Chapter 5
Chapter Five
Ink
G raduation was nearing. Weeks had passed since Jordan began to date Reina, sinking his toxic claws into her so deeply that she failed to see the bullshit he was spewing her way. All I could do was stand aside and wait for him to inevitably hurt her so I could do my best to put her back together again.
Johnny wasn’t so patient. The two siblings, who had once been each other’s rocks, now clashed heads so much, they could barely stand to be in the same room together.
After my eighteenth birthday, I’d moved into the clubhouse with the entire club’s vote on it. It was either that or become homeless since my foster parents made it clear they wouldn’t be housing me any longer, and homelessness wasn’t something I was keen on experiencing.
But to the club, I was family, and they protected family. The moment Blink heard I’d been kicked out, he called a club vote, and I was moved in.
Simple as that.
And this was also the one place I knew Jordan would never step foot near. He knew better. The SCMC already didn’t fucking like him as it was, but him stabbing me? That was the proverbial icing on the cake. If he stepped foot on these grounds, he was a dead man walking.
Reina dropped onto the couch beside me and handed me a cup of sweet tea, smiling sweetly at me. I sighed. It was so hard to be agitated with her when she aimed that smile of hers at me.
Jordan hadn’t snuffed out her light yet , but I knew it was coming. And she would never be the same sweet girl I loved. Even after her light came back— if it came back—she would never be the same.
“I feel like we never see each other anymore, Ink,” she grumbled, frowning at me.
I shrugged at her. “Not really my fault, Reina,” I gently reminded her. Her frown deepened, and she looked away from me. “You’re caught up in Jordan. I get that,” I lied.
Truth was, I didn’t get it. I didn’t fucking understand it at all.
Jordan had something up his sleeve. I knew it with every fiber of my being. He was being too sweet with her, working at too slow of a pace to get what he wanted from her. As far as I knew, they hadn’t even slept together yet, which was completely out of the norm for Jordan.
Something was up; I just didn’t know what . And it had me on edge.
“I wish you and Johnny would come around to the fact that Jordan and I are together,” Reina mumbled.
I tensed. I hated hearing that they were together—an official fucking thing.
Tensions had been high between her and Johnny. She was ripping her family apart, and she didn’t even realize it. Her mom had even begun to listen to me and Johnny. After hearing my horror stories, she tried to get Reina to see sense. But then Reina yelled at her, claiming she just wanted Reina to be as unhappy as she was, and her mother spiraled again.
I hadn’t seen her since. As far as I knew, her mom had remained holed up in her bedroom, her depression taking her down again.
Bipolar depression, especially as bad as hers, was a shitty fucking thing to suffer from.
“How can you not see how bad he is for you, sweetheart?” I asked her, setting the tea on the coffee table.
She glared at me. I leaned my head back, glaring up at the ceiling for a moment. This was a never-ending cycle with her. I couldn’t even ask a simple question about him without her wanting to bite my fucking head off. It was just a sign of how goddamn bad Jordan was for her.
“I’m tired of hearing about this. None of you can provide physical evidence of why he’s such a terrible person. He’s good to me .”
I gritted my teeth. I could provide her with the evidence, but I didn’t want her freaking out. That healed wound on my side still throbbed sometimes with a phantom ache.
But I had a feeling that even if I did show her, she would want proof that it was actually Jordan. Because that was how deep his claws were in her.
He had brainwashed her so much already, and I knew it was only going to be a matter of time before he brainwashed her into thinking Johnny and I were the enemy as well.
Jordan was smart. He knew which girls to go for—knew how to hook them and have them hanging on to his every word. He’d had Reina hooked from the first word out of his mouth.
She’d been blind to all of his bullshit ever since.
Her doorbell rang. I gritted my teeth. I’d been at her house less than thirty minutes, and already, Jordan was here to whisk her away for the rest of the day. He always did this. Even if I took her somewhere to try to spend uninterrupted time with her, he showed up wherever we were and talked her into leaving with him.
I suspected he had put a tracker in her phone, but considering she was always glued to the damn thing, I couldn’t check. And if I asked to go through her phone… yeah, that would go over so well.
