I couldn't be that distracted ever again.
I pulled into a parking space and walked my happy ass into the grocery store. I needed some shit for my apartment. I walked up and down the aisles, keeping an eye on all the security cameras. I was painfully aware of everyone surrounding me. Everyone who was anyone that detective could have tapped into to watch us. The single mother battling her two twins who cried because they wanted sugary cereal. The asshole with the sunglasses whose eye was watching that single mother a little too hard. I lingered around her, making sure that man wouldn't do anything. And when he took a step toward her and her kids, I eyed him down until he backed his ass out of the grocery store.
“Thank you. He’d been following me around the grocery store ever since I walked in. I’ve been ready to check out for twenty minutes,” she said.
“If you give me ten, I’ll check out and walk out with you,” I said.
“Thank you so much,” she breathed.
I rushed and got the things I needed. A six-pack of ice cold beer. Some steaks to grill up. Potatoes to bake and some cheesecake to devour later. I picked up some damn toilet paper and a few bags of chips. Then, I headed to the register with the woman and her kids.
I walked outside and saw that asshole standing around a vehicle. And when that woman froze, I knew he was standing by her vehicle.
“You stay right here. I’m putting my stuff on my bike, then I’ll walk you over there,” I said.
I kept my eyes on the man as I stepped off the curb. The woman clung to the curb with her cart and her kids, her eyes never wavering from the man in the sunglasses. Such bullshit, men these days. I wanted to strangle all of them I came across. I stuffed my groceries into the stowaway compartment I’d attached to my bike when I first got it, then I balled up my fists and walked over to the guy.
“You got a problem?” I asked.
“I need to talk to her,” he said.
“You don't need to do a damn thing.”
“Who the hell are you?”
“I’m the man who’s gonna make sure her and her kids get in this car safely and get home,” I said.
“You fuckin’ her, too?” he asked, grinning.
I jutted my hand out and wrapped it around his neck as the woman cried out. I pressed him against the car as people stopped and gasped. I gnashed my teeth as the man’s eyes bulged with fear behind his pathetic sunglasses.
I ripped them off and tossed them to the pavement before I stomped on them with my boot.
“You’re going to let this nice woman get in her car with her kids. And you’re going to let them drive away. I’m going to give her my number and I’m going to tell her that if she ever sees you again, to call me instead of the police. You got it?” I asked.
The man nodded quickly as my face came closer to his.
“And if she needs a good fuck, she can call me, too,” I said, grinning.
I sucked air through my teeth before I sat back up. I tossed the man by his neck out into the street, where he scurried off and ran. I turned back to the woman who had her children clutched to her bosom and her eyes locked onto me.
Then, I walked back over to her and pulled out a piece of paper from my pocket.
“You got a pen?” I asked.
She nodded quickly as her trembling hands dug through her purse. She handed me one and I wrote down the number of my office phone at the lodge. An encrypted, private line where clients could call and barter for our services.
I wrote my name down underneath it and handed it to her.
“Call if you have any issues. Ask for ‘Stone’,” I said.
“Thank you so much,” she whispered.
“Not a problem.”
I escorted her kids to her car and helped her with her groceries. And when I watched them drive down the road safely, I hopped on my bike and rode off as well. I didn’t give a shit about the crowd. Or who saw. Or what was caught on tape. All that mattered was that woman and her kids, and the fact that they got home safely.
I sighed as I hit a traffic jam on the highway leading out of San Diego. My apartment was on the outskirts of town. In a quiet area that would never be further developed because it was a fuckin’ dump that smelled like sewer all the damn time. But the apartments were very nice for a cheap price. It was the developer’s first chance at trying to set roots down in the area. Which didn’t work well, because no one wanted to live in a damn bog that smelled like shit all the time.
But my three-bedroom, two-bathroom renovated apartment with all the utilities included only ran me one grand a month.
I sighed as I weaved in and out of traffic. Horns honked and people cursed at me as I hopped curbs and tried to get around the jam. If I could get to the damn back roads, I was only fifteen minutes away from home. Away from my couch. Away from my walk-in shower and my jetted tub and my king-size fuckin’ bed.
I swerved into a lane and slammed on my breaks, readying myself to jump another lane of traffic. Then suddenly, with horns honking and people screaming, my motorcycle went screeching up the lane. Moving without being propelled by myself as my ass flew over my damn handlebars.
I’d been hit by a goddamn car.
6
Hayley
I groaned as I lifted my head up from the steering wheel. I heard people yelling off in the distance. Cars honking off miles away. My eyes felt so heavy and the world around me felt like it was spinning. I placed my hands on the steering wheel and pushed myself upright. Concussion. I needed to figure that out first. I pulled one eye open, and then the next. And as I surveyed the scene around me, I felt something trickling down my skin.
I rose my hand to my forehead and felt the warmth of my own blood.
“Shit,” I hissed.
I sniffed the air. No smoke. My father taught me from an early age what to look for in any sort of accident. Concussion, smoke, smell of gas. I slowly turned my head in all directions, trying to see if it was stiff. A headache unlike any other ricocheted through my skull, but my neck wasn’t immobile. My back didn’t hurt. I wiggled my fingers while the world slowly trickled to the forefront of my mind, getting louder and louder.
