by Jayne Blue
“No good, Kel,” Tate poked his head in from the front door.
“Huh?” It took me a second to shake the cobwebs out of my head and focus on something other than this gorgeous girl in front of me. She was trying to act tough. Not let me see what she might really be thinking. I fucking hated it. I never wanted her to hide anything from me ever again.
“The van,” Tate said, coughing to clear his throat. “It’s not the battery. There’s something else electrical going on but that thing’s not going anywhere anytime soon.”
“Perfect,” Mallory said. “I’m gonna throttle Justin.”
“Don’t sweat it,” I said. I put a hand on her arm as she pulled out her phone. “Let me just take you home.”
Mallory’s mouth dropped; her lips formed that perfect ‘o’ I was starting to love.
“It’s far,” she said. “I live out by East Point. I can just have Justin come pick me up.”
“In what? That’s his shit van out there not starting. Come on, don’t be silly.” Before she could protest any more, I was on my feet and took her by the hand. I grabbed a spare helmet off the bar and took her outside.
I jerked my chin at Tate. “I’ll be back in an hour or so. We’ll head out to Heidi’s then and see what’s what.”
Tate nodded and went back inside. When I knew we were alone, I turned back to face her. I don’t know what made me do it. This could be a clean get away. She’d given me an out. But I knew something special when I saw it and Mallory Rhodes was something special.
I put my hands on her hips and pulled her close to me. She let out a little gasp that sent my heart racing. I brushed her hair out of her face and tilted her chin up toward me. For someone so small, her eyes blazed fierce. Almost daring me to kiss her. And I wanted to do so much more. Wanted to keep doing more. I wanted to take her back to my room and keep her there all day.
“Kellan,” she said. “Maybe you should just take me home.”
I smiled. “Yeah. I suppose that’s what I should just do. But what do you want me to do?”
She hesitated. I watched her chest rise and fall with her heavy breaths. Her eyes darted across my face, filled with a thousand emotions and her racing thoughts. She was doing all the things that I should do. Thinking. Weighing risks. Trying to choose the right thing.
I wasn’t going to force her, but I sure as hell wasn’t going to let her go. Before she could say anything, I leaned down and kissed her. She sank into me for a fraction of a second before her back went rigid and she pulled away. Her eyes flashed fire.
“Take me home, Kellan.” Her voice came out as a choked whisper. It tore at me a little because I knew she wanted more from me, just as I wanted more from her. For now though, I’d give her a little space.
She smiled, stepped back and took the helmet from me. I climbed on my Harley as she snapped it on. My skin prickled when she climbed on behind me and slid her arms around my waist. It took everything for me to maintain my self-control as she pressed her chest against my back. I revved the engine and pulled out. I’m not going to lie. I floored it a little harder than I needed to. Just enough to make Mallory squeeze me tighter as we roared off toward the highway.
The ride was smooth. The weather perfect. Mid-seventies, blazing sun and blue skies. It was the kind of day I wanted to spend doing nothing but ride. I felt Mallory’s breath hitch from the thrill of the speed. I was careful. Played it safe. But Mallory squealed with joy every time I took a curve and it was hard not to just tear off and let her rip.
She pointed the way as we got near East Point. She directed me down Charleston Street just past the factory district. Her neighborhood was old and starting to turn, but the houses were still kept up. The yards neat and clean.
I felt her stiffen as we came to a little white ranch house with brick red shutters. An old VW Bug sat on blocks in the driveway.
“This is me,” she said as I pulled up behind the Bug and killed the engine. Mallory let me go and slid off the bike so fast she stumbled a little. I reached out and caught her by the elbow.
“Thanks,” she said. “You better get going. You told Tate you’d be back within the hour.”
“Don’t worry about Tate,” I said. “Let me walk you in.”
Mallory stiffened as I swung off the bike and walked toward her. She gave a nervous glance toward the house that got me worried.
“Everything okay?” I asked. My back went up. Something wasn’t right here. She was jumpy. My fingers played at my side belt loop. I usually carried a piece but this morning I didn’t. I was starting to regret that.
