Chapter 12
Haze
I dock the boat at a local restaurant that caters to day trippers and permanent residents who want to sit down and eat an elegant meal. It’s expensive, but this is a celebration, so I’m prepared to go all out for Anna. I hate that she’s gotten the impression that I’m not the settling down type. Although she’s not necessarily wrong about that, it’s not a part of my personality that’s etched in stone. If I met the right woman, I’d want the chance to have something real.
My brother thought the same as me, until he met Trix and fell for her hook, line, and sinker, and now they were gonna be a family. I hadn’t told Anna about that, as Vapor had told me in strictest confidence. The baby was a surprise and Trix didn’t want to announce anything until she’d had the three-month scan. My sister-in-law was also terrified she was gonna have a multiple pregnancy, which was why Anna’s comments about twins running in families freaked her the hell out.
But seeing Vapor so happy, had gotten me thinking, maybe settling down wasn’t such a bad thing?
Anna’s all wide-eyed when we get inside the restaurant. “This is a really nice place. I never knew it was here.” Glancing nervously at me, she adds, “Guess I’m not used to places like this. When my parents were married, I was too young for fancy restaurants, and after they divorced, my stepmother refused to allow me to go out with them, and my mom and I couldn’t really afford to frequent places like this.”
I slip my arm around her and murmur, “You deserve all the best things in life, Anna.”
Her expression turns bashful. “I like an occasional treat as much as the next girl, but I prefer when it’s just the two of us, sharing pizza from a box.”
Something about her lighthearted disclosure endears her to me. It might be because I’m a little out of my element at places like this as well. I lean over and give her a kiss on the side of her head, tugging her close.
Just then the hostess shows up to seat us. Of course, it’s someone I had a fling with at Rigs’ wedding a couple of years ago.
Ignoring Anna, she gushes, “Haze, it’s so nice to see you again.”
My grip on Anna tightens. “Stephanie, it’s nice to see you again too.” Getting right down to business, I add, “We need a table for two, preferably somewhere with a view of the ocean.”
She barely spares Anna a glance as she responds, “Of course. Anything for my favorite club brother.” I cringe inwardly when she says that and hope that Anna doesn’t pick up on her tone. Stephanie and I are history, that’s if we were even an item—which from my recollection we weren’t.
I follow her, never taking my hands off Anna. I don’t know why I’m being so handsy, but I can’t seem to stop. I realize that I’m engaging in guarding behavior when a memory resurfaces of Stephanie getting into a knock down drag out fight at the clubhouse one night, over being cut off from drinking. Mel wiped the floor with her in under a minute. Hopefully, she’s cleaned up her act now.
Once we’re seated with a drink, I try think of a way to jumpstart the conversation.
Anna beats me to it. “So, the woman who seated us, is she a former girlfriend?”
“I wouldn’t describe her as a girlfriend. She’s just someone who used to hang around our clubhouse. We sometimes have a problem with unstable women being drawn to club life. Stephanie was one of them. She eventually got banned and is always trying to ingratiate herself to me and my club brothers in order to get the ban lifted. I guess she feels like she has a chance of sweet-talking me because we had a weekend fling.”
“You don’t sound like you’re that close anymore.”
“We were never close,” I clarify. “She was one of many.”
The moment the words leave my mouth, I regret saying them because her expression shuts down and she sits back in her chair. Anna looks every inch the beautiful queen, wearing the lovely gown I picked out for her. It bothers me that my crass background and words have converged to make her feel like perhaps she is just one of many as well. I scramble to explain it in the most non offensive way I can manage.
“I need to explain club life to you, darlin’.”
She gestures with one hand for me to continue, her expression blank.
“Motorcycle clubs have some longstanding traditions. One of them is the club girls. The first time you came to interview for the bartending position, you got a bird’s eye view of the kind of women who hang around our club. Most of them are not interested in long term relationships with one man. They like the kind of thrill that variety has to offer.”
“That’s a bold statement. How do you know what they like? Do you ask them before you get with them to make sure?”
“No. I’d be lying if I said I clarified with each woman every single time. I’m invested in you liking and respecting me, but I won’t deceive you to get what I want. I ain’t gonna sugarcoat it, I’ve got a past.”
Her expression softens. “Just tell it to me straight. I’m an adult. I can handle the truth.”
“The truth is that both me and my brother swore an oath to remain bachelors for life. We were attracted to club life because we wanted to be part of something bigger than ourselves. We saw them as protectors of our community and looked up to them for years growing up. And I’m not gonna lie, we were wowed by the endless stream of beautiful club girls throwing themselves at us. It was part of the mystique and made us feel strong, attractive, and desirable. When I was young, nothing gave me the kind of high that being pursued by beautiful women did. It was proof that I wasn’t some lame ass nobody. I was a member of the Savage Legion, envied by men and adored by women.”
Anna unexpectedly bursts out laughing. That should offend me, but somehow it doesn’t. I quickly realize it’s because my immature train of thought as a teen was so over the top as to actually be hilarious.
“Yeah, I guess I was a bit of dumbass back then.”
“It’s actually kind of adorable that you hero-worshiped the brothers and joined up for what sounds like fortune and glory.”
My right hand comes up to tug at the collar of my dress shirt. For some reason, the room is getting hot. At first, I think it might be the suit jacket I’m wearing, or that my tie is restricting the blood flow to my head. I quickly realize it’s because I’m blushing.
“Yeah, my brother and I both have huge hero complexes. The glamor of a different club girl in my bed every week wore off fast, but the idea of keeping our town safe and rescuing damsels in distress never got old for me.”
