Chapter Eight
Katie
Summer before Sophomore year…
I PULLED OPEN my door to find Kam with a black eye, holding a bloody towel to his nose.
“Oh my god, what happened?” I squealed, pulling him inside. “Billy!”
My brother came running from the back of the house, sliding to a stop when he saw Kam. “What the hell?”
Our mom was at work, so we had the house to ourselves, but it also meant we had to figure out how to help our friend on our own.
“Did your dad do this?” I asked, guiding him to a kitchen chair.
“Yeah,” Kam confirmed.
“God, he’s a dick,” Billy snapped.
“This time, I hit him back.”
I gasped. “You did?”
He gave me a bloody smile. “I sure fuckin’ did.”
“Keep that towel on your lip,” I ordered.
“I think the bleeding’s stopped,” he said, standing and making his way to the kitchen sink where he rinsed his mouth out. “Yeah, it’s stopped. I’m good.”
I grabbed a tray of ice cubes from the freezer and wrapped them in some saran wrap. “Sit down so I can ice your eye,” I ordered. “We need to call the police.”
“My dad’ll just lie and tell them I fell,” Kam said.
I let out a frustrated squeak. “Well, you can’t go back there! It’s not safe.”
“We could hide him here,” Billy said.
“How are we going to do that?” I asked.
Billy shrugged. “Haven’t figured that part out yet.”
* * *
Rooster arrived at five-fifty-nine, and I took a few deep breaths before pulling open the door. I probably should have given myself a few extra breaths, because good god, he looked good.
Dark jeans, straight cut, hugging every delicious inch of his long legs, a black henley, black beat-up motorcycle boots, and his leather cut under his leather jacket instantly made me want to peel him out of everything and taste what was underneath.
He held his helmet in one hand and a bag of what I assumed was our food in the other.
“Hey, baby.”
“I thought you weren’t supposed to wear your colors when riding alone.”
“My jacket’s got nothing on it. My bike’s just a Harley. We’re all good.”
I bit my lip, then nodded. “Come on in,” I said, stepping back so he could walk inside. “Can I take anything?”
He smiled. “I got it.”
I locked up behind him and led him into the kitchen. He set everything on the island and his gaze swept the room. “Nice place.”
“Thanks.”
“You bought it a few years ago, huh?”
“Yeah,” I said, then demanded, “Wait, how did you know that?”
He smiled. “Getting right into it, then.”
“Absolutely.” I cocked my head. “Who has been feeding you information?”
“You really can’t guess?”
“No one close to me would betray me like that.”
“You see it as a betrayal, Katie?” he challenged. “Really?”
“Ah, yes! Wouldn’t you?”
He crossed his arms and leaned against the counter. “Well, considering he’s known me as long as you have, no.”
“Billy,” I breathed out. “I should have known. I’m going to murder him in the face.”
“Or, maybe…” Rooster raised an eyebrow. “Go with me here… you give him a break because when I left, he lost his friend, too, so I don’t just have shit to make up to you, I also have to make it up to Flea.”
“So what made him so special that you kept in touch with him, but ghosted me?”
“Because I’m a dumb fuck idiot.”
“Well, that’s the truth.”
“Let’s eat before everything gets cold. I hope you like the wine I brought. Grace said it was your favorite.”
“You’re friendly with my sister-in-law now?” I squeaked. “Enough to ask her what my favorite wine is?”
“Settle.” He grinned, wrapping his arm around my waist. “Your brother gave me the message. I’ve only met Grace once. The night I came back.”
I leaned against him for a second before remembering I was not ready to give in that easily and wriggled out of his hold. “I’ll grab plates.”
“You good with me putting the beer in your fridge?”
“Oh, yeah, go for it.”
I dished up our dinner and set everything on my little dinette table as Rooster poured me a glass of wine and opened himself a bottle of beer. The whole ‘scene’ was so very fucking easy and domestic.
Everything had always been easy with us and maybe that was part of the problem. We’d never been tested. At least, not before he went away. Not really.
As he set his beer on the table, he waited for me to sit down (as he always did), and I glanced up at him… then I suddenly couldn’t breathe.
“Katie?”
I shook my head, one hand to my stomach, the other gripping the back of a chair.
“Baby?”
I backed up against the wall, sliding down it and drawing my knees up to my chest as Rooster hunkered down beside me.
“Sweetheart, talk to me,” he ordered.
I couldn’t. Literally. Wracking sobs had overtaken my ability to do anything, but cry.
