She nodded. “Coming right up.”
Lucy went into the kitchen for a moment, then came back and grabbed a heavy white mug from under the counter. Placing it in front of me, she filled it from the glass carafe behind her. “Just made this a little bit ago. Cream?”
“No thanks, I take it black.” I thanked her and picked up the cup, savoring the warmth and heft of it in my hand.
“So,” she began, leaning against the counter. “What are you doing back here in town? What have you been doing with yourself for the last seven years?”
“I came for a visit,” I told her between sips. “I’ve been out east for high school, then college. I just graduated from the University of Vermont a couple of months ago.”
“Oh, wow, congratulations,” Lucy said. “How long you here for?”
“I’m not sure,” I replied. “I hadn’t planned that far ahead. I guess I’m just taking it one day at a time.”
“What’s it like being back here?” she asked, her eyes curious. I imagined that, like most people in Cheyenne, she hadn’t ventured much beyond the state’s borders.
“It’s strange,” I admitted. “It’s been so long. So much has changed.” I glanced around. “It was actually a relief coming in here and seeing it so much like it used to be.”
Lucy laughed. “Yeah, Crouse’s doesn’t really change much. Lenny still owns it.”
“Wow, he must be getting up there,” I said. Lenny Crouse had to be at least in his seventies by now.
“Yeah. He doesn’t show any sign of slowing down, though,” Lucy replied. She stood up straight and shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “You staying out at your dad’s?”
“Yeah,” I nodded. “He got married. I suppose you knew that.”
“Uh-huh,” she nodded. “To Randi Stone. My mom gets her hair done by her. Nice lady,” Lucy offered.
“Yeah, seems like it,” I agreed.
“You met her son yet?” Lucy asked. “Ryker? Oh, well of course you would have.”
I worked to keep my voice neutral. “Yeah, I’ve met him. He seems okay.”
“Hotter than shit, too,” she said dreamily. “Jesus H., that man could turn me into a biker chick.” She pretended to fan herself with her hand.
I laughed, forcing myself to sound nonchalant. Not wanting to talk about Ryker Stone any more than I had to, I decided to change the subject. “So, what else has changed around here?” I asked her. I looked to my right, out the front window of the restaurant.
“Well, for one thing, there’s a foofy new coffee place downtown,” Lucy said. “‘Uncommon Grounds’, they call it. Fancy coffee drinks, sandwiches, that kind of stuff. Been open a couple of years now.”
“Wow, little Cheyenne’s coming up in the world,” I joked.
“Yeah,” Lucy’s tone turned disapproving. “They’ve taken a lot of our business in the mornings.” She rolled her eyes. “The younger crowd prefers their lattes and cappuccinos. I keep telling Lenny we need to get an espresso machine in here, but he won’t budge.”
“Well, they’ll never have Crouse’s food,” I replied loyally. And it was true. Crouse’s served simple fare, but they had the best burgers in town.
“Speaking of which, I’ll go see if your pancakes are ready.” Lucy disappeared into the kitchen, and came back bearing a large plate of steaming food. “Here you go.”
My stomach growled its approval, and Lucy watched me as I took the first bite. “Oh, man,” I moaned, “I missed this. Hits the spot.”
Lucy smiled her approval. We chatted a bit more as I ate, and she told me what a few of our classmates had been up to.
“And I suppose you know that Jimmy Stocker’s in The Throttle, now,” she was saying.
“Yeah, I just saw him this morning at the garage. It was weird seeing him all tatted up. He’s changed a lot.”
Lucy’s tone shifted. “Yeah, he sure has,” she murmured. For a moment she was silent, and she looked at me as though weighing what to say next. “The club has changed, too,” she continued hesitantly.
“What do you mean?” I asked between bites.
She said nothing for a moment, but then continued. “Well... it used to be that the club mostly minded its own business, you know? Like, they did their thing, whatever that was, and then they would do charity rides in the community and stuff. Doing good for Cheyenne. Like, they were a net positive around here. And now...” Lucy stopped. She looked down, and I could tell she was trying to decide whether to go on.
