She’s worked many jobs, most not lasting longer than six months and she’s a saver. Her spending is minimal, and her account grew each month she got paid from whatever job she was at. As for the funeral bill, a guy called, Adam Smith paid it off. Adam Smith is a no one and a totally unoriginal alias.
My vision blurs and I push the laptop of my legs, it falls on the mattress and I reach for my smoking tin when someone knocks at the door.
Heaving myself up to my feet, I find Leo standing on the threshold. He doesn’t look happy.
“Thanks for watching Rayna last night.”
“No problem,” I murmur, confused why his gratitude is laced with anger.
“I heard you took her to Nina Rollin’s place and stayed the night.”
“She was at my side the whole time,” I tell him, and this makes him angrier.
“So there wasn’t any fucking? Because when I used to ride into town that late, it wasn’t for milk and fucking cookies.”
“It wasn’t like that, fuck you for thinking I would while I had my niece with me.”
Now I’m pissed and my high is fading very fucking fast. Who the fuck does he think he is? Leo fucking Jackson. Always thinking he can put his mouth anywhere he wants.
“Don’t worry, I won’t offer to help you out again.”
I step back and shut the door in his face. Fuck them both, him and India. They’ve got enough people running around them with the kid. It’s not like they need me.
I roll a blunt and light it up. I can’t stand being sober and if I’m too high to care, I’m not wasting energy being angry either.
The day I found out Leo Jackson had knocked my sister up, I wanted to kill him. I wanted to wrap my hands around his throat and crack his windpipe with my bare hands. I took a bat to his bike instead and smashed it to shit, so much so, he’s still working on it in the garage.
Fuck this.
Grabbing my shit off the bottom of the bed, I collect my keys on the way out and jog down to the bar.
India makes a beeline for me and I fasten my step so I don’t have to deal with her tonight. She chose to be with Leo and his words are on her as much as him in my eyes.
“Zach, wait up,” she calls out and I don’t stop for her.
“Leave him, babe,” he shouts out to her.
“Fuck you, Jackson,” I yell over my shoulder, throwing him my middle finger.
My bike is by the gates, and I know brothers have wondered why I started parking here. It’s simple, they don’t hear me leaving or coming back when I head into town to restock my smoke supply.
I don’t give a shit tonight if they hear me or not. I don’t care if Cas tries to chew me out for leaving alone.
I simply don’t care. Perhaps I’ll go out the same way my biological father did, beaten and bleeding out. What are the odds of that happening again, to me, his son?
Lightening can strike you more than once, but the odds are high. I’ll take my chances.
I roll my bike out onto the road as Tal watches on, keeping his mouth shut, and I jump on and bring it to life.
I don’t know where I’m headed, but it doesn’t matter, I ride and ride and I end up stopping outside Nina’s place and for some reason a guy in the car rolling past me eyeballs me.
What’s his fucking problem? Oh yeah, it’s just me. I piss people off now. It’s my thing.
I leave my bike parked by the curb and walk up her path. I like the feeling of walking towards her door, knowing I’ll be seeing her any second.
When I first saw her standing by the bushes outside her old house, I didn’t feel anything. When I saw her standing over her slime ball ex, balancing the shovel over his groin, I came alive in every kind of way. I had never seen anyone so stunningly beautiful. She stole my breath and took the feeling from my legs. A car pulls up behind my bike and a young kid jumps out and collects a large pizza box from the passenger seat.
My mouth waters at the thought of pizza and when he comes up the path my stomach growls, ordering me to eat something.
I dig out a twenty and pass it over. He assumes I’m the one who put in the order because I’m standing here and I gladly let him.
I knock on the door as he pisses off and I hear her rushing to open the door. Holding the box up to partially hide my face, I see her bare feet just inside the door and step forward.
“That was fast,” she says, and I lower the box.
“What? Oh my god, what are you doing here with my dinner?”
“I thought I’d join you, I’m psychic like that. Come on, let me in, I’m starved. I hope you didn’t order pineapple, I fuckin’ hate pineapples on pizza.”
I brush past her and this time, I head straight for the kitchen.
“Did you pay?” she asks, following me through.
“No, he just gave me the pizza and left without payment.”
She’s so easy to tease, and I find I enjoy messing with her.
“Seriously, you guys can’t lay off with paying for everything, can you?”
Rolling my eyes, I open the pizza box and take a piece as I sit in the same chair I did yesterday.
Wow. I can’t believe that was just over twenty-four hours ago.
“I found out someone called Adam Smith paid your bill. You know him?”
She sits down and joins me, frowning.
“I don’t know him.”
“He sure knows you to pay out nearly five thousand dollars.”
She stares off over my shoulder and I watch her for a few moments before interrupting her thoughts.
“If it helps, I’m certain he used an alias. Could it have that Vincent guy you were having a nightmare about last night?”
I didn’t dig her out for information on her nightmare when she was screaming his name out in fear, it was clear she was shaken up and didn’t want to talk about it.
“No, he left town a while ago. He wouldn’t know about my mom.”
She isn’t sounding convinced.