“Fuck!” I exclaimed.
Everything sounded loud. Way too loud for my liking. That wasn’t good. That could be a sign of a concussion. Then, everything came to me in bits and pieces. Specifically, the sound of the motorcycle.
I looked through my windshield with my hands against my ears and gasped.
I hit a fucking biker.
I squinted as I watched him get off the ground. His hands came off his handlebars and he got up. It looked like there were groceries all over the street. Some broken glass. Was that a cheesecake? I cleared my throat and slowly let my hands fall from my ears as blood trickled down the bridge of my nose.
I looked down and watched a droplet fall into my lap.
“Not good. This is not good,” I murmured.
I slowly looked back up, at a loss for what to do. Cars slowly eased around us as the light at the stoplight turned green. I saw the man tilt his bike back up. He gathered his groceries off the ground and shoved them into some sort of compartment-looking thing. I watched him dust off what looked like to be a very nice leather coat before he looked around.
Then, his eyes leveled with mine.
Oh, shit. He was pissed. As I gripped my steering wheel, my heart slammed against my chest. What the hell was I supposed to do? He was a damn biker. Surely he didn’t have good insurance. Or any insurance at all to ride that souped-up bike he had. His eyes narrowed at me before he picked up his helmet. My eyes cased his body. The man was massive, with brown hair and dark green eyes that looked capable of putting me six-feet under with nothing but a glare.
Then, just before he turned back around, my eyes found the back of his coat.
My skin prickled. The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. He had a leather cut on the back of his jacket, and my heart stopped in my chest. Fucking hell, my father always warned me abo
ut guys in motorcycle clubs. I had to get out of there. I had to get out of that situation by any means necessary.
I had to get home and call my father.
I watched the man toss his helmet around in his massive hands. A grin slid across his face before he gripped the sides of his helmet, then slipped it over his head. My eyes darted up to the lights. They had turned red again. My foot itched to press down onto the gas pedal and get the fuck out of dodge.
I watched the man work his helmet down against his neck.
Then suddenly, the light changed. It was green again, and traffic around us began moving. In an instant, I made a decision. I wasn’t proud of that decision, but I wasn’t about to stick around and have this man accost me or hang this shit over my head because of who my father was in exchange for all the money he could squeeze out of my own insurance. I slammed my foot down onto the gas pedal and changed lanes. Cars honked their horns and slammed on breaks as the ham whipped his helmeted head up.
I caught him in the rearview mirror following me with his eyes as I raced around the left-hand turn.
Not my finest moment, but when I got myself flowing with traffic again, I didn’t hear the bike again. I didn’t see the man following me. And I figured I was okay. The guy on the bike looked fine, after all. I mean, he got up, dusted himself off, and grinned at me for fuck’s sake. I was the one bleeding down my damn head. I was the one that had the dented fender. The only thing his bike probably suffered were a few scratches from him not being able to let go of the damn thing as he fell to the ground.
“Men and their toys,” I murmured.
I knew it was stupid to run, but my gut told me to. My hands shook as I gripped the steering wheel, trying to navigate my way back to the main road. I was driving in the opposite direction of where I needed to be going. I needed to head back home, not to the fucking ocean. My entire body shook as I took back roads. I drove slowly down one-way streets, trying to pay attention to the feel of my station wagon. Sure, it was an old piece of shit. But that old piece of shit had gotten me through a lot in my life. My headache raged, but the nausea never came. The ringing in my ears subsided and there was no pain in my neck whatsoever.
“At least you don’t have a concussion, you idiot,” I hissed.
I finally got myself turned around. I drove up a couple of intersections, hoping that the man on the bike was gone. I hoped he had simply driven off with his impeccable bike and his bullshit leather cut and his muddled groceries with no thoughts of tracking me down. I pulled up to the stoplight a couple of lights down and smiled. I looked both ways as lanes of traffic poured into one another. I heard no bike. I saw no black. I didn't see a man racing to cut in front of me like the reckless asshole he was.
I relaxed back into my seat and waited for the light to change.
The lights of San Diego were the pits. They took forever to cycle through, and a drive that needed to take only twenty minutes something took me a fucking hour. I lived fifteen minutes from my father. That was it. And it would take me almost three times that to get back to my place. I rolled my eyes as the turning lanes flooded the road, bypassing the main lanes a second time.
Then finally, it was our turn to move.
I tried my best not to move my head. The headache grew worse, and that worried me. I’d have to call a doctor when I got home. Maybe tell them I tripped and fell into something. I rolled my neck around and still felt no stiffness, but my stomach did roll over onto itself once.
“Oh, no,” I murmured.
A flash of light almost blinded me. I held my arm up and came to a stop in the middle of the road. Cars slammed on their brakes and honked for me to get out of the way. People leaned out their windows and cursed my existence. I turned on my blinker and eased off to the right, pulling into a fast food restaurant.
If I put something salty in my stomach, maybe that would help. After all, I hadn’t eaten much at my father’s place.
“Welcome to Red Kingdom, can I take your order?”
