No longer blushing, Nolan turned his whole body to face him. He was smiling, and Havoc was struck by the sudden effect of age and maturity that smile cast over his young features. “You realize that what you just said is the exact opposite of what every other adult has ever said about sex to any other teenager in the history of the world, right?”
Havoc grinned and put the bottle to his mouth. Before he drank, he said, “And see how fucked up the world is?”
Nolan laughed and shook his head. “Yeah, I guess. Love didn’t get my mom much, that’s for sure.”
Havoc finished his beer and waved the empty at Jerri Rae. Then he turned his attention to Nolan. “Your dad treat her bad?”
The kid looked awkward, and he didn’t answer. Havoc figured he’d pried his nose in where it didn’t belong and was going to let it drop, acutely interested as he was. But then Nolan said, “Yeah. Cheated a lot, I guess. That’s why they split.”
Havoc got pissed—and then he was pissed because he was pissed. What the fuck business did he have caring about shit like that?
Jerri Rae brought over two beers, handing one to Nolan, too. He took it and turned to Havoc, as if trying to decide whether to ask him for permission. Havoc was trying to decide whether to stop him or let him do what he wanted. They stared at each other, at an impasse, neither of them knowing what Havoc’s role in this moment was. Finally, Nolan took a drink.
“Just that one, though,” Havoc said. He thought it seemed like a fair compromise—and Nolan nodded, so it looked like he agreed.
“Hey. Remember I was telling you about the bike my buddy and me rebuilt? Wanna see it?”
“Yeah. Cool.”
Havoc nodded toward the side hallway, and Nolan followed him into the bays.
He uncovered the bike and stood back, feeling proud. Bart had done a lot of the work, but Havoc had taught him how. These days he mostly did custom work, making new bikes flashy. This restoration was something else. Something deeper. It was probably stupid, but Havoc felt like there was some kind of honor in making something that had been dead live again.
“See the shape of the rocker boxes, there?” He pointed. “That’s where the ‘shovelhead’ comes from. The model is really Electra Glide. But a lot of guys are more interested in the motor than the model.”
Nolan squatted down and peered closely at the engine. He reached out to touch it but pulled his hand back. “Cool. There’s so much white. I guess I didn’t expect that. All the bikes in the lot are solid black.”
“Yeah. Black-out works for late-model. You get a bike like this, you want vintage color.”
“You think you could teach me to ride?”
“Nah. Not yet, anyway. You want to ride, you need a bike. And probably your ma not to have a say, so a few more years in your pocket. I’ll help you do something like this, if you want. Be a lot of work, though. Took a couple of years for this one.”
Nolan looked up over his shoulder at him, his smile easy and bright. Havoc wasn’t sure what he’d said that had pleased the kid so much. Then he stood up. “Years is okay. Years is good. I’m not going anywhere.”
“Alright. I’ll get my hands on a bike to work on, then. Let’s cover this one up, though. And I’m gonna get the van and take you home.” He picked up the cover.
Nolan grabbed an end and helped. “I can walk. It’s only a couple of miles.”
“Yeah, but I need to talk to your ma, anyway. So let’s go.”
~oOo~
He waited on the pre-poured stoop outside the mobile home she’d rented down the street from Bonnie, and Nolan went in and told her he was waiting. She came to the door but didn’t open it, just stared at him through the screen.
“What do you need?”
“I need you to come out here so I can talk to you.”
“Why?”
They were going to do this fucking dance. All this shit? Why he stayed away from chicks. There was nothing good about any of them. They just fucked shit up. Made it more complicated, then tore it down.
“Cory, just—come on. I got a party to get back to.”
After another few moments of hesitation, she opened the door and stepped out. Then she stood right up against the side of trailer, her arms across her chest. She was barefoot, in a pair of tattered jeans and a tight, black t-shirt that left an inch or two of belly bare. He was pretty sure she wasn’t wearing a bra. If she was, it was thin, because the air was chilly, and her nipples were hard. The sight did things to him.
