by Drew Elyse
After a few minutes, she emerged from the bathroom. Drops of water clung to her exposed skin above and below the towel, catching the light as she moved. Her hair was wet and messy from her drying it off. Moving to the dresser, I pulled out a shirt for her to borrow and held it out to her without a word.
“Thank you,” she offered, turning away from me to pull it on. I might have demanded she not turn away, but seeing her bare from the back, her ass that I hadn’t had the chance to mark properly, did just as much for me as her facing me would have.
Ember went right to the bed, climbing in on the left side. It was farther from the door, and I was glad. If she’d chosen the other side, I would have made her move. She watched me, her eyes tired but expectant.
“Get some rest,” I told her as I left the room. I didn’t wait to see the expectation die. I knew it would and that was enough.
For hours, I kept myself planted on the couch, that same book I wasn’t reading in my hand. Fuck, even as I set it down and finally gave in to joining her in my bed, I couldn’t say what book it was. I lay down on my side of the bed, careful not to disturb her or settle too close.
I didn’t sleep. Not just because I couldn’t, but because she didn’t need the shit scared out of her when the nightmares woke me. So, I was awake when hers woke her. She didn’t scream, didn’t thrash about. She just shot up to sitting on a gasp. It took her a while to calm her breathing and lay back down.
All the while, I pretended to be fast asleep.
The knock came at my door not long after I got back to the clubhouse. Jager had kept his word, taking me back to the gym for my car first thing and I came right back because, honestly, it wasn’t like I was going anywhere on a Saturday morning in a hot dress and heels. I didn’t need to be the walk of shame girl at the coffee place. I only had time to change into a pair of comfortable shorts and a tank before the knock.
“Come in,” I called, figuring it was Dad.
I was right, and his face spoke volumes.
“Hey, Daddy-o,” I said, trying to diffuse the tension.
“Figure you know I know,” he replied.
He was right, of course, so I didn’t respond.
“Not gonna give you a lecture or any shit like that. You’re a grown ass woman and I trust you. This is somethin’ you wanna do, not gonna be me to stop you.”
None of this was said harshly. Dad wasn’t pissed. He was just laying it out like it was, something we’d agreed to do with each other a long time ago. I loved that we had that, even if it made for awkward moments like this.
“Just need to say my piece,” he went on. “Jager’s my brother. Not gonna bad mouth him. I trust him, ‘bout as much as I trust you. And I’d trust him with your life, just like I would any of the brothers. What I can’t say I trust him with—what I want you to be cautious of trusting him with—is your heart.”
He was right. I knew that, so I set him at ease.
“I know this isn’t that. It’s not heart and flowers and forevers. I’m good,” I told him.
He looked me over, that penetrating Dad look where he tried to see right into my head and read me. When it left without turning to concern, I knew he’d let it go.
“Alright, then we got other shit to sort,” he changed the subject.
“Like?”
“Your shit. You got some new clothes, but that doesn’t mean you should just leave everything in your old place.”
Right. Of course. But…
“I don’t know if I can go back there and pack,” I told him.
“I know, Ber-bear,” he said quietly. “Got a couple of the guys together. Daz, Ham, Tank. Gonna go up there, move all your shit out.”
I thought about the brothers having to pack up all my stuff. Then, I thought about Daz taking charge of packing my underwear drawer. The horror of that thought must have showed on my face.
“Not going through everything,” Dad assured me. “It’s in the dresser, your nightstands, whatever, it goes on the truck in them.”
Well, that was a little better. I hadn’t even thought about the unmentionables in my nightstand.
“Okay.”
“Gonna head up there today, might crash there tonight, then be back tomorrow with your stuff. Still got your room at my place. We’ll move your things in, store the stuff we can’t,” he explained. “You stay however long you want. Fuck, you stay forever if you wanna. But, if you get a place, you’ll still have everything to do it up.”
Part of me, the child who had always wanted it, was ready to jump for joy at the idea of living with Dad. Even if it was only temporary. I loved him, but there was no way I was moving in forever.
