by Ashley Hall
Sky pulled back and propped her head up with an arm, elbow buried into the sand. "I've been thinking about that a lot lately." She bit her lower lip, looking so vulnerable, I wanted to pull her close. "I know I dropped out of college. Marie told me I had been a waitress. I don't just want to wait on other people for the rest of my life, so I think… I think I want to go back to school."
"For what?" I reached over and brushed her hair back. She looked younger than her years, tiny, so fragile, but there was a light in her eyes I hoped would never burn out. She was a fighter, my Sky. Was she mine? I sure as hell wanted her to be.
"Beauty school," she said without hesitation. "I know it's crazy to even think about, with having so many bills to pay back and everything, to even think about adding tuition onto it but… Yeah, I want to go to beauty school and own my own salon one day." She sounded so hopeful, so sad, but also so happy. Driven.
A pang hit my chest. Weirdly, or maybe not so weirdly, I wanted to provide that for her. I wanted to give her everything her heart desired. I could find a way to handle her bills, to take care of her, help her get on her feet…
But what if when she had money, when she had her own salon, what if she decided she didn't need me anymore? I didn't think she would use me for my money—especially, if she knew how I earned my income, she wouldn't be any happier with me than when she'd learned about my missions—but I could see her moving on and settling into her new life without me.
The thought felt like a dagger stabbing into my chest.
I would just have to be there for her and hope that she cared about me as much as I cared about her. No, fuck caring. I loved her. Despite my intentions to never let her back into my life, she'd wormed her way back into my heart. This might not just be her second chance. This could be our second chance.
And I'd be damned sure to make certain we both gave it our all. If we didn't work out this time around, it wouldn't be because of a lack of trying that was for damn sure.
"It's stupid, huh? A stupid, silly dream." She dropped her head back onto my chest and sighed.
"It's not stupid or silly." Nothing about her was stupid. "It's your dream. It's perfect."
Sky lifted her head again and stared at me, her eyes full of hope. "You're not just saying that?"
"I think you should follow your heart." I kissed her, soft and quick. Even that was enough to make my cock start to stir.
"Follow my heart," she repeated. A tender smile crossed her lips. Fuck, she was beautiful. "I like the sound of that."
"I'll help you," I said hoarsely. Whatever she wanted, I would try my damnedest to make it possible.
This second kiss was just as soft and quick as the first one, but there was more to it. The kiss was a promise. We deserved a second chance.
Shit, I deserved a second chance.
Chapter Thirteen
Shadow
We lay there in the sandy cove for a long while, only leaving because we were hungry. Breakfast was always the worst meal of the day at the clubhouse.
Hand in hand, we made our way back to my bike. Before either of us could climb on, my phone rang. Sam the Slayer. One of my best buds.
"What is it?" I asked. He, more than most of the others, knew about my history with Allie, and while the guys weren’t aware of her memory loss yet or that she was going by Sky now, he wouldn't interrupt my time with her unless it was important.
And, fuck, did it turn out to be important.
"Turned on the news this morning," he said without even greeting me first. "The police are reporting that a local man is involved in a child molestation ring."
My eyes narrowed. "Who is he? Where is he?"
"They didn't release his name, at least not yet, but they did say he's on the lam," Sam said.
"Fucking asshole," I swore. I hung up and curled my free hand into a tight fist.
"What's wrong?" Sky had crossed her arms, and from the expression of worry and apprehension on her face, I knew she thought I had a lead on another mission. Which I did. A very basic start to one. A difficult one. The police were never involved in our missions, and our targets were never on the run. I'd have to play this one out carefully if I didn't want to get caught.
"Trust me, you don't want to know the details." I climbed onto my bike and gestured for her to do the same. "We need to get to the clubhouse."
She hesitated, and I wanted to groan. Just when I had promised to help her straighten out her life, here I was, mucking mine up all the more. Despite knowing my crusade against pedos could ruin us, I just couldn't bring myself to stop. Not yet at least. As much as I wanted to do anything she asked, I wasn't positive I'd be able to end it if she demanded it of me. Couldn't I change in other ways to be worthy of her?
"Shadow, please." She wasn't pleading. She was too strong for that. Stubborn too. Loved that about her.
She softly gripped my arm as she remained on the sidewalk, it had me shifting my focus from my ride to her. "It's important," I said plainly, willing her to climb on my bike behind me.
I wasn't going to explain things to her. I wasn't going to beg her to understand. Fuck, it might not be possible for anyone else to understand. Sure, my boys in the motorcycle club were with me, my partners in crime, but not even they understood my drive, my need to do this. Dark, twisted, and fucked up. That was me. Either Sky could handle that, or she couldn't.
"Are you coming or not?" I demanded.
