Fallen Lords MC: Books 1-3

by Winter Travers

  I couldn’t get that smile out of my mind.

  It haunted me.

  Day and night.

  I fucked up.

  *

  Chapter 2

  Nikki

  “Can I get a side of hash?”

  “You put it on the ticket?”

  I rolled my eyes and shook my head. “If I had, I wouldn’t be asking you.”

  “Then no, you may not have a side of hash.”

  “Then you can go tell the bitchy lady at table eleven in the corner she can’t have hash because she’s an indecisive cow who can’t make her mind up.” I grabbed the ticket Bos had in his hand and squiggled hash on the bottom of it. “There,” I growled, thrusting the ticket back at him. “The hash is on there.”

  “Indecisive cow?” A chuckle rumbled from his lips, and he shook his head.

  I leaned into the pass-through from the counter to the kitchen. “Yes, indecisive cow. It took the woman twenty minutes of me going over the menu with her to finally decide on the poached eggs and bacon. The fact she added the hash all on her own about bowled me over. Make the hash, now.” I was not prepared to go back over to her table and tell her she couldn’t have hash.

  Bos huffed but turned his back to me with the ticket in his hand. He knew better than to go toe to toe with me when I was in a mood. I had only been here for a month, and he already knew not to mess with me.

  “Bad day, sugar?”

  I gritted my teeth. I hated when anyone called me sugar. My eyes closed, and I leaned back my head. “For the ninetieth time, Alice, please stop calling me sugar.”

  She stepped next to me and bumped me with her hip. “Sorry, sugar.”

  “It’s a good thing I like you, Alice. Otherwise, I’m pretty sure I would have tit-punched you.”

  She scoffed and pinned her ticket up for Bos. “Please, that would have been the most action I’ve had in months. The old girls would have liked the attention.”

  “The fact you call your boobs ‘old girls’ worries me.”

  “Would you prefer peaches and cream?” She snapped her gum and put her arm around my shoulders. “The Olson Twins?”

  “Oh, my God,” I scoffed. “You are completely mental, you know that, right?”

  “You say mental, I say I know how to have fun.” She rested her head on my shoulder and sighed. “You wanna go out tonight? I thought we could hit up The Mark and watch the latest Vin Diesel movie.”

  “You mean the one you’ve watched the past month every weekend? And by the way, Fast 8 is not a new movie anymore.”

  “Well, by Kales Corners standards, it is.”

  I pulled away from her and turned around to lean against the counter. “I think I’m going to have to pass. The last three weekends of watching the same movie over and over have kind of grown unappealing.”

  “Well, I suppose we could take this weekend off and do something different. Although, don’t make plans for next weekend because I think they are getting the one with Mark Wahlberg in it.” Alice grabbed a towel off the counter and wiped down the coffee machine. “That man is almost as dreamy as Vin.”

  “Why don’t we go to the bar tonight?”

  Alice scrunched up her nose. “Really? You’d rather go to the bar instead of the movies? There are only eighty-year-old men and college drop-outs there. I’m afraid to say the bar scene you’re probably used to is way better than The Bar. I mean, they couldn’t even come up with a decent name. It is literally called The Bar.”

  She was right about the unoriginality of the name, but I needed a drink and didn’t feel like buying a bottle I was only going to have three sips out of and the rest would sit there. “We go to the bar for a few drinks, and then I promise, we can head back to your place and watch whatever Vin Diesel movie you want.”

  Alice tilted her head to the side and stuck out her hand to me. “Deal,” she mumbled, shaking my hand. “I’ll pick you up at seven. We chug our drinks, and we can be back to my house by eight.”

  I was going to accept that. If I drank enough, I would get drowsy and be out before we got through the opening credits of whatever movie Alice picked.

  “Hash. Don’t forget to write on the ticket from now on.” Bos slammed down the plate behind me, and I closed my eyes. Oh, how I wished for the days of Karmen and me working together. Things were so much better back then. Now I was in this podunk town trying to heal a broken heart that never should have broken, but that was the silly thing about hearts.

