He fell to the floor like a sack of shit.
“What in the fuck is going on?” Baker howled. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Fuming with anger and brimming with adrenaline, I loomed over Cash, waiting for him to stir.
“Holy shit,” Reno gasped.
I glared down at his motionless body. “He needed it.”
“Been needing it for a while,” Tito whispered.
Baker bent down and removed Cash’s pistol from his waistband. “Sure as fuck don’t need him pulling this out.” He handed Tito the gun. “Put this somewhere.” He unclipped Cash’s knife from his pocket and held it in the air. “This too.”
Tito took the knife and gun to the other side of the office.
Baker looked at me and shook his head. “Want to tell me what happened?”
“He got what he deserved.”
“Is there something I need to know about?” Baker asked.
I shrugged. “If you don’t know about it by now, I guess not.”
He scowled. “What the fuck does that mean?”
“It means Cash has had a big mouth for a long, long time, and I’m fucking tired of it. He can either learn to control it, or you’ll all have to get used to me reminding him that I’m not going to listen to it anymore.”
“What did he say?” Baker asked.
There was an unwritten rule amongst bikers. One biker didn’t disrespect another biker’s Ol’ Lady. If he did, there was hell to pay.
Some of the things Cash said to Ally were on the cusp of crossing that line. I’d let them slide, knowing—or at least hoping—that they were comments made without ill intentions. His most recent remark couldn’t be construed as being anything other than what it was.
Disrespectful to Ally, and to me. He’d disrespected all of the men at some point in time, me included. I wasn’t about to let him disrespect Ally, though. Not now, or ever.
“Remember Cash and Reno at the barbeque?” I asked, making reference to Cash whipping Reno’s ass over a disrespectful remark Reno made about Kimberly, who was Cash’s Ol’ Lady.
As Cash began to stir, Baker responded. “Sure do.”
“It was a similar deal,” I muttered.
“There’s one difference,” Baker argued. “A big difference.”
Still angry beyond belief, I glared at him, not really caring to hear his opinion. At least not at that moment.
“What?” I snapped. “What’s this big difference?”
“She’s not officially your Ol’ Lady,” he said. “If she is, you’re going to need make sure everyone knows it, including her.”
36
Ally
I had my suspicions about why Goose knocked Cash on his ass, but I knew nothing for sure. If he didn’t say something soon, I was going to start prying.
I put the mayonnaise in the fridge, carried my plate to the island, and sat down across from him. I picked up my sandwich and paused. “Are you going to tell me what happened?”
Sipping his coffee, he lowered the cup just enough to speak over it. “Sooner or later.”
“The sooner is long gone,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“Well, when I asked on the elevator, you said I don’t want to talk about it. When we got to the basement, you didn’t say want to talk about it. Now, we’re here, and you haven’t said shit the entire time it took me to make a sandwich. So, the sooner is gone. We’re on the later. Spill your guts, dude.”
“I want to talk about our relationship,” he said.
“Good, me too.” I took a bite of the sandwich. “Tell me what happened first.”
“Relationship first,” he said.
“Fuck it. If that’s how you’ve got to do it, fine.” I took another bite. “Relationship. Go.”
“You go first.”
I laughed. “You’re the one that started this. Now, suddenly, you’re afraid to talk?”
His gaze lowered to his coffee cup. Obviously troubled by whatever it was he intended to say, he peered into it long enough that I became anxious. I wondered if he shared my feelings about the problems that had developed recently.
He stood and turned toward the counter. “Kind of.”
“Do you want me to talk about our relationship?” I asked. “My thoughts on it?”
“Sure.”
I hated that word. Sure. Not quite a yes. Not a no. Somewhere in between. I bit the sandwich and rolled my eyes.
I swallowed the food and began my no-holds-barred explanation. “When we started this, it was us meeting at the diner. That was kind of cool and nostalgic or whatever. When it came to sex, I flirted, and you didn’t react. Then, one night, you reacted. We boned. It was great. You eventually invited me here. That was a big step—for me, anyway. We had sex in a real bed and I didn’t have to leave before the ten o’clock checkout time. You asked me to stay for a few days. We had more sex. You cooked meals. We had sex in the kitchen. You said I could stay as long as I wanted to.”
I put my sandwich down and turned my stool to face him. “That’s progress. Measurable progress. I liked that. I can look at it and see things started one way and eventually turned into something else. Don’t get me wrong, I was okay with how it was in the beginning. Seeing that progress kind of excited me, though. Then, the wheels fell off.”
Fresh coffee cup in hand, he faced me. “What do you mean?”
“You’ve never heard that phrase?”
“I’ve heard it, yeah.” He sat down. “But what do you mean, the wheels fell off? What happened?”
“I mean the fucking wheels fell off. You introduced me to the club. Your little bearded boss is cool, and everything. Everyone else is okay, except for you-know-who. But you-know-who is causing a lot of tension. That tension carries through to our relationship. If that’s what being in the club is going to be like, it’s not for me. We bring that shit home with us. And, that’s exactly what it is. Shit.”
“The club really needs you.”
