Chapter 10
Jasper
I get busy with a crowbar, pulling up the tiles from Tessa’s roof, only to discover that it’s a dry-rotted mess up here.
We’ll have to pull everything down to the frame and likely have to replace some of the wood there before adding the plywood, felt, tar, and shingles.
It’s shaping up to be a long, arduous process for me and four prospects.
But at least it’ll give me time to process getting dressed down by the mother of my child over showing up with a fuck-ton of supplies and a crew without bothering to notify her of my plan, much less bothering to ask if it was okay.
The sun’s already burning off the morning dew. Sweat gathers around my collar and begins to run down the center of my back. I don’t mind, though, because a little hard work has never bothered me.
The prospects are working like a well-oiled machine, and I’m up here doing what I said I’d do.
Fixing her roof is a priority for me because I want to make sure the mother of my kid doesn’t have fuckin’ mold in the rafters or rain leaking in over her head.
But after doing some deep soul searching, I realize that none of that changes the fact that I messed up.
Tessa told it to me straight the minute she saw what I was up to this morning.
She was bold, articulate, and a little peeved at me, but she didn’t lose her shit like some women do.
There was no screaming, or accusing me of being an asshole, crying to get her way, or any of the other dramatic bullshit.
She just spoke her piece and left us to it.
That’s what I call respect—for yourself and for the other person.
I’ve always been nursing some kind of fucked-up hero complex.
I think if a woman needs something and I rush to do it without asking, she’ll swoon over how take-charge I am.
When in reality, women these days don’t want a man to take charge.
Hell, maybe they never did? She wanted to be treated like an equal and participate in decisions that affect her. That doesn’t seem like too much to ask.
But instead of doing that, I showed up with a truck full of supplies, a crew of prospects in cuts, to execute a plan I never ran by her.
Because in my world, I’m used to just gettin’ shit done.
You see something broken, you fix it. You don’t wait around to ask permission and wait while they fret about whether accepting your help is the right thing to do.
But Tessa’s not part of my club. She’s not a brother who knows the rules. She’s not one of the club girls or hang-arounds, happy for whatever attention and favors I see fit to bestow upon them.
She’s a woman who’s going through some shit—with the Whitmores, and her gran being sick, carrying my kid. I didn’t even think to knock on her door before turning her driveway into a construction site.
I shove the last of the shingles off the roof.
My jaw’s tight. The sun’s high enough now that it glares straight into my eyes, but I don’t shift.
I have to figure out how to make this right again.
I don’t want a pissed-off pregnant lady on my hands.
And she doesn’t deserve to be rubbed raw by the headstrong VP of an MC most people consider terrifying.
Some small, stupid part of my brain still wants to argue with her that I did the right thing.
That I showed up, I’m putting in the work, and the house is gonna be safer because of me.
But the cold, hard truth is, I took control and expected her to be okay with it.
Yeah, I’m fucking stubborn that way. I like getting my own way.
I’ve also been taught that talk is cheap, so I got into the habit of proving myself through actions rather than words.
And that shit might fly in the club where I practically rule the roost, but not when it comes to soft, pretty outsiders like Tessa.
I know what it’s like to be boxed in by good intentions.
To have someone step up and take the wheel because they think they know best. Hell, that was my whole lived experience growing up with Rock as my dad.
He ran roughshod over everyone because he was club president and the father of our household.
I should know better than anyone what that feels like.
Maybe it’s because I grew up this way, it’s a blind spot for me.
Or fuck, maybe I just lack empathy full stop.
Whatever my malfunction is, I’m gonna fix it real damn quick.
Tessa fought to keep my child when the Whitmores wanted her to get rid of it, and then, against her better judgment, agreed to be a surrogate for a big fuckin’ scary biker.
She went out on a limb for me. That means I owe her my fuckin’ best.
Trigger calls out from a few feet down the ridge. “This beam is in bad shape. Looks water damaged. It’s brittle, and I don’t know how long it’s gonna last. We need to replace the whole beam.”
