Dark As Coal

Prologue

Adeline

I couldn’t help the smile that came across my face this morning as I pulled out of the clubhouse and headed to school.

My freaking jaw was starting to hurt.

How that man could say little to no words, and still completely mesmerize me, I had no freaking clue.

But he did all of that and then some.

That ever-present saying that actions speak louder than words could never be truer than when I was with Coal Matthew Adams.

With just that on my mind, I knew nothing was going to bring down the high I had going on today.

Not any of the kids that would be walking through those doors and having the mentality that they weren’t going to do a thing I asked of them today.

Not creepy McPeterson, our janitor, and his wandering eyes and the licking of his lips when he sees a woman with a nice round ass.

Shiver.

Why that shiver?

Because he looked like a cross between Grandpa Munster and Steve Buscemi.

Steve Buscemi is the man who played the serial killer in the movie Con Air. You know, the one that sat playing with a Barbie doll with that little girl? Yeah, enough freaking said.

That thought was wiped from my mind when I glanced at the clock and moved to the door of my classroom.

I was ready.

I was prepared.

Any minute now, I would see my teaching assistant leading the kids from the lunchroom where they waited until the first bell of the morning sounded.

I had just gotten into place when my phone vibrated with a text.

Knowing they wouldn’t be here for a few minutes longer; I pulled my phone from my dress. Yes, my pretty, mauve-colored dress that sat just below my knees had pockets.

Pockets!

I had this same dress in six other colors because of the pockets. I loved it.

Coal – You’re free tonight. Family dinner.

Not even the text I just received was going to dampen my mood.

Nope.

Negative.

Not after the events of last night and again this morning… twice.

It didn’t even bother me that he had yet to kiss me or let me kiss him. Nope, it didn’t. Because after that man has had me in positions that even some Playboy Bunnies wouldn’t want to be in, I didn’t complain.

With that smile firmly on my face, I pocketed my phone, and just in time too.

Because I saw my teaching assistant round the corner with the kids.

I bumped fists with the boys and winked at the girls.

“Hey, Miss Adeline,” I heard as one of my favorite students of this year came through the door.

Smiling down at her, I tapped the tip of her nose, “Good morning, Olivia. How are you?”

She scrunched her little nose and smiled, “I’s good. Daddy made me blueberry pancakes this morning, and he didn’t burn them this time.”

Smiling, I nodded. “They do taste better when they’re not burnt. I tend to agree. Now, go take your seat.” I winked at her.

“Yes, Miss Adeline.” I smiled when she skipped to her seat.

So far, Olivia’s father couldn’t cook eggs and the bacon was too crispy, but he had mastered pop-tarts and now blueberry pancakes.

Shaking my head, I watched as the last kid walked into the room, and then I closed the door.

As I walked to my desk, I did my usual speech, “The best-ever kindergarten class is now in session. Who’s ready to have some fun?”

At once, they all clapped and nodded.

Climbing onto the edge of my desk, I called out, “Okay, for two points towards the magical chest this Friday, who can tell me what number this is?” I asked them as I held up seven fingers.

Mindy, my teaching assistant, had her eyes on the kids and caught the first one that raised their hand. She called out, “Ben?”

He smiled, showing a missing front tooth, and said, “Seven.”

I smiled, “Right on, Ben.”

We had a mini-board with all the kids’ names on it and a table of sorts. At the top of the board, we had the day’s Monday through Thursday. The top five students with the highest number of points got to raid my magical chest.

What it really was, was a small chest I picked up for a song. It was filled to the brim with little party favors, knick-knacks from the dollar store, and odds and ends from mom-and-pop stores in our town.

See, I did this, because the first year I started teaching, I had two boys, two twin boys. And after the fourth week of them coming to school in dirty clothes, the same clothes they had worn for three days, and never complaining, never not eating all their food, and being amazing kids, I reached out to a friend of mine.

She had informed me that sadly, they were the youngest of seven children and money was extremely tight because their father had been killed when he was working on a pipeline.

After my childhood, I knew what it meant when someone said the money was tight, oh how I knew.

Thankfully for those twin boys, they had brothers and sisters, and a mom that loved them fiercely, unlike I had.

But…. I bet you’re wondering, why the hell would a kindergarten teacher be a club girl?

Yes… I said a club girl.

It was a long story.

And I guess my story starts at the age of five.

Yeah.

Five.

Well… technically, that was as far back as I could solidly remember.

I learned that when the men came, I was to flip the lock on my bedroom door, go to my closet, flip my little lamp on, and lock that door, too.

And in the morning, I would have to grab the medical bucket, as my mother called it, go into her room, and clean her up.

The sight of blood and vomit stopped making me squeamish by the time I turned six.

When I turned eight, I hadn’t made it to my bedroom in time.

Thankfully, the man who had come that night didn’t like little girls.

However, the man that came when I was nine and had kicked in my bedroom door, and my closet door… he did.

