Angel Girl

by Christine Michelle

  “Sure, and when you’re ready to talk, you call for me, you hear?” I nodded to her. “Angel? Do I need to beat his ass?” She asked before I got two more slump-shouldered steps away.

  I just shook my head no, and proceeded up to my room. Of course, I felt my cell phone buzzing on my hip, but instead of taking a look at the messages I shut it off completely. Why in the hell had I slept with him? I should have known better. The two of us being together was simply doomed from the start, and that apparently hadn’t changed. He could be telling the truth about what happened all those years ago, but there was no denying what I’d just witnessed with my own two eyes. That sick feeling settled in my stomach again.

  I threw myself at the mercy of my comfortable bed. Not that it was working to shut my mind down, but I had hoped. Instead, I kept seeing the woman, who appeared to be slightly younger than me, running towards Sweet. Her dark chocolate locks billowing back behind her, the grin on her face, her large breasts bouncing in the barely there, harlot-red tube top with her little cut off shorts and cowboy boots. I wanted to punch her in the face. I wanted to un-see it all. My lot in life was to remember every goddamn vivid detail in full-on Technicolor though, because apparently I’m a masochist like that.

  I had heard a few bikes pull up while I was playing this morning’s scene on repeat in my head. Part of me knew it was my job to go see what was going on, and who was at our clubhouse, but the petty part of me – the one throwing herself a pity party – was loathe to move from her bed. At least while throwing my own personal ‘poor me’ soiree, I had also been going over the possibilities and various approaches we needed to make concerning the missing women, missing Winter’s Renegades members, and how to better fortify both Paramour and our clubhouse without making them so inaccessible that they were losing business. Let it not be said that a heartsick woman couldn’t multitask.

  I waited a good thirty minutes without hearing any engines pull away before I steeled myself to go take care of business. Still, I didn’t rush. The shower I took washed away the road grime, and the lingering scent of sex and the unforgettable smell of Sweet from my skin. I both missed the male musky scent of him on my skin and was thankful for it being washed away all at once. Ugh. There was no part of our stupidly intertwined world that wasn’t a big ball of confusion right now.

  I dressed, tossing on some jeans and an old black Henley that once upon a time belonged to NFL wide-receiver Derek Moore. Hell, I’m not sure why I’d kept the damn thing. Normally, I only took it out when I was thinking of the baby I’d lost. Today, it was a sort of armor. The shirt became a reminder of sorts that I needed to guard my heart better, and my body too. Also, the shirt reminded me that there were worse things that could happen in this world. Worse things had happened to me, and I made it through all of them. I could make it through seeing Sweet with another woman just a few short hours after we’d made love. Sure, I could.

  Someone should really teach me how to give myself a pep talk, because that shit was so not working. After running a brush through my still shower-damp hair, I finally found the courage to pull my big girl panties up and carry my ass downstairs with a fake smile plastered to my face. As soon as I hit the last step, Tash was there whispering to me. “Your dad, Sweet, and three older guys are all here to see you. They’re at the bar.”

  I nodded, as I could see them all from where I stood, and I knew they were aware I was there too. They’d probably watched me descend the steps while I’d been busy trying to pretend they weren’t there. “Any more word about the club that I should be aware of? What do we know about the missing women?”

  Tash’s forlorn features said it all. “We’re still working on it, Angel. Keys is busy trying to dig up any more possible property links we could search, and the Redemption guys are doing physical searches now based on places the WR held girls before.”

  “Have the guys been checking in regular?” I don’t know why I bothered asking. I knew they would be, and she confirmed it for me. I was stalling. “Okay, well, wish me luck with the shit show about to go down over there.” I started to head to the bar, but Tash’s hand stayed me.

  “Angel, you should know…” She glanced over toward Sweet before speaking again. “He tossed that bitch off of him like she was on fire as you were peeling out of there this morning.”