  They felt whatever they wanted, and there wasn’t any way to stop it.

  *

  Chapter 3

  Pipe

  “Wake the hell up.”

  I cracked open one eye and saw the dingy, dirty wall in front of me. An audible grunt rumbled from my lips, and I closed my eye. There wasn’t anything I needed to wake up for right now. After my full bottle of whiskey last night and not falling asleep until well after noon, nothing was going to get me out of this bed.

  “Karmen thinks she knows where Nikki is. I need someone to ride with me.”

  I willed my body to not jump out of bed. This wasn’t the first time Nickel had come to me with those exact same words. No one knew where Nikki had gone. She was here one day and then gone the next. After she had come to my door and heard the damn whore in my room, I couldn’t talk to her. She shut me out, and I couldn’t figure out how to get in. Hell, I don’t know why the hell I even wanted to get in.

  She should have been some girl who I had slept with, and that was that, but she wasn’t. The one time we had been together was burned into my soul, and I couldn’t get her gone. “Not interested,” I grumbled.

  Nickel yanked off my blanket, and a chill greeted me. “Thank Christ, your ass wasn't naked,” he chuckled. “We leave in two hours. She’s right this time.”

  I rolled over and looked up at Nickel. “You said that the last two times we tore out of here like a bat out of hell, and she wasn’t there.”

  “I sent Manic and Slayer ahead. They both said she’s there.”

  I closed my eyes and shook my head. “You sure are going to a lot of trouble to find this chick.”

  “She’s not some chick to Karmen.” Nickel moved to the door and looked over his shoulder. “And don’t try to deny she’s only just a chick to you too. You’ve changed, Pipe, and we all noticed when it happened.”

  “I’m not into whatever Oprah shit you’re about to lay on me. I’m straight. Your ol’ lady’s friend doesn’t matter to me.” I grabbed my pillow and laid it over my face. “Get out,” I muffled.

  “Well, I guess that’s more than you’ve ever said about Nikki before.”

  Her name rolled around in my head like it always did. The only way I lost it was at the bottom of a bottle. I yanked the pillow off my head and tossed it in the direction of Nickel. “You wanna tell me what the hell is going to get you out of my room?”

  “Five o’clock, be ready.” Nickel waltzed out of my room, leaving the door wide open.

  Fucking hell.

  I didn’t want to do this shit anymore.

  I had followed every lead I could to find Nikki, and none of them panned out.

  My gaze landed on the clock across the room. It was three-thirty, and I had barely slept three hours. There was no way in hell I was going to be able to sleep now I knew we were going to possibly see Nikki tonight.

  “Did he tell you?” Karmen peeked her head in my room. She had a huge smile on her face, and she looked like she could break out into song at any moment. “We found her.”

  “You think she wants to be found?” I didn’t want to be a dick, but you had to wonder, if Nikki went to such lengths to disappear, if she actually wanted to see any of us again.

  Karmen cocked her head to the side. “She calls me. If she truly wanted to never talk to me again, then she wouldn’t call me.

  She had a point. “You’re relentless, doll.”

  “You’re coming with, right?”

  I sat up, leaning back on my e
lbows. “You really need me there?” I don’t know why, but Karmen always insisted whenever Nickel got a lead on where Nikki was I needed to go along.

  She had been gone a little over a month, and we had been on five wild goose chases looking for her.

  She looked over her shoulder and stepped into my room. She pushed the door shut behind her and leaned against it. “Something happened, Pipe.”

  “With what?”

  “With you and Nikki. I’m not stupid. After the whole thing at the club where Morski tried to kidnap me, things changed with you and Nikki.”

  “She tell you that?”

  Karmen shook her head. “No. She swore up and down she wasn’t interested in you.”

  I laid back down and held up my hands. “Then I guess you have your answer. She wasn’t interested in me, so nothing happened.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest and paced the length of my room in front of my bed. “You think Nickel will like you being in my room with the door shut?” Not that Nickel would actually think that I would try anything with Karmen.

