Chapter 11
CHAPTER
ELEVEN
SHAWN
“What do you want?” I ask, trying to keep from clenching my jaw and gnashing my teeth together.
I ball my hands in fists at my thighs, unsure of what to do but knowing I need to do something.
My mother’s lips curl into an expression of disgust as she closes the distance between us. I know that look all too well. It’s usually how she glares at me, and I know that she’s about to say something nasty.
She places her palms on the clean glass of my case, and I know that the oils on her hands are going to smear the glass. It bothers me, but only because it’s her. I wouldn’t give a shit if anyone else in the world did it… well, except maybe my brother.
“What do you want?” I ask again through gritted teeth.
She laughs. It’s ugly and loud. Too loud. “Looks like you got a whole fuckin’ setup here,” she snaps. “And you couldn’t even give your momma a helping hand? I see how it is.”
Momma. She only calls herself that when she’s trying to make me feel guilty about something. She’s never been a mother to me. Not when I was a kid, and certainly not now.
“You don’t see shit,” I snap.
I’m sick of her, of everything about her. I walked out when I was eighteen, and I haven’t looked back. She’s only here because my brother told her that I got paid for baking those cupcakes, and he only did that to be petty. He’s angry because he got thrown out on his ass by Elvis.
She arches a brow. “I heard you were fucking a Dark Horse,” she says, her voice almost a purr.
I hate it.
She would get this voice any time one of her druggie boyfriends looked at me. Eyed me instead of her. It was always me who was tempting them. Always me who was a filthy whore. It was always me who was doing whatever to or for them.
It’s why I named my shop the Filthy Sweet Treats. Because my mom always called me a filthy little whore, and I wanted to change that word. I wanted to breathe new life into it, new meaning.
I wanted it not to hold a negative meaning over me anymore.
I wanted her not to hold power over me any longer.
Not anymore.
At least that’s what I tell myself over and over again.
“I’m sorry you misheard. What do you want?”
I’m trying not to be snooty, but when it comes to her, it just happens because everything about her is accusatory and pisses me off.
“Heard you got paid by that Dark Horse,” she hisses. “You are a lying, filthy little whore. You said you had no money. Give me some cash, bitch.” Her final word comes out with a snap, and if I were just a few years younger, my spine probably would have straightened. It was so harsh.
“I’m not. I have nothing. What money I earned went toward bills. I have nothing left.”
She reaches forward and wraps her hand around the front of my throat before I realize what’s happening. She squeezes her fingers. I hate that she’s so frail from doing drugs and drinking her life away. Yet at the same time, she is so damn strong.
With both hands, I try to pull her one hand away from my throat, but I fail. Darkness lines the edges of my vision. I’m going to pass out. Only then does she release me.
Gasping for air, I stumble backward a few steps.
She takes this opportunity to rush forward to my back counter, where I have all my ingredients and supplies laid out for my morning baking.
She reaches her arms out, and I know what she’s going to do before she does it, but it’s almost like it happens in slow motion.
I can’t stop her as she reaches forward and swipes everything onto the floor.
I stand in shock.
I stare at her, unsure that this has happened.
Attempting to catch my breath. Then she turns to me once all my batter and frosting are on the floor, when all my bowls are shattered, and she’s ruined hundreds of dollars’ worth of product and supplies.
She smiles. Her lips curl, they curve up, and her eyes almost sparkle.
She is so damn proud of herself for this, and I swallow the tears, knowing that it’s what she wants from me. Emotion. She’s not going to get it. Tamping down every feeling throughout my entire body, I stare at her, waiting for whatever else she’s going to deliver to me.
“Fuck you, Shawn. You think you’re so much better than me because you’re younger, and for now, your shit’s tighter. You’re not. You’re nothing but a filthy little whore. Always have been and always will be. Watch your back.”
Without another word, she turns away from me and walks out of my bakery. I watch her go, frozen and trembling in place. It’s not until the front door closes, not until I hear it click, that I move. Every fiber of my being is full of rage. I want to destroy everything around me, but I don’t.
Instead, I inhale a deep breath, let it out slowly, then move toward the front door and flip the lock closed. Closing the blinds, I flip the open sign off and begin to clean up the mess. Tears stream down my face, and for the first time in years, I allow myself to cry.
When I’m finished, I make a list of all the things that have been broken and destroyed, including ingredients that were thrown onto the ground. I would rather buy a new bowl than get a whole bag of paleo flour. The bowl is about five bucks, the flour thirty.
It’s depressing.
I try not to think about how much it will cost to replace it all. It doesn’t matter because I probably won’t be here next month anyway. Another thing I tell myself. It doesn’t matter because I’m failing, so who cares? She just drove my dying dream a little further into the ground.
Once I have everything cleaned up, I run my hands over the front of my jeans and walk to the door to turn the light on and open again. There won’t be any cake, and there will only be snickerdoodle cookies and two different types of cupcakes, but it’s better than the nothing that it could have been.
I take another deep breath. I don’t know why I let her have this kind of control over me. I should have moved away as soon as I was old enough. I shouldn’t have stayed here. Once again, I was stupid. I’m always fucking stupid, and I hate myself for it.
