HALE: Lords of Carnage MC

by Daphne Loveling

  But that’s why I had to make myself stop.

  Cam has gotten under my skin. His infuriating, sexy, overbearing self has wormed his way inside me, making me want his touch. Making me crave his presence, the warmth of his skin. It’s my fault for letting myself start having these thoughts about him. I should have remembered that I’ve always had a thing for Cam. I should have been on high alert as soon as I ran into him again at the clubhouse, and been more careful.

  But I know what he thinks about me. I know that even if he wants my body — and he as much as told me it was just a reaction to my form-hugging dress — that’s as far as it goes. He said every man in the club wanted me, and I guess he was telling me that he was no exception. But that means I’m just a piece of ass to him. And that’s the last thing I would ever want to be to him. Because if I open myself up to him — if I let him see how much I’ve always wanted him — I couldn’t face his hatred afterwards.

  Because the fact remains, Cam does hate me. And the fact that he was momentarily nice to me today doesn’t change that. He blames me for Scotty’s death, and he thinks I can’t be trusted. Having sex with him wouldn’t change that. In fact, it would probably just make it worse. He’d still hate me because of Scotty, and on top of that he’d judge me for just falling into bed with him. He’d think I was loose, or that I was trying to use my body to soften him up. Or something like that. He’d never take anything that happened between us at face value.

  I couldn’t bear to live with his contempt afterwards. I can’t stand the thought of opening myself to him — and to how good I’m afraid it would feel to be with him — and then having him despise me even more because of it. Cameron Hale will never believe anything but the worst of me. I can’t give him any more ammunition.

  Cameron Hale is one man who could never be just a one-night stand for me. I’d never be able to get him out of my head afterwards. It’s too dangerous. I need to keep my emotions, and my body, on lockdown.

  I flee the clubhouse without managing to grab my other clothes. But I didn’t want to stay in that place for one more second, and risk having Cam come after me. Thankfully, I have my purse with my keys on me. None of the other men try to stop me on the way out, and I’m able to slip into my truck and drive away more or less unnoticed.

  When I get back to my dad’s house, he’s already gone to bed. He’s left a note for me on the kitchen table, telling me he was tired and that he’ll see me in the morning. I’m incredibly grateful for the reprieve from having to make small talk with him. For not having to pretend I had a fun, harmless night out with my nonexistent girlfriends. I try to make my life sound as positive as I can for Dad’s sake. I know he feels bad that I moved back to Ironwood from Lexington to take care of him. But sometimes, it takes more energy than I have to put a positive spin on things.

  And tonight, I’m not sure how I’d manage to hide it from him that I’m sad, and stressed, and filled with longing for a man who will only ever think the worst of me.

  The next day, Dad appears in the kitchen long after I’ve gotten up and already had breakfast. He stayed in bed so long that I was tempted to go check on him. When he shuffles up to the table where I’m drinking my third cup of coffee, I look up with a smile, but my greeting dies in my throat. He’s not looking good, at all. His face is gray and drawn. Across his forehead are the telltale lines of the pain he’s trying to conceal from his daughter.

  “Dad,” I say softly, trying not to let my concern show on my face. “You want some breakfast? I can make you some Cream of Wheat or something.”

  He gives me a pinched smile. “No thanks, pumpkin. I’ll have a cup of coffee in a little while. I’m just gonna go sit down in my chair.”

  I watch his emaciated frame as he continues toward the living room. A pang of guilt slices through me that I wasn’t here last night. How long has he been feeling like this?

  I pick up my cup and follow him out of the kitchen. Patiently, I wait for him to lower himself into his chair, trying to push away the alarm and heartbreak I feel. When he’s finally settled in with a low groan, he notices I’m standing in front of him and gives me a weak smile. “There,” he grits out. “Just give me five minutes, and I’ll take that coffee.”

