by Jamie Begley
Time to find out what this shit was about.
Q uiet steps marked my arrival into the club’s main room, my heavy boots making a softened thump as I finished the last step. The lack of an echo and a creak made me feel a little lonely as I set my eyes on the newly refurbished room, which had to be done after an enemy gang had gunned the shit out of it. But still….
I had become so accustomed to the smell of whiskey, sex, and sweat embedded into every piece of furniture, along with the knife marks and gun holes decorating the wall and the creak of a hardwood floor, that the new space made me feel strange. The smell of new was not on my list of favorite scents. I preferred something a little more aged… something with a little more character.
It wasn’t as noticeable when my brothers filled the room, the character and age almost overwhelming by the dinosaurs themselves, but when there was only Hunter awaiting my arrival in the spacious hall, the effect was strong.
I ran a hand through my hair, pushing the growing length out of my face as I approached my closest brother waiting by the bar. I had been meaning to have it cut for a while, having no plans to join Hunter and Wolf in the ponytail club. Wolf’s had become so biker cliché that it attracted the spectrum of looks from everyone no matter where he went. I couldn’t be bothered with that. “So where is everybody?” I grumbled.
“Not here,” Hunter grunted.
“Well, I could figure that out, you ass.” I rolled my eyes. “Sarcasm is only cute on pint-sized blondes and redheads, not on six-foot and above brunettes.”
Hunter rolled his eyes.
“They’re outside in the parking lot.” He extended a large hand, and in it was a shot of strong whiskey. One of my favorite kinds of flavored water we kept behind the bar. None of it influenced me like my moonshine did, though rumors were reaching ears we didn’t need listening, so illegal liquor was out of the question for now. Until then there was little I could do but drink what was offered.
What I could do, however, was give Hunter the most suspicious look I could muster. “Why?”
I couldn’t besure what he read from my face, but his own frown didn’t change. “You’ll need it.”
His huge hand didn’t give me a chance to refuse as he shoved the thing at me, the liquid almost coming over the side of the glass. “It’s a bit early to party, isn’t it, brother?”
I glanced at the clock. 11 a.m. Not the earliest I’ve started to drink, but for everyone else? It would be considered the early hours of the morning.
“You won’t be partying.” Hunter gave me the final parting words before he turned away from me, showing me his huge, broad back and black curled hair before he headed outside. Bright light cut through the club as he disappeared through the door, a buzz from the outside sneaking in as well. When Hunter said they were outside, I thought he meant every single member of the Black Angels if the sound was anything to go by.
What the hell is going on?
I chucked the liquid from the glass down my throat and headed to the door.
Better get this shit over and done with.
I didn’t like the echo of my boots following close behind me as I headed toward the door, the normally short stretch to the front feeling longer than ever as caution carried with me.
I pushed the emergency bar, the metallic exit door swinging open as Oregon’s humid weather hit me hard. Summer burned my eyes as I adjusted to the bright light and buzzing noise filling the car lot.
The noise was the ruckus every single member of our club was making as they lined the outside wall, gossip and excitement rushing through all the women and even some of the men.
I felt my stomach drop as I recalled the one and only thing that got all the women to collectively do something without bitching, bribery, or blackmail.
Drama.
“I’m getting a bad feeling…”
Pretty, my other closest brother in the club, appeared by my side with perfect timing. He clapped a hand on my shoulder, while handing me a bottle of beer. It had lost its fresh-fridge chill but hadn’t yet reached the lukewarmth that made it gross and undrinkable.
“If it were just the women out here, it wouldn’t be so bad.” His blue-grey eyes creased in amusement as he gestured over my shoulder. “But Lamb’s over there too.”
“Fuck,” I hissed. “That bastards here too?”