  “You were there?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I was. Although I understand why you didn’t see me, considering.” She fidgeted a moment with the keys in her hand. “Normally, I wouldn’t bother sticking my nose in, you know that. But I wanted you to hear what happened from someone you know who has no agenda where that man is concerned. He tossed her off, looked disgusted, and started yelling at your dad for bringing her down here.”

  “He yelled at my dad?” I asked, curious now because my dad didn’t take kindly to disrespect, and yet there they sat all cozy at my bar like nothing was amiss.

  “Yeah. Your dad punched him in the damn eye, and told him to stop fucking shit up with his daughter.” Tash laughed lightly. “It was awesome. Then he started yelling at some guy named Crutch. Apparently, he’s a prospect, and brought the bitch down in the van. From what I could understand of the sputtering words the scared kid spit out she told him Sweet wanted her here, because she’s supposed to be his old lady. The kid took pity on her when he couldn’t reach Sweet for confirmation.” Tash shrugged her shoulders. “I didn’t stick around for the whole story. It sounded like maybe both the prospect and the woman would be sent home, but I left before that resolution was worked out. I just wanted you to hear it all from me before you got any of their versions of events.” She winked at me before frowning and tugging on the end of the oversized Henley. “Don’t think I don’t know what this is. We’re going to talk later, babe.”

  “Thanks for letting me know.” I ignored her last comment about the shirt, because of course she knew what it was, but that didn’t mean I wanted to talk about why I was wearing it. Thinking instead on the information she gave about what happened after I left Sweet holding his woman in that parking lot, I wasn’t sure it changed anything. After all, he’d kissed her and held on to her ass pretty tight as a first response.

  My own wounded first love crap needed to sit its ass down on the back burner for now. It was all too many years ago, and Sweet and I had never established that level of familiarity with one another. Sweet should have the girl. Sure, it would hurt for me to see it, but I’d get over it eventually. Right? God, I hoped so. Thankfully, I didn’t see the woman in my clubhouse though. I might be trying to take the high road in my head, but were she here – in my territory – I don’t think I could hold myself back.

  I took one deep breath in, and then I let it out again, trying to expel every bit of anguish, frustration, anger, and all the fucking sadness that was weighing me down. As if such a magical, cleansing breath existed. When it didn’t work effectively, I steeled my spine, threw on my best blank, poker face and moved towards the group seated at my bar. A brief glimpse of him almost caused a misstep. The emotion on his face could have been a mirror image to mine if I let anything show. In fact, I had to look away quickly before my mask of indifference slipped. Instead, I gazed toward my father, disheartened to see the slump of his shoulders and the wariness in his face. I offered up a brief smile for him. “Sorry. I really needed a shower and to check in with my people about our missing girls.” My excuse for not sticking around was flimsy at best, especially since most of my people had been at the Aces High Clubhouse. I let out a bullshit version of a laugh. “I didn’t realize Tash was there waiting on me though.”

  “Hard to notice such a thing as quickly as you took off,” my father admonished as his all too familiar turquoise eyes took me in.

  “Yeah,” I admitted on a huff as I reached for a bottle of water behind the bar. “I was just about to call you to set something up though.” I touched my wet hair, as if to reiterate my excuse. “Since I finally scrubbed myself free of that trip,” I added while trying to ignor
e the hurt expression on Sweet’s face. Too bad that shower couldn’t have scrubbed the memories of our time together away as well as it had washed away the scent of him.

  “Well,” my father said stiffly after clearing his throat, apparently having caught the double meaning I was tossing about at Sweet’s expense. “Now that you’re plenty clean, we need to talk.”

  His tone brokered no argument, and I simply nodded my head. “What’s up? Any news on the assholes who got away?”

  His head was shaking before he spoke. “Nah. Jamie, we need to talk about a personal matter.” He glanced around then. “You have somewhere private we can go?” Again, I nodded my head, dropped my water bottle, and moved around the bar.

  “My office is as good a place as any.” I began walking, trusting my father would follow, but he stopped briefly behind me. I turned to see Sweet was about to follow behind us. My father held up a hand to still him.