“Who is Vincent?”
“I don’t want to talk about him, he’s someone from my past but I doubt it’s anything you’re probably thinking it is.”
“What do you think I’m thinking?” I ask around a mouthful of cheesy pizza.
“He wasn’t an ex or anything.”
I shrug. If he wasn’t an ex, I don’t care who he was to her.
“Did you manage to stay out of any fights today after I left the club?” she asks.
“Did you?” I throw back at her.
“Do you fight a lot? Like with another club?”
Lifting my shoulders, how do I tell her that I crave a good fight most of the time? How do you explain the surge of violence is sometimes what drives me to get up in the mornings, even if it’s the violence you play out in your mind.
“It’s becoming more frequent these days.”
That’s all I’m prepared to say on it without giving her more information on the club’s business. I could tell her I shouldn’t even be here, that when I return to the club I’ll be in for it when I see my president, but I don’t.
“What time did you leave this morning?” she asks next.
“Just after seven.”
She picks up another slice and I’m transfixed on her mouth.
“It’s rude to stare.” I hear and lift my eyes to hers.
“I don’t care, I like what I see.”
I’m not shy, not by no means, but I’m not usually this bold. With her, the shit pours from my mouth and I genuinely mean it.
Her cheeks redden, and I like it far too much. She finishes her pizza quietly, and I feel her eyes follow me around her kitchen as I look for a glass for some water as there was no beer in the fridge.
“Anything else you want to help yourself to while you’re up?” she says as I lean against the counter.
“I could do with a painkiller; my arm is starting to ache again.”
She looks ten types of concerned for me in the blink of an eye and gets up from the table. She se
arches through a cupboard beside the fridge and pulls out a box. After rifling through it for a couple of minutes, she passes me two little white pills and I throw them down my neck, chasing them with the rest of my water.
“They should kick in soon,” she offers and puts the box away.
She walks into the living room and I join her, sitting on the couch with her. As we’re sitting in front of the big window, she leans over the back of the couch and moves the netting out of the way. She scans the street and relaxes when she obviously doesn’t find what she thinks might be out there.
“Who are you expecting?” I ask her and wait for her to answer when she doesn’t look at me.
She sighs and peeks up at me under her thick lashes.
“Vincent Anderson was the reason I left town six years ago. Like I said, he wasn’t an ex. I didn’t even know him. He was my stalker.”
I don’t know what I was expecting to hear, but I wasn’t expecting that.
“It started when I was seventeen, I felt like someone was watching me but I never saw anyone around. It was creepy as hell. It kept happening and then one day, I came out of school and someone had left a pink teddy bear under one of my wipers. None of my friends admitted to putting it there. The next day, there was a box of chocolates on my car roof. Random gifts kept showing up, in my car, in my locker and at home here. Everyone thought I had a secret crush but I knew it was more than that. It wasn’t until I was at the movies on a date, my first ever date, that I found out who my admirer was.”
“What happened?”
“We were half way through the movie and Chris was about to kiss me.” She chuckles at the happy memory. “I was about to share my first kiss with him and out of nowhere, this guy came over and dragged Chris out of his seat. He was punching him, kicking him, he wouldn’t stop. I was screaming and then when Chris was knocked out, the guy came towards me telling me I was safe with him now and then I ran. I got help and when we got back, the guy was gone.”
I think I remember something about this. A couple of cops came by the club to ask if any brothers were in town that night. Cas was pissed and the whole club felt it.
“Did they catch him?”
“No. It was a week later when he came up to me again. I had just been to visit Chris so he could tell me to stay away from him, when I saw the guy again. He introduced himself to me and told me he’d look after me. He went on and on about how he loved me, and we were meant to be together, how he wasn’t going to let anyone near me. He was crazy.”
“Fuck.”
“Yeah. My mom freaked out and the police said they couldn’t find a Vincent Anderson. My mom made me go everywhere with her, and she’d drive me to school and pick me up. It was one day when we came home from the grocery store that he was in our house, acting like I was waiting for him. He lost it, and my mom got me out of town that night. He was becoming too dangerous and we had no one who would help us.”
“Your mom should’ve gone to the club, she was friends with Alannah, wasn’t she? You would’ve had help there.”
I know someone would’ve helped them.
“My mom knew Alannah, they weren’t close and my mom wasn’t one to ask for help unless it was necessary.”
“When I arrived, some guy was parked out front and threw me shade when he drove off when I parked up.”
“Coincidence. Vincent left town a year ago. My mom would have rather died alone than bring me back here if he was still around.”
Her mom sounds like a strong lady, I see where Nina gets it from.
“What happens if he comes back? You still have nightmares about him, he still affects you.”
“I don’t know what will happen, but I’m older now. I won’t be run out again.”
I’ll make sure she isn’t. Fuck knows how, but I’ll be around if he ever returns.
“Why you?”
I mean, I want to be around her, I can’t stop thinking about her, but we were at least introduced by third parties for a common goal.
She’s already said he wasn’t an ex, so who could he be?
