by Piper Rayne
“I’ll love you enough for the both of us. We’ll raise Aaliyah as our own and when the time’s right we’ll tell her together.”
“Are you sure?”
The Malawi Kingdom is a matriarchal system, therefore, governing without a husband isn’t unheard of, but a pregnant princess without a husband might send shock waves through the kingdom.
Colt nods, “And one day maybe you’ll learn to love us both.”
I look out at the water and back at Colt. “I will.”
We hug and Colt leaves me alone with Xander. I walk to the water and once the water reaches my stomach, I’m swimming with my tail to the horizon telling our daughter our love story until she kicks.
And I’m certain Aaliyah Durante Hudson will be the best of both of us and our love.
Thank you for reading Dive, if you want to read about what happens to Aaliyah in Under.
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About the Author
Selene Drake writes romantic adult fairy tales laced with love, legacy, fate, and undeniable passion. Her novels feature culturally diverse characters and she hopes to renew or deepen your love for magic, shifters, and romantic imagination.
Visit her website at www.selenedrake.com for more information.
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Stay in Touch:
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Axle: A Devil’s Nightmare MC Novella
Axle: A Devil’s Nightmare MC Novella
by Lena Bourne
Mia
* * *
We found love in high school. He a football star, me a cheerleader. It began as a wholesome, all-American happily ever after story. Not how it ended.
* * *
I wanted a career fighting crime, he was determined to join an outlaw biker gang. We had no future so I let him go.
* * *
Now, almost twenty years later, I’m back in my hometown, helping my mom close down her business. I thought enough time had passed to see him again, catch up, talk about old times. I was wrong. The love we shared still burns.
* * *
But the obstacles are still unsurmountable too.
* * *
Axle
* * *
Twenty years ago she broke my heart. Since then, I devoted my life to fixing cars and my MC. I never thought I’d see her again. Now she’s back, with all my feelings for her in tow. Feelings I thought I killed and buried a long time ago.
* * *
But she’s a public prosecutor and I’m an outlaw biker. The two don’t mix.
* * *
The trouble is, I can’t let her go a second time.
I won’t.
* * *
Axle is a steamy second-chance romance novella set in the universe of Lena Bourne’s bestselling Devil’s Nightmare MC series. HEA guaranteed!
Copyright © 2020 by Lena Bourne
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
1
Mia
Car windows down, music blaring, the subtle scent of redwood trees filling the car, its tinge of sweetness undercut with earthy tones, spice and dry wood. Freedom and the smell of home. Two of the best things a person can feel. It’s just too bad that I’m faking feeling both.
I’m driving too fast down this forest-lined, narrow, blacktop country road, trying to catch those feelings for real. Or just trying to get this visit over with as fast as possible. Or trying to escape the inescapable.
The wind is messing up my loose brown hair. I’ll have a hell of a time getting the tangles out tonight, but in this moment I want nothing more than to feel the fresh, fragrant, cool air. Mom will help. She’s a master hair stylist and my hair’s in need of a cut anyway. Her expert hands working on my hair will feel good.
It’s been too long since I’ve just existed in the moment. I’ve lost the ability to just be so long ago, I don’t even remember ever having it most of the time. But these scents of home along the empty country roads surrounding my hometown always bring it back at least a little. At least they bring back the memory of the carefree, love and life loving girl and young woman I used to be.
Hoping to get to this state of Zen, I turned off the new highway that everyone now uses to get where I’m going. It’s good to remember those better times. Good to sing along to old hits from my youth blaring on the radio, even if the only place they still play them is the oldies station. Good to leave the world behind and just enjoy the fresh air and the beauty of this world, stretched out on either side of this narrow, pristine because of disuse, two-lane country road, taking the form of tall redwoods and pines and other majestic trees I won’t even try to name. I don’t know their names. I just know they’re beautiful.
In my youth, almost twenty years ago, I’d make this drive often. Alone or with Axle. It was a glorious and exciting time, full of hope and possibility and love. Now I hope I don’t run into him on this visit.
When I first moved away, I came home every weekend. But later, after I broke it off with Axle and started law school, these trips became few and far between, dwindling to nothing in the last few years.
I’ve been trying to convince my mom to move to San Francisco with me for years. But she’s always refused until now, claiming her small beauty salon in the small town of Pleasantville-my hometown-is too much part of the community there, too much her home to ever leave.
That’s changed now that she’s being evicted from the place where her salon has stood since I can remember. She’s sixty years old and according to her, too old and too tired to start fresh somewhere else. Which she would have to, because the rents in the once quiet, out of the way town of Pleasantville are suddenly sky high. I disagree that it’s too late for her to start over, but she refuses to let me pay the difference. It’ll be great to have my mom nearer, but I’m afraid she won’t be the happy, bubbly woman she’s always been. Not after she’s forced to close the business she’s worked her whole life to build. And leave the town she’s always lived in.
