Had the cards fallen differently… Destiny tried not to think about the cards. Had she not put this club first. Had Trent not been around. Maybe the Til’ Death tattoo would be the only club ink she would be wearing.
She shook her head in an attempt to chase the thoughts and images from her mind. She applied the red lipstick and brushed out her hair and glanced in the mirror.
Stephan had stretched out on her bed. She hadn’t thought about him as Stephan since he was fifteen and got that damn haircut. Except for that night. That night it seemed wrong to moan Fabio’s name. That night he wasn’t the good ol’ boy who had been like her club brother, even at that early age. Not the guy whose parents took her in after her mom died.
That night he had been her first lover. Her best friend. Nothing had changed between them, except nothing had ever gone that far since. Stephan Ames was still the number one man in her life.
“So, where are we going tonight?” she asked. “If you’re taking me to the strip club, I’m going to be pissed.”
“No. We’re going somewhere with classy whores who ain’t working it for pay,” Stephan grinned. “There’s a band downtown at Murphy’s Longhorn. Should be a good party.”
“And it would be helpful if we had a reliable witness to testify to an alibi?” Destiny raised an eyebrow.
“Never hurt. Besides, you would get patched Sweetwater almost instantly. Probably get the gavel within a heartbeat. That is if everyone else goes inside.”
“Let’s go.”
“Need me to hold your purse for you?”
Destiny punched him in the arm. “Do you need me to hold yours?”
She grabbed her cut off the back of the chair and they left the clubhouse.
Destiny rode in behind Fabio and they parked their bikes up front. The band was a country rock and was blaring through the front of the bar. It had been almost a year since she had been to Murphy’s and she was kind of excited to be back.
Likely, she was going to see plenty of people she hadn’t run into in forever. She used to avoid these places on the off-chance Trent was around. He had happily moved on with his life and so had she. He had someone more of his own tastes now. The person he could never shape Destiny into being.
“Behave yourself. I’m not having your drunk ass on the back of my bike throwing balance off on the way back home, you hear?” Fabio called out as they took their helmets off and headed for the door.
“I was going to say the same to you.”
“I’ve calmed down a lot, Double D. You on the other hand seem to just be pre-heating still.”
“I turned twenty-one overseas. Spent my time on best behavior in Fort Worth. Besides, it’s not looking like my drinking will have much of a difference on my chapter patch.”
“Oh don’t be so pathetic-sounding. You will ruin my good time.”
“I thought you were supposed to be cheering me up?” Destiny asked as they walked into the bar.
“Yes but we’re supposed to have a good time. Hence the cheering up part.”
“Are you sure you don’t want to go to the strip club and get it on with Kari?”
“Jealous much?”
“Never.”
“You almost killed her that night at the club.” Fabio laughed.
“She’s a whore.”
“She’s a stripper. We make our living from them. We need girls like her.”
“Not going down on you though.”
“Someone has to sample the girls and know if they’re good enough to bring in the big bucks.”
“It’s a strip club, not a brothel.”
“I still plead you’re just jealous. Is it just over me? Or anyone getting laid in general?”
“I plead the fifth,” she said as she tossed some bills on the bar after motioning for two draft beers.
“So, both?”
“Drink your damn beer, Fabio.”
“We could take it back to my place and take care of both.”
“You can’t be serious.” Destiny looked around the bar searching for potential problems and friendly faces.
“You’re back home and you can’t say you haven’t thought about it.”
“Dear Lord you are serious.” She sighed and took a seat and table toward the rear of the bar where she could sit with her back to the wall. “You know how this is going to go. I don’t patch Sweetwater, I go crawling back to Fort Worth. If I stay it wouldn’t be right.”
“Go Nomad and base yourself out of here. Ride when you have to with your brother. I’ll stay in Sweetwater.”
“You’re like a brother to me, Fabio.”
“Now that just makes this sound like incest.”
“Ten years and all of the sudden you want to go back to ripping my clothes off?”
“There’s no going back. I never stopped wanting to.” He leaned into her and placed his hand on her leg. “Things are changing here. This is the most I’ve seen of you at a time in years. The thing with life is we never know how much time we really have left. Especially in the business we are in.”
“Things really that bad?”
Fabio sighed and slumped back in his chair. “See, this is the problem with Callaghans. They put the club first always and push everything else out.” He chugged the rest of his beer and stood up with a shake of his head and walked away.
Destiny sat there dumbfounded. Fabio had been serious. Stephan had been serious. He actually felt that way and wanted to build a relationship with her.
She thought back to her brothers. Her father. Her father had her mother from the start of the club. Destiny couldn’t ever remember her brothers having an actual girlfriend they kept longer than a few months. Had a girl even been willing to commit to the Til’ Death lifestyle, her brothers weren’t willing to commit to anyone or anything besides the patch.
Destiny finished her beer and got up to go for another one. The place was starting to get crowded and she had lost sight of Fabio in the throng of people.
Halfway to the bar she looked up to see Trent leading his perfect fit Marissa across the bar and straight toward her. She flipped her hair back and stood a bit taller.
