by Karen Renee
I was reluctant, to say the least. I had just met Mallory, and while we had hit it off yesterday, this seemed a little much. Yet, I also felt like I needed a woman’s opinion on things going on with me. I had not expected Reggie to be so firmly in favor of a reconciliation between me and Vamp.
“Where were you planning to have this drink?” I asked.
Mallory’s lips thinned slightly, and she dipped her head to say, “Well, I wanted to do Carrabba’s, but Cal put the kibosh on that. So, we’re either going to have to go to the compound or one of our own houses.”
I knew the answer to my question, but I asked it anyway, “And just why did Cal put the kibosh on Carrabba’s?”
The look Mallory gave me said she knew that I knew the answer to that question, but she still gave it to me straight. “Because of the shit going down with you. He doesn’t want that jackass getting near you ‒or any of us other ladies.”
I was loath to go to the compound. You'll need to get over that if you get back together with Vamp. Whoa, now where the hell did that unwanted thought come from? Damn Reggie and his hopeless romantic ways! While I didn’t want to allow my past to dictate my future, I also did not want to run into any other faces from the past. Seeing Roll, Blood, and many other kind, familiar people was hard on my sensitive heart. The Riot MC had a family camaraderie that I damn sure didn’t have with my mother, and last night I realized I missed that family as much as I had missed Vamp over the past six years.
I sighed, “Well, I’d love to meet your friends and have a quick drink. No offense, but there’s not a chance I’m going to the compound. It might be one of the safest places in town, but I can’t go there.”
Mallory gave me a nod, and then pulled her phone out of her purse, “Give me just a second. You live at the beach right? We could go to Jackie’s. She’s in Lakewood, so that would at least put you on the other side of the river, though not on the other side of the Intercoastal Waterway.”
“Thanks, that’s thoughtful of you,” I said with a smile at her.
Mallory left to pick up Natasha. Forty-five minutes later, she returned to the credit union and I followed her to Jackie’s house. A prospect with dark red hair was following me. I didn’t know where Vamp was, but I knew I was not going to dwell on that. He might want a second chance, and I may have foolishly been excited to hear that, but it wasn’t going to happen. I needed to instigate a strict out-of-sight-out-of-mind policy where that man was concerned.
We pulled into a horseshoe-shaped driveway and parked our cars. As I rounded my SUV, a tall black woman angled out of the Mustang Mallory was driving. She approached me with an outstretched hand, “I’m Natasha Russell. I hear you’re an old flame of Vamp’s.”
I gave a rueful chuckle. As I shook her hand, I said, “Frankie Ingram, nice to meet you. I wouldn’t call me a flame, but yes, Vamp and I have history, that is all water under the bridge.”
She dropped my hand while she skeptically said, “Mmmm-hmmm.”
Before I could react to that, the front door of the ranch-style house opened and a thin woman with board-straight chocolate-brown hair stood waiting for us to come inside. She had a huge smile on her face and her rich brown eyes were dancing.
“Hi! I’m Jackie. Volt’s old lady. It is so great to meet you. I only got a little bit of the skinny on what happened last night, but Volt doesn’t normally have to get Vamp to tamp down his temper. You must be some kind of blast from his past.”
At that point I was beginning to re-think my decision. These three women seemed eager to talk to me about Vamp, and I knew if I wasn’t careful, they’d be on board Reggie’s hopeless-romantic bandwagon, urging me to give Vamp a second chance.
I didn’t need to talk about Vamp. I needed to talk about my problems with Mark Stillman. I especially needed to discuss how much more complicated my problems were going to be if I agreed to help Emily Yates tell her sister Mark was a violent cheating bastard.
After I introduced myself to Jackie, we all followed her into her home. It was gorgeous, and if I weren’t such a beach type of girl, I’d love living some place similar. We settled in her kitchen, which was not just a showroom-kitchen. It was the type of showroom-kitchen that could easily be the feature of an Architectural Digest article. I was focused on keeping my mouth closed, otherwise, my jaw would have been hanging wide open. I still noticed Natasha and Mallory had dreamy and slightly-jealous looks on their faces as they glanced around the kitchen. Jackie shook her head at us and moved to her built-in refrigerator.
