“You lazy piece of shit, grab a glass,” he told the other man, reaching into the cabinet and extracting one before sitting it on the counter.
Jagger gasped, taking the juice down the wrong way, and then coughed, heaving as he tried to push the juice past his throat. “You scared the absolute shit out of me. What the fuck are you doing up?”
“Could ask you the same thing, and why the hell are you here and not at your apartment?”
“The Fall Festival ran over, and it was closer to come out here than go to the apartment. B’s exhausted after helping to plan it. I was afraid she’d fall off the bike if we tried to go any further.”
Travis nodded. He knew that Bianca worked hard at her job as a teacher—she took it very seriously. “That doesn’t explain why you’re out here drinking orange juice out of the carton, which I have to tell you, is fucking nasty, dude. Germs and all. Who knows where your mouth’s been?”
Jagger let loose with a shit-eating grin, and Travis held his hands up. “Don’t wanna hear it.”
“Hey you asked why I was out here.”
The two stood there in silence. Travis’ heart beat heavily against his chest. He wanted to tell Jagger, so badly, about Christine. He knew that Jagger wondered about her, he had let it slip once, while drunk, that he had gone back to his childhood home, but his parents wouldn’t see him. They wouldn’t tell him where she was, or even acknowledge that either one of them was their child. Steele knew that had to hurt. His family was just as fucked up as the rest, but at least his mom, when he did see her, acknowledged him. “Whatever. Can you tell Liam that I had to go take care of a personal emergency? I’ll meet everybody here before we head out to deal with the Rooster situation.”
Jagger regarded Travis closely, his young face turning serious. He looked a lot like Christine when he did that. “You know, it must be weird for you now that all of us are in relationships and happy with what we have. If you ever just need to hang out, you know that Layne and I are here, right?”
Awesome, now Jagger was feeling sorry for him.
“I know, man, thanks for the offer.” He squeezed Jagger’s shoulder. “But this really is something that I need to deal with on my own.”
Not wanting to be in the same room anymore, Travis made a mad dash for the door and all but ran into the garages. Tired didn’t even begin to cover it as he hopped on his bike. Now the lie he was living was becoming increasingly harder to keep up with. He hoped with everything in him that Christine Stone was worth it, because if not, when this all came crashing down, his life would be over. He’d probably be kicked out of the MC, lose every single friend he had, and live the rest of his life wondering what could have been with her. Never had he been the type of person to put all his eggs in one basket, but he had with her, and while he wasn’t regretting it, he was wondering just what in the fuck he’d gotten himself into.
Any person in their right mind would question themselves for getting out of bed at 2 AM and driving to meet a woman that they hadn’t even kissed yet. Starting the bike, he sighed and drove down the driveway before hitting Porter Pike and driving the same direction he’d been driving for months. Soon, he would need to demand answers, but right now, he wanted to be what she needed because he desperately wanted her to be what he needed.
Chapter Five
Christine was scared that Travis had changed his mind when, after thirty minutes, he still hadn’t showed up at her house. She didn’t want to examine too closely why that bothered her or why it scared her, but it did. She got up, pacing the living room until she heard the muted roar of a bike. She would know that sound anywhere, it had become one of her favorites. Running over to the front door, she opened it when she heard him on the front porch.
“Sorry it took me so long,” he told her as he made his way into the house. “I got stopped on my way out.”
“At this hour?” she asked, disbelief showing on her face.
Travis shrugged. “We kinda keep our own hours at the clubhouse. Just so happened someone was drinking out of the orange juice carton. Drives me fucking nuts. There’s glasses there for a reason.”
She smiled softly. “Sounds like something Jagger used to do.”
He tensed, wondering if he should tell her the truth. This was one of the first times that she had mentioned him voluntarily. Knowing that they wouldn’t get past this huge elephant if they didn’t acknowledge it, he decided it was best to be honest. “It was Jagger, and he asked me where the fuck I was going.”
“Did you tell him?” Two feelings bubbled up in gut at the thought of him telling her brother, fear and relief. She didn’t want to examine either one of them.
“Have I broken a promise to you yet?”
Something about him coming here at this time of night, something about him dropping everything just for her, made her look at him differently. He hadn’t ever broken a promise to her, and she could tell by looking at him now that it was taking a toll. There were dark circles under his eyes, his face was pulled taut. “You haven’t, and I’m beginning to think that’s been very selfish of me.”
Those were the last words that he expected to come out of her mouth. “You’ve got a lot going on,” he tried to play it off.
“So do you. I don’t have the monopoly on bullshit and life crises.”
“Wow,” he chuckled. “What’s going on here?”
She sought the words that she wanted to speak. It took a long time, but finally she found them. “Tonight is the first time that I’ve ever seen you when your guard isn’t up.”
“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” It was hard to hold back the tone of his voice, the lack of sleep was beginning to get to him.
“That I’m always asking for your help but never asking if you need mine.”
He couldn’t believe what he was hearing from her. For so long she had been scared to speak to him, almost like she couldn’t put voice to anything she really thought, and now here she was telling him that maybe he needed her help. “What the fuck happened to you tonight?”