“See you’re out of uniform,” Destiny said when Trent got within a foot of her.
He grinned. “I see you never are.” He nodded to her cut.
“I’m proud of it. And it’s not exactly a duty as yours. More attractive too, I think. Though your tan slacks seem to fit you well.”
Marissa shifted her weight uneasily and pulled herself a little closer to Trent. As possessively as someone like her could get. “Trent tells me you two are old friends. Classmates?”
Destiny smiled and looked at Trent. He hadn’t told Marissa. Of course history was history and that’s where it deserved to stay. But as much as he seemed to be following her around since she got back, to keep eyes on the club or not, it would make any female start asking questions.
“We were in the same graduating class, yes. But we were more than that, right Trent? Right up till his Daddy made him split right after graduation. No banker’s money for Trent if he married the girl from the wrong side of the tracks. ‘Course, no hard feelings. He left me in a town an hour away where we had been sneaking off to together to hide from his old man. I got jumped, spent four days in the hospital. Didn’t see him from the night he took back his rings until the night I came back to town.”
The look Trent gave her was worth it all. Destiny turned on her heels and strutted to the far end of the bar. She ordered a double shot of Fireball and tossed it back.
“We need to talk now.”
“There’s nothing to talk about, old class chum,” she said and Trent grabbed her arm, whirling her around. She put her hand to his throat and slammed him against the nearest wall.
“Don’t put your hand on me like that ever again!” A few people turned to look at them. The Bastard slamming the cop into the wall. An interesting enough spectacle.
“We need to take this somewhere outside,” Trent said a
s she slowly and reluctantly dropped her hand.
She followed his lead out the back to the much less crowded area behind the bar.
“What the hell you have to go and run your mouth like that for?”
“Thought she wanted to know what her boyfriend was keeping from her.”
“It’s ancient history.”
“That it may be. But there ain’t much honor in a cop who left his pregnant girlfriend. And then never showed up in the hospital when she was bleeding the loss of their unborn child after she got the shit beat out of her!” She paused, letting herself go back in the years. “Of course Daddy never would have let you come. Not after I killed my first man that night.”
And she had. She had been able to get to her blade finally and shoved it in one of her attacker’s throats. It was a near instant death but one of the bloodiest she ever witnessed, let alone caused. But it had been the only thing that had saved her from the rape she had been about to experience, and the likely death.
The back door to the bar pushed open and Fabio came through it with some blonde on his heels.
“What the hell is going on here!” he shouted, pushing his way between them and facing off with Trent.
“I got this under control,” Destiny said, placing her hands on his arms. He shook her off.
“How come you never told her?” Trent asked him.
“It wasn’t for her to know! It wouldn’t have changed a damn thing!”
“Tell me what?” Destiny asked, shoving herself back between them.
“I showed up at the hospital. I was there the first two days you were unconscious! He wouldn’t let me in to see you. He convinced Houston and Austin to have me run out and kept out.”
“It was for your own good, Double D. He did that to you. He left you at that restaurant. More than an hour from home or anyone that could protect you,” Fabio said. “He didn’t deserve the right to be there.”
“That wasn’t for you to decide! Things could have been different!” she yelled.
“You could have been with him? A cop and left your brothers? Your family behind?” Fabio turned and went to the blonde and pulled her close, kissing her deeply. The girl arched her back and pressed herself into him. When he broke the kiss, he tossed one last look over his shoulder before leading the blonde back into the bar.
“I see some things haven’t changed. You are still attracted to him.”
“I’ve never been attracted to him.”
“I know he was the one who took your virginity at that bike show. I see the way he looks at you. The way you look at him. I just wonder if you had a thing with him on the side through our entire relationship.”
“That’s bullshit. You know I was faithful to you. I loved you!”
“And you still love him. To this day you still get jealous every time you see him with another girl!”
“And you don’t think every time I see your little Marissa, I don’t lose it a little? The perfect girl for you. Someone of your own… tastes? Standards?”
“I fucked up, I get that! I let my father choose for me. Between him and my fiancée and my child. I was young and stupid and it’s all my fault, I know. I’ve regretted it every day of my life.”
They were chest to chest. Just a whisper of air separating them. She could feel his breath on her face from where he stood, just an inch taller than her. She wrapped her arms around his neck and he grabbed her ass and pulled her closer. She pressed her lips to his and in a second his tongue was mingling with hers.
“Let’s go,” she whispered in his ear as his mouth went to her neck.
“I don’t think we would make it anywhere but here,” he moaned and ran his hands up her sides.
“Trent!” a female voice shouted.
Trent dropped his hands from Destiny’s body and pulled back. Destiny looked to see Marissa standing in the open doorway. She was petrified with a look of heartbreak on her face.
“Marissa!” Trent called and stepped toward his perfect girlfriend as she turned and fled back into the bar.
“Dallas.” He looked back at her, confused and panicked.
“Go,” Destiny told him and leaned back against the wall of the bar and lit a cigarette.