“Okay,” he said, taking my hands and lifting me off the ground before carrying me into my living room. He sat on my recliner, settling me onto his lap and holding me close. “Just get it out, honey.”
“You left me.”
“I did. I can’t apologize enou—”
“No, wait,” I sobbed out. “Let me get this out.”
He gave me a squeeze, but didn’t say another word.
I took a few deep breaths to pull myself together.
“When you left, I was sure it would be temporary. A few weeks, months… maybe a year. I mean, yes, you’d dumped me, but I thought for sure you’d figure out you were wrong and come back.
After that year mark, when you didn’t come back, and especially after I hadn’t heard from you—at all—I got mad, and then I just let hate fill that space in my heart that had once been so filled with love, I didn’t see what was right in front of me. ”
“What was right in front of you, baby?”
“I didn’t fight for us. I just let you go.”
“This isn’t on you, Kate.”
“But it is!” I cried. “At least, partially. You’re right about some of it. If I hadn’t been so mad at you, I probably wouldn’t have had the fight in me to do everything I’ve done.”
“That’s not really what I meant.”
“Maybe not, but the results are kind of the same.” I shoved my face in his neck and continued to sob. “I should have fought for you.”
“Okay, honey, let’s not spiral just yet, hm?
” He stroked my back. “I appreciate you’re looking inside yourself and taking some responsibility, but the truth of the matter is, we both could have done things differently, but the onus is on me.
Neither of us had a whole lot of tools back then, but I was the one who fuckin’ left you.
I should have stayed and worked it out.”
“I just missed you so much.”
“I know. I missed you, too.”
“You really didn’t shack up with anyone else while you were gone?”
“Didn’t even kiss another girl, honey,” he said.
I sat up and frowned. “Boy?”
He snorted. “Don’t swing that way, and you know it.”
“Well, I kind of went out on a few dates, but none of them were you, so they went home unsatisfied.”
“Not really any of my business.”
“Flea didn’t fill you in?”
“No, baby, he didn’t.” He wiped the tears from my cheeks and smiled gently. “Outside of letting me know you didn’t have a man, he didn’t go into details.”
“I don’t think I’ll be able to eat until you tell me everything.” I bit my lip. “Are you starving?”
“The food’ll keep, honey. As will my stomach.”
“I still want my wine.”
He chuckled, letting me up so he could get our drinks, then he insisted on sitting us back down in the same position again before beginning his story.
* * *
Rooster
“When everything went down with Tillie, it was the straw,” I said.
“I couldn’t believe I’d let a little girl fool me, you know?
She’d said she’d left her math book at her friend’s house, and she had a test the next day.
” I sighed. “I was just going to run and grab it for her. She was right next door. The alarm was set, she was good. But she’d lied, obviously, and snuck out.
Brick grabbed her the second she got past the camera. ”
“I love Tillie, she’s one of my favorite humans, but let’s be honest, she’s always been sneaky,” Katie said. “There was an incident not long ago with Teagan and fake IDs that Tillie had set up. Hatch and Mack nearly lost their minds.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Jesus, can’t wait to hear that one.”
“Later,” she promised, taking a sip of her wine.
“It wasn’t just the Tillie shit. It was Dad, it was my obligations to Hatch, to the club, to you. I felt like my skin was peeling off because of the stress of me fuckin’ up. I felt like I couldn’t do anything right, and if I couldn’t figure it out, I’d never be good enough for you.”
“I just wanted you to love me.”
“Fuck, baby, I did,” I said. “I do. With everything I have. But you deserved more.”
“You were perfect just the way you were, Kam. I loved you just the way you were. I didn’t need you to be someone you’d made up in your head.”
“Maybe not, but I needed to go, and now that your mom’s sick, I needed to come back.”
Katie gasped, her eyes filling with tears.
* * *
Katie
I scrambled off his lap. “You know about my mom?”
“I do.”
“When did ‘Tabs’ tell you about her cancer?”
My mom had smoked since she was fifteen and had just been diagnosed with stage three lung cancer.
It would have been caught sooner if she’d fucking seen a doctor or, I don’t know, told me about any of her goddamned symptoms, but she’d kept everything from me.
But when she’d had a coughing attack and I’d noticed blood on her hand, I immediately rushed her to the emergency room and forced her into a battery of tests.
“Rooster? When did Billy tell you about my mom’s cancer?” I repeated.
He leaned forward, settling his elbows to his knees. “A few weeks ago.”
I narrowed my eyes. “And when did you decide to come back?”
