Shake (The Club Girl Diaries Book 8)

by Addison Jane

  The woman looked at me in disgust. I’d only met her once, and she let me know in no uncertain terms that I was not good enough for her son and that my mom, being a single mother of two, was so far beneath her that we may as well have been in hell.

  “Nicholas, go and get in the car,” his mom ordered, her high pitched tone almost making me want to block my ears. She stepped back from my mother, who was staring her down like a lioness protecting her cub and herded Nick, and who I assumed to be Nick’s father, out the office door in haste. It was more than evident who wore the pants in their relationship. I had no doubt her balls were bigger than his, too.

  “I hope that woman grounds him and doesn’t let him leave the house for a week,” Hadley mumbled to Leo as they walked in front of me down the hallway. My mom’s clip-clop of her stilettos brought up the rear and also telling me that she was still furious.

  Leo shook his head. “Hopefully, he’s not stupid enough to come near Meyah again,” Leo added, slipping his arm around Hadley’s waist and pulling her body against his.

  “Oh, it’s not Meyah I’m worried about, the girl can handle herself,” Hadley replied, looking up at Leo with a smirk. I frowned, wondering what the hell she was talking about. “I meant I hope she keeps him locked up for his own safety. Because when Ham gets wind of this…” She let the words hang in the air, but even the mere mention of his name had my stomach flipping all over the damn place, making me feel like I just might be sick.

  I was so caught up that I missed a step and flew forward managing to keep my body on its feet but dropping the ice pack I was holding. Uncle Leo stopped to help me gather it back up, taking my hand in his as we returned to our feet. “Need to teach you how to throw a punch,” he said jokingly, but I had this strange feeling that as soon as I felt better, we’d be in the ring, one on one.

  And you know what, after the day I’d had, that sounded like a fucking perfect idea to me.

  A banging on my bedroom door had me rolling over and groaning. “Fuck off!” I called catching sight of my digital clock. It read 10:30 a.m., but I hadn’t slipped into bed until after 4:00 a.m.

  Which everyone fucking knew.

  I expected to hear footsteps walking away. Instead, the door flew open slamming back against the wall with a hard thud. Instincts had me reaching for the gun I kept tucked under my pillow, flicking off the safety and sitting up in one swift movement, ready to put ten fucking bullets in whoever was standing in my doorway.

  My aim was dead perfect, and I could have killed the person within a couple of short seconds, but you wouldn’t think so with the way Wrench stood there with his arms folded across his chest and a beaming smile on his face.

  I didn’t lower my gun, and for a minute I wondered how much trouble I’d get in if I just shot the smug bastard. “Did you break my fucking door?”

  “Well, don’t you look fucking horrible in the mornings,” he commented casually. “Ain’t no lady gonna want to wake up to your ugly ass.”

  “Is there a reason you’re beating down my door at the ass crack of dawn when I’ve been on a shift at X-Rated until three?” I snarled.

  No, I wasn’t a fucking morning person.

  “Ass crack of dawn? It’s nearly fucking midday.” He stepped in ignoring the death glare I was throwing at him in the dim light of my room. “And sorry, princess, I was excited. Pretty sure you’ll forgive me after I show you what I found,” he explained flicking on the bedroom light and almost fucking blinding me. Obliviously, he walked forward to the foot of my bed pulling a folded stack of papers from his back pocket before sitting down.

  I huffed in annoyance but clicked the safety on and slipped the gun back into its hiding spot. Wrench handed me the papers, and I took them eagerly, my brain finally awake enough to realize what Wrench was talking about. I’d asked him to find information on my brother and sister, and while so far, the search had been a handful of dead ends, he looked extremely optimistic.

  “When I couldn’t find anything, I had a friend of mine in a government agency do some searches that would even push the limits of my abilities,” he went on. “There’s some good news. Some not so great.”