As soon as thoughts of that creep into my mind I turn the radio volume higher and start singing along louder.
Nothing is decided. Nothing is set in stone. I’m taking this week off work, even though I’m at the start of the biggest case of my career as a public prosecutor, so we can try and find a solution. And that’s all I’m going to focus on.
The town of Pleasantville is just over the next hill, less than twenty miles away.
Homecoming is supposed to be bittersweet, isn’t it?
I’m afraid it’ll be nothing but bitter after this visit.
And I don’t want to make it so before it even starts.
If I hadn’t read the sign—the words Pleasantville, population 12002 in sea blue letters against pearl white—I’d be sure I was in the wrong town. When I left, this town had a population of a little over seven thousand, but now I passed two large shopping complexes containing everything from huge hardware stores to sprawling cineplexes on my way in, and now I don’t recognize anything along this road that merges with Main Street up ahead I must’ve entered the town from this direction at least a thousand times, but it’s as though I’m in a completely foreign place. The redwoods used to come up almost all the way to the sign back then. Now I passed the last of them at least five miles back. They’ve all been cut down to make room from those shopping villages, which are both larger than my hometown used to be.
Not so anymore.
Everything is different. I don’t recognize any of the buildings lining this road. What used to be Smith’s and Sons Hardware Store is now a high end fashion store, the mannequins
in the large windows dressed in hues of lush purple, deep yellow and forest green. What are those supposed to be? The colors of fall? But it’s almost summer.
Quaint, phony-retro boutiques, coffee shops, tea shops, and just random stuff shops continue, each more ornate and more soulless, despite trying to be so hard to be unique, the closer I get to the town center—if that’s even where I remember it being. Mindy’s ice cream shop is gone, I realize with a twist in my stomach. You could get every flavor of ice cream imaginable and unimaginable there—pumpkin spice for Halloween before it was all the rage, cotton candy that tasted better than the original, and minty-chocolate chip cookie dough. Mindy’s shop is a bank now. A piece of my childhood is gone like it never existed.
Pop’s Diner on the corner of Main Street and Sycamore, the place where I went on my first real date, because it was only one of three places where you could go on a dinner date—is a pancake place now and exactly the same as every other pancake place by this chain in every other city or town. No soul, no history, no memories. Just cheap, generic pancakes with syrups so sweet they’ll make you gag guaranteed. At least they make me gag.
Mom’s always telling me how much Pleasantville is changing, how modern it’s becoming, but I always only half-listen to her. I should have been paying closer attention then maybe I wouldn’t be this shocked now.
Her salon—Little Escapes—is on the other side of Main Street in a small, quaint strip mall type place, but it might as well be on the other side of the world judging by my anxiety to reach it already. I recognize none of the buildings leading up to it now and I can see why they want to tear it down.
What used to be a new, modern, minimalistic place to shop, do your nails and hair and grab a bite to eat, is now an eye-sore amid the fake-quaint little shops selling homemade stuff, vegan restaurants, hipster cafes, and manicured parks. In one of those, a yoga class is underway. Why practice yoga on Main Street? When you have the majesty of the forest all around you. I get the necessity or rather desire to attend classes like this in parks in the city. But not here. Not when you’re surrounded by the very thing you’re trying to get closer to—nature. Though I’ve long suspected that most people who do yoga nowadays do it for the status it brings. The only place that mars the phony perfection of the little yuppie/slash hipster village is a boarded up shop front covered with angry, undecipherable graffiti. I don’t even remember what that shop used to be, nor do I understand why no one rents it. It’s sandwiched between a natural juice shop and a boutique sports apparel store, so I’m sure a vegan snacks place, or something like it would fit right in.
Relief floods me as I finally reach the mall and park in front of my mom’s salon. The purple letters on the pink sign over the door is the same as it’s always been. A familiar island in a sea of strangeness. Finally, I’m seeing some of my hometown.
I park next to a huge champagne colored Range Rover in front of mom’s salon and step out of my tiny rental Honda to the sound of hissing and tongue clucking.
“Did you just bump it?” a woman my age snaps. Hurrying to check the door and fender of her car. Her platinum blonde hair pulled up into a tight, high ponytail, and she’s wearing pale pink yoga leggings slashed with pale yellow and matching sports bra under a pristine white hoodie.
My heart starts racing even though I’m sure I’ve done absolutely nothing to her car.
“No, I don’t think I did,” I say calmly and kindly as I check for myself. No scratch in sight, just as I thought.
“I’m pretty sure you did this just now,” the woman says, running her long-nailed, perfectly manicured index finger over a non-existent scratch.
“There’s nothing there,” I say in my snide voice, the one I reserve for the courtroom. “And with a car like that, I’d imagine you have the money to get it fixed without resorting to what could be called insurance fraud.”