“Well.” I reached for my sandwich. “I don’t need the club. I was fine flying solo. I’ll be fine flying solo. I’m used to it. I’m good at it. If that’s what it takes to save us, that’s what I’ll do”
As if the coffee held the answers to our woes, he gazed into the cup with glazed eyes.
“I don’t want you to fly solo,” he said, looking up as he spoke. “I want this to work out. All of it.”
“Why?”
“Because seeing you work makes me proud of you. Listening to you make suggestions for a job makes me proud. Seeing you stand up for yourself after the bank job convinced me you’re the kind of woman I want to be with. I can’t stand a pushover. You’re not. You’re intelligent, witty, and courageous. That’s what I need in a woman. Well, that and someone I can be honest with. That someone’s you.”
Learning that he’d recognized I was exactly what he wanted caused me to swell with pride. I leaned onto the edge of the counter and looked him in the eyes. “Those things? That’s who I am, not something I’ve done. I’m all those things with or without the club. Working, or retired from work. That’s me. I don’t need the club to be that person for you.”
“I like working with you.”
I leaned away from the counter. “Sounds like you’re making excuses, now.”
“I’m not.”
I picked at my sandwich’s crust. “Sounds like it.”
He set his cup aside. “I’m going to be in that club. It’s part of who I am. I don’t need you in it. If you are, great. If you’re not, the club get by. We’d be much better with you, I know that much. I’d just hate to see you give up.”
He could have said a lot of things. Suggesting that I was giving up wasn’t what I wanted to hear. It hinted at failure. I wasn’t a failure. If walking away from the club was required for me to succeed in life, I’d walk away. I’d succeed. My successes, however, wouldn’t be club related.
“Maybe I didn’t do a good job of explaining myself,” I said. “Let me rep
hrase it. Right now, nothing’s more important to me than making sure whatever it is that you and I have succeeds. Everything else is secondary. The club creates tension. That tension comes home with us. I don’t like it. The tension’s got to stop, or our relationship’s going to suffer. So, either the tension stops, or I walk away from the club.” I did the biker thing and crossed my arms over my chest. “Now, why’d you punch Cash?”
His mouth twisted into a smirk. “To relieve tension.”
“Bullshit. Here’s your second chance,” I said. “Why’d you punch Cash?”
His gaze fell to the coffee cup. “I really don’t want to tell you the specifics.”
“Well. Tough shit, mister. I want to hear them. We’re being honest with each other, remember?”
He looked up, but not at me. He let out a sigh. “He called you a bitch.”
My heart fluttered. Having a man stand up for my honor was flattering. Having Goose stand up to Cash for my honor was heart-warming. “Really? You punched him because he called me a name?”
He nodded. “I did.”
“Thank you.”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “You’re not mad?”
“Heck no. I’m flattered.”
“Not at me,” he said. “At him.”
Getting mad at Cash for being a dick was like getting angry at a dog for barking. “No. I’m not mad at him. I’m disappointed. There’s a difference. My point a few minutes ago was this: I don’t have to put up with it. That’s my choice.”
“Understood.”
“Now,” I said. “What did you want to say about our relationship?”
“What do we have right now?” he wagged his finger back and forth, between us. “This. What is it?”
For me to have a man in my life on a permanent basis required a long list of boxes to be checked. Attractive. Fearless. Witty. Willing to stand up for himself. Eager to take risks. Picks up after himself. Decisive. Has hobbies other than going to the bars. Wants me for more than a place to poke his dick. Lastly, but most importantly, he had to accept me for who I really was.
Goose checked them all.
I fell head over heels for Goose the evening that he kissed me on the roof. But, our relationship was nothing more than what it was. Putting a label on it would be impossible.
I looked him in the eyes. “I don’t make assumptions, and we haven’t discussed it, so I’m sure this isn’t what you want to hear.”
His face washed with worry. “Go ahead.”
I drew a breath of hope. “Well, we became friends, I guess. We had sex. You invited me to sleep here. I agreed. So, I guess I’m kind of a convenient piece of ass.”
His eyes went wide. “That’s what you think you are?”
I laughed. “It’s what I am.”
He scowled. “You’re more than that to me.”
I was elated that he felt I was more than a convenient piece of ass. I liked thinking I was more than that, but he’d said nothing to lead me to believe otherwise. In the absence of that declaration, I was left to make my own decisions about what it was that we had.
I didn’t like making assumptions, so I was forced to look at what we had on the surface. The obvious. We enjoyed each other’s company. We had sex. We slept in the same bed. That, pretty much, was the sum of it all.
I realized I’d picked the crust from the uneaten portion of my sandwich and had piled it on the edge of the plate. I covered the crumbs with the sandwich and pushed the plate aside. “I guess you need to tell me what this is, then. I must have missed the memo.”
“There’s a rule, of sorts, with bikers. If a man makes it known that he’s in a relationship with a woman, the other bikers respect that relationship, and they respect her. If you and I are in a relationship, Cash will respect that, and this bullshit will stop. I want to be in a relationship. I want to give this a label.”
