by Mia Malone
Something passed silently between them, and then Paddy nodded.
“Call Day, we’ll do it here,” he said calmly, and Mac moved immediately.
Suddenly who they were made sense and I blinked in surprise. How had I not seen this?
***
Joke
Oak was closed, Day was on his way, and they would wait for him, but Joke was not happy about the delay. He knew that whatever Sissy had to share would make him supremely unhappy and he hoped to God he’d be able to stop himself from exploding.
Sissy walked over to the tables where the others were waiting, and stumbled a little when she almost walked into a chair. Joke stretched a hand out toward her hip to steady her, which made her sidestep quickly, and his brows went up.
“Babe?”
“Don’t,” she said quietly.
“I didn’t –”
Did she think he would start feeling her up right then?
“It’s not that,” she interrupted, stepped closer and whispered. “I got a tattoo today.”
Through his stunned silence he heard that her whisper hadn’t been quiet enough because there were chuckles in the background.
“You got a tattoo?” he asked hoarsely.
He didn’t particularly like women who had tats all the way down their arms or massive things all over their cleavage. Other places? Yeah, that was another story, and a story he really liked.
“It’s kind of… not tiny.”
It felt as if someone punched him the belly, but he tried to hide his reaction. She’d gotten a tat that was kind of big.
“Where?” he rasped out before he could stop himself.
“On my hip. Bobs did a fantastic job.”
“Show us,” Mac called out.
“It’s covered so my pants won’t scrape over it,” she said with a grin. “Looks great. Celtic design, black dog.”
“A dog?” Mac asked, and Joke wanted to know why the hell his buddy was so damned interested.
“Always wanted one,” Sissy said quietly.
“So get one,” Joke said before his goddamned friends could state this obvious fact.
“Can’t have a dog,” she said and the way she suddenly looked told him immediately what had happened. She told him anyway. “He kills them. Killed my daughters’ pets too.”
Joke turned abruptly and took a few steps away to stare into the wall. Wanting to hit it. Shit, he wouldn’t manage to keep his temper in check.
“Hold it together,” Gibson said quietly and put a steady hand on his shoulder. “My place later. We’ll work it off.”
“Yeah,” Joke rasped out.
“What’s going on?” Day asked as he closed and locked the door behind him.
He was met by silence, and his face hardened.
“Right,” Sissy said. “I have some shit to tell you.”
“Give us a sec,” Joke cut in and moved her away from the others.
He put his hands on either side of her neck and leaned in close.
“I might get a bit upset,” he said quietly. To his surprise, her lips twitched, but he went on quickly, “I’ll try to stay calm.”
“You throw any bottles, you clean the mess up yourself,” she said calmly.
He straightened and stared at her.
“I won’t.”
“You might.”
Shit. He might, actually.
Sissy looked like she’d handle it if he did, so he nodded and said, “Let’s do this.”
She nodded too, and they walked back to the others and sat down.
“I should have checked in with you, Paddy,” Sissy started, and Joke felt his brows go up. “I didn’t realize that you’re a club, but I should have seen it.”
There was a stunned silence, and then Paddy tilted his head to the side.
“Why do you think we’re a motorcycle club?”
“Oh, please,” she snorted. “I grew up in one.”
“You –”
Paddy clearly didn’t know what to say and just stared at her. Then Day started laughing.
“I always wondered. Your dad picked you up on a bike once, and he has that look –” He cut himself off and laughed some more.
“People have ideas about the clubs, so they didn’t have their vests and shit when we were around the slopes.”
“They?” Paddy asked, and Joke wished he could get his stunned brain to work again but it was just an empty hole full of nothing to say.
“My dad. Mom. And…” she grinned wryly, “My two brothers.”
“Where?” Paddy asked.
“Up north. You might have heard about –” She made a face and looked at Joke. “I should probably have told you this?”
“That would have been good,” he said, not sure if he should roar with laughter or continue to blink like a stupid fucking owl.