“I had a dream,” she told him.
“Must have been some kinda dream.”
“It was about the night I left him.”
He stilled, completely stopped moving any part of his body. Was she finally ready to tell him who “him” was? Was she finally ready to trust him? “You know you can talk to me about that…right? I want to know who this guy was, who made you so scared you had to go to a shelter for battered and abused women.”
“He was a bad man.” She took a deep breath.
It was on the tip of Steele’s tongue to tell her “no shit”, but he refrained. This was the closest she’d ever been to telling him the things that he wanted to know, and he didn’t want to ruin it. “How did you meet him? Does Jagger know him?”
“I don’t think so,” she shook her head. “I don’t know where Jagger would have met him, but stranger things have happened, I guess. To tell you the truth, I really don’t know. I haven’t thought about that in a long time.”
She was quiet for so long that he had a seat on the couch and leaned back. He was tired, and he thought maybe if he acted like this wasn’t that big of a deal she could open up. He leaned his head back against the cushions and willed his body to relax, closing his eyes at the silence of the room.
“My dad knew him,” she finally said. “They had some sort of deal.”
His eyes popped open. “Like an arranged marriage?”
“I guess, I never quiet understood it.” She shrugged, pulling her legs up to her chest.
He recognized that as a protective gesture and knew he had to tread lightly. Travis couldn’t believe that someone their age would be involved in an arranged marriage. It was so antiquated. “How old was this piece of shit?”
“When we got married, I was a week past eighteen. He was forty-five,” she whispered, her eyes downcast as she said the words.
“Are you fucking shitting me?” he asked, his whole body coming up off the c
ouch.
“I wish I was.” She swallowed roughly against the lump that had formed in her throat. “I was nothing more than a trophy wife for him. He decided the color of my hair, what I wore, who I hung out with. I could only drive the kind of car he wanted me to, only when he was with me.”
“Is that why your hair looked so weird the first time I met you?”
She couldn’t help but laugh. Her hair had looked awful. It was in that in-between stage of color because she hadn’t been able to afford to get someone to do it correctly. At that time, she had been trying to do it in the small bathroom at the CRISIS house, and it had been a nightmare. “Yeah,” she giggled. “It did look weird. Thank God you got me the job at the hair salon; otherwise it might still look like shit.”
He leaned back down against the couch again, pulling her with him. Very carefully, he reached over and ran his hand through her hair. He let his fingers linger at the end of the strand. “I like this color on you.”
It was one of the first times that he had ever touched her, other than helping her on or off the bike. They weren’t ones to give into displays of any type of affection. They had never even hugged one another, but the way he ran his fingers through her hair, she wanted to lean her head against his chest and purr like a kitten. “I do too.”
“Is it your natural color?”
She knew that he was thinking about Jagger. His was a dirty-blond, sometimes darker. Hers had always been on the darker side. She often wondered if the two of them were real brother and sister when she was younger. Their looks, as far as hair color and eye color, were polar opposites, but their bone structure was almost identical. It was why Jagger had always been called a pretty-boy. “It’s a little bit darker than my natural color, but I’ve always had darker-colored hair. Jagger, when he was little, had hair so blond that it was white. I can remember once we went to the pool and the chlorine turned it green. My dad was so mad.”
He took that little nugget of info that she had given him and put it in his pocket for later. It wasn’t like her to share things with him, and he wanted to believe that they were turning a corner, that she was starting to trust him. “Why would your dad be mad? It wasn’t like it was the little shit’s fault his hair turned colors.”
“It was just how dad was.” She shrugged. “The littlest thing would set him off, and the two of us would be wondering just what in the hell we did so wrong. That’s why I was surprised when you told me that Jagger’s in a relationship.”
He had accidentally let that slip in one of their conversations. “Jagger isn’t anything like I would imagine your dad was. He’s a very compassionate guy. He and B, they have a great relationship.”
“B?”
“Her name is Bianca, but we all call her B,” Travis explained. “Here.” He reached into his pocket and pulled out his personal cell phone, the one that had all his pictures and real-name contacts on it. “This is them.” He pulled up a picture that had been taken a few weeks prior at one of the family dinners that the club was now known to have on occasion. They were sitting so close together that there was no space between them. They were cheek to cheek, and the smile on both their faces was bright. Jagger’s arm was slung around B’s shoulders, and he apparently hadn’t been able to help touching her, his thumb cupped her chin.
“She’s gorgeous,” Christine said as she gazed at the picture. “They look happy.”
“They are. It took them a little while to get there, but they are. I’m expecting them to run off and get married any day now.”
“Really?” she questioned. After the hell their parents had put them through, she couldn’t imagine Jagger willingly wanting to tie himself down like that.
“Yeah,” Travis nodded. “Your parents might have been asses, but Jagger has some really good committed couples to pull inspiration from. He’s grown into a good man.”
No thanks to her or their parents was left unsaid. “I’m so glad he’s happy.”
“He is, but I know he wonders about you.” He slipped that tidbit of information in, hoping that she wouldn’t shut down on him. It meant a lot to their relationship, and he wanted her to want that relationship as much as he did.