“Uh, yes. Could I have a small french fry, with extra salt, and a large Sprite?” I asked.
“Extra salt?”
“Yes,” I said.
“You want anything else?”
“Actually, make it a medium.”
“The large is only fifty cents more.”
My stomach turned over onto itself and I sighed. I wasn’t sure if I was hungry or about to puke on myself, but I figured it I was going to puke I would at least heave up something other than stomach acid.
“Sure. Make it a large,” I said.
“Still with the salt?”
“Yes, thanks,” I said.
“Pull around for your total.”
I felt as if I was being tugged through a daze. Like I was moving through jello. I paid for my order and the woman at the cash register stared at me. Shit. I’d forgotten about the gash on my head. I put my fingers up to it and felt the blood caking onto my skin. At least the bleeding had stopped. She handed me my card along with some napkins, then quickly shut her window door.
I shook my head as I pulled to receive my food.
The smell of the fries made my mouth water. Okay. That was a good sign. I took a long pull of my drink and didn’t feel the immediately need to retch, which made me feel better. And the more fries I wolfed down, the clearer my head felt.
“You were hungry,” I said.
I ate four and five french fries at a time, filling my stomach and washing it down with the Sprite. By the time I was halfway done, I felt better. Much better. My headache was just a headache, the bleeding had fully stopped, and my body was no longer trembling. I drew in a deep breath as I finished off the fries sitting right there in the damn drive-through lane. I sucked down my drink before putting the empty to-go cup in the cup holder of my car, then I eased myself back onto the road.
“Time to go home,” I said, sighing.
Then, off in the distance, I heard the revving of an engine. An engine that grew closer and closer as I eased myself into traffic. A roar that grew monumental as I raced to the stoplight I had been caught at.
“Oh, no,” I murmured.
And before I knew it, the deafening roar of a motorcycle inched up next to me. At the stoplight. With a massive man on that bike whose scratched helmet and leather cut looked all too familiar. Then, he reached over and knocked his knuckles against my window before motioning for me to roll it down.
I’d been caught. And I had a feeling this wasn’t going to go down very well.
7
Stone
After peeling myself off the damn concrete, I looked around at my scattered groceries. I grabbed the handlebars of my bike and tipped it back up, grunting as I moved. I’d taken many dives over the handlebars of my motorcycle over the years. I knew how to tuck and roll. I knew how to protect myself. Even though my helmet somehow ended off my damn head and mingled itself with the broken glass, I kept myself out of harm’s way.
Came with the territory of my lifestyle.
“Fucking hell,” I murmured.
I gathered up the things that weren’t completely ruined on the road. Four bottles of beer that hadn’t busted. The cheesecake that hadn’t popped open. Some other random shit that hadn’t mangled itself in the process of pouring out of my bike. I shoved it all back into the storage compartment before closing it up. Then, I dusted my leather coat off and started looking around.
Traffic eased slowly around me. Some, to get around the glass, and others? To get around me. I looked around at the cars to see which of them speeding off had hit me. Surely there was some sort of mark on their fender or some shit. People in San Diego were notorious for hitting bikers and speeding off. Like if they hit us, we were going to automatically pull weapons on them and fill them with lead.
I looked behind me and saw a woman behind the steering wheel of a rundown station wagon. Wide blue eyes. Dark brown hair piled into her face. Her beauty would have made my cock throb had it not been for the trickling of blood runnin
g down her nose.
I furrowed my brow as I leveled my eyes with her.
She was hurt. How badly? I studied her from beyond her windshield as people continued cruising beside us. Around us, like we didn’t fucking exist. I narrowed my eyes a bit to get a better view, moving my body to get around the glare of the sun off her damn windshield. I didn’t want to spook her. If she was hurt or concussed, she needed a fucking doctor.
But I saw those hands of hers white-knuckling her steering wheel. And I didn’t want to spook her away.
Slowly, I bent down. My hand reached around onto the ground, trying to locate my helmet. If I held her eyes, she probably wouldn’t run. She probably wouldn’t try to flee the scene. Just in case, though, I needed to make sure I had my helmet to toss over my head. The blood kept running down her face, and she was so shell-shocked I wasn’t even sure she noticed it. Her tan skin radiated with the sun that bared down onto our backs. And when I didn’t feel my helmet grazing my fingertips, I tore my gaze away from hers.
Away from those striking ocean blue eyes.
I picked my helmet up as quickly as I could. I leaned back up, steadying my bike against my thigh. I tossed my helmet around in my hands, trying to make sure the outside of it hadn’t been compromised. I pressed it between my palms and gauged its give. It didn’t feel cracked. It didn’t groan or give underneath my skin. A grin slid across my face as my eyes leveled with the woman’s again. My helmet was good to go, and I was ready to challenge her if she decided to flee the scene.
I should have known the second I slipped that damn thing over my head, it would be on.
Just as I brought it down against my neck, I heard the squealing of tires. Horns honked and people cussed as a waft of wind crashed against my left side. Oh, this pretty girl had guts. Lots of them. I watched her station wagon tear around the left-hand turn at the light as my leg quickly slipped over my bike.
The Lost Boys MC Series: Books 1-4 Page 19
