6. I Don’t Speed
Chapter 6
I Don’t Speed
Taz
I had this lingering sense of dread in the pit of my stomach. Something was about to go wrong. Like I was standing on a helicopter skid with no rope, peering down at the air between me and the ground.
Griff sounded funny on the phone last week. Angrier. But like he was trying to hide it from me. Like there was so much he wasn’t saying. I kept replaying it in my mind, looking for clues, but always came up empty.
My mother’s voice came at me through the Bluetooth of my helmet as I rode down the country lane.
“Are you on your motorcycle again?” she nagged. “You shouldn’t answer the phone when you’re riding! It’s dangerous! Do you want to end up hamburger on the side of the road? Pull over.”
That was rich coming from Teresa Guerro. She answered the phone all the time while she was driving and had severe road rage.
“What do you want?” I asked, impatiently, as I banked around a familiar dairy farm, the cows huddled together in the corner by a white fence. I was living the Upstate New York bucolic dream – like an old dog, sent to live on a farm.
“Trinity, I wish you would just get a car,” my mother’s critical voice was a thing of nightmares. At least my nightmares. It was the nagging voice that told me I wasn’t enough. That I was too soft, too weak, too young, too reckless… “That motorcycle will kill you.”
I didn’t answer her.
I wasn’t always like this. Once upon a time, I had been a good girl, obedient, and quiet. I never said a curse word.
Then I realized that being good and sweet would never be good enough for her. It would never make her consider my feelings and my needs above her own. Then my give a fuck meter went to zero.
“What do you want?” I finally asked, when the silence dragged on too long.
The world was flying by. Wheat fields, farms, and little grain silos dotted the distance. Craftsman and Federalist houses, with perfect American flags lined the side of the road, surrounded by manicured grass that would soon die for the winter.
“Don’t you dare use that tone with me!” I could hear the irritation in her voice. The same one that had scoffed when I got an A-, and not an A. “I’m your mother.”
“I know!” I yelled back. “But I’m apparently just like my father, right?”
That was her chief insult. If I got a A-, then I was a slacker like my father . If I didn’t come home on time, then I was unreliable like my father . When I joined the Army at 18 without consulting her, I was abandoning her… just like my father .
It wasn’t a compliment. Mama was a beauty queen, with high aspirations up until I ruined her body. Then she sacrificed, went to night school, got a business degree, and started a tech company that went public when I was in elementary school. Then she was working longer hours to provide for us – to get us a house, to put food on the table, and to send me to a decent school.
Every day, she told me how much she had sacrificed to have me. She sacrificed everything!
Including me. She sacrificed my need to have one functioning parent.
Getting out of her house was the best thing that ever happened to me. And still, my need to feel connected to someone kept me from blocking her number. I answered her, always hoping that things would be different between us. But it never would be.
When the static between us dragged on, I was ready to disconnect.
“I would really like to see you,” she interrupted my thoughts.
I cringed.
That was the last thing I needed.
But then she added a word that I didn’t think she knew. “Please.”
It was all too… weird. My skin crawled with discomfort, and I mumbled something non-committal, then tapped the control to cut the call.
I couldn’t handle this right now.
For months she had called, trying to get me to come home, or for me to tell her where I was so she could visit. She’d take one judgmental look at my trailer, and I’d be back in the hell I used to live in, where her words cut me down like a machete through tall grass.
I was better when I was away. I was better alone.
But I still wanted her to reach out.
Now that it was happening, it made my skin crawl. Maybe that foreboding dread in my stomach wasn’t from Griff. Maybe it was from my mother.
I had to work to push the feeling aside. Going with your gut was not something I believed in.
My gut wasn’t to be trusted. The gut was what made me think I was in love, all those years ago, wasted years of my life, and made me suffer several broken bones.
Not a single peer review study ever validated something like gut instincts or intuition. The CIA’s MK-Ultra studies on mind control and other nonsense came to the same conclusions - it was fiction.
The air whipped around my full-face helmet as I idly turned on the winding mountain roads. It should have cleared my mind and my soul – wind therapy. But I couldn’t shake the sensation that I was standing on the edge of a cliff, ready to lean forward for a base jump, not sure if I had a parachute on.
My stomach was somewhere high in my ribs. My fingers tingled with anticipation. Like they itched to pull a trigger.
All the while, my mind blared that something big was going to happen. Something that would change the world as I knew it.
Anytime I tried to explore that feeling, Griff’s slicked black hair, and deep chocolate eyes came front and center in my mind. Him, his chiseled jaw, and his ridiculously large forearms. The way he always had a half-smile as he threw out another hurtful barb, and blunted the pain with a touch, or look.
I wanted him here, beside me. I’d even ride bitch, if that made him happy.
I could wrap my arms around him, and enjoy the wind, with my head on his shoulder, holding on as I let him take control. Wouldn’t that be nice? Letting someone else take control?
But I waved off that fantasy because that’s all it was. A dream I could see but it would never be within my grasp.
