by Karen Renee
After Andrea had her first sip she gave me a strange look. “I can’t help but mention, I had their protection a few months back, and then I lost it. When I lost that protection, things went really, really bad. Isn’t there anyone, besides Roll, you could contact just to put their minds at ease or something?”
My gut told me to call Blood, but after the way he handled my drive to Biloxi, there was no way I was calling him. A sick part of me wanted to call Har, but not only did I not have his number, I didn’t want to lead him to any wrong conclusions. I could call Patch, who worked at a mechanic shop which was not owned by the Riot MC, but that felt wrong, too. Deep down I knew I needed to woman-up and call Roll direct.
“You’re right, Andrea. I’ll call Roll and keep it short and sweet.”
I pulled my phone from my back pocket and called him. It didn’t even ring once on my end before he clipped out, “Where the fuck are you?”
“I’m fine, and I’m safe. Where I am, though, doesn’t matter.”
“Sure as fuck does, Tr—”
“Nope. I’m not spendin’ the night here, but when I go home, your ass better not be there,” I said and hung up. I powered off my phone and set it on the small glass table between the loungers.
***
At a quarter to eight, I parked in front of my apartment. As I drove in, I scanned the surroundings and saw no signs of a bike. Sitting in my parked car, I looked for any familiar pick-up trucks or cars, because I wouldn’t put it past Roll or Blood to borrow somebody’s cage and wait for me. When I realized the coast was clear, I went to my unit.
I unlocked the door and dumped my purse and duffel bag on the couch. Once I closed and locked the door, I jumped a good foot in the air at a man’s voice.
“Not a good idea to hang up on your old man.”
I realized it was Rage, and turned annoyed eyes to him. “Not a good idea to break into my place, asshole.”
He unfolded from a chair at my kitchen table. “Then you shouldn’t live in a shithole.”
I knew I should let that go, but I was in no mood for these guys. “This place is not a shithole!”
Standing in front of me, he crossed his arms on his chest. “Yours isn’t, but as easy as it is to get in here, it’s close e-damn-nough.”
“Whatever, you shouldn’t be here, so get out.”
Rage stared at me for a long moment as if he could get answers that way. Finally he asked, “Why are you fuckin’ with him?”
That made me see red, and I leaned into Rage with my fury. “I am not fuckin’ with him. He’s the one who’s been fuckin’ with me for so goddamn long I’m ashamed of my own damned self!”
Seemed I would never learn because Rage wasn’t called ‘Rage’ for nothing. He got off on other people being pissed and returned that ten-fold, so he mimicked my lean, but his fury was a quiet fury, which made it scarier. “Not very long ago, you refused to get on my bike because ‘the man you loved’ had finally told you he loved you. You knew not to put yourself on my bike, but you got pissed at ‘the man you love’ and hauled ass to Biloxi. And then you brought their President back with you, a man who apparently slept with you years ago and insisted you were in his bed last night. If that ain’t fuckin’ with my brother, I don’t fuckin’ know what the hell is.”
I glared at the wall to my right. My mind couldn’t wrap around the idea of Har sharing that shit with Rage and Roll, but then I remembered exactly how I woke up this morning. Brute had been there too, and something about Brute was off by just that little bit that I knew he would enjoy telling other men about me, or hell any woman. Damn Brute and his big mouth!
“Listen—”
“No. Not me you need to spew your shit to. Funny thing, stood in this place thinkin’ an old lady wouldn’t be too bad if she had the grit you do. Turned out, I was right all along. Ain’t a single piece of gash out there worth what you’re doin’ to the best brother in Jax.”
With that scathing blow he stormed out of my place and with a heavy numbness I locked the door after him.
Seemed everything I did fucked up my life even further.
Roll
After Trixie hung up on him, Roll left her place and went to the rehabilitation center. His mother had been moved there that morning. He checked in at the front desk. When he entered his mother’s room, he was amazed his brother wasn’t around.
To his surprise, his niece Leah was at his mother’s bedside.
“What’re you doin’ here?” he asked.
