Chapter 3
Three
Dear me, your anxiety is a lying ass bitch. Don’t listen to it.
—Jasper’s secret thoughts
JASPER
“Hello?”
“Hey,” my sister, Sophia, greeted me sheepishly.
“I know that I was supposed to come see you today with the kids, but there’s been a diarrhea outbreak in the house, and I don’t think we can physically make the road trip to see you.
I mean, we could try, but I think that my van would be covered in shit by the time we arrived. ”
Just the idea of the shits gave me the creeps.
I hated being sick.
I paused. “Please, don’t be upset about not coming. I don’t want that shit. Literally.”
“That was the only time we could come, though.” She groaned. “Are you sure you can’t come down?”
I loved my sister.
I really, really did.
But I fuckin’ hated being back home.
Being back home brought up memories that I’d rather keep buried so deep I never thought about them.
My father, Madden, died in a fire at the gym that he co-owned. Sophia had been in the same fire, but my dad had managed to get her out. My dad hadn’t been so lucky, and he’d died.
My dad’s life had never been a good one.
He’d struggled from a young age to raise two kids, and never really got to experience life without strife.
Being home reminded me of the injustices in life, and I just wasn’t willing to go home and be yet another tragedy in the Madden family saga.
At least when I was in Dallas, I was fairly anonymous—as anonymous as you could be when you were a member of the Truth Tellers MC, anyway.
I’d first started on with the Truth Tellers MC as a part of an undercover sting operation, a joint task force of both the FBI and the DEA.
But over time, I’d found myself becoming a part of the Truth Tellers MC.
I’d found a home where I’d never expected.
And now I truly did belong—a fully patched in member of the Truth Tellers MC—and my fellow club brothers knew all.
I wouldn’t say that it’d been an easy transition after they’d found out. The club president, Webber, had originally asked me to leave and not come back.
But then I’d saved his wife in the parking lot seconds later, and he’d changed his mind.
I’d been lucky.
I’d take a bullet for their women over and over again as long as they’d let me stay.
This was the first place that I’d felt like I was home since my father had passed away.
“I’m sure,” I said to my sister. “Plus, you have everyone and their brother coming over to your place, and you know that I don’t do crowds.”
I hadn’t done crowds since life had kicked me in the teeth years ago, leaving me a burned husk of the man that I used to be.
I’d been working a concert as the first point security guard of a country music star—Bayne Green. He’d had issues that he hadn’t shared with us, and they’d targeted him for an assassination attempt—something that it came out years later came from his jilted ex-wife.
She’d succeeded in killing Bayne, and had almost killed me. Though, in the beginning, they’d thought they’d killed me, and had only maimed Bayne.
It took me nearly half a year to finally tell them that I wasn’t Bayne, but that I was Jasper Madden.
My level of care had gone downhill after that—turns out no one cares about a police officer/security guard as much as they do a country music super star.
It’d taken me another three months to finally get to the point where I could move and function without constant help and supervision.
That’d been when I’d walked into my sister’s wedding the day that she was getting married to my father’s best friend.
“If you change your mind, you know where to find us.” Sophia sighed. “I hate that you hate crowds.”
I grinned. “Next time that you have a Christmas with just you, Haggard and the kids, I’ll be there.”
“You know that’ll never happen. Too many bikers have nowhere to go. Haggard literally runs a halfway house during the holidays,” she grumbled, but I knew that she loved it. “Shit. I gotta go. The shits are back.”
When she hung up, I shoved my phone back into my pocket just in time to see the neighbor’s truck pull into the parking spot next to her house.
I smirked—because that was all I could do with half my face being so fucked up—and headed outside.
Kent, my neighbor’s brother, had been bringing his bike over here periodically to work on it since he’d gotten the machine.
It wasn’t the greatest in the world, and broke down more than it worked, but I enjoyed tinkering on the motorcycle with him.
Kent was a smart cookie, and I got along with him much easier than I did with his sister.
I got to the truck just as she went to pull the second ramp out of the back.
“He only needs one, Callie. Bikes technically only have one wheel since they are in alignment.” I teased.
I could hear her grinding her teeth. “I know that.”
She did.
She was just as smart as the rest of the Hodges family. Way smarter than me.