“And now what?” I prompted.
“Well,” she hesitated. She sighed, and then her words came out in a rush. “Lately, we’ve been having a meth problem around here. It’s bad, Hadley. And it’s the club that’s bringing it here. There’ve even been some kids getting addicted. It used to just be they’d get high on pot or booze, but now...”
I started to protest, to say the club couldn’t be responsible. My dad would never do that to Cheyenne! But I stopped myself. What did I know? I hadn’t been here in years. And even before that, I never really knew anything about how the club made its money anyway, apart from the garage. Could it be possible that The Throttle had brought meth here? I didn’t want to believe it, but I knew Lucy had no reason to lie to me.
She looked up at me apologetically, and regret filled her eyes. “I’m sorry, Hadley. I know your dad’s the club president. I never should have said anything.”
“No, of course you should,” I said softly. “But I had no idea. It’s really that bad?”
Her eyes momentarily filled with tears. “Yes,” she whispered. “My cousin... she’s an addict now. She’s stole a bunch of money from my aunt Katy. We don’t even know where she is.”
Shit. “I’m sorry, Lucy.” I couldn’t help but feel a little responsible. My father was the MC president, after all. He was the one who called the shots. Ultimately, if it was true that the Throttle was into meth, the choice to bring it here had been his.
“I know,” she said, looking away. “It’s not like you can do anything about it, anyway. But... I just thought you should know.”
“Yeah,” I replied, feeling sad and helpless. “I should know.”
Chapter Ten
Ryker
When I walked into the chapel, most of the brothers were standing around, waiting for it to start. Small groups of three and four were hanging around, shooting the shit. Over by the head of the table, Jimmy was in deep conversation with Lon. Lon’s brow was furrowed slightly. Once or twice, Jimmy glanced over at me, and Lon’s gaze followed. I wondered what they were talking about.
Eventually, Lon banged the gavel, and chapel came to order. There was the usual discussion of club business, some banter back and forth about this and that. There had been a small garage fire the week before, so we talked about what had caused it and what it was going to cost us.
Lon usually ran chapel with a strict attention to order, but today the atmosphere was looser, more jovial. I wondered if it had anything to do with Hadley’s arrival. Between orders of business, there was more chatter, more joking around. Jimmy was being even more of a smarmy prick with Lon than he usually was. I could tell something was up, and at first I thought it was just him trying to ingratiate himself with the prez so he could make a play for Hadley.
If that was a reason, though, I soon found out it wasn’t the only one. No, Jimmy had an idea for the club, it turned out. One that would take us several steps further down a path I didn’t want to be on at all.
As if meth transportation and distribution wasn’t enough of a sideline for The Throttle, Jimmy wanted us to get into production.
“Come on,” he said with a persuasive grin, looking around the table. “It’s a perfect opportunity. The Chrome Warriors and us are the main sources around here, and we can barely keep up with the demand. Right now we’re getting our stuff from the Teror cartel. Why the fuck should we be paying them a cut, when we can get everything we need and make it ourselves? We got all that land and them outbuildi
ngs outside of town, not doing anything with it but storing product. If we started producing ourselves, we could cut out the middle man. If we can produce big enough, pure enough, we can corner the market and even cut the Warriors out of the game.”
He looked expectantly around the table for support. Sure as shit, Jimmy’s goddamn lap dog Stick piped up and agreed with him. “Fuck yeah,” he nodded. “Why the fuck we need to pay someone else for something we can make ourselves?” Stick wasn’t the brightest bulb. That’s why he and Jimmy were thick as thieves: Jimmy liked that Stick thought he was some sort of fuckin’ genius.
I glanced around the room at my brothers. Some were nodding slightly, brows furrowed. Others looked skeptical. I took that as my cue. “Jimmy’s suggestion is interesting, but ultimately it’s not worth our time or our effort,” I said. “Why the fuck would we go to all that trouble to build a lab, get the chemicals, go into production, and all that, when we got a steady source of meth already? Leave the grunt work to someone else. Gives us more time for the important stuff: riding and fucking.”