My mother had sat there on our old, dilapidated couch while pushing a needle in her vein as that man did unspeakable things to me.

And I hated her.

After a child goes through having to learn how to hand wash their clothes for school in a kitchen sink.

After a child learns they can get food from dumpsters on the weekends to hold them over until free breakfast and lunch at school.

After that child knows that while everyone is excited for Christmas break and seeing all the marvelous things Santa Claus brought them, that child is just praying that the lock on their bedroom door will hold.

That child doesn’t cry when they find their mother unresponsive on the couch that morning.

They don’t cry when the cops show up.

Nor do they cry when they watch their mother being covered up with a sheet and taken from the trailer.

Not even when they are placed in home, after home, after home, all so those people can get checks to feed their drug habits and make it look like they are taking care of the children in their care without doing it.

And when I was fifteen and moved into my final home, we had a neighbor.

I watched as our neighbor beat the shit out of the man who he had just seen spit on me where I lay curled up in the grass behind the house with my underwear around my ankles, my body blue and purple already.

Before that man could take me to the hospital, he had called someone, and a black van came, then a couple of men loaded the unconscious man into the back of it and sped away.

The foster family I was with got a verbal warning from our neighbor.

Thankfully, that warning held true.

No other men came to the house.

And for what he had done for me, being the first person to have my back and to care, on the day I turned eighteen, I gave him one of my kidneys.

As I lay in the hospital bed after reacting badly to the surgery, it was to find the same man, our neighbor, Piney, holding my hand.

Once he made sure I was awake and lucid, he lowered his voice, softening it, “Owe you a marker. No other person on this planet have I ever met would have come to the hospital on their eighteenth birthday and donated me, me of all fucking people, a kidney.”

“That was payback,” I told him with a smile. Not even recognizing my own voice.

He shook his head, “No, darlin’ girl. What was payback was making my meals and cleaning my house, even though I told you, you didn’t need to do that shit.”

I sighed. Over the past two years, I learned that once Piney had something on his mind, there was no talking him out of it, and I knew that when he continued, “Still owe you a marker. You call it in whenever you need it. Okay?”

I sucked in a deep breath, let it out, and then nodded.

I took in his worn down, cracked face, the mangy beard that didn’t know whether it wanted to be a riot of wire spring curls, or be completely straight, right as he said, “Now, what I’m about to offer you doesn’t count for this marker.”

Once he made sure he had my eyes, that was when Piney, a member of Zagan MC located in Fulton, Mississippi, rocked my entire world.

“Darlin’ girl, the way I see it, you got this light. It’s so bright it’s unreal. You got a few choices, no matter what you choose, I’m gonna back you. No matter what.”

Once I nodded, he laid them out.

“First, I got money. I’ll help you get on your feet. I’ll have your back.” Immediately, I shook my head at him in the negative.

I might be damaged and used goods, which was the only thought I learned to never voice to Piney again after he sat me down at his kitchen table and ranted and raved for three straight hours.

I wasn’t damaged. Nor was I used goods. No, what I was, was an angel sent to earth to shine so brightly that people needed to wear ten pairs of sunglasses just so they could look at me.

But even though I thought that about myself, except for the angel part, I saw what taking money from people did to a person. Boy, did I see it, and I had vowed that I wouldn’t be like my mother.

No matter what life threw at me.

He sighed, “I know. I know. Second, if you want to be able to make your own way and have your own shit, we got something called club girls. You sign on for three years, you’ve got a roof over your head, and food on the table, and we cover all expenses for your education. And I want you to know, had our tech guy look into shit. Proud of you. Saw that you took college courses at the library, with a little help from the club, and in a year, you can be a teacher. So, think about what grade you wanna teach.”

Even though I didn’t know what a club girl was, he had me at making my own way and having my own shit.

Now, I know what you’re thinking; why would a girl who had been through what I had could ever dream of being a club girl?

Simple, once Piney explained to me what a club girl was, he had gotten on the phone with the President of Zagan MC, and they brokered a deal.

I was going to be the only club girl who had the right to tell the brothers no.

And if they disrespected it, the President was going to give them the beating of their life.

It was later in the day when someone knocked on the door.

That was also the day I met Asher, the President of Zagan MC.

And it was also the day that the biggest man I had ever seen walked in behind Asher.

And I kid you not, the big man hunched his shoulders to make himself look smaller. He knew. He knew what had happened to me, and he had made sure that he showed me he wouldn’t harm me.

Yes, he showed me that.

I learned a long time ago that actions speak louder than words.

And… it was that afternoon I felt down to my marrow that I had met the most important person in my life. The person that had the name Coal stitched onto his leather kutte.

He was the someone I would fall for the very first time he smiled at me.

That smile… it was a lady killer.

And the first time I heard his laugh, granted it had taken me seven months to hear it, and longer for other people, that was when he pulled my heart from my chest, and placed it in his body, firmly inside of his own heart.

Shaking my head out of my thoughts, I held up another number, and the day really began.