She put on a fake smile and nodded. “Yeah. I’ll just see you next weekend, okay?”
“Mallory?”
There was movement toward the front of the house. The screen door swung open and chaos poured out.
“Slut! Don’t think you can run around on me and crawl back here any damn time you please!”
The guy was big. Almost as tall as I was. Barrel chested with a shock of white hair and a face like a bulldog. He ran at Mallory and I put myself in front of her, hands up. I’d drop the old guy if I had to but I could see in an instant that his eyes saw something in front of him that just flat out wasn’t there. There was a tiny flicker of fear in them, but more than anything, his eyes were dead.
I knew that look. God. I fucking knew that look. His eyes darted left and right as he searched for some threat on a battlefield he’d probably left more than forty years ago. He wore a tattered white tank top leaving his bare arms exposed. Though he waved his fists, I could make out the tattoo clearly on his upper arm. An army flag. A date. Vietnam.
Mallory stepped from behind me. “Dad! Focus. Nobody’s running out on you. It’s just me. It’s Mallory.”
“Who’s this asshole?” he said, swaying on his feet. He had a beer in one hand and a baseball bat in the other. He seemed a little more present and I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing.
I grabbed Mallory’s arm, meaning to pull her back behind me. She put her hand up though. One on my chest, the other on her father’s.
“He’s just a friend, Dad. Kellan. His name’s Kellan. He gave me a ride home.”
I didn’t like the grip he had on that baseball bat. Except it turned out I was watching the wrong thing. The beer bottle went flying right past my ear. I dodged to the right just in time. It shattered against the curb and the noise it made seemed to pull the old guy even further back from whatever waking nightmare he found himself in.
“Whoa. Hang on there, Mr. Rhodes,” I said. “What’s your dad’s name, Mallory?”
“Cocksucker!” he shouted. Then he spit on the ground just near my feet. Okay, so maybe his nightmare was over. Maybe he was also just an asshole.
“Please just go, Kellan,” Mallory whispered as she turned to me. Her eyes filled with pain. “He’s all right. He probably just woke up too fast. He’ll come around in a minute or two.”
“Like hell,” I said.
Just then, another car pulled up alongside the curb and Mallory put a hand to her forehead, the other on her hip. “Hey, Mitch!” She made her tone bright, but the pain was still in it.
A young kid, maybe twelve years old, took a tentative step out of the back seat. He was wearing a baseball uniform and he had Mallory’s pale eyes and sandy blond hair. I wondered if that was her real color too. He looked from me to Mallory and to her dad, surveying the scene. He didn’t so much as flinch. It was clear this kind of thing was status quo at the Rhodes’s house. His back stiffened and he turned to the driver of the car, flicking two fingers. The middle-aged woman behind the wheel looked worried, but she nodded, put the car in gear and drove off. Apparently, she’d seen a version of this spectacle more than once as well.
“Yours?” I said to Mallory.
Mallory stepped forward and put a protective arm around the kid.
“Gross,” he answered for her. “Mallory’s my sister, not my mom. We’re a fucked up family, but not that fucked up.”
M
allory smiled and cupped a hand over Mitch’s mouth. If it weren’t for her bat-swinging, bottle-wielding father, I could have had a laugh over all of it. As it was, a small line of worry creased her forehead. I knew that look. I came from a volatile home life too. My gut twisted looking at Mallory and her kid brother. It had been different in my house. When I got old enough and strong enough, I’d thrown my own father out on the street. All it took was one punch back and he was gone. But who was here to stand up for Mallory and the kid? God. With every passing second, this girl was making it harder for me to just walk away. But I’d seen every inch of her. Whatever was going on here, he wasn’t laying a hand on her.
She let go of the kid and went up to her dad. She put her hands on his cheeks. Her dad’s eyes focused in and out, then back in. A sweet smile lifted the corners of his mouth and he kissed her on the forehead. Wherever he’d gone to, he was back now.
“Why don’t you go inside with Mitch?” she said. “I’ll be along in a second, okay?”
