Chapter 3
I packed enough to last a couple of weeks.
I’d called my boss and promised I would be back soon.
He begrudgingly allowed me some personal time, because the take the night before had almost doubled.
He knew I was a good deal for business. He would call me before the two weeks were up, no doubt.
I just didn’t know if I’d be able to come back.
Warren text around midnight to say we were heading out at seven AM.
They wanted to get back to Jersey in one day.
He said I was riding with them, but that wasn’t happening.
If he thought I was leaving my car behind, my only way out of that place, he was crazy.
When I heard the bikes as I slammed the trunk, I smiled at the thought of facing two pissed off bikers.
I turned and held up a hand to Warren, not in greeting but to tell him to stop.
Declan came out of the apartment building with my cell phone and his eyes immediately went to the two bikes. Luckily, Warren heeded my warning and turned away, stopping down the block.
“What the hell are those guys doing around here at this time?”
I shrugged, reaching for the phone to distract him.
“I can’t believe you almost forgot this.”
“I didn’t forget it.” I shook my head. I couldn’t forget it. It was my lifeline.
“Call me when you get there, okay? Let me know how your aunt is.”
“I will,” I told him, about to pocket the phone and taking out my car keys.
The phone pinged with an incoming text and a glance told me it was Hudson.
It was worrying I still had his number stored in my phone, even more that he still had mine.
I ignored it and locked the screen. “You focus on the band, okay? They’re going places. ”
“You bet they are.” He pulled me into a tight embrace, rubbing a hand over the back of my neck.
The other reached down and squeezed my ass, making me giggle into his neck.
“Drive safe,” he leaned back and looked at me.
I pressed myself into him and gave him a searing, passionate kiss, one that had him hardening against me.
“God dammit, woman,” he laughed. “You sure you have to go right now?”
“I really do.” I kissed him again and gave his cock a squeeze. “It’s about an eight-hour journey and I don’t want to stop.” I was certain from their position, Hudson and Warren could see exactly what was going on.
“Shit, I’m gonna have to take care of this now.” I laughed, pulling back as he adjusted himself. “If you need a rest stop, take it,” he tapped the end of my nose. “You’ll be no good to your aunt if you end up the same way as her. Gonna miss you.”
I swallowed, staring at him with a tremulous smile.
There was an awful feeling in my stomach, one I didn’t want to give in to or even think about.
I hugged him close again, breathing in his scent.
Then I stepped back and got into the car.
Warren and Hudson started their bikes and set off.
Declan stepped back, shoving his hands into his pockets, watching them in confusion.
I waved to him as I backed out of the space.
I drove the other way, taking a different route to the Interstate.
It would piss them off, but I didn’t care.
Watching Declan getting smaller in my rearview mirror was like watching everything I’d worked towards for the last five years, disappearing from my grasp.
They caught up with me on I-85 about thirty minutes later, after I’d ignored a few phone calls.
I heard them before I saw them. Warren pulled alongside me and gestured at me to pull over.
I pointed a finger at my ear and shrugged as if I didn’t know what he meant and kept right on driving, turning up the radio, ignoring him.
I wasn’t worried in the slightest. If I was being forced into this, they’d go along with how I wanted to do it.
A little over four hours into the drive, I decided I needed a comfort break and copious amounts of coffee. We were approaching Petersburg in Virginia when I spotted a sign for a rest stop and headed in.
After finding a space as close to the building as I could, I grabbed my purse and phone, locked up the car and walked inside.
I made my way to the bathrooms first, used the toilet, and washed my hands and face.
I hadn’t had time to apply make up before I left, and I didn’t have it with me now to hide the dark shadows under my eyes.
I finger brushed my hair and found a hair tie, pulling it up into a messy ponytail.
In the restaurant, I found Warren and Hudson at a table, my brother holding and studying a menu with three cups of steaming coffee in front of him.
I plonked myself on the chair beside him and added a sugar packet to my coffee before taking a sip.
It wasn’t great, but it was caffeine and my sleep deprived brain sighed.