“Okay.”
“Headin’ out,” he said. “Gotta get the truck and grab Tank. He’s gonna drive it back down so I can get your ride.”
He’d thought of everything. Damn. I was so lucky.
I went to him and wrapped him up in a hug. “Thanks for taking care of all this.”
“Anything for my girl,” he said with a kiss on my head.
He meant that, completely. Anything for me. He’d proven it time and again.
God, I loved my Dad.
When he was gone, I sat on the bed. I meant what I’d told Dad. I knew what this thing between Jager and I was and what it wasn’t. I had no delusions it was something big that was going to last.
Still, it was hard not to feel the enormity of what we’d shared. To him, it may not have felt like it—I couldn’t be sure. He was probably used to the intensity, but I wasn’t.
Yet, he hadn’t acted like it was just run-of-the-mill for him. Those eyes, the active ones I saw for the first time while he had me tied, didn’t lie. Even as I lost control, I saw something in them that reassured me he at least understood the gravity of what I’d given him. It was reverence. Not avowals of love, let’s-spend-the-rest-of-our-lives-together reverent devotion, but reverence all the same.
It was that that convinced me. Even if things between Jager and I were never going beyond what they already were, I was absolutely not ending it any time soon.
The next afternoon, I was sitting in the forecourt of the clubhouse, waiting. Dad had called saying they’d be back any time. The guys were headed right to his place with the truck to start unloading, but he was swinging by to get me.
Behind me, the front door opened. Ace and Jager strode through it. Jager gave me a look, a heated, heavy look I felt run through me, but he didn’t approach. Ace came right over.
“What’re you doing out here?” he asked.
“Waiting. Dad’s going to be here in a minute with my baby,” I explained.
I saw his confusion, but was focused on Jager, who kept moving toward his bike. He hadn’t acknowledged that he was in the conversation, didn’t look my way again, but his body noticeably tightened.
“Your baby?” Ace repeated.
“Mmmhmmm.”
“Fuck. Are we talking about one of those little yappy dogs or some ridiculous shit like that? Didn’t pin you for the type.”
“Me? A yappy dog person?” I shot back. “Yeah, no.”
“Thank god.”
Then, I heard her. That sweet purr coming closer just as she came into view.
“Fuck,” Ace muttered. “That your baby?”
“Yep,” I replied.
“A nineteen thirty-two Roadster?” he asked, like he couldn’t see it right there.
“Yep,” I said again, putting an extra bit of pop in the P.
“Fuck,” he repeated.
I left him there, heading out into the drive more so Dad pulled up right in front of me, but I sensed Ace moving behind me. I also sensed Jager’s eyes tracking me.
Dad stepped out of the driver’s seat. “Beauty drives like a dream,” he said by way of greeting.
“Well, she was restored by the best,” I answered.
I grew up around cars. Dad loved his bike, always had. He loved the freedom of it. There was something amazing about the open air. Still, tha
t didn’t make him any less of a car man. He loved anything with an engine. He had the name Roadrunner for a reason, after all. It was because of his perfect condition 1972 Plymouth Roadrunner. “The bird”, as he called it. It was his baby. If I didn’t know he loved me, I might have gotten a complex over the way he loved that car. Instead, I got a love of cars instilled in me by my motorhead father.
When I was twenty-one, he surprised me with the fully restored hot rod for my birthday. That was the day it became my baby and I’d been treating it as such ever since.
“Did you treat her good on the drive?” I pestered him.
“You givin’ your old man shit after he just hauled his ass up to Seattle and moved all your stuff?” he grouched.
“Absolutely. Now, did you treat my baby the way she deserves?” I sassed.
Dad gave me an indulgent grin. “Opened her up on the highway, let that engine do what it’s designed for instead of that cooped-up city driving you’ve stuck her with.”
“Whatever,” I groused. “Give me my damn keys.”
He tossed them my way. “Gonna grab my bike, meet you at the house.”
