Chapter 6
Teddy
I didn’t notice the cash until I was ushering the kids toward the truck. Curtis had used the toe-curling kiss to distract me so he could stuff it into my back pocket.
“Oh, crap,” Jesse said, reaching for a drink carrier sitting on the hood. “We forgot to bring these in.”
I shot them a questioning look as I threw my fanny pack over my shoulder and across my chest.
“Curtis saw the door was open, and he set these down as he booked it,” Jesse explained, looking down at the cups. “Here, this one is yours.”
They handed me a cup with a little chocolate-covered espresso bean on the top.
“You got me coffee?”
“Curt asked what you normally get,” they said. “He paid too. Uh, should I bring his in?”
“Thanks, Jess.” I looked at the coffee I hadn’t even asked for. “Yeah, run it in.”
Finn and I loaded up, and less than a minute later, Jess hopped into the truck with us.
While they were searching for the closest grocery and thrift stores, I took my time driving out of the neighborhood in the direction we’d entered it the night before.
The neighborhood looked like it had been built about thirty years before.
There were mostly two-story houses like the one we were renting, some of them smaller, but none of them were much bigger.
Down the street, I jerked in surprise when a familiar face waved at me from a driveway.
After checking my mirrors, I slowed to a stop as Jesse rolled down their window.
“Hey,” Curtis’s sister-in-law greeted, walking toward us.
Her hair was up in a messy bun at the top of her head, and her face was flushed.
Behind her, there was shit all over the driveway, and all the doors to her SUV were thrown open.
“I’m taking advantage of the girls being at their grandparents’ house,” she said, grinning.
“And swamping out the car. It’s filthy. I think there might be shit growing in there. ”
“I know the feeling,” I replied.
“What are you guys up to?” She leaned her forearms on the edge of the window and smiled at Finn in the back seat. “Hey, Finn!”
“Hi,” my boy called back, a smile in his voice.
“We’re going thrifting,” Jesse replied. “I need a mattress.”
“I do too,” Finn added, like we’d forget or something. “I need a whole bed! And a dresser! And a TV!”
“You’re not getting a TV in your room,” I said dryly, turning to look at him. “Nice try.”
Kara laughed. “Fun!”
“We also have to go grocery shopping,” I told her. “The fridge is bare.”
“Sorry about that,” she replied, wrinkling her nose. “I wasn’t sure if anyone had any dietary stuff, so I figured it would be safer to leave that to you.”
I looked at her in bewilderment.
“I picked up some toilet paper and cleaning supplies and stuff like that,” she continued on. “But I didn’t want to overstep.”
“You did?”
“Not a big deal,” she said with a wave of her hand.
“Thank you,” I replied, trying not to stare at her.
The woman had bought supplies for our rental? Who did that?
“Just didn’t want you to be stuck on the toilet,” she said with a grin. “Moving is tough.”
“I really appreciate that.” Understatement. I was stunned.
“No worries!” She looked at Jesse. “You know, if you guys don’t find what you need while you’re out today, I bet we can round up quite a bit from the club.
” She looked at me. “Everyone likes to pitch in, and there are always old ladies who have extra that they’re planning on donating or whatever. I can ask around if you want?”
“That’s okay—”
“That would be awesome,” Jesse said at the same time, glancing at me with a wide smile. They looked back at Kara. “We’re not picky, but I need a twin mattress to fit my bed.”
“Jess,” I chastised quietly.
“But dressers or whatever, anything works,” they continued, ignoring me. “We need pretty much everything.”
In the corner of my eye, I noticed a car coming up behind me.
“Oh, crap,” Kara said, backing away from the window. “I’ll see you guys later. Good luck on your thrift hunt!”
“Thanks,” Jesse said.
“Bye,” Finn called, waving as I pulled away.
“Take a right at the stop sign,” Jesse ordered.
“What the hell, Jess?” I hissed, following their directions.
“She wants to help.”
“We don’t even know her.”
“She’s Curtis’s sister-in-law.”
“I’m aware of that.”
“And she lives right down the street.”
“And? What does that have to do with anything?”
“She’s nice.”
“I know she’s nice.”
“If she wants to help, you should let her.”
“We don’t need her help.”
Jesse just shot me a look. “Go through this stop sign and then take a left at the next one.”
I grit my teeth.
“Curtis said the club is like a big family,” Jesse said as we drove.
