Roadhouse, one of the members closer to my age, asked me to go out with him a couple days ago to a party over near the University. I was beginning to think I’d have to take him up on that soon. Maybe I’d find an appropriate-aged woman to hook up with that was more like her.
When I looked up and saw her smiling at me again I had to force myself to turn and walk away. Just my fucking luck, Ghost was there, eyes narrowed and bouncing back and forth between Jamie and me. I just offered a quick tip of my head, and took off for the bar to see if the bartenders needed help restocking. As a prospect, I didn’t like standing around waiting to be told shit needed to be taken care of. I sought out the work. Hell, maybe that would make up for me leering at the boss’s daughter. If nothing else, it would serve as a hell of distraction.
Bonus Chapter Two
Sweet! Office. Now!” Ghost called the three-word demand out to me from down the hall. Damn if I didn’t have to shake off momentary jitters. It was like P-PTSD. Prospect Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. I’d been patched over as a full member for almost a year now, and I still worried I was going to be told I didn’t make the cut in the MC.
My Uncle Ben, my last living blood relative, was an Aces High member in a small chapter in Falls Church, Virginia. I’d come home from the Army two years in on a hardship discharge to take care of my mom. Breast cancer was kicking her ass, and she literally had no one else. Unfortunately, finding a civilian job in a shitty job market in West Virginia was proving more than a little difficult. Uncle Ben sent me a phone number and told me to check in with the local chapter of his MC to see if they could help.
Ben had been my dad’s brother. My dad, who had taken off when I was ten, had been found dead two years later. In hindsight, I think he did us all a favor by going away to die. By the time I started prospecting and working in the club’s junkyard my mom had full time hospice care. Two months in, she lost her battle, and the only people I had left were the MC. Even though I was only a prospect the club helped with burying my mother and kept me around even as I fell apart for a while. It was two months after my mom passed that I saw her for the first time.
“Sweet!” Ghost yelled again, pulling me out of my memories and self-induced anxiety. I pushed my way through my brothers, some of the idiots asking what I did to make Prez mad. Hell if I knew. Maybe Mick was right. The old fart had been telling me for over a year that the boss man would have my ass if he ever saw the way I looked at Princess Jamie.
Pushing through the office door, I noticed Ghost was alone on the other side. He inclined his head in the direction of a seat across the desk from him. “Want a beer?” He asked.
“Do I need one for this conversation?” I asked in all honesty.
Ghost smirked and leaned back into the mini fridge by his desk. He pulled a local brew out and handed it to me. Nothing was said as he settled back in his seat and we both took a long pull of our beers while he studied me. I was actually surprised by the taste of whatever he’d put in my hand. It was smooth with a little bitter bite at the end that caught me by surprise. I tipped the beer back to take a better look at the label as Ghost spoke. “Good stuff, eh? It’s new from the local boys down the road. They gave me a few cases to test out.”
“I’d say they have a winner here.” I took another sip. “This is something special.”
“Yeah, not for the knuckleheads out there though. They’ll drink shit beer and smile about it. I noticed you always choose different kinds when you drink.”
“I’m 22. I’m still discovering everything I like about the world. No way of knowing what my favorite is until I’ve tried them all.”
“I like that, Most 22 year olds think they’ve already discovered everything in their microscopic little worlds.” Ghost took another sip of his beer while I just sat there waiting. “You were Army before your mom got sick, yeah?”
“I was.” Now I was really curious where this conversation was going.
“Ever think about going back?”
I was shaking my head before I even spoke. “Nah. It wasn’t that long ago, but it seems like another life already, you know? Outside the MC I don’t really have family left, aside from Ben, and we aren’t close. I feel like I got a second chance at a family when I hooked up with the MC. The Army offers a brotherhood too, but it’s different. Transient. I just want normal and stable these days. You know seeing the same faces and places for the most part.”
“Funny place to find normal,” Ghost considered. “In an MC.” He laughed then as he thought about it.
“Everyone has their own idea of normal, I guess.” I told him. “For me, it’s riding, hanging with my brothers, and…”
“Fucking the women!” Ghost’s eyes twinkled with delight as he tossed the last part out, speaking for me.
Again I found myself shaking my head back and forth. “Nah. The women here are not…” I glanced up, stopping myself from going forward when I remembered Ghost was notorious for hooking up with the clubwomen.
“Go ahead and speak your mind, Sweet. Remember, everyone has his own standard of normal? I’m not judging how you feel based on what I do.” His grin encouraged me to put it out there. So, I did.
“Eh, well the club women are a bit too used up and just not really my type.” I shrugged.
“A couple of the guys have questioned if you might be gay because they’ve never seen you hook up.” Ghost tossed out.
