by Addison Jane
But now I understood why they did.
My mom was sad. She was depressed. She was angry. And spiteful. And vindictive.
But who the fuck puts that on a headstone?
She may have been all those things at one time in her life, but they didn’t define her life.
“She was a cheerleader when she was in high school,” I said out loud, not really sure why. “She had a dog called Bella. A little white one that slept on the end of her bed every night. She was the top in her art class. And she was a part of the choir because she loved to sing.”
She wasn’t always broken. She wasn’t always this shell of a woman who was forced into a life she never wanted. It wasn’t her fault she became the heartless and hateful woman that I knew, but the people in her life never gave her the option to be anything else.
“I loved you, even though you never kissed or hugged me. There were times I was angry, that I was frustrated you weren’t like other moms, but I never hated you. I just wanted something better, not just for me, for the both of us.” The words just came, and they came because my head was clear. And they came because I had someone beside me giving me the strength I needed to say them. “I want you to know I don’t blame you. I don’t blame you for the constant nightmares, or the way you challenged my perception of how to love. And I don’t blame you for leaving.”
There were times when I did.
There were days when I would get angry and accused her of being selfish. But why should I be her judge and jury? Why should I want her to force herself to be someone that she never wanted to be?
The sunlight twinkled off her stone and suddenly I felt this breeze sweep past us, flicking through my hair and nipping at my bare skin.
“This is Dakota,” I managed to finally say, despite the way my mouth and throat had dried up. “If there was one thing you taught me, it was that we shouldn’t let people try and force us into a box. And Dakota is the first one to refuse to get into any kind of box, but I love her anyway, even though she’s weird and awkward, and she has bad breath in the mornings.”
There was a thump to my stomach, knocking the air out of me for a second before I looked to the side with a smile to find her glaring at me.
I could practically count down the seconds though, to when she realized what I’d said.
“Rip,” she whispered, her eyes turning glassy.
I looked directly into her eyes, but I spoke to my mom. “Dakota heard my pain. She saw my demons. She didn’t try to fix it. She didn’t try to tell me it was wrong. She accepted it as a piece of me. A broke piece but a piece nonetheless.” Don’t you dare fucking cry. “And I wanted you to meet her so that you knew. Maybe you care, maybe you don’t. But this was for me.”
Dakota wrapped her arms around my waist and laid her head against my chest. “Do you want to sit for a bit?”
I looked down at her. “You okay with that?”
She nodded, and we both sat down on the dead-looking grass. “What other stuff was your mom good at?” she asked, making me laugh.
“Grilled cheese. Sarcastic comments. Making my dad feel like he was losing his mind.”
It wasn’t much. But it was something.
We sat there for over an hour. It was weird for that to feel so normal, and I hoped it became something that was.
“You ready?” Dakota asked as we stood up.
I nodded. “Yeah, you go on ahead, I’ll be there in a second.”
She just smiled and nodded before skipping back toward the bike. I dug down into my pocket and pulled out the tiny piece of wood that I’d had for years, but that I’d never really been sure what to do with. It was one of the first things I carved.
It wasn’t very good, but I never really thought about changing it. I placed it on the stone, the small wooden heart balancing precariously on the top. The word ‘Mom’ was carved into the middle. The letters wonky and kind of hard to read.
“Bye, Mom,” I whispered before turning and walking away.
Maybe I’d come back, maybe I’d try and make it a regular thing. Maybe she would hate that I was here, alive, happy, annoying the hell out of her spirit as well as when she was alive. But I guess I’d never really know.
Or care.
Whatever happened back then, it hurt, it stung, but it had shaped the person who I was today. So, if it took that pain and that heartache to get me here—I wasn’t angry. Because the guy who I was today had family, friends, brothers.
And I had Dakota.
My ride or fucking die.
Definitively.
Inexplicably.
Irrevocably.
HUNTSMAN
If you’d told me a couple years back that I’d be celebrating the fact that my daughter was having a baby—with a member of another MC—I would have laughed in your fucking face.
Firstly, for the fact that I didn’t even know I had a daughter.
Secondly, because the idea of one of my children being with someone from another club was something they knew wasn’t done. But goddammit, if I couldn’t stop myself from smiling as I watched Meyah’s face light up, as her man picked her up off her feet and swung her around in a circle. That was how it should be.