“Nolan smells like beer.” Her tone was more observant than accusatory.
“I let him have one. One. I didn’t leave his side.”
“He’s fifteen.”
“I’m aware.”
She sighed. “What do you need?”
“Isaac wants me to ask you to come with us next weekend. To Hemsburg. For Oktoberfest.”
“What? Why?”
“So you can sell that shit you make.”
“I don’t make shit.”
He rolled his eyes. “Your jewelry, whatever. He wants to give you some space in his booth. And you can help at the wineries, figure out what to order. You know all that bullshit now. Better than me.”
Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I’m supposed to work Friday and Sunday next weekend.”
“I know. I make the fuckin’ schedule. You’ll still be working, just in Hemsburg. And I’ll put Bonnie on. She’s gonna do close for me then, anyway.” It would be the first time since goddamn Larry Bellen that he’d let somebody else do the close. He hoped Bonnie wouldn’t fuck him over.
He’d intended to make sure Cory said no to this idea. He’d been very set on that plan. Yet here he was, talking her into it. He had no idea why. He did know it was a terrible idea.
“Who’s going?” She was still looking at him like she was trying to figure out the secret code in the invitation.
“Isaac and Lilli. Show and Shannon. Me. Badger. And you. Nolan, too, if you want. You’ll ride with Lilli and her kids.”
She looked past him, over her little patch of rented grass. He waited while she worked out whatever she had going on in her head. She looked back down at him. “Yeah. Okay. It’s really nice of Isaac. Okay.”
“Good. Talk to him or Lilli if you want to know more. I gotta go.”
“Yeah. Thanks.” She went inside.
Havoc stood there after she closed the inside door, too, shoving back an urge to go back and knock. He had nothing more to say, but he almost did it anyway. Muttering to himself, he turned and took the van back to the party.
CHAPTER TEN
Cory closed the door and leaned against it, her eyes closed, trying to get her heart to return to its regular, steadier, rhythm. It always went haywire these days when Havoc talked to her at all.
She did not understand herself. Maybe Lindsay was right. Maybe she did have some kind of ‘success issue’ or a self-destruct switch in her head. Because she always managed to fuck everything up somehow.
Like now—if she wasn’t careful, something about the weirdness between her and Havoc was going to blow everything up in her face. She could tell. Things were going well, looking up for the first time in well over a year. In fact, they seemed to be looking up higher than they had been since Matt had left. She had steady work that she liked, for the most part. She had a few steady gigs. Her online stuff was picking up a little bit of traffic. She was even thinking of opening a little online shop to sell her jewelry, maybe. They had a lease on this trailer, and she felt more confident than she had in a long time that she’d be able to keep the rent up.
She had a friend in Bonnie. A real friend, someone whose company she enjoyed, who was there to talk to but didn’t judge or force advice down her throat. Someone she could be a friend to.
And Nolan was completely blossoming. It was amazing to see, just in the few months they’d been in Signal Bend, how much more content and at ease her boy was. He still didn’t like school. He was never going to like school. He was always going
to be a misfit in a public high school; he was too inside his own head to be otherwise. But he was doing better, letting more of the bullshit that was just an inevitable part of high school roll off his back. And at home he was…he was happy. Relaxed.
She hated to consider how much of that was Havoc and the Night Horde. A lot, she knew. He had friends. In the plural. They were older, and they were outlaw bikers, or something, but he liked them, and they seemed to like him. It wasn’t just Havoc. It was Badger and Dom and Omen, and Wrench, too. He was at that clubhouse two or three days a week. He’d be there more if she’d let him, but their compromise had been that he couldn’t go on school nights or if he had homework on the weekends.
He seemed to fit in over there and really like it. He hadn’t seen more of the wild party side since that first night, but still Cory worried that he’d found a place like that to fit into. And she worried more about how much he looked up to those guys. They were all several years older than he was—at least. Havoc, she was pretty sure, was older than she was. She knew they were the wrong kind of friends for her high school sophomore. She knew she should put a stop to it.