“Shit!” I sputtered out some of the beer I was just drinking. “Are you fuckin’ kiddin’ me?” Ghost laughed, the bastard. I placed what was left of my beer on the desk and wiped the spots that I had spewed on myself away. “I’m definitely not gay. Not a virgin either, if that’s the next rumor you’re gonna hit me with.” I added.
“I never said I believed it. In fact, I know better. I’ve been watching. You seem interested in one particular girl.” Heat flared up my neck as my guilt settled like heavy stone in my stomach. “You watch her when you think no one will notice. You’ve been doing it since you were still a prospect.” Ghost took a sip of his beer again, never taking his eyes off of me. His eyes had to be the only feature he shared with his daughter. The girl we both knew he was talking about now.
“She watches you too. She doesn’t think I notice, because she doesn’t think I care anymore.” He leveled me with a hell of a look then. “I do care!” His tone beyond sharp, as if he needed me to believe it for him. “I see all the assholes who watch my underage daughter with their lascivious thoughts painted all over their faces as they do.” He took another drink while waiting for his words to sink in. “Jamie deserves someone who really sees her. She’s had a rough couple of years. I don’t want to see my little girl run-though by the assholes of this MC. I could put her off limits, but I’ve seen those kinds of dictates tear a club apart. I have something else in mind.”
I was waiting for him to say he was sending her away or something. Hell, maybe he was sending me away along with all the other fuckers who dared look at her.
“I’d hoped Jamie and Wallace, Quickshot, would end up together eventually, but that boy is too dumb to see what’s right in front of him, and my daughter sees him as a brother instead. I guess that’s what I get for letting them bathe together as children. Probably took all the mystery away.” He chuckled then. Meanwhile, I wanted to hunt down Quickshot and knock his teeth out forever having seen Jamie naked. It didn’t matter if they were toddlers when it happened. My hands gripped the arms of my chair uncomfortably hard. Ghost just smiled like the cat that ate the canary.
“You’re the only one of them who sees her. You’re also the only one who either respects her age, or your position in the club and has done nothing about it.”
“What the fuck?” I finally spoke, a little louder than I intended. Who in the hell had been propositioning Jamie? I’d kill every one of them.
“Calm down. I’ve already dealt with those bastards. Here’s the thing, I’m gong to ask you to do this one thing. If you agree, I’ll announce it to the club
, and if anyone else approaches her after that they’ll be breaking our covenant on claimed women, and I can just boot their ass out the door.” Shit, I was breathing hard now, because I could almost see where he was about to go with this.
“First, I need you to know there’s a sacrifice you’ll be making if you agree.” Ghost put his head in his hands for a moment then scrubbed them slowly down his face as he looked back up at me. “I missed a lot of time with Jamie and her mom. As Prez and VP before that, I was always gone on this run or that club business. When my wife got hit…” His voice thickened with emotion. “All I could think of was that I wasn’t even here. Maybe if I had been we’d have been together. Maybe we never would have left the house that day. She’d wanted me to take them on a vacation to see the ocean. I kept putting it off and then she just wasn’t there anymore. My Jamie deserves to have someone who will put her needs before the club, even while that person still loves the club.”
He took another moment to pull free from the memories that still clung to him. “Here’s what I’m proposing. You claim Jamie now, a betrothal of sorts. You have to wait until she turns 18 and then you guys can make it official in any way you choose, if either of you still want it then, you will have my blessing and club backing of your relationship. What you sacrifice is the ability to hold a table position. You will never be allowed to hold an office in this club while you’re with Jamie. She needs someone who can take her to the ocean instead of heading out on another damn run.” Ghost drained the last of his beer while watching me. “Take a few days to think it over, and then let me know.”
“There’s nothing to think over,” I found myself saying. Ghost’s eyebrows shot up high, disappearing into the hair that spilled over his forehead. “You think giving up going on runs and wearing an officer patch to be with Jamie is the sacrifice? It’s not. You were right, the punishment would be in having to go away without her constantly.” Someone should have been there in that moment to snap a picture of Ghost’s face. He looked like he was being raised up in the bloody rapture or something with the way he was beaming at me.
“I knew it should be you,” he said as he came around the desk and clapped me on the back. “Okay, let’s head out there and make this announcement then.”
“Wait, what about Jamie? Does she already know?”
“Don’t worry about Jamie, I have it handled.” I took that to mean that he had already talked to her about the possibility of this happening. I really should have made him clarify that statement a bit more before we walked out into the bar area of the clubhouse.
“Ghost!” Tuck, the club VP called to my future father-n-law. “Need a minute, brother.”
Ghost tapped me on the shoulder; “We’ll announce this in just a few.”
