Outlaw Souls MC Box Set: Books 1-6

by Hope Stone

  I saw red. He could insult my values. He could say horrible things about me as a person, but he could not insult my ability to do my job.

  “Only an idiot wouldn’t have looked into Outlaw Souls,” I said. “Bikers were all over this case, and I’m sorry that I used you, that things got out of hand, but I had to do it.”

  I crossed my arms and willed a mask of strength to fall over my face. We couldn’t have a real conversation about my feelings. Not when Pin was like this. And he might always be like this.

  It was over. I had waited too long, and I had messed up everything. Now all I could do was hold onto my dignity.

  “That’s what you call what happened with us?” Pin asked, eyes widening. “It just got out of hand?”

  I flinched. It wasn’t what I had meant to say, but I mentally injected steel into my spine. I would not back down from him. I put a tight leash on my emotions.

  “You won’t listen to me, so I don’t have to explain myself,” I said. “I already told you I didn’t fake things with you and last night was real.”

  “Don’t fucking talk about last night,” Pin said.

  He turned around and gripped the table. I stood still as he took several deep breaths. When he turned around, it seemed as if he had calmed down. He had shoved all his pain into some deep corner. I felt awful that I had been the cause of this. I had hurt him so badly that he was lashing out, like a wounded animal.

  After he had been so hesitant to trust anyone. After he had feared how anyone who got close would betray him. I did feel bad. But I was angry at him too. He wasn’t even trying to see my side.

  “I just got hired for a job,” I said. “They told me to look into Outlaw Souls, and I did it. It’s not personal.”

  I regretted the last sentence as soon as it left my mouth.

  First of all, it was a lie. The case had gotten personal almost the second I had heard about it. I hated that I was lying to him again, even after he had accused me of being a liar, and I had denied it.

  “You’re a cold-hearted bitch,” Pin said. “You really are.”

  My heart shattered in two. But I couldn’t show it. What right did I have to a broken heart? I was the villain here. The bitch. The whore. The heartless slut.

  I blinked rapidly and pressed my lips. “Get out of my apartment.”

  Pin stepped back and opened his mouth. He probably had more to say. More cruel things to yell at me or more horrible names. I didn’t care. I wanted him to leave. I couldn’t draw this whole ordeal out any longer.

  “Stop looking into Outlaw Souls,” Pin said. “Don’t even come near us.”

  I scoffed and rolled my eyes. I had just lost him, I wasn’t going to give up my job as well. “You know I have to continue with this case.”

  “No, you don’t,” Pin said. “And we have nothing to do with those missing kids.”

  “That may be true,” I said. “But I have to keep looking.”

  For a second, I thought he was going to yell again. I braced myself for his shouting. Instead, he turned on his heel and stomped over to the couch. I stood stock-still as he grabbed his jacket and boots. He didn’t even put his shoes on. He just headed for the door, as if he couldn’t stand one more second in my presence.

  I looked away as he slammed my door shut behind him. I didn’t want to see him leave. I was going to have to live the rest of my life with this memory, and it was already bad enough.

  As soon as he was gone, my legs gave out. I crumbled onto the floor and clutched my knees to my chest as great heaving sobs erupted from my chest. All the tears I had held in came pouring down my face. I hadn’t cried this hard for as long as I could remember, if ever.

  Maybe I had cried like this when I was little and fell off my bike, but I couldn’t remember it being this painful. This was a level of hurt I’d never known before. Because my heart was being ripped out of my chest. The beautiful future I had dared to dream of was crumbling before my own eyes, and it was all my fault.

  That was the worst part. If someone else had been to blame, if Pin had done something wrong, and I had ended up losing him, I would still cry. But it wouldn’t be as horrible. I could still point my finger at someone else and plot revenge on someone else.

  But how was I supposed to get revenge on myself?