13
Destiny woke with a pounding in her head and no recollection of the night before, past her rejection of Fabio and Trent’s rejection of her. Not that it would have gone much differently with Trent. She could never date a cop, having done the things she had. And Trent wasn’t going to walk away from the badge and his perfect girlfriend. Fabio had been right there. The past was the past and most of it wasn’t worth digging up from the grave.
She rolled over, noting she was mainly dressed and not in her apartment at the clubhouse. The room was painted beige and sparsely furnished and decorated, but still done with some taste.
“Good morning, beautiful,” Fabio said from where he stood in the doorway. He was wearing jeans low on his hips and nothing else. His hair was wet from a shower still. Feet bare and chest chiseled. Silver cross draped around his neck.
“For whatever I did, I’m sorry,” she said as she pulled herself upright in the bed.
“For messing up my chances with a smoking hot blonde? For starting a fight with a cop? For getting ridiculously drunk and almost making us crash twice on the way home, which you promised you wouldn’t do? Or from turning me down?”
Destiny cringed. “All of the above.”
“I have coffee and breakfast on,” Fabio said and he turned and left.
Destiny walked into the kitchen. The headache she had become accustomed to pounded away. She sat down and stared at the waffles before her.
“Domesticated.”
“Some of us don’t like to live life like a frat house forever. Of course you’re a Callaghan so you wouldn’t understand the concept.” Fabio had put on a white T-shirt but still had the same fresh look on her. She could only wish to have her life as put together as Fabio did.
“How big of a place is it?”
“Three bedroom, two baths. A small garage for the truck and the bike.”
“It’s nice.”
“I know. That’s why I bought it.”
Destiny had expected rent but not purchase. Fabio was way more domesticated than she could ever dream of. She was still not much more than an ape escaping the caves.
Fabio’s cell phone rang and he answered. He said very few words and his whole demeanor dropped. Destiny pushed the rest of the waffle away. This wasn’t good. Wasn’t good at all.
Fabio disconnected. “Get dressed. We have to go.”
“What did Alec say?”
“Just that something went wrong last night. We have to get to the church ASAP,” Fabio said as she strapped on her sidearm and tugged her cut over top.
“Take me to my bike.”
“Only because it’s on the way.”
They rode up to the clubhouse in a matter of minutes. Kristy and Stella’s vehicles were both in the lot. It was just minutes after nine on a Saturday. This was never a good sign. Especially after having dealt with the Apache the night before.
The two of them exchanged glances as they hurried inside. Stella and Kristy sat in the barroom. Tears in their eyes. Instantly Destiny searched the room for missing faces. Vat, Charlie, Drew, and Eric were all missing.
“Oh God. Not Dad,” Fabio said as his mother rushed to him.
“It’s not your father,” Stella said and they both felt relieved.
Alec walked into the room. “Eric is in Fort Worth. Charlie and Vat got picked up last night on the run. We got busted. One of Ray N.’s boys… we lost.”
Destiny searched her uncle’s eyes for a name. She was one of Ray N.’s crew. One of her boys had been killed.
“Leto.”
“Damn.” Leto and Destiny had been close when she was patching. They went through some hell together. She had seen him at the charity ride. He had had his doubts concerning whatever it was that Alec got himself into.
&
nbsp; “Let’s get into church and we will fill you in.”
“Where’s Drew?”
“He never showed up last night,” Alec replied and he pushed the doors to the meeting room open.
They gathered around the table. The remaining members and Destiny. “Everything was going fine last night. We had just made the hand off to Fort Worth and were following behind them, running escort. Until they were a few miles clear of the meeting site. We had about five cop cars pull out behind us. One got up behind Leto and bumped his rear end. Leto got it in control but took a side road. Vat and Charlie fell in behind him. He ended up blowing a tire, laying the bike, head first into a tree, best we know. Vat and Charlie got picked up. Our lawyers working on getting them bail now.
“Eric stayed back with Ray N. and the boys. The run got completed and the rest of them got back safely.”
“I’ll be leaving immediately,” Destiny said without a moment’s hesitation.
“I’ll be riding with her,” Fabio said.
Alec nodded. “We will be up within a few hours. I want to meet with the lawyer. See if there is anything else he needs.”
“And find Drew, I suppose,” Destiny said and she dismissed herself from the table.
***
Halfway to Fort Worth, Fabio pulled into a rest stop, gas station, and diner combo.
“You have to eat,” he said as she parked behind him.
“There’s only so much you can do in Fort Worth. We will be there plenty of time to be with your brothers,” Fabio added when she said nothing.
They ordered burgers and fries. Destiny pulled out her cell phone. A missed call from the number she recognized as the one Jay had given her as Houston’s.
She made no attempt to return it. Houston would show in Fort Worth. He would be there to bury a brother in arms. Especially a brother whom he knew so personally, as Fort Worth and Sweetwater spent much time together being the only two in Texas.
Houston could turn his back from many duties to family and his responsibilities of being president of the Nomads. But he would not turn from this one.
“Where the hell was Drew last night?”
The Devils Bastards MC: Destiny Dallas Callaghan Page 10
