5. Penelope
FIVE
Natty arrivedin similar fashion as a woodland princess. She had flowers threaded through her braids, and a soft dress that looked like it was from a cosplay or Renaissance fair. She was beautiful and happy…and it was infectious.
“Hey Pen, I need your help!”
I liked that she didn’t seem to want to coddle me or babysit me. She seemed genuine in wanting to see me.
I had enough time to wash my face and change my clothes, so I felt refreshed.
“Hi Natty, what—” Natty was unpacking something over by the couch.
Wearing a long-sleeved black shirt with my denim jeans, I held my stomach as I made my way over to her.
“What are you doing?”
Natty smiled up at me. “I made these for you.”
She pulled out several crocheted stuffed animals…wait, “are those—penises?”
Natty paused, staring down at her multicolored plushies.
“They’re not—they’re squids. Like little squids…I thought they would be cute for your little guy.”
I stroked a hand down the expanse of my stomach as a smile curled my lips.
Natty gripped a small stuffed item, tilting it in her hand—examining it.
“Does it really look like a penis?”
With a snort, I nodded. “How do you not see it—the long shaft…”
“That’s the body!”
“The bulbous tip.” I squeezed the top of the squishy.
Natty’s face turned red. “That’s the head, they’re eyes!”
Her outrage only made me laugh harder.
“I’m asking Callie and Laura, they never said anything!”
Wiping the tears from the corners of my eyes, I smiled at her. “I needed that.”
Natty’s expression hardened for a second. “I heard what happened, you doing okay?”
How had she already heard what happened? Was it just being talked about everywhere? Then I remembered that Jameson had said he was calling her. Heat warmed my face at the reminder, making me want space. I began wandering the small kitchen, toying with the small coffee maker.
“I get it…not exactly excited to talk about the fact that you were uprooted from your life and club and transplanted here. How you’re having to pretend and act like everything is fine simply because people are being nice to you. When all you want is to throw a fit, scream, cuss, and hit something because none of it is fair. None of it at all.”
My gaze snapped over to hers.
She had just summarized nearly exactly how I was feeling.
“You?”
She gave me a slow nod. “I haven’t ever talked about it with anyone here.”
Stepping closer to her, I finally slid onto a chair. Natty walked over and filled us both glasses of water, then she joined me at the table.
“I think I heard you were from the Death Raiders?”
Natty’s face stayed completely stoic as she sipped her water. I sipped mine too as the silence grew.
With a tight blink, she finally let out a sigh.
“My mother was a Sweetbutt in the club…she messed up and got knocked up.”
My heart felt a tiny prick at the understanding of how painful that was, based off my own experience.
“She wasn’t patched?”
Natty shook her head. “Just there to fuck. But when she got pregnant, someone took her in as a house mouse. They let her keep me, as long as she was still able to perform her duties…”
Oh god.
I had grown up in the club, but I had grandparents who had helped raise me when my mom couldn’t shield me from the dangers of the club. It wasn’t until I was sixteen that she decided I was ready to start understanding how they worked and what my role would be within the club if I chose to stick around.
My head dipped, knowing what Natty’s life was like.
“I guess it wasn’t all bad. There was another mom in the club, she was nice. Yelled at my mom from time to time. I didn’t understand why until I was older, but I guess my mom did drugs a ton while she was supposed to be lucid, watching me. That woman…she became kind of like my mom, at least in my mind, I had sort of adopted her.”
I listened intently while I continued to sip.
Natty dipped her face, slowly drawing an invisible design into the table.
“Her name was Sasha. She saved my life…when it mattered the most, and I needed to be rescued. She got me out, had Simon Stone make a deal for me…”
She trailed off, but I knew there was just about a million things she wasn’t saying.
“She was a mom…were you friends with her kid?”
Natty’s face jerked up, her eyes wide.
“What?”
“Her kid…you said she was a mom too. Did that mean you had a friend in the club?”
“He…well we, yeah…I mean.” She blinked a few times as if she were trying to figure out how much to tell me. “We were friends…he kept me safe.”
I stared at her, my brow rising curiously because if he had kept her safe then why did she need to be traded to the Stone Riders?
I didn’t want to press, so I let it go. I could tell Natty was starting to feel cagey about sharing information.
“Want to go grab some food up at the clubhouse?” Natty asked with a beaming smile, as if we hadn’t just talked about her dark past.
I wanted to figure her out. She was like a fictional character, always smiling, happy and nearly unreal. It made me want to dig into her sternum, just to make sure she wasn’t made of cotton candy and glitter.
“Yeah, that sounds fun.”
She moved around the room, grabbing her coat. “I can show you my room in the club too, that way if you ever want to chat while you’re visiting, you’ll be able to find me.”
“That sounds nice.” I smiled, hiding how badly I didn’t want to be around the club at the moment. Ironically it was the Stone Riders who had come to my aid, it wasn’t that I was afraid of them…but I was embarrassed that my own club thought so low of me that they would literally go so far as trying to hit me with one of their bikes.
Heat wound around my neck as tight as a noose, suffocating me.
I followed her anyway.
Natty took me in through the door shown to me when I had first arrived, the one I was told I could use for washing my clothes. I still hadn’t built up the confidence to do it. I had been washing my clothes in the shower and hanging them to dry with fishing line.
The club was muted from the back, which was nice as it gave me a little bit of time to acclimate.
“Should just be mostly old timers right now,” Natty said, sliding her coat off and hanging it over her arm.