The clubhouse was just getting started, shit was going to set off soon, and there were going to be far too many fucking sore heads tomorrow morning. Including mine.
I wasn’t ready to be grandad.
Or Grampa.
Or Pops.
I shuddered and shook my head.
A buzzing in my pocket drew me away from the celebrations, and I pulled out my cell as I headed to somewhere a little quieter. I opened the door to church and closed it behind me, the soundproofing instantly making the room silent. The number on my phone was listed as unknown, and I frowned at it for a couple of seconds before deciding to answer.
I put it to my ear. “Yeah?”
“Huntsman, Judge here.” My brows shot up in surprise. It had probably been close to ten years since I’d heard from Judge. He worked for the FBI, mostly doing undercover shit. He barely ever stuck his head out of the ground.
“What’s up?”
“I have a favor to ask,” he answered, his tone serious and straightforward. “I’ve got a witness who’s been in protection for close to sixteen years. The offender was meant to be serving life. And low and behold if I don’t get a call from a friend in the penitentiary to say he’s being released next week.”
My fist clenched at my side.
That shit didn’t just happen.
“She can’t come to you?” I asked, knowing just how serious this could be if this asshole had people inside.
“Man, I’m so deep right now I can barely see the end of my nose. If I pull her here, there’s gonna be questions, ones that I can’t answer, ones that could destroy four years of fucking work.” I could practically see the worry on the old man’s face. Judge and I had known each other for a long time. We’d worked together on more than one occasion before we’d both decided to leave the army, and he joined the force while I went… well, the opposite route.
When I didn’t answer right away, he started to push harder, pulling on whatever fucking strings he could. “She’s got a girl with her, single mom, teenage daughter.”
Goddammit.
Something caught my eye through the glass of the door, and I looked out to see Meyah run past with a gun in her hand, heading out the back. I ripped the door open. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I barked, causing her to freeze and turn slowly toward me. I could hear Judge laughing on the end of the phone, but I ignored the asshole and narrowed my eyes on my daughter.
“Drake bet me a hundred dollars that I couldn’t shoot a penny from a hundred feet.” She held up her gun with a devious glint in her eye. She knew she fucking could. Drake knew she could too. He also knew that if he tried to give her or her old man any money to help with the kid, that they would turn it down.
She thought she was winning.
He thou
ght he was fucking winning.
Jesus Christ.
I shook my head and stepped back into the room and pulled the door shut. “Fine, I’ll do it.”
I heard him release a slow breath of air. Like he was relieved. I wasn’t sure what this case was to him, but it was obviously one which was important enough for him to ask me—the outlaw—for fucking help.
With Meyah having her own babies, I guess you could say doing this was a bit of Karma. If I wasn’t around and she was in trouble or needed help, I’d like to hope someone would say yes, and that they would do whatever was humanly possible to protect her.
“Good, she’ll be there tomorrow,” Judge laughed.
“Say fucking what now?”
“I heard you needed a new interior designer,” he answered casually. “Well, congrats, you just hired one. I think you’ll like her. Her name is Zoey. Kid’s name is Blair.”
“Fucking fantastic,” I drawled, realizing that I’d just stepped into this one. He had no intention of ever letting me say no. “You’re a conniving bastard.”
“I learn from the best.”
Then the line was dead.
“Motherfucker,” I cursed under my breath.
Guess I better get prepared.
ZOEY
“Blair, move it,” I called from the front door of our little two-bedroom apartment.
My foot tapped impatiently on the tiled floor as I once again took another look at the time on my phone. I was going to be late. Nothing new there.
“Keep your pants on,” my teenage daughter screamed back at me, forcing me to take two deep, hopefully calming breaths.
The kid was the brightest light in my life, but she was also the sharpest pain in my ass. She was like a walking, talking lesson in karma.
A few seconds later, she came flying out of her room, her backpack hanging from one shoulder as she hopped around fighting to pull on one of her shoes. “I’m just letting it be known again…” she protested, slightly out of breath, “… I’m not happy about this.” She finally got the defiant shoe on and huffed out an exhausted breath.
“Noted, for the eighty-fourth time.”
She stuck her tongue out at me as she headed for the front door, and I returned the gesture—because I was fucking mature like that—before pulling it closed behind us.
