by Addison Jane
I started to back out of the room scared I’d ruined the moment.
They both looked up, and I froze, screwing up my nose. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to interrupt.”
They both laughed. My uncle climbed off the ground. “How’d things go with your mom?” he asked, holding out his hand to Hadley who gratefully took it allowing him to help her up off the bed.
“Good. Fine.” I couldn’t find the word that fit right. Things weren’t exactly awesome, but they were okay. “I wanted to talk to Ham. Where is he?”
“He had to go away.” The short answer wasn’t what I wanted.
“Go where?”
“Meyah, I can’t share that, you know this,” he answered sternly as if I was just supposed to accept that answer. Yes, I knew I wasn’t exactly privy to club information, but this was Ham.
“We’re together.”
Hadley cringed slightly as she came around to where I stood toe to toe with Uncle Leo. “Meyah, everything’s okay, you don’t need to worry.”
“I’m not worried, I just want to know what’s going on and why he dropped me off at home this morning and then vanished into thin air.”
They both knew. Uncle Leo wasn’t stupid. He knew I’d spent more than one night in Ham’s bed since I’d been at the clubhouse.
“And I can’t tell you because you aren’t his old lady,” he threw back. “He hasn’t claimed you. That’s how the club works, Meyah.”
I’d heard the stories of the girls when they were claimed. Things were different here. You didn’t just start a relationship with one of these men, and that was it. No, these guys took ownership, and they let everyone know their woman was taken. It was announced to the entire club with pride.
They didn’t mess around. When they knew they wanted something, they took it. Uncle Leo had only known Hadley for a couple of weeks when he claimed her as his, and I’d heard stories about Kit claiming Harmony the day after they’d met.
What did that mean for us?
It had been a couple of weeks since we’d started to get to know each other, and things had begun to heat up. But everyone knew the history we had. It wasn’t like it was a secret the way Ham and I had spent so long dancing around each other.
Was he still unsure about what he wanted?
“When will he be back?” I demanded, trying not to let myself get emotional about something so stupid. Like it wouldn’t have taken five minutes to stop at my house and let me know he had to go away for what? A few hours? A day?
“Meyah…”
“He promised he’d come with me to prom.”
“I don’t know. But I’m sure if Ham made that promise, he’ll be doing whatever humanly possible to get back before then,” Uncle Leo assured. “And to make up for it. How about we go and see your mom about rethinking the club escorting you there.”
The gesture warmed me, and I nodded, but honestly, all I wanted was Ham.
He was the one who was giving me the strength to stand up and go to the damn prom.
He was the one I wanted standing beside me giving me that little shove I’d no doubt need.
He was the one I wanted to end this year of hell with and replace it with dreams and ideas of the future.
And he’d just gone AWOL.
Feeling awkward and embarrassed, I sat up and grabbed my half-empty water bottle, shaking it in the air. “I’m going to go fill this up, it’s getting a bit warm.” I didn’t bother to stick around to see their confused faces. Hurriedly, I made my exit. I wanted to tell them I was coming, for once, and be the girl that everyone else envied rather than pitied.
How fucking pathetic.
But true.
I’d watched girls’ ogle Ham in the grocery store and stop on the side of the street as he drove by. I’d even seen his name scrawled in the margins of their books. He was the leather wearing, motorcycle riding, sexy as all sin bad boy that every girl’s daddy warned them about when they were little. He made them want to rebel, to take a short ride on the wild side which made him probably the most wanted man in town. Although, I think Skins and Levi could probably give him a run for his money.
The catch was, they would never see him as good enough to take home to their parents or to show off at family functions. They just wanted other girls to be jealous of what they had and wanted to have him for a moment in time just to say that they had.
And he was completely fucking oblivious to it all.
Because he wasn’t that guy for me.
He was more than a cheap fling.
Ham was the guy who made me feel stronger than I’d ever felt because he believed in me. He was the guy who wasn’t intimidated by the fact I knew how to shoot a gun, and instead found it sexy as hell and encouraged me to do better. He was the guy who wouldn’t let me fall unless he was there to catch me.
“You’re really bringing your run-down biker to the prom?” Just the sound of his voice was like a grater on my skin. It made me cringe and want to mentally punch myself in the face for ever thinking that silky tone was anything but slimy and disgusting. “I’m pretty sure greasy jeans and leather isn’t part of the dress code.”
Taking a deep breath, I turned around forcing myself to stand a little taller. Even if Nick was still taller than me, I refused to let him think he could stand over me and talk down to me in this bullshit manner. “Walk away, Nick,” I sniped, stepping to the right to try and get around him.
He moved blocking my path and closing in on me. I gripped the bottle of water in my hand that I’d just filled up, wondering how much damage it would do if I hit him around the head with it.
“That guy has wanted you since he first laid eyes on you,” Nick continued, menacingly. The tone of his voice was sharper, darker than his usual teasing tone, and the look in his eyes was one that I hadn’t seen before. Another step closer, and suddenly I felt like this wasn’t just Nick being an asshole anymore. “I bet it makes him furious that I got there before him, that I’ll always be your first. The first one to touch you, the first one to fuck you, the first—”
“Shut up!” I snapped, slightly horrified at just how far this had escalated.