“Nice to see you too, Uncle Roll,” she chided with a grin. “It’s a planning day and I just finished four hours of volunteer time, so I decided to hang with Grandma.”
He noticed his mother was watching him. The left side of her face was still fairly slack, but the assessing light in her eyes was as bright as ever.
He slid his eyes back to Leah. “You’re a good egg, Lee-Lee.” Then he focused on his mother. “How you doin’, Momma? Feelin’ okay?”
She pressed her lips together, and he knew it was so she could choose her words carefully. Since she started recovering from the stroke, in addition to her physical therapy she was getting speech therapy, which seemed to frustrate her more than anything else.
“Be better, you tell me what’s wrong,” she said, and her voice was tight with the effort to enunciate her words.
He gave her a half-smile. “Nothin’ wrong with me, Momma. We bust you outta here, everything’ll be right again.”
She slowly shook her head at him, and he had forgotten about Leah in the room until she spoke. “This have to do with Trixie?”
He turned sharp eyes to her. “Little lady—”
“Not little any more, Uncle Roll.”
Before he could rebuke her, his mother asked, “Your niece knows about this woman, but I don’t? Seems you have some explaining, Homer.” Her ‘s’ sounds weren’t the best since the stroke so it sounded like she said, ‘eems you have ome expaining, Homer.’
As much as it twisted his heart to hear her struggle with her words, it warmed his heart just as much to hear her wanting to know about Trixie. Fuck! What was he going to do? He wanted to lay it all out for her, and Leah too, for that matter, but he wasn’t certain there was anything to explain. He wanted Trixie to be his, but she was doing her level best to thumb her nose at his claiming her. No matter how little it said of him, he wasn’t willing to sacrifice so much of his pride to make her give in to him. She wanted nothing to do with him, so be it. He’d spent many years snubbing her, trying to push her to look elsewhere, so if now the tables were turned, he would suck it up.
“I would if Trixie weren’t so damned determined to break things off, and to be honest, at this point I don’t think she’s wrong about any of it.”
A strange sound came from his mother, and he realized she was trying to force a huge breath from her mouth, but it caught on her lips, which weren’t fully under her control. “That’s a bunch of cockamamie bullshit.”
Roll thought his gut would bust as he tried to hold in his laughter at her saying ‘bullshit’ without a full mastery of the ‘s’ sound, but he managed it. His mother saying ‘bullhit’ aside, he realized his mother was right. Any excuse from him, or Trixie, for that matter, was nothing more than a bunch of bullshit, and life was too short for him to give in to that.
***
He left his mother with his niece later in the evening, but not before making sure they both had some dinner. Throwing a leg over his bike, Roll debated going to Trixie’s but he was in no mood to deal with her right then. Plus, it was highly likely he would say things he would regret. Knowing Har and the Biloxi brothers were still in town, he didn’t want to hit the clubhouse either.
As he twisted the key in the ignition he knew exactly where he was headed.
Heathen was in lock-up for what he did to Kim, and she had been discharged recently. She’d left him a message telling him she was staying with a girlfriend who had an apartment in Mandarin. Since he hadn’t spoken to Kim sinc
e prior to Heathen’s attack, he prayed Heathen had no idea where this girlfriend lived. What he did know was that the apartment complex was a decent distance from the Devil Lancer’s compound.
It was a twenty-minute drive from Orange Park to Kim’s friend’s place, and Roll circled the lot twice to be sure there were no suspicious vehicles or people trying to keep tabs on the unit. Maybe he was crazy, or maybe he was overly-protective, but he put the kickstand down on his bike in front of building Four Hundred rather than building Six Hundred, which was where Kim was staying. Roll then walked a circuitous route to be certain he wasn’t being followed, and to make sure anyone watching Kim’s friend’s building wasn’t aware of his presence.
At the top of the breezeway of Kim’s building he texted her to let her know he was there. When he approached her doorway, she flung the door open.
“Get your ass in here! It’s about damn time, little brother,” she insisted, as she grabbed his wrist.