  It made my stomach twist in excitement as I looked down and saw Romeo written across the top of the page, but the ecstatic feeling soon began to deflate as I realized just what these papers were. “Prison records?” I rasped, looking up at Wrench for some kind of explanation.

  The excited look was gone from his face, and he gave me a slow nod. “Yeah, your brother’s been locked up for about six months now. He’s got less than a month left on his sentence.”

  I frowned looking down at the charges. “This can’t be right,” I insisted. “There is no way my brother is like this.”

  The file read that Romeo had been caught dealing coke and heroin down in Las Vegas. And those were past charges—this wasn’t his first stint behind bars. Running from the police. Assaulting an officer. Fucking Christ. I just couldn’t imagine the little brother who used to follow me around and bug me to play with him all the time was capable of drugs and assault.

  Sure, Rome had his cheeky side doing what normal teenagers did, like going to parties and drinking while they were underage, but he was more like the class clown. I couldn’t imagine him ever purposely hurting someone with his body or by giving them hardcore substances.

  Wrench held up his hands in surrender at my harsh tone. “Hey man, don’t shoot the messenger. Your bro there changed his name, that’s why I couldn’t find him anywhere after his last foster home. The minute he turned eighteen, he’d become someone else. Same with your little sister.”

  I clenched the papers in my hand scrunching them tightly in anger before tossing them onto the bed beside Wrench and throwing the blankets back. He didn’t say anything as I snatched up a pair of jeans which had been thrown haphazardly into the corner of the room and pulled a fresh white T-shirt from the folded pile on my dresser. I pulled them on before taking my club cut from its place on the back of my door and slid over my shoulders giving me the support I needed to ask the question I’d been considering for a while now. “You think they were trying to hide from me?”

  Wrench took the papers in his hand and stood up to face me. He held them out, but all I could do was look at them in disgust. For so long, I’d just wanted to find my little brother and sister and apologize for not being there when they needed me, and it seemed that maybe they didn’t even want that much from me.

  “I can’t ever imagine that I’d hate my brother for fighting that many years in court for me, or for becoming homeless because he spent every cent he had on lawyer’s fees,” Wrench announced clearly and slowly, no doubt hoping I heard every damn fucking word. It didn’t matter, though, it was going in one ear and out the other.

  Shaking my head, I made a beeline for the door stomping out and down the hall. Wrench followed behind me, not saying a word, but offering his silent support as I headed downstairs. I just wanted to fucking hit something, or throw something, maybe just feel something else other than the ache in my chest.

  “Phee is doing good,” Wrench pointed out calmly as I stopped briefly at the bar ducking around behind to grab a bottle of water. I gripped the cold bottle in my hand allowing myself to look when he held up a picture across the wooden bar top. It was a newspaper article of some new home in Cali that took in homeless teens and helped them get back on their feet and go to school. It was owned by some famous movie director. “She and her friends are living in this house and going to school.”

  I cringed. “Another group home.”

  “No, not this one. This one’s different. The kids here are old enough to care for themselves, so they are expected to get a job, go to school, and be respectable members of society,” Wrench explained as if he’d studied the article down to the finest points. “They have people come in, counselors and things like that to ensure the house is looked after. But from the sounds of it, it’s a great place.”

  My body warmed as I e
xamined the photo closer. It was black and white and a little grainy, but I could see my sister’s face hiding in a group of six or seven teens. I would always recognize her smile. It was slightly crooked, like one side of her mouth couldn’t go up as high as the other, no matter how hard she tried. When she did smile, though, her eyes lit up so brightly it was like stepping out into the morning sun. It filled your body with something you knew you couldn’t get anywhere else.

  “That’s good,” I finally croaked. Feeling the emotion begin to build in my chest and throat, it was choking me burning my vocal chords. I coughed, trying to clear it, already feeling far too emotional and out of my depth like I was swimming and couldn’t quite reach the bottom.

  He slapped the papers against my chest. “Read them. If you truly want to sort your shit out and have the chance of maybe putting your life and family back together, you need to know what they’ve been through while you’ve been apart,” Wrench told me in all seriousness. “All their information is there, it’s up to you what you do with it now.”