Lon and a couple others laughed appreciatively at this last comment. “It does seem like a lot of work in exchange for not much,” Lon murmured, his brow creased as he considered Jimmy’s idea.
“Fuckin’ dangerous as hell, too,” I replied. “That chemical shit is unstable as hell. Last thing we need is to blow ourselves sky high.”
Jimmy looked sideways at me and snorted derisively. “Fuckin’ dangerous?” he repeated. “Don’t be a goddamn pussy.”
There was sudden quiet around the table. That kind of taunting talk among the brothers was one thing. Normal, even. But disrespect of an officer -- during chapel, no less? That was another. That was a challenge.
A couple of the men looked at me with raised brows, waiting for a reaction. There were two ways this could go now, and both of them hinged on me.
One was fists. That one wasn’t risky in terms of immediate outcome. I knew I could take Jimmy down. Shit, the fuckin’ prospect might have been able to take Jimmy. But giving him a beat down was potentially risky in the medium term, unless I really fucked him up good, so he and everyone else knew that he wouldn’t dare challenge me again. Part of me wanted to go that route. Hell, truth be told, I was itching for the chance to pound that little prick into the goddamn ground. But I wasn’t willing to do it, not yet. As I weighed my options, the image of Hadley flashed unbidden through my mind. What would she think of me breaking her childhood friend’s face?
Christ. Maybe I am a fuckin’ pussy.
So I chose the other way.
“Fuck you, asshole,” I said easily, with a tone that said he wasn’t worth taking seriously. The tension around the table eased instantly. I would deal with Jimmy later if I had to. For now, the best thing to do was show the table he wasn’t important enough to take seriously. “We let you within a hundred feet of a meth lab, your ignorant ass would blow every last one of us to kingdom come. You think I’m gonna let a dumb shit like you be in charge of dangerous chemicals?”
Raucous laughter met my response. “He’s fuckin’ right, Jimmy,” Gonzo laughed, and others yelled their agreement. I gave an inward sigh of relief. Thankfully, our exchange seemed to have derailed the meth production discussion, at least for now.
But I knew better to think that it was over between me and Jimmy.
After chapel, Lon motioned for me to stay back for a moment. “Hey, brother, I wanted to talk to you about something,” he said to me, closing the door behind the last of them.
“What’s up?” I asked. I leaned back against the table and crossed my arms, waiting.
“It’s Hadley,” he muttered, his face stony.
I tensed up instantly. Could he possibly know what had happened between us? No. That couldn’t be it. If Lon knew what had gone down this morning, we wouldn’t be having a conversation about it. He’d be doing his best to kill me. And I’d deserve it.
“What about her?” I asked, trying to keep my tone as detached as possible.
“She said anything to you about how long she’s planning on sticking around?”
I relaxed a little. He didn’t know, of course. I shrugged my shoulders casually. “Nah. She hasn’t really talked to me much about anything.” We ain’t been spending a lot of time talking. Goddamn it. Talking to Lon about Hadley like nothing had happened was fucking nerve racking. “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
Lon took a deep breath and let it out. “See, Hadley and me, we ain’t always had the best relationship. Her ma died when she was a baby, and I had to raise her alone. I didn’t know shit about being a father back then.” He chuckled softly. “Hell, I still don’t know shit about bein’ a father. But when she was little, it was all I could do to make sure she had three meals a day and clothes on her back.
“When she got older, I could tell she was gonna be a real knockout. I started gettin’ worried about her future, you know? I didn’t want her to end up like her mother. Married to a biker, dead at twenty-four from a fuckin’ overdose.”
My eyes widened in surprise. Hadley’s mom had died of an overdose? Jesus.
I didn’t know what to say, so I just asked the only question I could think of. “Does Hadley know how her mom died?” I questioned.
“Nah, I never told her,” Lon muttered. “I could never figure out a good way to break it to her. I figured she had enough to deal with, without knowing her mom was a crack head.” He looked down at his feet. “Tessa came from a different world. Sheltered, you know? She came out west from the east coast on a road trip with her friends after her senior year in high school. I met her in a dive bar they went to one night -- to slum it, I guess. Get a taste of danger, go back and act all tough to your other preppy friends.
