The Restart and the Remedy (Aces High MC - Dakotas Book 3)

by Christine Michelle

  “I have my degree and just need to take the exam for licensure,” I explained.

  “Good, in the meantime you can work for the club here. Study, do your testing, and then maybe Doc can get you in with one of the local doc shops or the hospital in Spearfish.”

  I had told her it sounded like a plan then, and that had been two weeks ago. Now, I was in South Dakota, right in the middle of shit that I swore I’d never be around again, another damn biker club. I knew Cherry had become an old lady to one of the guys, and she swore to me that these guys were not like the brotherhood I’d left behind back home. From what she said, her man, along with the rest of them, looked out for women. Supposedly, they treated them all like something precious. Sure, they had club girls here too that they referred to as BRATs, though I didn’t know what the acronym meant or even if it was one, but they were for the single guys to use. According to Cherry, no one looked too kindly on those who struggled with infidelity. If you can’t be loyal to one aspect of your life, it makes it kind of hard to believe that you’ll be that way in the rest of it, or some such. So far, it all appeared to be true, but I knew better than most that looks could be deceiving.

  I’d just have to see, because this was the spot I’d landed. Running had been my only option out of that life. I’d left there in so much pain, but just a few hours later I managed to put a plan together for my life. It took all of three days to pack up the only things I wanted to carry forward into the rest of my life with me. If it was connected to Michael or the club in any way, it got left behind. So, everything else was shoved into my Suburban. My job received notice of my departure, and luckily my boss understood the lack of notice when I told her about my boyfriend’s whore, her fake baby mamma situation, and how the news was delivered to me. I did not tell her about my own baby, because I couldn’t lose my shit again, and my emotions were pushing me over the edge too easily as of late.

  I got a new prepaid cell phone and used it to contact my mother who cried and begged to come see me. I shot her down and told her I needed time to forgive her too. She continued sobbing out an hysterical “I’m sorry,” every few minutes before I finally just had to hang up.

  I drained my savings accounts that no one but my mom knew I had. She’d helped me set them up when I was 16. She told me every woman, no matter how happy her life seemed, needed a rainy day fund that no one else knew about. I think she probably had been aware then that the love of my life was already cheating so he could “learn how to be a good lover” with the club whores. This was her way of preparing me for my real future since she couldn’t tell me about things that happened within the club. I thanked her, but also hated her for it. If she had just told me back before I’d given Michael my body, along with my heart and too many more years of my life, maybe I could have found someone who did deserve a woman like me.

  Together, Michael and I had almost six thousand dollars in our checking account. I drove to the bank on my way out of town and asked to have my name and access removed from the account. Some of that money was mine fair and square, especially considering my last pay check had been deposited there. I took none of it though. Had I taken any, it would have sent up a red flag letting the men know I was a flight risk. Instead, I simply emptied the accounts they didn’t know about and signed the paperwork necessary to get my name off of anything connecting me to Michael financially. Then I hopped back in my beast of a vehicle – my Suburban fondly nicknamed The Beast – and I drove north out of town. After I went roughly an hour out of my way in that direction, I finally headed east.

  Six hours of driving straight through the first day wore me out. I’m sure taking the final steps to sign away my old life helped with that a great deal too. I pulled into a hotel in some no-name town, paid cash, and slept like a log for 12 hours before waking, grabbing food, and getting back on the road. The following day, I spent 10 hours driving with a few bathroom and food stops along the way. I ignored the numerous times my cell rang. I ignored the beeps indicating I had texts too. Judging from the amount of them, my mom had shared my number with someone. Probably my dad, possibly Michael, and either one was a betrayal to the confidence I had asked her for.

  I continued to ignore the calls until the morning of the third day. After another night, in another no-name motel in the middle of nowhere, I picked up the phone and dialed my mom.

  “Oh my God! Where have you gone? The boys have looked everywhere,” my mom shouted in a panicked version of a greeting. “Your father is beside himself with worry and guilt. He knew you’d do something stupid.” On that note, I hung up. I was beginning to wonder if anyone who I once loved had ever been more than a stranger to me. My phone rang. It was not my mother so I answered calmly.