“Alright, Daddy-o,” I replied, getting behind the wheel.
I started my girl up, loving that purr just as much as always. Then, because I couldn’t help it, my eyes moved across the forecourt to Jager. His eyes were already on me and there was a look to them that told me I’d be feeling whatever he was thinking about me and my car soon. It took all I had to ignore the shiver that went through me as I focused on maneuvering my car out onto the road.
When I pulled up to Dad’s place, the guys already had the moving truck pulled into the drive and were unloading boxes. Dad had an almost shockingly suburban abode. A two-story colonial on an acre and a half plot. It wasn’t the sort of block where the houses were all so similar you could easily pull up to the wrong one, but they were all similar. Small family homes in a decent neighborhood; a decent place to raise kids as long as there weren’t too many for the size of the houses.
Dad had gotten it for me, for the occasion when I came to stay with him. Unfortunately, in what I now knew was my mother’s attempt to keep me from the club, that had happened less than I would have liked. He always came up to Olympia to see me, and now, for the first time, we were going to get some decent father-daughter time in the house where he’d always planned to share that with me.
I wasn’t choking up a little bit. Nope, not me.
Dad pulled up on his Harley right after me. We walked up to the truck together to take a look at all my stuff inside. He put his arm around me as I pondered how crazy it was that my whole life was right there in that truck. It hadn’t even taken the guys long to load it all up and bring it down to Hoffman.
“Gotta head inside, Ber-bear,” Dad said. “I’ve still got the bedroom set you replaced the kiddie stuff with a few years back in your room. We brought all your stuff down, but I figured you might want a change. Whether that’s your furniture with new sheets and shit, the stuff that’s in there, or you wanna go out and get everything all new. We can do whatever you want, just gotta know.”
A change. I knew exactly what he meant. It might not be my bedroom in my apartment, but if I filled the room here with all the same things, it might feel like it. It might trigger me. I thought about waking up from the nightmares and seeing the curtains, the bedding, the dresser. I remembered waking during the real thing and seeing those things.
He was right, I needed a change.
We went inside together and I felt some of the anxiety that had started rising with those thoughts ease. I might not have gotten to live with Dad, but that didn’t mean I wasn’t with him. There were pictures all over—of me, of us—like a timeline of my life. In the living room, on the mantle over the fireplace, you could see baby me the day I was born, elementary school me missing teeth, my high school senior picture, graduation days from high school and college. Then, right in the center, a picture Doc had taken. It was on my twenty-first birthday, right when Dad surprised me with my hot rod. I’d thrown myself at him and Doc snapped the photo just after I hit. Dad’s arms wrapped around me, my smile huge and eyes closed as I hugged him, my baby gleaming in the background. I had the same picture framed. It was sitting in one of the boxes on the truck outside.
Dad noticed my eyes on the picture and smiled. “Love that picture,” he rumbled.
Yeah, I did too. It was us, plain and simple.
It was then, seeing that, I decided the furniture upstairs—furniture I’d picked even if it had been a few years now—would be perfect. I didn’t need to recreate my apartment in Seattle. It had just been a place to live.
Right then, I was home.
I walked into the clubhouse yard and drew to an immediate stop when Emmy darted across my path, giggling as always. Right on her tail was the only one here with enough energy to keep up with her, Daz.
“I’ll get you, little princess!” he cried.
“No, Uncle Daz!” she shrieked back. I hadn’t noticed until then that she’d managed to say “Uncle” correctly. Ash had been trying for as long as any of us had known Emmy to get her to stop saying “Untle”.
Now that she fixed it, I had to admit, the old way was kind of cute.
“Hi,” I heard from beside me and saw the older Davies woman sidle up.
“Hey,” I replied to Ash.
“So,” she went right on, “where’s Ember?”
“How should I know?”
She looked innocent, but it wasn’t some showy, wide-eyed, porn-acting look. It was just her keeping her expression clear. She shrugged. “You two seem…close.”