  She tossed her hands up in the air and sighed. “You’re not going to distract me from this, Pipe. Something happened to you and Nikki. Something that made her run.”

  “Nickel told me you said Nikki had been thinking about moving for a while.”

  “Yeah, but if she were going to move because she was fed up with Weston, then she wouldn’t have left in the middle of the night like some thief. She left with no trace because of something that happened with you two.”

  “You’re barking up the wrong tree, doll.” I wasn’t going to admit to anything. Nikki and I had knocked boots, but that was it. Neither of us had made any promises, so I wasn’t going to take any blame in her running. Did I feel like an ass for having another chick in my room when she showed up? Hell yes, but I hadn’t been doing anything wrong.

  “No, I’m not, but I don’t think you’re up to admitting that just yet.” She moved to the door and pulled it open. “I’m assuming Nickel told you we are leaving in an hour, right?”

  “He mentioned it.”

  She nodded her head and slipped out the open door.

  I didn’t want to go.

  The odd sensation she had left inside me when she disappeared wasn’t getting better, but I was getting used to it. The dull, nagging ache I felt was becoming a part of me. My hand grazed my chest, trying anything to brush away the feeling.

  I did that often.

  Fuck it.

  I was going to go. Maybe seeing Nikki again would give me closure or some shit like that. I wasn’t a damn shrink, and there was no way in hell you would ever catch me talking about my feelings with some stranger, but just maybe seeing Nikki would make everything go back to the way it was.

  Back to when the only person I cared about was myself.

  Back to getting my dick wet with anyone I wanted.

  Back to before Nikki.

  *

  Chapter 4

  Nikki

  What in the hell was she wearing?

  “Um, Alice? Is that what you are wearing?” My gaze traveled over her clothes as she backed out of my duplex, and I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. She had to be going back to her house to change. I had never met someone who would step foot out of the house wearing what she was.

  “What? Why?” She shifted the car into drive and launched us forward toward The Bar.

  It was a quarter after seven, and Alice was late, but I was used to that. Alice was late no matter what she was doing. Bos, who made the work schedule, had two schedules. One for Alice, and one for the rest of us. Her schedule was always fifteen minutes ahead of the schedule we had.

  I shifted in my seat and rested my hand on her arm. “Sweetie, you are wearing a one-piece pajama suit thing in a very loud cow print.”

  She rolled her eyes and turned onto the main drag of Kales Corners. “I know. I’m the one who dressed myself.”

  “Is the dress code at The Bar nap time chic?” Although what Alice was wearing was anything but chic. “Where do you even find something like that?”

  Alice snickered. “Oh, you got jokes now, huh?”

  I tried wiping the smile off my face, but it was damn near impossible. “Seriously, what is with the moo moo onesie?”

  “You promised we would only have a couple of drinks and then we are heading back to my place. I figured there wasn’t a reason to get all gussied up only to take it off half an hour later.”

  I sighed and stared out the windshield. “I can see your logic, but I would have gone with pajamas that were a little bit less…well…cow.”

  “Besides, I’m not looking to impress anyone at The Bar. Half of those guys are friends with my dad and grandpa.”

  Second thoughts about going to the bar flashed through my head as she pulled into the vacant parking lot. “Are you sure this place is even open?” I asked. I figured there would have been at least a couple of cars in the parking lot.

  “The bar is always open. It’s the only place you can get a drink around here besides the grocery store.” Alice pulled up next to the door and shut the car off. “I’m telling you, you have no idea what we are about to walk into.”

  I pushed open my door and put one foot on the pavement. “As long as they have whiskey and a jukebox, I’ll be good.”

  Alice rolled her eyes. “Sugar, you could have had both of those at the restaurant. You know Bos has a bottle behind the grill, and I could have brought in my boom box.”

  “Are we in the eighties now?” I laughed as I slid from the car and slammed the door shut behind me.

