn’t know he’d gotten out. I’d been counting down the days, even though I knew how stupid that was. It wasn’t like there would be some wonderful reunion after he got out, but I couldn’t help myself.
But seeing him like I did…that was hard. Harder than anything I’d ever had to do up to this point, and I’d had to do some pretty hard things over the last few years.
The fact that I was so on edge was what made me decide that it was a cleaning day today. I had started with the kitchen and was about halfway through the living room now. The upstairs would be next. Since getting with Sal, I’d given up a lot of things that, at the time, had been both very important and not important at all in the grand scheme of things.
A job? Who actually wanted to get saddled with work that they absolutely hated?
So when he told me that I should quit, that he would take care of the expenses, well, I didn’t argue. I told myself it was because I hated that damn waitressing job and the secretary job before it, but I knew what the real reason was. I just couldn’t tell anyone else what that was.
As I finished vacuuming and put it up in the closet, there was a knock on my door. I glanced at my watch. Only a little after noon, so probably not Sal. He had “business” in the day, he usually told me, though sometimes I knew the real business took place late at night.
Thinking it was maybe the post or something, I headed to the door, wishing I’d cleaned up a little bit. I was wearing those ratty cutoff shorts that Sal hated so much and a tank top, the kind that actually buttoned down though it was more practical to jerk the shirt over my head than undo them all. My hair was tied up in a messy, wild ponytail. Not exactly the most presentable look in the world, but I was cleaning—what was the point of dressing up?
Swiping at stray strand of hair, I yanked open the door and felt my heart skip a beat. Twice in as many days, I found Nick Perry standing on my doorstep.
I almost slammed it in his face then and there, not wanting to deal with another argument or another round of the blame game. I was done with that, thank you very much. I had my reasons for doing what I did and I couldn’t share them with Nick, so really, what was the point of sitting there and arguing?
But before I could yank the door closed, he pulled out a drink holder with two coffees from that place I loved down on Cedar and a baggie filled with what I had a sneaking suspicion was two huge muffins topped with cinnamon sugar crumbles and toasted marshmallow coating stuffed with gooey chocolate chips.
My absolute favorite.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his face radiating a sweet earnestness that I didn’t think I would ever see again. His jaw was still sharp, the lines beneath his eyes were still deep and long. There was still an edge in his gaze, but I found a little of the old sweetness lingering there, too.
Something I’d missed sorely.
Still. I’d seen his flashing anger last night and I couldn’t for one minute believe that he had just let bygones be bygones after less than a day. There was no chance. Especially now that Sal was thrown in the mix. They’d been enemies for as long as I could remember, fighting with each other like only people who knew each other really well could.
No one had ever volunteered any information as to why, and in all fairness, I couldn’t care less. I didn’t want any part of their little feud and that was just fine with me.
Eyeing the coffee, I folded my arms beneath my chest, trying to hide just how much I wanted to believe that he really had forgiven me. That he was apologizing for real, but how could I? How could I when I knew the kind of hurt he was feeling?
I just couldn’t figure out why else he’d be standing in my doorway with muffins and coffee.
“Are you going to at least say something, or am I just going to stand out here all day while our coffee gets cold?” he asked, putting just a little bit of a lilting tease into his voice.
My frown deepened, but even as it did and I tried to hold strong, I felt myself softening. “What if I just told you to go away?” I forced myself to ask, though I knew that regardless of his answer I would never ask that of him. I couldn’t. I’d already done more than I ever thought I’d manage and it was just too much to expect more.
I saw his eyes flicker, but the emotion fled as quickly as it came, too fast for me to pick it out. But his smile stayed in place and he gave an easy shrug of his shoulders. Nonchalant, like this was nothing to him, all of it.
Now I definitely knew something was going on. Still, I waited for an answer.
“I guess I would tell you that you don’t really want me to go away.” He winked at me, like this was a joke or a shared secret or something else equally as ridiculous.
We weren’t children anymore, and I was marrying another man very soon.
Shaking my head, because I was starting to think of stupid, dangerous thoughts, I said, “No. I’m sorry, Nick, but you can’t come in.”
Instead of backing off or saying that was fine or doing anything else that might have made it easy on me, Nick did a Nick thing. He stepped closer, just a little, so that the tips of his steel-toed riding boots were just past the entryway, perfectly placed to keep the door at the very least cracked. I wouldn’t be slamming it in his face anyway. And then he leaned forward, just slightly, in that way that he used to do when we were kids and he wanted to charm me.
I was ashamed to think that it still worked, but it did. I found myself wanting to lean towards him to meet him halfway, to suck my lower lip between my teeth and worry it, because I knew if I didn’t, I’d say something stupid. Say something wonderful. Or that I’d just try to kiss him then and there.
My body flushed, though he wasn’t doing anything but looking at me, but it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter in the slightest, because I knew that look, had always known it from the first time we met in the rock quarry that night and he saved my life. He didn’t know it, probably never would, but I’d been in a bad place then and he’d pulled me back from it.
“Let me tell you I’m sorry, Zo,” he said, dropping the ‘e’ in my name so that he could whisper it like prayer. “Let me tell you that I’m an asshole. That you’re right. Just give me a chance.”
And before I could think better of it, before I could let myself remember all of the obvious reasons that this was such a bad idea, I found myself stepping back. I let the door open wider and let him cross the threshold into my home. The home that once upon a time I had dreams of sharing with him.
He went to the kitchen and I trailed behind him, keeping some space between us because if nothing else, this visit had taught me that he still had the same irresistible pull that he always did on me. It wasn’t a good thing.
Nick set the coffee tray down and the muffins next to it, then grabbed one of the cups. Turning, he offered me a crooked smile, handing me the cup. “Coffee with two scoops of sugar and about a quarter cup of cream.”
I did my best to hold back a smile, but I could feel it on my face regardless of my wishes. I took a sip of the beverage in a pathetic attempt at hiding it from him, but I could tell by the way his own grin widened that I failed in my efforts.
Taking a deep breath, I finally said, “What are you doing here, Nick?”
He picked up his own cup—black coffee, as strong as they could make it—and drank it carefully, thinking over his next words. He looked casual doing it, leaning against the counter with one arm and drinking his coffee with his free hand, not quite looking at me, but instead staring up at the corner of the ceiling as though just casually examining a spot there.