“Oh, that’s Jordan!” she exclaimed, her eyes brightening the same way they used to when she looked at me. She gave me a quick hug before rushing to the door. I stood and followed them out, glaring at Jordan as he kissed Reina, groping her ass before opening his car door for her.
What a douche .
He only smirked at me when she wasn’t looking. Shaking my head, I straddled my bike and spun out of the driveway, heading toward the clubhouse.
“You’re still not ready to prospect?” Blink asked me as he dropped into a chair at the bar beside me. I nodded at Lindsey, Blink’s wife, in thanks when she set a plate of food in front of me. She smiled at me and patted my hand before disappearing back into the kitchen.
“Graduation,” I reminded him for the umpteenth time.
He was pushing for me to prospect. The entire club was, but I had a goal, and I was determined to graduate before I buried myself in the life of an outlaw. I was going to prove I was better than Jordan and my father. Graduating would be proof of that.
Blink heaved a heavy sigh. “Alright, alright. I’ll stop asking.” I smirked before I shoved a bite of food into my mouth. I knew as well as he did that he wouldn’t. “Anything on Jordan?”
I shook my head, my mood souring. “Reina won’t listen. Fucking Johnny is MIA—been MIA for a few days now.” He tended to disappear when he and Reina were on the outs. “Pretty sure he and Reina had a pretty big fight, but she’s not saying anything about it.” I frowned. “Jordan is changing her too quickly for me to fucking keep up with.”
And that was the truth. She wasn’t reading as much. Normally when she went out with him, her glasses were missing. Sometimes, when she went out on dates with him, her clothes were so provocative that I wanted to lock her in her fucking bedroom like an overbearing parent.
He stayed silent. I set my fork down, my appetite gone. “Maybe he really isn’t being an asshole with her,” I said after a moment. It was a thought I hadn’t wanted to entertain because Jordan wasn’t capable of not being an asshole. “Maybe I’m just being too much of a dick considering my past with him. He’s not doing any of his normal shit, Blink. He’s not fucking her. He takes her out. He doesn’t keep her out late.” I rubbed my temples. “None of it makes fucking sense .”
“Maybe it’s time to cut your losses, kid,” Blink said quietly.
“Not that easy,” I grumbled.
I was in love with Reina. Shit with her would never be simple because of that.
Blink clapped a hand to my shoulder. “Love can be a right bitch, brother. Back off for a while. Let them do whatever it is they’re going to do. Sometimes, we just have to let shit play out.”
With that, he stood up and walked toward the back hallway where his apartment was. I sighed and got off the stool, walking outside, needing some air and some peace and quiet. Grim, the club VP, was sitting on a picnic table, a cigarette between his lips. He was an older guy in his thirties, and he was quiet. Never really said much.
Without a word, he offered a cigarette to me along with his lighter. I nodded in thanks and lit the cigarette, handing him back his lighter.
We were silent for a minute. Neither of us said a word. With Grim, it was normally always this easy.
Grim’s gravelly voice surprisingly broke the silence first. “Life without women that matter is a lot fucking simpler, kid.”
“No shit,” I muttered. I was beginning to learn that. Some days, I craved the days before I met Reina—the days I could fuck whoever I wanted and not feel guilty because I was in love with another woman.
Guilt was a shitty fucking emotion, and because she was with Jordan, I didn’t understand why I felt guilty.
“You know what you need right now, Ink?” Grim asked me. I looked over at him, arching an eyebrow in a silent prompt for him to go on. “You fucking need pussy, liquor, and new ink.”
Pussy, liquor, and new ink didn’t sound bad at all, to be honest. And it would take my mind off of Reina for the night. To hell with the damn guilt. I needed to lose myself in something for a few hours.
“Trinity is a good woman for no-strings sex,” Grim told me. Trinity was one of the girls that liked to hang around the clubhouse, hoping to turn one of the guys into her old man. It wasn’t going to happen though. Wouldn’t be long before she moved on like every woman before her had. “You can probably find her in the kitchen. She gives you a hard time for not being one of the members, let her know I sent you.”
With that, he stood from the table and walked back inside. I finished my cigarette and went to go do exactly what he’d suggested in that exact order. Liquor always settled better after I’d gotten off anyway.