“Believe it or not, I do hope your new boyfriend doesn’t end up like your old one,” he said. “I don’t consider Terrance a friend any longer but I wouldn’t wish prison and a lifetime of being a felon on anyone.”
I didn’t say anything. What was I supposed to say? He was still insinuating that Terrance was a bad guy and may end up in prison someday. I wanted to believe he was saying it out of jealousy and he didn’t really believe Terrance was running drugs or something just as bad. I was hoping that someday we could all be friends again.
Changing the subject he asked, “So how’s school, are you finished yet?”
Oh great, another sore subject. I was hoping that his mother already told him and I wouldn’t have to.
“I quit school,” I told him.
“Why?” He was looking intently at me with his penetrating green eyes like he was really interested. We both had such big dreams and we had worked hard our first year in college. We had both managed to make the Dean’s list and we were proud of each other. I didn’t want him to think I was blaming him, but I was honest.
“I just got stressed out when you were…when everything happened with you…I just couldn’t think straight and I couldn’t sleep. I was failing everything. I didn’t even wake up and get to class some days. I should have gone to the doctor. I’m sure now that it was depression and I probably could have gotten help for it if I had tried. But I didn’t even have the energy for that. My aunt and uncle let me wallow for a while and then they just told me that was it. I needed to get out of bed and get on with life or I go home…to my mom. I got out of bed and I went to work for my Uncle Jeff and honestly, that’s when I started seeing Terrance a lot. He came in almost every day and—”
“I think I’ve heard enough about you and Terrance,” he said.
“Okay, I’m sorry. One more thing though. He was just as upset about what happened to you as I was. We were just there for each other and didn’t plan for anything else to happen. His heart broke for you, Dax.” His facial expression was telling me I was walking a fine line so I switched back to my own feelings. “I was worried about you. I would lie in my bed at night and wonder what it was like there. I imagined it being awful. All I know about prison is what I’ve seen on television. What was it like, Dax?”
“It’s hard to describe. It wasn’t fun and it was lonely. I would never want to do it again, but you learn how to get along and how to survive. You just have to be adaptable because it’s a whole different world.”
“You mean doing things like getting all the tattoos and working out?” I asked him.
“The muscles were necessary, yes. I was a skinny kid when I went in and we both know that I was awfully pretty.” We both chuckled. It was nice to hear him laugh genuinely and not sarcastically. “The tattoos were because they were easy to get I guess and I was bored. It gave me something to look at and think about and even look forward to.”
“I like them,” I told him honestly.
They weren’t naked women like some of the other guys had or racial slurs. They were a bunch of other designs and were appealing to the eye nonetheless.
“I'm glad you didn't cut off your blond hair and go bald like a lot of the other guys in prison.”
He ran his hand through his hair and said, “I know, it is pretty sexy, isn't it?”
I laughed. “Whatever you want to believe, Dax.”
We grinned in unison. “Well it seems not to be stopping all the girls around here from trying to get with me.”
“I think they're trying to get with you so that they can be your old lady and take all your money,” I quipped.
He snickered. “Yeah, they probably are. Good thing I'm not interested in any of them. They're all a bunch of whores who will sleep with anyone to get what they want around here. The only girl I want is—” He didn't finish his sentence.
Thank God he didn’t because I did not know how I was going to respond if he said my name. My heart was thumping hard in my chest. It felt like it was ready to explode out of my body.
He stared at me for a few more seconds before saying, “Anyways, prison can only be described as prison. It's a lot scarier when you're actually in there as opposed to looking at it from the outside world.”
We talked for a while. He told me more about prison, even though I was sure that he was sugar-coating it. He said he spent most of his time in a cell and only got to go out in the yard a few hours every other day. He was put in another cell out there; he called it the cage. I shuddered at the term. I couldn’t wrap my head around being put in a cage. That had to make you feel less than human no matter who you were.
He told me about a few of the famous prisoners he had met and how books and television made them seem bigger than life but in reality they were really just big thugs like the rest of them.
We talked about his mom, Gail, who I really liked, although I didn’t understand why she put up with the things she did from his dad. It was why he knew comparing me to her would be an insult. I wouldn’t mind being like Gail the lady, but Gail the wife of the president of the club was not what I was aiming for. He told me that she had sent him a care package every week and she had come to see him every Sunday and on holidays. His eyes always softened when he talked about her.
We talked about my uncle and the shop. I told him that he was expanding and he told me if I went back to school and finished my degree he might be talked into giving me a management position someday. I was considering it for the winter semester since the fall semester had already started.
I happened to glance at the clock over the bar and I noticed it was getting to be after lunch time and I knew Terrance would be home soon. I really didn’t want to go. We seemed to have found an easy rhythm and were talking like we used to. I used to love sitting up with him all night just talking. I loved staying up at night with him and doing other things too. I knew I shouldn’t have been thinking about it.
I finally said, “Thanks for talking with me, Dax. I should be getting home now.”
He looked like he had more to say. His eyes were serious and thinking about what he might say made me nervous.
