Beyond the Cut

by Sarah Castille

  She wanted that kind of happy life for her children—a life without stress or fear, a life where they were surrounded by love and laughter, a life where parents kissed you in the morning and didn’t disappear in the afternoon.

  Keeping to the lit side of the street, she walked toward the bus stop. The streetlights had been changed out for energy-saving orange a few months ago, giving the area an eerie glow. She reached the crossroad and looked up and down the street. Time to jaywalk. She just couldn’t help breaking the law. Maybe it was genetic. After all, her uncle had broken at least ten different laws the first time he trapped her in the bedroom.

  Footsteps rang out behind her, and she turned, half smiling, expecting to see Banks. But her smile faded and her pulse went into overdrive when Jimmy stepped out of the shadows.

  “Time to come home, love.”

  Dawn’s gaze flicked back to the bar and then down the street. Where was Banks? The drunks were still inside. The streets were deserted. It was just her and Jimmy, and a lifetime of regret.

  “I’m not going anywhere with you.” She took a step toward the bus stop, and Jimmy grabbed her arm and yanked her back.

  “You’ll come with me or you lose those girls forever. I’ll take them someplace you’ll never find them.”

  She stared up at him, his face at once foreign and familiar. They’d shared a bed every night for seven years. At first, she’d thought of him as her knight in shining armor, rescuing her from a pimp who had discovered her unprotected and living on the street. It was only after Jimmy turned vicious that she saw him for who he truly was: a monster. In biker’s clothing. There was no way she would allow herself to get caught up in a relationship where she could fall into that trap again. Especially not in a world where women were property and everyone turned a blind eye to abuse.

  Still, it had taken years to push aside the childish teenage fantasy, break the emotional bond, and gather up the courage and enough money to leave him. And in the end, she’d done it for her girls. Not for herself. Caught in an endless cycle of abuse, she’d lost her sense of self-worth. Her mama bear instincts had saved her as much as she’d saved her children and taught her an important lesson: She was a fighter and a survivor, and she would never let anyone take that away.

  “I’ll find a way to get them back.” Her heart thundered so hard she thought she might break a rib. She was intimately familiar with Jimmy’s moods. Her safety had depended on reading him correctly and responding accordingly. And right now, she read danger with a capital D. He wasn’t just angry; he was enraged, and his control would slip the longer they dragged out the conversation.

  Jimmy gave a bitter laugh, tightening his grip on her forearm. “You’ve tried for a year and what do you have to show for it? Nothing. Shelly-Ann has you over a barrel and now I’m gonna have you back in my bed. I lost the last election ’cause the brothers thought I was too weak to control my woman. But there’s a new election coming up and I’ve let this stupid little game go on long enough. You’re mine until I let you go. Until death do us part. Nobody leaves Jimmy, especially not you, and never for a Sinner.”

  “Wrong.” She tugged the unloaded .22 from the pocket of her jacket and Jimmy released her with a jerk, his hands flying up in a defensive gesture.

  “You don’t want to that, love. Think about the kids. You’d go to jail for life. They would have no one but Shelly-Ann.”

  Love. The term of endearment made her feel sick inside. He’d called her “love” from the day he took her back to the clubhouse. New name for a new life, he’d said. Now she associated that name with only one thing: Pain.

  “Drop the gun and stop playing games.” His grin turned feral. “I know you. And I know it’s not loaded.”

  For a split second, Dawn wondered what she would have done if there had been a bullet in the gun. But he’d called her bluff, just as Banks had. Now she had only one option.

  Run.

  Turning quickly, she raced across the street. In the distance, the headlights of the bus glowed warm in the night. It would all come down to timing.

  “Fuck.” Jimmy’s voice echoed in the darkness, and the thud of his shoes on the pavement sent her heart into overdrive.

  But although she was fast, Jimmy was faster. Just as she reached the bus shelter, he grabbed her hair and yanked her head back. Using her momentum, he slammed her face into the glass. Pain shot through her skull and she shuddered beneath his grip.

