23. Melody
MELODY
“Go on.” Rebel pokes me in the back.
I reach for Emily’s doorbell with more than a little trepidation. “I’m working on it.”
Last time I was here, I was apologizing. As kind as she’s been to me, even after finding out my full story, I still feel a little nervous about coming back to her house. I take a deep breath, paste on a smile and push the doorbell.
The door opens, revealing Emily. Tiny, a little rounded and smiling broadly.
“There you are. We were starting to take bets on if you would chicken out or not.” She looks behind me.
“Hey, Rebel. Can you let her off her leash long enough to socialize for a bit? Or do we have to pretend you aren’t sitting in the corner, brooding? ”
Rebel smirks. “I’ll be in the garage. She’s your responsibility for the next couple hours. You know the drill.”
“Go on.” Emily makes shooing motions with her hands. “One of us will call if anything happens. Or just open a window and scream.”
“Behave,” Rebel tells me, kissing the top of my head before heading to the hangar where it looks like the guys work on their motorcycles.
Emily rolls her eyes dramatically, then laughs.
“For a bunch of bikers, they can turn into real mother hens when they decide we need watching. Most of the time it’s great, but sometimes it’s like having a cat that’s always right behind you.
When something is going on in the club, I can barely turn around in this house without tripping over one of them. ”
“Sounds miserable,” I observe in a deadpan.
“Stop. You’re sounding like them. Come on in.” She steps back and gestures for me to enter. “I think you’re the last one, since Harper is at the hospital with Outlaw, keeping an eye on Lightning.”
“Thank you for inviting me. I wish I could’ve brought something, but…”
“I know. You’re stuck in the barracks. I’d say you’re probably bored out of your mind and starving for attention, but we’d both know I’m lying.
I bet they’re bending you over whatever they can find.
” She bursts into laughter, probably because my face is beaming red like a beacon.
“Sorry. I couldn’t help it. Trust me, if there’s any group that can sympathize with what you’re going through, it’s us.
Let me introduce you to the Harem Brunch Club. ”
“The what?”
Emily drags me into her living room where almost a dozen women are scattered across the couches and chairs. This has to be just about every woman in the compound, and then some.
“Uh, hi.” I wave, a little taken aback. When Emily asked me over for a little gathering to take my mind off things, I didn’t expect this many people. “I’m Melody.”
When everyone turns my way, I nearly run right out the door to go find Rebel. Maybe I’d be better off getting interrogated by Shadow and the boys. At least until they smile and start eagerly introducing themselves on top of each other so I only catch a handful of the names.
There’s Alessa who lives next door. Shelby who has a house nearby.
Faith who’s Eagle-eye’s daughter and runs a bookshop.
Mila who’s a reporter. Summer and Kaylee and…
gah. I guess I’ll learn the rest when I can.
I’m definitely the youngest, but there are at least a few others who are probably only a couple years older than me.
“Hi, I’m Sandra.” The most alternative of the bunch waves.
Her hair is dyed inky black with a streak of purple, there’s an eyebrow piercing with a matching purple ball on it, smoky eyes and ruby lipstick.
Her black T-shirt is cut short and has the logo of some band I’ve never heard of on it.
She grins widely. “I’m the new girl, so I’m kinda hoping you stick around so I have someone to band together with against all these old ladies. Buddy system, and all that.”
“Who are you calling old?” snaps a blonde woman who, once I look away from all of Sandra’s accessories, looks an awful lot like her.
Sandra’s grin widens. “That’s Natalie, my older sister.”
“Listen here, you little shit!”
Their laughs are almost identical, making it even more obvious they’re related.
“So wait…” I’m finally putting the Harem part of the Harem Brunch Club in context.
“Everyone here has… um, has the same thing going on that Emily does? Like…” It feels too crude to ask out loud, so I count off three on my fingers.
Alessa looks briefly around, then her eyes twinkle as she holds up a hand with four fingers up.
Right, Harper is together with four too.
But everyone else nods. “Yep. Harem Brunch Club,” Emily says.
“It was me and Alessa to start, but when we realized there were getting to be a few of us, and we were surrounded by all this overprotective testosterone, we decided we needed a space where we could be ourselves. It’s not a life most people outside the club can relate to, so here we are, meeting regularly.
I thought it would be good for you to see what you might be getting yourself into. ”
I blink. “Thank you, but… I mean, I’ve only been here a few days, and while I really, really like Mad Dog, Rebel and Riptide, I barely know them, and once all this is over, I’m sure I’ll be going back home and—”
I’m cut off by the whole room cracking up in laughter. I’m not sure what the joke is though.
One of the women—Shelby?—leans forward toward me.
“That’s how it started for everyone here.
We’ve developed a bit of a sixth sense about who might stick around.
Bikers have a reputation for moving fast. They’ll happily screw their way across the city and back, but when they find what they want, they lock it in.
Good luck resisting. Their arguments are quite persuasive. ”
Summer and Sandra nod.