KING
Watching the truck being loaded with pallets, I step away from Atomic and whoever the fuck he’s talking to. I have no goddamn clue, and honestly, I don’t care too much. This is his deal, but it’s got potential. There’s nobody around to really watch any of this shit that’s being loaded.
“So, are there regulators?” Atomic asks.
“Do you mean, is anyone going to come and check up on you?” the guy he’s talking to asks.
Clearing his throat, Atomic jerks his chin. “You get pulled over or anything, you could be searched. But otherwise, it’s load the shit, drive the shit, drop it off.”
“And the pay?”
He shrugs a shoulder. “Varies. Each company pays a different amount. Every load is different.”
I can almost see Atomic’s eyes sparkle at this news. It’s perfect for the shit we have planned, all except the part where none of us are fucking truck drivers, nor do we have a goddamn truck between us to drive.
After about an hour of shooting the shit, Atomic deems this enough intel to bring it to the club and walks back toward the pickup.
I follow him and climb inside as he starts the engine.
He doesn’t shift the truck into Reverse or speak immediately.
Instead, he sits quietly for a moment, staring straight ahead before he eventually turns to face me.
“We got some work to do on this, but think about how this could really boost our pockets. And then also think about the other clubs. We want to grow? This is a great fucking way to do that.”
“Moving drugs,” I murmur.
“Nationally.”
I consider calling my dad and asking him what he thinks about all of this.
He’d have an opinion for sure. But it’s not his club to run anymore, and it would be considered going behind Atomic’s back if I did.
But I need to know what someone else in the industry thinks about this.
I don’t want to make a decision on this blindly.
“How much those trucks cost?” I ask.
“A lot,” he grunts.
A lot.
That tells me enough, I suppose. It tells me that it’s going to cost the club a fuckton of money, and we don’t even know if it’s going to be viable or if we even have enough contacts to transport shit nationally.
“I think that if you’re going to bring this to the club, it needs to be completely laid out.
Because they need all the information. The bottom line of how much this truck is going to cost. How they’re going to get their CDLs, and then who we’re going to be transporting to and how much they’re going to give us. This is a big undertaking.”
Atomic nods his head a couple of times, then shifts the pickup into Reverse and begins to back out of his parking spot. Without a word, he drives back to the clubhouse, but I can’t handle the silence.
“Atomic?” I ask. “You thought of all that shit, right?”
He grunts. Which tells me that he didn’t think of all of it. Maybe he thought about some, but he was more excited about the possibility of what it could mean instead of truly thinking of logistics.
“It’s a good idea,” I say. “It’s not bad by any means. It just needs some work and number crunching. We’ll get it figured out. You want to boost the club like that, we’ll work toward it.”
“Yeah?” he asks. “I do. I want to be a goddamn legacy.”
“Then that’s exactly what the fuck we’ll be.”
And when I say those words, I mean them. That is what we’ll be. We’re the OG chapter of the Dark Horse MC, and that means something. We’re about to make it mean a fuck of a lot more, and I’m goddamn here for it, too.
When we make it back to the clubhouse, the sun is already on the rise.
Atomic pulls the pickup into his spot, and I turn to face him.
I watch him for a moment. I’ve known him since I was born.
We ran around this clubhouse in diapers together.
No way am I just going to ignore a dream of his, and no way am I going to make him do all of the work on a dream himself.
“How about I work on the cost of the truck and the CDL shit over the next couple of weeks while you get the trade shit and all that under control?”
Slowly, he turns his head, his eyes finding mine. He appears so unsure, so self-conscious. It’s an odd thing. I’ve never, not once, seen him look anything other than strong, cool, collected, and like a badass. Not even when we were kids. Atomic was a born leader. This was his fate—hands down.
“Let’s do this,” he says.
“We’re not going to create a legacy, brother,” I say. “We’re going to create a goddamn empire.”
And with that, I climb out of the truck and head for my bike. I think about going inside for a morning beer, but there is somewhere else I would rather be this morning. The sun is up, and I know that she is, too.
She’s probably baking something fucking amazing and thinking that I dipped out on her, maybe that I used her for a one-time fuck. This would have been the case if she were any other woman on earth, but there’s something about her, something that I’m not quite ready to just forget about yet.
Instead of heading straight to her place, I park my bike in front of the coffee shop that’s nearby the downtown area. I think about grabbing a muffin but decide against it. Glancing at my watch, I realize it’s close to lunch, so I decide to get her some food.
Except I don’t know what the fuck she eats.
But since I’m a man who does whatever the fuck he wants, I decide she can have a burger and fries today. So, as I’m walking toward the bakery, a coffee in hand, I dip into a diner and order two burgers and two fries.
Only once I have food and coffee do I make my way toward her bakery. Backing into the door, I use my body to open it, then slip inside and turn around to face the counter. What I see causes my entire fucking body to stiffen.
“What the fuck happened to your neck?” I growl.
Shawn’s eyes widen, she gulps, then she shifts her attention to her hands that are holding a rag and cleaner. Slowly, her gaze lifts to find mine.
“Nothing,” she exhales.
It’s a fucking lie.
I move toward her and place the food down on the counter, then move around the side so I can see her closer. I extend my finger and touch the underside of her chin to tip her head back so I can look at her throat. There are clear red finger marks covering the front.
“Shawn,” I bark.
Her eyes lift to mine, and I watch as tears fill them. “My mother came by.”