Chapter 3 Vegas Rescue #2
“That’s not too far from us. Is your friend mixed up with a club there?” The question should have seemed innocuous, but I could tell from the calculating glint in Rick’s eyes that it was far from that.
I shook my head. “Elena - no. Her fiancé, it’s debatable.”
“Debatable?” Rick questioned with a chuckle. “How so?”
“He dresses the part and rides a motorcycle. Honestly, I think he’s seen one too many biker television shows and fancies himself one of them.
” I chuckled and Baffle - Rick - whoever the hell he was - laughed along with me.
I was sure, being the VP of a club, he had come across his fair share of wanna-be badasses who really didn’t live up to the hype.
“He calls himself Slicer, but he doesn’t get to wear the leather cut that they wear, at least not the ones with a club name on them. ”
“So he’s a hang around at a club near you?”
It was my turn to shrug. “They come to town once in a while, but I don’t think they have a place in Flagstaff.
The asshole goes on weekend trips to hang out wherever they are.
Before you ask, I don’t know where that is because he never even told Elena, despite how often she asked him.
I guarantee he didn’t want her to show up and find out whatever he was up to while he was away playing hardcore biker.
” Again, I rolled my eyes. Slicer might have been the type of man who had no qualms about cheating, or even forcing women into sexual situations, but his faux bravery was only a show he put on in front of people he thought were weaker.
“I see. Do you know the name of the club, by any chance?”
“Not sure, some kind of Devils, I think.”
Rick had a great poker face, and I wouldn’t have thought my answer mattered to him at all, had I not seen the slightest twitch at the corner of his eyes, as if he had to fight to hold back the surprise. That wasn’t quite right, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what I picked up on.
“Do you know of a club in Arizona?” I finally asked as he flagged down a waitress.
“I do, and they’re not good men.”
I scoffed and rolled my eyes. “I really didn’t expect much of men who allowed people like Johnny Culver to hang out with them.”
Rick nodded in agreement. “Says a lot about a club, the types of people who are allowed to circle around them.”
“What about your MC?” I asked.
“We would bury someone like Johnny out in the desert and never think of him again. We also wouldn’t honor him with the use of a road name he didn’t earn. If you ain’t patched, we don’t acknowledge ‘em.”
The way Rick said it was meant to come off as a bit of a joke, but something in the set of his shoulders told me there was a hint of truth in his words, too.
“Does your club do bad things, Rick?”
“Depends on your definition of ‘bad things’, I guess.”
“Do you harm women and children?”
“Never children. The only time a woman would ever come to violence at my club’s hands is if she attacked someone with the intent to seriously harm or kill.”
“Good to know.”
“Not gonna lie to you, Nellie, the Kings are a one-percent club. We don’t exactly live by the laws of the state.”
“Nell,” I corrected.
“Sorry, I heard your friend call you that earlier.”
“Yeah, she only ever used that to try to soften me up and get her way. Considering what she wanted me to forget, I’d rather never have someone use her nickname for me again.”
“Sounds fair. I’ll call you whatever you want. Is Nell short for something else?”
I groaned and tried to hide my amused smile. “Petronella,” I admitted. “Petronella Ambrosia Bushing, to be exact.”
“That’s a mouthful.”
“You’re telling me. You should have seen me trying to learn to spell my own name for school.” I rubbed my hand over the spot where my mother used to crack a ruler against my knuckles when I got it wrong.
Rick chuckled, though if he had known about the lengths my mom had gone to, to teach me, I don’t think he would have found humor in the situation. He took the cup of ice the waitress brought over and put a few of the cubes into a napkin before he passed it to me.
“Not sure if it will help with the swelling at this point, but the ice might numb it a bit.” I followed his orders and put the paper thin napkin up to my mouth. “So, tell me what do you do when you’re not ditching shitty friends in Vegas?”
I wanted to laugh and cry at his very apt description. “I am an artist, kind of.”
“You either are or aren’t.”
“I am.” I stated with more confidence than I felt. “I do metal work and create statues out of scraps I find.”
“Yeah?” Rick questioned, and I could see a hint of admiration in his eyes before he added, “I’d love to see some of your work.”
“Sure,” I agreed because after the night ended, we would probably be headed our separate ways.
That was for the best, since I rarely showed my work to anyone I knew in real life.
It was more like no one in my ‘real life’ had ever been interested in seeing it, which should have been a whole batch of red flags.
People bought my art at shows and online, but they were always strangers.
I wasn’t sure how I felt about Rick seeing those intimate pieces of my soul, or if he’d even be around to push the issue.
He was still an outlier, for the most part.
Even as I tried to sort through my feelings about him being in my life longer than a night, I had to admit that something in my gut told me he wouldn’t remain on my periphery for long.
Whether it meant we would see more of one another or slip away never to be heard from again remained to be seen.