If they weren’t so friendly and nice to me, I’d worry I’d stumbled into some kind of cult. Then again, isn’t that one of the things that cults do? But also then again, if the cult is getting romanced by three to four sexy bikers long term… maybe that’s a cult worth considering?
Natalie pats an open spot next to her on a love seat.
“Now come here, grab yourself something to drink and help yourself to the cookies I baked this morning. We want to hear everything. The good and the bad.” Her smile gets a little softer.
“I know we’re a lot, but we’ve been through a lot together.
This is the one place we can have cookies, play with babies, and talk about what it’s like to recover from being kidnapped, sold or both. ”
I laugh like she’s joking, but I’m pretty sure she’s being serious.
We move on to other topics, and if you ignore the circumstances, it’s incredibly…
normal? We talk about plans and kids and the weather and eat absolutely delicious cookies and drink tea.
On second thought, maybe it isn’t very normal, because I think something like this is actually pretty special.
I know I don’t have anything like it, and Mom didn’t either.
Okay, so one of the things we bond about is the joys of biker polyamory, but still.
It’s nice.
Maybe that’s what strikes me more than anything here.
Whether it’s between the men, the women, or all of them together, they feel like family.
We can’t choose who we’re blood with, but we can choose who we bleed with.
I think I read that somewhere, and it was really cheesy, but at the same time, here it feels so true.
The cry of a baby cuts through the comfortable chatter. Faith sits up. “Oh no. If one goes off, the rest will too. It’s like throwing a grenade into the armory.”
I’m not going to question how she knows that, but she’s right. A moment later two more voices join in, sounding like they’re feeding off each other’s energy.
“Guess it couldn’t last.” Shelby gets up, followed by Faith and Natalie. Apparently they were all sleeping in the next room, since each woman returns with a whimpering bundle in her arms.
Sandra takes Natalie’s spot next to me and gestures. “Meet the newest members of the Screaming Eagles family, including the president’s new grandson, Hudson. Then Shelby’s Reid, and the best little nephew anyone’s ever had, Natalie’s Shawn. We had a bit of a baby boom a few months ago.”
The ladies sit back down where they find space, and then three hungry boys are getting fed. From the sound of it, they were starving, though I’m imagining that babies are a little bit like cats: always on the brink of starvation—if you ask their opinion anyway.
Kaylee laughs. “I swear, no matter how old men are, they’re fixated on boobs.”
“Ain’t that the truth” and “No kidding” echo around the whole room. I’m not the only one without a kid here at the party, but we’re obviously in the minority. Bikers and their old ladies are fertile on top of everything else, apparently.
While the other old ladies get to talking about baby care, Sandra gives me a nudge. “So what do you think?”
“About what? This? It’s nice. Everyone’s so friendly, and everyone seems to care about everyone else.”
“Yeah. I ran away from it, at least for a few years. I got in a lot of trouble as a teenager, so it was a little crazy that it was Natalie, the goodie two-shoes, who ended up a biker babe first. I went to college, messed up that too, came home, messed up some other stuff… Are you seeing a pattern? I was going to put the wild life behind me and settle down a little more normally until Zero, Piston and Beast came into my life. That sort of turned everything on its head.” With a shrug, she nods her head in the old ladies’ direction.
“They’re a great bunch, and you can do a lot worse than having three Screaming Eagles on your side.
Each one is like a force of nature, and when they get going, you better get out of their way.
Luckily, they’re your forces of nature, and that’s amazing. ”
“They definitely seem like something special. This is so out of my wheelhouse, I really don’t know what I’m doing.” I pick up my tea and take a sip.
“That’s okay, because they’ll help you figure it out and we’re here, too. Shelby was right. When they fall, they’re yours for as long as you need them. And if you don’t watch out, that turns out to be forever.” She smiles fondly. “And the sex, right? The sex.”
Tea catches in my throat and I end up spitting it back into the cup, followed by a racking cough.
“You okay, honey?” Alessa starts to stand, but I wave her off.
“Fine. Just went… down the… wrong way.”
Sandra laughs next to me. “Let’s do something without all the babies next time.
I know it seems like a whole nursery right now, but apparently half of them forgot how to use protection last year.
” She rolls her eyes. “Not all of us have kids, believe it or not. I do have a dog though! Her name is Princess Junkyard and she’s perfect. ”
“Next time, sure.” I nod.
Everyone seems so convinced I’m sticking around that I nearly believe it myself, but it’s not something Riptide and the others have talked to me about.
Sure, we’re all having fun, but Rebel told me he wasn’t sure about having an old lady mixed in with the club.
Is that something that could change just because of me?
And things are complicated.
I’m actively avoiding thinking about the fact that Dad is still a suspect in the shooting, and even if he didn’t do it, he’s a member of a rival club.
We’re having fun, but the boys will want to move on when the excitement is over. Until then, I’m going to enjoy my time here as much as I can while we figure out the mess we’re in.