“You want anything to eat?” Warren passed me the menu.
I didn’t answer him as I perused. When the server came back, all wide googly eyes staring between my brother and Hudson, I sighed impatiently and rattled off my order.
Warren beamed a huge smile at her, making her cheeks flush a deep pink as he ordered.
Hudson just waved a hand that he was fine with his coffee, barely glancing at her.
I stared at her. She got the picture we were done. She cleared her throat and spun away.
Warren laughed, and I glared at him. “It’s like old times, Waverley, protecting her guys.”
“You’re not my guys anymore.”
That shut him up. I drank more coffee and looked out of the window.
I stayed like that for a while as they talked about some motorcycle crap.
They wouldn’t talk business around me, so the mundane bullshit about engines and pipes and body work droned on.
When the server returned, Warren shut up long enough to inhale everything on his plate.
He’d always been a vacuum when it came to food.
When he tried to steal some fries from my plate, I slapped his hand away and scowled at him.
“You won’t finish them.”
“Back off,” I snarled. He was right. It was more food than I would normally eat, but I was going to make damn sure I ate every bite. Warren knew I was doing it out of spite, if the half smile on his face was anything to go by.
“So,” he said, after the server topped off our coffee for the fourth time. “Who’s the guy?”
“What guy?”
“The one grinding all up on you,” he smirked.
I pulled a face. “Just because you perverted degenerates are comfortable watching each other get your dicks sucked doesn’t mean I want to talk about it with you.”
Hudson snorted. I’d purposely ignored him, and he’d been happy enough to sit in silence while we ate.
I cast a critical eye over him. He’d had girls falling all over him in high school.
He was a grade A asshole to most of them, but that never deterred them.
As a fully grown man, he was even more gorgeous.
I couldn’t think about that because it caused a pain in my chest I didn’t want to identify.
He didn’t get to affect me like that anymore.
“Is he your boyfriend?” Warren pushed.
“You have had no interest in my life for the last five years, Warren. Why the hell would I bother telling you about it now?”
“That’s not fair, Wave.”
I glared at him. “Fair?”
“When you left-”
“When you abandoned me, you mean.”
“Wave, that’s not how it happened.”
“Oh really?” I reared back and turned to face him.
He looked upset, but I had no intention of letting him get under my skin.
Before I could say something I would regret, I shook my head and looked out of the window.
Despite how I felt, he was still my brother and as much as I would love to hurt him for the way he’d let me go back then, I wouldn’t and couldn’t reciprocate.
“You think I was happy when you left?”
I ground my jaw to the point my teeth hurt. I didn’t like the pleading tone of his voice.
“You’re my sister, my twin, for fuck’s sake. If you think it didn’t hurt me as much as it hurt you, fuck, not seeing you these last five years has been hell, Wave.”
“You knew what to do if you felt that way,” I whispered, not looking at him.
He put his hand on my shoulder and for a second, I let the warmth of it remind me of when we were younger and inseparable.
I hadn’t seen him since the day I left, and I got angry again.
I’d been forgotten. They had the club, their brothers, friends, family.
I walked out of there with nothing, and no one gave a single shit. Least of all my father.
“How do you think I knew where you were?” my brother asked me.
Hudson got up without a word and left the restaurant. Warren looked after him for a few seconds with a deep frown, then focused on me again.
“We knew where you were. It wasn’t hard to find you.”
“Is that supposed to make me feel better?” I ask him quietly, incredulous at this revelation.
When I responded to his many messages, after I’d settled into the dorm and college life, I thought I had made it away from them successfully.
But they’d known the whole five years. He stared at me, identical eyes to mine.
If I allowed myself to be honest about it, eyes I had missed every day of the five years I’d been gone.
“Probably not,” he sighed. “But I thought it was best to leave you to get on with your life. To do what you always wanted to do, college, a decent job, away from…”
“My family?” I say on a sigh. “The only people I cared about.”
“My hands were tied.”
“No one owns us,” I reminded him. “Isn’t that what we always said.
