by Piper Rayne
I helped her fight this as best I could, and ried to get her a better price, exhausting all my connections and knowledge. In the end, the developer offered about fifteen percent more and there was suddenly nothing else to do. My mother was served the eviction notice two weeks ago, and it runs out this Sunday. The guy had better connections than I did in this part of the state. Nothing I could do.
“Sounds to me like you did everything you could,” he says. “And that guy at the garage today, he’s the man causing all this grief?”
He brings another piece of his steak to his mouth and starts chewing it like he means business, his eyes flashing in anger. Our food arrived while I was talking, and I’ve been attacking my ribs while I spoke.
“Yes, Miles Lester,” I say, wiping my fingers on a napkin. “A real piece of shit.”
“Too bad he didn’t leave his car with me like he planned to,” he says.
“You wouldn’t mess up his car to get back at him,” I say and smile. “You couldn’t.”
He chuckles. “Yeah, you’re right about that. So what now? Your mom’s retiring?”
“Yes, I guess,” I say and shrug. “At least that’s what she says. “She’s also talking about moving to San Francisco to be closer to me.”
“Well, she’ll be missed, I’m sure,” he says. “She always had a full shop. Lots of the old-timers saw her place as one of the last pieces of what this town used to be.”
“I know,” I say. “All her friends are trying to talk her out of just throwing in the towel, and I’ve even offered her money to help her set up somewhere new, but she won’t hear of it.”
“Stubborn as her daughter,” he says and grins, before putting another piece of steak in his mouth. His eyes look kind of sad and watery. Even when I grin and nod, and agree with that statement they remain so.
“And you? How’s your life in the big city?” he asks.
“Good,” I say. “I’m doing good.”
I proceed to tell him about the big case I’m preparing for. It’s against a crazy rich guy, one of those high-tech millionaires, who’s been running a country-wide sex trafficking ring under the radar for the last twenty years. Or not really under the radar, more like protected by the bigwigs who are also his clients.
“Underage girls, most of them,” I say. “It’s sick as hell, and he’s got the most cut-throat legal team behind him. But I’m going to get the scumbag.”
He’s nodding along, his eyes kinda vacant like I’m boring him. Which pisses me off.
“But I guess you and your MC do a hell of a lot worse,” I snap. “So maybe we should just talk about something else.”
That brings the flash of life back into his eyes. “Hey, I just fix cars and bikes. And we ain’t never trafficked a woman, underage or otherwise. You think I’d be part of something like that?”
“I have no idea what your club does. Never did,” I say. “Nor ever wanted to.”
He glares at me for a couple more moments, then looks down at his steak. “Let’s not start that old argument again. We’re here to have a nice dinner and catch up. That’s all.”
I pick up my beer bottle and take as long a drink from it as I can to cool down. He’s right. That old argument about him joining Devil’s Nightmare MC was a huge part of the reason why there was no choice but to break up for us. I wanted to pursue a career as a public defender, rising to prosecutor, then becoming a judge. I’m at the halfway point of that now, and none of it would be possible if my husband was an outlaw biker. With the high-profile case I’m working on now, it’d probably be best if we weren’t seen together at all.
I scan the room, looking for a familiar face, someone from San Francisco, someone who’ll recognize me. I see two, a couple at the far end of the room by the large windows—they look exaclty like the scumbag’s lawyer and his assistant.
But I’m imagining it, I must me. Still, it’s quite the wake up call.
I really should’ve thought going on this date through better. But I let my hormones get the better of me.
He pushes his plate away although he’s not done with the steak, picks up his bottle of beer and leans back in his chair.
“You OK there, Mia?” he asks pointedly. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
“Let’s get the check,” I say. “This was a mistake.”
“Clearly,” he says. Beyond that, he doesn’t ask why, doesn’t argue, just calls the waitress over and pays.
Within five minutes we’re driving back down the hill. And the worst part about it, is that those feelings of rightness of the two of us together keep crashing against me like storm waves demanding I heed them.
But how can I?
My whole life, everything I’ve worked so hard for, could come crashing down if I do. I can’t let that happen.
“Hardly anyone in town knows I’m with the Devils,” he says as he stops the car by the curb in front of my mom’s place. He sounds so sad about it, I can’t help but look at him. And be sad too.
“I wish it was different,” I whisper. “I really do.”
And then I can’t speak anymore and I can’t look into his sad, deep, watery eyes anymore either. I slip out of the car and walk away as fast as I can in my stilettos, hoping I won’t sprain my ankle again.
13
Axle
I’ve been tossing and turning for hours and everything in my bed pisses me off. The pillow’s too hard and too small and too soft and too itchy. The mattress is too soft and too lumpy and too old. The covers are either too hot or too cold, too flimsy or too heavy, depending on the… depending on nothing in particular and everything at the same time. I hate the creaking of the old wooden bed as I turn, hate the random noises the house makes around me, hate all the sounds coming in from outside.
