Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
LEXI
THEN
W hen I agreed to go out with Dean tonight, I did not expect to end up at the Vipers clubhouse, but the second Ryan invited Dean, he didn’t want to miss out on a Viper party. He said he had always wanted to go to one but had never been invited because he didn’t know anyone in the club. While I was talking to Jay and Ryan, he called his best friend Ethan, and invited him as well so we stopped to pick him up on the way here. When we walked through the gate of the clubhouse, they both headed inside to get a drink and left me outside on my own.
“Baby Davis, come here, girl!” Haz called me over from where he had set up a game of beer pong on one of the tables outside the clubhouse. Jay stood on one side of the table with a girl under his arm and Haz wanted me to be on his team.
“Haz, you do realize that Jay and I are twins, right? I’m not his baby sister.” I pointed towards Jay, who laughed from the other side of the table.
“Actually, Lex, I was born first so you are the baby,” Jay yelled over at us as he took a sip of his beer.
“By two minutes, Jayden.” I glared at my brother as I held up two fingers in his direction.
“See, I was right, you are baby Davis.” Haz put his arm around my shoulders and pulled me closer to him. He passed me an unopened beer bottle before filling the red cups sitting on the table in front of us with a brown liquid.
Jay took the first turn, and the ball landed straight in one of our cups, which I made Haz drink because the alcohol looked disgusting. We grew a small crowd of people around us as we finished the game. Jay and his partner Becky had four cups remaining and we had only one. I was starting to feel slightly tipsy and Haz clearly had too much to drink because his shots weren’t even landing on the table anymore, let alone anywhere near the cups.
“I’m going to find Dean,” I said in Haz’s ear. The music had been turned up louder and it was hard to hear the conversation around us.
I walked into the main clubhouse and made my way through the crowd of people before making it to the bar. I stood up on the base of one of the bar stools to try and get a height advantage to find Dean, but had no luck spotting him in the crowd.
“Looking for someone?” a brunette girl with green eyes asked me from behind the bar. She looked familiar and after a moment, it finally clicked.
“Bella Blake?” I asked her and a small smile came across her face. Bella was Ryan’s older sister but when his parents separated, Bella left with their mom and Ryan stayed here in Haven Cove with his dad.
“Hey, little Lexi Davis. I heard Jayden joined the Vipers a few months ago.” She passed me a glass of ice and clear liquid. One smell of the glass told me it was straight vodka. “Are you looking for Jay? I saw him outside before”
“I was just with him. I’m actually looking for my date.” I took a sip of my drink and felt the liquid burn my throat.
“You’re dating a Viper?” Bella asked as she lent over the bar and rested her face on her left hand.
“No, not a Viper. His name is Dean, he’s wearing a white button up shirt. Probably looks like the opposite of everyone here.” I laughed because everyone around us was wearing casual clothes such as jeans and t-shirts and most shirts were covered with a leather cut.
“Oh him! I saw him and his friend head down the hallway just a minute ago.” I took one more sip of the vodka and thanked Bella before heading down to find Dean and Ethan.
As I walked past one of the bedrooms, I could hear loud moaning, which usually was not out of the ordinary in the clubhouse. But the name being moaned was what caught my attention. I stood closer to the door to listen before reaching down and opening the wooden door. My eyes were instantly drawn to the girl kneeling on the bed in nothing but her underwear and Dean standing next to the bed as they continued making out without realizing they now had an audience.
I coughed under my breath to get their attention.
“Shit, Lexi” Dean stepped away from the girl and towards me but I walked out of the room and back down the hallway. I could hear him calling out to me as he followed. “Lexi, wait, it’s not what it looks like.” Dean’s hand grabbed my arm and stopped me from walking. I looked down at his unbuckled belt and back up at his face that had red lipstick smeared on his lips.
“Not what it looks like? It looks like you were hooking up with someone else when you’re supposed to be on a date with me. Am I wrong?” I raised my voice back at him. I tried to pull my arm away, but he tightened his grip and pushed me against the wall as both his hands held me still.
“Let go of me.” I tried to wriggle from his grip but he held me firm.
“Not until you listen to me. I just had too much to drink, okay. I wasn’t thinking.” He took another step closer to me and ran his hands down my arms but stayed holding me tightly.
“Get your hands off her,” I heard a voice say from behind Dean. I looked up and saw Ryan standing directly behind Dean and his eyes were full of rage.
“Fuck off, she’s my date,” Dean replied back without knowing who he was talking to.
Ryan raised an eyebrow at me with a small smirk on his lips. We both knew that if Dean knew it was Ryan behind him, he would have never said that. “I’ll give you three seconds to take your hands off her before I do it for you.” Ryan held up three fingers that only I could see and one by one he put them down.
“Fine, jeez man”. Dean let go of my arms but pushed me back in the process and my back hit the wall.