I followed her through the kitchen into a dimly lit hallway. We passed by an office that boasted of natural light and hanging plants. After a few more doors, we were cutting across the main gathering space, where pool tables, couches and the large flat screen were set up. Natty was right, there were several old timers scattered around a rectangular card table holding cards.
But there, in the center of the room, leaning against the stone mantle was a man who looked like death himself.
His inky black hair fell slightly over to one side, while being cut close on the sides. He had a wide, firm jaw that pulsed as he stared at the woman in front of me. His eyes were a blueish hue but had more white than seemed natural. It was unsettling. He wasn’t wearing a cut, or anything that would have told me where he might be from.
Natty had stopped walking mid step, her gaze fastened on him.
“Do you know him?” I whispered, nervous at the way she was tensing.
I glanced up again to catch the man’s expression. He only continued to stare at her, that muscle in his jaw jumping.
Natty took one step forward, and I followed.
It brought us closer to the man, which made me nervous until I realized Natty was…blushing.
She continued toward the stairs, faltering slightly when we were within a few feet of the man.
His eyes seemed to burn as he searched her from head to toe, and then gruffly said, “Ne ingrediaris silvam solum.”
Natty glared up at him. I looked between the two because they were speaking a language that didn’t sound familiar at all to me.
He held out a small, folded note to her. “Promitte mihi.”
Her hand came up, gracefully taking it as she replied in the same perfect accent as he’d used, “Promitto.”
The man’s gaze briefly flicked to me before returning to Natty. He didn’t waste any more time before tucking his hands into his pockets and taking off.
I waited until we’d scaled the stairs, and Natty shut the door to her room before I spun on her.
“Who was that? What language was that?”
Natty hung her jacket, and then gave me a small smile.
“This is my place.” She held her hands out wide. “It gets good lighting, but I’m too afraid to try my hand at keeping any plants beyond succulents.”
I glared at her, raising my brow.
“You’re not getting out of this. Who was that?”
She let out a heavy sigh before falling back onto her bed.
“You can’t say anything to anyone, okay?”
I nodded. “We’re friends now, I’ll keep your secrets. You keep mine.” Hopefully she understood that meant I didn’t want a ton of people to know that I had nearly been run over by my own club.
Natty sat up, wisps of her hair going all over the place. “He’s my friend…the one I told you about.”
My eyes went wide. “That you grew up with?”
She nodded, biting down on her lip.
“He’s…well, we’re…” She let out another sigh. “It’s complicated, but he’s sort of a taboo subject with Callie and especially Laura, so definitely don’t mention that he was here.”
My mind was slowly piecing different little elements together.
“He’s not part of the club?”
Natty continued to tug on her lip, now spiraling her hair around her finger. “No…he’s not. He’s a Death Raider.”
“A Death Raider?” I sank down on the edge of her bed, fully confused by how he would have been allowed into the clubhouse, and not killed on sight. Unless he was just a prospect, or maybe someone who wasn’t around much.
“The leader actually. Do you want some water or juice?” Natty jumped up and walked over to her small kitchenette.
I wanted to chase after her, but I had to settle for following her by spinning my legs in her direction. “The leader?”
“That’s as much as I’ve told anyone, Pen. It’s a really dangerous situation…Silas has almost been murdered twice for threatening the club on my behalf. I have no idea how he was in here without being killed.”
“But you were passing notes and speaking another language…”
She shrugged, ducking her head to reach into her small fridge.
“We grew up together. His mother taught us Latin…it’s a dead language, and well Death Raiders dealt in death and deadly things, she thought it would be helpful to learn a dead language we could use as a way to secretly communicate when needed.”
I sat back on my palms, looking up at the green vines twisting along her ceiling with a dopey smile on my face.
“You have a secret love.”
Natty made a noise that sounded defeated. “We have to change the subject. I feel like I’m about to break into hives.”
I laughed, then rubbed my stomach.
“Just think, Natty, this just sped up our bonding process by a thousand percent. I’m your girl now, and I’ll share secrets with you.”
Natty poked her head over, bringing over a bottle of water before curling her knees under her and getting on the bed.
“Okay, tell me what’s going on with you and Jameson.”
That reminded me… “First, I have to ask you if there was anything between you and Jameson…you two seem…friendly.”
She tossed her head back and laughed, making her shoulders shake. “I just told you that I’m somehow bound to the leader of the Death Raiders. No, nothing is happening with Jameson. He met with me to ask about this club, to make sure it was safe for you. That’s all.”
My chest felt like a valve had been released so air could finally get back in.
“There’s no story with Jamie. I’ve known him since I was thirteen…he’s always looked out for me, and when my mom passed away, she made him swear to take care of me.”
Natty’s golden brow wrinkled. “She didn’t make Luke swear it?”
My stomach dropped out before I shook my head.
“Luke had already…” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “He’d already left me by then.”
Natty’s face flushed. “Oh.”
The reality of my rejection, and my son’s, was always a fresh pinprick to my sternum.
“Can I ask…if you knew Jameson from the beginning, then why not—” She trailed off, inspecting her bottle of water.
“Why not him instead of Luke?” I finished for her, already knowing where her mind was going.
She nodded. “Just seems like he would have made more sense.”
If she only knew.
“It’s complicated…similarly to your own situation that has tangles of strings, barbed wire and scotch tape keeping it all together. Simply put, Jameson and I…well we?—”
There was suddenly a loud knock on Natty’s door, making us both tense while our heads swung over.
“Natty, it’s Killian. I’m looking for Penelope. Well actually Jameson is, but I wouldn’t let him come up here.”
Our gazes collided and then Natty moved off the bed.