I want that, but I also want to sleep for one million hours. And I have work tomorrow. Plus I have to go up to the school, find out what’s going on with Cal Porter. Give them a piece of my mind for not calling my work number. Make some changes to the emergency contact list.
Oh, crap. My mellow is gone.
Charge can tell.
He scoops me up, clicks off the overhead light, takes me to the bed, and lays me between his legs as he leans against the headboard. A one bulb lamp casts a tiny glow from the bedside table.
“First order of business, we gonna need to do it on towels from here on out. I ain’t gonna do a load of laundry a day cause my girl’s a squirter.”
I slap his chest, play-mad. Then I think twice. “You’re gonna do the laundry?”
“Did you want to?” he asks.
No. No, I did not.
“Now tell me what turned that dopey grin I worked so hard for upside down just now.”
I sigh. My grin probably was totally dopey. “Work. Jimmy’s school. What to do about Dad and Victoria. My dad knows people. He’s not going to drop this.”
“Oh, yes he is. Baby, you know people, too. One of those people is the long-time side-piece of the principal at Petty’s Mill Elementary. I say we talk to Jimmy. There’s only a week or two left, but if he’s down with switchin’ schools, next year, we move him. So he can be with his brothers. That’s where Dizzy’s youngest goes. You have to drive him, but you’ll have time.”
“Not if I want to get to work on time.”
“Lucky you, your new boss is flexible.”
“My new boss?”
“Uh, huh. Ain’t at all like your old boss. This one’s sexy as shit.”
I give him the side eye. “I’m going to work construction?”
“Nah. Inventory. Pig Iron says he can use you at the businesses. The garage, The White Van, the warehouse where we keep the tools and shit. Doin’ inventory mostly. Same wage as General Goods. You pick your hours. Figured that’d do until I can convince you to quit.”
“I’m not going to quit working.”
I might be stupid in love, but I’m not full-blown stupid. I’d love to stay home, but not ’til I have a ring on my finger. And some bucks in a bank account with my name on it.
“I figured, baby.” Charge wraps his thick arms around my middle, nuzzles the crook of my neck with his beard. A good, warm tired settles over me like a thick blanket.
“Hey, Charge?” The words keep coming, although I’m drifting off.
“Yeah, baby?”
“What do you inventory at a strip club?”
He chuckles. “Don’t know, babe. The excitement’s in the findin’ out, I guess.”
We lay there a little longer, me curled on top, him stroking my skin, whatever he can reach, fussing with my hair and dusting me all over with kisses. I’m on the verge of passing out, but I don’t let go, instead I hover at the edge, not wanting this moment to end.
The window is cracked open a sliver, enough to let in the night sounds: the crickets and the river lapping its banks. An owl in the distance and the shushing of tires on pavement up the street.
“Peaches?” Charge murmurs.
“Uh huh?”
“Do you love me?” His voice is a little too deep. A touch uncertain.
I smile, lifting the cheek plastered to his chest. How can he not know? He’s so deep in my head and my heart, I figured he’d read it all there already.
“I love you,” I say.
“I love you and Jimmy, too.”
“You didn’t make me ask.” I squirm, freeing my arms to wrap around his neck.
“You’ll never have to ask, baby. You and our boy will always know. My job is to show you every day. Okay?”
“Okay.”
And it was.
For the first time.
It was all okay.
EPILOGUE
NICKEL
My cell rings at three in the morning. It’s Heavy. He says gear up. We ride.
My brain’s a little slow to start, but my adrenaline’s on board. It shouts fuck yeah.
Rebel Raiders are at the Patonquin site. A Garvis guy raised the alarm. Dude was cryin’ so hard Charge said he couldn’t make out much about the situation.
I roll over, hop over a club whore lying half across my bed. Jo-Beth? Angel? I dunno. I was wasted when I crashed. I guess the girl must’ve been worse off than me. She didn’t make it all the way on the bed.
I toss my blanket over her, and then I pull on pants and grab my piece from the night table.
Heavy, Forty, and I meet out front. Creech and Wall stumble up lookin’ rough. Bitchin’ about it bein’ late and all.
I ain’t sayin’ shit. My mind is in fuckin’ knots, worryin’ shit to death like it always does, but to my body? This is Christmas Day, man. The adrenaline hits my veins, purer than any high, and I draw in a deep breath of crisp night air.