  I knew the answer as soon as I posed the question. Living with the mistakes I had made, living my life without Pin, always wondering what could have been, was going to be punishment enough. I had told lies before. I had always justified them. They were for the greater good, or lies of politeness, or even for survival. Nothing bad had ever happened, so I just kept lying. I carried deception around with me like a shield and weapon all in one.

  Now it has all caught up to me. Every little white lie, every day I had spent pretending to be someone other than who I was, I was paying for all that now.

  I sat on the floor of my apartment for almost an hour, as tears poured down my face in an unrelenting river. I gasped for breath and blew my nose in my shirt and patted my face dry, but the tears just kept coming.

  At one point, I thought I heard footsteps in the hall. I thought he was coming back, maybe to listen, maybe to tell me that he knew I had messed up, but he believed me that I hadn’t been faking my feelings.

  But it was all in my head. He wasn’t coming back. After I realized that, I cried even harder.

  He was never going to believe that the night before had been anything but a twisted manipulation. He was never going to see that I hadn’t been making a desperate play for information. And on top of using him, I had insulted the one thing he cared about above all else, the Outlaw Souls.

  I cried, and I cried. Three times I told myself to pull it together. To get off the floor and keep moving. Shit happened. Life went on. Each time, I just curled up into a smaller ball and wept out a fresh batch of tears.

  When my back and bottom started to hurt, I lay down on my side. I relished the hardness of my wooden floor against my cheek and side. I didn’t deserve softness. I wasn’t worthy of a bed. I certainly hadn’t been worthy of Pin’s bed. He had been everything I could possibly want. He had been funny and cool and smart and kind-hearted. He was an accountant, which was just perfect and endearing in every way.

  He had been so good at being with me. He had understood me when I told him what I wanted out of life. He had laughed at my jokes and made me laugh in return. He had admired my career. He definitely did not anymore, but in the beginning he had thought my job was amazing. He had shown me how much he liked me. He had taken me to that barbecue and invited me into his inner sanctuary, unaware that I entered bearing matches and kerosene.

  He had even made me breakfast, and it was sitting right there on the counter, taunting me with its scent. I had fallen in love with him. That was the truth I had to face as I lay there sobbing on my floor.

  I had found something that some people spend a lifetime searching for, but I had been too stupid to even realize my luck until it was too late. I could have owned up to everything earlier. I could have told Pin about the investigation after he spent a night on my couch. I could have told him before the barbecue, or even after. He would have listened.

  But I had waited and convinced myself that was for the best.

  I cried, and I cried, and I knew that this wasn’t like the time I fell off my bike as a child. Those scrapes and bruises had healed with time. The pain had faded. That wasn’t going to happen now. Time was not going to make this better.

  This was never, ever going to stop hurting.

  Pin

  I couldn’t stop replaying the scene with Claire in my head.

  Even as I raced along the highway on my bike, when I should have been focusing on the road, I kept seeing her face. I kept hearing her telling me to listen, telling me that she had no choice. The roar of my engine couldn’t drown out how stiff and cold she had sounded when she told me to leave.

  I didn’t regret anything I had said. She had lied to me, and it hurt me to th
ink of how the whole time I was worshipping her in bed, she had an ulterior motive. She had probably been wondering how to leverage our new level of intimacy.

  I didn’t know where I was headed. Just away. If I stayed in La Playa, I would go back to her. I would yell at her some more or beg her to explain, and I didn’t know which was worse.

  I had turned back as soon as I exited the apartment building. I had stood near the mailboxes for way too long, and then climbed back up the stairs. I had made it all the way to her door.

  And then I heard.

  Horrible gut-wrenching sobs came from within. Every bone in my body longed to break down that door and go to her. Even though I knew better, I had cared for her and those feelings wouldn’t evaporate. Every instinct I had longed to comfort Claire if she was in pain. I wanted to hold her and rock her while she cried into my chest.

  But that wouldn’t be right. Because she wasn’t mine, and she had never been mine. I didn’t owe her my protection and comfort. She had shown me no respect and had trampled over my heart in her black combat boots. If I went into that apartment just because she was crying, I was saying that I was ok with what she had done.

