Chapter 12 The Day After
CASSIDY
It was all a thoughtless blip. He was confused by our mutual pasts and seeing me again after all the years that had passed.
There was no need to worry about what happened.
It was a one-off while I was so tired I couldn’t think straight.
Luckily, there was no need for me to see him again.
It would suck because the asshole belonged to the Kings.
The MC would have probably been my biggest customer, as he’d mentioned the night before, but I couldn’t take the chance of anything more happening between us.
“I need to figure out how to branch out sooner than later.”
“If you tell me why we can’t accept further business from the Kings, I’ll be happy to help look for alternatives.” Collette all but rolled her eyes as she put her foot down to let me know that my silence wouldn’t fly.
Fair enough.
We were all in this together, and I couldn’t make a decision that would affect us like that without giving my friends a good damn reason. She thought I was being dramatic. Maybe I was.
“Did one of them hurt you?”
I huffed in frustration because the answer was yes, no, and beyond complicated.
If only James stuck to his usual script and pretended he didn’t know me in front of everyone.
Then, I could have catered the event and left with a pile of cash for my efforts.
Instead, there was also a boat-load of baggage that would keep me from signing the contract the club sent over this morning for my company to cater for them a few times a week as well as during other major biker events.
“Cass, some biker-dude is here to speak with you.”
I turned to acknowledge Amberlee as she pushed through the swinging doors that led from the dining area - that we weren’t using yet - to the fully-functional kitchen in the back.
“Long blond hair and beard? I asked.
“The embodiment of fantastic sex draped in leather - that’s him,” she agreed.
It was my turn to roll my eyes. “You don’t even like men,” I teased.
“For that one, my mind might just be changed long enough to test drive the goods and see if I could be converted.”
“If that’s all it would take, I’ll loan out the use of my cock, Jones.” Amberlee flicked a collapsed cake box at the fourth member of our little band of misfits. Collette Rogers, Amberlee Jones, and Finch Darkhorse were the family I found for myself while I was away in the military.
“First names, asshole,” Collette reminded Finch again. Of the four of us, he had the most trouble adapting to civilian life. It wouldn’t surprise me one bit if he made his way back into the Army before the year was out. He was restless without the rigid structure.
“Sorry,” Finch mumbled before he turned back to me. “Want me to get rid of him?”
I shook my head. “Better if I send him packing myself.”
“You know I can hear everything you’re all saying in there, right?
” James Davis called from beyond the swinging doors.
I was honestly impressed that he didn’t simply barge into our kitchen.
It struck me in a way it hadn’t the other day - when my senses were on overload - that his voice seemed deeper than the last time I’d really heard it.
“Why would you let him into the building without checking first?” I asked Amberlee.
She tossed a quick shrug up. “You did business with their club yesterday. If you had some trouble, you would have mentioned it.”
I couldn’t be angry because she wasn’t wrong.
I normally told them everything. Unfortunately, my friends did not realize he was the James from my past and not simply Knuckles as his cut implied.
And there was also the fact that the three of them got in even later than I did the night before, so we were all sacked out and any conversation was put on hold for today - which had just gotten started.
“Come on, Cassidy. Quit hiding out in the kitchen. We need to talk.” The asshole had the audacity to demand my time?
At least he hadn’t barged in to make his demands in front of my friends.
The good Lord only knew what the hell he wanted to blame me for this time.
Probably the fact that we sort of semi-hooked up the night before.
Maybe that was unfair, but it was par for the course with James Davis.
As our past had painfully revealed, either I was his secret friend or his public, verbal punching bag.
Neither of those things would fly with my real friends or with me.
“I’ll be out in a minute, James,” I finally called to him.
Collette sucked in a breath and shook her head in disbelief. Amerblee’s jaw appeared to come unhinged. It was Finch who put himself between me and the door, though.
“No fuckin’ way. Tell me it’s not ‘the James’ who used you, treated you like a dirty secret, and then humiliated you at every fucking possible opportunity! That asshole couldn’t possibly be stupid enough to come here and think we’d let him anywhere near you.”