I spun on my heels, spotting the spiked blonde hair and silk suit several members down beside our president. If Wolf was the stereotype for bikers, Lamb was the exact opposite. Only a bit taller than me, his slim figure was miles smaller than anybody else’s at the club, though that didn’t mean he was lacking muscle. He was a good brother, but his personality was nasty, and the bastard just loved pissing everybody off. He hadn’t been around for a while, escaping on who-knew-what business any time he had the chance. I had a feeling Wolf knew exactly what Lamb was up to, but when he didn’t mention it, neither did anybody else. Everyone’s business was their own.
One thing I did know was that when Lamb appeared, something emotionally traumatic was bound to happen.
“Don’t overthink it,” another familiar voice cropped up between me and Pretty. I looked down—way down—to see one of my beloved pint-sized blondes wedging her way in next to me.
“Anna,” I purred, “since when do I overthink anything?”
“Ha,” Anna scoffed, readjusting the chubby baby boy in her arms, dead asleep with a powerful grip on the front of her shirt, giving me a peak to her post-baby boobs. Good boy. “You don’t think in general; it’s probably why this has happened.”
“Are you all going to speak ambiguously, or are you going to tell me why I was called out here?”
“There’s somebo—” Anna stopped without warning, at last noticing his hand on her shirt.
“Oh, you little— Stop wrecking my shirts!” She hissed, making the boy giggle with laughter. Looked like someone wasn’t as dead asleep as he was pretending to be. The boy wasn’t even three months old and he was showing natural aptitude for his mother’s devious nature.
“You and your father are going to be the end of me.”
“That’s our privilege,” Wolf’s deep baritone came from above my head as he stepped around me. The almost seven-foot hulk of a man reached down to his small woman, plucking his son of out her arms and pressing a kiss to her head. The baby, who seemed massive in Anna’s small embrace, now looked like a pea wrapped in Wolf’s monstrous forearms.
“There’s somebody at the gate for you.” Wolf looked at me, annoyance clear in his voice. “Go sort it out so we can all go inside.”
I looked to the men, and aside from Lamb, they all looked uninterested in my mysterious visitor. From a couple glares I was being sent, I had no doubt they had been dragged out by the women and their old ladies.
Men may rule this club, but women rule the men.
“Who is it?” I asked, finishing off my beer and passing the empty bottle to Anna, who uncharacteristically accepted it without argument. Any other day she would have bitten my head off for giving her my trash.
“How the fuck should I know?” Wolf grumbled, freeing an arm to give me a shove in the back. I surged forward with his beastly strength, almost falling over my own two feet.
“Get moving,” he commanded.
“Bastard,” I grumbled, catching my balance as I began walking across the concrete car lot.
On my approach, I saw Mint lean into the cabin of the old blue truck, point into the parking lot, and then signal to Pipe to open the gate. He stepped back as the truck started up, making any brother that knew anything about cars (which were most of them) wince as it screeched into Black Angel territory.
The parking lot was big enough for at most twenty cars when it was empty, ten if our bikes were parked along the front like they were today. A 60s Chevrolet flat-bedded truck and bumper-pull horse trailer attached to the back caught everybody’s attention.
Mint, the second person least likely to give a shit about a woman askin
g after me, walked up as the truck pulled into one of the bays at the furthest end. “Said she’s here for you,” he relayed, his voice just as annoyed as Wolf’s was.
As I ambled over to the parked truck, looking over the unmarked horse trailer, I searched back through my past seven years’ worth of memories at the club, wondering what kind of woman it could be.
If I were being honest, it was difficult to tell one woman from the other. But out of all the women I could think of, none of them would have any reason to have a horse trailer tied to the back of her truck.
My curiosity grew, and my heart jumped at the sound of the truck door creaking open. I expected the whole thing to just fall off as the girl stepped out.
Brown hair, tight ass, and long, long legs. They had my dick perking back up in my jeans for the first time since I left my room, and I was left wondering what treasure I had lured in. She wasn’t exactly my usual type, coveting girls with fuckable tits and blonde hair. Every guy made an exception every now and then and looking at her athletic body made me ready to make that exception—possibly the second time, if between her legs was really where she knew me from.
