by Chiah Wilder
“Yeah, Aunt Martha sucked as a mom.”
“Trisha was a lousy wife, and Martha was a selfish mother. There are good and not so good people out there, but just because you happened to have married one who was rotten, doesn’t mean all women are that way. I know Trisha hurt you, but you can’t give up on having a happy, loving relationship because of her. If you do that, you’re giving her a whole lot of power.”
“I guess. But Lena obviously doesn’t want anything to do with me.”
“Did something happen?”
“No, and that’s the fu—weird part. Things were cool between us, and then, she just stopped responding to me.”
“Do you like her?”
Propping his elbows on his knees, he rested his chin in his hands. “Yeah.”
“Then find her and ask what the problem is. Why do you young people make things so complicated?”
“I think she got spooked. Her parents were killed in a plane crash when—”
His mother gasped. “That’s horrible.”
“It is. I think she’s afraid to get close to anyone for fear of losing them too.”
“So you’re both coming to the table with some big issues—you’re letting your divorce determine your future, and she’s letting the grief of loss keep her from living.”
“I guess.”
His mother grabbed for his hand and squeezed it with a surprisingly firm grip. “Go talk to her. You owe it to her and yourself. And, if I’m being honest, I want to see you settled down with a good woman before I die.”
“Mom—”
“I know you don’t like it when I say those things, but death is a part of life. Any mother would want to know her children will be okay once she’s gone. Promise me you’ll talk to her.”
“I don’t know…”
“Make your mother happy.”
“And here comes the guilt trip.”
“If it works, then yes.”
“Hello, Tank,” Myra said as she walked into the room.
“Hey,” he replied, smiling at her.
She bent down and adjusted his mother’s shawl. “Are you two having a pleasant visit?”
“She was ready to guilt trip me before you walked in.”
“I always had good timing.” She laughed, checking the oxygen tank. “Time for me to get you a new one. Are you ready to take your nap?”
“Not until I get a promise from him.”
With an exasperated sigh, he stood and kissed her head. “Okay, Mom, I promise,” he conceded grudgingly.
A grin spread across her worn face. “Good.” She looked to Myra and said, “I’m ready to lie down for a bit.”
“I’ll give you a call later.”
“You better. I want to hear what Lena had to say to you.”
Groaning, he made his way to the door and called out, “Love you.”
“I love you too.”
Once outside, he got on his bike and checked his phone to find a ton of missed calls and text messages, but none of them were from Lena. Putting his phone away, he started the ignition and sped off in the direction of the pier.
After parking his Harley in front of The Fish Shop, Tank walked into the small eatery and went up to the counter to place an order of fish and chips, and a glass of local craft brew. With his tray in hand, he ambled to the back patio, plopped down at a table, and gazed out over the bay while taking a pull from his beer.
An hour later, he ate the last of the hand-cut fries the restaurant was known for and pushed the empty food basket aside. Leaning back in the chair, he stretched out his legs, crossed his ankles, and watched the waves crash through his half-closed lids. He was glad to be alone. Between the drama in the club, his mother’s declining health, Lena dissing him, and Quinn breathing down his neck, everything seemed to be circling down the drain at breakneck speed.
As he sipped his beer, his thoughts drifted to Lena, just as they always did the second he had some free time. Despite the fact that she was clearly over them, he couldn’t deny the feelings he’d caught for her within mere seconds of meeting her.
“Fuckin’ pussy,” he berated himself.
None of the women who frequented the club did a damn thing to dim the candle that still burned bright for Lena. He’d found himself waking up in the middle of the night, rock hard, and cursing it all. Everything was a mess. To say he was pissed as hell for letting her into his life was an understatement. Fuck. No random pussy was going to make his day any better.
He banged his fist onto the metal table, feeling white-hot anger burning deep inside of him. That was something he could handle. Something malleable that made sense in the grand scheme of things. He had plenty of things to be mad at that went far deeper than some girl ghosting his ass.
His phone rang beside him.
Fuckin’ Quinn again. It was the fourth call he’d ignored from her since that morning. Quinn had always been like a bad rash that didn’t know when to go the fuck away, but lately she’d taken to stalking him, and he wasn’t quite sure why. He guessed having loads of Daddy’s cash had made her believe she could get whatever, and whomever, she wanted in life with a snap of her fingers, which made total sense, given that her father acted the same way.
A majority of people in town knew how Quinn’s father got his wealth—that he was hardly on the up-and-up. As if Fitzgerald’s hiring of the club for shady business wasn’t one big fucking bullseye, he had been swindling people in shady backdoor real estate deals for years. Now he had his sights set on Main Street and was stopping at nothing to take their quaint little town and throwing it to the dogs.
The dumbass was as corrupt as they came. And while Quinn had been sweet and pure in high school when they’d first dated, she had proven lately that her gnarled, infested apple didn’t fall far from her rich daddy’s fucking tree.
When his phone rang again and he saw her name, he flipped his ringer to silent and stuffed it into his pocket. It seemed that getting a little bit of peace and quiet in his life was becoming harder. Whether it was an emergency at the store, Quinn, a Jagged Outlaw member, or his younger brother, everyone was out to bother his ass. Too bad the one person he wanted to get hold of him wasn’t pulling the trigger.