“I might have heard about what?” Paddy prompted.
“My dad is Roderick Hagen,” Sissy said calmly.
Mac started laughing, and Joke realized that fuck it all, he’d just continue with the owl-blinking a while longer.
“Your father is Roderick Hagen, as in the Roddy Hagen who is the president of Thor MC?” Paddy asked slowly.
“Yes.”
“Huh,” Paddy said. “That was unexpected.”
“Unexpectedly bad?” Sissy asked.
“Just unexpected.”
“Haven’t heard of them,” Day said. “Don’t have much to do with the clubs.”
“Small club, up by the Canadian border. Crazy,” Mac said, winced and said to Sissy, “Sorry.”
“It’s okay. They are,” she said.
There was a short silence, and then Paddy ran a hand over his hair.
“Why do you think we’re a club?”
“Aren’t you?”
“Not really,” Paddy stalled, but he wasn’t lying.
They weren’t a motorcycle club as such. They acted like one when it suited them, but technically they weren’t one.
“You resemble one,” Sissy said.
“Yeah?”
“You’d be the president,” she said to Paddy, turned to Gib and murmured, “Sergeant at Arms.” His brows went up, but she ignored it and turned to Mac, “Second.” Her eyes went to Day, and she grinned. “Road captain.” He grinned back at her, and finally, her fucking fantastic blue eyes speared him with a look. “Liaison.”
She’d pegged them all correctly.
“Jesus, Siss,” Joke said, but something had struck him, and he had to ask, so he did. “Your dad is the president of Thor. Why haven’t they just gotten rid of the man who hurt you? Surely they could –”
“They can’t,” she said. “Okay. Right. Let me start from the beginning.”
Joke closed his hands in fists under the table and braced.
“I was fourteen years old when he became my boyfriend,” she started. “I was so fucking stupid. He was older, and he had a lot of money. Great car. Took me places. Told me I was everything he ever wanted. He wasn’t good-looking, not exactly, but to a small-town girl growing up with a group of bikers, he still was. Clean, expensive clothes and real haircuts. Gave me presents.” She paused and looked down at her lap. “So fucking stupid,” she murmured again.
“Young,” Day cut in.
“Yeah. I’d been skiing my whole life. Everyone does in my family. There were mountains all around us, and we used to walk up and ski down, so I got good training from an early age. Turned out I was good.” She flashed a grin at Day, and repeated, “Good.”
Day nodded but didn’t say anything.
“He didn’t like it. Wanted to get married. Wanted kids.” She sighed and shook her head. “I made the national team, and he wanted me to give that up. I was eighteen years old and figured we’d just wait a few years, but he was twenty-four and didn’t want to wait any longer.”
The fucker had been six years older? He’d made her his girlfriend when he was twenty, and she was fourteen?
The others had clearly done the math
because angry grunts rumbled around the table.
“I know,” Sissy said quietly. “Stupid.”
“What did your parents say about it?” Joke asked slowly.
“They hated him. Said he was too old for me. Told me he was a douche and that I couldn’t see him.” She made a face and a small movement with her hand. “I was fourteen. Thought I was a grown-up. They warned me about lots of things he did, but I knew it all, didn’t I? So I ignored them.”
“We’ve all been there,” Mac said gently.
“I finally told him no. He insisted, but by then I’d been to training camps, seen a bit more of the world… Grown up a little. I didn’t love him anymore, and broke it off. Told him I didn’t want to get married.” She swallowed and looked at Joke. “You’ve told them about my leg?”
“Day did.”
“Right. I won’t bore you with the details, and at the end of the day, it doesn’t matter. I got most of my mobility back, but I couldn’t get back to where I had been. He went to jail, and I spent the first couple of years trying so fucking hard to get back. Didn’t make it. I could ski, but not good enough to get me back on the national team.”
