Chapter 13 #2
Avery mentioning Ash’s road name had Lyric pulling in a big breath. Before she could stop it, her expression went soft with the memory of what had happened only a couple of hours prior. She quickly spun on her stool so Avery wouldn’t notice.
She hated not being able to tell her closest friend, but Avery also had a big mouth. Her losing her virginity to Ash would be a huge deal among the sisterhood. And in her case, possibly the brotherhood, too.
Hell, Avery would want to go out and celebrate Lyric’s loss of virginity, even if it was to a doorknob.
Except it wasn’t. It was to Ash, a club brother, and that would make it an even bigger deal.
Avery grabbed her arm and spun her back around. Her eyes narrowed on Lyric. “What’s that about?”
Holy crap, she was busted. “What do you mean?”
“That reaction. You’re hiding something from me, your very bestest friend and sister by choice, aren’t you? What is it?”
“Nothing.”
Shit. Avery knew her better than anyone. Of course she’d know when Lyric was avoiding a person or a subject.
She kept her face as blank as possible as Avery searched it.
Her club sister’s eyes narrowed even more, to the point they were slits. “I stopped in this morning before heading to the pawn shop and Trish said you were late. You’re never late.”
Act casual and perfect your zombie stare. “I forgot to set my alarm.” She added a one shoulder shrug for good measure.
“Bullshit.” Avery circled a hand in front of Lyric and shook her head. “No. There’s a different aura about you today. I can’t put my finger on it.”
“You’re imagining things.”
“No, bitch. I know you almost as good as I know myself.” She continued to stare at Lyric with a finger pressed to her lips. “Did you meet someone and not tell me?”
“No.”
“Is he hot?”
“Stop.”
“Does he give good dick? Because you look like someone who got good dick.”
“Avery.”
Her mouth dropped open and her green eyes went wide. “Holy shit! Did you finally lose your virginity? You hold out, you!”
“Shush! No one knows that I hadn’t yet,” Lyric hissed at her best friend.
“Hadn’t? Yet?” Avery squealed.
“Haven’t,” she quickly corrected.
“No, you said hadn’t. Past tense. I know you’ve been waiting for Rage—”
“I told you that when I was like fifteen. That was almost ten years ago, Ree.”
“Yes,” Avery drew out and tipped her head to the side. “And that’s why you remained a virgin all this time. You were holding out for your dream man.”
“Did you seriously call Ashton a dream man? Most people look at him as a nightmare.”
“Not you. Do you think I’m so blind that I can’t see you tracking his every move whenever you’re in the same room? Hell, whenever you’re within a mile.”
“I don’t think you’re blind; I think you’re seeing things. More like having hallucinations.”
“Uh huh. I’ve never known you to be a liar.”
“I’m…” She bit her bottom lip.
“See? You can’t even lie about being a liar!”
“Keep your voice down! I really don’t need my employees to know my business.”
“And that you got the business?” Avery grinned.
At least Carl was gone, but Trish and their resident goth girl, Raven, were in their areas busy tattooing. Hopefully they couldn’t hear shit above the whir of their tattoo machines.
“If it wasn’t Rage, who was it, then? Spill, bitch!
We don’t ever keep anything from each other.
Don’t make me burn our best friend cards.
” When Lyric covered her eyes and groaned, Avery grabbed her wrists and yanked her hands back down.
“Fess up! Because if I’m right, we have something to celebrate! ”
Just as she thought. Avery would want to make a big deal over something Lyric wanted to keep on the down low. But before she could try to head off Avery again, the front door opened.
Saved by the bell!
“My next client is here.”
“Your next client is your father?”
“What?” She twisted her head to see Crow heading in her direction. She bugged her eyes out at Avery to make sure she kept her mouth shut.
With a grin, she elbowed Lyric and whispered, “Why is your dad so fucking hot, even as old as he is?”
Lyric scrunched up her face and shoved her back. “Eww. Will you stop lusting over the men in my family?”
“Never!” she exclaimed. “We’ll talk about that other thing later. I want details.” She wiggled her eyebrows.
“None to give.”
“Uh huh.” Avery stood and said, “I need to get back.” She paused to give Crow a quick hug. “How are you doing, Daddy?”
“For fuck’s sake,” Crow muttered at the same time Lyric fake gagged.
Of course, Avery had always teased him like that, but now, Daddy meant something totally different than when they had been connected at the hip as kids.
