Chapter One
Jack
Diamond Creek, Nebraska
Two Years Ago
“JACK!”
Shit.
“I’m coming,” I heaved back at King. What could I have possibly fucked up now? I swore, anytime something got fucked up, it was my fault. Even when it wasn’t.
Walking down the hall to King’s office, I stood in the doorway and waited for him to notice I was standing there.
“JACK!” King hollered again.
“I’m standing right here, King.”
King looked up from his desk. He immediately narrowed his eyes at me. Throwing his pen on the table and leaning back in his chair, he crossed his arms over his chest.
“You wanna explain to me why I made you secretary but I’m the one doing all this goddamn paperwork?” King snarked.
“Because you’re a control freak and can’t trust anyone?”
“Fuck you,” he growled, then stood from his desk and walked over to his liquor cabinet against the wall. He handed me a glass of amber liquid before downing his own.
“How is NoShot doing as a prospect?” King asked.
“He’s doing ok. He isn’t the most motivated, but he isn’t the worst either,” I replied honestly. “We aren’t keeping that name, right?”
King laughed. “No, we’ll have to come up with something else. Though, I have to be honest, I’ve never seen anyone take his shot and miss like that boy does.”
“He should be patching in soon, along with Mimic and Tank.” Mimic and Tank would make strong brothers.
Jury was still out on NoShot, though.
“Ok, let’s get something set up in the next month or two.”
“Will do. Have you talked to Grams? Is she gonna want to cook?”
Grams was Willow Washington. She lived across the road from the clubhouse. Our club brother, Blade, knew Grams from when he grew up here in Diamond Creek. He’d always called her Grams, since she was a grandmother to him when he was a kid. She kind of adopted the rest of us when we moved in. It meant a lot to a guy like me, who grew up in the system. I’d never had parents, let alone grandparents.
She sold us the land we built the clubhouse on when we started our chapter here in Diamond Creek. She’d been spending her Saturday nights cooking for us ever since, and then stuck around for the parties after.
King smiled. Few people got a reaction like that from him.
“Yea, she told me not to leave her out when we finally stopped ‘ torturing those boys .’” King said, making quotation marks with his fingers.
I smiled, knowing I could hear her saying it just like King said. “Alright, I’ll talk to her and set it all up. Anything else you need?”
“No, get the hell out of here. I have to finish all this shit you should be doing,” King grumbled.
“I will gladly take it off your hands,” I offered as I stood from my chair. King just glared at me.
I knew he wouldn’t take me up on it.
Walking back down to the main room, I sat at the bar. My brother, Tank, passed me a beer. He was a big man, around six foot six inches and had to be at least three hundred pounds, if not more, hence the name.
Road names were a funny thing. Some were descriptive, like Tank or Blade. Some were ironic, like Jingles, who never made a sound when he moved.
Then you had a name like mine, that was said so much while you prospected that it just stuck. The name given to me when I was a baby was Charles Williams. It was the name of the firefighter that found me.
My parents didn’t want me. My mother gave birth, then dropped me off at a firehouse. No name, no birthdate, no nothing. I grew up in the system, bouncing from one foster home to another. People believed babies in the system got quickly snatched up by parents desperate for a child. That wasn’t the case for me.
I was told I was sick as a baby. Anytime a family took me in, they figured out soon enough that I was more trouble than I was worth.
None of them wanted me.
I frequently slipped through the cracks in every aspect.
I wasn’t good at school. Hated being there.
I was always getting in trouble, playing pranks, and took nothing seriously. When I prospected, all those habits just stuck around. When the guys got frustrated with what they deemed as my lack of sincerity, they called me a jackass.
It stuck.
Thankfully, by the time I patched in, the guys had shortened the name to Jack. Most people assumed I didn’t have a road name, which was fine with me. I was never a Charles or even a Charlie.
Jack suited me just fine, despite how I got it.
“Hey, Jack.”
