A Love So Hard (Aces High MC - Charleston Book 2)

by Christine Michelle

  “If you were so serious about her then why the hell would you go be with club whores and then do it where everyone could see?”

  I sighed. Is that what this had been about? “Those bitches didn’t even get into my pants the night she came to drop that bike off for Johnny,” I told him. Again, I didn’t need to, but for some strange reason I wanted his approval too. It all came back to her. I knew she would need for me to have it. She was a daddy’s girl, after all. “After she saw their attempts to seduce me I was never touched by another woman. Not once in all that time.” I let him see the seriousness I attempted to project with just my voice before I scrubbed my hands down my face feeling like a complete pussy for what I was about to admit. “I’m no fuckin’ angel. I went through my share of women especially when I got involved with the club at 17 and never looked back. For her, I wanted to wipe it all away. I couldn’t do that, so instead I was planning to offer her me as clean as I could get me. As untouched as I could manage considering my history. The least I could do was remain celibate as long as it would take to earn her trust and her heart,” I admitted.

  His eyebrows were screwed up tight making the wrinkles in his forehead and along the bridge of his nose more predominant. “You don’t have to lie to me, boy. I’ll still feel the same if you were enjoying all the free club pussy or not.”

  I just shook my head. “You don’t have to believe me. It’s not for you to believe. It’s what I wanted to do for her – even if she never knew. She deserved to get me at my best, my cleanest. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I went after her without giving at least that much.”

  The man shook his head and then let it hang loosely between his shoulders while he seemed to take great interest in his booted feet. “Should have known that little prick was making shit up.”

  “What’s that now?”

  He glanced up at me then. “It’s like history repeating itself, son. My wife was supposed to end up with the biker meant to be Prez of the club. She wasn’t supposed to settle for me.” His gaze drifted back to the house he worked his fingers to the bone to earn for that waste of a wife. “I don’t want that same push and pull for my little girl. Johnny’s already been staying at his parent’s house once that bitch told him my girl was coming home.”

  “Johnny doesn’t mean shit in this equation.”

  “The things Johnny told my girl about you are what sent her running, so I think you’re a fuckin’ idiot if you don’t think he matters in this.” He tipped his head at me. “My daughter doesn’t need to be saddled with a fuckin’ idiot who can’t handle his shit, and doesn’t know what his own brothers have done behind his back. She needs someone who won’t hesitate to find out the fuckin’ truth and fight for what they want.”

  “I couldn’t fight for back then, because she was underage still,” I reminded him, silently cataloguing the fact that Stiff and I were going to have a little chat later about what actually went down. If what Jack insinuated was true I was going to have a little fist to fist talk with my Prez too. Whether he wanted to claim her or not, Lucy was his biological daughter. If that prick had done something to run her off and Prez allowed him to become a brother anyway, I would take out those three plus years on his ass and not care one iota what his status as Prez meant to my actions.

  “What about the rest of those two years she was gone?” He moved to take a step off the curb, heading home.

  “I knew she was going after her degree. I wanted her to have that before I claimed her.” That stopped the man in his tracks and he looked back at me a little differently then. He tipped his head, far from a sign of approval. It was a sign of respect, a silent thank you. He knew I could have gone to claim her at any time. Now, he knew why I had waited. “I won’t be waiting any longer. Get your fill of having your daughter home, because I’m telling you now, I’m going to make her mine.”

  “You can try,” he stated coolly as he continued on to his house.

  I went back to the clubhouse that night and I pulled out the notebook I had been writing in. It was actually the fifth one, since I had already filled the first four. I had written a letter to Lucy for every day she had been gone. They were stashed in this old wood box I kept locked up in the top of my closet. Maybe, one day, I’d actually give her those letters. This one would be number 987, and I vowed it would be the last.

  Chapter 6

  (Lucy – age 20, Double-D – age 23)

  Sleep would not come to me easily. I couldn’t get the image of Double-D out of my head. He had been there, just down the street, watching as he used to do from time to time. He had spoken to my father who hadn’t said one word about it to me. It made me wonder if anything had changed. I was 20-years-old now, and it seemed my father was going to continue to play games where my love life was concerned. I knew he didn’t approve of the MC or Double-D, but after the things my parents had alluded to in their argument before I left I had to think that there was an ulterior motive I just wasn’t seeing.

  My brain went back and forth all night between questioning my family, their reasoning behind things, and Double-D himself. How did he even know I was back? The sound of a motorcycle pulling in next door sometime during the night answered that question. I had refused to speak to Johnny when he tried to say hello when I first got home. I had nothing to say to him just over three years ago when I left and I certainly had nothing to say to him now. He was no one to me. He was someone to the club though. I saw that he now wore the MC’s patch on his kutte. Apparently, they didn’t care if one of their brothers sold another one out. I cringed at the thought, because I hadn’t been woman enough back then to confront Double-D. Actually, that wasn’t entirely accurate. I just didn’t think I had a right to confront him so I hadn’t. Maybe if I had he would have known about Johnny. Even if what Johnny told me was true, I doubted seriously that Double-D would have taken too kindly to find out he’d been running his mouth about his personal business.