Crow’s brow dropped low in feigned annoyance, even though he treated Avery like a daughter. “Ain’t you supposed to be somewhere?”
“Heading there now!” Avery said in a singsong cadence. She added an exaggerated wink to the ridiculous finger wave she shot Lyric. “Toodles, bitch.”
Lyric expected to be relieved once Avery left, but instead, her father had shown up.
Why?
Her heart began to thump. Did he know? The blood drained from her face. “Is something wrong?”
Crow stopped beside her. “Dunno. You tell me. Left pretty damn early this mornin’.”
Having her parents know her business was one of the hazards of still living with them. And why she was saving to move out.
“Was worried somethin’ was wrong.”
“Nothing’s wrong, Até.”
Of course she screwed up by using the Lakota term for “father” since it set off his fatherly instincts. She normally used it when trying to get on his good side, which was just about every side unless you screwed him over.
Or he had a reason to suspect something.
Like now.
Ugh! She needed to come up with a believable excuse on the fly as to why she skipped breakfast—and more importantly, coffee—and snuck out.
She hated lying to her father because not only did it make her feel shitty, he had a sixth sense when it came to his offspring trying to pull one over on him.
“Nothing’s wrong,” she repeated. “I just needed to get caught up on some work.”
“Lookin’ for a second job swingin’ ‘round a pole?” Of course his expression and his words held no judgement, but she knew good and well her father would have an issue if she wanted to strip at Heaven’s Angels.
Her mother would have a strong opinion on that, too.
Lyric was pretty damn sure Ash would as well.
But, holy shit! “No. Why would you think that?”
“You live and work in a town full of the DAMC. In a town where we know just ‘bout everyone. Where noses tended to be stuck where they don’t fuckin’ belong and those noses are set right above lips that love to fuckin’ flap. You forget that?”
If she had paled before, she probably looked like a corpse right now without a drop of blood left in her face. In fact, she swore her heart seized and she was actually dead. They might need to break out the AED.
Did her father actually know? Or was he trying to flush out the truth?
Either way, that wasn’t good.
None of this was good.
“If it wasn’t for a tryout, then why the fuck were you there?”
Think. Think. Think!
She couldn’t. Her brain was frozen.
She scrambled to come up with something. “Ash asked me to stop by and rebraid his hair.”
“He uses the girls for that.” By girls, her father meant strippers.
“Yes, but it was early and they weren’t there yet. His braids were all messed up.”
“He could’ve waited ’til they got there.”
“Only a couple of them can do it right. Neither will be working today.” Crow stared at her for what felt like a lifetime. She swore he could read minds. Lyric tamped down her panic and continued. “You know that, like us, he only trusts a few people to touch his hair.”
Did she actually manage to come up with something he’d believe? Because there was no way in Hell she was discussing with her father what really happened in Ash’s apartment.
While Crow knew she and Ash were close, he didn’t know just how close after this morning.
Once again, she was saved by the bell when her next appointment walked in.
Phew.
“Be right with you!” she yelled out, then turned her attention back to her father. She pointed to the drawing she’d been working on. “Do you think he’ll like it?”
“What’s not to like? You’re a great fuckin’ artist.”
That compliment thawed the ice clogging her veins.
Stepping behind her, Crow cupped a hand over her forehead, tipped her head back, and pressed a kiss to the tip of her nose. He then whispered, “T?e?hí?ila.”
“Love you too, Dad.”
While her father was technically only half Lakota, he’d been sent to his mother’s reservation and raised by his aunt after his parents were brutally murdered by the Shadow Warriors when he was very young.
Once he was old enough to become a prospect, he returned to Shadow Valley to be with his DAMC family, but while in South Dakota, he’d learned a lot of Lakota and decided to pass the language on to his own children.
Even to this day, his father still called her mother Kachina, despite the term for the Native American doll belonging to the Hopi and not the Lakota tribe. All these decades later and her mother still melted every time her father used it.
The same happened to Lyric when Ash called her “baby.”
But then, maybe she was reading too much into it and the club’s sergeant at arms called every woman he slept with the same.
It was best to remember that women were a dime a dozen to bikers. She wasn’t special.
Now that the crisis had been averted, she needed to get to work. A deposit on an apartment wasn’t going to pay for itself.
Then a scary thought hit her.
What if Crow went to confront Ash next and their stories didn’t match?