Anna’s expression melts and she leans close again. “I thank God for your hero complex. If not for that, I don’t think I would have made it out of my wrecked jeep in one piece. Coma or not, I’m only alive because you rescued me.”
A powerful sense of pride surges in my chest because this gorgeous woman is saying everything my ego needs to hear. She’s chaining my heart to hers without even realizing it. I swallow thickly and finish my thoughts. “You’re nothing like a club girl, Anna. In fact, you’re the kind of woman who makes a man dream of happily ever afters.”
Her hand comes out to cover mine and she opens her mouth to say something profound.
Unfortunately, the moment was interrupted by the server coming to take our order. Since we’d spent our time talking, we both had to scramble to find something on the menu. The server was so polite and patient that I decided right then and there to give her a huge tip.
Once we are alone again, I dare not revisit the conversation of club girls, or of how getting close to Anna makes me want the kind of bonded relationship my other club brothers are slowly finding for themselves. Instead, I turn the conversation in a different direction.
“We’ve spent a lot of time talking about me. How about you tell me about yourself?”
Her expression closes down immediately.
“Surely, it can’t be that bad? You’ve hardly told me anything about your past. You aren’t married or anything like that, are you, and that’s the issue with your ex? Because I get the impression there’s more going on there.”
“Oh God no. I already told you that I’ve never been married. Like a lot of women I have an ex-asshole that I’d like to forget ever existed, but nothing more.”
“I hope he wasn’t physically abusive.”
She sighs and has a pained look on her face. “My family is really fucked up. You wouldn’t understand.”
“Try me,” I fling back. “I’ve been through some serious shit since I’ve been with the Savage Legion. Things you wouldn’t believe. Besides that, you’ve already told me some of what they did, so I’ve got an idea that it wasn’t great for you.”
She folds her arms over her chest. “For starters, my dad divorced my mother when he met another woman. She already had a kid and my dad adopted him. He was raised in luxury while me and my mom scrimped by on limited child support and my mother’s job as a teacher.”
A little bewildered, I tell her, “That’s not all that fucked up. Lots of people end up in weird hybrid families.”
“My stepbrother always saw me as my dad’s property and his personal servant because his mom would make me take care of him and give him anything he wanted during my scheduled visitation with my father.”
“You were parentified? Yeah, now that’s totally fucked. Didn’t your dad do anything to put a stop to it?”
“He tried, but my stepmom and stepbrother would play nice for a while and then go back to ordering me around and treating me like an unpaid maid and child minder. At some point when I was a teen, my stepbrother got it into his mind that he could pair me up with any of his friends who wanted to date me.”
“Fucking hell. And your dad didn’t say anything?” My blood boils to think the little prick thought he could get away with shit like that.
“My dad told me to suck it up because my stepbrother was just looking out for me. He said that as long as they kept their hands to themselves, my stepbrother could set me up with as many potential husbands as he liked. He was convinced my stepbrother had my best interests at heart, and one day I’d end up falling for one his rich friends.”
I found that I was shaking my head without meaning to. “I’m just confused as hell about why he would care so much about your personal life.”
“Oh, he didn’t,” she shoots back. “I honestly think that he just got off on the power of being able to force me to sit through date after date with his insufferable friends who were all total pricks.”
Her expression turns distant as she adds, “It was weird. It’s like they thought that because my dad was rich that getting with me would ensure their financial future, you know help them create their own little dynasty, independent of their parent’s money which always seemed to come with strings attached. Of course, that wasn’t true, but my stepbrother never told them that I was never meant to inherit very much.”
“Okay, that was a seriously fucked up situation. I’m sorry you had to suffer being around rich little assholes on a power trip. You must have been pretty miserable during the time you spent at your father’s home.”
“Yeah, I was always unhappy there. Anyways, my stepbrother’s best friend hung in there the longest. At some point he convinced me that he was different and that he really cared for me. I can’t believe I fell for all his lies, but maybe I was just desperate for any affection.”
“It sounds like you were always between a rock and hard place. Any woman in that situation would be hoping to find someone who really cared about her. Those assholes saw your vulnerability and instead of protecting you, they exploited you.”
“No truer words have ever been spoken,” she responds sadly. “When my father passed and it became clear that I didn’t stand to get much of an inheritance, he got nasty fast.”
“I’d like to spend just ten minutes with that asshole. Strike that, both of those assholes.”
She just shrugs. “I understand why. They are both upper echelon assholes. I suspect that my stepbrother misled him. For the longest time, I didn’t even realize what was going on. Right before I left, things were escalating pretty quickly. He was talking about marrying me, getting his two-point-three kids, and then getting rid of me for some insurance money of his own.”
By this time, there was an inferno raging in my gut. “What the actual fuck? The stupid fucker came right out and told you that?”
“No. I overheard him talking to my stepbrother on speaker phone one day. They were both drunk, talking dumb shit. But it was enough to make me realize that drunk words are sober thoughts, and that meant I needed to get the hell away from them. So that’s why I came to Las Salinas.”
I take both her hands in mine and look her in the eyes. “You are worth a thousand of those assholes. Never forget that, sweetheart.”
“When you say that, I can almost believe it’s true. I doubt either of them cared about me, I was just some shitty chew toy for them, nothing more.”
Again, our moment was interrupted when the server brought out food. To be honest, the sight and scent of our dinner was breathtakingly alluring. We both took a moment to get ourselves situated before taking the first bite. My steak was delicious and so tender it melted in my mouth. If Anna’s expression was any indication, she felt the same way about her breaded zucchini. We talked, stuffed ourselves with delicious food and even shared a decadent chocolate dessert.
That’s what made going back to the boat so devastating.