It was wasted energy though because all he really sputtered out was, “Sure, take care of yourself, Olivia.”
I could feel his eyes watching me as I went into the kitchen to find Cookie who did in fact have my purse in the lost and found. My one pitiful credit card and the three dollars I had in cash last night were still there. When I came back out and headed for the door Dax was still watching. I smiled and gave him a little wave. He raised his beer to me.
Terrance was already home when I got to the apartment. I thought about telling him about my talk with Dax, but I didn’t really have anything to say about it that wouldn’t make him feel bad. It was a good talk. He had given me the chance he wasn’t willing to give Terrance. I would always love Dax, but I cared a lot about Terrance and had no desire to hurt him. When he asked me where I had been I told him about going out to look for my purse and finding it with Cookie at the bar. That was all I said about it. He didn’t ask any other questions either.
Thank God.
“What do you want to have for dinner?” I asked him.
CHAPTER 5
DAX
My morning started out with my mother yelling at me to wake up. I looked at my phone, which was wrapped up in the sheets with me. It was only eight in the morning, what the hell? I didn’t have any appointments today that I knew of.
“Dax!” She was right outside my bedroom door. It was the same bedroom that I had slept in since I was a kid. The only time I hadn’t was the one year I lived in the dorms at college and the couple of years I lived in Pelican Bay.
“What, Mom? Is something wrong?” I knew I was whining but I had drunk way too much beer yesterday. I really needed to start finding other things to do than hanging out around that damn bar.
“Everything’s fine, but your parole officer is here.”
“Oh shit! Sorry, Mom. I forgot!”<
br />
“It’s okay, just hurry please.” She used her sweet voice, but I could tell she was annoyed. My parole officer had called two days before and said that she would be by that morning. I told her that I would be sure to be there. I threw on some jeans and a T-shirt, slipped my moccasins on my feet, pulled a beanie over my head and headed out.
“Hi, I’m sorry.” I stopped dead in my tracks.
My parole officer was hot. She reminded me a lot of Olivia with the petite build and the long dark hair that she wore in a straight ponytail down her back. Her eyes weren’t dark like Olivia’s; that was the one major difference. They were the most incredible shade of light blue. How the hell was I supposed to take her seriously as a parole officer when she looked like that?
“Um…Miss Ortega, right? I’m sorry. I forgot to set my alarm.”
Her sexy eyes were traveling all over me and it made me shiver. She was the first woman other than Olivia who ever made me feel like that without touching me.
“It’s fine,” she said, all businesslike.
She stood up when I came in the room and I said, “Please sit down. Can I get you something to drink, coffee or something?”
“No thanks,” she replied.
“If you need me I’ll be out in the laundry room,” my mother said.
Miss Ortega smiled at her. She was even prettier when she smiled. It softened the hard set lines of her face.
When my mother was gone she opened the folder she carried and said, “Who all lives here in the home?”
“Me, my mom and dad, that’s it.” But she could move in any time.
“And your father is Joe Turner?”
“Yes, ma’am.” She gave me a weird look, kind of like she had a bad taste in her mouth. I wasn’t sure if it was because I called her ma’am, because my father was Joe Turner or both.
“Have you been looking for a job?”
“Well, I was actually thinking about going back to school.”
And helping out in my dad’s biker bar, which was a known hang out for most of the felons in the county. Oh and taking rides out to warehouses that were probably hideouts for drugs and guns.
She raised an eyebrow and for a second I was worried that she was reading my mind.
“You need to decide soon. Sitting around doing nothing every day will get you into trouble quicker than anything. But I guess you know that since you spent most of your time in the SHU.”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said. No weird look this time so the other one was definitely about my dad.
“Are there any weapons in the house?”
“My dad has a gun safe, but they’re all legal and registered.”
“To him?”Again, the look.
“Uh, I guess probably to my mom.” Shit! My dad had been off parole for a long time, but I guess since he was convicted of a felony that would mean he was not supposed to have guns. This was all new to me. I really hated being forced to think like a convicted felon.
“I know your CCI went over all of this before your release, but I’m going to touch on some of the things here that are pretty common reasons why a parolee can be found in violation, okay? I don’t want you saying later that I didn’t tell you something.”
Her beauty was quickly fading under the glare of her talking about me going back to prison.
I swallowed and said, “Okay.”
“You understand that your residence and your personal possessions can be searched at any time of day or night without reason and without a warrant?”
“Yes.”
“You understand that if you want to leave the county, it has to be approved by me and so you know, it would have to be a pretty damn good reason for me to approve it?”
“Okay.”
“If you get a job or start school, you will have three days to let me know.”
“Okay.”
“If you travel more than fifty miles from your home, it will need to be approved by me.”
“Okay.”
“You cannot be around guns or things that look like real guns, bullets or any other weapons. What that means is if you’re going to stay here, your….mother will have to get rid of her guns or at least store them in a place that is not your residence. You will have a week to sort that out and when I come back I’ll expect them to be out of the house.”
Shit! My dad was going to have a fit. “Okay.”