Hearing anyone call him ‘little’ anything was strange to him, but a woman calling him ‘little brother’ was especially bizarre to him. He had to force himself to ease the tension in his jaw or he might crack a tooth at the sight of his sister’s battered face. Her left eye was blackened and the bruising extended toward her temple. He noticed her lip was split in two places, and having spent over a decade raising hell, he knew how much that shit hurt. No matter how deeply he breathed, he struggled to keep his temper in check at such brutality being carried out on a woman.
Once the door was closed behind him, Roll shoved those thoughts aside. He guided Kim to the living room, and when she was seated, he examined her face and body. She hadn’t been holding herself carefully, like women who had recently been beaten around their ribs and kidneys, but she still moved slowly. That was to be expected, because Heathen had done his best to make her move slower. Much as she tried to hide it, Roll could see that taking deep breaths hurt Kim, which meant big movements were few and far between.
Roll followed her into the cramped living room and was pleased to see her roommate was not home. He planted his ass on a plush sage-green love seat, adjacent to Kim on the matching couch.
When he was comfortable and Kim looked at him expectantly, Roll spoke. “Assumin’ you ain’t heard anything from your dipshit husband, but none of his brothers have been by, have they?”
She shook her head. Even though she tried to hide it, he could see it hurt her to move her head side-to-side. “None of them have been around me since he was last around. Can’t say they aren’t watching me, but with him in jail I’d imagine they have better things to do right about now.”
Running a hand through his straggly hair, he asked, “Hate to ask, but after all the shit Heathen put you through, you made it clear to the cops and shit that I’m not a threat, right?”
A ghost of a smile played on Kim’s lips before she said, “Roll, I’m not sure if you’re aware of how this shit works or not, but I’d have been hard-pressed to not demonstrate you weren’t a threat.”
That was a little wordy, but Roll decided to let it slide.
“I’m thinkin’ your involvement in this needs to end,” Roll said.
“Tough,” she bit out.
He blinked slowly and refocused on his sister. “I know I didn’t hear you right.”
She grinned. “You did hear me right. A victim’s advocacy rep came by my hospital room, and convinced me to speak with a cop.”
Roll shot her a look as a strange feeling crept over him. She’d been with Heathen a damn long time, and wanted to get away from him for nearly as long, but she was still part of the one-percenter life. It didn’t sit right that she willingly talked to the law about her man, even if she was looking to get away from him.
“I don’t think you—”
“You’re done.”
Roll narrowed his eyes at her. “Kim, I ain’t got time for another bossy woman right now.”
“Your momma’s that bossy, hmm?”
He should have lowered his chin, or done something to affirm her question, because his silence said she was wrong.
“You have another woman in your life? They said you never got tied down.”
Roll sighed. “That was true years ago. I never corrected anybody when things changed.”
Kim raised her eyebrows. “Who’s bossing you around? Not sure if I wanna pat her on the back or tell her to back off.”
Roll shook his head. “It’s complicated, but shit don’t change soon, she won’t be around any more.”
Kim’s eyebrows lowered. “Harsh, don’t you think?”
“Nope, and I know it ain’t harsh. She knows the score but hasn’t stopped long enough to listen to me.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Trixie
Admitting I’m a dumb-ass has never been easy. I should not have let my temper get to me two days ago, but I did. Adding fuel to that fire of dumb-assery, I had to go to Biloxi and drag the only other two men from the Riot MC I’d been with back with me. Though to be real about it, I had no way of knowing Har would escort me right back the next day. This meant, in a way, Rage was wrong. It wasn’t my idea for Har to be back here, and it damn sure wasn’t my idea for Brute to run his mouth to the brothers. Of course, Rage didn’t care about all of that, and he wasn’t the person who needed to hear it, anyway.
I debated calling Roll so I could ‘fess up to my idiotic ways, but I needed the night to get my shit together. If there was anything I’d learned about dealing with him over the years, it was that we were both better off with a decent night’s sleep. Taking the clothes from my duffel bag, I dumped them in my hamper and got ready for bed.
