"Belong," I mused, testing the word out, finding it odd, foreign, too possessive to feel comfortable.
"Old ladies, not fuck buddies," he clarified. "Guys around here seem to shack up fast."
"Because the women in this town are top-notch," the woman who had been sitting on the big bearded man's lap said, coming up behind Virgin. She peeked around his arm, giving me a once-over. I'd hate to play this woman in poker, because whether she found me wanting or not was a complete mystery. "Has Lo met her yet?"
"Don't start shit, Janie," Virgin demanded, but there was a softness in his voice, an affection for the woman.
"Me? Start shit? No way," she said, devious smile in place as she moved over to join Penny and Bethany who had decided to keep their distance. Shy, I decided, in Penny's case. And maybe a bit standoffish in Bethany's.
"Go on. Load up," Virgin invited, passing me a plate, leaving me out of the loop. It was ridiculous to feel like the last kid chosen in Red Rover, but that was how I felt as I started picking out food, feeling Virgin at my side as he loaded up his plate as well.
I spent the next hour meeting enough people to ensure I would forget all of them save for the first few I was introduced to in the kitchen. Thaddeus was always somewhere in my periphery as Virgin asked some basic questions, seemed to accept my veiled answers.
Or so I thought.
"You gonna stop bullshittin' me, or tell me the truth?" he asked when we were alone - well, as alone as you could be while a party raged around you.
"I'm sorry?" I asked, my head whipping back in his direction, knowing I looked as guilty as I felt. I needed to find that Janie woman and ask her for lessons in poker faces.
Virgin's lips twitched. "You're a shit liar," he told me.
"I know," I agreed, shaking my head at myself, suddenly wishing I had something to drink that wasn't water from the tap in the kitchen. Why was no one serving up shots now?
"Why would you lie to me? You know I am an arms-dealing biker. You knew I grew up around heroin and clubwhores. Not exactly in a place to judge."
The words were out of me before I could think better of them.
"Have you ever been to prison?"
"Jail, yes. Prison? No. You?"
FIVE
Virgin
I didn't think she would show. Not really. Maybe I hoped. Because, apparently, all these relationships around me were making me soft or some shit. But something about her said she wasn't the type to show up at a biker compound even if she was invited by a member. I'd been around a lot of women in a lot of clubs. There was a vibe about them, an energy. Freddie didn't have that.
In fact, if I wasn't completely mistaken, she almost seemed to have a sort of goody-goody vibe to her. Which was not my type. Not by any stretch of the imagination. I wasn't one of those guys who got off on the ideas of corrupting good girls, dragging them down to wade in the muck of things.
I liked my life.
I liked the uncertainty, the familiarity of the crassness, the brotherhood that was the closest to a family I had known in far too long to even remember.
But it wasn't meant for everyone.
And it felt cheap to try to coax someone into it.
I probably shouldn't have even invited her in the first place.
Especially knowing it was a bit of an open house, not just the guys and their girls, knowing that whenever you brought in new, unpredictable men, you opened up the potential for unsavory things to happen.
Reign had about five guys who had been brought to him - or in West's case, just swaggered his cocky ass in through the gates - that he wanted us to all get a chance to vet.
It was almost distracting enough to forget to check the door for her.
Almost.
"What's the consensus?" Reign asked, tipping back a beer, watching the guys move around.
"The one with the gauged ears is out," Renny decided, always the first to nix a potential member.
"Gonna need reasons, Renny," Reign reminded him.
"The way he talks about women like objects, I get the feeling he roughs up his girls in his free time."
"So he's out," Reign agreed. Drugs and hurting women, those were the old man's triggers. It took some getting used to, coming from the MCs I had been in where drugs was where the money came from, where women were often treated like trash. "What about that fucker walking around charming all the women?"
"West," Repo supplied. "Dunno. Reminds me a bit of Shooter before he settled down."
"What's his story?" Reign demanded.
"He's a floater," Sugar supplied, shrugging. "Worked all across the states doing whatever paid."
"Such as?"
"Anything that involved fucking someone up," I pitched in.
"A lot of suppressed rage," Renny agreed.
"In a way we got to worry about, or like Wolf?" Cash asked from behind me.
"Best guess? Like Wolf. He's hard to read. But I would pick him over the others to prospect at least."
"We'll see how he does the rest of the night," Reign allowed. "Christ, what is that, the eighth woman he's hit on tonight?" he asked with a snort, pushing away from the bar.
My gaze followed the line his had, finding Wes standing there. Kissing Freddie's hand while her brother loomed behind her holding an umbrella under his arm despite the fact that it was dry and dark out.
"She yours?" Renny asked, those unsettling eyes on me. Eyes that were that way because of how much they saw, how many inferences they made from all they saw.
"I invited her," I clarified. "But she isn't mine."
But despite that being the absolute truth, there was no denying the possessiveness that swarmed my system - swirling and uncomfortable - at seeing her smile at West, seeing his hands touching her.
Mine something in me called. It was some prehistoric, caveman impulse to take, claim, own. Some biological drive that I had never felt before.
