Under Locke

by Zapata, Mariana

  I froze.

  “Sleep good?” the raspy voice asked against my ear. Warm breath wafted over all the skin within centimeters of it.

  The instinct to turn my head in his direction was right there, taunting me, calling for me, and that was a bad, bad thing. I couldn’t step backward because that would bring us flush together, but there wasn’t any space to step forward or to the side either.

  “Like your shampoo, babe.” More moist breath against me.

  Jesus, I needed to get it together.

  Luckily I was facing away from Dex, so I was able to keep my wide, alarmed eyes away from his view. “I did,” I answered his question a little weakly, ignoring his comment about my hair.

  He chuckled right up against me. His chest so close to mine I could feel the vibrations radiating from his laughter onto my skin. I wanted to scowl but instinct told me that something so simple would cause more unnecessary physical contact so I tried to pull my best imitation of a statue for longer.

  His nose grazed the skin right behind my ear. “Pour me a cup when you get a chance?” His voice still had that rough edge to it. Paired with the heat of his chest and the breath touching a spot that should be an erogenous zone—if it wasn’t already—he was making it so friggin’ hard to stay still.

  I was going to need to change my underwear if he didn’t step away in like a second.

  So I nodded with more enthusiasm than I needed. I mean, he usually served our coffee, but still. “Sure.”

  Then this guy moved the tip of his nose just a little higher, resting it right where skin met my hairline and took a deep, deep inhale. “Goddamn that's good.”

  New underwear. Oh crap, I was going to need new underwear. Stat.

  Dex didn’t move away. He took another inhale and if I wouldn’t have been floating around in the universe to keep from dissolving into a pool of melted ovaries, I would have noticed that his arms tightened around me.

  And I panicked.

  When I panic, I either laugh or say things I regret. In this case, it was the latter.

  “Is that Rocco guy still alive?”

  His chest started to shake with repressed laughter. “You serious?”

  "What do you mean am I serious?"

  Dex's chest kept shaking. "Babe, you watch too much TV," he snickered.

  I tipped my chin to the side so that I could look at him over my shoulder. Yep, he was definitely trying not to laugh but happened to be losing the battle. "What? I didn't see him leave."

  The head shake he gave me and little smirk on his face said that he thought I was crazy for making such a question. “Well? I don’t know what you guys were planning on doing to him. On TV they’d probably cut him up to pieces to make a lesson out of him.”

  And then he laughed. Loud. “What the fuck, babe? We’ve all been to county at one point or another except your bro. None of us wanna go back. Half the guys got kids they worry about. I already told you most of us aren’t into doin’ real shady shit anymore.”

  To be fair, he had told me most of those things before but I guess I hadn’t really believed him. Even Trip, who seemed like the friendliest guy, didn’t give off a friendly neighbor vibe. “Really?” I still asked him a little hesitantly.

  “Really. Most of the guys work at the auto parts store or Mayhem, couple of the others work with Lu, and the ones that don’t have nonstop shit on their records, work at other places. We’re watered down now.”

  “Oh.” Well, now I felt like a huge jackass. What business did I have stereotyping everyone? “So Rocco’s fine?”

  "He walked out on his own after we were done," he explained. "All we did was have a little talk with him."

  "Oh yeah?" I raised both my eyebrows in disbelief.

  Friggin’ Dex cracked a grin that seemed to crack my chest in half. "We might've told him he wouldn't be intact if we didn't get every single cent back he stole within a week but you know, that's all, babe."

  Ahh. Owed money. A story every motorcycle club that I knew of—a whopping two—were familiar with. Well, at least they were giving him a week. "Will you promise me something?"

  "Depends."

  "If he doesn't pay you guys back, don't do anything to his family," I whispered.

  The smile on his face transformed into a stony expression that made his jaw clench. Dex tilted his face downward, reminding me that our position was a terrible idea. Terrible because it made me want to close the distance between us. His forehead touched the edge of mine. "Baby, I won't let anythin' happen to you, you gotta know that." Warm breath wafted over my cheek. "Don't worry about it."

  "I know." It was the truth. My bones knew it. "But not everyone has a Sonny or a Dex to keep them safe, Charlie."

  He nodded slowly, his eyes understanding. "All right."

  Good gracious. Calm, sweet Dex was like a tranquilizer straight to my neck. I shared a little smile with him and dropped my gaze back down to the counter, knowing there was nothing left to tell him. "I wanted to go to the Y before work. Were you planning on going to the bar or should I drive myself?"

  I had no idea why I even bothered asking.

  His answer was always the same: "I'll take you."

  "Okay."

  “Finish your food, and then we’ll get going. Yeah?” he asked me from somewhere several feet away.

  “Sure.”