“Hi, Drew. Do you have a second?”
Jerking his head in the direction of the bar, Tank saw John Bourne walking toward him. The guy was a little on the wobbly side and red in the face. Tank hadn’t seen John in quite a while. The guy was one of the most pleasant men in town, and Tank would never forget how John had helped his family out when he and Christopher were in grade school. Their mother had cleaned offices for one of John’s buildings, and he paid her three times the minimum wage. The man had always helped her with anything extra she needed to make ends meet, such as groceries and utilities. He would even drop them off at their house a few times a month. Yeah, John Bourne was one of the nicest men Tank had ever met.
Tank smiled as he made his way over. “John, how are ya?”
The older man came over to the table, and his usual bright smile didn’t decorate his face. “You have a lot of nerve asking me that.”
Tank frowned. “What’re you talking about?”
“I can’t believe you’re trying to destroy me. I always thought you were a decent guy, even when you joined that hoodlum club, but now I see you’re just like them.”
Shit, it’s John’s building Hammer’s targeting. Fucking Fitzgerald. Tank swallowed back the tight rage in his chest and took a long sip of his beer. What the hell am I gonna say? He couldn’t discuss what was going on with the club, or any club business.
“John, you know I can’t say anything.”
“If things keep up the way they are, you’ll destroy everything I’ve built for me and my family. Doesn’t that mean anything to you?”
Bristling, Tank ground his teeth, wishing he could give the poor man the answers he wanted. No citizen could understand the brotherhood, and nomad or not, he couldn’t discuss club business. If he broke his o
ath to the brotherhood, he might as well burn the ink off his skin and tear up his cut. It was something that just wasn’t fucking done, even for a decent man like John. Tank felt for him, and wanted to tell him he and the other members were going to end the bullshit soon, but he couldn’t give John any assurance that the insanity would stop before all was lost.
Running his fingers through his hair, Tank said, “I’m sorry, man. My hands are tied, and I can’t say a thing. You don’t know how much I wish that wasn’t the case, but we are where we are with it. I’m not even a full-time member anymore, so I don’t have much to do with the club at all. You’re asking the wrong person.”
Tank watched the man crumble before his eyes. Shit really was taking a heavy toll on him, and Tank vowed again to make it come to a standstill once and for all, sooner rather than later.
“Whatever’s going on with you, I hope it gets better, if that’s any consolation.” Tank got up from the chair, overshadowing the now hunched over older man, and squeezed his shoulder.
“I don’t understand any of this. Your club is forcing my tenants to pay them protection money. They work hard, like your mom used to. Would you want someone threatening your mother if she didn’t pay them?”
Pressing his lips into a firm line, Tank shook his head.
“Then why can’t you do something to stop it?”
“I already told you the score.”
Hanging his head, John nodded. “I know you did.”
“For what it’s worth, John, I am sorry.”
“I appreciate that.”
“Of course.”
“I hope your mother is doing well. You’ll give her my best, won’t you?”
“I will.”
“You’re still in the same house, I imagine?”
“Yep. Not much has changed.”
John sighed. “Not much has changed, and yet everything has shifted…”
An awkward silence stretched between them.
“I gotta get going,” Tank said at last.
John looked up at him. “Sure.”
Tank turned, and with slow, heavy footsteps, he walked toward the street.
Tank
The next couple of days were a flurry of meetings at the Devil’s Surfboard, concerning the unrest in the club. The anti-Hammer members had all agreed that talking sense into the VP and his cronies wasn’t going to do shit. The man wanted the dangerous combination of power and money, and there was no way he was going to peacefully step down from the board.
Tank had gone over to Raptor’s house to discuss what vision the president saw for the Jagged Outlaws’ future. He conceded to Tank that he was too preoccupied with his son’s health to be a strong leader, and when Tank brought up electing an interim president, Raptor was all for it. For the members who were trying to keep Hammer from taking the presidency, Raptor’s cooperation in naming a temporary president was huge.
John Bourne’s dilemma weighed heavily on Tank’s mind. It’d killed him to see the fear, sadness, and hopelessness in the kind man’s eyes. When money was short and the bills were many, John had been there to help them all out, and Tank felt like he was stabbing an old family friend in the back by not helping him out. Intense anger roared through him when he found out that Cougar and Rubble were the ones who had torched Gus’s dry cleaning store the week before. Gus, the gentle man who had given Tank a job in high school.
The day after he’d spoken with John, Tank had gone to Hammer and asked when he would be needed to do the collections. The smug sonofabitch bumped fists with Tank, happy he had taken an interest in the club’s new channel of revenue. It took all of his willpower not to deliver a smashing blow to the asshole’s face. The jerk actually thought Tank was jumping off Raptor’s ship, which was fine with Tank, because the less Hammer and his cohorts knew of the plans to oust them, the smoother the transition would go down.
