Chapter 3 Grudge #2
She smiles up at me. “Good, because they’re the only lips you’re ever gonna kiss.”
Fate’s a liar too.
Her arms slide over my chest. I reach for her hands, squeezing them twice before letting go, and gently budging my chair back.
Isla takes the hint and moves out of the way. “You want me to go to your room with you? We could get into some mischief.”
“Another time,” I say, and pull on my thick, lined leather jacket.
She pouts. It’s cute. But it won’t change my mind. “Things are changing around here. Everyone is getting married.”
I circle my finger around the room. “This is now my office, so yeah, things have definitely changed.” I grab my riding gloves and helmet off the desk. “And if you want to get married so bad, maybe you should look around outside the club.”
She steps into my space, brushing my lips gently with hers. “I can’t, because I’m waiting for you to realize you’ll miss me.”
“I’m not the marrying kind,” I say. “You know this.”
Isla smiles as if she knows something I don’t. “I heard you were, once. I’m willing to wait for you to try again.”
There is no way I’m marrying a club girl. Fucking them is one thing, but marrying one you know your brother’s dick has been in is something else completely. I’m sure that makes me judgmental, a misogynist, and probably an asshole.
“Don’t, Isla. You’re not meant for me.”
She huffs. “Good enough for a night, though, right?”
“Sure. For as long as it’s mutually consensual and you don’t feel pressured to come with me.”
And then, I see it.
A moment of hesitation in her eyes. As if she can’t decide what she’s supposed to say next.
There’s a weird power exchange between the two of us, now.
I’m suddenly the catch of the club girls.
And she doesn’t know whether to say yes or no, which means, this isn’t truly consensual.
I cup her cheek but then remove my hand because it isn’t fair and I shouldn’t be the one to give her that kind of comfort.
“I’m gonna save you from making that decision, sweetheart.
I can see you can’t answer that question.
Not sure how long you’ve felt that way, but I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner.
And you need to ask yourself that question of whether it’s just me, or everyone else in here.
Because if it’s the latter, you should go home. ”
“But this is what I want.” She throws her hands out to the side. “I want this life. I want the club, the ride outs, the friendships. And I want a man who will stop at nothing to take care of me and keep me on his bike.”
“Then you need to put some distance between us and you. Because an old lady is not what everyone sees you as. And every day you stay here pushes you farther away from what you want. You deserve someone who sees you as the woman you are, not as a club girl. It’s hard to escape that label.”
She nibbles on her lower lip for a second. “Then, I’ll just have to prove you all wrong.”
I watch her flounce out of my office. Not sure I got through to her, but I’m sad to see her go. She was a favorite because she liked it rough. Rougher than any of the others would let me be.
When I leave, I see Atom chatting with Smoke at the bar. “Don’t you two have homes to go to?” I say.
Atom points to Smoke. “There’s no one to go home to because of his old lady’s book club.”
Smoke grins. “In fairness, the book club outdates the pair of us. It’s at Dawn’s house. Wraith stayed home with Fen, so we’re stuck here.”
The growing book club is becoming infamous between the brothers.
Wraith’s old lady, Raven, likes to highlight scenes in books she’d like to try, then leaves them in full view of Wraith.
Quinn is as dirty minded as Smoke is. I had the misfortune of seeing one of those mock horror movie masks in the back of his truck, then learned way more than I needed to about Quinn’s chase fantasies.
Now, Catfish is saying how he’s gonna join their book club in preparation for when he finds an old lady, which…fuck.
“I’m out for the night. See you guys tomorrow.”
A few others call out as I walk to the door.
The air is frigid when I step outside, which will make for a gnarly ride home if any of the rain has turned to ice.
I put my helmet on. Most of the year, I just wear a half helmet, but in winter, I go with a full face, mainly for warmth, but also to keep the glare from other vehicles from making me squint.
I connect to my phone and put on some metal. Then, I pull out of the club, but instead of turning right to go home, I pull out and head left, taking the road into town. It weaves and bends and finally straightens out as I approach Main Street.
Our town is a blink-and-you’re-done kinda town. Just about everything it offers is on this strip. The doctor’s office, Quinn’s bakery, Ember’s bar, the grocery store.
I’ve seen it a million times.
When I reach the other side of town, I open up the bike and let her fly.
The white lines splitting the road go past me in a blur. Wind bites through my layers of clothing. Especially my thighs. I should be home right now, not riding the streets.
This is fucked up.
I know it is.
Everything about it is the definition of losing my mind. And the irony isn’t lost on me that Killswitch Engage’s “The End of Heartache” blasts through my helmet singing about waking to the misery of being without the person you love.
Because I have no business lingering down from the gates that block off the De Bose estate.
Pretty sure I shouldn’t have put my fucking tracker on Lucy’s father’s truck while she was at the grocery store. But I need to know where she is. I keep telling myself it’s so I can avoid her. That I can make sure I’m never where she is.
Yet, I now find myself outside her parents’ place because I know she’s in there. Like a fucking magnet, she’s pulled me in. Once again, I’m still on the wrong side of the tracks, watching for the woman I married.
They’re probably drinking some fancy French wine that matured a hundred years ago and costs four figures. I remember when her dad tried to make a fool of me, telling me I was drinking some fancy bottle that tasted like piss.
Turned out he’d gotten a bottle from a discount store, some alcohol-free shit, and decanted it to make it look fancy.
When they poured me a glass of the expensive shit, after having a laugh at my twenty-year-old ass, I knocked it over on purpose, and it was my turn to laugh as the red wine caused an ink blot across the tablecloth and De Bose’s crisp white shirt.
And Lucy, man, she looked at me as though I were the king of the world, grabbed my hand, and led me out through the manicured gardens to the fields of wildflowers beyond.
I couldn’t remember a time before her, and thought we’d be together forever, until I grew up into the man I’d always been becoming.
Until it got real.
Until I got locked up for beating the shit out of a man who dared to touch her, because the law her father lived and breathed couldn’t help her.
Until her father thanked me for looking out for her by using my actions as an excuse to get me away from her.
Until the divorce papers arrived the day of my sentencing.
And maybe one day, I’ll find out why.
I didn’t hit him as hard or as violently as his injuries showed. But I definitely threw him down.
And him…he who was arrested but never charged because they said it was a he said, she said. Think it was the first and last time a case Lucy’s father was involved in went to the opposition.
I fucking held Luce that night as she shook in my arms. She arrived at the clubhouse from that fancy society party, her pretty face tear stained.
There were rips in the gorgeous pink dress she’d been so excited to wear, and four bruises on her right arm that almost matched the placement of my own fingertips.
He’d violated her with that same hand.
Didn’t feel a moment’s regret for charging to the party to lay that asshole out once I’d got Lucy settled. I’d do it again in a heartbeat. Even if I knew the result would be the same.
I can’t prove it, but I’ve always known there was only one person who could convince Lucy to divorce me, and that was her father.
He couldn’t bear to see her with a criminal hoodlum.
What makes my blood boil most about the whole thing is that Lucy let him win.
She knew what he was like. He never liked our friendship.
When we were young, he paid no attention to Lucy or who her friends were.
I always wondered if she chose a career in law to try and get his attention and approval.
We were fourteen before he realized that the Zach his daughter knew was the son of an Outlaw, and how that would look for his career.
Early in our relationship, he’d threatened to withdraw all offers to pay for her undergrad and law school if she didn’t break up with me, and she didn’t.
I’m not sure what he said to her, or what he had to hold over her.
But whatever it was, it was big enough for her to no longer confide in me.