  “Wrong. Fucking. Decision.” Jimmy pressed his lips to her ear and growled, “Looks like someone needs to be reminded of her lessons.”

  Well conditioned to what usually followed those particular words, Dawn froze. Jimmy had rules, and every lesson she’d learned after breaking one of his rules resulted in a trip to the hospital.

  The growl of an engine shattered the silence. Light flooded the shelter and the bus slowed to a stop. In the distance the bar door slammed and she heard Banks curse.

  “Let me go or I’ll scream.” She mumbled the words against the glass, unable to move an inch with his body pressed hard against her. “They have armed security on the night bus, and my manager is coming.”

  Her gamble that Jimmy knew nothing about buses or the limited resources they had to run at night—resources that most certainly didn’t include salaries for security guards—paid off. With a last smash of her forehead against the glass, he released her and backed into the shadows.

  “We’re not done, love.” His words sliced through the darkness, piercing her heart. “Not even close.”

  * * *

  “Son of a bitch.” Cade slammed his fist on the chipped Formica table, and the six customers seated at the counter of Table Tops diner on the corner of Fourth and Pine stilled.

  “Would you like coffee with that?” Dawn tried to keep her voice steady and willed everyone to go back to their respective conversations. Anything but watch the drama unfolding in the corner booth of the cheap restaurant where she worked six mornings a week, remarkable only for the fact there was absolutely nothing notable about it. Brown vinyl booths lined the walls across from the curved counter; a plastic palm tree, its leaves heavy with dust, took up an empty corner; and a newspaper stand filled with day-olds perched in the corner. The kitchen was partially open, filling the restaurant with scents of grease and coffee, and the walls were decorated with pictures of cats. Lots of cats.

  “What the fuck happened to your face?” Cade stared at her aghast.

  “Cream and sugar, sir?”

  Conversation resumed around them, slowly rising to a gentle murmur, and Dawn’s tension eased. Hopefully her boss, Stan, had missed Cade’s outburst.

  “I had a run-in with a bus shelter.” She kept her voice low and her eyes on her notepad. There seemed little point lying to him. Although she’d done her best to cover up the bruises with makeup, she couldn’t hide the swelling around her eye.

  Cade’s lips pressed into a rigid line, a far cry from his warm, affable expression of only moments ago. “It was Mad Dog, wasn’t it? I’m going to fucking kill him.”

  She caught a flash of red out of the corner of her eye and saw Stan standing by the door to the kitchen in his Table Tops uniform: black pants, red polo shirt, and white apron. Dawn wore a skirt instead of pants and instead of the word MANAGER stitched across the top left corner of her uniform, her shirt read WAITRESS. As if people wouldn’t know when she took their orders.

  “Quiet,” she whispered. “I can’t afford to lose this job.” And then she raised her voice loud enough for Stan to hear. “How would you like your eggs, sir?”

  Cade ripped the napkins from the holder and crumpled them in his fist. “Scrambled.”

  “Any toast?”

  “Yeah,” Cade muttered. “He’ll be fucking toast when I’m done with him.”

  Dawn leaned in and tugged the napkins out of his fist. “Bad pun. And get it together. My boss isn’t the most understanding of people.”

  “How the fuck am I supposed to get it together wh
en I walk in here and see your face all banged up? I don’t see you for one day and look what happens.”

  “Life is what happens. My life. And yeah, it’s fucked up. But I have a plan to get back at him.”

  Resolved not to let Jimmy scare her, she’d come up with her plan last night while tending to her cuts and bruises. This was her town. Her safe place. Jimmy had never assaulted her in public before, and she’d never had a friend in the sheriff’s department. Maybe this time, the police could help.

  “I’m going to see the sheriff’s deputy after work tomorrow to report the assault.” She tucked her order pad in her apron and gave Cade a cheeky smile, hoping to calm him down. “Want to come?”

  “Why the fuck would you go to the police?” Cade attacked the napkins again, grabbing the bundle she had just tucked away and tearing it apart with one fierce yank. “They can’t help you.”