  Besides, she was probably crying because her so-called lead in the case was ruined. She wasn’t sorry about what she had done, that was clear. She was only sorry she got caught. The truth was, I didn’t really know her. I had fallen for an illusion. Had been enamored with a lie. The Claire I knew didn’t even exist. I wanted to comfort a ghost.

  So I had turned and ran out of that building as fast as I could. I had gotten a car back to my place and hopped on my bike, without even going into my apartment. I just needed to ride. A long fast ride always cleared my head. It had to work this time because I was going to need it.

  My personal wounds inflicted by Claire was one thing, but the implications for Outlaw Souls were also a serious matter. We were suspects in an ongoing investigation. Claire hadn’t come up with Outlaw Souls on her own. I had seen her notes about parents and police and random teenagers. Other people had pointed their fingers at us. Claire was an idiot for believing them, but she had not made the first accusation.

  Which meant that we needed to have a meeting as soon as possible. We needed to discuss why we were taking the blame for drug-dealing and child-snatching, and we needed to figure out who was at fault. We needed to solve the problem.

  That’s why I had asked Claire to stop investigating. She needed to get out of the way. This was biker business, plain and simple. I couldn’t be distracted by her running around, hurling accusations willy-nilly and asking questions.

  It had been stupid to ask her to stop. I may not have known the real Claire, but I did know she was like a dog with a bone. She wasn’t going to release her hold on this case. I saw the way she snapped when I told her she was a bad PI. That had affected her even more than when I called her a whore. Whatever her other faults, she did care about her job.

  I cringed at the memory. I didn’t say things like that, especially not to a woman. I had not been myself in that apartment. As a defense mechanism, I had morphed into a monster of a man. I had just been so blind-sided by that stupid fucking notebook. I had been shocked and hurt, and so I had lashed out with whatever weapons came to hand.

  I should have known better. I should have been more careful. I had somehow convinced myself that I knew her, just because we had insane chemistry. I didn’t know her. I had met her only weeks ago, and pretty much everything had been a lie.

  I was jolted back into the present when my bike drifted too close to the line and the car in the other lane honked at me. I cursed and looked for the nearest exit. It wasn’t good to ride when my head was in such turmoil. My life was pretty shitty at the moment, but I still didn’t want to be scraped off the pavement.

  Once I was off the highway, I pulled into the parking lot of a diner and parked my bike. I got off, but didn’t go inside. I just leaned against the bike and thought. I forced myself to consider my relationship (if I could even still call it that) with Claire in chronological order. It was torture, but I ran through each and every detail.

  It started that night at Blue Dog Saloon. Claire had been at the bar, and Moves had gone to her. She hadn’t approached us first, but she probably would have at some point, just to get closer to Kim and Trey. She had been cute and personable. A little bit flirty, although back then Kim had been her priority. I should have remembered that. She hadn’t been interested in me at all in the beginning. I was just a stepping stone on her way to cornering Trey. She hadn’t even faked attraction back then.

  I had known that at some point. I had been curious about her, but I had known nothing was likely to happen. Everything changed the night we caught Trey. I let out a bitter laugh as I recalled the fake date. As if that had been the only fake thing about Claire. I had thought that because I was helping her with the PI stuff, I was in on the joke. I had been allowed behind the curtain.

  Instead, I was just like Trey. I was being deceived in Claire’s con.

  I wondered if she was already looking into Outlaw Souls at that point. I wished that I had read that notebook closer. In the moment, I was too overcome to glean more than the general details. I barely remembered the names. The missing girl was Zoe and the boy was Hector, but I couldn’t recall their last names or their parents’ names.

  According to Claire’s notes, they had gotten tangled up with bikers and then ran away. No word from them, but a lot of rumors flying around about drugs. Because that’s what bikers did, according to people. We dealt drugs and we ruined young kids’ lives.