  Maybe he was onboard with me and the not-bringing-shit-up game. That would work. It would also work if neither one of us spoke to each other, period, to avoid dipping into an awkward conversation that I wasn't sure I was ready to have. Today or ever.

  The sound of my cell phone ringing from the living room had me bolting. No one called me. Ever. Ever. I knew who it was.

  I sprinted over the back of the coach like a track champion, reaching for my purse as if touching it would save the world. When the “unavailable” popped up on the screen, I shrieked and pressed the answer button with the strength of Hercules.

  I panted. “Will?”

  “Ris, it’s me,” my brother’s calm, baritone voice came over the receiver.

  A weight I shouldered so often I forgot it was there, levitated off of me. It was one thing to know that my brother was off on the other side of the world in a decently safe area, but it was an altogether different experience to box those worries up and try not to deal with them. It made the worries stew beneath my skin, beneath my heart, under all of the fibers and the tissues that protected me.

  “I was worried you were dead."

  Will laughed in his own reserved way. “Sorry I haven’t called in so long, but you know how it is.”

  I didn't though. Hearing the sound of his voice kind of made me a little bit mad since it'd been months from the last time I'd heard from him. Months! It wasn't like I emailed him daily, or asked for him to call me weekly, but the length of multiple months crossed the line—and it pissed me off.

  “How you been? How’s work? Austin okay?” my little brother asked quickly.

  My stomach churned in frustration. So he'd read my emails and just decided not to write me back?

  I had to hold back the shuddering sigh that had built up in my chest at the realization and calm down. "Pretty good. You got my emails I guess?”

  Will paused before making a grumbling noise in his throat. “I read them before I called. I figured I’d get all caught up so we wouldn’t waste time."

  Maybe I was just being too sensitive but his comment about wasting time scratched at me. Like writing me an email or talking to me for five minutes longer once every other month was a hassle. Like what Sonny was doing—taking time off from work and traveling around the country—wasn't a waste in its own way. I bit back the smart ass comment that floated into my vocal chords and tried to appreciate the fact that I had him on the phone finally.

  “Are you still staying with Sonny?”

  I needed to quit being a baby. “I was, but he had to take a little vacation so I'm staying with a friend until he comes back," I explained to him va
guely, suddenly not in the mood to really share with him more than I needed to. What was the point? Why had I been fighting Will growing up and moving on with his life, so much?

  Will knew even less about the Widows than I did. Growing up, it was as if he'd just cut our dad out of his memory and life. Existing without him, while I'd been the one stuck with the memories and the wishes.

  "Huh. I have leave coming up in a couple of months, are you gonna stay there?"

  Where the hell else would I go? "I'll be here."

  The awkward silence that followed left me feeling weird. Since when had talking to Will been a strain? Was this what Sonny and I sounded like when we talked on the phone? No way. Speaking of Sonny... "Hey, umm..." I really didn't want to tell him. A part of me genuinely didn't think he'd care but that was the difference between us again. Will liked Sonny enough but then again, did he even like me now? I didn't want to answer that.

  The point was, he deserved to know so that it wouldn't the same situation I found myself in with Sonny. "Dad had another kid." Shit. That wasn't exactly the way I wanted to blurt it out.

  The disheartened, uninterested "Oh," confirmed that my brother didn't give a crap. “That's... cool."

  Yeah, he didn't care. At all.

  When he immediately started talking again, I knew I'd messed up. I'd pushed too far. He'd done the same thing when we were younger and I thought he wanted to talk about Mom. Will would bring up something else or suddenly remember that he needed to do something. "I need to go, Ris, but I promise I’ll call or email you as soon as I know when I’m going back to the States, and we’ll figure it out, all right?” he mumbled out the sentence so quickly it made him sound desperate.

  Maybe I wasn't the only chicken in the family. “Deal. Love you.”

  “Love you too. Be safe and we’ll talk soon,” Will said right before disconnecting the line.

  I sighed and pocketed my phone, immediately sensing Dex’s hulking presence behind me for the first time. His lips were a hard slash, eyes deceptively distant on me before he spoke. “Your brother?"

  "Yeah."

  There was so much about our phone conversation that bothered me. It wasn't that I wanted or needed to have a long conversation with my brother, but it'd been so long since the last time we'd spoken, getting rushed through a five minute conversation didn’t seem fair.

  Dex narrowed his eyes. "What's wrong?"

  "Nothing."

  He rolled his eyes. "What is it? Looks like somebody just told you Santa wasn’t real."

  Oh lord. The man who got pissed off about his property taxes going up wanted to make a statement by comparing us? Please. I snorted. "Nothing," I insisted.

  "Somethin's botherin' you. Tell me."