  Dawn glanced quickly behind her and saw Stan frown. When he took a step in her direction, she turned back to Cade and cupped his jaw in her hand then bent down to touch her cheek to his, whispering in his ear. “Cade, honey, please calm down. Stan is on his way over and I really, really need this job.”

  Cade gave a contented rumble and stroked his thumb over the bruised apple of her cheek. “I shoulda been there. He said he was going to give you an ultimatum. I shoulda realized he wouldn’t do it over the phone.”

  “It’s nothing to do with you.” Dawn drew his hand away from her cheek and backed away. “It’s my messed-up life and I have to deal with it.”

  “Everything all right here, Dawn?” Stan came up behind her, so close she could smell the bacon on his breath and feel the faintest brush of his belly against her back. Stan never went farther than surreptitious touching, but even that made her skin crawl.

  “Yes, just taking this order.”

  He rested a clammy hand on her shoulder. “You’re taking a long time and we’ve got other customers waiting to be served.”

  Dawn gritted her teeth and shook Stan’s hand away. “I said it’s fine, Stan. I’ll finish here and then I’ll go and check on the other tables.”

  Cade tossed a wad of twenties on the table. “Buy ’em some coffee on me. I’m not done deciding what I want.”

  Stan frowned. “I’m afraid I can’t allow—”

  “Now.” Cade shoved the money to the edge of the table. “Or I call up a bunch of my brothers and invite them all for a free meal.”

  “Cade!”

  Stan reached for the money, and Cade slammed his hand over the man’s thick wrist. “Before you take that cash, one thing you need to understand. You. Touching her. Not on.” He squeezed Stan’s wrist and Stan paled. “Looking at her. Thinking what we both know you’re thinking. Also not on.”

  “Stop it.” Dawn tugged on Cade’s arm but he was in full-on alpha mode and didn’t flinch.

  Sweat beaded on Stan’s brow. “I get it.”

  “Make sure you do.”

  “I cannot believe you did that.” Dawn’s voice shook so hard she could barely get out her words after Stan scurried away. “How am I supposed to work now? Stan’s going to hate me.”

  “He didn’t get that boner in his pants ’cause he hates you.” Cade pulled out his phone and stabbed at the screen. “But I agree, you might want to find a different job. I know his type. He’ll keep pushing unless you push back in a way he understands.”

  “You don’t understand.” She glanced back over her shoulder to make sure Stan couldn’t hear. “This is the only restaurant near the school, and Stan lets me go during our busy time so I can see the girls. I don’t just need the job; I need this job. And I have my own way of handling Stan.” Although Cade was right that Stan kept pushing despite her firm rebukes. But she couldn’t go much farther without risking her job, and for all that he was annoying, Stan was harmless.

  “Your way of handling Stan means Stan gets to touch something that doesn’t belong to him.” Cade leaned back in the booth, arms folded, legs spread. “Something I want. That causes a problem.”

  Dawn’s eyes crinkled in amusement. “For him or for you?”

  “For him, since I always get what I want.”

  “Cocky.”

  Cade licked his lips. “Maybe you should drop a napkin and bend over and pick it up so I can show you just how cocky I can be.”

  “Always about sex.”

  He reached for her hand and stroked a thumb across her knuckles, sending a wave of heat through the body. “Always about you. What happened last night won’t happen again. I’m gonna protect you and keep you safe.”

  Without thinking, she stroked a hand over his hair. So fierce. So passionate. What would it be like to have someone like Cade in her life? An idea stirred at the back of her mind, but she quickly dismissed it. Yes, she liked Cade, but not enough to embrace the biker life that had caused her so much pain.

  Reality kicked in and her hand dropped. It would never happen. Wrong life. Wrong world. Entirely the wrong guy.

  SIX

  I will avenge all wrongs done to me and my club.

  SINNER’S TRIBE CREED

  Christ. Cade pulled open the door to the Conundrum Sheriff’s Department and steeled himself for a takedown. Damn cops would just love to toss a one-percenter in jail. If the Sinners still had Sheriff Morton on the payroll, he wouldn’t have been concerned, but the idiot had been caught stealing weapons from the evidence room, and that was the end of what had been a damn fine arrangement with the local police.