More of what he didn’t want to hear came spewing from my mouth. “I don’t want to be in a relationship with you to get the bullshit to stop. I want to be in a relationship with you because it’s what—”
He shook his head adamantly. “That’s not why I’m doing this.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“I think I love you,” he blurted.
My jaw hit the floor. It was exactly what I wanted, but not at all what I expected. Not at that moment, anyway. I pressed the heel of my palm against my overactive heart.
“What’s it…what’s it going to take…for you to know?” I asked.
“Repercussion.”
My brow wrinkled. “Repercussion?”
He laughed. “Sorry. I’m…I’m a little bit nervous,” he stammered. “Not repercussion. Reciprocation. Acknowledgement, or whatever.”
I smiled. “I think I love you, too.”
37
Goose
I’d been in a handful of relationships. One of them turned into a botched marriage.
At the time, I believed marriage would provide stability in my life. A sense of balance that I felt was lacking in the lop-sided life of an outlaw. I eagerly searched for someone to provide that balance.
In no time, I found a woman whose mere existence tugged at my heartstrings. Divorced and with children in tow, she needed a man in her life. I believed I could provide her—and her children—a better life. I could provide for her children what I wasn’t able to have as a child.
Fixing her life, I was sure, would fix mine. So, I began building what I believed to be a more stable foundation for us all. We moved forward, both eager to see what our future together held.
I feared being truthful would jeopardize the club’s anonymity. I found out that hiding club business from my spouse caused that very foundation that I was building to crumble into a pile of rubble.
What we had promptly ended in divorce. It was for the better. It happened for all the wrong reasons. I knew I never loved her. I loved the thought of having a family. A group of people to cook for, care for, and provide for.
Looking back on that failed relationship, I can safely say that until I met Ally, I’d never been in love. Love found me when I wasn’t looking. The hand of life slapped me in the face, waking me from a life-long slumber.
When I opened my eyes, love was looking back at me.
With my eyes wide open, I eagerly looked back.
“I don’t think I love you anymore,” I said.
Her eyes bulged. “Huh?”
“I know I love you,” I said. “I know it.”
Her blue eyes blinked. “Excuse me?”
“I know I love you.”
She leaped from her bar stool and held her flattened hand over the center of the island. “Fuck yes! I love you, too.”
I glanced at her hand and then met her blue-eyed gaze. “You want a high five?”
She grinned. “A little slappy to make Ally happy?”
I stared, wondering what in the hell I’d gotten myself into.
The look on my face must have scared her. Her hand lowered a little. “I’m guessing you didn’t see the movie?”
“What movie?”
“Trolls? Justin Timberlake and Anna what’s-her-name. Kendrick, or whatever. Animated movies are a close second to old feature films.”
I slapped my hand against hers. “No, I haven’t seen it.”
“We’ll watch it together, sometime. Soon. You’ll do that with me. Wanna know why?”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you love me,” she said. “And when two people are in love, they make sacrifices for each other.”
“Is that how it works?” I asked.
She nodded “Uh huh. I’m going to make one for you. A sacrifice.”
“What’s that?” I asked.
“Everyone deserves a second chance,” she said. “I’ll stomach Cash’s bad attitude until he accepts me. However long that takes.”
38
Ally
It had been two weeks since Goose and I declared our love for one another. Life was joy
ous at home. At the clubhouse, it was a different story.
If there was one thing I learned to do throughout my career, it was act. So, I began to act like I enjoyed being in Cash’s company, even though it was obvious he didn’t enjoy being in mine.
Hoping to bond with the overgrown child, I sat at the clubhouse’s snack-stained sectional instead of off to the side in a hard chair. The results were often frustrating, but almost always entertaining.
For me, anyway.
Positioned between Cash and Goose on the sofa, I listen to Baker as he instructed us on our next bank job.
“Is there anything anyone feels like adding?” he asked.
“I’ve got something,” I said.
Baker nodded in my direction. “What’s that?”
“If we continue with the cheerleader thing, there’ll be enough people that eventually report it that we’ll be known as the cheerleader bandits or some ridiculous shit. It isn’t the label that bothers me, it’s the cops looking for a cheerleader while they’re on patrol. After that first report of a cheerleader at a bank is given, the next time we pull up beside a cop and I’m wearing a cheerleader outfit, we’ll get got.”
“What about waiters and waitresses,” Cash asked. “Or something like that? Act like we’re coming home from the bar?”
Baker shook his head. “I don’t like it.”
Cash slumped in his seat, obviously butt-hurt. “Why not?”
“Because most waiters in this area wear black. I liked the cheerleader thing because anyone that pulled up alongside the car would recognize the driver as being a cheerleader. If they pulled up alongside a bunch of waiters wearing black, they’d think you’d just robbed a fucking bank.”
I raised my index finger. “What about the guys wearing SDSU shirts while they’re on lookout, and when we’re done, they can take them off? We can paint their faces red and black. Underneath the shirts, they can have body paint?” I asked. “One guy with a red “S” painted on his chest, one has a black “D” another has a black “S”, and then a red “U”. I’ll paint my face half black, half red, and make my hair fire engine red? It’ll look like we just left a San Diego State University game?”
Goose Page 19
