Crash’s Secret (Ash Valley Hellborn Kings MC #4)

1. Cassidy

CASSIDY

The prospect spots me in my car through the chain-link and drops his clipboard.

“No way.” He hauls the gate open one-handed. “Cassidy Harlan.”

“Hey, Trapper.”

“Saber told us you were coming tomorrow. He’s gonna lose his mind.” He bounces on his heels, twenty-three and as loyal as a golden retriever. “Go. Go in.”

He waves me in. I park in front of my brother’s MC clubhouse.

Gravel pops under my boots the whole walk up. The clubhouse is loud enough to rattle its own windows with bass and laughter.

There are more bikes parked than I’ve ever counted here before, with plates from all over the country, instead of just Arizona.

Guys’ cuts in the parking lot have bottom rockers from charters that aren’t Ash Valley. Because the Hellborn Kings has chapters across the country, and above all of them sits National. The men who outrank even Saber.

The men who don’t ride eight hundred miles for a party.

The out-of-towners rode in two months ago, after years of trouble with a club called the Crimson Warriors.

And the Warriors have been lying low since National got involved. That doesn’t mean the danger is over.

The guys from National aren’t staying much longer, though, from what Saber told me. Two months is a long time.

I push the door open.

The noise hits first. Then the smell—beer, smoke, and leather. The main area of the clubhouse is exactly how I left it four years ago: pool table, the bar running the length of the far wall, and a kitchen near the back.

And him. Crash. The Vice President of the Ash Valley Hellborn Kings.

He’s behind the bar, telling a story to a group of guys. Tall, dirty blond, a beard, ink down both forearms, and that grin. He’s just as hot as I remember him.

A woman on a stool is flirting with him, and he’s flirting right back, leaning in close like she’s the only person in the room. He doesn’t touch her. He doesn’t have to. She wants him regardless.

I used to think that was charm. Whatever it is, he’s never once aimed it at me.

I’ve been in love with my brother’s best friend since I was a kid. When I left for college, I told myself I’d forget about him. It’s been four years since, and my body still hasn’t gotten the message.

One look at him and I’m a teenager again, infatuated with a man who’s never looked at me twice.

He’s been friends with my brother since grade school, and since they’re nine years older than me, I’ve known Crash my whole life. He’s been at every barbecue, every party, and every big event.

It wasn’t one thing that made me fall for him. It was a million small actions that formed one big feeling.

It was him remembering I took my coffee with too much sugar and pouring it that way without asking, every time, for years.

It was the summer I was fourteen, and a couple of older boys hung around the edge of a club barbecue looking at me, and Crash drifted over and stood at my shoulder until they found somewhere else to be. He never said a word about it, to me or them.

It was the way he’d actually answer my questions about the bikes instead of waving me off like a kid.

It was a hundred Friday nights of him sliding a soda down the bar to me before I asked.

None of it meant anything to him. That’s the part that took me years to understand. He was being good to his best friend’s little sister, the same as he’d have been good to anybody Saber loved. To Crash, it was nothing. To me, it was everything.

His eyes find me. His grin disappears.

The story hangs unfinished, and nobody around him seems to understand why he quit talking.

I stop breathing.

He’s still staring. The glass cracks in his hand.

Beer seeps through the glass, running off his wrist, and he doesn’t look down at it.

He sets it on the bar, doesn’t say a word, and walks out the back door.

Gone. Four years and he couldn’t even say hello.

“CASSIDY!”

The roar comes from the pool table, and then Saber is plowing through his own party, and I’m off the ground, ribs being crushed in a hug that smells of leather and the same cologne he’s worn since I was twelve.

“You said you were coming tomorrow,” he says, twirling me around.

“I lied.” I playfully smack his chest. “Put me down.”

He doesn’t. He turns another full circle with me hanging there and shouts at the room. “MY BABY SISTER IS HOME.”

Strangers raise bottles to me. My brother—President of the Hellborn Kings, the man who scares grown men out of whole counties—is grinning so wide it changes his face.

He sets me down and holds me at arm’s length. “Four years.”

“I came home for Christmas.”

“Four years,” he says again, like Christmas doesn’t count.