Blade sat down at the bar next to me and motioned to Tank for a beer.
Blade was the best friend I’d ever had. We met when he was eighteen years old. A few of us were at a bar one night drinking and this scrawny kid came in. The bartender never questioned his age, but I could tell he was young.
I could also see he had it rough.
Like noticed like.
I watched him throughout the night, curious to see how he handled himself. I watched as a woman walked up to the bar and hit on him. A woman that I knew was there with someone else. When the guy she was with went looking for her, I knew he’d find her with the kid.
This was a big guy, close to Tank’s size, and the kid was no match for him. I stood from my seat and walked toward the hallway I had seen them sneak down. I wasn’t gonna let this kid get hurt because some skank wanted to cuckold her old man.
Turned out the kid could take care of himself. By the time I’d gotten to the hallway, the kid was gone, and the guy was on the floor with a slash across his face and his chest.
I walked back out to the bar, grabbed the guys, and we headed out. We walked to our bikes, talking and joking around. Hearing a noise, I turned around. The kid was there with a guy on the ground and a knife at his neck.
We’d never heard a thing, but the kid must have seen the guy trying to sneak up on us. He took a chance and saved us from an altercation where one of our guys could have gotten hurt.
When I thanked him, he surprised me by saying he’d seen me come into the hall to have his back. The least he could do was to have mine.
That right there was the type of guy we wanted in the club.
I talked him into prospecting, and I became his sponsor. The name Blade was a no-brainer when we learned just how fast and accurate he was with that knife.
To say we were close would be an understatement. This man was my brother beyond the club. The only thing we didn’t share was blood.
“What’s up?” I asked.
“There’s a new waitress at The Diner. Thought we could grab a bite to eat and check her out,” he said as he spun his beer bottle in his hand.
“You interested in her?” I asked, looking over at my friend, knowing he wasn’t.
There was only one girl for him.
Unfortunately, that girl thought he was dead.
“Nah, figured you might be, though,” he hedged .
“And why would you think I might be? She hot?” I lifted my bottle to my lips and took a long drink.
“Yea, she’s hot.” He chuckled.
Blade didn’t laugh. Hell, he barely even smiled. So, when I heard a noise that came close to a laugh, I pulled the bottle from my lips and waited for him to continue.
He looked over at me, and the grin on his face had me nervous.
I didn’t know what I expected him to say, but it certainly wasn’t the words coming out of his mouth.
“She looks a lot like your girl,” he said.
“What the fuck are you talking about? I don’t have a girl.” I turned back to my beer and took another long pull.
“She looks a lot like Sammy.”
I immediately spat my beer all over the bar top.
“Fuck, man, why are you always spitting beer everywhere?” Tank griped, wiping off the bar with the rag he carried on his shoulder.
I glared at the giant man.
Prospects didn’t talk to patched brothers that way, but like I said, Tank was big. He often got away with things others didn’t.
I ignored his flippant mouth and turned back to Blade.
“What?”
I hadn’t heard her name in three years. She was the one woman that made me consider settling down with an old lady. We had one night. What a night it was.
The next morning, I woke up alone with a note lying on my cut that said, ‘Thanks for a great night. Sam.’ We left Arkansas for Nebraska the next morning to start this chapter, and I never saw her again.
I knew it couldn’t be Sammy. She said she wasn’t from Little Rock. Anyway, we’d been here three years. If she lived in the area, we would have crossed paths by now.
I told Blade that and he shook his head.
“It’s been three years, man. People move around sometimes. I did for the first seven years of my life.” He shrugged his shoulder. “ I’m telling you, I remember her. Let’s go get dinner.”
He stood from his stool and waited for me to decide.
“Christ, fine, let’s go.” I stormed past him. Stalking toward the door, I said over my shoulder, “You know as well as I do it won’t be her. When we get there and it’s not her, I’m gonna kick your ass.”
I pushed the door open and strode to my bike. We both fired up our engines and drove through the gate toward The Diner.
