Chapter 20
TWENTY
CALLIE
Dusk had claimed the sky, and with it a chill cut through the air, making me wrap my arms tightly across my chest. The winter months were supposed to be slower for the club, seeing as everyone put their bikes away and drove their trucks.
There was usually less travel, which meant less partying, and fewer nights where the music was blaring loud enough to be heard from the main road.
However, it was October, and here I was, feeling like a little girl again trying to outrun another loud party.
Except instead of running away, I was slowly walking toward it because my boyfriend was somewhere inside.
We were supposed to look at a house today, but Wes never showed.
He hadn’t even texted, or called—not even a DM.
I just stood there with the realtor, looking like an idiot while he tried to show me the house, all while knowing I wouldn’t make a decision without my partner.
I needed to cool off, so I drove around for a while, and it seemed as though my boyfriend had finally remembered me, by sending me a text roughly an hour ago, asking me to come down to the gathering.
I hated the part of me that resented him so much, because he knew how badly I hated these parties.
He knew because he used to be the boy who saved me from them.
Now he was the one delivering me right into the mayhem.
I had been in denial about our relationship for a while, but the house thing today severed a piece of my hope for us getting back to normal.
I assumed if we could move off the property and get some distance from the club, it would make things easier, but now that dream was gone, just like all the others we had.
Summer vacation, camping trips, date nights, a trip to Wyoming to see my aunt and cousins.
A trip to see his mom and sisters. None of it happened, and while I was showing up as a receptionist at a dental office, day in and day out, doodling art for tattoo ideas, more and more of myself was starting to disappear.
I loved Wesley, but not more than I loved myself. I was about to turn twenty years old, and I already felt like I was locked into a life I never wanted. As a child, I couldn’t change it, but as an adult, I owed it to myself to at least try.
The party was strewn out on the lawn, with a large bonfire and people drinking themselves stupid.
I pushed in through the back door, moving out of the way for a couple making out.
There was another pair fucking against the wall.
I was pathetically used to it, so I kept going, completely unfazed.
There in the main room were so many men and women it was hard to make anyone out, especially with all of them wearing similar cuts.
I wasn’t wearing mine that indicated I was property of Wes.
Frankly, I thought it was bullshit. I never wanted to be someone’s fucking property, and the man I loved knew that.
Yet, he still asked me to wear it when I attended these things.
Tonight, I wouldn’t, and I didn’t give a single fuck about it.
Red was behind the bar, serving drinks and blowing kisses. She didn’t have to serve, but she liked to keep an eye on how much liquor the girls were giving away. One time a sweetbutt took a whole bottle of vodka upstairs with her to seduce someone. Red nearly lost her mind.
Brooks wasn’t too far from the bar as he played pool with Hamish.
Killian had a girl in his lap as he smoked a blunt.
I hated how distant his gaze was as the girl kissed his neck.
I wanted him to be happy and find a real relationship, something with meaning like Red and Brooks, but his taste was always with the girls who just got to their knees and disappeared the next day.
My eyes kept moving looking for Wesley when someone grabbed my ass.
“You are the best-looking thing in here,” the guy rasped into my ear, pulling me by the hip with his free hand.
I pushed at him as panic seized my limbs, making them feel heavy and frozen.
I knew logically that he’d feel stupid and terrible as soon as he realized I was Simon’s daughter.
In the past, the panic would relent, but my brain and body seemed at odds as anxiety robbed me of breath and fear prodded at my lungs, worsening as his grip tightened.
“Get off me.” I attempted to push him, but his lips landed on my neck as more of his long arm wrapped around me.
“I like fighters.”
Tears were building in my eyes as I continued to push at him with no avail, and then in an instant, he was gone.
Wesley was there, and he looked furious. His beer bottle was tossed to the ground, and then his fist landed in the guy’s face.
“Fuck!” The jerk doubled over, holding his face.
Wes’s eyes were wide, gleaming with malice as he grabbed the guy by the vest to stand him up, then he punched him again. This time I heard a crack.
“I didn’t touch nothing that was yours, Ryan. What the fuck?!” the guy screamed, spitting a glob of blood on the floor.