  “Hello?” I had no numbers programmed in so this was phone roulette I was playing. No telling if I’d get the bullet or a telemarketer.

  “Jesus!” I blew out a breath at the sound of his voice. “Don’t hang up, Myra,” my father stated quickly. “I need to know you’re okay.”

  “Do you? Mom was only worried about how much guilt you harbored about not having me watched. So are you concerned for my wellbeing or because your ego was bruised?”

  A heavy sigh blew through the speaker then. “I deserved that. I’m sorry your mom went off like that. She’s scared and gets defensive when she can’t control her fears. I really need to know you’re okay, baby girl,” he explained quickly.

  “You lost the right to call me that,” I huffed out. Before he could say more, I continued. “I am fine. I went away for a while to think. That’s all you need to know.”

  “You quit your job, took your name off the bank account, and cleaned out part of your apartment. No offense, but that doesn’t sound like a quick trip, kid.”

  “Honestly, I haven’t decided how long my trip will be.”

  “Michael says you didn’t take any money from your account, baby.”

  I laughed. Of course he checked. “Nope.”

  My father surprised me then. “Do you need any? I can wire it somewhere for you. Your mom says she set you up with a rainy day fund way back when, but she didn’t know if you still had it.”

  “I’m thinking she did that back when she found out Blaze was a cheating bastard. Pretty sure she was setting me up for the failure she already knew was coming, huh?”

  “Yeah, baby.” Him admitting that fact hurt my heart. They knew we were doomed and said not one damn word to me beyond helping me set up a fund in case I ever needed it to get away. It wounded me somewhere so deep I didn’t think there would ever be a fix for the damage they caused. They could have just told me so I could stop everything in its tracks way back when. I sighed.

  “I fucked up,” he admitted quietly. “Please, Myra, my only baby girl, please, let me help you fix this.”

  “I wish you had come and said those words to me months ago, hell, years ago. How could you let me stay tied to a man who didn’t love me?”

  “Because I knew he did love you, baby. And I could keep an eye on him.”

  “What good did that do, exactly? You knew and still did nothing to keep me from being hurt.”

  “I thought I had,” he told me adamantly. “I thought I was protecting your heart.”

  “No, you helped destroy it, Dad. Protecting it would have been you telling me all those years ago. It would have been you asking what flavor ice cream would get me through the breakup when I was sixteen. It should have been you putting a stop to a man disrespecting your daughter by cheating on her, and doing it so openly in front of your brothers. Hell, I was friendly toward the club girls back then, and I bet they are who he was learning from, right? That way no bitches from school could run their mouths to me to try to break us up. Lyssa used to be nice to me, but then there came a time she wouldn’t talk to me anymore or look me in the eye. I honestly thought it was because she was with you. You and mom were having problems then, so I thought it was about you.”

  My father sighed. “Yeah, it was Lyssa. Your mo
m and I… our problems then were about her not wanting to hide shit from you and me making a stupid choice. I thought if he got it out of his system, then that he’d never cheat on you once you started being intimate.”

  “How stupid was that?” I asked.

  “He never did, baby. I know he was faithful to you once you…” He cut himself off, not able to talk about the fact that I’d had sex apparently. “Not until that cunt took advantage of him,” he finally tacked on.

  “He told me,” I stated clearly. “He told me he woke up to her riding him, but that it felt so different, so good being bare, that he didn’t stop her.” My dad let out a string of profanities that could make a sailor blush.

  “That dumb fuck said that to you?” He asked incredulously.

  “Right before you all barged in on our happy little family breakfast. He sure as fuck did. So excuse me for pointing out the flaw in your logic. You made me an obligation to him because of my feelings. This is what it got us.” I sighed, looking around at the big bunch of nothing that had become my new scenery and I wanted to throw the phone and cry. I wished there was a way to fix what everyone had screwed up in my life. There wasn’t though. They’d each had their hand in a very specific kind of damage they’d done to my heart.