Nick had always been crude and disgusting, but this was next level. This wasn’t joking anymore. I could tell by the way his eyes watched me like I was a piece of meat, and he was a hunter looking for his next kill.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” I asked, taking a couple of steps to the side hoping to maybe to get around him. The fountain I’d used to fill my bottle was relatively secluded around the side of one of the buildings. He certainly wouldn’t have been able to see me there, he must have followed me.
“You know, originally, it was that shy, conservative girl act that you had going that pulled me in,” Nick continued, ignoring my plea for him to stop. “I found that kind of sexy. And my mom always said I needed a girl who would pamper and idolize me. Look to me to be the man.”
“Your mom is fucking crazy,” I countered, barely getting the words out before I found myself slammed back against the brick wall.
The air whooshed out of my lungs and struggled to fill them again.
“You don’t get to talk shit about her. You’ve already done enough damage to my family’s reputation trying to make us look bad.”
“You were the one who treated me like shit,” I argued, my voice raspy, and my body shaking with both annoyance and fear. There was no one around to back me up if he came at me, this was all me, and I was going to have to fight to stand my ground. I was sick of letting him win and have control—over my mind, over my body—he couldn’t hurt me anymore. I refused to let him. I refused to back up or run away from him. “You don’t really want to do this again, do you?” I threw back standing straight and staring up at him like I wasn’t afraid to take him on.
He stared right back at me, his head tilted slightly to the side as if he was considering what his next move should be. There was a calculating look in his eyes, and I was starting to wonder whether he was as
stupid as I thought he was. I assumed this was all some juvenile game he played using me as the piece to move on the board.
I figured once I’d fought back, he’d get bored, or scared, and move on to someone a little weaker, someone who would cower like I’d spent the last year doing. But instead, it was as if the harder I fought back, the more determined he was to get to me—like it was one big challenge.
His fists clenched at his side, and I was almost sure I saw the muscles tense like a ripple effect up his arm. And for a moment, I wondered how I would protect myself. It was that one moment you knew things could go wrong, and if they did, you needed to know how you could minimize the damage. Like when you hit a stone while you’re riding your bike, or when you walk over an icy footpath.
Your heart stops.
You see what’s happening.
You know it’s possibly going to hurt.
“Meyah? You okay?”
And then you manage to steady the bike or catch your footing.
Turning my head to the side, I was surprised to find six or seven of Nick’s football teammates standing there, watching us, with Trent standing at the front. His eyes were focused on Nick, who had yet to move or possibly even blink.
“Come on, we’re all going into town to get lunch.”
I cleared my throat. “Coming.” I gripped the water bottle as tightly in my hand as humanly possible in the event I needed a weapon.
It was like the dark clouds in Nick’s eyes that threatened destruction and fury were instantly blown away by a cool breeze and replaced by a calm sky, birds fucking tweeting and all. “We were just chatting, right, Meyah?” he pushed, but I didn’t reply as I slipped away from him. He finally removed his body from my personal bubble and grinned. “I’ll see you around.”
I shuddered, taking one step after another toward Trent and the boys. “I hope not.”
I can’t say that the desert was exactly my idea of a place I wanted to be locked up in or even spend any more of my time than I needed to. While there were sporadic bursts of little green bushes every few feet that, literally, was all there was. It gave me the fucking creeps.
We waited patiently outside the prison gates. The guys in the guard tower up to our left making jokes about how easily they could pick off each of us from there, talking like we couldn’t fucking hear them. It was the comment they made about Phee which had me almost losing my shit.
Blizzard grabbed me.
While Phee had just enough herself, she walked closer to the tower. “Hey you!” she called up to the guy who’d been ogling her for the past thirty minutes.
He smirked at his buddy and pushed his rifle behind him as he leaned over the railing. “Hey there, beautiful. What you doing with this lot? You wanna escape?”
“What I really want…” she called, twisting her hair around her finger like she was flirting. It turned out my sister had no idea how to flirt, she fucking sucked at it. But it was still amusing to watch. “I want you to come down here, so I can stick my massive cock so far up your ass it will tickle your tonsils.”
I snorted, the brothers surrounding me trying to conceal their laughter.
“I got seconds,” Dice yelled, grabbing his cock.
“Crazy bitch,” the guard spat. “You’re lucky I don’t send someone down to arrest you.”
Phee raised her middle finger in the air and bought it to her mouth, licking the length of it in a way that made me cringe but had every one of my brothers’ cocks standing at attention. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Put that shit away.”
We all looked up seeing my brother walking out of the large building, a backpack over his shoulder, dressed in dark wash jeans and a collared shirt with a leather jacket over the top. He must have been melting given that we were out here in thin T-shirts without our club cuts and already feeling like we were going to die of heat stroke.
We’d decided to leave our colors off while we were here. We’d had to move too fast and didn’t have time to get in touch with a couple of the local MC to let them know we’d be coming through. The last thing we wanted was to upset anyone, so as a show of respect, we’d just left them off.