  “Okay.” I pull up the ottoman from the chair opposite him and sit down on it. “But first, I have something to tell you.” I smile encouragingly, hoping it will make him feel better. “Remember how last night when I called, I said I had some good news?” I don’t wait for his answer. “Well, I got a promotion at work! And the best thing is, it comes with health insurance!”

  Dad’s face moves into a rictus of a smile as he tries to conceal his pain. “That’s great, honey,” he murmurs.

  I can tell he’s not following. “Dad, that means that we can afford treatments for you! I can get a family plan, and we can start you out right away!”

  I’ve practiced the lie in my head so that it comes out easily. I’m thankful that Dad doesn’t really know enough about health insurance to realize plans don’t let children add their parents to them. It’s a silver lining to his pain right now that he’s not likely to ask me too many questions or think my words through too much. “I’m going to process the paperwork,” I continue, “and then I’ll call the doctor right away and get you an appointment to set you up with treatments.”

  Dad just nods, his eyes closing. “Okay, pumpkin,” he wheezes. “That’s great. Could you… get me some aspirin or something? Just feeling a little achy this morning.”

  I stand up and start for the bathroom, but then remember the pills I’ve got in my purse instead. I talked Mal into giving them to me when I got back from the run with Cam yesterday. My heart floods with relief as I grab the bottle, then go to the kitchen for a glass of water. Back out in the living room, my father takes them gratefully, swallowing without so much as looking at them.

  Twenty minutes later, Dad is much more relaxed, his body less tense as I bring him his coffee with the non-dairy creamer he likes in it. I even manage to get him to eat some toast and butter. I sit with him and watch morning TV shows until it’s time for me to leave for work. I leave another dose of pills in a small bowl next to a glass of water on the side table by his chair. Then I grab my things and head out the door, telling him I’ve put his lunch in a Tupperware in the fridge with instructions for heating it up in the microwave.

  Dad waves me off with a hazy smile. I pull the door closed behind me, hoping the meds will keep the pain mostly away until I get back.

  At work, I wait until my first break to call Dad’s doctor and ask him to make an appointment for us with an oncologist as soon as possible. I manage to get one for early the following week. The appointment is during a time when I’m supposed to be working, so I call the other receptionist who works at the salon, Nevaeh, and make arrangements with her to switch days with me.

  For an hour or so, I feel a swell of unusual optimism. Instead of life happening to me, like it usually feels, for once I feel like I’m actually just a little bit in control of things.

  Maybe this is the beginning of things getting better. The thought makes me smile to myself.

  Cyndi comes in for her shift, and pouts at me a little bit for leaving the clubhouse last night without telling her. “At first we thought you and Hale had disappeared for the night,” she says, flashing me a coy smirk. “Wow, he was pissed off that the other men were looking at you in that dress! But then he came back out a while later without you, and said you’d gone home.”

  “Sorry.” I try to look contrite. “I just wasn’t feeling good. And I was worried about my dad.”

  Thankfully, Cyndi decides to just shrug it off, and tells me a few funny anecdotes of the things I missed from last night’s party before going off to get ready for her first client. Relieved, I watch her go. But her mention of Hale puts the image of his lust-filled face in my mind, and the memory of his kiss and fevered touch makes heat begin to pool between my legs.

  And then, I remember last
night when I got home from the clubhouse. How after I checked on dad to make sure he was asleep, I went into my bedroom and closed the door. And then, there in the darkness, memories of Cam’s lips, and his hands on my skin mingled with the thought of similar forbidden moments when I was in high school.

  Moments when I was alone in my tiny bedroom in our trailer in the dark, my teenage hormones running high and wild. Moments when, instead of dreaming about my boyfriend Scotty as I touched myself with tentative fingers, I was thinking of Cam.

  13

  Kylie

  When Scotty and I first got together back in high school, I felt like I’d had an amazing stroke of extraordinary luck.