“Lovey,” Day murmured and leaned forward to grab her hand. “This is gonna hurt, but we all cried when we heard about what happened. You would have gotten a medal, and we all knew it, so we cried. Athletes, staff… everyone.”
“Oh, Day,” she said. “We’ll never know what could have happened.”
“I know what would have happened,” Day said firmly, and Joke had never liked his friend more than in that moment.
“Thank you,” she said quietly, and added with a sigh, “It is what it is. And then he got out of prison.”
“He didn’t give up on you?” Paddy asked.
“Never. Followed me around. Tried to rape me twice. Broke into my place so many times I’ve lost count. Stole my underwear. Swinging between declaring his endless love for me and threatening to kill me. Broke my pinkie. Sent me diamond earrings. Killed my dogs…”
“Jesus,” Mac said. “What did the police do?”
“Sent him to jail when they had something on him. He made friends in jail, though, and he always got out. His parents helped him every step of the way too. His mother went to parole hearings and wailed about how she needed him and how he had found God or whatever. And he always came back.”
“Why did you come here?”
Joke didn’t want to ask, but he had to. She held his gaze for a few seconds, and her eyes were so sad he wanted to roar.
“He was released a few months ago, you know that. I couldn’t stay when he got out because the last time he’d been in prison… It was because he’d jerked off on my bed. He’d been in our house. Not in the master bedroom. In the small guestroom where I slept when I had nightmares. And he jerked off on that bed. They found evidence all over my pillow and put him away, but I had to sit my teenage daughters down and explain that to them.” She swallowed and added hoarsely, “Killed me, but I had to. They had to know because they had to be careful. He’d made threats that involved them. So when he was released, I waited until he came to my house and made sure he saw me pack up and drive away because that was the only thing I had left to give my girls. Peace. Normality. Safety.”
Joke clenched his teeth together so hard it hurt, and he could still not stop the angry hiss from slipping out. Gibson moved next to him, and he felt a hand squeeze his shoulder.
“Someone should shoot the bastard,” Day snarled.
“That’s the thing,” Sissy said calmly. “I come from a small town. A lot like Wilhelmine… a bit smaller maybe, and in the middle of nowhere. His father owns everything. The land. Half the houses in town. His uncle is the chief of police, and a cousin is managing the bank. Everyone owes them. Or works for them. When he hurt me the first time, Dad went after him, and his father told Dad and everyone else that if someone with any kind of connection to me hurt him in any way, everyone in the club would lose their jobs. Their homes. Everything.”
“Fuck.”
“Exactly. I couldn’t let them do anything to him. Can’t let them. They tried to warn me, and I was so fucking stupid. Didn’t listen. I brought this down on myself, and I can’t let my family and a group of good men who I grew up with take the hit for shit I caused.” She raised her chin and looked around the room. “I won’t let that happen, which is why you needed to know about all of this. I need to be safe, and I hope I can be safe here, but most of all…” Her breath hitched, and she tried to smile which again made Joke want to roar. “Most of all I want to stay hidden in a way that makes it possible for me to bring my girls here.” Her bottom lip wobbled slightly, but she straightened her shoulders. “I miss them,” she concluded silently.
***
Joke walked into the barn and faced his friends.
“She okay?” Day asked.
“Yeah.”
“You?”
Gibson had been the one who asked, and it looked like he was looking forward to a good fight. Joke wasn’t going to give him one, which was a surprise because their usual way to work off anger was to throw each other around some.
When the others had left, he had sat with Sissy at Oak for almost an hour, telling her about how he and the others had announced that they were a club to keep the county as clean from criminal groups as they could make it. He told her about some of the things they’d done, and what they could do, would do, to keep her safe. She asked questions that were on point and shrewd in a way he realized came from her growing up in the life. He also pried a lot more details out of her about her fucking menace of a stalker, and in a strange way that had focused him.
He’d handle this. Sissy was calm and strong, so he would be too. If the fucker showed up in Wilhelmine, he wasn’t sure what he’d do, but as long as the asshole stayed away, he’d handle it.