“Ok, ladies. I got three kinds of white wine, a red wine, light beer, and of course, harder stuff if that’s the route we’re going tonight.”
“Girl, it’s a school night. I can’t hit any of that hard stuff. I’ll take a beer, in case I need to drive Mallory home,” Natasha said.
“Ha! You just want to drive Cal’s Mustang,” Mallory retorted.
Natasha gave a mock-innocent look. “No, I don’t.”
“Frankie, Mallory? What’ll it be?”
“White wine. Sauvignon blanc, if you’ve got it,” I said.
Mallory seemed disgruntled with my choice, but then she said, “I can’t handle white today. I’ll uncork the red. Just tell me where it is.”
Once we all had drinks in front of us, the ladies insisted I recount everything that happened last night. I left out the parts where Vamp helped me get dressed and saw me half-naked this morning. Apparently, though, the bikers still gossiped worse than women, because Mallory asked, “What about getting dressed this morning?”
My eyes rolled to my eyebrows and my head tilted to the ceiling as I blew out a breath.
“Vamp did insist on helping me put on my clothes. Which is a tedious chore with only one hand. If I could feasibly go to work without wearing a bra, it would make my life ten times easier, but my girls are a little too large for such shenanigans.”
Natasha gave me a sympathetic look, “I feel your pain. I mean, I’ve never had a broken hand, but if I were forced to do it one-armed, I know that shit would get old quick. Large ta-tas require firm support during the day. So, you and Vamp getting back together?”
“What? No. Why would you ask that?”
With a smile Natasha said, “Whoa. Cool out, chica. I just thought maybe it was a possibility. Hard for me to picture Vamp being all alpha-bossy and super-pushy with a woman he didn’t want to pursue.”
“No. Not happening. Been there, done that, and I burned the t-shirt I had to prove it.”
Mallory looked between me and Natasha and hesitantly said, “I can see being leery of getting with Vamp, even without your past. His reputation is something else, and then, the way he looks at any woman he wants. God, it’s unnerving.”
I giggled. I couldn’t help it. The discomfort was almost palpable from her. Her fearful reaction was the polar opposite of mine. She looked at me like I was crazy, and maybe I was.
“What’s so funny?” she asked.
I smirked. “Just that my reaction to what I call ‘Vamp’s drill look’ is the complete opposite of your discomfort and fear.”
Mallory exclaimed, “I’m not fearful. It’s just uncomfortable.”
“Believe me, it’s anything but, in bed,” I blurted.
Shit! Now why had I shared that?
In-between giggles, Natasha said, “No wonder you call it his ‘drilllook’, if he did that before drilling you!”
I groaned and put my head on the island we were all sitting around. I heard Mallory say, “Seriously, though, you’re the one who got away, he says. What was he like back then? I feel like you’re the last woman he was exclusive with.”
I lifted my head. “That might be true, but he did a number on me. I mean cheating with two other women? Kind of a blow to a girl’s ego you know. I understand guys, for whatever reason, like girl-on-girl action. But seriously, he knew about the cheating thing with me.”
“What do you mean, ‘he knew’?” Jackie asked.
“I mean, we had been li
ving together for over a year. I didn’t do that willy-nilly. I told him I’d been cheated on before. He told me he understood and he wouldn’t do something like that to me. Just a bunch of empty words.”
“Well, Vamp has said for the last six weeks or more that he is tired of empty pussy. Time for another chance?” Mallory asked, hopefully.
I drained my almost empty wine glass and then said, “Yeah, he said something to that effect but it’s just too late. Jackie, mind if I refill this? Anyone want another?”
Natasha requested another beer. After filling my glass three-quarters of the way full, I returned the white wine to the fridge and grabbed a bottle of beer for her. As the fridge door closed, a stocky man with dark hair framing his face walked into the kitchen. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. A look crossed his face, as though he thought I was familiar, too.