  Being the new girl in a school where most of the students had known each other practically since birth, I was instantly recognizable and singled out as an object of curiosity. I got enough attention early on from horny boys that many of the girls were instantly wary of me. I had very few female acquaintances to speak of as a result. Desk neighbors or lab partners who would be initially nice to me would cool considerably when they’d see me in the hallway, turning away with sour looks on their faces when boys came around to show off or flirt.

  I guess I can’t blame some of the girls for being jealous. I know it wasn’t me exactly they disliked — after all, they didn’t know me well enough to make a judgment. It was just the fact that I was new and therefore interesting to the male population. They probably would have reacted the same way to any girl who was at least average looking.

  Not that any of them really interested me much. Most of the boys at Corydon High School were gangly and awkward, too loud and too obvious in their intentions. They all tended to blur together, at first, except for one: Scotty Bauer. He was handsome and charming, forward without being overbearing. He seemed more confident than the other boys in my classes, and I found him amusing and easy to talk to. A couple of weeks into the school year, he started hanging around my locker, and then one day after school he offered to give me a ride home. The way he asked was so casual and self-assured, I found myself saying yes almost without thinking.

  Corydon was such a small town that there wasn’t that much of a difference between the haves and the have-nots, so it wasn’t much of an embarrassment that I lived in a trailer on my dad’s land. Living outside of town, though, it could get a little lonely with just me and him out there. Scotty was a welcome distraction.

  It was nice to have someone to pay attention to me — someone who thought I was pretty, and smart, and worth spending time with. My dad liked him, too. Dad was working on getting his lawn care service going, which involved a lot of fixing up of the second-hand equipment he’d bought, most of which didn’t work all that well. Scotty was interested in practically anything with an engine, and the two of them bonded quickly over fix-it talk. Sometimes, to the point where I almost wondered whether Dad didn’t prefer Scotty’s company to mine.

  After our first few dates, Scotty introduced me to his two best friends — cousins named Malcolm and Cameron. Mal instantly struck me as kind of a big brother type. He was just as attractive as Scotty, funny and friendly, but he treated me like one of the guys — maybe out of deference to the fact that his buddy was my boyfriend.

  Cam was a different story. From the first time I met him, I was struck by his quiet, brooding manner. His handsomeness was darker than Scotty’s and Mal’s. Even then, he seemed older than the rest of us, somehow. More serious. Even at eighteen years old, he seemed more like a man than a boy. He exuded a casual confidence that was less showy than Scotty’s.

  There was something about Cam that made my pulse quicken when he was around. Something that made me want to watch his body when it moved.

  And wonder what it would feel like if it moved against me.

  Cameron’s smiles were rare, his laughter rarer still. I had no idea what he thought of me — whether he liked me, tolerated me, or despised me. He simply allowed for my presence as Scotty’s girl, and kept his distance. But every once in a while, I would catch him looking at me, with eyes that seemed to burn into me, with an intensity I couldn’t name.

  Scotty didn’t seem to mind having me there when his friends were around. On the contrary, he seemed to be proud to show me off. Sometimes that made me feel a little like a trophy girlfriend, which I didn’t like much. But I mostly tried to let it roll off my back. I was happy that he didn’t ditch me every time his buddies wanted to go do something, like some other guys seemed to do to their girlfriends. And after a while, I felt almost like Mal and Cam were my friends, too. Well, Mal, anyway. Like I said, I could never quite get a read on Cam.

  I never hung out with the other two boys without Scotty. It was just an unstated thing that if I was there, he was, too. So it was that I had never really had a one-on-one conversation with either Mal or Cam. And it also meant that I never had to be alone with my attraction to Cam, and it mostly stayed as a muted but more or less constant background beat to my interactions with him.

  One day that changed.

  One day, Scotty came up to my locker between classes and said he had to leave school early. He said his handyman dad needed him to come home from school to help him with project, because one of his workers had gone home sick. Since I usually rode to and from school with Scotty, he had asked Cam to give me a ride home instead.