“He said that they all look out for each other. So, like, if someone is in the hospital, they all go to the hospital. Or if someone’s like big-time sick, they all pitch in with meals and stuff.
He said that everyone is in everyone else’s business, which is annoying as hell, but it all evens out because of the first part. ”
“Sounds like he said a lot,” I grumbled.
“Now you’re going to go for a while. I’ll tell you where to turn,” they replied. “Curtis said that we can trust anyone in the club. That if we need anything, go to them first. Or if there’s, like, an emergency or something.”
“Or you could call nine-one-one,” I said, widening my eyes at them.
“Obviously,” they replied.
“What kind of club is it?” Finn piped up from the back seat. “I wanna be in the club.”
“It’s a motorcycle club,” Jesse replied. “Didn’t you see the vest he was wearing today?”
“No,” Finn grumbled.
“That’s like…his team shirt,” they explained, still turned toward Finn. “It says whose team he’s on.”
“Cool!”
“And you can’t be in his motorcycle club because you don’t have a motorcycle and it’s only for grown-ups.”
“I could when I’m a grownup!”
“Fuck me,” I murmured under my breath.
“Yeah, maybe,” Jess said with a grin, turning back around. They shot me a look, their eyes dancing.
“Let’s just focus on the things we need to get done today,” I said, trying to end the conversation about my sensitive, sweet Finn joining an MC.
“I wonder why he wasn’t wearing his cut when he came to get us,” Jesse said, almost to themselves. They looked at me. “Did you know that’s what it’s called?”
“Don’t know and yes,” I replied. “I’ve met plenty of Aces. So have you, for that matter. Where am I going?”
“I have?” Jesse asked in surprise.
I nodded. “When you were a baby, and you were hanging with Papa a bunch. He had lots of friends in the club.”
“No way. What happened? Why did he stop hanging with them? Did he know Curtis?”
“Jess, where am I going?” I asked again, ignoring the questions I didn’t know how to answer.
Jesse huffed and gave me the directions, but thankfully stopped telling me about all the information Curtis had imparted while they were gone for twenty minutes getting coffee.
I was glad that they got along because that was going to make the next few months a lot easier, but I didn’t want them getting attached.
I had no idea what the future would bring, but I did know that this relationship I was faking with Curtis wouldn’t last forever.
At some point, we were going to part ways, and I knew that once we did, leaning on the club wouldn’t be an option for me or my kids anymore.
Finn started talking when we reached the first thrift store and basically didn’t stop.
Normally, I would’ve been worn out by the second store, but I was actually thankful for his running commentary because it kept my mind from wandering to the kiss Curtis had given me that morning, wondering about what was happening back at the rental, and how the hell we were supposed to maintain our little farce for more than a few days.
Jesse and Curtis’s conversation made me nervous. By the way they’d been talking, Jess was already starting to settle into the situation. That should’ve comforted me—I wanted them to settle—but instead it made anxiety pool in my gut.
My kids were going to get used to this. They were going to get used to Curtis and Dylan and their massive support system.
Hell, they’d already started acting like the whole situation was normal, and it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours.
Where would they be when that was gone, and it was just us again?
I’d lived through that. My pop had so many friends when I was a kid—people checking in all the time, stopping by, old ladies bringing us food—but somewhere along the way those visits had grown fewer and farther between until they’d stopped altogether.
I’d never understood why, and my pop never explained.
I didn’t want Jesse and Finn to go through that disconnect, but now we were too far in for second thoughts.
Curtis’s brother was stopping by to help us unload our truck, and his sister-in-law was offering to furnish our house.
It was all too much, too fast, and I had no idea how to slow things down.
After a few hours of thrifting, all we had to show for it was an old T-shirt that Finn had begged for and a funky little nightstand for Jesse’s room.
It was pretty much a bust, and I wasn’t sure if we were checking the right stores.
We didn’t need antique furniture. We just needed secondhand furniture, but we’d barely found any.
Grocery shopping took another hour and a half because I had to stock up on nearly everything, especially now that the kids would be home for the summer and not eating breakfast and lunch at school.
I wasn’t sure what Dylan liked, but I figured he couldn’t be that different from Jesse.
Teenagers were like raccoons in my experience—they ate anything.
I didn’t touch the cash in my back pocket, and it was still there when I parked in the driveway next to a Harley Fat Boy that was older than I was and still in pristine condition.
Dylan’s truck was gone, and so was the truck that had been parked at the curb when we’d left.
I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.