  “Can I help you?” The receptionist glared through a Plexiglas window, her hand hovering over the conspicuous emergency call button at the side of her desk.

  Yeah, he needed help. He needed someone to shake him up, slap him around, and tell him to get his sorry ass back to the clubhouse instead of panting after the only woman on the planet who didn’t want him.

  What the fuck was he doing here? She’d been joking around when she invited him to go with her to the sheriff’s office, and if she had any sense she’d boot his ass out the minute he showed up, if the cops didn’t throw him in jail first. But dammit, she had no one looking out for her, and the cops wouldn’t be able to help. Conundrum was a biker town. The kind of protection she needed was the kind of protection only a biker could provide. Still, showing up here took things to a whole new level. Maybe she’d think he wanted more than another night with her in bed.

  Maybe he did.

  “Sir? If there’s nothing you need, perhaps you could step out of line.”

  And leave Dawn to the inept fumbling of the local police?

  “I’m meeting a friend who’s seeing the deputy sheriff. Dawn…” Christ. He didn’t even know her last name. Par for the course. He usually didn’t care about a woman’s last name when he was buried deep inside her. Or her first name, for that matter. But Dawn wasn’t like the others and he silently berated himself for not making the effort.

  “Dawn. No last name.” The receptionist lifted a manicured eyebrow in censure, and Cade scowled.

  “Just make the call.”

  Five minutes later, accompanied by two suspicious police officers, he walked into the intake area of the sheriff’s office. An assortment of drunks, vagrants, and a few high school girls in cuffs were seated in the waiting area. All the desks were in use, and the air was thick with the stench of unwashed bodies, old cigarettes, and pastrami.

  The lead member of his entourage gestured to a desk in the corner where Dawn sat across from a cop with brown hair and the chiseled good looks of those losers on the front of men’s magazines. Cade snorted at the frickin’ gigantic shiny badge on the dude’s blue shirt, but his derision faded when the deputy met Cade’s gaze and then reached over the desk to clasp Dawn’s hand.

  A growl escaped Cade’s lips. So that was the game. Bastard thought he could put his hands all over Cade’s girl.

  Okay. Technically, she wasn’t his girl. But he’d slept with her, wanted to sleep with her again, and he’d had a good time with her and her kids on Sun
day afternoon. Hell, he’d even missed joining Gunner and Sparky at a little pool party with Delilah and the girls from Peelers Strip Club. Now, that was something he would never live down.

  His gaze still on Cade, the deputy stroked Dawn’s hand.

  How fucking pathetic. Was that his idea of a challenge? Seated at his fucking desk in a collared shirt, patting Dawn’s hand? He’d give anything right now to get the deputy outside in the alley. Pansy ass would go down with one punch. Guaranteed. And the guy was an idiot if he thought he’d rile Cade up enough to risk assaulting a police officer. Not that Cade was afraid of doing time, but he had business to take care of first, and item number one was to get the deputy’s paws off his woman.

  “Thought you were done with bikers,” the deputy said, loud enough for Cade to hear. Cade snorted and put more effort into thudding his boots across the tiles and rattling the chain hanging from his belt.

  Let the fucking games begin.

  Dawn looked over her shoulder, her brow wrinkled in confusion. “I am. He’s just a friend.”

  Friend? Ha. He didn’t fuck his female friends. He didn’t give free rein to all the kinky, twisted shit in his brain and have them demanding more. And he certainly didn’t come so many damn times in one night that the sight of blond hair the next day made him instantly hard.

  “A biker friend. Same poison. Different color.” The deputy’s face soured when Cade bent down and brushed his lips over Dawn’s unbruised cheek, a direct response to the challenge in the deputy’s eyes.

  “Babe.” He stroked her hair for good measure and then sprawled on the empty chair beside her, ignoring the salivating police officers behind him. They knew who he was. And they also knew they had nothing on him. The Sinners kept their illegal activities under the radar, and if someone did get caught, they had a big-shot criminal attorney on retainer.