  She rounded the front of the car and leaned against the fender. “Don’t be talking shit about my boom box. I’m gonna bring it to work tomorrow, and we are going to liven up the breakfast crowd.”

  “We seriously need to update you, sweetie,” I muttered. Alice was only four years older than I was, but I swear, sometimes it felt like she was twenty years older. “Now, let’s get our drink on so we can safely get you back home to your movies and cow pajamas.”

  Alice moved to the front door and held it open for me. “After you, sugar. I want to see your expression when you walk in.”

  I rolled my eyes and stepped into the smoky bar. My eyes adjusted to the foggy haze. I waved my hand in front of my face and looked back at Alice who was still standing outside. “I thought you couldn’t smoke inside bars anymore.”

  Alice laughed and hesitantly stepped next to me. “Technically, you’re not supposed to, but the only people who come in here smoke, so it really doesn’t matter.”

  My gaze traveled over the small bar, noticing the bartender leaning against the bar, a cigarette hanging from the corner of his mouth while he pointed a remote at the TV over the bar. “Three dollar rails, two dollar drafts, and one dollar pull-offs,” he mumbled without looking at us.

  “Gee, Reierson, it’s nice to see you too.” Alice strolled up to the bar and set her wallet on it.

  Reierson, the bartender, looked over his shoulder and smiled. “You’re the last person I would have thought would walk through that door tonight, Alice.” He turned fully around to us, and his eyes bugged out of his head. “What in the hell are you wearing?”

  A giggle escaped my lips knowing I wasn’t the only one who thought Alice’s attire was a bit mind-boggling.

  Alice rolled her eyes and scoffed. “I’ll have a Coke, and Nikki will have whatever will get her drunk in half an hour. The meter is running on my patience, and I have no plans to be here longer than thirty minutes.”

  I lamely waved at Reierson and cleared my throat. “Um, I’ll just have an amaretto sour. Make it a double.”

  He hitched his thumb at me and smiled at Alice. “Is she always this cute?” His gaze landed on me, and he shook his head. “How about a whiskey and Coke? That’s about as close as you’re going to get to an amaretto sour here.”

  I had initially wanted whiskey, but I was trying to ease into a drunken stupor for the night. Reierson ha
d plans for me to fall head-first into it. “That’ll do,” I mumbled. One does not turn down whiskey.

  “Pretty dead tonight.” Alice plopped down on her bar stool and slowly spun around taking in the bar. “I thought for sure at least Mick, Bean, and Dell would be here.”

  “They were,” Reierson replied. He poured a healthy stream of whiskey into my cup and topped it off with a short squirt of Coke. “Your mama called and said she had leftover pot roast and they were out the door faster than I could add their drinks to their tabs.”

  Lord have mercy, I was going to be half in the bag after three sips.

  Alice snickered watching Reierson’s heavy hand with my drink. “You think you could maybe go light on the first drink with her?”

  He shook his head and placed our drinks in front of us. “You get what I serve you. Rule number uno of The Bar.”

  I hesitantly took a sip and felt the whiskey burn the whole way down my throat. “Good golly,” I gasped.

  Alice sipped her Coke and slowly spun around in her chair. “I have a feeling we’ll be out of here in fifteen minutes, and I’m pretty sure Reierson is going to have to carry you out.”

  That was probably a good guess. I lifted my glass up to hers and tapped them together. “Cheers, babe. Here’s to forgetting, well…everything.”

  “There is one good thing about you deciding to get rip-roaring drunk today. I can get your lips loose, and you can tell me all about everything you are trying to forget.”

  I took a huge gulp and shook my head. “You could feed me that whole bottle of whiskey, and there is no way I would tell you. It’s in the past, and that is where I fully intend it to stay.”

  Alice watched me warily as I downed half of my glass and slammed it down on the bar.

  “It’s a man, isn’t it?” This was from Reierson.

  I leveled my glare on him. “Really? Aren’t you just here to get me drunk?”

  He leaned his hip against the bar and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m here for whatever you need me for.”