  I tried to remember how many pages of notes she had. There was a lot, but that was typical Claire. She was thorough. I snorted. I had to stop thinking about things like “typical Claire.” I didn’t know what was typical. I didn’t know anything about the real Claire.

  Maybe she already had the case the night we slept together. At the time, I hadn’t thought Claire was being too aggressive. She was into me, just like I was into her, but she wasn’t pursuing me with relentless determination. She had just seen where the night had taken her.

  How long had it taken her to master that degree of nuance and subtlety? How many men had she seduced? How often had she practiced her delicate dance? I had been right that first time to sneak out before morning. If only I had left and never looked back. I should have stuck to my initial instinct and let Claire Brennan fall from my mind.

  Instead, I had reconsidered. I had thought it would be harmless to hang out with her again. And how serendipitous it had been when she texted me? It was my lucky day. I hadn’t even paused for a second to wonder why she was reaching out after two days of radio silence.

  By that point, I was sure she was on the case against Outlaw Souls. I had been blind in the moment, but looking back it was so obvious. She had agreed to just hang out at her own home. It was quiet there. If we had gone out dancing again at a club, she would have had very little time to question me. If we had gone on a real date, that would have been too much hassle.

  So Claire opted for the most efficient method of gleaning information. She didn’t even have to leave her own home. I went to her, and I talked and talked about everyone’s role and how our club operated.

  I knew she couldn’t do anything with what I had given her because Outlaw Souls was as clean as they came, but the fact that the whole time, she had her ears pricked for any shady details was repulsive to me. I cringed as I remembered how I had blabbered on and on about how we got gigs, how new pledges were brought into the fold, and how Moves kept everyone in line.

  I frowned at that. Of all the things I had said to Claire, that was the only thing that edged on the controversial. As enforcer, Moves had to operate in some gray areas. He never crossed the line as far as I was concerned, but I wasn’t sure Claire would see it like that.

  If Claire was going to fixate on anyone in Outlaw Souls as the potential villain, it would be Moves. Which was total bullshit because he was at heart one of the best men I k
new. It made me sick to my stomach that Claire would even suspect him of going after a sixteen-year-old girl.

  The drug stuff was unfathomable as well. Moves only used violence to curtail drug dealing on our turf. He never left anyone with serious injuries. But then again, who knew if Claire saw it that way? She probably figured that Moves was beating up half of La Playa and dealing drugs to the other half while I fixed the books to make the money disappear.

  I kicked the ground in frustration. I had to tell Moves and the others about this. We were going to have to look into what bikers were behind this, but I doubted we were going to have to look very far. This situation had Las Balas written all over it. Only people who didn’t understand biker culture and the differences between our clubs would mix us up.

  My brothers needed to know what Las Balas was doing. Somehow we were going to have to curtail the drug dealing and possibly rescue a few teenagers. If those teenagers were even still within reach. It wasn’t going to be a fun conversation. My brothers would never cut me off, but they wouldn’t take it as no big deal that I had unwittingly brought a spy into our midst.

  But first I had to continue replaying my past mistakes.

  That night watching TV and talking had been the night things started to change for me. My feelings had started to grow. And the whole time she had just been waiting for me to fall asleep so she could jot down all her notes. Or had she? We hadn’t talked about Outlaw Souls the whole night. We talked about TV, food, our lives. A range of topics.

  That just showed how good Claire was at a con. She never forced Outlaw Souls into conversation. She let me think that everything was natural. That it was natural for us to just fall asleep in each other’s arms. That it was natural for us to wake up and share breakfast and then just go for a ride.

  First dates weren’t supposed to be like that. They weren’t supposed to last over twelve hours, and I wasn’t supposed to fall that hard for a girl on the first date. But Claire had manipulated the whole thing so I didn’t have a chance to stop and think. I should have tried to slow down, but instead I had surged ahead, positive that I had found someone special.