“We’re doin’ this job the right way,” I say, keeping my voice even. “When it comes to Tessa, we don’t half-ass nothin’.”
He nods and gets back to work without questioning or second-guessing me.
That’s because I’ve proven myself and earned their respect.
The prospects and my club brothers trust my judgment and decision-making ability.
Unfortunately, I haven’t earned shit from Tessa.
So naturally, I’m gonna have to work on that.
The first step is to apologize. No half-assed jokes or awkwardly rushed ones either.
I need to discipline myself to sit her down and do it right.
I want to be the kind of father this kid needs.
And the kind of man she doesn’t have to worry about being a bad role model or someone she looks at like he’s another problem to manage.
I need to respect her the same way she respects me.
Show her that I’m adaptable and she’s safe talking to me about real-life problems.
I run my hand down my face, grit clinging to my palm.
The heat is making everything feel dry, and my throat is parched.
I yell down for one of the prospects to toss me up a bottle of water from our cooler.
I frown when I get a weird bottle of sparkling water in a club bottle.
Cursing under my breath, I twist the top off and take a long swig of the ice-cold water.
It’s not as bad as I thought it would be, so I stand there two stories up and drink the whole liter down.
Right as I remove the empty bottle from my mouth, I catch sight of something through the bottom of the bottle.
It’s the reflection of what appears to be a biker.
I look directly through the bottle with one eye.
It is a fuckin’ biker, about three streets over.
He’s not one of ours. That means he’s likely a fucking Hyena, though from here I can’t see the patch on his vest. I toss the bottle aside, pull out my cell phone, and zoom in with my camera.
It’s a Hyena alright, with three more following close behind.
“Gotcha, motherfuckers,” I whisper under my breath as I watch them ride into a small warehouse.
I capture as much as I can until they shut the warehouse door. Then I send it to the family group chat.
Slate calls me immediately. “How the everlovin’ fuck did you find them?”
“Let’s just say I had a higher vantage point, and they rode right past my line of vision.”
“This one of those warehouses on Lightning Bolt Drive?”
“Yeah, I’m looking right at it. How about you get a crew together and scout it out?”
“I’m on it,” he says with excitement.
I don’t even realize the others have stopped working until the sound of hammering falls off behind me. The guys are lookin’ at me.
Trigger jerks his chin in my direction. “What’s going on? Is there trouble on the way?”
I shoot him a feral grin. “Reckon I found the Hyenas’ hideout. They’re holed up in a warehouse, three streets over.”
Nitro’s holding the beam that Trigger was hammering into place. “Fucking hell, you’re the luckiest bastard that ever walked the face of the earth.”
Dark glee fills every corner of my soul, ‘cause he’s not wrong about that.
“Slate’s gonna check it out. He’ll let us know what he finds.”
They get back to work, talking about how our whole club has been looking for them for days now and I found them while I was roofing a fuckin’ house. I keep my phone recording and trained on the warehouse, giving Slate a chance to get into place.
I keep my focus on the warehouse I saw them go into.
Four more bikes move slowly down the road towards the warehouse, all flying the Hyenas’ colors.
They don’t even bother to hide their bikes inside the warehouse.
They boldly park right out in front. These bikes are different from the cobbled-together trash that ran me off the road a few weeks back.
I can’t tell the quality of these bikes because they’ve all been painted matte black.
One of them has got a red bandana tied to the bars.
That’s all I need to see. They’re Hyenas all right, and unless I miss my guess, the one with the bandana is their road captain.
It strikes me as strange that they set up their clubhouse right in the middle of the town’s industrial district. They’re not trying to hide. They’re walking around like they own the block.
A flatbed truck rolls up while I’m watching. A couple of guys hop out and start unloading gear from the bed. From where I’m standing, it looks like cement mixers. They’re not rental grade either, but industrial size—old but serviceable.