“I have no clue. To this day, I still don’t know who he is, why he became obsessed with me. I don’t even know when he first saw me. Nothing.”
Nina
I offloaded to the biker like I’ve known him for years. I told him about Vincent when I haven’t told anyone about him. Joey never knew about my stalker, he didn’t even know where I came from. I guess he just didn’t care enough to want to know about me more than sex and a place to stay.
I have nothing more to say, his mouth is firmly shut offering nothing to my tale of craziness. He holds my gaze and I lean in, I don’t stop, I don’t care what this will mean, I don’t care about anything apart from kissing him.
His lips, soft and enticing, pull me in and he doesn’t back away when I press mine against his. One moment is all it takes before he half turns and grabs onto my hips. He lifts me and slams me down on the couch. He hovers above me never once breaking our connection and drives his tongue into mine. It becomes a blurry battle of who can kiss who more fiercely. A hunger rises and takes over me. I buck my hips up to meet his groin and then he’s off me before I can register what’s going wrong.
“What?” I ask, trying to get my breath back.
“I…we...that shouldn’t have happened,” he says, barely able to look at me.
“Why?”
I can see the bulge in his pants, it’s clear he wanted me as much as I wanted him.
“Fuck, Nina. You were just telling me about a creep who ran you out of town, and then I…”
“I kissed you,” I snap cutting him off.
“Still, it feels like I’m taking advantage of you.”
“I don’t allow him in my life anymore. You can’t take advantage of me when I hold the power over me now.”
He stands, still not looking at me.
“What he put me through was hell. I was afraid of everyone for a while. Back then, I wouldn’t have given you a second glance, you and your club would’ve scared me stupid because of him, because he had me on edge. Like I said, I own me now, so when I kiss you it’s because I want it to happen.”
I’m mad.
Fucking fuming.
Like I would kiss him if I didn’t want it to happen. Why does he have to be the one who knows best on my behalf. No one gets to tell me how I feel anymore. I know what’s best for me, and I know what I want and what I don’t.
“Hey, I…fuck,” he growls, gripping onto his hair. “I’m too sober for this,” he mutters.
“Too sober for what? To talk to me? Or to fuck me?”
If I thought I couldn’t get any angrier with him, I was wrong. I’m ready to go off the charts at him.
“You should go,” I manage to say without losing my shit.
I don’t know if I’m still angry or hurt when he leaves without a goodbye or a backward glance.
No hesitation. No trying to apologise. No nothing.
I run to the front door when I hear his bike thunder up the street. No doubt all my neighbours will know he left here in the middle of the night.
I lock the front door and check the back door and all the windows. Everything is secure, and I’m left feeling open and vulnerable again.
* * *
PAST
The walk from the movie theatre to my car is a forty second walk from the side door. I’ve made the walk countless times since I was hired last summer to man the concession stand. Lately, the walk is filling me with paranoia and when I finish my shift at closing, I’m scared.
No one is around, the street is quiet, and nothing is moving. There is no wind to ruffle the leaves on the trees, no group of friends milling around waiting to be picked up, the town is asleep for the night. Apart from one guy standing at the end of the street. He was there four nights ago, and he was there last week, I mean, no one else saw him but I did. He was definitely there.
I pick up my pace and count down the remaining seventeen steps to my car. The
key grates against the lock before it slides in and I twist it around. Popping the door open, I stumble into my seat and lock the door so fast behind me I feel a fool.
I don’t bother with my seatbelt and get the hell out of there. Once I’m off Main Street, I push my foot down on the pedal and speed up until I’m a couple of minutes from home.
I’m momentarily blinded by the sharp lights flashing in my rear-view mirror, I swerve the car. What the hell?
Squinting, I’m thankful I know these streets in my sleep. I speed up some more and turn onto my street.
The car keeps up with me and I can’t remember if the guy who has been creeping me out was standing next to a car? Or what kind of car it was if he was.
My mother is always telling me not to park on the curb, but I’m not parking halfway down the street just so mom is happy the grass won’t be turned up.
In my side mirror I see the car slow down to a stop at the top of the street. This isn’t happening. Half of me is relieved the presence I’ve been sensing is real, I don’t feel so crazy now, but the fear is quickly building and replacing it.
His headlights burn out and I’m running. I don’t remember opening the door, I don’t think of anything apart from getting inside the house and seeking safety.
Momma never locks the door until I get home and I’ve never been so grateful for a loving mother who waits up for me every single late shift.
“Where’s the fire?” she laughs.
Rose Rollins, my mom, is my best friend and a woman who should not be messed with. She threw my father out because he kept leaving ‘his shit’ around and accused her of nagging. She then made him keep up with our Saturday visits he eventually didn’t need her nagging any longer, he just disappeared from my life.
When I’m around her I feel safe, like a child should feel with their parent.
“I saw him, well, from a distance. I told you there was someone watching me,” I ramble on, dragging her over to the window. “Look, he followed me home. He parked up over by Mr Roe’s.”
Only there’s no one there.
No car.
No creepy guy with no face.
His Ride or Die : Sons of Lost Souls MC Book Three Page 7