He doesn’t need to introduce me to the women by the kitchen. I met most of them last Christmas, over three days at Saber's ranch. And I’ve heard about all of them during phone calls with my brother.

My glance lands on the back door. Shut. Stayed shut.

Shelby reaches me first, my brother’s Old Lady. She hugs me before I get a word out.

“I’m obligated to report he cried when you told him you’re coming home for good,” she says.

“Not true,” Saber says, behind me.

“It’s true,” she whispers, before stepping back.

The rest of the women come in a wave after that. I hug everyone who hugs me first, laugh when I’m supposed to, and lose track of half of what’s said.

It takes less than a minute to feel like I never left.

Acorn salutes me with his cue from the pool table, more gray in his beard than I remember. He taught me to bank a shot when I was twelve, mostly so he could take Saber’s money betting on me.

Near the pool table, Joker’s voice carries over the music. He’s talking to a couple of the National guys.

“Most of you are rolling out soon, right? Can’t blame you. Two months and the Warriors haven’t so much as crossed the county line. It’s over.”

“Nothing with Nitro is over,” Razor says from the end of the bar.

“Here we go,” Joker responds.

“I’m just telling you what I know.”

Joker laughs it off and changes the subject, but I catch the look the two National guys trade. They don’t argue with Razor. Nobody does.

Razor is the club’s Road Captain. Crash might be the VP and my brother’s best friend, but when it comes to getting things done, Razor is Saber’s right hand.

“Don’t mind them,” Shelby says, close to my ear. “It’s been calm. That’s all anybody will tell us, anyway. Club business stays in Church.”

“And what do you think?” I ask her. The talk of all this violence makes me nervous. I care about a lot of people in this room; they’re the only family I have.

She takes a second before she answers. “I think two months of calm doesn’t erase years of bad. But your brother is careful, and National wouldn’t leave if it wasn’t safe. Come on, you need a beer.”

She flags down the prospect behind the bar, and he hands the bottles over to us. As I take mine, I look at the back door again, wondering where Crash went.

Shelby looks at the door. Then at me. She doesn’t say anything about it, and somehow that’s worse. She already has me figured out.

I just hope she doesn’t mention it to my brother.

Saber finds me an hour later and steers me into the kitchen.

“So.” He leans on the counter, boots crossed at the ankle. “I really want you to stay at the ranch.”

I shake my head. “Nope. I’m not moving in with you and your Old Lady.”

“I’ve got thirty acres.”

“You don’t need your kid sister in the guest room.” I lean on the counter across from him. “Besides, I’ve been on my own for four years. I don’t need a guardian.”

He scowls. “Fine. There’s an extra room in the clubhouse. Stay here until the trouble is over with the Warriors. Then, I’ll help you get your own place.”

“I thought it was over.”

“Probably is.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it. “Humor me anyway.”

I nod. “Deal.”

Staying at the clubhouse is not ideal, but it’s safe, and I’ll have my own bathroom.

“And I have a job for you.” He says this casually, but knowing my brother, he’s had this planned for a while. “The books are a mess for the club’s bar, and Duke is stretched thin. But he’ll train you on the Bones and Bucks ledgers. The pay is good. And you can walk there from the clubhouse.”

“A bookkeeper for the Hellborn Kings.” I turn the bottle in my hands. “Dad would be proud.”

“He would be.” The grief comes and goes in one breath, the only way either of us lets it. “It’s legit work, Cass. Nothing illegal. That’s the point of it.”

“Who runs Bones and Bucks now?”

I know the answer.

“Crash.”

The beer bottle is cold against my palm, and I’m using that feeling to anchor me. I’m going to be spending a lot of time with the man I’ve never stopped thinking about.

“Crash is the person I trust most in this world,” Saber says. “If anything escalates with the Warriors, I like that he’ll be close by. He’ll protect you if he needs to.”

“Okay, I’ll take the job.” My voice is too eager, but he doesn’t react.

“Great.” He squeezes my shoulder. “It’s good to have you back, sis.”

“It’s good to be back,” I say.

I just wish the man I came back for had stayed in the room long enough to say hello.