“Kate—”
“Answer the goddamned question, Rooster. Jesus.” I threw my hands in the air. “Why can’t you just answer a fucking direct question?” I faced him again after he still hadn’t said anything. “When, Kam? When exactly did you make the decision to come back?”
“Two weeks ago.”
“So this didn’t have anything to do with helping Hatch and the club,” I hissed.
“That’s not true, honey. But the fact your mom is sick kind of escalated things.”
“I don’t know how to process this!” I snapped. “I’m so angry at you, I want to throw something, but I also love you so much because you obviously knew I’d be overwhelmed that my mom could be dying… gah!”
“Let’s go with the loving part.”
He stood and looked like he might hug me, but I held my hand out to him. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Baby—”
“Do. Not. Move,” I snapped, but he ignored me, pulling me to him and wrapping his arms around me.
“You’re okay, honey, I’ve got you.”
“I can’t believe you came back for me.”
“Why can’t you believe it?”
“Because you’ve stayed away so long and now, when I need you the most, you just poof, show up? You’ve never been that noble… it doesn’t track.”
“Oh, baby, this isn’t because I’m noble.” He chuckled.
“Then what is it?
“It’s all purely selfish.”
“Why?”
“Because your mom saved my life, Katie. Her being sick wrecks me too.”
I sniffed. “She doesn’t know she saved your life.”
“She does so.”
“No, she doesn’t.”
“She caught me.”
I gasped, meeting his eyes. “What? When?”
He smiled. “Middle of sophomore year. I was halfway out your brother’s window. He was in the shower, and I’d almost made it. She walked in and let out a quiet tsk.”
“Oh my god, seriously?”
“I thought for sure she was gonna kill me. Or your brother. Or both of us.” He nodded.
“She just looked at me and crossed her arms. Then she asked me if I wanted breakfast. I told her I had to get home before my dad woke up. She said, next time use the front door, and if he hit me again, she’d call CPS. ”
My mouth fell open of its own accord. “No way.”
“Yep. But by then, I had two inches on my dad, and ever since I’d been sleeping at your place, he hadn’t had the opportunity to strike anyway.”
I bit my lip. “But you stayed after that. Practically every night.”
“Yeah. Your mom told me to.”
“Oh my god, she never said a word,” I breathed out.
“I asked her not to.” He gave me a squeeze. “Billy and I met Hatch soon after that and we started working in his shop, do you remember that?”
I nodded.
“I paid your mom a little bit of money for food and shit, and she let me stay.”
“I noticed we started to get name-brand ketchup junior year. I just thought she got a raise.”
“She might have,” he said. “I can’t imagine my forty bucks a month made much of a difference, though.”
I gasped again. “That would have been a ton to you, though. You really paid her that much?”
“Yeah. She saved all of it and gave it back to me when I graduated.”
“My mother did that?”
“Yeah, honey, your mom did that. It was a few grand. A million bucks to me back then.”
“God, she was such a bitch to Grace,” I hissed.
“Flea told me. But you gotta remember, she didn’t meet Betty until we were all out of the house and that bitch was crazy. It took a minute for your mom to realize it but once she kicked her to the curb, she figured it out, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah, she loves Grace now.”
“I think she always did,” he said. “Betty was the one that was jealous.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“She was always comin’ onto Billy.”
“She wasn’t!”
“She totally was.” He gave me another squeeze and I leaned against him, forgetting my resolve to keep my distance from him.
“Bad Betty,” I bit out.
“Indeed,” he agreed. “But when your brother had that come to Jesus convo with your mom, I think she realized how much influence Betty had been havin’ over the years. He also told her about the shit that had been goin’ down with her so-called best friend.”
“Oh my god,” I breathed out. “I can’t believe you know more than me.”
He shrugged. “Flea and I wanted to keep a lot of it from you… we just didn’t feel it was stuff you needed to know.”
“There you go again, making decisions without talking to me,” I hissed, pulling away from him.
Rooster raised an eyebrow. “Tell me, baby, and be honest. Would it or would it not have totally grossed you out to know that your mom’s best friend was trying to make a play for your brother?”
“Well, duh, but why couldn’t I have known about it?”
“Because I have always strived to keep that shit from you, and so has your brother.” He stroked my back. “I just want you to be happy.”
“Dumping me and leaving me was proof of that,” I snarled.
He sighed. “Direct hit, sweetheart.”
I bit back tears and turned away from him. “You stayed away, Kam.”
He took my hand and pulled me to him again, settling me back on his lap.