There were a lot of ways to define close. Ember and I might have been a fuck of a lot of one of them, but we weren’t any of the rest.
“No.”
“Huh.” I didn’t know whether Ash was playing a game or just using this as a way to continue her mission to get close to me. She’d been at it for a while, always seeking me out when the opportunity arose, like right then when the club was hosting a party. Those opportunities weren’t exactly few and far between, and she always took them.
“She seems really sweet,” Ash went on. “It makes it even more horrible, what she went through.”
She wasn’t wrong. That shit was always fucked, knowing it happened to Ember made me fucking homicidal.
In a softer, deeper voice, Ash said, “I don’t think she’s dealing with it.”
She saw the breakdown that afternoon in the clubhouse plain as I did. She saw Ember around with the brothers acting like everything was normal. She hadn’t seen Ember wake from a nightmare, something I knew was a common occurrence from the way she reacted. It was clear she didn’t need to to suspect the truth. I was pretty fucking certain Ember wasn’t dealing with any of it.
I expected the next thing out of Ash’s mouth to be a suggestion that I try to help Ember, like I’d helped her, but that was not going to fucking happen. I’d laid that shit out for Ash—as much as I ever had, anyway—because I wasn’t sure anyone else was going to be able to help her. Not to mention, Ash had already been very spoken for. I could have unloaded all that shit, given her every fucking part of my messed up past and dropped to my knees to beg her to be mine, and it wouldn’t have mattered. Ember’s situation was different, and there were a fuckload of people around ready to do what they could. To add to that, our situation was different. I kept on fucking her and burdened her with all that shit, she’d get ideas she had no business getting.
I wasn’t in the market for an old lady. Not now, not ever.
Ash didn’t preach to me about helping her. No, the next thing from her mouth was, “Oh, wow.”
My eyes followed her line of sight, landing on Roadrunner, who had just come around the side of the clubhouse. He wasn’t alone.
Fuck.
Good fucking God, Ember was trying to fucking kill me. First with her excitement over that goddamn car of hers. I’d never cared for the bimbos they put in bike and car magazines
, sprawled out half-naked and oiled up on whatever vehicle they were spotlighting. If I wanted that kind of thing, I’d get porn. It had always been about looking past them to whatever actually had my interest. Watching Ember, not even done up a bit compared to those women, leaning all around that hotrod of hers to give it a look, I found I really fucking understood. Ember and that beauty were the shit teenage wet dreams were made of. I thought the hard on she gave me right then would never fucking deflate.
I wasn’t even going to start in on that tight ass dress she wore to the fight.
With both those and the images burned in my brain of her tied up and creaming for me, I thought I’d gotten a good sense of how crazy the woman could make me.
I hadn’t even scratched the surface.
It seemed, being stuck with just the Hoffman mall to get herself stocked, she’d had to settle. Now, with Roadrunner and the guys getting Ember’s shit from Seattle, she was able to give it all. And that all was a fuck of a lot more.
She strutted into the yard on a pair of red heels I was damn sure she’d be wearing with nothing else. I’d work her until her skin was as bright as the fucking things before I fucked her in them. That was how fucking hot she looked. I was ready to lose it over the fucking shoes alone.
The rest of her…there were no words. She looked like the hottest fucking pin-up ever. If they’d been able to photograph her and stick her on the postcards they sent to the boys during the world wars, morale would have been at an all-time high. Fuck, you put her on postcards now, you’d have guys enlisting just to get a copy.
She had on a pair of short shorts that went up to her waist. I couldn’t see her ass, but the way they fit her like a glove everywhere else told me that view would be spectacular. On top, she had a red and white striped halter shirt. It looked like a sailor get up, and if I had to get on a fucking boat to get it off her, I would. Her blonde hair was all pinned up away from her neck, her bangs rolled, and she had a red bandana tied around her head. Even from across the yard, I could see her lips were painted red to match the rest. I loved red lips. Red lips made a fucking mess and they looked great with a black ball gag.