I returned to my stool at the island and saw a look on Jackie’s face that I had seen many a time before. Those guy-friends of mine who had to focus on their girls in college? When those girls met me, the look on their face was the same look Jackie was wearing. The expression communicated trepidation, caution, and a little bit of proverbial hackles rising. Great. Whether I knew this guy or not, I could be certain that Jackie was done with me.
The man came closer to the island, and even though he gave me a sideways glance, he still greeted Jackie with an ardent, open-mouthed kiss that lasted almost a minute. When they broke, Mallory looked slightly uncomfortable, and Natasha had a dreamy look on her face.
The man, who I had to presume was Volt, looked at Natasha and Mallory, “Ladies. Nice to see you again. Jackie, you gonna introduce me to our newest guest?”
Jackie looked at me, and I could see she was trying to wipe the cautious expression from her face when she said, “This is Frankie Ingram. She’s –”
Volt turned fully to me and cut Jackie off to say, “Lo-lo? Is that you?”
I felt my eyebrows lower and I looked at Volt askance. Only people from my hometown in Tifton, Georgia would call me that; specifically, only two people would have done that, and one of them had died.
Tentatively and softly, I asked, “Henry?”
I heard Jackie pull in a surprised breath, and saw Mallory and Natasha whip their heads between me and Volt.
He nodded and swiftly moved around the island to me, and gripped me in a tight hug.
He looked down at me, smiling. “Christ, it’s good to see you again!”
I could have been pushed over with a feather, I was so shocked. Even seeing Henry Adler, or Volt, it reminded me of the epic break up with Vamp. He was the first person I saw after catching Vamp in the act of his threesome, but I didn’t know Volt was his road name. In my all-fire hurry to get as far away from the Riot MC as I could, I ran bodily into my childhood neighbor. After I gave him a hasty explanation about why I was thoroughly freaked-out, I gave him my bellybutton ring. I did that because it was how Cary and I had met, and I was determined not to have any more reminders of him. I had told Henry to give it to someone special. He had tried to refuse because he was only passing through; he said he was a member of the club, but not a member of the Jacksonville chapter.
I distinctly remembered that part of our conversation, so, to clear up my confusion, I asked, “I thought you had no ties to the Jacksonville chapter. You said you were…what is that word that starts with an ‘n’?”
Mallory muttered, “Neanderthal?”
I glared at her, and said, “No. No. Ah, ‘nomad’! I thought you were going wherever the wind took you?”
Volt smiled at me almost apologetically. “You were the first person I saw here and it was at my club’s compound. I took it as a sign, even if you were in a really bad place when you ran into me. Things went down a couple of years later and I became President.”
That did not surprise me. Volt, though I still saw him as Henry, hung with the rough smoker stoner set in high school. My mother made sure I knew that about him. She did not approve of him, but I didn’t care. When I’d see him in the neighborhood on my way to the bus stop, even though he was much older, I was still friendly to him. While my mother warned me about his friends being bad influences, I also knew that Henry was smart as all hell. I hung with his little sister, Dolly. She was the one who dubbed me Lo-lo. We’d play games at Dolly’s house, and Henry would play against us. His ability to strategize was scary even back then. He often said he thought of me as another little sister.
It was Henry who found me licking my wounds the day after prom. I was hiding at the gulch in the woods by our neighborhood. The gulch was where I went anytime I needed to get away from my mother. I had come home from prom in utter tears, and she was consoling, and got me off to bed. The next morning though, she had the audacity to gloat about it, reveling in being right instead of soothing my wounded pride and heart. I hadn’t been able to tell which hurt more, the heartache or having a mother who could be so self-absorbed. That debate had brought fresh sobs and that’s when I had heard Henry come through the thicket. He had been out of high school for quite a while by then, but when he heard my woeful tale, he still offered to beat Ben’s ass for me.
“That’s nice of you, but some lessons have to be learned the hard way,” I had said to him. If only I had known just how right my teenage self had been.
He had bulked up now, but living the biker lifestyle, it was necessary for survival. His wavy brown hair had also grown out considerably in the past six years and I had never imagined he’d wear his hair long.