Sky closed her eyes for a moment. Her lips moved slightly like she was talking to herself. Then she climbed on behind me. At first, she didn't hold on as tightly as she normally did, but I flew on the highway, going at least twenty over the speed limit, forcing her to cling to me. If I weren't so pissed off, I would have really enjoyed that ride with her.
We reached the clubhouse in record time. At least there hadn't been any cops on the highway to nab me for speeding. As I parked and climbed off, I turned to her. "I need to talk to the boys. Do you think you could…?"
"I can clean up the kitchen and get started on making lunch." She shrugged, not looking me in the eyes. "I'm not going to mother all of you, but I guess I need to earn my keep somehow if I'm going to be living here."
"You are going to be living here." I rubbed her shoulders, trying to ease some of the tension that was now brewing between us.
She shrugged again, shifting away from me as if she didn't want me to touch her.
Fuck. I didn't need this. Not now. Honestly? Not ever.
"You could always earn your keep the way you did the first night." I wiggled my hips suggestively, thinking back to the first time Sky and I slept together.
She slapped my shoulder, but she was grinning too. Damn, when she smiled, it felt like everything just might end up all right after all.
"That shouldn't have any strings attached to it," she countered.
I lifted my eyebrows. "That? Meaning…"
Her gaze was bold and sexy as hell. "Fucking," she answered, but she said it so softly she might as well have said lovemaking instead.
"No strings, huh?" I grinned recklessly but inwardly, I winced. No strings meant no commitment, and that was the last thing I wanted from her. She had to know that, right?
"Yes. It makes it all feel more… dangerous." Her eyes had been bright, but now they clouded over. Fuck, she was thinking about my missions now. I just knew it.
I had to redirect the subject. "You like living on the edge. You can't tell me you didn't enjoy yourself while we were fucking in public."
"True." Sky's smile returned, wide and bright and beautiful, and damn it all if I didn't want to just take her into my arms and kiss her senseless, maybe even more right here, in front of the clubhouse.
But I couldn't. I had work to do, a new pedo to nail.
Still, I gave her a brief, tight hug. She embraced me back, but her sigh cut through me.
"What was the sigh for?" I asked.
"Can't a sigh be one of contentment?" she asked, gazing up at me with her wide, expressive
, beautiful eyes. When she looked at me like that, I would do anything for her.
"You're content?" I wanted so fucking badly to believe that. Could I really make her happy when she couldn't accept all of me?
"For now." With a grin that would turn on priests, she winked at me. She sauntered into the clubhouse, hips swaying. She could be such a damn tease.
My cock wanted to rise, but just thinking about why I was here was enough to kill my hard on. Shaking away my lust, I hurried into the clubhouse and instructed Sam the Slayer, to gather everyone. By the time I made my way to the meeting room, it was filled—just about everyone was here. Good. We would need all hands on deck for this one.
Sam was the last to walk in and shut the door behind him. I glanced at him, but he jerked his head toward Eyebrow. Larry had the largest, thickest unibrow anyone had ever seen. His nickname might not be original, but it was well deserved.
"What's the latest?" I asked him, my tone biting. Something told me this wasn't going to be our everyday, run of the mill kind of pedo.
"It's really twisted, this one." Eyebrow furrowed his eyebrows as he shook his head, lips sneering.
"Just get on with it," I growled, drumming my fingers on the table, anxious and uneasy. I just wanted to hit the streets, to follow leads, to nail the guy.
"A daycare. The guy runs a fucking daycare. He forced his wife to look the other way when he…" Even the guys had a hard time going into details. They might not have been molested personally, but every single one of them knew someone personally who had been. As depressing as that was, it bonded us together.
But, what the fuck, what a sicko this guy was. Not only was he fooling around with the kids in his charge, but he was coercing his wife to be an accomplice too. What a fucking asshole. Women should be loved, not abused. Children should be untouched and protected.
Well, we would have to be the ones to protect them. Jail was too good for the likes of him. He needed to be put six feet under, and I would be the one to put him there.
"What else do we know about the guy?" My voice echoed in the room as I looked around at my boys. They would always have my back. They would do whatever I asked of them. My brothers. I'd always have them, at the very least.
"His name's Greene. Frank Greene." Eyebrow cleared his throat, his eyebrow wiggling like a worm. "Goes to church every Sunday with his wife, as if that makes him a good guy."
"Supposedly a quiet, unassuming guy," Sam the Slayer cut in. He crossed his arms. He never wore shirts with sleeves. Always wanted to show off his guns. Even I would admit his biceps were pretty sick.
My fists opened and closed, as I thought about this fucking asshole, wishing he was standing in front of me so I could pummel his face. I fought back the urge to spit and asked the question I didn't really want to know the answer to, "How many kids?"
"Child after child." Sam shrugged. "Quite a few have stepped up to report molestation, or at least their parents have on their behalf. And I'll bet there's a lot more who haven't talked yet. Hard to say how many."