Ryan moved so quickly and within a second, he had pulled me away from the wall and behind him, before he raised his fist and punched Dean in the jaw.
“Get the fuck out of here!” Ryan grabbed Dean’s shirt and dragged him down the hallway and through the crowd of people in the clubhouse and pushed him out the door, straight into Haz and Jay who were standing outside with Dean’s friend, Ethan.
“What happened?” Ethan asked Dean, whose lip was bleeding from Ryan’s punch and his belt was still unbuckled from the hook up. I watched as Jay’s eyes looked down at his belt and over to my messy shirt and he moved so fast that I couldn’t correct his thoughts.
“What did you do to my sister? If you hurt her, I will kill you.” Jay had Dean pushed up against the wall as he held onto the front of his shirt.
“Jay, stop. I’m fine.” I walked next to Jay and put my arm on his shoulder as I tried to pull him back.
“It wasn’t me. He was with another girl”
Jay turned to narrow his eyes at me. He then looked back at Dean and dropped the grip on his shirt before throwing a punch to the same spot Ryan hit. But Jay didn’t stop at one. He threw at least four punches before Ryan pulled him off.
“Get him out of here and next time we see you, I won’t stop him,” Ryan said to Ethan and all of us felt the threat.
Ethan picked Dean up off the ground and helped him walk away from the clubhouse and back towards where Dean had parked his car earlier.
I walked back into the clubhouse and away from the crowd outside who were watching the fight unfold and made my way straight back to the bar. Bella was gone now and there was another girl behind the bar and after ordering my fifth vodka shot, she got the hint and left the bottle behind. I was well and truly drunk when I thought it was a good idea to join the other girls on the makeshift dance floor. It was just an area of the clubhouse that had the chairs removed and the wooden floor was sticky and wet from the spilled alcohol but it didn’t stop us from dancing to the beat of the music. I was stumbling as I was dancing and the room began spinning around in circles when I felt a firm hand land on my hip to keep me upright.
“Time for bed, Lexi,” I heard a quiet, deep voice whisper in my ear before two hands picked me up and threw me over their shoulder and led me down the hallway.
* * *
W hen I woke up the next morning, my head was pounding and I felt like I was going to be sick. I was trying to build the courage to open my eyes but I knew I’d be dizzy once I did. I opened one eye first but then quickly opened both when I noticed I wasn’t in my bedroom. I looked down at my outfit and I was in a black Viper t-shirt, without my jeans. I looked around the bedroom and quickly realized I was still in the Viper clubhouse, but more specifically, I was in a Viper’s bedroom.
I noticed the door to my left and quickly stood and ran into the bathroom before emptying the contents of my stomach into the toilet. I heard footsteps before a hand rubbed against my back and reached up to hold my hair off my face. Once my stomach was empty, I sat back against the wall and ran my hands over my face before looking up at my helper. Although once I saw who was in front of me, I instantly wanted to hide from embarrassment.
“I got you some aspirin, thought you might need it.” Ryan opened his hand that held two white pills and the other hand held a glass of water.
“Thank you.” I took the two pills and swallowed them with one sip and then drank the rest of the glass before leaning my head back against the wall. I would hate to see myself in the mirror right now. “What happened last night? Did we…?” I waved my finger between the two of us and he knew what I was asking.
“No, Lexi, we didn’t have sex. You were wasted.” He sat on the floor on the opposite side of the bathroom and leaned his hands on his knees. Ryan was wearing a pair of plain gray track pants with a black singlet. I hadn’t seen him in a singlet before but I noticed how both of his arms were full of tattoos that went the whole way up to his shoulders.
“Okay, but where are my clothes?” I looked down and pulled the shirt a little bit lower but since this was Ryan’s shirt, it was long enough to land at my mid-thigh.
“They’re in the shower because you weren’t so quick to the toilet last night. I don’t think those vodka shots agreed with you.” He laughed at my expense while I hid my face in my hands, embarrassed that I not only vomited on myself but also that Ryan had to help me get changed. As though he read my mind, he added, “Jay put the shirt on you while I cleaned the floor.”
Ryan stood and held out a hand to help pull me up with him. We stood looking at each other for a moment and he kept his hand placed on my waist which made the shirt rise to my upper thigh. I felt his thumb move up and down slowly, and even through the shirt it was causing goosebumps to appear under his touch. Ryan took one step closer to me and his hand slid down from my waist to the hem of the shirt and feeling his skin on mine sent a shiver through my body. He leaned closer to my ear and just when I thought he might kiss me, he moved his other hand over my shoulder and reached into the shower to turn the tap on.
“As good as you look in my shirt, Lex, you look better clean. Jump in the shower, I’ll head down and get you a towel and a toothbrush,” Ryan whispered in my ear. I could smell the mint and coffee on his breath and when he stepped away from me, I missed him instantly.