  After that day, a lot of things shifted. A lot of things changed.

  Some of what was changing were things no one but Scotty knew about.

  And at least one thing was a secret that I never admitted to anyone.

  After that day, I had even less of an inkling what Cam really thought of me.

  But as for me, I found myself thinking about him more and more.

  In ways I knew I shouldn’t be.

  And wondering — hoping, almost — that maybe he thought those ways about me, too.

  The phone at the salon starts to ring, shaking me out of my daydream about the past. I feel a spark of guilt in my gut as the memory of how I felt about Cam even then comes rushing back.

  Even now, I feel like I’m being disloyal to Scotty. Even though he’s gone, and has been for years. Even though nothing ever happened between me and Cam. I never acted on my attraction. Hell, I never even knew whether he had any of the same thoughts about me. We never talked about it. Not that day, or afterwards.

  I have no way of knowing if what happened last night between me and Cam has any roots in the past. Maybe it really was just my dress that set him off. I have no real reason to think it was anything else.

  Besides. Even if Cam had wanted me in high school, that was before. Before Scotty got arrested. Before he was killed. There’s no way Cam could have felt anything other than anger and hatred for me after that. I know that for a fact. He’s made it abundantly clear.

  And even though Cam’s lips still burn on mine from last night, I know I’d be a fool to believe that the past twenty-four hours has changed the way he feels about me. Just because our bodies took control for a few seconds during an unguarded moment, that changes nothing. Cam sees me as the enemy. It’s foolish to hope that will ever change.

  And worse, now he probably hates me even more for disrupting his life yet again. Showing up in Ironwood, bringing my own special brand of chaos with me.

  As I try to distract myself from replaying our kiss in my mind one final time, I pick up the salon phone and answer it, but there’s no one there. My cell buzzes on the desk beside me, and I realize that’s the phone that was ringing all along. Rolling my eyes at myself, I pick it up, almost answering with the name of the salon.

  “Hello?” I half-stammer.

  “Hello, may I speak to Kylie Sutton, please?” a clipped, professional voice asks.

  “This is she.”

  “Ms. Sutton, this is Francesca from Morningside Hospital. I have you listed as Charles Sutton’s daughter, is that correct?”

  I sit bolt upright, my heart beginning to hammer in my chest. “Yes?”

  “Ms. Sutton, I’m call
ing to let you know that your father has just been brought into the hospital via ambulance.”

  14

  Hale

  An hour after Kylie leaves the clubhouse, I’m still seriously fuckin’ confused by what just happened between us. I know she wanted the kiss. I know she wanted more. She was wet as hell for me — so wet I could feel her through my jeans. So I can’t figure out why the hell she left.

  Not that it’s bad that she took off, in the grand scheme of things. Sure, I have a fuckin’ Grade A case of blue balls now, and the feel of her skin under my hands is making my nerve endings buzz from the memory.

  But fucking Kylie is probably one of the shittiest ideas I’ve ever had, given our history. Hell, having her around like this is already having a bad effect on me. For one thing, I’m not quite as mad at her as I used to be. And goddamnit, that makes me mad.

  I leave the apartment, wanting to be somewhere where I don’t see the empty space where she was standing just a minute ago. I go out to the main room of the clubhouse and bark at the kid behind the bar to start pouring me shots of whiskey. A couple Ironwood guys come up and start trying to shoot the shit with me, but one look at my face and they back right the fuck off. Which is exactly how I fuckin’ want it. I’m not in the mood to make conversation.

  The years have changed nothing for me where Kylie is concerned. I see that now.

  I want her just as much as I ever have.

  After Scotty died, I was battling anger, grief, and guilt in equal measures for a long time.

  Grief, because I’d just lost my best friend.

  Guilt, because I felt like I should have known how to stop the runaway train he was on and save him. And because I had a secret that I had never acted on, but that tortured me just the same.