I wanted to smile and cry all at once. “I’m a big girl now, Finch. I can handle my past when it comes calling.”
“You know how to handle unwanted callers? You send them to voicemail and let them leave a message you have zero intent to listen to.”
My smirk and eye roll did nothing to deflate the protective bubble my friends tried to wrap around me.
We had all traded our sob stories that led us to joining the Army.
My own turned into a never-ending saga with everything that happened in my family after I left.
Not to mention the fact that every time I’d seen James, he had been loud and proud of the horrible things he accused me of being involved in.
There was only one person still alive who they despised more than James Davis and that was my former stepmother, Tiffany.
I supposed Simone would have been in line with him if I’d seen her even once since high school.
Her lies about me to James were the reason he always got in my face and things turned nasty, so maybe the former love-of-his-life was in the running for top slot after all.
If my father had still been alive, he might have rounded out the top four.
Then again, if all of those people came knocking on my door, we might indeed decide that my inherited house wasn’t enough to hold us hostage in Violence.
“Stand down, soldiers,” I finally said to them as they all rallied in closer around me.
“You all know I can handle my own shit. Look at what I’ve had to go through in the past few years with Tiffany and the mess my dad left behind.
I’ll be out front with him for a minute.
You can stay and listen in, if it will make you feel better.
You know I’ll tell you everything anyway. ”
After a few dubious nods of acquiescence, I moved through the swinging doors from the kitchen into the unused dining area and heaved out a perturbed sigh.
James Davis was seated in one of the four mismatched chairs that we sometimes used for our lunches, and wouldn’t you know it, he had picked mine.
Despite not being open to the public for dining in yet, we still managed to do a decent enough business to keep the lights on.
Violence, New Mexico had grown quite a bit since I’d been gone.
From what James mentioned the night before, the local motorcycle club was directly responsible for that growth.
I wasn’t sure the recent population boom would make a difference in whether we were able to open the dining room and have a true bakery or restaurant, but we had a contingency plan in place in case that came to fruition.
None of us had strong family ties that would pull us back to our home towns.
We could have chosen to settle anywhere, somewhere better for business, but the lure of free housing and a ranch that paid the rest of the bills practically made the decision for us.
What we saved in household rent or mortgage went toward the business’s physical location.
So far, it meant that we were able to keep up with our overhead expenses and still manage to feed ourselves, too.
“Why are you here?” I finally asked when it was clear that James, or maybe I should think of him as Knuckles, wasn’t going to make the first move.
The way he tracked me as I made my way to Finch’s seat was reminiscent of the way military members always knew the points of egress when entering a room.
He was taking everything in and probably hadn’t missed the fact that he was in my seat to begin with.
We had each picked out our own chair in the style we wanted to see in the dining room if we ever opened it to the public.
Luckily, it was an argument we didn’t need to have yet because we were most assuredly not on the same page about how the place should look.
“I came to apologize,” he explained as I pulled Finch’s ugly-ass baby-poop-green monstrosity out and took a seat. I couldn’t say why I chose that chair, other than it gave me a little comfort since it belonged to the one man who had no qualms about putting himself between me and my ugly past.
“About what?”
“Fuck, Cass, pretty much everything from our past.” The way he exhaled those words, as if they caused him the same deep pain they did me, gave me pause.
I should have gotten up and shown him the door. If not for the deep sadness and regret I could see displayed on his face, clear as day, I would have. Still, I refused to fill the silence that followed. He came to apologize to me. That left the burden of conversation in his corner.
“You may not know this, but my ex-wife lied to me for years and you were the person who supposedly covered for her every time she went off to fuck someone new.”
“I’d gathered as much based on everything you yelled at me whenever we ran into one another since graduation. The part I don’t understand is how you could be so stupid?”
His head flew back like I’d physically reached out and struck him. “What the fuck?”