Chapter 17
Charlie managed to sit still for about half an hour after Mia left her. At least she tried. She settled on one of the sofas with another cup of coffee and told herself that resting her leg for a while was probably a good idea, but within minutes the inactivity had begun to crawl beneath her skin.
The coffee had time to go cold while her thoughts travelled around the same circles, and eventually she gave up.
She got to her feet and began tidying without really knowing what she was doing.
A few empty mugs found their way into the kitchen, she folded a blanket that had slipped halfway onto the floor, and when she discovered a chair standing in the middle of the walkway, she pushed it back beneath the table.
It didn’t take Mia long to notice.
“You’re not very good at sitting still, are you?”
Charlie shook her head and picked up another mug.
“Drives me insane.”
“Good.” Mia smiled crookedly. “Then I’ve got work for you.”
She disappeared for a moment and returned carrying a large bundle of sheets, which she promptly dumped into Charlie’s arms. Charlie had to adjust her grip quickly when she realised how heavy they actually were.
“Assholes MC are coming later today, and there are a lot of them.”
“How many?”
Mia considered the question. “Enough that we need those.”
She nodded towards the sheets, and Charlie laughed as she followed her through the building.
“Sounds like a minor military operation.”
“That’s about right. Nobody knows exactly how long they’ll stay, so we assume a few days and hope I’m wrong.”
Mia led her through parts of the clubhouse Charlie hadn’t seen before.
Behind doors she had barely noticed were small rooms, sleeping quarters and a loft, while mattresses stood stacked against walls in several places, waiting until they were needed.
It was becoming clear that the building could swallow considerably more people than Charlie had first imagined.
“Spare beds need bringing out, mattresses need airing and everything needs making up. Then there’s food to sort out and probably another hundred things somebody will suddenly remember five minutes before they roll through the gates.”
“And you do this every time?”
“Yep. Although occasionally we’re clever enough to start earlier.”
Charlie smiled and began making the first bed.
The work was easy, and before long they had fallen into a rhythm, one pulling the sheet into place while the other moved around to the next corner.
It felt good to have something to do with her hands, and even better to have something to concentrate on that wasn’t Dennis, Reeze or everything that had happened over the past few days.
“Reeze never really liked Lotta,” Mia said suddenly as she stretched a sheet over the next mattress.
Charlie glanced at her but kept tucking in her side. “No?”
“They were young when they got together. Too young, probably. Lotta wanted security, status, something different from this life, but at the same time she liked some of what came with being around the club.”
“And Molly?”
“An accident,” Mia answered bluntly, then continued before Charlie could react. “Not unwanted. Never by Reeze. But Lotta has used her when it suited her, and that’s one of the reasons those two have never managed to stay together for very long.”
Charlie thought about the girl she had spent the previous day with and how naturally Molly seemed to gravitate towards her father.
“She adores him.”
“She does, and he adores her.” Mia pulled the sheet tight and moved on to the next corner.
“Lotta never liked the club itself, but she liked the power around it. What she couldn’t handle was the loyalty.
She could never accept that Reeze wouldn’t turn his back on everyone else just because she wanted him to. ”
“So he chose the club?”
Mia looked up.
“He chose Molly. Always. And the club is his family. There was never really a third option.”
They moved on to the next room, where Mia kicked the door open with one boot because both her arms were full of bedding.
“We’ll cram as many as we can in here. Assholes like sticking together.”
Charlie helped her drag out another mattress and began making it before another question that had been nagging at her finally made its way out.
“There are a lot of rules here, aren’t there?”
Mia laughed.
“Oh, yeah. More than you’ll remember on your first day, so don’t even try.”
“It feels as though everybody else knows exactly what they can and can’t do.”
“That’s because most of them have been around for years.
” Mia straightened and pushed her hair away from her forehead with her wrist. “For you, it’s fairly simple.
If you see somebody screwing around behind their partner’s back, you didn’t see it.
If you hear something about club business that obviously wasn’t meant for you, you heard wrong.
And if somebody outside starts asking questions, you don’t know anything. ”
Charlie raised her eyebrows.
“And if somebody breaks the rules?”
“Then it’s the club’s problem, not yours. You don’t try to sort it out yourself.”
There was nothing threatening in Mia’s tone. She was simply explaining how things worked while continuing to make the bed.
“We women know a hell of a lot more than the men sometimes think we do,” she continued after a moment. “We hear things and we see things, but we don’t talk outside these walls. Not about our men, not about somebody else’s, and definitely not about anything that could cause trouble for the club.”