But there was no denying it as the night went on, as the men and women eyed her, sized her up, silently - or not so silently - placed their bets on our status, on her potential of fitting in.
Mine the voice called again, selfishly steering her away from them while staying in the party, in the line of sight of her protective brother.
No one would accuse me of being chatty, but I tried, threw out conversation starters, attempted to get to know her. She was open with stories about her brothers and her when they were young. But when I tried to get information about her over the past few years, she got ramrod straight, her eyes evaded contact, her words went from effortless to careful, calculated, awkward.
And then the words blurted out of her, an explosion of repression and uncertainty, and maybe even a twinge of fear.
Have you ever been to prison?
I didn't have to ask to know.
Not with her skittering gaze, her anxious tugging at her shirt, her hair, the hoops at her ears.
Freddie, the woman who I had thought of as a goody-goody not too long before, had been to prison. Not jail. Not some county stint while she waited for a court date where she would get out on time served.
No.
She went away.
Away away.
And, from the evasiveness of her answers, I imagined for a long while.
Her teeth sank into her lower lip, uncomfortable, waiting for my answer.
"Jail, yes. Prison? No. You?"
"Prison, yes," she answered in a choked voice, not even a hint of air in it.
"Am I supposed to look at you differently now?" I asked, watching as her eyes snuck a look from under their lashes. "You did time. So what? I once cracked a tire iron across a man's face. Done anything like that?"
"No."
"Then why would I think differently about you?"
"Yo, boo, you good?" Thad's voice called from behind me, making her head shoot up. "Tugging at her earrings. That's her stress thing," he added, moving toward my side, looking down at me with what could only be called accusing eyes.
"
I'm fine," Freddie insisted, giving him a wobbly smile.
Thad's eyes narrowed, reading her like only a sibling could do. "Right. But you have to get some beauty rest so your fine ass can start bringing home the bacon tomorrow. So we best be going, yeah?" he asked, extending his hand down toward her.
She paused.
Her eyes lifted, looking at me, trying to read me.
Her hand eventually rested in her brother's.
But she paused.
Like she didn't want to go.
Like she would rather stay here. With me. Talk. Maybe do something more.
"Thanks for having us," she said as she was pulled onto her feet, giving me a smile. "It was nice to get out and celebrate a little."
"I'll be seeing you around, Freddie," I told her, getting to my feet too.
"I don't really get out too--"
"I'll be seeing you around, baby girl," I cut her off, watching as her lips parted, her eyes went hooded.
Oh, yeah.
I wasn't the only one who was having some feelings.
And hers could be ignited with a solid pet name. I was storing that information away for later.
"Oh, yes you sure will," Thad murmured under his breath.
"Let me walk you out," I offered, leading them through the crowd, out into the cooler night air. "Nice seeing you, Freddie. Thad."
"Not like you not to close," Sugar's voice called from behind me, jeering, amused at the idea of me being stuck with just my hand when I clearly wanted her.
He was right.
It wasn't like me not to close.
Not when we were both clearly interested.
"You running a long game?" he asked as I turned back, finding him leaning against the clubhouse, looking off at the town.
"I don't even know what the fuck a long game is," I admitted. If there was one person who knew me perhaps as well as I knew myself, it was Sugar. There was no shame in admitting that I was clearly on uneven footing with Freddie - a woman I just met. A woman who I had barely spent enough time with to get to know even a little bit. Everything should have been about the attraction, about getting her into bed, satisfying the desire we both felt toward one another.
I hadn't even tried.
It wasn't like me.
"You like her."
"I don't know her well enough to like her."
"Met her for two minutes and I like her," West declared from the doorway, shamelessly eavesdropping. And, for some reason, neither of us told him to get lost.
"Liked Peyton by the end of our drive in her hearse back to town. Not saying you're in love with the woman. I'm saying she's piqued your interest. In more than a 'I want to get up in that' way. So what? Get to know her."
"Not like I can bounce into her. She works at Abby's now. And then likely just goes home after."
"Well, if it helps. Her brother and her are having a spa day at Kennedy's next Saturday when he doesn't have a class to teach," West supplied.
Sugar and I shared a look.
We'd gotten good at the unspoken conversations over the years.
He had our vote for a prospect too.
"Eavesdropping is a favorite pastime of yours, huh?" Sugar asked, raising a brow at him.
"Never know what information might be useful," West said, shrugging, reaching to put a cigarette between his lips, cupping the tip to light it.
"So long as the information stays in the club," I added, tone barely masking a threat.
"I like this town. Wouldn't fuck up my chances of hanging around. I don't wanna be a loanshark. Or a fixer, whatever the fuck that involves. And I have a moral objection to selling Easy Lay."
"Easy Lay?" Sugar and I both asked at the same time, straightening up off the wall, turning to face him fully.
"Who is selling Easy Lay?" I asked.