Her long hair caught the breeze, and although it wasn’t silky soft and seemed to have more sun damage from being outside in hot weather, it looked well-cared for and healthy. If her tanned hips told me anything—from under the shirt that seemed to have risen while driving—she spent a great deal of time outdoors. Tugging it back down as she turned around, I almost sighed in disappointment as the plaid shirt covered my gazing eyes, then I noticed the tight jeans that hugged those long thighs. Damn, if her legs were that nice, then her chest must be….
Not as big as I expected. It was on the smaller side, but they looked like a nice handful, nonetheless. Maybe having a squeeze of them would make me remember.
A glimpse of light caught my eyes as I spotted the jewelry around her neck. I didn’t realize what it was at first. A circle? A letter?
It was a horseshoe.
A silver horseshoe.
I stopped dead it my tracks. I recognized that necklace.
My mind froze, eyes pinned to that little piece of silver resting on the dip of her collarbone.
I couldn’t think.
No, I didn’t want to think.
I knew who that shoe belonged to. I looked up, hoping I was wrong. It couldn’t be her. Never her.
I was stunned. Staring at the face I recognized, the face that mirrored my stunned recognition.
It was her.
“Ronnie?”
She staggered as our eyes met, the sound of her boots shuffling back and her dark green eyes becoming ringed with pure white surprise. “Jackson?”
She said that name on a breath of what could only have been a mix of relief and surprise. I almost hadn’t recognized the voice. Didn’t recognize her.
She changed. The new curves, boobs, and the extra inches of leg had thrown me, and it had thrown me hard. The understated way she was dressed, in well-cared for jeans and the plaid shirt newly tucked into her waist band despite the heat. The material that clung to her chest pronounced the handful breasts I’d taken notice of earlier. But it was her face that had changed the most. The soft curved edges that had once defined her youth were now lost to a sharper, defined structure.
Her red-flushed cheeks carrying her familiar green eyes studied every inch of me; she was taking me in too.
I must have changed a lot in her eyes since the last time we met.
But my opinion of her hadn’t.
“Leave.”
The word was filled with rage. It rode on a wave of pure hot lava up my throat, as if the volcano of emotions that had been dormant for eight long years was now alive again, and thundered destruction in its wake. “Get back in your truck and get the fuck off of my compound and out of my town.”
Ronnie stuttered. I wanted her eyes to turn to stone, for her to pluck up her stubbornness and leave. But it was hurt in her green eyes, the glint of the sunlight rimming on the water swelling across them. It only fueled the burn inside.
Does she really think she can come back to me after all this time and expect me to play nice? After what she did?
“But—”
“Get out.”
“Jackson, I—”
“I don’t care,” I hissed, shaking my head, lips snarling. “Whatever the fuck it is that you’ve come here for, I don’t care. Now go.”
Ronnie’s pained eyes searched for any indication that I was lying. Like she didn’t expect me to be this harsh to her. The longer she looked at me, the quicker I saw her getting the picture; I meant my words.
Then her eyes dropped from mine, her dark hair casting a shadow over her eyes, and a shaking breath left her lips. There was a moment of silence, enough for me to hear the faint rustle of the club behind me, realizing they were still there. I had all but forgotten about them while facing the human representative of the past I never wanted to remember, all the memories hitting me like a sledgehammer to the chest.
I heard the scrape of her boot against the ground and looked up, ready to see her get into her truck and go straight back to the hellhole I had long since left behind. I saw her shoulders square and her face turn to mine. My stomach dropped.
I knew that look.
“No.”
My chest rumbled. It was a dark, guttural sound, and I could taste the ugliness of it at the back of my throat.
How dare she argue with me?
“If you don’t leave now, you’ll make me do something I can assure you I won’t regret.” I growled, taking a long, threatening step toward her.
My shadow cut across her face, and the glint of her eyes widened as she took in my huge form. She retreated a slow, safe step back into the sunlight. Her expression didn’t falter.