  “Here’s what I know,” I told my dad who had gone quiet on the other end. “Michael and I were best friends growing up because we were both club kids. Our moms wanted us together. They talked about it so much, I believed them. I believed he was my soul mate, my fate, my one and only.

  “Looking back, I remember how he used to watch other girls in school when he didn’t think I saw. He longed to be with someone else, but out of an obligation he thought he had to me, because of our moms, you, and the club, he stuck with me. He came up with a bullshit excuse to get laid early on and that should have clued you all in that I wasn’t what he wanted, but instead, you helped him hide it and continued pushing me as the main agenda. I blame him for not manning up and ending it. I blame you for perpetuating that problem for the both of us.”

  “I do love you. You’re right, about high school. You’re right I felt stuck, but then I realized what I had, babe.” Michael’s voice came over the phone and I realized I’d apparently been spilling my heart and thoughts to an audience. Nothing was sacred for me anymore. No one from my old life gave enough of a shit about me that they could give me the same privacy, loyalty, and respect that they gave to that man who betrayed me repeatedly. Fuck. My. Life.

  “Un-fuckin-believable!” I shouted into the phone. “Do the betrayals against me never stop? I’m F-I-N-E,” I spelled out for them. “I am not coming home. You all just sealed that fucking deal by allowing that fuckwad to listen to my conversation with you. Do not look for me. Do not attempt to contact me. If I cool down and decide any of you are ever worth my time again, I will be the one to make that contact.” I wasted no time after that as I turned the phone off, pulled the sim card and battery out, dumped them in the toilet of the gas station I ended up stopping at and then I dumped the phone too.

  The call, along the emotional meltdown that ensued, kept me from leaving at the time I’d planned. Instead of getting to Spearfish by mid-afternoon, I didn’t roll into that area of South Dakota until dark had already fallen and a man’s naked ass walking down the road distracted me long enough that I ended up with a mostly naked hitchhiker in my passenger seat. Welcome to South Dakota, and your new life, Myra Chase.

  Chapter 4 – Rabbit

  Present & Still Naked…

  The too beautiful for her own damn good woman, who had accidentally picked me up on the side of the road, was just about to tell me her name while also missing her turn into the bar. “You’re going to want to turn in here,” I told her, cutting her off before she could tell me who she was. She yanked the fuck out of the wheel sending the big ass SUV, and all its contents careening wildly into the parking lot of Renegade Rosy’s.

  “Shit, darlin’, you tryin’ to pick up where Jerry wished he’d left off?” I waggled my eyebrows at her in a kind of crazy, off-beat manner. It was the same gesture I’d always used on my parents to get out of trouble, and since it worked, my brother hated when he saw me use it. He wasn’t here to see though, and I wasn’t too sure it worked on everyone the way it had my mom and dad back in the day. Instead, the woman in the driver’s seat just glared in my general direction before finally coasting her vehicle to a safe stop.

  The huff she let out was my cue to get up and go. “Thanks for the ride, sweet cheeks,” I called out to her as I opened the door. Just before I closed it though, I caught sight of a man’s sized sweatshirt on the floorboard, and I snatched it up and wrapped it around my waist.”

  “Um, wouldn’t you rather turn that around the other way?” Little miss know-it-all called out to me.

  I glanced down at the fact that I’d tied the sweatshirt with the front part open and the back covered up. “Honey, if I’m going to advertise one end of me, it’s gonna be this one,” I told her, as I pointed down to my cock. “The back door is strictly off limits, so it gets covered.” I gave her a ‘duh’ look and then swaggered on out of hearing range as I made my way inside the bar and left her to contemplate my crazy.

  “Rabbit?” Flicker, one of our prospects for the club, was standing at the front door with a smirk cocked up across half his face. “Good night?” He asked as he looked past me to the woman I’d arrived with.