“Why couldn’t I just go to the local public school?” Blair continued to groan as we pulled out of the apartment complex parking lot in my trusty Toyota. This car had gotten us across the country and back again on several occasions. I’d been waiting for years for her to break down, but she was hanging in there.
Blair yanked uncomfortably at the collar of her polo shirt, her nose screwed up in disgust. “You know… public school,” she continued in annoyance when I didn’t reply. “Where they don’t wear plaid skirts and collared shirts that make me feel like I’m being slowly decapitated.”
“Wow! Where’s your crown at, drama queen?” I snorted.
She patted her hand around on the top of her head. “Oh dammit, I must have left it back at the apartment with my get-me-the-hell-out-of-here wand.” I tried hard not to smile. “I have a feeling I’m gonna need that today, so can we go back and get it?”
“Sorry, your majesty. The carriage is almost at the kingdom,” I informed her in a snooty-tooty voice pointing to the large building up ahead.
“Fantastic.”
She felt like I was punishing her. And while I’d always fought tooth and nail to make sure Blair was happy, this was one of those times where I had to put my foot down and remind myself she would thank me later.
After six different public schools in three years, five of which were in neighborhoods where I was afraid she was going to get gunned down by gang bangers, I was finally at a point in my life where my business was thriving steadily, and I was able to afford to give her the education I didn’t get. Yes, we were still living in a tiny apartment, but the complex we were in had security, a pool, and it was nice. Right now, all my money was going into Blair’s schooling and advertising myself around the city.
We’d been here for just three weeks. I’d secured myself a pretty high-profile job doing the interior design for around twenty new apartments which were being built just a few blocks from our new home.
It was the biggest job I’d had to date—hence the move down here from Montana.
It was an opportunity I couldn’t say no to. It would keep us going for the next couple of months, then I just had to cross my fingers and hoped they liked me enough to keep me on to do other projects with them, or they recommended me to others. Basically, it was a leap of faith, one that Blair had taken with me more times than I could count on both hands.
It’d been her and I against the world since she was born. In a few months, she’d be the same age I was when I’d gotten pregnant—sweet sixteen—but in reality, she was an old soul already.
She’d had to grow up pretty fast.
We both had.
And I was determined to make this stop the last one. The place where we could finally settle down and stop running.
I had to make this work.
I was going to make it work.
Come hell or high water.
Check out this book by
Addison Jane
Harmony (The Club Girl Diaries Book One)
Addison Jane
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Harmony makes no excuses for who she is or what she’s done. For the past few years, she’s been living as a club girl for the Brothers by Blood MC. The club girls are there for a purpose—to cook, to clean, and to keep the men happy. She respects the club, respects the men, and she follows the rules. Watching the men walk in and out of her life is strangely comforting, and a feeling she’s grown accustomed to. With a history of disappointments and false promises, all she wants is to have fun, play music, and finish college. Being associated with the club, she can do that without having to risk her heart. That was until he showed up.
When Kit's father stepped down as president, he took the title with pride. The Brothers by Blood MC is his family, his home. Deciding to celebrate his new title with his brothers from a neighboring chapter, the last thing he expected was to find Harmony—a club girl with all the makings of a perfect old lady. The stunning blonde is beautiful, strong, and fiercely independent. Harmony refuses to lower the walls she’s created around her heart, but the fire inside her and her love for the club fuel his need to have her by his side and on the back of his bike.
When Harmony’s safety is threatened, Kit is determined to do whatever it takes to protect her and prove that she can trust him. But after a lifetime of broken promises, will it be enough?
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Addison Jane is a born and bred kiwi girl with a passion for romance and writing.
When she gets the chance, she enjoys the little things in life such as reading, dancing, music, and Facebook, but her world really revolves around the little girl who calls her Mum. It’s an awkward balance between alpha males and Disney princesses, but it works.
Growing up on a small farm next to the beach will always make her a country girl at heart. But since moving away to a small town close to the city, she’s discovered a dangerous love for shopping.
Writing stories has been something that’s come naturally since she was young, and with the massive support of her friends and family, she finally decided to step out of her comfort zone and share them with the world.
/> She enjoys bringing her books to life with strong female leads, sexy, passionate men, and a rollercoaster of twists and turns that lead to the happily ever after that her readers desire.