She shook her head, her long hair hitting his arm. “I can’t.”
“You can.”
Inhaling deeply, she looked him in the eye. “Please respect that, right now, I really can’t. I might work up to it one day, but I don’t want to ruin his happiness.”
“You wouldn’t be, it would make him even happier.”
He could see that this caused her anxiety, that somehow she thought Jagger knowing where she was would ruin everything for him. “Okay, I’ll keep your secret for now, but I’m warning you, Christy. I won’t keep it forever. I’m telling you, if you don’t tell him in the next few weeks, I’m telling him. I can’t keep doing this.”
The look on his face, the tired eyes, the taut features, told her that he was being completely honest. He couldn’t keep living a lie, and if she was honest with herself too, she was sick of being alone. Seeing that picture of Jagger, she wanted nothing more than to be included in that happiness. She might even want that kind of happiness with Travis. “Do you have any more pictures of them?”
“I do,” Travis nodded. “Have you ever heard your brother sing?”
She grinned, nodding. “He used to sing me to sleep when I was little. I knew he sang at Wet Wanda’s, but I was always scared to be scheduled on those days or to stick around. I was afraid I would blow my own cover. I haven’t heard it in so long.”
He grinned back at her. “Then you’re in for a treat.” He flipped through a bunch of pictures—some of just Jagger, some of Jagger with other people—and then he opened up the videos on his phone. “Sometimes we have parties, and every once in a while, we’ll get Jagger to pull out his guitar and sing for us. He did this the other night.” He pulled up the video and pressed play, letting her watch it.
By the time the video ended she was in tears.
“Are those good or bad?”
“Good,” she smiled. “He’s gotten so much better, and he stared at Bianca the entire time he sang that. He loves her so much.”
“He does,” Travis agreed.
He shut the phone off and then put it back in his pocket. Out of nowhere, he felt arms around his waist. Christine was hugging him. She was physically touching him someplace other than the back of his bike. This night would go down to be one that he never thought would happen but was so surprised that it had. He wouldn’t forget this night for as long as he lived.
Chapter Six
The next morning dawned way too early for Steele, and he knew that he had to bring it. Rooster had brought him in on something that he had absolutely no idea about. He just knew that his cousin had pointed him in the direction of something that maybe the Heaven Hill MC needed to be aware of. He met the guys, just like he promised to do, and took them out deep into Richardsville. Even though he had grown up on these roads, he hated them. They were so curvy, with twists and blind curves that made him nervous. There had to be a reason that Rooster had brought them all the way out there. At one point, they had to pull off to let other people come through the road, even though they were on bikes.
“This shit is crazy,” Jagger breathed. “I’ve lived in this area my entire life and never knew this shit existed.”
“This is why the county always took snow days last winter and everybody in town bitched ’cause there was nothing on the roads in Bowling Green. It was slick as snot out here.”
“Are we almost there?” Layne asked from where he brought up the rear.
“Yeah, couple more miles ahead,” Travis assured them as they got back on the road.
The group of them came upon a broken-down farmhouse. It was obvious that it had been in disrepair for years. Travis signaled that this was where they needed to be, and they followed his lead, shutting their bikes off and parking them. “Is this Old Man Sullivan’s place?” Liam asked as he got off his b
ike and took a look around.
“It is,” Travis nodded. “It was abandoned even back when we used to come out here as kids, but it was ours.”
“I think Rooster brought me out here a few times, but the memory is hazy. I think we were doing a little more than playing,” Liam grinned. “We might have been drinkin’ a few beers and experimenting with some Mary Jane.”
They laughed as Travis broke off from the group, trying to get his bearings. “I’m trying to think, it’s been a very long time since I’ve been out here.” He turned to the left and right. “Tyler, which way is northwest?”
Looking up at the sun, Tyler pointed in the correct direction. “You’re gonna be over that way.”
Travis took off until he rounded the house and spotted a large tree. “That’s it. What he wants us to find is over there, but it might take me a minute to get to it.”
“Go do it. This place gives me the creeps,” Jagger said from where he stood. He had his gloves on, as well as his leathers, but he was fidgety.
“You too?” Layne asked. “Almost feels like someone’s watching us.”
“We’re gonna go check it out,” Jagger told Tyler and Liam as they stood there with Travis.
“Sounds like a good idea,” Tyler agreed. He was also feeling twitchy.
“Wouldn’t put it past that damn sheriff to be setting us up,” Layne mumbled as they made their way around the house.
Liam grinned. “He is not a fan of Rooster’s.”
“Not many of us really are,” Tyler admitted. “You have a much different relationship with him than the rest of us do, you have to admit that.”
Liam sighed. The relationship he had with the sheriff’s deputy was different than those he had with any of the other guys. He and Rooster had grown up together, speeding down these back roads on bikes that they’d built themselves. They had been the best of friends until that fateful night that had sent it all crashing down. Liam wasn’t willing to relive that night just so he could explain to the guys why they weren’t close anymore. Not even Tyler knew. “I will admit that, but that’s all I’m gonna admit.”
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