I’ve slept in this damn bedroom since I was born. I’m sick of it. I never moved out of the house. My father died before I was ready to. I hardly knew my mother. She was always coming and going while I was growing up. Mostly going. She finally settled down about ten years ago. In Florida of all places. We still talk from time to time, but not very often.
I’m only twelve years younger than my father was when he died. Is that it? I’ll live and die in the same house I was born in? Doing the same things my father did? I joined the same MC he belonged to, took over the business he started, kept it going after his death. I never even got to earn a road name of my own, since he gave me one when I was born—Axle. I’m sure as fuck headed to ending the same way he did—alone, restless, too soon—and I don’t know how to alter course.
I haven’t been sleeping well for months and there’ll be no sleeping tonight. Not with thinking about Mia on top of everything else. I should just accept that and get up. It’s almost dawn anyway.
But I refuse to let Mia give me one more sleepless night. She’s given me enough already.
I refuse to think about her at all, but there’s no stopping that barrage.
Why the fuck did she have to just show up?
Why the fuck did I have to ask her out?
Why the fuck did I ever think it could be any different?
She’s a damn public prosecutor and I’m an outlaw. I might not ride with the Devils when they go out to do their killing business, but I sure clean up after them when they need it. There’s no way in hell she’ll ever accept that. And her job has always been more important to her than me.
The best I could’ve hoped for is some sex for old times’ sake. But clearly even that was too much to hope for. I knew I should’ve just had her over to my house.
And now I’ll have to see her at least one more time when she comes to pick up the SUV. Unless I just let Diesel handle that.
Why the fuck didn’t I just send her packing as soon as she showed up? That’s what I should’ve done.
And with that absurd thought, I kick off the useless covers and leap out of bed.
I could no less have sent her away than I can chop off my right hand. It’s always been that way.<
br />
And I can’t think about that right now.
Maybe working on a car will calm me. It always does.
Though I doubt it.
14
Mia
The more I told myself I did the right thing cutting our date short, that it was a mistake to agree to it in the first place, that it was just a dumb idea to go poking around in the past, the more sleep retreated from my grasp.
Even the few times I managed to doze off, I jerked right back awake, feeling an anxious fear I couldn’t trace the origin of.
By the time the sky outside my bedroom window started getting lighter, I only knew one thing. I overreacted last night.
There’s no going back to how it was. Not in any way, shape or form. I opened the door to the past and surprised both of us to find that there was a lot more than nothing on the other side of it.
But it’s as impossible to go back now as it was to stay all those years ago.
Only, I should’ve let him down more easily. I had no real cause to go flying out of there like a banshee.
I dress quickly in the dark and tiptoe my way downstairs, so as not to wake my mom. She sat outside until about two AM and didn’t even hear me come in. There’s no point disturbing her now. I figure she’ll sleep until at least ten or eleven, and I don’t plan to take that long with my errand.
She probably won’t miss the car, but I leave her a note anyway. I feel a little weird going through her purse searching for the keys, kinda like I’m a teenager again, sneaking out at night, but that passes as the cold grey light of dawn hits my eyes outside.
The drive to his house takes less than ten minutes. Getting up the nerve to walk up to it and knock on the door takes almost twenty.
The front yard is still as neatly mowed as it always was, but there are no flowers or bushes decorating it. There never were any. He grew up without a mom, and his father had no time for things like that. The white paneling on the walls and the porch seem to be freshly painted, and the drawn curtains on the windows all match and at least from this distance, look clean.
I finally stop lying to myself that I’m just waiting for the more reasonable hour of seven AM before I go banging on his door. Nothing stirs in the house the first time I knock. Or the second. No lights come on either. All is as quiet as it was while I still sat in the car.
He’s probably in the garage. He told me last night it’s become a habit of his to go there early in the morning, before anyone else gets there.
The large metal gate of the Three Stars Garage is firmly shut when I reach it. But I know more than one way into the lot. Like the hole in the chain linked fence in the back. Or the old wooden gate at the side, which looks nailed shut but actually isn’t. Or the scraggly linden tree in the back whose sturdy, low-hanging branches extend over the fence.
What the hell am I thinking?
He’s fixed all of that. There’s a new metal fence surrounding the entire lot and I see no tree anywhere near it. But there is a door by the gate and a bell.
I ring it.
“Yes?” his voice comes almost immediately.
“It’s me,” I say feeling a little foolish. He sounds so cold and distant.
“I know,” he says. “Your car’s not ready yet.”
“Just let me in, Axle,” I snap, though not as forcefully as I might have back in the day when he’d pout like this. Now I’m not even sure he is pouting. Maybe he’s just cold because he feels nothing towards me.
“I want to talk,” I add.
“The door’s open, Mia,” he says.
I don’t exactly feel foolish for not trying it in the first place, but I kind of do.