  My thoughts straying back to that scene with Johnny and more specifically with the one he’d described Double-D having with those girls sort of put a damper on my musings about whether he had come for me. I had dreamed of him coming to Florida and stealing me away so many times only to wake up disappointed and still living in my grandma’s little cottage house until I secretly moved into the assisted living facility with her. She needed help while I was at school too and I was worried with her living so close to the water that it would be an issue. I missed the cottage after we moved out of it, but I had a blast getting to meet all of my grandma’s new friends. They helped with the depression I’d fallen into for a while.

  Once, when I’d been feeling particularly down about things my grandma told me that if that boy ever came for me I’d know I was just as much on his mind as he was on mine. She also reminded me we were both young and needed to grow up first. It was odd, because I never pictured my grandma supporting me being with a biker. At least I hadn’t until I found the photo album she had hidden away. Apparently, my grandma Rose had once been involved with her own biker bad boy. I thought he looked a lot like my grandfather, but my mom never said anything about him being a biker. At least not to me. My grandfather had passed before I was born so I never got the chance to know him. Heck, I didn’t even know how he had died beyond the fact that it had supposedly been in an accident. It was then that I wondered exactly how many secrets my family kept from me. It also made me realize that my maternal family legacy was to know the biker bad boys, but never to have them. That was what made me lose even more hope in my situation, and the dream that the biker I wanted would come and whisk me away the moment I turned 18. Needless to say, my eighteenth birthday had been a major let down.

  It was already four in the morning when I gave up lying in my childhood twin bed. I wasn’t going to get any sleep so I figured I’d do something productive instead and start searching the paper for a job. In order to do that, I had to snatch it out of the paper boy’s hand before my dad could grab it to carry off with hi
m to the garage when he left. With that goal in mind I grabbed a paperback book that my grandma had loving referred to as a bodice ripper and went to sit outside on the porch to wait for the paper. I chuckled as I remembered my Grandma Rose explaining why they were called bodice rippers. She had not been afraid to talk to me about sexuality, what to expect when I finally found someone worthy of my virginity, or the fact that I didn’t have to wait for the men of this world to sow their wild oats while I clung to my innocence. “It’s a new age, Lucy-Lu. If you want to test drive that man before you agree to buy him outright, then you should. Hell, we do it with cars, why shouldn’t we be able to do it with people.”

  When I’d been scandalized by her words she just laughed at me. “Lucy, here’s a lesson that you’re mom will never teach you, even though she knows it well. Just like all women don’t have the same breast size, all men don’t have the same penis size. The same is true for vaginas. Each woman is just as different as each man and some fit each other better than others. You shouldn’t find out on your wedding night that you don’t fit the man you just made vows to. It’s a miserable existence, my sweet. Besides, I am of the belief that the person who fits you physically will also fit you in other ways. If the chemistry isn’t there, or the man doesn’t have the will or the ability to learn what pleases you, well honey, that man will be a dud in the sack.” She noted the blush on my cheeks and continued chuckling at my expense. “I know you’re embarrassed now, but you’ll thank me for that bit of advice later.”

  “What are you laughing at pretty girl?” The deep voice coming from over by the sidewalk startled me out of the memory. I glanced up and sure as sweet tea is the drink of the south, my heart stopped beating in my chest. After a couple missing ticks it finally kicked back in with a hammering thud. He was here. “You don’t have to tell me,” he finally said after I failed to answer the question.

  “Sorry,” I muttered as I hid the novel behind my back. “I was remembering something my grandma told me.”

  “What was that?”

  I felt the heat of my blush as it stole across my cheeks, down my neck, and settled into the cleavage that had grown much larger since the last time Double-D had laid eyes on me. “Um, just some things about life,” I hedged.

  He cocked his head to the side, as if thinking on my answer before he started moving closer up the path that led from the sidewalk to the porch. “What are you doing out here so early this morning?”

  “Trying to beat my father to the newspaper before he runs off with it.”

  His brows kicked up higher on his forehead in surprise. “That eager to read the news?”

  I smiled at him then. “No, I’m just that eager to get a look at the classified ads.”

  “What for?”

  “I need a job now that I’m back,” I admitted before turning my head slightly and throwing a glance over my shoulder at the house my parents lived in. “I can’t live here forever. My mother will drive me crazy.”

  Double-D laughed at that. “Of that, I have no doubt,” he agreed which made me wonder how he could possibly know.

  “I saw you yesterday,” I blurted out.

  “Did you now?” He had moved another couple steps closer, and it was obvious I hadn’t been the only one to fill out more in our time apart. Double-D was now even broader in the shoulder, though his waist still tapered down into a trim V-shape that dipped into slender hips that sat atop powerful thighs. I nodded my head. “Why didn’t you say hello?”

  “I would have, but I saw my dad walk up and start talking to you instead. What were you talking about?”

  “Did you ask him?” I shook my head, no. “Why not?”

  I sighed then. “I’m not sure he’d tell me the truth even if I did. I figured if I didn’t bother asking he couldn’t lie to me.” I noticed Double-D glancing over my shoulder and I turned in time to see the front door being edged back to a closed position. My stomach clenched. I didn’t want my father mad at me, but it had been the truth.