But he had friends. He was happy. He was doing all the things he needed to do, meeting all his responsibilities. Getting decent grades, staying out of trouble at school, being home when he said he would be, helping out at home. Except for the beer on his breath tonight, she was pretty sure he hadn’t been drinking or doing anything else since that first night. She couldn’t find solid ground to stand on to pull him away from the clubhouse. She wasn’t the kind of mother who said ‘because I said so’—because she didn’t think it worked, and she knew it wasn’t fair.
Havoc was good to him. He watched out for him. And Nolan liked him a lot. Cory was still worried that his attention would wander and Nolan would be left out in the cold, but she was losing a rational basis for that worry. Besides his own behavior toward Nolan, there was the rest of the Horde. Nolan had more than simply Havoc now. Whether that was a good thing—that was a question.
Another question was her own feelings about Havoc, which were even more confused than her feelings about the way Nolan was fitting in with the Horde. Since that night in the office, he’d been giving her a wide berth, but she caught him all the time staring at her. Not in a way she found creepy or threatening—though maybe she should have. Instead, though, she found it oddly calming to turn and meet his dark eyes. He never acted particularly guilty to have been caught, but he always turned away.
He barely looked straight at her or talked to her at all, beyond the words they needed to exchange at work or about Nolan. They had not spoken about that night in the office, and he hadn’t tried to touch her since—he went out of his way to avoid it. Cory thought she’d be a lot less confused if he were a lot less obvious about how much he wanted to stay away from her. She got it—what happened that day was an aberration. That made sense and was for the best. He was a fuck ‘em and forget ‘em kind of guy. She was not that kind of woman. And she was done—totally done—with men who couldn’t keep their dicks out of trouble.
And yet she’d meet his eyes and remember his mouth on her, the way his beard was softer than she’d assumed. The way his eyes had lased into her with nearly tactile heat. She’d remember the strength in his hands and the firm breadth of his chest.
All of that was physical, and none of it should matter. It shouldn’t. What should matter was the kind of man he was. On that measure, she should stay the hell away. He wasn’t a good kind of man.
Except he was, treating Nolan with respect, giving all the signs of genuinely caring about her son, who was so often lost.
He was a jerk. Except he wasn’t, keeping Nolan out of trouble, going out of his way to give her shifts that let her gig, too.
He couldn’t stand her. Except he couldn’t keep his eyes off her.
She couldn’t stand him, except she couldn’t stop thinking about him.
Could it just be that she needed to get laid? No. No way. She hadn’t gotten much play since Matt had left—okay, any—but she hadn’t really missed it, either. She’d had many more obviously decent opportunities than Havoc, too. But her opinion of men in general wasn’t exactly high, and she had some pretty robust trust issues. And she’d had Nolan to look out for. She’d been content with handling her needs on her own.
So it wasn’t that. She didn’t have any idea. Spending a weekend away with him, even in a group, was probably one of her all-time worst decisions. It could only be a disaster. She could feel it.
Nolan peered around the corner from the kitchen. “You okay, Mom?” His mouth was full of granola bar.
She pushed away from the door. “Sure, kiddo. Looks like we’re going away next weekend.”
“What? Where? Why?”
“To Hemsburg—it’s a little town north of here. For Oktoberfest. I’m going to sell some jewelry and help Havoc pick wines for the bar.”
He grinned; his was mouth again full, with the rest of the bar. “You and Havoc?”
“Me and Havoc and you and a bunch of other people. Badger, for one.”
“Sounds cool, but I can’t go.” He grabbed up his pack and headed across the living room to his bedroom. Their new home was an old-model mobile home, just four rooms and two bathrooms. But it was palatial compared to the Winnebago, and serene, especially compared to living with Lindsay and Alex. Nolan had a room of his own, with his own bathroom. It was perfect.
Cory stopped him at his door. “Hold up, kiddo. What do you mean?”
“I have midterms the week after next. I need to study next weekend. I can stay home on my own, though. No problem.” He was still grinning like he had a secret.