Her dad gave me a hard look but the aggression was gone. He put a heavy arm around Mitch’s shoulder, making his body sag. Then the two of them walked back into the house together.
“Thanks for the ride,” she said, turning back to me. She rubbed beneath her eyes, maybe wiping away a tear that threatened to fall. But she kept her face blank.
I leaned against my bike and smiled at her. God, she was something. She stood there on her front lawn looking scared and strong all at the same time.
“You sure he’s gonna be okay?” I asked.
Mallory slid her hands into her back pockets, looked toward the house then back to me. Shrugging, she took a step toward me. “He’s got his good days and bad days, just like the rest of us.”
“Your mom around?”
Mallory’s eyes went to the ground when she answered. “Not anymore. She died a few months after Mitch was born.”
I wanted to grab her and kiss her again. But she had her armor in place. She kept a few feet between us and wouldn’t meet my eyes. I didn’t know how long her dad had been like that but my heart cracked a little thinking about Mallory at thirteen or fourteen or however old she’d been when she put her mother in the ground. Now, here she was, all by herself, trying to hold shit together with her bare hands while her dad drank himself into the ground and her kid brother in the mix.
“Hey, look,” she said, finally meeting my eyes. “We’re okay, right? I don’t want you to think I’m going to weird out on you after what happened last night. We got it out of our systems. I’m not going to be a problem.”
The right answer probably should have been, sure, see you around. But the more I got to know this girl, the more I wanted in. All the way in. She was trying to change the subject from what just happened on her front lawn. God, I remembered doing that for so many years too. Growing up, I’d wanted everyone to mind their own damn business. And when I got back from Afghanistan it happened all over again. I hated the looks of pity. Everyone assumed I didn’t feel whole. They’d been wrong. I was stronger now than before I lost my leg.
I took a step forward, then another. Mallory took a step back. Her eyes traveled up and she cocked her head toward mine.
I took another step. Before she could tell me not to or give me some lame excuse about not expecting anything, I slid my arm around her and pulled her close. Was it selfish of me? Probably. Would it have been a whole lot less complicated if I’d just did what she said and got on my bike and cleared out of there? No doubt.
But when I pressed my lips against hers all the things I should have done pretty much fell away. She stiffened at first, then she sank into me, letting out the sweetest sigh as I tasted her. I felt her nipples harden against my chest.
She was still breathless when I finally let her go. Her skin flushed pink and I ached to get her close to me again.
“S-see you next weekend,” she said, still trying to keep her tough act in place.
“What if I want to see you sooner?”
She looked toward the sky and shook her head. “Kellan. I just can’t. I need things simple. You can see the kind of crazy my life is right now. Why don’t we just both do each other a favor and not make it any more complicated than it needs to be?”
Tough. Stubborn. Vulnerable. Mallory was all of those things at once. She made my blood run hot as she stood there with that fierce flash in her eyes. She kept her back straight and her legs slightly parted as if she were bracing for an attack. It took everything in me not to take her and kiss her senseless again. I wanted to watch that slow blush creep from between her breasts and color her cheeks. For now though, I’d play it her way.
I smiled and let out a laugh as I straddled my bike and revved the engine. I left her standing in her front yard as I turned the bike and roared back down the street. She wasn’t the only one trying to play it tough. The girl seemed to have my dick and now my heart in the palm of her hand.
Chapter Twelve
Mallory
I didn’t think I’d ever get my heart to stop pounding as I watched Kellan ride away. My lips still stung from the heat of his kiss. My legs went weak as I turned and walked back toward the house. I put my hand on the door jamb to steady myself then took a deep breath as I walked in.
The most immediate crisis had passed. Dad was already snoring from the back room. There was a good chance he wouldn’t remember flinging a bottle at Kellan’s head. I was thankful Kellan didn’t freak. He could have dropped my dad in a heartbeat and he would have deserved it. Something about the way Kellan was with my dad gave me the impression he was used to shit like that. It would make sense. Every member of that M.C. looked battle hardened in one way or another.