  “Do you mind if a sit a while?”

  “I don’t mind.”

  He took a seat next to me so that our knees almost touched as we faced each other, each with our back against one of the mini white pillars that my mom insisted had to be there to hold up the front porch even if they were just decorative and only a shadow of the image she was going for. My mother thought she deserved an old plantation home straight out of Gone With the Wind. She had definitely grown up in the wrong era, or married the wrong man, if that’s what she had been hoping for. My dad did well for himself as a mechanic running his own business, but at the end of the day that’s what he was – a mechanic – and mechanics didn’t own plantations. Slowly, I raked my eyes up from where I had been staring at our knees and the small space left between his denim clad ones and mine that were covered in flannel pajama bottoms still.

  “You look a lot better than the last time I saw you before you disappeared,” he finally broke the silence only to leave me momentarily speechless.

  “You mean just before you tore off in the opposite direction on your bike?” Yeah, it was a bit snippier than I would have liked, but it certainly didn’t earn me the response I thought I’d get from him. Instead of getting angry or frustrated Double-D grinned.

  “Were you hoping I would follow your dad when he took you home so I could find out why you were crying?”

  I said nothing, because that was exactly what my nearly 17-year-old self had been hoping for. He just grinned even bigger then before he spoke again. “I did end up back here that night. I watched you pack your dad’s truck and leave the next morning too,” he admitted.

  “I know.” I fidgeted with my fingers briefly before looking back up at him.

  “I didn’t know why you were going, but I figured your parents were sending you away because of me. I didn’t want to make it worse for you.”

  I was flabbergasted. “They didn’t send me away,” I told him.

  “What?”

  “I was given the choice to go help my grandma. I turned them down twice before, because I hadn’t wanted to uproot my life that close to graduating high school. At least not until,” I stopped myself then. He probably still didn’t know what had actually happened to send me away since he thought my parents had made me go.

  “Until what?” Those two words seemed to hold the weight of the world as he spoke them in a low growl. I couldn’t help my reaction. I glanced in the direction of Johnny’s parents house before I could stop myself. “What did Stiff do that day I saw you crying, sweetheart?”

  “Stiff?” I asked, not thinking about the fact that Johnny would have a road name by now.

  He tipped his head in the direction of Johnny’s bike that was still in his parents’ driveway. I huffed out a long breath and then looked him in the eye as I told him what had driven me away. He hopped up on his feet within seconds of me beginning to tell him what Johnny had said that day to set me off. “Double-D!” I whisper-hissed at him as he started heading to the other house. “Please!” The word came out as more of a moan, which stopped him in his tracks. He turned to see the worried look on my face and then came back to me. His hands wrapped around either side of my face possessively as he directed me to look him in the eye.

  “Lucy, what he told you were lies. No other woman had touched me since that day you were at the clubhouse dropping off his bike.”

  “But,” I started to say.

  “No. I mean it. No other woman got their hands on me after that day.”

  “I saw girls at that party,” I started, but he pushed a finger to my lip, sinking it into the pillow-like softness before he spoke again. “Bitches have attempted to paw at me, sweetheart. They have learned that I am off limits though.”

  “That you ARE off limits?” I asked hesitantly.

  He nodded. “Have been ever since I realized you were the woman I wanted on the back of my bike. Had you there once, sweetheart, been waiting to get you back on there ever since.”

  I
stood there stunned as he continued to cradle my face with his hands. “You mean to tell me you haven’t been with anyone since,” I couldn’t even bring myself to finish asking my question. “Even while I was gone?”

  “Even while you were gone. The only satisfaction I’ve seen has been self induced.” He seemed so sincere, but I honestly wasn’t sure whether I could believe him or not.

  “You can tell me the truth, you know. It’s not like we were ever really together.”

  “Lucy, I understand why you would doubt me, especially since you’ve seen how things go at the clubhouse sometimes and heard lies told about me, but sweetheart, I promise you the only woman I’ve been close to all this time is your memory while working my hand.”

  “Jesus,” I heard hissed out somewhere behind Double-D which set his shoulders to rigid once again as he slowly turned to see Johnny – Stiff – getting on his bike. “What a pussy,” he muttered to himself before starting up the machine and taking off with a one-finger salute.

  “I’m going to kill that little prick,” Double-D vowed.

  “He’s not worth it. He’s just mad that I wouldn’t talk to him when I got back and I’m out here with you.”

  Double-D laughed then. “Yeah, well, if he had been truly concerned about getting you on the back of his bike he wouldn’t have been acting out that story he came back to tell you. I saw him that night.” The man before me shook his head. “I wouldn’t have touched those bitches separately, let alone together, even if you hadn’t been in the picture for me. Knowing you were a possibility there was no way I was going there. He didn’t feel the same way. That’s why I had no qualms about going after you even though I knew he had a bigger claim since he’d known you forever.” He shook his head, disgust written all over his features. “When there’s a goddess on Earth before you, you don’t bow down to the peasants. You worship the goddess and hope she blesses you with even one moment of her time.”