Chapter 4 – Ghost
Chapter Four
Ghost
When I first sat down at this bar, I told myself I wouldn’t allow myself any distractions.
I’m here for business – and not alone. Zebulon came to the city from his place in the midwest after a special meeting with Magnum Sinclair and the rest of the club board members.
The two of us led a convoy with the men Wyatt ordered out to Boston to establish a beta chapter of the Rebel Barbarians Motorcycle Club.
Most of us are already at this bar – Mulligan’s – in South Boston owned by the youngest member of the biggest Irish mob family out here.
They’re good people and solid allies, but I hate feeling like a fish out of water and I still miss the fuck out of the kids. Wyatt might be right that I need a distraction, but even the pressures and dangers of underwater welding couldn’t keep me from thinking about my kids.
I tell myself the money I get out here can set us up for a while and I won’t have to work.
I’ll get them back from Tylee, get them a little bit of counseling and send them to a private school or something.
If I have to be away from my kids, it’s going to be because I’m working to get them a better life.
I trust the club. Wyatt has big plans and after crunching the numbers, Magnum thinks it’ll work – I would never take a business deal with a gambler without running the numbers by my wiser family members.
No offense to the Shaws. They’re not bad men, for the most part, just prone to vices and self-destruction.
Wyatt and Magnum both think there’s potential to break into other urban markets nearby once we establish supply lines through the greater Boston area.
We would be crazy as fuck to try New York considering the Italian mafia controls everything down there – and what the mob doesn’t control falls under the jurisdiction of various Puerto Rican or Black city gangs…
But Providence might have potential. Especially if the government sends their men down there to terrorize folks.
The music at the bar does nothing to take my mind off churning between business and the kids.
Then that woman walks in – the short black woman with the curves.
I’ve always loved rare women – red heads, dark-skinned women, women with vitiligo, stretch marks…
anything that makes a woman stand out from the typical rural girl hanging around motorcycle clubs.
I’ve only been with two women – Tylee and a friend of mine that I hooked up with to make Tylee jealous.
I’m not proud of how I treated her, mind you, but those are the only women I’ve been with.
Since I was fifteen, I thought the world didn’t get better than Tylee.
I don’t know what the hell went wrong with us.
But I can blot it out of my mind for a quick second when I look over my shoulder and see this dark-skinned creature who walks with so much alluring grace that I can’t look away from her. By my age, you learn the art of a quick sneaky glance. I can’t help but gawk at this woman. Fuck.
I turn and face my drink, hoping she didn’t notice my staring. But I can’t help checking over my shoulder a few times for where she’s sitting. I want to know where she is in this bar, as if she’s already mine. I don’t even know her name and frankly, I’m a fucking mess.
“When the fuck are Cody and Christian going to get here?” I grumble at Zeb, who should have told those assholes there would be severe consequences for lateness.
Unfortunately, while I have most of the guys here, we’re still missing two of the new recruits and Ethan.
The two of us are meant to set down roots in the east together by Wyatt’s command.
Despite our closeness in age, I’ve never been close to Ethan Shaw.
He’s a difficult stone of a man to get close to.
I don’t know what the hell I’m thinking of buying this woman a drink.
I saw her the second she walked in and told myself that I was here for business only and didn’t want to lose my focus.
Then she walked over to me and I had to follow my heart – or the liquor.
I can’t tell which one is in charge right now.
“What’s your name before I get that drink?”
“Gabrielle.”
“Pretty name.”
“Ghost?”
“Isaac.”
She nods. “Great. Are you from Boston?”
I don’t want her to know anything about me. It’s a strange urge, honestly, but the second I look at Gabrielle, I don’t want to be Isaac Sinclair, the guy who screwed up his marriage. The guy who let his ex-wife run off with his kids. I just want to be… Ghost. Whoever she wants me to be.
“Doesn’t matter,” I answer, keeping us focused on the task at hand. “Beer?”
“I already had one,” she says, a shy smile crossing her face that I personally find endearing. My stomach does a little tumble and I feel something that I don’t remember ever feeling. It’s different from yearning. A more powerful drink might help both of us.
“Whiskey?”
She nods. “At this point, something stronger couldn’t hurt.”
“Bad day?” I ask with a smile. Maybe knowing a little something about her would be better than telling her anything about me. She already knows enough about me based on the cut. Yet, she still came walking towards me.
“That doesn’t begin to cut it.”
“Will your sister mind if we have a drink together?”
Pretty Gabby looks over her shoulder to check on the woman who must be her sister.
Looks like her sister is pretty thoroughly occupied with the phone.
My luck. I pat the seat next to me, encouraging the best thing I’ve seen since coming to Boston to pop a squat next to me. I haven’t done this in a while.
“She won’t.” Gabby says, and she sits next to me, flooding me with a sense of relief and the perfect scent of whatever perfume she has on. The woman smells good.
“Good. Then you can tell me all about that bad day of yours.” The fiercely protective urge to end the life of whoever hurt this woman passes through me like a tremor.
But I feel the urge and wonder if it’s my fatherly instincts kicking in or something deeper.