This next little bit? I got a cravin’ for it, a jones, and like any addict, I’m running on one part shame to two parts unholy glee I don’t have to hold shit in, hold shit back. All the fuckin’ ugly that squats in me like a raving lunatic can go where it wants, do what it wants. Wreck anything or wreck it all.
I kick start my ride and shout into the night over the roar of the engine cause the monster in me ain’t a quiet one.
Damn, I wish every night was fuck-some-shit-up night.
A thick fog has rolled up from the river, and the light from the full moon is streamin’ down and turnin’ the world into a funhouse mirror. More brothers meet us as we clear town limits; we hear ’em before we see ’em, the roar of their engines distorted in the fog.
Charge, Bullet, Dizzy, and Cue pull into formation first. Then the old-timers. Pig Iron, Gus, Big George. Grinder and that dumb ass boy of his, Bucky. No Scrap. Heavy must not have given him the call. Scrap’s done his time on this shit. He’ll be pissed as hell when he finds out we left his ass behind, though.
Our engines echo between the hills. The dark is dark. Ain’t nobody on the roads tonight. The night air burns my chest, and I swear, my dick gets a little hard.
I’m about to get loose of my chains and ain’t no one gonna try and stop me. The fear is there. Heart in my throat and hands shakin’. Is this the time I go too far? The ugliness roars, “Hell, yes. What do we got to lose?”
For an instant, wide blue eyes and long blonde hair flash into my mind, but I shut that shit down.
Nothin’. I got nothin’ to lose and never did.
When we take the exit for the Patonquin site, the fog lifts into swirls hovering a few feet above the ground. There should be a gate, a guard. But all’s I can see is chain link on the ground.
We back our rides into a line, headlights on, aimed at the site. I check my piece, make sure the safety’s off, and then I take a good look around. My pulse races triple time. Someone has not only plowed down the wire fence at the gate, but beyond…
It’s a fuckin’ rally. An easy thirty or forty bikes. Headlights on, facin’ us. They’ve rode all over the foundation, torn shit up. Somethin’ is on fire—a pallet of plywood?— lightin’ the scene like a horror movie version of hell.
“Motherfuckers.” I’m off my bike and sprintin’ toward them, drawing my piece, a half-dozen paces away when Forty catches up to me.
“Think,” he barks, hookin’ his arm around my middle, usin’ his shoulder to push me back. I keep goin’—I ain’t easy to stop—so he defensive-linemans my ass back ten feet.
“Use your fuckin’ brain.” He slaps both sides of my head.
“Ain’t my strong suit,” I snarl. And it really ain’t.
He’s right, though. I got to ease up. Pull back. Remember I got brothers, and we got a chain of command. This is Heavy’s play. I ain’t got nothin’ stoppin’ me, but Dizzy, Charge, the old timers…they got old ladies and kids at home.
I shake it out. Force the ugly down. Go stand next to my president.
“What’s the play?” I ask.
<
br /> Heavy’s at the center of our line, stance wide, his chest is risin’ and fallin’ quick. That’s the only way I know he understands as well as I do how totally fucked we are. Outnumbered two-to-one at least.
This is gonna be insane. I can’t stop the grin.
I love insane.
Heavy spits. Sniffs. “YOLO, my brothers,” he finally answers, voice low and calm. “What other play we got?”
Then he strides forward, to the edge of the foundation, and cups his hands around his mouth.
“All right, limp dicks. You got our attention. What the fuck do you want?”
For a long moment, there’s silence, broken only with the growl of engines. All the Raiders seem to be looking up, not at us, but higher. At the moon? And then a lighter flares in the dark, and we see him.
On a column in the middle of the site. At least two stories in the air. Sitting with his legs dangling over the edge. A mad man. A ghost.
“Heavy,” the ghost cackles. Not a care in the world. “You look old as shit.” Then he takes a drag, the butt lightin’ up a mouth full of gold fronts. His raises his pasty-white face and the moonlight catches it. In an instant, I’m thrown back in time.
Ten years old. Hidin’ from the shit at home at the clubhouse garage. This motherfucker pullin’ up in a Willie G. special, blacked-out engine and that badass rear wheel made entirely of aluminum. Hair dyed bright green, hand in the back pocket of a club whore wearin’ a tube top that didn’t cover her nips.