  I wasn’t sure how long I stood there just staring at the ink on the paper, not even reading the words or trying to make sense of what they said. This was the moment I’d been fighting for so long, bugging Wrench day in and day out to do this for me, and drinking myself into a hole whenever we hit a dead end. I think he was probably expecting some kind of excitement, maybe some jumping up and down and screaming ya-hoo, but instead, it was like reality punched me in the gut. All the things I’d forced myself not to consider before were slapping me in the face—a wakeup call that I found extremely hard to stomach.

  They could have found me, my name was the same, and I wasn’t hiding. There was no reason they couldn’t have come looking for me.

  They just hadn’t.

  Wrapping my fingers around the papers, I nodded. “Thanks for all the effort you’ve put in to find them.”

  “It’s what we do,” he replied simply.

  “You know you have family here.” I looked up and saw Leo walking toward me from the patio. “I know it’s not the same, but I got a brother, too, out there, and I fucking worry about him every day. You have us, too. You’re not going at life alone.”

  “Wow, that was really fucking sentimental,” Wrench cracked, patting Leo on the back with a teasing grin as he rounded to my side of the bar.

  I leaned against the bar and sipped at my bottle of water while Leo went straight for the strong shit pulling a bottle of whiskey from the top shelf. “Uh…” I murmured with a frown. “Stressful morning?”

  He poured half a glass before putting the cap back on and slipping it back on the shelf, probably hoping Optimus—whose expensive fucking whiskey it is—wouldn’t notice.

  “It started when he found out Meyah had punched a boy in the face,” Hadley chuckled as she shuffled over to us. Her words made my entire body freeze. “And then he realized he has a daughter who already has twice the sass as Meyah… he’s not prepared for the number of principal visits and douche-bag teenage boys which are in his future.”

  Hadley seemed to be thoroughly amused, but I was stuck on the first words she said. “Meyah fucking punched someone?” I repeated, looking to Leo as he took a long drink of the whiskey and not even flinching at the harsh taste.

  “That happens when prepubescent boys grab a girl’s ass,” Hadley snorted, attempting to hoist herself onto one of the barstools with Wrench finally offering her a hand after a couple of seconds amused with her struggle. Even though Hadley was popping at the seams pregnant, she still hated asking for help and tried to do everything on her own. She huffed like a brat as she took Wrench’s help. “There’s only so much shit a girl can handle before she stands up for herself,” she finally added, slightly out of breath.

  “That little Nick assho—” Leo hadn’t even finished his sentence, and I was already storming out from behind the bar on a fucking mission to do something I should have done a long fucking time ago.

  The only color I was seeing was red.

  I heard Hadley laugh as I stomped toward the front door and my bike, her voice breezing out the doors after me. “What did I tell you?”

  Enough was enough.

  The thought of his hands on her made me want to take my gun with me, but I restrained myself. I had fucking plans after this and getting myself arrested wasn’t a part of them.

  First, make sure Nick knows where he stands. Then go and make sure Meyah was okay.

  He touched her, and she wasn’t his to touch.

  She wasn’t mine either…

  But she soon would be.

  Uncle Leo tried to force me to go to the emergency room after my unfortunate interaction with Nick. I managed to convince him to stop and see our doctor on the way home, who confirmed my hand wasn’t broken, just a little bruised from the impact of Nick’s now not so pretty nose. All I needed was a lot of rest and ice, plus some painkillers which I’d already taken, and was ready to go and lay down and sleep through the rest of the day.

  The doc even agreed that maybe a few boxing lessons wouldn’t go astray after Uncle Leo explained to him what had happened.

  My mom, on the other hand, decided to head back to work with a kiss on my forehead and a lost looking gaze. Even though I was impressed with the way she stood up for me to Principal Lacky and Nick’s mom, I could still tell that she was angry. At me or the situation, I couldn’t tell, but I knew I was in for an ear full later that evening. I guess part of me understood why I’d punched a kid, but it definitely wasn’t the way we were raised to solve our problems.

