Chapter Twenty
Two days passed without much happening. My dad and the others were busy planning how to trap Nytro and his asshole officers.
Mace wasn’t exactly given much freedom, there was always someone up there with him at the cabin, but they let him go outside every once in a while.
As much as Hudson hated the thought of me being in the same room as him, I still slipped away at times to check in on Mace.
I couldn’t really explain the way I felt about him.
Hudson had mostly been busy with club stuff, and making sure things at his house were getting sorted.
I still couldn’t believe I’d agreed to move down there with him.
But I rationalised it wasn’t forever, just while I was still in a mini lock down on the compound.
Although I did fantasise a lot about what it would be like to actually live there with him, permanently.
He’d been insatiable the last few days, like we couldn’t be in the vicinity of each other without him dragging me off to some dark corner to kiss me stupid or feel me up.
It was different to how we had been just before Lily and Omen took me.
Things were tentative then, we still weren’t sure where we stood but now, after I got that tattoo, it was like a switch had been flipped.
I ignored the twinge of desperation I felt between us, like we were getting everything we could from each other in case it all fell apart. I didn’t think it would, but we’d been so thoroughly destroyed by each other, through a cruel act of someone else, that we were being cautious.
Casper freaked me the hell out when he saw the tattoo and told me we were more or less married now, cackling like a hyena at the expression on my face.
Rosa invited me over today along with Cassie, to have dinner and a few bottles of wine. We had guards coming out of our asses, but it was still nice to be given some sense of freedom back. I would have thought after what happened I would have been hidden away.
Hudson was busy going over plans with Ballistic though it didn’t stop him being the one to drive me over here.
I wanted to be pissed at the proprietary, but I…
wasn’t. And I had to question what the hell was wrong with me?
I wouldn’t lose myself because of a guy.
I couldn’t. Yet, Hudson was sinking into my soul.
Cassie and Rosa were in the kitchen when I arrived, after hopping off the back of Hudson’s bike and getting a searing kiss, a reminder of where I needed to be later, and a slap on the ass.
“You sicken me,” Cassie said as I came into the room. She was sitting on the kitchen counter, cross legged wearing jeans and a baggy Mot?rhead t-shirt. I’d never seen her looking so casual, nor had she greeted me quite like that before.
“Me? Why?” I dropped my coat over the back of a chair and stared at her.
She nodded to where we could see Hudson chatting with the men out front, before he pulled on his helmet and rode away.
“See, mom, look at her. That loved up look on her face. It’s disgusting.”
“It’ll hit you one day, my love,” Rosa poured me a glass of wine and held it out. “Then I fully expect Waverley to give you shit about this.”
“Fat chance,” Cassie scoffed. “Men can go fuck themselves.”
“They do, regularly,” Rosa chuckled.
“Gross. Do you see how gross my mother is?” Cassie looked back to me. “And for the record, I don’t think you’re disgusting per se. It’s just the whole situation. I don’t know how you do it honestly. Being tied down to one guy.”
“I thought you were dating someone in the City?” I asked, slipping off my shoes and taking a seat on a high wooden stool at the counter beside her.
“Dating,” Rosa rolled her eyes. “She’s fucking a work colleague.”
“I am not…” Cassie pouted for a second. “Not anymore anyway. He wants more,” she made quotes with her fingers, almost sloshing her wine.
“And you don’t?” I ask.
“Absolutely not.”
“With him, or… anyone?” I looked up at her, trying not to let on what I knew. Her eyes narrowed on me as we held the look.
“Her heart is made of wood,” Rosa interrupted us, drawing Cassie’s eyes away.
Could I get her to talk about Handlebar without telling her I know? I didn’t want to break his confidence.
“I’m focused on my career,” Cassie sniffed, finishing off her wine. “Besides, there is too much choice out there. I’m too young to settle.”
“Falling in love isn’t settling,” Rosa told her daughter.
“Maybe you just need to meet the right guy,” I suggest, looking at her over the rim of my glass as I take another sip, I can’t resist a little wink.