“No knives with blades over two inches either, unless it’s a kitchen knife and then it should be in your kitchen.”
“Okay.”
She looked at me, long and hard. I was actually starting to sweat under her gaze before she spoke again.
“Listen, Dax, I do what I do to help people, believe it or not. My one true goal is to keep you out of prison and make you a productive member of society. I look at the fact that you had no priors, no juvenile record and you were an honor student before this happened and I would like to think that you were at least trying to break the mold that being Joe Turner’s son poured around you. I have to tell you that I wish you had somewhere else to go, somewhere else to live. I don’t know what your relationship is with Joe and I don’t know if what I’m saying is going to piss you off. The truth is I don’t give a shit if it does. Whether you admit it or deny it or don’t want to hear it, you and I both know that if you continue to hang out with your father and his friends your freedom will be tenuous at best.”
I wasn’t pissed. She didn’t say anything I didn’t already know to be true. But I didn’t have a job, any money or anywhere else to go.
“I’ll make sure the guns are gone and I will be looking for a job and an apartment.”
“Good,” she said. “As long as we have the same goals in mind we’ll get along fine.”
“As long as that goal is keeping me out of prison, then yes, we have the same one.”
I walked her to the door and after I closed it behind her I turned to see my mom standing in front of me.
“I’ll call your father and have him send some of the boys over to get the safe. They can keep it at the club.”
“I’m sorry about all of this, Mom.”
She came over and put her hand on the side of my face. She and I never talked about why she wouldn’t leave him. It was one thing that was never on the table.
But today she said, “Stop apologizing to me, Dax. I should have taken you away from all of this long ago. I didn’t, so now you have to live with the fallout. I am going to do whatever it takes to make sure the consequences you suffered already were the only ones that you’ll have to suffer and I don’t care how pissed off it makes your father.”
“I got lucky the day they handed out mothers, you know that?”
She blushed and patted the side of my face. She sighed and went back to cleaning the house or whatever it was she was doing. The dynamics of our family were seriously screwed up, but at least I always knew that she loved me.
I showered and headed out. I hit a few auto parts stores and picked up applications. I was sure if I asked, Olivia’s uncle would hire me, but there was already enough awkwardness going around. When I ran out of places to get an application from, I headed for The Smoke Joint. I knew my parole agent literally just told me to stay away from those guys, but the thought of sitting in my mother’s house doing nothing for the rest of the day was almost equivalent to the thought of going back to prison.
I spent the early part of the afternoon helping the guys do some modifications to a few of the bikes. It passed the time a lot more constructively than watching reruns or daytime programming. My dad was there and he was his usual gruff self. He didn’t mention the guns or the safe so I didn’t know if my mom had talked to him about it yet or not. I figured that was a conversation best left alone until he brought it up.
Terrance had been making himself scarce lately and I was grateful for that too. I guessed one of these days we might have to continue that conversation we touched on that first night. I wasn’t looking forward to it. I just couldn’t stand the way t
hat he and Olivia both wanted to keep making excuses, trying to explain it to me. The simple fact was that I wasn’t around so the two of them got busy. For some reason that was a bigger slight coming from my best friend than it was from my ex-girlfriend.
I was getting hungry so I headed toward the kitchen to see if I could find Cookie or something he may have cooked up and left behind. I was surprised when I found my mother.
My mother pretty much steered clear of the bar and the club unless there was something going on that either forced her to be there or that she wanted to be there for like a birthday party or an anniversary party. She was still the Queen of the Joint no matter how few and far between her visits were. When she walked in even the old timers jumped to attention and she would always put everyone to work. She was gracious about it and always thanked them all profusely, but there was never any doubt in anyone’s mind that they would do whatever she asked of them.
I knew something was up when I found her and Cookie whipping up a feast in the kitchen.
“Hey, Mom, what’s going on?” I asked, giving her a kiss on the cheek and sticking my fingers in a bowl of freshly-made mashed potatoes.
“Oh nothing,” she said as she slapped my hand away. “Cookie and I just had some new recipes we wanted to try out.”
I doubted her sincerity, but I let it go. “Good, is any of it ready? I’m starving.” Cookie was frying up some chicken and my mom was making gravy. I spotted a platter of ribs that looked done on the far counter and headed toward them.
“Only take one, Dax, they’re for later.”
With my mouth already full of barbecue ribs I said, “I thought you were just trying out recipes.”
“We are, but we’re going to serve them for dinner later. I don’t want them all picked at.”
“Okay, Mom.”
I grabbed another rib and I wondered out to the garage and found my dad and Blake shooting a game of pool. I joined in, after I put up my fifty bucks of course. My dad didn’t do anything that didn’t involve money. It was actually my mother’s fifty bucks. All the money I had in my bank accounts at the time of my arrest had been seized by the State for restitution. My mom had paid for my attorney. I had told her I would just use a public defender, but she wouldn’t hear of it…for all the good it ended up doing.
Ruined (The MC Motorcycle Club Romance Series - Book #1) Page 4