  “No,” Ghost’s voice was low and gravelly, full of authority, and thickened by emotion. “This is a family matter only, Sweet. Just…” he flipped a hand at the bar. “Hang with the guys until we’re done. Then we can move on to discussing club business.” Sweet’s posture crumpled so fast I might have thought someone had dealt him a physical blow at my father’s words. With that one statement my father let him know he’d probably blown any chance at being family – beyond the MC family – and that he would not allow Sweet time for a personal conversation once my father and I were done speaking. Ghost had always treated Sweet as though he were already his son. According to Quickshot when we’d caught up, that hadn’t changed over the years. To be told he wasn’t family, and not welcome in our little powwow was obviously devastating to him. I both felt bad, and didn’t want to feel bad, all at the same time. Gah! So damn confusing.

  The confusion didn’t matter. I couldn’t take seeing that level of devastation on a man I once loved, hell still loved in a way, if I was being honest with myself. I turned and continued on to my office without missing a single step. Each foot placed in front of the other had become as deliberate a movement as each breath I was struggling to take. Once the door to my office was shut Ghost heaved out a weary sigh. “Jamie, what you saw this morning…”

  I cut him off, finishing his sentence my own way. “…was none of my business.” Moving to sit behind my desk was another layer of armor I was piling on myself.

  “Fuck!” The expletive was released on a harsh breath. He shook his head and took the seat across the desk from me. “There was a time when I wanted nothing more than to see the two of you together, happy.” His head was still shaking as he tipped it back then braced it with his hands locked behind his head. “I blame myself that it never happened. I fucked up, Jamie. How I handled things in the beginning – it was wrong. I was wrong. If I’d let everything play out naturally, the cluster fuck that ensued would have never happened. I set the damn stage for you to mistrust him, and in doing so we all lost you for so damn long. I don’t know how to make that right. Hell, I don’t know if making it right is even possible considering what we all lost as a result.” A deep growl came from my father’s throat then.

  “I can’t keep seeing that pain in your eyes though. Never, did I ever want to see such soul-deep damn pain from you. I won’t prolong your torment any further either. Jamie, if you need me to send him away, to banish him back to Cedar Falls or further away, I will. I swear to you, I will. I already lost you once. I won’t let you go again. Not for anyone.”

  “Dad.” That one word came out of my mouth on a strangle cry.

  He held up his hand to stave off whatever I would have said. “No, just listen, please.” His hand pushed through the dirty blond hair that hung loosely around his head. “I put myself first after your mom died. I forgot you were grieving too, and I screwed everything up. I put the club first, put my pain first, the fucking whores… anything that would help numb my mind.” He shook a bit in disgust at his own actions. That was something I never thought I’d see on display for me.

  “I almost wish your mom could have come back, not to see my disgrace, but to wake me up and make me realize that I pushed the most precious part of my life away in order to embrace my own pain. I won’t do that again, sweetheart. You are the one thing I did right in this world besides loving your mom as hard as I did. If I were stupid enough to let that go again, I wouldn’t deserve to live. You say the word, and I’ll transfer here myself. I’ll send him away. Hell, I’ll send him out west to form a new chapter there. Whatever you want, baby girl. Whatever you need from me to set everything I fucked up to rights.”

  I was speechless, staring at the anguish playing out on my father’s features, watching as his eyes pleaded for me to give him a way to fix this. To fix us. Jesus, he was killing my heart right now. We’d all screwed this up from the very beginning and he was shouldering the entire burden, or trying to. I started to speak several times, but the words I wanted to say wouldn’t come. That was probably because I was so damn confused.