I nodded then turned on my heel looking about the room. I spotted Jamie with her back to me near the game room. She was with that friend that was always tagging along with her. I decided I’d go make sure she was okay with everything before her father made the announcement.
“I can’t believe you have UCLA recruiting you,” Jamie’s friend was yelling enthusiastically.
“Me either!” Jamie squealed back. “They even sent information for a partial scholarship I qualify for. I just need to write an essay, and I might have half the tuition paid for. Then dad can’t say no about me going away to college.” My heart stopped beating in my chest for a minute. I didn’t even realize I was clutching at it before I was backing away. She was planning to go away to college. What would happen if her father made this announcement? Wouldn’t that take away her chance to leave? To go to a phenomenal school, on a scholarship no less? Shit. I needed to find Ghost.
“I have an announcement to make, everyone,” Ghost’s voice bellowed through the hall. Shit! Fuck! I hung my head, because I knew I was too late to stop this train from wrecking. “Ah, there he is.” Ghost’s eyes found mine, and when he saw my slumped shoulders and fallen features he paused a moment, not understanding the change in me from only moments ago. He chose to ignore what he was seeing, unfortunately. Instead he carried on. “I am happy to announce that my lovely daughter, Jamie, has been promised to our very own Sweet.” There was instantly an array of clapping, boos, and what the fucks bandied about. “Their union has my full support, although it won’t be made official until she turns 18 next year.” I made the mistake of looking back over my shoulder and catching the stunned stupid look on Jamie’s face. That look just broke me that much more. She didn’t know anything about this. I already knew that after listening to her and her friend talking about college.
I had to fix this, and I could only think of one way to do that. It might just get me kicked out of the club or maybe even killed, but I couldn’t force Jamie down this road with me. No matter how fucking badly I wanted to keep her by my side, it wasn’t right. I took note of the two club whores standing pretty close with faux pouty faces. Not that I’d ever given them time of day to make them feel like they were losing something with this bizarre claiming of the Prez’s daughter, but whatever. I moved forward and tucked one under each arm, then threw a wink back in Jamie’s direction before I headed to the private rooms down the hall with the two whores.
Yeah, I didn’t miss the hisses of “what in the fuck are you doing?” as I went. I just stuck it out and moved my ass. Jamie might not have been able to save herself from her dad’s crazy decree, but it was obvious I could help get her to college. That’s where she wanted to be, not stuck here with me. When I found an empty room I ducked into it with the two women and closed the door.
“You two, stay. Do whatever you need to with each other. I’m off limits. This was for show, and if you ever tell anyone that I didn’t actually sleep with you, I will see to it that your time here with the club is up.”
“Oh my God! You really are gay!” One of them yelped.
“Fuck my life!” I yelled. “I’m not gay, I’m just not into whores!” Okay, that was harsh, even for me. What could I say? I was a little stressed.
The younger of the two women started crying. Great. The older one looked at me knowingly. “You didn’t want to be stuck with the boss’s daughter, huh?” I just shrugged, neither admitting nor denying anything.
“SWEET!” I heard Ghost yell out from behind the door.
“Get in the bathroom, both of you,” I told them as they moved them toward the interior room before going to open the door.
Ghost looked around the minute the door was open. “Where are they?” He shouted in my face.
“Bathroom, getting ready.” I made sure that I had the biggest I don’t give a fuck grin plastered to my face just then.
“We’re taking a walk. They’re staying. Let’s go.” I followed him down the back end of the hallway, away from the bar and towards the door that led to the back parking lot.
Once we were out there I got punched in the damn face. At least I can always say I didn’t go down with that punch, but damn if it didn’t have me seeing stars for a quick minute. “You need to start explaining yourself right now. Matter of fact, you have five minutes or this club is no longer a concern of yours.” I thought about staying quiet, but then it hit me that if I was out of the picture Ghost might just pick one of the other douche nozzles to pair his girl with. Then everything would be for nothing.
“She doesn’t want this,” I said simply.
“What the fuck? How would you know?”
“I was going to talk to her about it when Tuck snagged you. She was telling her friend about how she got into UCLA with a scholarship and everything.” I smiled, because I was fucking proud of her for that. “I can’t take that away from her. She was so fucking happy about it. She obviously didn’t know anything about this little announcement, or your set up, or whatever. She thinks she’s going away to college.” I shrugged. “Figured if I walked off with the whores, she’d be free to go.”
Ghost just stared at me for a moment. I realized a little too late that Tuck was also out here with us, guarding the door so
I couldn’t get back through if I tried to run like a coward. Not that I ever would, but whatever. I continued to stand there while Ghost just kept right on staring at me as if I were some alien being descended to Earth in front of him. Then he grinned so fucking big it might as well have been Christmas and Santa brought him everything he ever wanted.
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