Charlie nodded. The more Mia explained, the clearer it became that what she had initially mistaken for chaos was actually almost the opposite. There was structure beneath it all, rules and boundaries everyone here seemed to understand without needing them explained.
After they had carried out another pile of old bedding and brought in clean sheets, Mia stopped and looked at her.
“You fit in here better than I thought you would.”
Charlie laughed uncertainly.
“I don’t even know if I fit in at all.”
“Well, you’re not standing around waiting for everybody else to look after you.” Mia handed her another bundle. “That’s a decent start.”
That answer felt far more reasonable, and Charlie accepted the sheets with a smile.
“Thanks for explaining all this.”
“I’m telling you what you need to know. Reeze can deal with the rest when he gets back.”
Mia gave her a quick look before heading towards the next room.
“Until then, you work with me.”
That suited Charlie perfectly. She was already warm and sweaty, and her leg had begun to ache slightly, but it was the pleasant sort of tiredness that came from actually doing something. Far better than sitting on a sofa and allowing her thoughts to eat her alive.
As she bent to straighten a pillowcase, she tugged at the jumper clinging to her back and looked down at herself. The plain jeans and soft jumper had seemed perfectly normal when she got dressed, but after watching people move around the clubhouse all morning, she suddenly felt very... ordinary.
Mia wore worn jeans and heavy boots. Some of the other women looked much the same, while others had gone completely the opposite way in short skirts and tight tops, wearing them with enough confidence that nobody would dream of questioning their choices.
Charlie looked down at herself again.
“I’m wearing the wrong clothes.”
Mia looked at her and then slowly surveyed the outfit.
“Everybody has a first time.”
“No, I mean really wrong. I look like I’m going out to buy milk.”
Mia laughed.
“Okay. Maybe a little.”
“Thanks.”
“We can fix it. We’ll find something here, borrow something from somebody or go into town. There are wardrobes in this place that could do with losing half their contents.”
Charlie ran a hand through her hair.
“I just don’t want to stand out.”
Mia’s expression became slightly more serious.
“Then don’t try to disappear either. That’ll make you stand out even more.”
There was probably some truth in that. Charlie had spent so long trying to make herself smaller that she barely knew how to do anything else.
They started on the next bed, and Charlie pulled the duvet into place before returning to the subject already turning over in her head.
“What about the women here? I’m guessing there are rules there too.”
“Of course.”
“Like what?”
Mia considered it while tucking in the sheet.
“Put simply? You’re somebody’s woman, you belong to the club in some other way, or you’re just here. People usually work out which one pretty quickly.”
Charlie hesitated before asking.
“And me?”
Mia glanced at her as though the answer were so obvious that the question almost amused her.
“You’re Reeze’s.”
Something tightened in Charlie’s stomach, and Mia must have seen it in her face because she laughed.
“That doesn’t mean he fucking bought you, Charlie. It means you’re his woman. Everybody who saw the two of you together earlier already understood that, and anybody who didn’t will definitely know before the day’s over.”
“And what does that mean for me?”
“It means nobody in here touches you unless you want them to. Nobody tests you and nobody openly questions why you’re here. If somebody’s stupid enough to try, you go to Reeze, me or Rollo. You don’t start trying to sort out club politics by yourself.”
Charlie couldn’t help smiling.
“Any really big no-nos I ought to know about before I completely fuck something up?”
“A few.”
Mia began counting them off on her fingers.
“Don’t talk about shit that doesn’t concern you. Don’t interfere in the brothers’ business. Don’t use the club’s name outside these walls to get something for yourself. And for the love of God, don’t start getting cosy with somebody else’s man.”
Charlie laughed.
“Getting cosy?”
“You know what I mean.”
“Is it really that serious?”
“Yeah.” Mia looked amused but shook her head firmly. “You met Nathalie earlier. If you want to live a long and happy life, keep your hands off Jesse.”
“That one wasn’t exactly difficult to work out.”
“Good. Then you might survive your first week.”
Charlie threw a pillowcase at her and Mia caught it, laughing.
It was strange how quickly something that had felt completely foreign only a few hours earlier was beginning to make sense. Charlie still didn’t know all the rules and would probably put her foot in it more than once, but at least she didn’t have to figure everything out alone.
Mia had already started on the next bed.
“Come on. We’ve got a fucking mountain of work to get through before Assholes roll in, and believe me, they’re a lot easier to like when you’ve finished the work before they arrive.”
Charlie took hold of the other side of the sheet.
This suited her far better than sitting on the sofa with cold coffee and nothing to do except wait. As they continued working, she realised that for the first time since Reeze had left, she had stopped looking towards the door and wondering when he would come back.
She had something to do until he did. For now, that was enough.