“Well,” he continued, “something kinda sparked between us, and before I knew it she was saying goodbye to her friends and shacking up with me. Said she was happier than she ever would have been back east. And for a while, I believed her. Then she got pregnant with Hadley. I married her because that’s what Tessa wanted, and everything seemed to be set.
“Thing was,” he smiled sadly, “Tessa got real depressed after Hadley was born. Don’t get me wrong,” he said, looking up at me. “She loved Hadley. But I think she felt kinda isolated. I don’t know. And I was away a lot on club business those first few months.
“Anyway, somewhere along the line, she started using.” Lon sighed. “She hid it from me pretty well, at first. I didn’t notice a goddamn thing. Then one night, I came back from a trip to find Hadley screaming in her crib and Tessa strung out on the sofa. When she finally woke up the next morning, we had the first big fight we’d ever had. She swore to me that she hadn’t been using long, and that she wouldn’t do it again. And like a fucking idiot, I believed her. She must have kept hiding it from me after that, because I didn’t see any evidence of her using again until about seven months later, when she O.D’ed.”
Lon looked at me now. His expression was intense, his jaw set hard as stone. “I wanted Hadley to have a better life, you know? The one her ma would have had if she hadn’t met me.” He was silent for a moment, and when he began talking again a bitter tone had crept into his voice. “When Hadley cut off contact with me, I figured it was the price I had to pay for getting her away from all this. It hurt, but whenever I missed her, I’d think, ‘Good. It’s good that she ain’t here. She’s making a life for herself. A better life than her old man could give her.’
“But now...” He shrugged his shoulders slightly and frowned. “She’s back. And I’m really fuckin’ glad she’s back. But part of me wants her to leave again, you know? I’m scared of her getting sucked back into all of... this.” He nodded his chin toward the door. “I feel like I’ll be a lousy father if I make her leave, but I’ll be a lousier father if I let her stay.”
I sighed, trying to think of what to reply. What would Lon do if he knew that the person he was confiding in, the person he considered like a son, was exactly what he was worr
ied about happening to his only daughter?
And, God help me, I was just as worried. Hadley... there was just something about her. The way her eyes flashed at me when we sparred. The way she had moaned underneath me clutching at my arms as she screamed her release. She was unlike any other woman I’d ever known. She was dangerous.
She was my sister.
I wanted to piss her off so badly that she would leave and never come back.
But even more, I wanted to take her into my bed, fuck her senseless, and make goddamn sure that she never looked at any other man again.
Lon was looking at me as I stood there in silence, trying to think of something to say. Finally, I decided I just needed to ignore everything I was starting to feel about Hadley, and tell Lon what I really thought. “Hadley’s fucking smart as hell, Lon,” I said, looking him in the eye. “She can sure as hell take care of herself, too. She’s been doing it for years, right?” Lon nodded, a look of regret flashing across his features. I pushed down the urge to apologize and continued. “So, maybe it’s time to just let her do what she wants to do,” I said. “Accept her. Be glad that she wanted to come back and see her dad.”
Lon looked at me for a moment, expressionless, and then finally nodded slightly. “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah. You’re right. I gotta let her make her own decisions. Her own life. I fucked that up once. I gotta give that to her.” His mouth twisted into a wry grin. “Thanks for lettin’ me go all girly on you there for a minute, son.”
I grimaced involuntarily at the word, then quickly recovered and clapped him on the back. “No problem, man.” I opened the door and left Lon alone with his thoughts.
Son.
Goddamnit.
Back out in the bar, Jimmy saw me and approached. Great. Just what I need. More fuckin’ Jimmy. I thought he was going to challenge me again on the meth lab idea, and to be honest, with the foul mood I was in now, I was reconsidering option one as a response. But Jimmy had another subject in mind.
Throttle MC: A Stepbrother Romance Page 6