Gabby’s face softens and I sense hidden pain behind her very beautiful face.
“Trust me, you don’t want to hear about it.” Her lashes flutter nervously and her soft, dark brown eyes drop away from mine. The sharp yearning to pull her back into my gaze wells up in me as well as a foolish, jealous question.
“Boyfriend piss you off?”
“Worse.”
My heart sinks as I lose the stupid game I played. Fuck, she has a boyfriend.
“He cheated on me. So he’s my ex-boyfriend. I found out today.”
Gabby bites down on her lower lip to keep words back or possibly tears. I hate to reopen a long closed wound, but I know how much it hurts when somebody breaks their word and shatters the sanctity of your relationship.
I used to tell myself that things would never be the same again because we could build something better from the hurt. That thought feels stupid and I realize that I’ve been quiet too long and I don’t want to say anything to scare Gabby away. I can’t imagine she trusts men right now.
Not when the hurt is still so raw.
“Shit. I’m sorry.”
I mean it, but I’m afraid to say anything more. I’ve never cheated on Tylee, and I would never cheat on any woman I love. Couldn’t imagine causing that much hurt, especially with kids of my own.
“I’ll be fine.”
Her voice almost cracks, but I can tell from looking at Gabby that she’s tough. It’s the quiet kind of toughness that might now always get the recognition it deserves, but I see it for what it is – true quiet strength.
Even if she’s a total stranger, it’s hard not to reach over and take her hand.
“You don’t have to be fine,” I tell her, and then meaning it with every fiber of my being. “He’s an idiot to hurt you like that. Any man who breaks his vow of loyalty to a woman and hurts her after she puts her trust in him deserves the worst.”
There might be tears welling in her eyes now, but Gabby does her best to push them back. She takes a neat sip of her whiskey. I catch myself staring a touch too long at her lips. I sip my own drink, hoping to stop something fucking stupid from coming out of my mouth.
“It doesn’t feel that way right now. It feels like… I’m never going to find someone again,” she says, glancing over at me vaguely apologetic. “Sorry if that’s too much.”
Too much? This woman doesn’t know the kind of shit I’m dealing with and this is far from too much. I have worse baggage than she could ever imagine. Not like it would make much sense to tell her.
Doesn’t change the fact that I understand Gabby more than she recognizes.
I can’t imagine a woman in her right mind who would want the type of baggage I’ve got right now.
Tylee and I aren’t officially divorced – she won’t sign the papers until she gets more money. That’s just the start of the bad shit.
My situation with the kids is a mess. I have a debt to pay off, which is why I’m out here in the first place.
Everything about my life is too fucked up for me to torture a woman like Gabby with it.
I would be lucky to get a shot with her – and even luckier that my dad, Randall, is dead and couldn’t lose his mind over it.
The other club members used to tease me that I never had to worry about my taste in women because I kept my marriage in the club. At forty-one years old and freshly single, I wonder if I would have been better off cutting my losses earlier.
“You’re beautiful,” I tell her. “Any guy would be crazy not to hold onto you.”
She laughs like she thinks I’m just telling her a line that she wants to hear. I can’t remember ever being the type of man to do such a thing and wouldn’t start now with her even if I was.
“I’m serious.”
“Is that what you’re doing?” she teases. But it’s flirty enough for me to pick up on it, and I feel way too old for games.
“Yes, ma’am. You caught me.”
“I can’t go out with you,” she says.
I laugh. “I can’t go out with you either. But we can have this drink, right?”
“Yes,” Gabby says. “We can. Isaac.”
I don’t know why she says my name like that, but I enjoy the way it sounds on her tongue. I drink down the rest of my whiskey because I don’t know how I’m going to stop myself from trying something with this woman tonight… even if I know how wrong it is to drag her into my world.
“I can tell you’re not from Boston,” she says. “You have an accent. I’d much rather hear about where you came from than talk about the day I’ve had.”
“Does it scare you not to know anything about me?”
“No. I’m starting to wonder if it’s better that way with men.”
Considering what she just told me, I certainly can’t blame her for thinking that way.
It’s tempting to tell her a whole bunch of lies about myself.
It’s easy when you don’t know somebody to become whoever they want you to be.
But I have this strange urge to be honest with Gabby about everything – even if it’s foolish and will ruin my chances with her entirely.
This woman makes me feel something that I don’t want to feel and that I barely understand. Talking to her is a gamble, possibly a mistake, but I don’t want to turn back now when she’s right here next to me. She’s a close human. A companion at the bar, even if it’s just for tonight.
Odd as I might be for it, I don’t want to let this moment with a beautiful stranger go.
I’m not a perfect man by any means, but I did what I thought was right.
I stayed faithful to Tylee throughout all the rough patches in our relationship and I told myself that doing the right thing for my kids and my family was all God wanted me to do.
I might have done a few things on the wrong side of the law like everyone in the club has at one point or another, but I never kept Tylee in harm’s way and I never hurt the kids.
Where the fuck did that get me? And what’s a little harm in getting closer to a woman like this one – just for the night.
“You might be right,” I tell her. “Have a seat.”