  “Spectacular night, Prospect. You workin’ or fuckin’ off?”

  He straightened as the smirk fell away from his face and his shoulders squared off. “Working,” he told me.

  I tipped my head back toward the Suburban I’d just arrived in. “Make sure you check her ID real well. I’m guessin’ she ain’t of age to be here.”

  Flicker’s eyes dropped down to the cock I still had on display before he shifted them to the vehicle I indicated. Then they moved back to me and sheer fucking anger radiated from his pores. “You fuckin’ around with underage chicks, now? I don’t care if I lose my position in the club. If that’s what the fuck y’all tolerate, I want no fuckin’ part of it.”

  “Well, how about that?” I hummed. “I was worried you didn’t have a set of balls until now.” I clapped him on the shoulder reassuringly. He shrugged the gesture off. “First, I meant underage for a bar, not for sex. Second, I never had sex with her anyway, or touched her at all. She gave me a ride here. That chick smells like desperation though, and I’m pretty sure she has a bun in the oven, so politely turn her away from any attempt to try to snag a job.” I winked at him, but didn’t miss the outraged harrumph that came from over my shoulder. I didn’t bother turning around. “She’s right behind me, isn’t she?”

  Flicker nodded as he folded his lips between his teeth and bit down to keep from laughing at me. “She can hear you too,” the woman called out with a whole truck load of sass added to those last few words for effect. I turned to face the irritated woman and then realized I had to look down and down some more. She was a short little shit. One glance back at the monster sport utility vehicle she’d been driving made me wonder how her tiny little feet even managed to hit the accelerator and brake. “Damn you’re small,” I commented.

  Her eyes swept up and down my body before landing back on mine. “And you’re nothing to write home about there, short stack, but I thought it might be rude to mention it.” She threw in a little wink before dismissing me altogether as she turned to Flicker. The asshole was laughing at me.

  “I’m not small. It’s fucking cold out here!” Damn it, I was going to get a complex if I didn’t get some clothes on soon. Shit, any more commentary about my dick’s stature and I’d have to trade my Harley in for a fucking jacked up truck with wheels bigger than my body. I shuddered thinking about the last jacked up truck that had fucked off from my life.

  “I’m supposed to meet Spinner here,” the tiny little spitfire informed Flicker.

  “I don’t think so,” I told her, cutting into her conversation once
again. “He know you’re in that condition?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” my brother said from somewhere just behind my shoulder. “What the fuck are you doing out here like that, Rabbit?” I turned to face him and grinned. Spinner rolled his eyes at me. “Jesus, man. Don’t let that bitch ruin your life. You never used to get into trouble like this before. What the hell would Mom and Dad think?”

  I shrugged my shoulders, pissed off that my brother would bring our dead parents into my issues. “Pretty sure they don’t get an opinion anymore.” I tipped my head toward the woman again. “You hiring pregnant dancers now?”

  “What’s it to you?” Spinner asked.

  “Last I checked, this place belongs to all of us,” I countered.

  “And last I checked, you never bothered to have a say about who the hell works in this establishment.” I narrowed my eyes at Spinner’s response. It wasn’t like him to be so hostile with me, even when I was fucking up.

  “Myra, Cherry’s waiting on you inside. Would you rather go unpack and get settled into the apartment or check things out first?” He didn’t bother waiting for my answer. Instead, he turned his glare back on his brother. “Actually, Rabbit can grab a set of clothes from the office and take over for me for a bit if you’d like me to escort you.”

  Myra, the short little bit of a woman who had picked me up on the side of the road, smiled brightly at my brother, and for some insane fucking reason, I found myself envious of that smile. It reached all the way to her eyes and was something I hadn’t seen in the time we’d driven here together.

  “Thanks, but I think I’ll just go in and say hello. Besides, I really need to pee. If you could show me to a bathroom, I’d appreciate it.”

  “Sure thing, come on, I’ll show you the way.” Spinner opened the door to Renegade Rosy’s and held it while Myra walked right in underneath his outstretched arm.