Henry looked at me and said, “Wait. You’re the Lorraine-slash-Frankie we’ve been helping? Shit. I had no fucking clue you had anything to do with Vamp. What the hell? He’s the reason you left the compound six years ago, isn’t he?”
“Yes,” I said. Noticing the anger in his brown eyes, I continued, “But it’s water under the bridge. Let it go, ok?”
His lips pressed together under his full mustache, but he nodded.
Then his eyes almost smiled, though his lips did not, when he said, “Now I know why he’s beatin’ himself up so bad, though. He damn sure should be. Lettin’ you get away was a colossal fuck-up, Lo-Lo.”
I shrugged, “We all fuck up in our twenties, I guess. Some just more than others.”
Henry shook his head at me, and went to the fridge. He pulled a beer out. He came back to Jackie, slung an arm around her shoulders, “I’m gonna watch TV. Leave you girls to your drinks.”
When he left us, there was an awkward silence in the room. The world was definitely small, but I wasn’t feeling all warm and fuzzy about it the way the people at Disney World did. I focused on my glass of wine, and took a large sip.
Natasha, who was sitting next to me, nudged my shoulder with her shoulder and asked, “So, was Vamp pierced, way back when? Like, when you two were together?”
I almost snorted white wine through my nose, but I managed to nod.
After a few moments, Jackie hesitantly asked, “So, what does the piercing feel like? In your channel, you know?”
I giggled, “I don’t know if you sound like a gynecologist or a trashy romance writer!”
Mallory mumbled, “They’re not trashy.”
Natasha and I laughed.
Undeterred, Jackie said, “I wonder if Volt would—”
Before she could finish her thought, a male voice rumbled, “Nope,” then Volt sauntered into the kitchen stopping behind Jackie. “The answer is definitely no.”
“Henry, you don’t even know what we’re talkin’ about,” I said with a smile and a slight head-tilt.
I noticed Natasha turn her head like she was looking for something, and then she glowered at me, “I wish you’d stop callin’ him Henry. Every time you do, I think there’s someone else in the room I haven’t met.”
Volt shook his head at us. “Lo-lo and I go back a long way. She can call me whatever she wants,” then, with a stern gaze at me, “And I do know what y’all are talkin’ about. You women are worse than men
. Minds in the damn gutter all the time.”
Jackie gave him a flirty smirk. “That’s not true, baby. Besides, why say ‘no’ if it means you’d get some on the regular?”
“Jacqueline, I already get it on the regular from you. You want to feel something different, you get your clit pierced.”
All of us gave a slight shiver, and then Mallory piped up, “New topic. Definitely time for a new topic.”
“I second that,” I said.
Then we all sat staring at one another for at least a minute and a half, and Mallory cried, “Crickets? Seriously, we got nothin’? Maybe he’s right.”
Then we all burst out laughing.
*** ***
Jackie was giving me the “other woman” look again. We hadn’t even discussed the fact that Stillman’s sister-in-law had paid me a visit today, but that look had me feeling extremely uncomfortable. I quickly blurted, “Well, this has been great, but I gotta run.”
Natasha and Mallory both protested, but Jackie said, “If it’s because of me, then don’t go.”
Leave it to a biker’s old lady to lay it all out. I almost felt awkward, but said, “I’ve seen that look before. I think it would be better if I –”
“You’re not a threat to me,” Jackie interrupted me.
I gave her an angled nod, “Well, you’re the first woman of a guy-friend of mine to recognize that.”
She lifted her chin slightly, but said, “However, you have a piece of him, I’ll never have.”
That was an insightful new take on things. Maybe that was the reason those other women were jealous of me, but I didn’t think what Jackie said was true.
“I don’t think so. You’ve got that piece of him too, and if anything you’ve got the better piece of his past. He and I share a loss…”
Jackie sighed, “His sister, Dolly.”
I nodded. “Yeah, she’s the one who dubbed me ‘Lo-lo.’ Drove my mother up the fucking wall, which made both of us love it and use it that much more. The way Dolly died…well, I know it’s the primary catalyst that sent Henry to seek out an outlaw MC instead of just a run-of-the-mill riding club. So, don’t think you don’t have every piece of him. You have him in all of his glory.”