Not dad, not the club, it was just us.” I looked back at where Hudson had disappeared.
“The four of us. But it was never gonna end up that way, Warren. And deep down you all knew it. I was the idiot girl who thought my friends had my back, or that my brother would always be there for me. But you weren’t.
You let him take you and you didn’t fight it.
” I gulped, blinking to prevent the tears falling.
“We never meant to hurt you, Wave.”
“It was inevitable, Warren. It was the only way it would ever be. It took me a long time, but I got my shit together. I moved on, I made the best of what I had. I worked hard, I got myself to where I am now, a degree, with a great job, a boyfriend I care about, friends, a home….” I looked away from him. He knew what this was doing to me.
“And again,” he carried on my train of thought. “We don’t care what you want, we’re barging in and making you leave,” Warren rubbed his eyes and turned to look through the window.
I tried to sniff quietly, but my nose and eyes were red from trying.
“It hasn’t been easy for me, you know. I have an obligation, I have… demands made of me.”
I looked at him, five years may have passed but it was more like an eternity in my brother’s eyes.
He’d seen more than anyone his age should.
Done things no man should have to do, all because of our father.
But he had a choice. My anger surged again.
I wouldn’t forget the first year after I left home, how hard it was, how distraught and alone I felt.
I worked two jobs and a full load of college work, barely time to meet anyone.
In fact, I’d pushed people away because it wasn’t worth getting close to anyone.
I didn’t want to let anyone in, I refused to allow anyone to make me feel the way my family did.
I’d fed myself on sandwiches and leftovers at the end of the night from the restaurants I worked at.
I’d been scared and lonely and heartbroken.
Warren took hold of my hand, and I snapped my head towards him, ready to pull back, tell him I don’t need this shit, his guilt or his excuses, the words died on my tongue. Like it or not, having Warren on my side was the only way to get through this. I gave his fingers the slightest squeeze.
Hudson broke our stare, his voice hard as he held up his cell phone. “King just called, he wants to know when we’ll be back. Are you two done with the heartfelt reunion?”
“Watch it, Hustle,” Warren said in a low voice.
I turned to look at Hudson, waiting for him to blow up like he used to at being told what to do. Warren and Hudson, despite how close they were as kids, would always butt heads, they didn’t take any shit from each other. I’d seen them come to blows enough times.
The only sign Hudson wanted to snap back was the tightening of his fist around his phone. A small part of me was doing cartwheels that Warren being VP was stifling Hudson’s natural inclination to argue back. It had to hurt that his equal is now his superior.
“I knew bringing her back would cause shit,” he muttered as he walked away from the table.
A quick glance at my brother showed a strange mixture of pissed off and resignation in his features.
He heard what Hudson said, as I had, and my eyes itched.
They had changed, of course they had, but once upon a time, despite his reputation, and him trying to make light of it, there had been a time when Hudson Kelley meant everything to me, and he’d told me he felt the same.
I grabbed my purse and got to my feet. “It’s on you, right?”
“When is it not?” my brother said with a sarcastic smirk.
He dropped some cash on the table from a roll in his pocket, my eyes widened at the sight, there had to be a few hundred dollars in his hand.
He put it away seeing me looking and came over, putting a hand around the back of my neck.
“Think you can make it the rest of the way with no more stops?”
I told him I would be fine and was surprised when Warren laid a quick kiss on the top of my head.
“I missed you,” he said, holding me in place, putting his forehead to mine and staring hard into my eyes. “You need to know that.”
Flustered by my mixed emotions, I gave him a tight nod and pulled away.
“I’ll make sure he doesn’t upset you, I promise, Wave. I’ll keep him away from you.”
He wasn’t talking about Hudson. He was talking about our dad. Although there was a part of me that wondered if it was about his best friend too. It was no secret how Hudson and I felt back then. But I would not think about it. He wasn’t worth the head space or the stress.
I sighed heavily. There was no point putting off what was coming. The sooner I faced my father and found out what he’d gotten me mixed up in, the quicker I could get the fuck out of there and back to my new life, where I belonged.