“I can’t leave.” Ronnie shook her head, brown hair clinging to the sweat trickling down the sides of her cheeks. “Not yet.”
“I have nothing to give you,” I yelled, the noise loud and startling as my arms swung out beside me, exposing all of me to her. “I have nothing left for you, Ronnie. Not for you.”
She flinched and just for a moment, for a split second, her bravado faltered. The emotion bubbled forth, but she caught it before it manifested. Whether it was hurt, pain, or anger, I didn’t care and would never know as a carefully constructed mask hardened her features. “I’m not here for me,” she whispered, so slight I almost missed it. But what I didn’t miss, what I couldn’t miss, was her hand reaching up and flattening her palm against the hot metal towed behind the back of her truck.
It was the second time it had caught my attention. I didn’t just give it a passing glance this time, however. I really and truly looked at it.
That’s why.
The gesture was small, but I knew what it meant. I knew what she was truly asking of me. Knew it, because it was the same question I had spent half of my lifetime answering no matter who had called. And the same question I had spent the last eight years of my life trying to forget. It was a part of the past that I left behind, and one of the many things I had long since accepted I would never do again.
I felt my muscles tighten over my chest, my ribs suffocating under the strain, and my heart throbbing hard on the other side. It was as if my body were building a wall, trying desperately to stop the feelings welling up from the sight of that big metal box.
I turned my back on this, and I never wanted to face anything like this again. I couldn’t go back to that life. Not after everything I had sacrificed for the happiness I have now.
“No,” I breathed, voice tight and graveled. “I don’t do that. Not anymore.”
“Please,” Ronnie pleaded. Her desperate and genuine emotion was like a gushing wave, slamming into me with a force that I was sure would knock me off my feet. She stepped forward, her hands tugging on the collar of her shirt. The material strained underneath, as if it were the only thing stopping her hands from reaching out to me. “Please, Jackson. I need your help.”
“No.” I retreated a step back. I knew the rage and betrayal still sat inside of me, but knowing what she was asking, knowing what she wanted was like adding fuel to the fire as memories of the past began to burn up inside of me. “Go somewhere else.”
“There is nowhere else!” Ronnie cried, the tears that had once brimmed her eyes were now falling, one after another down her olive skin. “I’ve been everywhere else. Do you think I wanted to come here to you? Do you think I wanted to travel all the way to find you? Do you think I would want to, when I know I’m the last person you want to see in the world?” Ronnie’s head dropped, her hair, dark and flowing, fell like a grieving veil over her face. “I know you hate me, Jackson...,” she whispered, voice soft and tired. “I’m not blind, nor have I forgotten what happened between us.”
She turned to the trailer, her hand reaching up and flattening against the sun-warmed metal, eyes gentle as if she could see inside. “Please help her.”
I stared at her, the long-limbed woman who was the core representation of my past, and to the trailer that used to define everything I was. I could feel the old urges surfacing, telling me exactly what I wanted to do. But I couldn’t listen to them. I knew exactly what kind of rabbit hole I was standing on the edge of. It would only take one step to fall.
“No.”
“Jackson!” Ronnie cried, voice breaking. “They’ll put her down if you do nothing!”
“Ronnie—” I growled, my stubbornness trying to hold firm.
“Just a look,” Ronnie pleaded. “If you say she can’t be helped, then I’ll accept it. If you say it’s over, then it’s over. And if you do say it’s over then….” I saw her bottom lip tremble as she looked to the ground, the words left hanging in the air like a sucker-punch to the stomach. Her other hand tightened on her collar until her knuckles went white, but it couldn’t hide the shaking rippling over her shirt. “If it’s over…,” she whispered, “…then I’ll do what needs to be done myself.”
I looked down at her, this woman I no longer recognized, and for a moment, I was taken back. Back to when I could see the girl I used to know standing in front of me, the same stubborn tears filling those prideful and compassionate green eyes. And for just a second, I saw the same eyes staring back at me in the present.