  “I don’t know if it matters at all at this point, but she means nothing to him, baby girl.” He finally spoke into the silence. The sadness in those words hit me just as hard as the words themselves. “I don’t know how she even managed to make it down with the prospect without the rest of us noticing. She’s been vying for him to make her an old lady for about a year now. He’s made it clear to both her and his other regular girl, Becca, that he didn’t want that. Hell, if it were going to be one of the two of them, it would have been Becca, not Alice. Shit, I’m pretty damn positive he called things off with Alice months before he ever left Cedar Falls. He was still talking to Becca afterwards, so that girl had no hope in hell. Doesn’t stop them from continuing to try to change his mind though.” My dad huffed out a humorless laugh.

  “Years,” he started to say and had to clear his throat. “That boy waited for you to come of age for damn near two years, and never touched a woman in all that time. Then once you were gone, hell, I don’t think he was with anyone until maybe two or three years after you were gone. We all noticed when it happened, when he gave up on the idea that you’d come back. I’ve never seen anything like it before. He more than earned my respect when he waited for you to come of age, but even after you were gone for so long, I hurt for the fact that he was waiting. Mostly, it hurt, because he shamed me with his ability to stay the course even when he wasn’t sure where you were, or what you were up to. I didn’t even wait months after your mom passed. I tried to kill the pain by killing off my own damn heart. That man out there though, he kept his, held in pieces, for a long time hoping you’d come put it back together for him.”

  White-hot tears streamed down my face at both the regret my dad was openly showing for his own behavior after my mom’s death, and for the picture he was painting of Sweet. I was out fucking every man that was willing for a while. I had done exactly what my father’s example had taught me to try to cope with the loss of my love, of the life I’d known. There he was, waiting for me. Gah! Confusion wasn’t a strong enough word to deal with the bullshit that had been dealt us. My dad wasn’t done with this tale of woe though. He continued on, and I kept listening through my tears.

  “When he finally started seeing people, when he lost hope of ever seeing you again, a light dimmed inside of him. He lost his heart to you, and he’s never given it away to anyone else in all this time, because it’s been here with you all along. I can see it in your eyes that it’s been the same for you. Doesn’t matter whom you’ve been with in between. Neither of you had that piece of your heart to give away, because you left it with each other. I don’t know if you can put each other back together anymore though. There’s so much rotten history there spoiling anything new from forming. If you can’t deal, I swear, baby girl, I will do whatever it takes to make it easier on you. I just thought you should know the truth before you make that decision.”

  Ghost stopped the pacing he’d begun half way through his speech, when his emotions – or mine – made it too d
ifficult for him to sit still. “When Sweet texted to let us know you two were on the way back he told me you were coming back together, finally. Maybe I took it to mean more than was actually meant, but I didn’t think so. If you guys worked through your shit while you were away, why the hell would you let some club slut put her hands on him and just ride away?”

  My head snapped up and I leveled the worst glare in my repertoire at him. Then I huffed out a shuddering breath. “Old ghosts haunt me, and he didn’t exactly block her, or toss her off of him with any kind of expediency. I mean she ran, jumped, wrapped herself around him, and even spoke of how much she missed him long before their lips ever locked. All of that happened long before I managed to slip out of my shocked stupor to take off again. That level of familiarity they had spoke volumes to me, especially after the night we had, and the fact that he was in no hurry to move her away or tell her about me.”

  I didn’t even bother disguising the hurt in my voice. My dad wasn’t stupid. He knew. “That girl, whoever she is, has a much bigger claim on him than I ever did if he could go from being in bed with me to holding her like that without immediate protest. I don’t know what to believe anymore, Ghost. There have been so many lies, miscommunications, and hurts that I don’t trust myself anymore, let alone anyone else.”

  “He did push her away, Jamie.” My father argued.

  “Yeah? And was that after my bike started on its merry way, alone? It sure as shit didn’t happen while I was watching that nightmare take place. Nope, he at least waited until I kicked the damn bike in gear and took off. Hell, for all I knew, he had that reunion set up because I didn’t meet the hype from all the years waiting once he got me in bed or something.” My father had the good grace to wince at my words. I didn’t relish in telling my father about my sex life, but damn, there was no other way to hammer home why I took off feeling betrayed, yet again.