Fuckin’ Knocker Johnson. Legend. Convict. Son of a Steel Bones founding member. And now, apparently, a fuckin’ Rebel Raider.
His hair’s jet black now. His nose looks like it got broke a dozen times. But it’s him. In the flesh.
“I thought you were upstate,” Heavy shouts, his voice echoing back to us from the hills.
“Got early release. Good behavior.” Knocker gestures at the Rebel Raiders around him. “As you can see.”
“I see a man who’s got the wrong idea.”
Knocker flicks his cigarette and leaps to his feet. He sways. “Fall, motherfucker,” I mutter. Don’t care what he was. He been out bad since he blacked-out his Steel Bones ink. Heard about that from Scrap many years past. Knocker wanted no parts of the club when he was upstate.
“I don’t think you see at all, prez.” Knocker grins and those fronts gleam. With his sunken sockets he looks like one of those Mexican skulls with jewels for eyes. “I’m a free man. Paid your daddy’s debt to society.” He sweeps his hand like the ringmaster at a circus. “I see you been busy. Makin’ bank with Des Wade?”
“We should talk, brother.” There’s a note in Heavy’s voice. A weight. Jagged. What the fuck is happenin’ here? Why’s Heavy not callin’ this shit? This don’t seem to be shapin’ up into a free-for-all. The ugly in me screams in rage, and all my muscles bunch. The ugly don’t like disappointment.
Knocker keeps runnin’ his mouth. “Your daddy set up me and mine to take a fall. Then you got in bed with the motherfucker who put him up to it. We ain’t got nothin’ to talk about, brother.”
“That’s old beef.” Toward the back of the site, a stuttering pop draws everyone’s eyes. Ain’t a gunshot. Sounds like fireworks. Heavy reaches the hand that was on his hip toward the gun tucked into the back of his pants anyway. “The business between Stone and the MC is settled.”
“You got eighteen years in that back pocket you reachin’ for?”
Heavy’s hand freezes.
“Cause if you don’t, ain’t nothin’ settled. My father didn’t settle nothin’ with you. He lost his mind. You took two sons from him.”
“Two pieces of shit!” Pig Iron yells. Damn. He’s shakin’ worse than me. Poor bastard. Don’t know how he’s not takin’ a shot at that fucker, but Wall is right up on him, ready to shut him down if he gets froggy.
Feels weird for once not bein’ the motherfucker everyone is eyein’ all wary.
“No parley?” Heavy calls, and squares his shoulders. I recognize the signal. It’s go time.
“No parley.” Knocker spits.
Heavy moves quick, the kind of quick no one expects a man his size to have, and as he draws we’re all with him, at his back, a line of men ready to go against an army, for him, for each other.
It all happens so fast, I can only squeeze off a half dozen shots before a bullet kicks up the dirt inches in front of me, and I dive for my bike.
While bullets are flying, Knocker drops down the column, swingin’ from some rope, and the bikes in front of us roar to life. They ride, all over, figure eights and donuts, and added to the noise is fire, flashing into the dark, ropes of flame kickin’ up in their wake.
Knocker laughs and hops behind a Raider, ridin’ bitch up and out of the site that now crackles and smokes. And then—
Boom!
Dirt explodes, rains down in thick clumps, and then again—boom!
Dark smoke and fire fill the air, and explosion after explosion rocks the ground. The column Knocker was sitting on lists, then crumbles, hunks of concrete piling up, sending grey dust billowing in every direction.
They’ve rigged the place. And as they drive off into the night, the roar of engines mingling with the rebel yells, I can see clear as day in the light of the fires they set.
Past ain’t past no more.
Heavy’s weird calm is gone. He stands on a rise, hair wild in the wind, emptying his chamber into the air behind that last Rebel Rider out of the site. His eyes are blown out, and rage has made his face monstrous. I’ve never felt closer to my brother than in this moment.
My body fiends for blood, and I laugh into the chaos. This is war.
I was made for this.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cate C. Wells writes romance with heart, heat, and a lil’ dirt. Right now, she’s into bikers, but she’s been known to flirt with mountain men, aliens, dukes, criminals, and billionaires. Regardless of the backstory, her characters are human, their love is messy, and their happy ever after is hard won. She loves mistakes, flaws, long roads, grace, and redemption, in life and in books. Romance readers are her tribe because ya’ll get it.
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Charge: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance Page 22