He comes out of the garage as I cross the lot, wiping black grease off his hands with a cloth that’s more grey than white. He’s wearing dark blue coveralls, rolled up to reveal his biceps and the tattoos, which are mostly new and which I hoped to inspect more closely before I left him again. I still do. And I’m not sure I want to leave at all.
And I do feel foolish for thinking that.
“I’m sorry for the way I ended our dinner yesterday,” I say, slightly out of breath from striding over here and not pausing for breath while I got that off my chest.
“It’s fine,” he says, wiping his hands some more, even though he’s just making them dirtier at this point.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I’d like to explain—”
“I have absolutely no need for us to discuss all the reasons why it’s best we never see each other again,” he snaps. “Do you?”
“It’s not that…” I say, taking one more step towards him. Not much space is separating us at all now, but we might be on other sides of the world for all that’s worth.
I came here with no clear plan of what to say in mind. I wanted to apologize, and I’ve done that. And I wanted to let him down easy. But now that he’s right here, smelling as good as he always did, looking better than he did, his presence alone filling with me warmth and optimism and a zest for life I hadn’t felt since I left him, I now realize. And whether that’s just hormones, or just me imagining things, makes it no less real. And whether we have a future doesn’t even matter anymore. We have this moment. And it’s better than the last ten years of my life combined. Easily.
“What do you want, Mia?” It’s such a simple question, but I have no idea how to even begin answering it.
“I want this to be easy… and simple,” I finally manage.
His eyes glow with a light that matches the glowing in my own chest. But then it dulls and disappears.
“It’s not,” he says. “We both know that.”
“I don’t want to know it,” I say. “I want—”
“What?”
Good question. A kiss? A hug? An easy way out of this whirlwind of my thoughts pulling me down relentlessly towards a place I absolutely, positively must not visit again. We have no future. I have no future if I get enmeshed with him again. I won’t be able to get over him the second time.
A kiss. That’s what I want.
He leans in as though he heard my thought, and I do too, closing my eyes even, waiting to feel his lips on mine. That’s the only thing that will stop the whirlwind. I know it. Whether I accept the knowing is immaterial.
Loud banging on the metal gate shatters the illusion, the fantasy.
“Get the gate!” a man shouts and Axle steps back reflexively, kind of shakily to press a large yellow button at the side of the garage door.
The loud grating and clanking of the gate as it creaks open snaps me back into reality, and the sound of a bike entering, followed by four cars cements me there. I should reconsider all of this, I really should. For the good of my career.
“Let’s have a do over,” I say to him anyway, as a blond man wearing the Devil’s Nightmare MC cut dismounts his bike not far from us. “I’ll be at your house at seven. You can cook for us, or we can order in, but we’re finishing our dinner.”
Axle is frozen, his eyes wide, conveying nothing but disbelief. I look at him questioningly and he finally nods and mutters, “OK.”
“Good,” I say and turn to leave. The guys who arrived are all keeping their distance, giving us space I suppose. The blond man is looking at me very intently, like he’s trying to place me, but he could be just someone who vaguely recognizes me from back in the day. Though I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen him before.
I stride away as fast as I can without breaking into a run. This second date is probably a bad idea, but it’s also the first time in a long time that I’m doing something I really want to be doing.
15
Axle
The world suddenly bursts out at me in living color, despite the fact that the sun isn’t even up yet, and her red hair practically glows as she’s walking away from me. If Hawk and the rest of them showed up just a couple of minutes later, I’d have gotten to taste her again, something I’ve fucking fantasized about for twenty years. I can stop lying to myself that it’s not true. It’s
the reason no other woman I’ve been with was ever good enough. None of them were her.
“Sorry for interrupting,” Hawk says as he approaches. “You could’ve let us wait outside while you said your goodbyes to the lady.”
He chuckles, and I feel really dumb for not thinking of that myself.
“Who is she, anyway?” he asks. “Some yuppie’s bored housewife?”
“She’s someone from way back, actually,” I say. “Just recently come back for a visit.”
“Ahhh, that must be why she looks so familiar,” Hawk says.
I shake my head. “She was long gone before you joined us. Moved to San Francisco for good almost twenty years ago. So what have you got for me?”
He looks after Mia thoughtfully one more time, just as she disappears through the wide-open gate, then points at the three black sedans parked in a neat row. The brothers who brought them here are already packed into the pickup that followed them.
Hawk waves at the driver to take off, and he does.
“I need you to make these cars disappear as soon as possible,” he says. “They’re very hot.”
He’s our MC’s tech and hacking expert, but likes to also handle the more hands on part of his job like bringing me the cars that need to be gotten rid of, among other things. I suppose it’s so he doesn’t have to spend all his time behind the computer, which, in my opinion, must be sheer hell.
“Alright, no problem,” I say, not really needing to know more. It’s two Fords and a Chrysler. I bet I can get plenty of spare parts from them before they have to be crushed.