The ride was quick, but not long enough to cool off my annoyance at this wild-goose chase. We pulled into the parking lot and shut off our bikes. Wasting no time, I headed toward the entrance, wrenching the door open and looking around.
“There is no one here that even remotely looks like her.” I glared at Blade, and he grinned.
“Come on, let’s sit down.”
We grabbed a table and waited for the waitress. She walked over, her head down as she looked through her apron for, I assume, her pad and pen.
“What can I get for you?” She never looked up, but I knew that voice. It haunted my dreams.
If I hadn’t been sitting in the chair below her line of sight, I wouldn’t have been able to see her face.
“Sammy?”
Her body froze. The look of terror on her face when she heard my voice made me pause. She slowly turned her head and looked at me.
She blinked at me. “Jack?”
When she realized it was me, her shoulders relaxed.
What the hell was that?
“What are you doing here?” she asked, looking around the room, for what, I wasn’t sure.
“I live here. We started a new chapter here a few years ago.”
Sammy looked at my cut and then swung her head to look at Blade.
“Hey,” he said.
“Um, hi.” She glanced around the room again .
“Sammy, how long have you been in Diamond Creek?” I asked.
I wanted to know how I had missed her.
She turned back to me and shook her head.
“Um, I don’t. I just started working here. I live a few towns over.”
She fidgeted with her pad.
Why was she so nervous?
“Hey, Sammy.” I reached out and placed my hand over hers. She looked back at me again.
“I’m sorry, I’ll have to have another server wait on you. I was supposed to take my break fifteen minutes ago.”
She hurried toward the kitchen, and I stood to follow her.
As I walked away, I heard Blade arrogantly say, “Told you, asshole.”
Ignoring him, I went in search of Sammy.
I needed answers.
I needed her.
She was pacing out back behind the restaurant when I found her.
I walked up behind her and placed my hand on her back. She jumped and spun around with the same look she had earlier.
“Hey, beautiful, what’s wrong?”
“What? Nothing, you just surprised me. I wasn’t expecting you to be here.” Her hands twisted in her apron.
I placed my hands on her shoulders, trying to steady her.
“Sammy—”
“Jack, please don’t call me Sammy. It’s Sam or Samantha.”
“I like Sammy,” I said and winked.
“I don’t,” she replied sternly. “I don’t have long for my break, Jack. I have to get back to work. I’m sorry, but I need you to go.”
“I want to see you again.”
“No,” she said.
“Why?”
“Jack, you were great, really. It was the best night of my life, but I was only looking for one night. That was it. I’m still not looking for more. ”
“Then give me one more night.”
“No.”
That was it. That was all she said. No explanation, no chance to convince her before she walked back into the restaurant and went back to work.
She didn’t want me.
She never took our table back from the other waitress.
I watched her flit around the room, taking care of everyone else.
All I wanted was to take care of her.
Once we were done with dinner, I tried to talk to her again, but Joellen stepped in. Joellen owned The Diner, and she ran it like a general in the Marines. You didn’t argue with Joellen unless you wanted to get banned from The Diner. She didn’t care who you were. She would kick your ass to the curb and make sure it hurt.
So I left.
I wasn’t giving up, though. She was mine, and I would wait as long as I had to for her to get on board.
For weeks, I continued to show up at The Diner. I was there every day, either for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Sometimes, more than one. I barely spoke to Sammy. I didn’t want her to run.
Joellen kept a close eye on me. She wouldn’t hesitate to kick me out again. I was determined not to give her a reason to do just that. I was polite. I acted as though Sammy was nothing special, but I sat in her section every chance I had.
Sammy needed to get used to me being around. She needed to be comfortable with me. So I joked with her. I flirted with her but kept it light.
Eventually, we became friends. Once she was more relaxed having me around, I heated things up. She was adamant about keeping me in the friend zone, but I knew I would wear her down one day.