Phee screamed and ran straight at Romeo who dropped his bag in the dirt and lifted her up off the ground, crushing her against him. I couldn’t have felt any fuller at that moment—my MC family standing with me as I’m reunited with my blood—something which for a long time I thought would never happen.
The only thing that would fix this moment was if my parents were here, too. I guess in a way I knew they were. Not that I was spiritual or religious or anything like that, but I still felt like my mom and dad were sitting up there watching over us. I felt as if they had a hand in bringing us back together.
Walking forward, I felt my heartbeat rise hearing my sister giggle and laugh, my brother’s deep, gruff voice as he spoke to her quietly. He put her down on the ground, and she stepped aside looking between the two of us with her bright, beautiful smile. “Well? Can you two hug already?” she declared, throwing her hands in the air.
I stuck out my hand.
Romeo looked down at it and back at me before he reached out grasping it in his. I started to smile, and as I did, he yanked me forward and wrapped his other arm around me squeezing me tightly.
I choked on a laugh. “Christ, what the hell have you been eating the past six years?” I managed to splutter before he finally let me go, the corner of his mouth turned up into a smirk.
“It’s called dedication, little bro.” He looked me up and down. “You look too small. Haven’t you been training?”
“No,” I replied, my gut sinking. Less than five minutes, and he’d picked it.
“How long?”
“Six years.” I turned around and walked back toward my brothers. “Come on, I want you to meet my club.”
It took him a few moments, but he and Phee soon followed. Phee had already fitted well within the club. Her two friends had left town and headed back to Cali but said they’d be back soon with their girlfriends, who were apparently her close friends. Leo liked them, surprisingly, even inviting them to his wedding. I think he just found the confidence, but not the assholeness they came with, somewhat intriguing.
Guys with money tended to be a different breed.
They’d been nothing but respectful and unassuming.
That was what the club was about.
You give respect, you get respect.
“I didn’t expect such a welcome party,” Romeo noted as he came to stand beside me.
He seemed impressed. I’d come with eight brothers not willing to leave anything to chance or risk whoever it was after Romeo trying to stop us from leaving. But so far so good. We got in last night, found a place who’d rent us some bikes and an SUV for a couple of days—because everyone had a price, and the boys hated traveling in vehicles for long periods. They felt safer on motorcycles, and I didn’t blame them.
I was driving the SUV because, well, Romeo wasn’t about to ride bitch and Phee looked at our rides like they were demonic. They seemed to scare her a little. I wasn’t sure why, but I’m sure there was some sort of reason. I respected her choice.
“I told you about the club,” I explained before launching into introductions. Each of my MC brothers shook his hand. Romeo was still standoffish. He didn’t say much, which surprised me, given we were here to protect him. I guess that was just him. Suspicious and untrusting. He hadn’t always been that way, but he definitely wasn’t one to make friends easily either. There was still time to develop relationships and trust. He’d see soon that he could trust each of these guys with his life—if he let them in.
“Come on,” I insisted, waving toward the SUV Phee and I had arrived in. “We’ve got a plane to catch in a couple of hours.”
I started walking, but when I didn’t hear footsteps behind me, I turned and looked over my shoulder. Phee was staring up at Romeo with a raised eyebrow. “You didn’t tell him?”
I
turned slowly hearing Blizzard chuckle and mumble. “Oh, this should be good.”
Running my fingers through my hair, I dared to ask, “Tell me what?”
Romeo smirked. “Probably should have mentioned I’m on a no-fly list.”
I threw back my head and closed my eyes. “Of course, you are,” I groaned. “Do you know how many hours it is to Athens from here? Like twenty-seven hours. This wasn’t something you could have mentioned before?”
Romeo shrugged. “Forgot. Was a long time ago. They gave me ten years.”
Wrench cleared his throat, and I looked over at him. “Not to be a downer, but aren’t you meant to be going to prom tomorrow night.”
Fuck.
Fucking fuck.
“I promised I’d be there,” I muttered, already feeling her kick me in the balls. And you know what? I’d fucking deserve it because I hadn’t figured this all out properly. I’d rushed off, thinking the sooner, the better without asking the questions I needed to ask or even fucking bothering to say goodbye.
“You leave now, you might make it in time if you drive straight through,” Blizzard noted stepping forward. “You gotta move ass though, and these guys are gonna have to help you.”
“I can drive,” Phee offered straight away.
My eyes moved to Romeo. He grinned. “Oh, I can help drive, but first you need to explain to me why the hell you’re going to prom.”
I rolled my eyes, rushing forward. “Just get in the damn car, will you.” I looked over at Blizzard. “We’ll drive with you part way until you turn to head to the airport. You’re gonna have to call the guy we got the car—”
“Just go…” he waved me off, “… I’ll sort it. We’ll catch you when you get home.”
“One more thing,” Wrench called as I ran to get in the car. “You’re gonna be cutting it fine, so stop somewhere and buy a damn suit.”
I waved at him over my shoulder before opening the driver’s side door only to find Romeo already in it. “I’ll take first shift since I know my way around here like the back of my hand.”