“Sure,” I drawled. “Move. I’ll help.”
She moved, backing so far up that there’d be no way that I could accidentally touch her.
She acted like I had the plague, but I knew it wasn’t because she couldn’t stand the sight of me.
She truly didn’t like anyone.
Her sister had the same mentality, to be honest, but she’d slowly gotten better over time.
Calliope? Not so much.
Kent and I got his bike out of the back of the truck just as a UPS driver pulled up to the outside of Calliope’s house.
She breathed a sigh of relief and rushed over to the driver, just for the driver to nearly punt a box out of the side of the truck and start to take off.
I stepped out in front of the driver just as she was about to make a U-turn on our street.
“Um, no,” I said, pointing at her. “What the fuck was that?”
The young woman with a chip on her shoulder glared at me. “Move or I’ll hit you!”
“You hit me, we’re going to have more problems than that package that you just punted out of the truck!” I snapped.
“That was my computer, lady!” Calliope snarled. “And you were supposed to make me sign for it! I’ve had three packages stolen this week, and now I think I know why.”
The woman started to inch forward, but I stayed my ground.
“What’s your name?” Calliope growled, climbing the steps of the UPS truck and doing something inside.
The truck abruptly turned off, and Calliope emerged with a set of keys.
“Give those back!”
“Fuck you,” Calliope snarled. “You better fuckin’ pray that this computer works and isn’t damaged, otherwise I’m kicking your ass.”
“You could try.” The driver came barreling out, dead set on taking her keys.
Kent and I stayed back to watch, but it wasn’t a fair fight. Calliope had been fighting since she was old enough to walk. She’d been fighting for her life and those of her siblings.
Though, she’d done it in a much different way than her sister, Searcy, had.
“Come here!” the UPS driver kept following Calliope. “Or I’ll…”
Calliope turned around just as the driver raised her fist.
“What’s going on here?” Searcy asked as she got out of her car, surprising us all.
I didn’t take my eyes off the two women.
“Ma’am,” Searcy called out. “You can’t park here!”
The driver growled. “I didn’t want to park here!”
I pulled my phone out and called Apollo.
“Yeah?” Apollo answered, sounding distracted.
“You might need to be on standby,” I said. “Patch into my cameras and watch.”
“On it.” Apollo, our resident computer extraordinaire, ended the call just as abruptly as he’d answered.
The UPS driver reached for Calliope, but Calliope slapped her hand away. “Don’t touch me.”
“I’ll touch you if I want to touch you, bitch!”
“What’s going on here?”
Calliope didn’t take her gaze off of the driver, but the rest of us turned to see the newcomer.
“Uh,” the UPS driver looked worried for a second. “Nothing, boss.”
“It doesn’t look like nothing,” the driver’s boss said. “Miranda, I told you last week that you’d be audited due to complaints. And now this? What’s going on?”
“I’ll tell you what’s going on,” Calliope snarled.
“This sorry excuse for a UPS employee just threw my computer, a computer in which I was supposed to sign for, into the yard. It’s A, going to rain today.
You can see the dark clouds already. B, not on my porch or even into my hands, and I was right here.
And C, it’s a fucking computer, and instead of getting her lazy ass out of the truck, she threw it! Who the fuck even does that?”
“Like you can do much better.” The UPS driver rolled her eyes. “This is a hard ass job. You’re lucky I even brought it to your house. I could’ve easily dropped it off with all the other packages at the mailboxes.”
“I don’t know if you’re dumb or not, but considering I just watched you throw my package into the yard instead of getting out and delivering it to the front door, I’m going to assume you are.
But the packages up there are in a private building with the rest of the United States Postal Service deliveries.
You, dumbass, aren’t with the USPS. You are wearing brown—that’s UPS in case you didn’t know. ”
My lips twitched.
“I can tell you that you’re a mouthy bitch that…”
“Miranda, please enter your vehicle,” the big boss ordered as she walked up. “Sir, do you mind?”
I shook my head.
“The bitch has my keys.”
“Can I have the keys, ma’am?” the boss asked Calliope.
Calliope handed them off and the boss walked the keys over, spoke to the woman, and the woman left.