Disgusting. Disturbing. This had to stop, now. How long had this been going on for? A long while, if I had to guess. As sad as it was, it sometimes took kids a long time before they would tell their parents what was happening. A daycare. Fuck, the kids could be really young. What the hell was wrong with the guy?
"Community's devastated. They never realized how much of this went on behind the scenes, but this story's public now." Ratched rubbed his bald head. He was a nurse for his other job, and his nickname came from One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. "And the police are after him too, not just us."
"The man's on the loose, but that won't be the case for long." I slammed my fists onto the table. "I will hunt down this guy, this sicko, this Frank Greene," I swore, my blood seething with every word. "And then he'll pay for his crimes."
Chapter Fourteen
Sky
I tried to be a good girl. I went straight to the kitchen with every intention of cleaning up, just like I had told Shadow I was going to do. But, with the look on his face when he'd answered that phone call, and then he wouldn't provide me with details… I couldn't help myself. Too much of my past life was a mystery. I wasn't about to allow him, or anyone else, to dictate my knowledge of present and future events too.
So, yeah, I ducked out of the kitchen and trailed a guy to see where they were going. The door was shut by the time I reached it, but they were all talking very loudly. When I pressed my ear to the door, I could hear every word they were saying.
And every word made my heart sink lower and lower, my chest aching.
Couldn't Shadow see that he wasn't going to make things better? The police were already looking for the guy. Why couldn't he let them handle things? Or if he really felt the need to be involved, why couldn't he help the police? Give them leads as an informant. Weren't informants paid? Come to think of it, I wasn't sure what exactly Shadow and the other guys did for a living. How did they afford this place? Just through their profits from the bar? But there hadn't been that many people here the nights I'd been here, so I doubt they made a lot of money through that. In fact, the only people I'd seen drinking there had been the bikers and me and my sister.
My thoughts turned to Marie. My sister wanted me to leave here so badly. We'd fought over it. I'd stayed because I wanted to try and redeem Shadow, to rescue him. There was so much about him I didn't know, so many questions unanswered. Maybe I should be more careful around him. Not that I thought he would ever do anything to hurt me. At least physically. Emotionally, with my heart, now that was a different story.
He was amazing in bed and made me feel alive in ways I hadn't thought I could. After the car accident and waking up in the hospital, I had been seriously depressed, almost to the point of asking the doctors for medicine for it. I hadn't been able to walk or talk, and it had been a long and trying road back to recovery. The depression had stayed with me throughout it all, my one constant companion, considering no one had realized where I was. Only Shadow had been able to get me out of that funk. He'd been, well, not quite a ray of sunshine, but he'd made me laugh, made me feel, made me want to live again.
But not everything was perfect. It wasn't all rainbows, happiness, goodwill and peace and all that. He was seriously worrying me. More than that… he frightened me at times. He shot a man! Killed him right in front of me. Shadow had his own demons, his own issues with the past, and now darkness was enfolding him again. I had to bring him to the light, if that was even possible.
Although I wanted to burst into the room, I refrained. It would be better to talk to him one on one, so I stood off to the side and waited until the door opened. His men trickled out. Shadow was the last to leave. As he went to walk past, I stepped up then and put my hand on his chest. His jaw was set, his eyes hard, and he was back to having the expression on his face that he'd worn before he'd pulled the trigger in that guy's apartment.
Undeterred, I pushed him back into the room and closed the door behind us. We were alone now, and hopefully he would listen because we needed to talk, and talk right now, not after he tried to track down the daycare guy. Trust me, I wanted the guy nailed as badly as he did. I just thought the job of nailing should be in the police's hands and that the guy should be behind bars, not in a coffin.
I glowered at him, daring him to not take me seriously. "Shadow—"
He shook his head. "Sky, I can't—"
"You will let me talk." I leaned against the closed door, my arms crossed. He would have to physically remove me if he wanted to leave the room. Of course, he was more than strong enough to lift me out of the way, but I hoped I meant enough to him that he would at least be willing to hear me out.
His nostrils flared slightly, but after a moment he nodded.
I released a sigh. So far so good, but maybe it would be better to try and talk about something else first, to try and calm him down some. "I know this is kind of random…" I paused. He was staring at me, but he didn't seem to object to
my changing the subject. "What exactly do you do for a living? I know about your… ah… missions… but they don't pay the bills."
He didn't blink or react or seem willing to answer me.
"What's your job?" I asked, my heart starting to pound. Was this not a good topic of conversation either? What the hell! Was he hiding something else from me?
He rubbed the back of his neck. "Damn it, Sky," he growled.
When he used that low rumbling tone during sex, it aroused me. At the moment, it only angered me. "Damn it, Shadow," I said mockingly, jabbing a finger at his chest. "Answer the question!"
"We steal," he muttered, not meeting my gaze.