When Tank saw the headlights of an SUV coming down the street, he drew in his breath and exhaled when the vehicle drove by the complex. He pushed away from the trunk of the tree he’d been leaning against for an hour. Where the hell is she? She doesn’t have an event until next weekend. Tank had broken down and called Dawson to get the name of Lena’s catering company, giving him some made up bullshit about an anniversary party for the printing shop as the reason for wanting it. Dawson hadn’t questioned it, which surprised the hell out of Tank. He’d texted the number and the website, and Tank had pulled it up on the computer to check the calendar for their upcoming events. There was nothing scheduled for that night, so where the hell was she at ten o’clock?
The thought of Lena out with another man infuriated him. Fuck this! Pissed that he cared about her, he fished the keys out of his pocket and strode toward his bike. I’m outta here. Just as he reached his Harley, he spotted Lena’s burgundy SUV turning into the complex. Sprinting across the grass, he made it over to the garage as the electronic gate rolled opened. Lena drove through, and he quickly followed behind her.
Lena slammed the car door shut with her hip, balancing a bag of groceries, a briefcase, and her purse. Moving swiftly, Tank stepped out from behind one of the pillars in the parking structure and watched as she walked toward the elevators, her skirt clinging to her rounded ass, and her long dark hair swishing across her back. Sucking in his breath, he drank in every inch of her. His cock stirred, and something low in his belly heated. Licking his lips, he picked up his pace until he was right behind her.
“Hey, Lena.”
She came to an abrupt halt, and the bag of groceries slipped from her arm. Without missing a beat, he grabbed the bag before it hit the pavement, and looked up to find her glaring at him.
“You scared the shit out of me! Didn’t you learn not to sneak up on people?”
Holding the bag in one hand, he shook his head. “I didn’t mean to spook you. Sorry.”
“What are you doing here?” she snapped.
“Carrying your groceries?” He joked.
“I’m tired, and I’m in no mood—”
“Okay. I came by to see what the fuck’s going on with you. You’ve been ignoring my calls and texts. What gives?”
“Unbelievable,” she muttered.
“I think you at least owe me an explanation. If I were gonna move on, I wouldn’t ghost you—I’d tell you.”
She shifted her purse to her other shoulder. “That’s right, I forgot. You’re Mr. Honesty.”
Prickles of irritation crept down his spine. “Stop the elusive shit. Tell me what’s bugging you.”
“Excuse me,” A man in a suit pressed in between them, shoved a key into the door, and rushed inside.
Tank tightened his grip on the grocery bag. “This blows, talking in the fuckin’ parking garage.”
She stared at him, as if trying to decide what to do. Silently, Tank waited for her to make up her mind. Seconds seemed to turn into minutes, yet neither spoke nor relinquished their position.
Turning her back to him, she inserted the key into the lock and pulled the door open. Looking over her shoulder, she scowled at him. “Fine. Come on.”
Following her inside to a small room, he watched her push the button. Neither of them spoke as they waited for the car to reach the ground floor. When it arrived, they both entered and waited for the doors to close.. The elevator doors slid shut with an electronic sigh.
Tank was damned if he was going to say anything. She was the one who had a shitload of explaining to do. So, he leaned back against the railing and stared at her reflection in the brass doors as she pressed the button for her floor.
When they entered her condo, he went to the kitchen and put the bag on the counter. Without thinking, he started taking the groceries out.
“You don’t have to do that.”
Putting a head of lettuce on the island, he stepped back. “Fine. Do you have any beer?”
“No.”
“Bourbon?”
“No.”
“What do you have besides wine?”
; “Water.”
“Fuck that,” he huffed, taking out his phone.
“What are you doing?”
“Getting some beer.”
She let out an exasperated sigh. “I thought you wanted to talk.”
He waved his hand between them. “We are.”
“Just go in the other room and let me put this stuff away. I’ll be there in a few,” she ordered in a tone of undisguised annoyance.
“Whatever you say, darlin’.”
Tank sat down on a camel-colored sofa and settled into its cushiony comfort. He was ready to call Riley’s Liquor when he heard a clink on the glass top of the coffee table. Looking over, he saw a bottle of locally crafted beer with a coaster set underneath it.
“Thanks,” he said to Lena’s retreating back. “I guess you had some after all.”
She stopped and turned.
“I just remembered I had some left over from an event.”
“Cheers.” Picking up the bottle, he held it in the air. “Do you want one?”
The only response was the slamming of her bedroom door. Tank chuckled before taking a long pull of his drink.
A few minutes later, her footsteps had him looking up from his phone, and his breath hitched. She wore a short white T-shirt and gray leggings that clung to her curves, ending at mid-calf, which emphasized her toned muscles and rich tan. Leaning back against a throw pillow, he cocked his head and let his gaze travel down her body and back up again, enjoying every inch of it. The moment his eyes came to her face, he saw the disapproving frown creasing her forehead.
Lena sank down into a rattan armchair across from the couch and took a drink from her bottled water. He waited until she set it down on the table before he spoke.
“How’ve you been?”
“What do you want to talk about?”
He shrugged. “You owe me an explanation. I thought things were gelling between us.”