When she was gone, the boss handed out her card to Calliope and said, “If your computer has any issues, please reach out. I’ll handle it personally.”
Calliope took the card and shoved it into her pocket.
“I’m sorry for her,” she continued. “I’ll be letting her go the moment we get back to the office.”
“Good,” Calliope said then turned around and headed inside.
“Have you been having issues with your deliveries, sir?” the boss asked.
“No.” I shook my head. “But I’ve watched her deliver other people’s packages. None of them have been delivered to the front doors. Always to the end of the yard so she doesn’t have to get out.”
The boss sighed. “It’s so hard to hire good help now-a-days.”
The door to Calliope’s house slammed again and I watched her come down the length of her walk with her feet shoved in fur-lined monstrosities she called boots.
I wasn’t aware of what the boss was doing.
I also wasn’t aware of Searcy coming to stand beside me.
No, my entire focus was on the siren coming toward us.
Calliope may be a pain in the ass personality wise, but fuck, was she something to look at.
She wasn’t super tall, about five-foot-five. But her red hair the color of Ariel’s, that never ceased to be styled perfectly in loose waves always drew my eye. Paired with her beguiling blue eyes, and fuck, was I lost.
But, like always, I had to admit to myself that she was way too fucking young for me.
Way too young.
Ten years too young.
At twenty-one, she was by far the youngest of the group of adults. Though, she didn’t act like it.
Calliope acted like she’d seen the world, by being dragged around it, and had come out swinging on the other side.
And, by comparison, my forty years of life was just too much to ever consider going there with her.
That didn’t mean that I didn’t like being in her presence, though.
Because, my fucking god, did she take my breath away.
She was fun to tease, and she got angry at the drop of a hat.
Speaking of angry, Calliope said, “What are the requirements for a UPS driver?”
“You have to be able to lift fifty pounds,” the boss started listing things off.
Calliope nodded her head along with the requirements and said, “I’m looking for a job while I look for my real job.
I won’t promise that I stay for very long—the job that I really want is supposed to come open in the next six months—but I’ll be a fuckin’ awesome worker in the meantime if you want me to apply. ”
My gaze flicked to Searcy, who was watching the entire interaction with her arms crossed over her chest.
She did, however, nod right along with Calliope as she promised that she was a good worker.
“She worked her entire way through high school and college, while also maintaining a part-time status at our family’s diner,” Searcy confirmed.
“Then come by the office tomorrow and we’ll get you situated.” She sighed. “I seem to have a critical opening that needs filled immediately. Eight in the morning sharp, and sucks to say, but we are working overtime through the holidays.”
The boss left, leaving the four of us standing there watching her go.
“You already have a full-time job at that mechanical engineering company in Plano. Why’d you get a job now? You could’ve cruised through the next six months until it started. You have money.”
“Because I don’t like being idle. It gives me too much time to think,” she admitted. “Plus, I’m not touching that money. It can go to my nonexistent kids.”
“Why?” Searcy threw up her hands. “It’s not a bad thing! I gave it to you because I think you deserve it!”
Years ago, when Doc and Searcy had just started out, Searcy had been given a lottery ticket as a tip while she was working at the diner her mother owned. Then she’d forgotten about it for months until one day Anders, Searcy, and Calliope’s little sister had made the connection.
Turns out, she’d won a fuck of a lot of money in the lottery, giving them their first break in their entire lives.
“I don’t deserve anything, and you know it,” she said as she walked to her truck and pulled out her wallet and keys. “Kent, if you want, when you’re done, you can drive my truck home. I have another set of keys in my kitchen drawer. If not, will you make sure to lock up before you head out?”
Kent nodded. “I’ll be eighteen in the spring. Make sure you leave this job on good terms so I can apply. Also, I plan on eating the rest of your cereal before I leave. Make sure you don’t plan on having that for breakfast in the morning.”
The two sisters left without a backward glance, and I was left standing there wishing she’d stayed for just a little bit longer.
I had to get my hit somehow.
If I wasn’t going to pursue her, then I had to get the fix somewhere.
“What’s going on with it now?” I asked, pulling myself together.
Kent groaned. “I tried to work on the carb myself, but clearly I still have no idea what I’m doing.”