That’s when Wes finally looked at me and must have realized I wasn’t wearing my property patch, because that angry glare was now aimed at me.
With a clench of his strong jaw, he grabbed me by the arm and hauled me past all the craziness until we were pushing into the cold night air.
Once he let me go, I started walking away.
Fuck this.
Fuck him.
“Callie, wait,” Wes said at my back, but I kept walking.
He kept pace with me. “You can’t come here without your cut, you know that. Guys don’t know you’re spoken for. They don’t know you’re mine.”
I laughed, because fuck this guy.
Spinning on my heel, I shoved his chest.
“You forget that I grew up in this fucking bullshit, Wes? I know exactly how this works, and not wearing a fucking piece of leather shouldn’t ever give a free pass to grope someone. I’m a goddamn person, Wes. Not a piece of property. You used to be able to see the difference.”
I spun away, continuing to walk. I hadn’t even touched on how afraid that encounter had just made me, or how frightened I was being in a massive group of bikers after being taken. Rival club or not, on nights where extra members arrived, I turned into a terrified nine-year-old again.
He matched my pace, walking right next to me.
“Where are you going?”
Tears were in my eyes as I shook my head. “The only place I ever felt safe from this life. The only place that used to make me feel like I could actually be free from it.”
Wes pulled my wrist to stop me.
“The tree house is a mile down that road, Callie. It’s freezing. Just stop.”
His leather cut suddenly enveloped me as he slid it over my shoulders and then he wrapped me in his arms.
“Let’s just go home, baby. I’m sorry.”
My heart swelled with the need to make him understand that I couldn’t keep doing this.
There was an itch under my skin that was desperate to leave this place.
“Wes, I can’t do this anymore.” My voice came out as a whisper, then a sob, as my throat tightened. I had been holding those words back for so long it felt painful to finally let them free.
In the dark, it was difficult to read his expression, but his arms tightened around me.
“Is this about the house? I had a surprise for you. I planned on telling you tonight. Your dad gave me permission to build a house on the property, it's over there on the edge, where the canal is.”
No.
I had to get out. I had to leave. I couldn’t do this. I wouldn’t.
“I can’t be here anymore, Wes. I love you, but I don’t want the club.”
Wesley’s silence stretched, becoming louder like a screaming echo. I kept expecting him to say something, but he didn’t. It was when his arms loosened around me that I realized what was happening.
“I can’t leave, Callie. You know that better than anyone. I can’t just quit.”
My hands slid up his chest, cradling his jaw. “I can ask my dad. He’ll make an exception. I know he will. Please, Wes. Please just let me try.”
Wes held my hand to his face and closed his eyes.
“It can’t be undone.”
He was wrong. There had to be a way I could undo this. For us, for me.
There had to be some benefit to being the president’s daughter.
With tears staining my face, I decided for the night I would drop it.
I let Wes take me home, and when he slid inside me that night and held me to his chest, I knew it was him saying goodbye.
I knew because he fucked me five times before the sun broke into the valley, as if he was afraid of losing me. As if he knew I was already gone.
I found my father in his office.
When I was a child, I found it so strange to see him sitting at a desk with a pair of black rimmed reading glasses while he read over paperwork and made phone calls.
It was the only time he seemed like a normal person, and I used to pretend he was just a regular dad, who did taxes for people or something else that required him to work from home, but seeing it now as an adult felt strange. Like I’d outgrown this place.
“Knock, knock,” I said, leaning against the frame of his open office door.
His gaze lifted from the papers, his mouth spreading into a smile.
“Hey, I was wondering when I’d see you. Feel like you have been absent around here.”
Ignoring that comment, I pushed in, setting the coffee and donut on the table, then I slumped into one of the chairs facing his desk.
The office was small, his desk an old rusty blue, with old filing cabinets on the far wall and paint stains on the cement floor.
It wasn’t much, but considering our house was a piece of shit, it wasn’t a shock.
“What brings you in today?” My dad lifted the coffee to his lips, smiling over the brim. “You always pick the best places to go for this stuff. No one can ever get my order just right.”