This was the first we were hearing of it. And we all kept an ear to the ground about the organizations in this town. There was cocaine being dealt by a much more careful Abruzzo. And Third Street was doing the heroin. Maybe some meth. There was a trio of twenty-somethings selling pot. We overlooked all that. Adults made adult decisions. It wasn't our place to police the streets.
But date-rape drugs?
Had a feeling Reign would not sit back and let that fly.
In fact, none of the organizations would. Not now that they were all breeding like rabbits, had a bunch of girls aging up. In a town where GHB was easily acquired.
"You want to prove your loyalty, you tell us this," Sugar warned. "Otherwise, fuck off."
"I was planning on telling you," he said, shrugging, completely unconcerned with the ice in Sugar's voice. If I was right, Sugar was thinking about Peyton and her group of girlfriends going out on the town. To bars where maybe someone looks away from a drink for a minute. Long enough to have something slipped in. "Those bangers down on Third Street. Before I came here, I heard they were a pathetic facsimile of the organization they used to be. But it seems like they must have some new management because they are hopping to. Lots of little dudes on the street handing out GHB and Roofies. Lot of working girls on the street. With some bruises that makeup don't cover."
"We're going to go inside and tell the prez about this," Sugar declared, knocking the cigarette out of West's hand, grabbing the back of his neck, and turning him toward the door.
No one could claim Third Street were great to the women they pimped. But we'd never seen evidence of them being heavy handed with them. Or overlooking Johns who were.
Red flags.
These were all red flags.
Reign would want to check into it, put feelers out in town. Talk to Lo and her people at Hailstorm. Maybe even Paine who he knew kept tabs on the gang he used to run back when it was stable and - for all intents and purposes - a more respectable organization.
No beating on their women.
No selling date-rape drugs.
"Looks like we got a problem in town," Sugar announced, making Reign's beer slowly lower from his face.
I couldn't imagine what this man had seen over the years.
Sug and I had only been around for a short chunk of it, after most of the dust had settled.
His chest expanded and contracted with a small sigh.
"What else is new?" he asked himself. "Alright. What do we have now?"
SIX
Freddie
I understood why Abby was a workaholic.
And this wasn't even my business. My name wasn't attached to it. My life savings wasn't dropped into it. I didn't have the risks she had.
But I finally truly understood the pride of a job well done resulting in hard-earned cash.
My check felt heavy in my hand as I looked down at it, waiting for Thad to change after his shift so he could show me how to put it into my bank account through the phone app.
It had been a busy week even if you didn't include work.
I had needed to get a new driver's license, a bank account, work attire, and get myself a bike since Thad's and my schedule overlapped some days and I refused to let him throw down several thousands of dollars on a used clunker to get me from point A to point B.
Besides, I liked the bike. The wind. The sense of utter freedom - something so foreign to me. And the ability to get anywhere I needed to without having to worry about bus schedules and sketchy dudes. I even had Colson attach a basket to the front for if I needed to go shopping.
A basket on my bike.
The girl I was before I went away would be red-faced in shame at the very idea of something as, well, old-lady-ish as a basket on her robin's egg blue beach cruiser.
Funny how time changed even the little things.
I couldn't claim to love all things girly, but I had to admit that I was looking forward to a little spa day after being on my feet, losing five pounds in pure sweat all week.
And, apparently, my hairstyle was 'very high maintenance' and required 'a trim every week and a half.'
Besides, I liked Benny.
And
we would be picking up Jelena to bring with us for some pampering too, allowing Colson an afternoon to himself for a change. For as long as I was around, that was a habit I wanted to keep up. For Colson who deserved an occasional day to do whatever he wanted after taking on the whole responsibility of being a single parent. But also for Jelena, who I was really enjoying getting to know.
I never gave much thought to children. I had been too young when I went away to have considered it. And when I was inside, well, it was useless. Not that I wasn't surrounded by it. When you're locked up with a bunch of women, a lot of what they talked about was their children. How they were going to clean up for them, do better, get them out of the system, be a more significant part of their lives. There were endless photographs taped to the walls or lining the desks.
But when my plan was to get back out long enough just to get my revenge, well, it was pointless to torture myself with things I could never have.
Being around Jelena, though, it was making me really get to see something I would be giving up. The chance to be a mother, shape a life with stability like my mother had never been able to give us, with love that my aunt had never provided.
I shook my head, finishing ripping the top off of a frozen push-up yogurt, handing it over the center console to Jelena, secured in her car seat, legs and arms flailing out as she sang along to a song Thaddeus had blasting that I was pretty sure Colson wouldn't approve of.
"Do you and Uncle Thad go to the salon a lot?" I asked when the song winded down and she finally permitted us to get out of the car.
My hands wrestled with the straps of her car seat for a second, forgetting how tight the pieces clicked together, before lifting her small body out, her glittery Doc Martens catching the light as I set her on the sidewalk, taking the hand she immediately thrust up at me.
"Mmhm," she informed me. "They give me a lolly," she told me. "A big one."
"Think they will give me one?" I asked, making my voice low and hopeful.
"I'll make 'em," she promised me with a little hand squeeze I swear I felt in my heart as well.
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