“Hah! You’re not staying home alone for a weekend. No way. I won’t go. It’s fine. I didn’t even know about it until ten minutes ago, anyway.” The strength of her disappointment surprised her.
His grin faded. “Mom, you should go. Oktoberfest is a big deal. A lot of people. You could sell a lot, maybe.” His face lit up with a notion. “Maybe I could stay with Bonnie.”
She considered that. She trusted Bonnie. And her trucker boyfriend was here this weekend, so he’d be on the road next. “Okay. We’ll ask.”
“Baller!”
“Baller?” That was a new one.
“It means ‘cool,’ Mom. Which you are not.” He kissed her cheek and went into his room.
Cory had the unsettling feeling that her kid was trying to set her up.
~oOo~
Bonnie hadn’t hesitated even a breath before agreeing to keep Nolan for the weekend, so Cory spent all her free time over the next week putting together a decent selection of stock, from the inexpensive impulse sellers to the nicer pieces, along the lines of the leather and silver bracelet Isaac had bought Lilli. Nolan even made her some business cards, and she finally got around to setting up her online shop. She was nervous and excited, and she’d barely taken time to stress about spending so much time with Havoc. Anyway, maybe she was wrong about that. They were a pretty big group, after all.
On Friday morning, after she got Nolan off to the school bus, she loaded into the Beast her boxes and supplies and a backpack with some clothes, and she drove over to Isaac and Lilli’s house, where everyone was waiting. After the typical vague, friendly greetings of an encounter like that, they moved her things to Lilli’s truck and hit the road.
She rode with Lilli and Shannon and Lilli’s kids, Gia and Bo, in Lilli’s huge SUV. That was a little awkward, because the kids were in the middle seat, and either she or Shannon had to sit all the way in back. Since Lilli and Shannon were friends, and Cory felt basically like a hitchhiker on the whole trip, she volunteered right away for the way-back. At first, they’d tried to keep her in the loop of conversation, but between the kids and the noise of the engine, and of the bikes on the road around them, it was too hard. So Cory leaned on the window and let herself be alone with her thoughts.
She found herself fascinated by the way the guys rode. Isaac, Show,
Havoc, and Badger, all four of them, stayed near the SUV, which was pulling a pretty big trailer that held Isaac’s woodworking stuff. She’d had no idea he was a woodworker. She was interested to see what kinds of things he made.
They seemed to be riding in a formation, two abreast—Isaac and Show—near the front of the SUV, in the lane next to them, or sometimes in front, in the same lane; and two abreast—Havoc and Badger—near the trailer, in the next lane or behind. Sometimes, one would pull in front and another behind, while the others stayed at the side. There was some fluidity to the formation, but they stayed together and with them. Like they weren’t just riding to the same place, but were protecting them. Whether there was a reason they needed protection, or whether it was just macho chivalry, Cory liked it. It almost felt cozy, or something.
Havoc was often quite near the window she was leaning on. He looked good on his big black bike, sitting a little differently from his brothers—his handlebars were different and held his arms up higher. He wore the same kind of helmet they all wore, just a black bowl covering his head. No face shield of any kind. But he had sleek, dark glasses—they all did. Those glasses were hot.
He looked up and saw her watching him. She didn’t look away, and he grinned and tipped his head in a gentlemanly nod.
With nothing else to do but listen to the incomprehensible hum of Lilli and Shannon’s conversation, or They Might Be Giants, to which Gia was quietly singing along as Bo slept, Cory looked out the window, watched Havoc ride, and thought about all the things that confused her about him.
~oOo~
Oktoberfest was much bigger than anyplace else she’d ever had a table. And it was much more than a place to show off and sell arts and crafts. There were all kinds of events, and all the restaurants were doing tastings of beer and German food, and the wineries were doing special tours, and the trains were running, and there were people everywhere. In the vendor corridor, where rows of white tents were set up, real artists and artisans were already selling really beautiful works of art.
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