I always savored the final rides of fall. I never knew if it could be my last of the year, so I treated it like it was the end. Knowing that something is close to being gone makes it more delicious. And life had too few joys to not savor what we had.
That was how I lived my life. No past, no future. Just the present moment that I knew was mine.
I came upon the edge of town: Mourningkill, population 832. On the day the former members of the “Lucky 13” came in to stop arm’s dealers from taking out one of ours, there was a veritable population boom to 839.
The locals hadn’t forgiven us for intruding in their insular existence.
I turned the final curve of the rural road into the paved Main Street.
Then I heard it. The blare of other motorcycles. I was immediately on edge. My skin prickled with anticipation.
The fuck are those guys doing in town?
Mourningkill didn’t get a lot of attention. It was a crossroads, at best, with no Motorcycle Club in the vicinity. I had checked, searching for my own last name among their rosters only to come up empty.
Because your mom lied to you.
That was unusual. My mom wasn’t much of a liar… even when you desperately wanted her to be.
Will I grow up to be beautiful like you ? You’ll be pretty enough.
Will I be successful? Not with grades like that.
Did my dad ever love me?
The moment I took to a motorcycle, she told me that my dead-beat dad had left because his MC was more important than his baby. She said he’d cleared out and never looked back, and that I was just like him - ungrateful, disloyal, and heading for an early grave.
The rumbling bikes on the small street came into view, just as I turned at the town’s single stoplight. The MC was outside the only drinking and eating establishment. It didn’t have a name, but simply had a sign above it that said “Bar”. Much like the Tractor Supply and Hardware store, which was just called… you guessed it… “Hardware”.
These hinterlands didn’t even merit its own grocery store. Not that it mattered. You could get everything you needed from your neighbors at the farmer’s market.
Bikes of all kinds and creeds took over the parking lot in the small alley wedged between the Bar and the Hardware store. Men in cuts hovered, beer bottles in hand. I didn’t pull into that parking lot. That’d be as dumb as going through a minefield instead of around it.
I pulled in beside the fire station, parking my bike and taking up a spot where the firemen left their cars, beside the police vehicle that belonged to the Sherriff.
Daisy the Ducati couldn’t get any safer than that.
Still, I mentally checked myself to feel for the pocket pistol at the back of my jeans, concealed in a flattened holster. The Diamondback DB9 didn’t pack a huge punch but it got the job done. Anyone who got obsessed with the “stopping power” of a pistol was probably a lousy shot.
The eyes of the men in cuts crawled over my skin. I couldn't tell if they were curious, horny, or hostile. I didn’t have that kind of talent. Not like Charlotte who could take one look at a person and tell them everything they were thinking.
But I could feel when someone looked at me with hostile intent. It was sticky, like walking into a wall of spiderwebs.
“Trinity!” I snapped my head to the side, following the voice.
There he was. Riley. Over six feet of raw, handsome muscle in a navy blue fireman’s shirt, his biceps bulging and his ass perfectly sculpted into a pair of wranglers. He was easy on the eyes, and ears. Kind, and sweet. A good dad to his kid. Everything I wanted.
So why the hell don’t I feel more?
I pulled off my helmet, letting my braid fall from the spiral I had it in at the base of my skull.
“Hey, you,” I said as Riley came over to give me a side hug. “Are you working tonight?”
I leaned in and tried to take in his masculine scent. It conjured images of standing at a water side cabin, with marshmallows and the lapping waves. I could imagine him on a schooner, heading out to sea. Dashing, brave, and at ease with the storms that came ahead.
But I hated water.
Otherwise, I would have been a SEAL.
“Just getting off,” he said, pulling away, and smiling down at me. His eyes roamed my body but not in a dirty way. He was attracted… hell, so was I. It was mutual. But it felt like the attraction I had for a celebrity. Distant, and admiring. But not lusty. “You going in for a bite?”
“I’m a terrible cook,” I admitted, putting my helmet into the backbox, closing it, and turning the lock in place.
“I’m a great cook,” Riley admitted, with no hint of arrogance. He wasn’t that kind of man. Straight forward. Honest. Like a golden retriever. “I have to be since I’m a single dad and all.”
“How’s Lizzie?” I asked after his kid.
I hadn’t met her yet. He wanted to wait until we were serious. That made me more determined to make this work. Good fathers were worth their weight in gold.
“She’s having a sleepover tonight.” Riley bit his lower lip, lifting his shoulders.
“Oh!” I said, in a small gasp, throwing my leg over so I could stop straddling Daisy. With both feet firmly planted on the ground, I faced him, looking into his eyes and trying to read what those words meant. Was he telling me that his kid wasn’t home so I could come over?
So we could… seal the deal?
Did I want that?
“Hey, no pressure,” he said, reading the room much faster than I did. “I’m not asking for anything, okay?”
He put his hands up, palms out towards me.
“I’m good with slow.” Slow would give feelings time to develop, right? Psychologists say that proximity breeds affection. So it should just be a matter of time.