“He’s getting worse,” Mitch said from the kitchen. He sat perched on the counter eating cold pizza from last night.
I let a breath out and hopped up on the counter next to him. I reached over and peeled a pepperoni off his pizza and popped it in my mouth.
“Do you want me to argue the point?” I asked, holding my hand up to cover my mouth while I chewed.
Mitch shrugged. “I’m just saying. He promised he was going to get some help. You lined up that appointment with the V.A. doctor. He didn’t go. He told you he did, but I know he didn’t. I came home from school early the other day and he was still here.”
I wanted to tell Mitch I would handle it. I wanted to tell him the things that used to work when he was little. But he was almost as old as I was when Mom died. He was smart. He was tough. He could handle the truth.
I shoved him with my shoulder. “What the hell were you doing coming home early from school?”
He smiled. “Parent teacher conferences. They let everybody out early.”
“Oh. Hey! Why didn’t you tell me? I need to go to those.”
Mitch shook his head. “Don’t sweat it. I told ’em my dad couldn’t get off work. I’m not flunking or anything, Mal. Those things are bullshit anyway.”
“Hmm. Well, that’s not the point and you know it.”
“You didn’t answer my question. What are we going to do about Dad?”
“I don’t know, Mitch,” I said. “He’s got to want to get better. That’s all I can say. In the meantime, you and I just need to keep doing what we’re doing. Don’t let Dad’s stuff drag you down if you can help it.”
Mitch got quiet. He lobbed his crust into the sink and popped off the counter. “So who’s the new guy?”
My heart tripped a little when he said it. The New Guy. It didn’t seem to fit what Kellan was. And the minute I had that thought, I realized I couldn’t come up with a phrase that did fit. Kellan. He left me reeling. Breathless. Reckless. All of the things I couldn’t afford to be. We were hanging on by a thread here, I couldn’t let something as selfish as lust cloud my judgment any more.
“Is he for real?” Mitch asked. There was a quiet hopefulness in his widening eyes. It felt like a spike driving through my gut.
“A real-deal biker, I mean,” Mitch said.
&
nbsp; I laughed. “Yeah. He’s legit as far as that goes.”
“Cool. Like seriously cool. He looked like a badass. Is he a badass?”
I popped off the counter and faked a punch to Mitch’s arm. “Just simmer down. He’s something all right. But, for now, he’s kind of my boss.”
I dropped my eyes. Mitch knew me better than anyone on the planet. I couldn’t let him see there might be anything more to what Kellan was. Mitch counted on me.
“I want to come out there and watch you sing,” he said. “The Wolf Den, right? Can I come next time?”
“You most certainly can’t. It’s a biker bar. I mean, it’s hot. There were people lined up to get in last night. I was kind of expecting the thing to be some dive. It’s not though. This gig might actually last for a while. And the money’s good enough I probably won’t have to clean houses this month. And I can be there for shit like parent teacher conferences, Mitch. You gotta do your part and let me know what’s going on.”
“Hmm.” Mitch turned and slipped off his cleats. In the excitement on the lawn, I’d forgotten to give him shit for not doing it before he walked inside.
“Hmm, what?”
“Well, that Kellan guy. Sorry, sis. He looked more like your boyfriend than your boss. I saw him kiss you.”
Blood drained down to my shoes. “Mitch, look.”
He held up a hand. “I’m not judging. I’m just saying. He’s hot for you. I saw it.”
My face warmed as I held back a smile. “Oh, really?”
“Yeah. I’m not a little kid. I can read the guy signals, you know. That guy is into you. Hard. Just, you know. Maybe watch out.”
I wanted to hug him, give him a noogie and call him Stinky. Everything I used to do when he was a chubby toddler. But he also broke my heart in half. Mitch was my brother, he was acting like it. Concerned. Protective.
“So, tell me about these guy signals. What else do they say? Because I would really like the inside scoop.”
Mitch smiled and it speared me. He looked just like Mom.
“Oh, I can’t tell you that. There’s a code and everything.”