  It was the complete and utter opposite, but you know what? I’d do it again in a heartbeat.

  I knew my mom would more than likely blame the club for my sudden act of rebellion and violence, despite the fact that she had cooled her anger toward them recently. She was even letting me hang out there a few afternoons a week and some weekends, especially when Hadley was helping me study for finals. I guess I couldn’t really argue the point, being at the club had had an impact on me. I felt like part of a big, strange, and slightly crazy family.

  I had these women who were strong, beautiful, and loved so fiercely. They made me want to stand up and be strong and to demand the respect I deserved. And these men who treated their women with the utmost respect, who would kill to protect the people they loved. They set the bar for what I wanted, what I felt like I wanted in my life—someone who would stand at my back when I needed them.

  Let’s face it, I hadn’t exactly had a great example of love and relationships at home.

  My mom had always refused to tell my little brother, Denver, or me, about our dads. She wouldn’t even speak about them or acknowledge the fact that we even had them. Mom was pretty adamant they were nonexistent, and she didn’t know who they were. It wasn’t until I came to understand how children were made that I realized there was a guy out there who held half my genes.

  Uncle Leo had made sure I always had an incredible male figure around to look to, but the truth was, the older I got, the more I felt like half of me was missing. I felt like there was so much about myself I didn’t know.

  What was my culture? Did my dark colored hair come from my dad? Do I have grandparents out there? Cousins?

  Oh God, siblings?

  So many unanswered questions that a year or so ago wouldn’t have mattered, but now, I wanted answers. And honestly, I felt like every little girl at some point in their life just wanted their daddy.

  I growled in frustration as I tried to hold my sketching pencil in my hand. Go figure that I would stand up for myself, and Nick would still find a way to ruin my life. I loved to draw, anything from real living things to patterns and cartoons. It as one thing I could do that didn’t scare the crap out of my mom or make her nervous. It was something she wouldn’t take away from me because she thought it was too dangerous or would lead me astray. And more importantly, it was something I could do on my own—which was how I spent most of my time.

  Sketching calmed my mind
, and it gave me satisfaction. I was creating something. I was expressing emotions. Sometimes my lines were hard and sharp, engulfed in flames. Other times they were soft, blended, and floating in the sky. It was a part of me, but right now when I needed it the most, I couldn’t even hold the pencil right.

  Pursing my lips in frustration, I was about to get up and go in search of maybe some paints or something that might be easier to use with less pressure on my hand when I heard a hard hammering on the front door. A chill went down my spine as I climbed off the sofa tiptoeing toward the door. It could be one of the brothers. Leo did say he’d send someone around to check on me later today if he didn’t have time, but I’d already talked to Hadley and told her I was fine. I stepped into the foyer and jumped a foot in the air when the hammering started again.

  “Meyah… open up!” His voice hit me with force in the chest, and I leaped back. I could see the outline of his body in the large floor-length frosted window. It was fuzzy and blurred, but I took notice of the way he was pacing back and forth, his heavy boots thumping against the porch. “Meyah, come on?” Ham asked again, this time his voice softer and less urgent.

  I knew it was because he could see my body, too, like just having that view of me, whether blurred or not, was enough to ease his worry slightly.

  Licking my lips and running my fingers through my hair, I stepped forward, not even completely sure I wanted to see him but curious as to why he was there. Ham made me nervous at the best of times. I couldn’t help but feel shy and unsure around him partly because of the times I’d seen him with a look of danger in his eyes, and partly because I was scared of just how that look excited my body.

  I flicked the lock, the click echoing in the air. My hand didn’t even have time to grasp the handle before the door opened toward me forcing me to take a step back. My breath caught in my throat. No matter how strong I felt like I was getting, Ham always had this way of stealing my soul from my body when he entered a room.