It was probably the middle of the night, and I woke up because my bed had been gently jostled. I took in a deep breath as I debated how to deal with this, but the scent of cigarettes and the faint aroma of Roll’s cologne hit my nose and my anxiety melted. It was quickly replaced by serious irritation. These guys had to stop breaking into my place. Plus, even if I hadn’t smoked in nearly a year, smelling it on Roll fucked with my willpower.
I sat up with a sigh. “Please, God, take a shower before you get in my bed. I quit smoking, and I don’t need the smell of Marlboros while I’m tryin’ to sleep. In the morning I’ll admit to being an idiot, but you and Rage have to stop breaking in here.”
His breathing was the only sound in the room for a while. Then I heard his ponytail move across his leather cut and I could make out the shape of his profile turned to me. “Didn’t break in, I got a key. I’d tell Rage to stop breakin’ in, but he’ll do whatever the fuck he wants anyway. You’re gonna insist I shower, I’m gonna insist you do it with me.”
That was enticing, but no. “Roll, please. I’m tired, and I want to go back to sleep. You can shower with me in the morning.”
He shrugged off his cut, and placed it on a folding chair against the wall. I heard his boots clatter to the floor after a few moments, and the bed moved when he stood up. Then I heard the springs creak when he planted a knee on the bed and used his torso to shove me to my back.
“Where’d you go today, Baker?”
Even though I was laying down, my spine straightened. He had only called me ‘Baker’ once, and it was early in our relationship when he was royally pissed at me for getting falling-down drunk during my second trip to Biketoberfest. Hearing him call me by my last name, I realized I had underestimated his anger.
“I went to Janie’s,” I whispered.
He grabbed my wrists and pinned them above my head. “Don’t fuckin’ lie to me, goddamn it,” he growled.
I tried to jerk him off me. “I’m not lying. Jesus!”
“Andrea went to hang with Janie and she didn’t tell Liar you were there.”
I was glad the room was dark so Roll couldn’t see my smirk, but I couldn’t hide it from my voice. “That’s because Janie didn’t tell Andrea I was there until she got there.”
“Not a fuckin’ thing amusing about this shit, Baker,” he whispered.
/> That wiped the smirk off my face. After a few beats of silence Roll let my wrists go. “Didn’t think you’d put another woman in the position where her old man would have to spank her ass.”
If she was into that sort of thing, I would, but this was not the time for that. “I didn’t put anyone in any position.”
“Andi should’ve told Liar.”
“And she did, but by the time she did, I was gone. Besides, Rage was here when I got home. I don’t see what the damn difference is.”
He knifed off me, and sat at the edge of the bed. “The fuckin’ difference is that I needed to fuckin’ talk to you. Face to damn face, woman. Your goddamn temper’s always been an issue, but you need to get your shit together or there won’t be a you and me anymore.”
I sat up and turned on my bedside lamp. Through my wince at the sudden brightness, I snarled, “It’s that easy for you, is it? Claim me in church to your brothers, tell me you love me, supposedly give yourself to me, only to take yourself away when the going gets rough with me? I’m thinkin’ you’re the one who needs to get his shit together, because that damn sure isn’t how love works.”
He looked over his shoulder at me. “Strange, you know that’s not how love works, but you don’t know love also doesn’t run from a misunderstanding.”
“Years of my life, I spent only with you, Roll. I’ve known for a long damn time, you are it for me. So for you to claim me only because some other damn club—”
“That’s out of context,” he thundered. After a deep breath, he continued. “The attack woke my shit up, but it was my brothers who forced my hand. The Devil Lancers assumed you were my woman, even though I’ve never had an old lady. I wanted to lay claim to you last year, but it was never necessary, and it wasn’t fair to you, with your baby fever.”
“We’re back to this,” I muttered, and immediately regretted it.
He stood facing me. “Yeah, we’re back to that. It’s that damn important.”
“What’s important is you. And what’s fair to me, is working through shit with you.”