“I’m good,” Joke said. “Could use a whiskey.”
“Huh.”
“She’s handling it, so I will too. Kissed her goodnight, made sure she locked the door and realized I would.”
“What will we do about this whole mess?” Day asked, and added angrily, “We have to do something. I stood on that fucking podium with a goddamned medal around my neck while she was in rehab. I can’t just –”
“Oh, we’ll handle it,” Paddy said calmly. “I don’t know how yet, and I’d really like to sit down with her dad. He’s a shrewd bastard.”
“You met him,” Joke concluded.
“Once, years ago. Met her brothers too, and good luck with those crazy fuckers, that’s all I have to say.”
Joke shrugged when the others grinned.
“Okay, so set up a meet, and we take it from there.”
“Yeah.”
They sat in silence for a while and then Mac announced that he was going home.
“I’ll check official shit tomorrow.”
“Carefully,” Joke said.
“Fuck you,” Mac retorted, and Joke had to grin.
Paddy and Day left too, and he was downing the last of his whiskey when Gibson leaned forward.
“You’re getting in deep with her.”
It wasn’t a question, but Joke answered anyway.
“Very.”
“You’ll have to talk to her about a few things.”
Their eyes met, and Joke knew exactly what Gib meant. They had played around some in a sexual way since Gib and Lee got together and it hadn’t been a threesome, exactly, but it hadn’t been innocent either. The time had come to tell Sissy about it, which could go really fucking spectacularly wrong if he wasn’t careful.
“Yeah, been meaning to talk to you about that,” Joke said slowly. There’s this thing you and Lee could give me a hand with…”
Gibson’s brows went up.
“Are you sure that’s the right way to phrase it?” he asked.
Their eyes met, and in spite of still feeling antsy about the shitstorm they’d heard about that evening, they both started laughing.
Oh, yeah, Joke thought. He hoped what they’d shared wouldn’t make Sissy back away from him, but he didn’t regret it. Not one bit.
Chapter Seven
Sissy
Something was going on, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I’d asked Joke if they were plotting something behind my back about that man, and he denied it.
“We’re looking into shit to make sure we know what we need to know to make you safe,” he said calmly. “Pad talked to your dad. Mac is checking shit out. If we figure something else out, I’ll talk to you about it before anything happens. Promise.”
His eyes were intent, and I leaned my forehead on his chest.
“Okay,” I murmured.
Then I slowly let a hand slide up his side and felt one of his do the same on mine. He’d kissed me the night I’d told them about my past, and we’d kissed some more in the days that had passed since then, but he seemed to hold back.
“Are you backing off from me?” I heard myself ask.
The hand he had on my ribcage had been sliding around and downward, but it stopped moving when I spoke. Then he used it to press me closer, to him and consequently to what seemed like a pretty impressive erection.
“Does it feel like I’m backing off?” he breathed into my ear.
“No,” I murmured.
We were in Gibson’s barn and had completed our routines. Joke had showered, but I was still in my tights and a fairly fantastic new raspberry red racerback top. We couldn’t do what I really wanted to do right there because Gib and Lee were in Gib’s woodshop and could come walking any time, but I wanted it. His bare chest was right there underneath my cheek, and I turned slightly to move my mouth softly on him in something that wasn’t exactly a kiss. It was just a brush of my mouth and I heard him pull in air.
“I’ll just…” he murmured and walked off.
I turned to look out the window, wondering if I had it in me to tell him flat out that I wanted him to get naked and… do me. Fuck me. Sleep with me. Make love to me. While I tried to decide what words I’d use, Gibson and Lee came walking around the corner, and I was about to call out when Gib suddenly swung her around and pushed her up against the side of the house. As I watched he started kissing her and I grinned. They were in full view, and I couldn’t make myself look away. I knew I should. It was private, and their hands had started to roam in a way that told me what they were about to do, and I still couldn’t look away.