“I hear they have a hot new guy locked up at the compound, maybe I should go jump his bones,” she retorted.
Not sure what she was hoping to achieve by making that comment but it pissed the hell out of Rosa and she made sure Cassie knew it. Word about who was up in King’s cabin had spread enough that Cassie knew. How she knew he was hot was a different matter.
“How about we change the subject,” Cassie suggested with an epic eye roll aimed at her mom.
“Good thinking, go see to the pasta,” and with that, Rosa pushed Cassie off the counter.
Luckily, she made sure Cassie had set down her wine first. That led to a bread roll fight which I was way too inexperienced to join in with.
I took cover behind the fridge while Rosa and Cassie battled it out, until they were in a heap of giggles on the floor.
I laughed through a lot of it but it also made me sad, knowing what I did about my own mom.
After dinner, Cassie made her excuses to head out, not giving me an opportunity to get any information out of her about Handlebar but she knew I knew something.
It wasn’t that late so when Rosa suggested we hang out a while longer I happily agreed.
We talked about Connor. I didn’t want to bring up what was going on with Warren, because I wasn’t sure if she knew about their relationship, but Rosa did agree things were going to be difficult for him for a long time.
She reassured me he would always be looked after, making a joke about Smokey and Jolene being his guardian angels.
“Don’t think I didn’t notice that tattoo,” she said, bringing me another glass of wine.
It was my fourth of the night, I needed to start taking it easy. I brought my hair back around covering the tattoo. Hudson would kill me if he saw me doing that. I was still getting used to the reaction people kept having when they saw it.
Everyone thought it was a big deal, Warren had just given me a long, tight hug, before he headed out to do whatever it was he was doing lately.
“I heard you’re moving in with him too.”
“Christ, those guys are worse than gossiping housewives,” I groaned.
“You can’t hide anything from me. I think it’s great,” she nudged my toe with her boot. “You know I’ve shipped you guys for years.”
I laughed at her using stupid millennial phrases.
“I’m glad there is finally some good news around the compound for a change. And it’s good to see the two of you together and happy. There’s been a lot of shit to deal with these last few weeks.”
“Understatement,” I set my wine glass down.
I looked around the room at all the photographs Rosa had up of her family.
Our house had never been like that. We didn’t even have our high school pictures framed anywhere.
Warren and I had pictures in our rooms, but the rest of the house was mostly barren. Guess I knew why now.
“Rosa,” I look over at her. I take a deep breath. “Do you have any pictures of her? Delaney I mean. My mom,” I stumbled over the words.
“I do,” she said, giving me a sad smile.
“Could I see them?”
“Of course,” she patted my thigh, said she’d be just a minute and headed upstairs.
I got a text from Hudson while I was waiting for her to come back. I replied to let him know he could come get me in an hour, it was after ten already so I was expecting some kind of argument but he agreed he’d be here in an hour.
“Here,” Rosa came back in carrying a box.
“I hung on to them because…well I figured King would come out of the grief sooner than later and he’d want to see them again, but he never did.
Then, when he told us all we had to forget she was here and that you kids weren’t to be told,” she shook her head, it was written all over her face what she thought about that.
She passed me the box. “Do you need a minute?”
“No, stay” I told her, straightening up and putting my phone down beside me. “Maybe you could tell me a little bit more about her?” I frowned after asking, remembering the last time I asked her about my mom when I first got back.
“I’m sorry about the shit I told you about Danica. You came to me to ask me about your mom and I had to go along with what King told us all to do.”
“It isn’t your fault,” I reassure her but I had been thinking a lot about that conversation.
“All of it was true, I never lied about Danica and her time here, but I hated not being able to tell you about Delaney. I’ll tell you anything you need to know. War too when he’s ready.”
“He wants to go after the person who pulled the trigger,” I tell her, my hands nervously smoothing over the top of the box on my lap. “I know dad tried to find him and all these years later he hasn’t got close but Warren is determined.”
“It’s his way of dealing with it,” Rosa said gently. “He isn’t ready to look at these pictures yet.”
“You’re probably right.”