It was something he had said repeatedly. He was happy taking it slow. He just wanted to get to know me. He was good with just healthy conversation before diving into anything serious.
He was upfront, clear, and honest. Great communication was every woman’s wet dream.
So why wasn’t I feeling a spark? Why was there no magnetism? Why? Why? Why?
And why did my mind automatically go to the man with smooth, black hair, and almond-shaped brown eyes that had a way of insisting. It didn't matter what it was. They commanded my attention, made me uneasy and nervous when I was with him. Half the time, I wanted to wring his neck! But when he was gone, I yearned for him.
“I’ve got to duck into the office to drop something off for one of my guys, but why don’t I meet you at the bar and join you for dinner?” He kicked at the rocks under his feet. “If you want me to. Again, no pressure here.”
Was the lack of pressure a sign he didn’t want me that much? That maybe this unease was mutual?
“I’d like that,” I said to the ground, feeling a blush crawl up my neck and into my cheeks. “And… I think having company for dinner might be safer.”
I glanced at the bikers, finally able to read the name on their cut: “Prodigal Sons”.
Was that biblical, or just a cool name they plucked from thin air?
“What’s going on?” Riley stepped a little between me and the bikers, his brows furrowed in concern. “One of those guys bothering you or something?”
His biceps flexed, his shoulders snapped back. I almost laughed. Not because there was anything funny about it, but the idea that someone could defend me more than I could defend myself was just… ludicrous.
But also very, very sweet.
“I may have detained one of their guys for dodging bail,” I winced.
Riley assessed them, then turned back to me. Then across the street again.
“You want to go somewhere else? We can go down to Middlebrook and get dinner there.” His hands were in his pockets. That was something I never did because the military had drilled it out of me. No hands in pockets. No hats indoors.
“I don’t really do that,” I said, with a shrug.
“What? Eat in Middlebrook?” Riley arched a perfect brow, and I briefly wondered if he plucked them, because he was just too good looking for a town like this. He belonged in LA, modeling in his underwear.
“I mean, I don’t change plans just because someone might be giving me a hard time,” I chuckled. The phrase just because I’m laughing doesn’t mean I’m joking, rang out in my head. Where was he now? “I don’t back down.”
Riley’s smile was blindingly white, and genuine. “I like that about you.”
He was so unashamed of how he felt. This was a man who had no secrets, and he liked it that way. That’s why he was a good father. I was sure of it.
“Wait a minute, and I can walk you in,” he said, turning back to the building, probably to close out.
“No,” I said, unzipping my leather jacket, letting the cool autumn air hit my bare chest, over my long sleeved, v-neck shirt. “I’ll meet you inside. I’ll be okay.”
“You sure?” His eyes momentarily flicked down to my chest, before he forced them back up.
His heated gaze gave me a warm fuzzy feeling. Maybe this would work out after all.
“I’m a big, tough girl. I can load my own magazines and everything.” I gave him a wink that I hoped didn’t look like I was having a stroke. It must have worked because he beamed at me. A golden retriever, through and through.
There weren't a lot of men who could handle that I was Special Forces. Not unless they were in it themselves. But maybe there was something different about Firefighters. At least that’s what the calendars suggested.
“Okay.” He leaned down and planted a kiss on my cheek. “Call if you run into trouble. I’ll be in there as fast as I can sprint, okay?”
He walked away, thank God. I was done with the awkward standing and blushing thing I was doing.
I wanted to be okay with him.
If I wanted to not die alone, then… this was what I had to do, right? Date. Try to build something with someone who made me feel safe. Try to plant down some roots, build a community and be a part of something.
I trotted across the street, trying not to make eye contact, even as heads turned my way. They were like cows watching a slow-moving car puttering down the road. But maybe if I didn’t look at them, then…
“Hey! Girly!” The gruff voice made my hair stand on end.
I stumbled but kept on walking. Just a few more steps and I’d be out of their sight and inside the bar.
“Nice Ducati. Is that an upgraded exhaust?” The voice called again.
That time I stopped.
“Yes,” I said, still not looking in their direction, my hand ready to push the door open to go inside.
“998 cc power, then,” the voice continued. This time I did look. “Unrestricted?”
“That’s not legal in the state of New York,” I said. Getting rid of the artificial limiter that regulated the top speed of my bike was most definitely something I would do. It was something I had done. But I’d never admit that to a stranger.
That was between me, my maker, and my mechanic.
I finally assessed the biker before me. He had a long-sleeved black shirt, the leather cut over it, his eyes a deep brown. His long salt and pepper hair curled around his ears. His beard emphasized a sharp jawline. His tan skin was leathered, probably from riding as much as he did.
It didn’t take long to recognize him. The guy who been at the head of the MC and made them turn away. Why hadn’t he come after me and rescued his friend?
He snorted. “So it’s unrestricted then. You clocked it over 200 yet?”
Was he trying to get me to admit to breaking the law? Was that his game?
Fuck him.
“I don’t speed.”