  Dex wasn't going to drop it so I groaned. "I haven't talked to him in months. I've emailed him at least a dozen times and he never responds." I rubbed a hand over my forehead. "I mean, I know he's not a kid. He's a grown man, he doesn't need me anymore. I guess I'm just being a girl and getting butt-hurt that he has a life without me."

  His nose wrinkled but he didn't comment on my rant.

  I took in a deep breath and shrugged, forcing a smile onto my face. "Anyway, let me know when you want to leave, okay?"

  ~ * ~ *

  If I thought for a second that I'd have the ability to think about something other than my conversations with my brothers and whatever was going on with Dex, I'd have been terribly wrong.

  I'd be in the middle of logging the number of hour sessions that one of the artists had done for the week and suddenly, I'd think of the action hero Dex had in his spare bedroom. Or I'd be sitting in the front, uploading pictures onto the shop's website when I'd hear Blake on the phone with his son and I'd start imagining what the little boy in Colorado looked like.

  My whole day went like that after the two hours I'd spent in the pool and the aerobics class at the YMCA I took.

  Dex, Dex, Sonny, Dex, Will, Brother, Dex, Dex.

  And then some more Dex.

  My gut told me that I was insane. That constantly thinking about him wasn't normal. Then again, what was normal about Dex?

  Nothing.

  The only good thing I could come up with was that he'd been giving me a decent amount of distance. That wasn't to say every time he walked past me or stood by the receptionist desk that he wouldn't send a heated look my way or put his hand somewhere on my body when he was close enough. Whether it was the back of my neck, my hip, or the small of my back, his hand was always there in some way or another.

  I didn't do a single thing to move away from him.

  My brain said “No!” Yet everything else in me screamed “Yes!” obnoxiously.

  Yeah, I was a friggin' mess. A mess that had no hope of getting sorted out properly. There was no point in me even trying to fight it or figure it out.

  I sighed and got up feeling defeated, to see if Slim and Blue needed anything. I'd been putting off eating something for at least an hour but my stomach had started grumbling so much I figured it was time to quit procrastinating. "I'm going next door before they close, you guys want anything?"

  They both shook their heads. Slim had been messing around on his tablet and the last time I'd seen Blue, she was working on a tattoo for her next customer. Even at seven at night, it was way too hot. Definitely too warm for the sweater I'd pulled on before riding to Pins on the back of Dex's bike.

  I ordered a Mediterranean wrap from the deli and tried my best not to think about what Sonny had told me. Another brother. Well, shit. A little one at that. I didn't even want to consider what other kind of mess my dad was in that he'd be hiding. What had started as a headache didn't need to become a nightmare.

  Especially not if whoever he owed money to decided to come after someone who didn't have Sonny to watch out for them. Someone like my new little brother.

  God.

  I was so entrenched in the idea of actually having another sibling that I didn't see the silhouette of a man leaning against the stonewashed wall until his heavy black boot hit the top of my thighs.

  "Doll," that rumbling low voice I'd only heard once before, greeted me.

  My body didn't react immediately to it. It took a second for me to accept what the voice meant.

  It meant my friggin' death if any of the Widows saw me.

  Shit!

  The brown bag I'd been holding with my wrap in it slipped out of my hand, and I'm sure my face went pale. "What are you doing here?" I squawked. Yes, squawked of all friggin' things. I didn't even know I was capable of making such an ugly noise but in the face of my potential death, nothing was impossible.

  Liam looked at me coolly, like he wasn't on the wrong side of town. "What do you think I'm doing here?" he asked, straightening up off the wall.

  God, he was a big guy.

  But that wasn't the point or the time to notice how broad he was. "Trying to get us both killed," I hissed at him, taking a step away.

  "Nah," he mumbled, eyeing me with way too much interest.

  I looked down both sides of the street to see if anyone I recognized was coming along. The only good thing about the Widows was that I'd hopefully be able to hear the loud roar of a bike before I saw it.

  I hoped.

  To God.

  And maybe even a few other deities.

  "Look, I'm sorry for going to bother you before but it won't happen again."

  Liam ran a hand over the closely cropped hair on his head. "I'm thinking it's okay if you come bother me again, doll."

  Oh, whatever. I had to fight back the urge to roll my eyes and cry bullshit. Something in the pit of my stomach said that this man didn't have the same kind of control—or it might have been fondness—that allowed me to talk crap to Dex and get away with it. For the most part at least.

  "Umm, yeah, I don't think that's a great idea." My smile was more creepy-awkward than convincing.

  Apparently, Liam either didn't pick up on it or didn't care because he kept going. "I'm also thinking
that you and me can work something out with your daddy's debt."

  Infinite amounts of the word shit flew through my brain in a long rant.

  I'd been stupid for going to the strip club on my own, but standing here, talking to the president of the Reapers MC when I had a temperamental Widow less than thirty feet away, was even dumber. Way dumber.