Being back home always brings out the rebellious teen I used to be. Not that I ever moved very far away from the opinionated teen I used to be. I just grew up some.
“Insurance fraud? I never,” she gasps in fake indignation.
“What else do you call hanging around in the parking lot accusing people that they bumped your car?”
She opens and closes her mouth a few times, then waves her hand at me dismissively. “Think what you will. I honestly thought you banged my car with your door just now. And there is a scratch, but whatever.”
I bang the door of my rental shut. “I never touched your car, so I guess you’ll have to wait around a little longer.”
“If we had a decent mechanic in town, a little scratch wouldn’t be a problem,” she says. “But the one we do have is so full of himself he’ll overcharge me for sure.”
She flips her long, platinum blonde ponytail like a horse flips its tail and stalks off in the direction of all those phony shops, cafes and parks just beyond the parking lot of this mall, head held unnaturally high, leaving me wondering about the difference between yuppies and hipsters. And whether the mechanic she was speaking about is Axle. He would overcharge a haughty woman like this in a second. That sounds just like him. Especially if she came to him to fix an invisible little scratch.
“There you are,” my mom’s cheery, deep voice that always perfectly carries her smile sounds behind me. Lately, it carries her sadness too. “Finally.”
I turn to her and smile, then open my arms before walking to meet her and hugging her tight.
“It’s good to have you home. It’s been too long, sweetie,” she mumbles into my shoulder, squeezing me very tightly.
“It really has,” I say and find I mean it one hundred percent.
She takes my hand and leads me into her salon. The smell of shampoo, hair spray and coffee lingers, but it’s faint, almost gone. Soon it will be less than a memory. Light brown boxes are scattered around the shiny, pale green linoleum floor, some filled with towels, some with hair spray, some with shampoo, some with combs and brushed, some with hair dyes of every kind. None of them are full. A knot of sadness the size of a fist forms in my throat. My mom really, truly doesn’t want to leave this place.
It’s her life.
I hate the man kicking her out with such a passion right now it’s hard to breathe.
But I love my mom more.
The little bell on the door as it closes chimes the melody that was a constant in my life growing up. It’s the same bell, the same chime that rang all through my childhood, which I spent running in a out of this place since I could walk.
How can it be almost gone?
How could I not miss it more while I made my life elsewhere?
“Would you like some coffee?” she asks. “Or do you want to grab some lunch first?
I shake my head and smile as I grab a handful of my hair.
“First, I could really use some expert loving care for my hair, Mom,” I say. “It was frizzy and in need of a cut to start with, and I’m afraid I let the wind get into it on my ride here.”
She smiles at me, her eyes a little sad around the edges, but mostly happy.
“We’ll fix that right up. Take a seat,” she says and leads me to the back where the hair washing sink is.
My mom’s salon has been closed for a week now, and she only has another week before she must vacate the premises. But this isn’t the time to worry about that. This is the perfect time to savor what used to be.
She’s done my hair here for every special occasion in my life, and every occasion in between, and I refuse to fully accept this is the last haircut I’ll ever get here. But I don’t have to. All I have to do right now is let my mom’s deft, soft hands work on my hair.
2
Axle
Windows and doors wide open, the slight early morning breeze wafting in through the wide open garage door. As always, it’s laced with the smell of petrol, oil, grease, and metal—all the best smells, in other words. The only sounds are the chirping of birds and my wrench unfixing the wheel screws on the Pontiac.
&n
bsp; Every once in a while, a stronger gust of wind brings the scent of redwoods and catches the pages of the requisite naked lady calendar on the wall to my left, making it rustle. The calendar is years old, and now one of three, but I won’t toss it. I like the look of Miss July.
It’s because she looks like whatshername, the garage co-owner and my best buddy, Diesel always says when the subject turns to it.
Whatshername is Mia, my first and long-lost love. Truth be told, she looked better than Miss July. She probably doesn’t anymore. It’s been more than fifteen years since we broke up and almost that since we saw each other last. I still run into her mom from time to time, but we don’t speak of Mia.
She wanted to conquer the world and I was happy here in this small town. She also wanted to have a career fighting crime, and I was slated to become a member of an outlaw MC, like my father and his father before him. It never would’ve worked out. She saw that faster than I did, but I got there eventually too. I’m over it and I don’t think of her often. There’s nothing to think about. So I don’t know why I’m doing it now.
There’s no real reason for me to be here this early. Me and Diesel have a staff of eight eager and quite competent mechanics, which is more than enough to cater to the whims and caprices of the townsfolk around here. I can indulge in my one true passion now-restoring old cars—24/7 now. And that’s exactly what I’ve been doing most of the time lately. I can’t sleep. I wake up in the early morning hours and can’t go back to sleep. It’s why I’ve finished the restoration of three projects way ahead of schedule and after I put the finishing touches on this Pontiac, that’ll be four.
