by Zoey Parker
It was so wrong. I hated myself for it. She was a good person. She didn’t need to get mixed up in my bullshit.
I couldn’t help myself. It seemed like we were supposed to do it. Ever since I first saw her, everything we did and said was leading up to it. Like breathing. I didn’t even have to think about it, just do it. That was what being with her was like.
I wondered if she felt the same way. I hoped she wasn’t one of the types who would want to stick around just because we slept together. That was the last thing I needed. Just because I had a kid didn’t mean I wanted to sit around being a family man. That wasn’t me.
Life had a funny way of changing fast. One day I was just me. Then I had a kid. Now there was a woman in my bed who I liked. I wouldn’t mind getting to know her better.
Then I looked at what I was about to do, and any sort of smile left my face. I was going to go after the woman I thought I liked years ago. Rae was a good person back then. She was like me—a little broken from a shitty family life, but she was a sweet girl. I saw a lot of her in Gigi, actually. I hadn’t thought about it before. She was patient, a good listener. We used to spend a lot of time just talking about life. She had a good heart. She was always the first one to reach out to somebody when they were having a hard time, or when they needed something.
What happened to her? The needle. Just one try, just to see if she liked it or not. I told her I didn’t want her to do it—I was younger then, and I thought I could tell my woman what to do. It only pissed her off and made her want to do it more. So she did. That was it. She was hooked from then on.
She had tried to pretend like she wasn’t. She had tried to hide it from me. There was no way to hide it since she was a totally different person on it than she was before. She used to be sharp, funny, she had energy. After she used she was like a shadow of that person. She didn’t care about anything or anybody. She would sit and stare into space—or worse, she would pretend everything was fine. She would try to act straight, the way drunk people tried to act sober. It would have been funny if it wasn’t so fucking sad.
I couldn’t help her. I finally figured that out after around five or six months. I couldn’t make her stop. Only she could. She would be okay for a week or two, then go back to it. I couldn’t live like that. I guessed she must’ve stopped after she found out about Gigi—the kid seemed fine, which was something I would always be grateful for. She had done the right thing, at least.
Jamie moved a little, and I stayed still to see whether she would wake up. She did. And she jumped up when she remembered where she was.
“Oh crap.” She looked down at me.
“Oh crap? What?”
She blushed. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to freak out like that.”
“I hope not.” I frowned. Was she gonna be weird like that from then on?
She looked around the room, then back at me. “Uh, should I go?”
“If you want to.” I shrugged.
“Do you want me to?”
I sighed. “If I wanted you to, I wouldn’t still be here with you. Would I?”
“I guess not?”
“Is that a question?” I grinned at the way she smirked at me. That was more like it.
She lay down on her side, facing me. “Did you get any sleep?”
“Nah. You were only asleep for a little while, anyway. It’s not that late.”
“But you wanted to get some rest. I’m sorry.”
I chuckled. “If it were that important for me to get some sleep, I wouldn’t have pulled you in here with me. Right?” I looked over at her, and she blushed again.
“I guess not.”
“You didn’t seem to mind that I did.”
“If I minded, I wouldn’t have stayed. I would have kneed you in the balls, probably.”
I winced. “Thank God, then. But, ya know, if you ever feel like you wanna do that…don’t. Okay?”
Jamie giggled. “Okay. Point taken.” She pulled the blankets tight around herself, tucked under her arm. “Would it be too painfully cliché if I asked what you were thinking about when I was asleep?”
“Not too painful. Just a little.”
“So? What were you thinking about?”
I frowned and rolled over to face her. “It’ll sound corny.”
“So what? I won’t laugh. I won’t even judge you.”
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
“Come on.” She smiled. “Tell me.”
“I was thinking about Rae.” I watched as her face changed.
“Not a good move, telling a woman you were thinking about another woman right after you had sex.”
I put my face in my pillow so the rest of the house wouldn’t hear me laughing. “I’m sorry,” I said with chuckle. “I didn’t mean it that way. God, you always find some way to be pissed at me.”
“Why were you thinking about her, then?”
I got my thoughts together before saying anything. “I want you to know something about her, to be fair, you know? She used to be a different person. I was just thinking before you woke up that I can see how Gigi turned out the way she did. Rae was a lot like her.”
“How long did you know her?”
“Since we were sixteen, I think. I dropped out of school, but she graduated. She was a good student, too—not smart, really, but she tried hard. She went through a lot of shit growing up. Her dad split, her mom always had guys going in and out. I know at least one molested Rae.”
“Oh jeez.” Jamie’s face darkened.
“So yeah, she already had her issues. But she was a good person. Sweet. She cared about other people. She was a good friend. A good girlfriend. Honest. Faithful to me. She made me happy. I can admit that.”
“It’s sweet that you can,” Jamie murmured. “A lot of people can’t after a breakup.”
“Yeah, well, I was the one who broke up with her. I saw what the drugs did to her, and I knew she wouldn’t stop just because I asked her to. It wasn’t an easy choice. It took months for me to go through with it.” I thought back to the look on Rae’s face when I told her we had to end it. I wondered if she knew then about Gigi.
“This is gonna sound stupid, but do you know Gigi’s birthday?”
She closed her eyes. “Um, she had it during the school year. In September. I don’t remember the exact date, but it was late in the month.”
I thought about. I broke up with Rae just before Valentine’s—I couldn’t go through the motions. Eight months before Gigi’s birthday.
“Do you think she could have known she was pregnant?” I asked Jamie. “If I broke it off in mid-February?”
She did some quick math. “She would have been around a month, maybe two. She might have known by then, yes.”
“Shit.” I felt like the world’s biggest asshole.
“You didn’t know. She didn’t tell you. What were you supposed to do? Hang around for the rest of your life in case she got pregnant? That doesn’t make sense. It was her choice not to tell you. I’m still not sure why she didn’t.”
“I don’t know either. I guess I’ll never know. When I track her down, I’ll have a lot more questions to ask her. More important questions.”
“So you’re going after her?”
“Later today, like I said.”
“What are you doing?”
I sized her up. She wasn’t gonna let go of it unless I told her. “I went to the house today, like I told you.”
“Right. A very nice place, huh? Like something out of Better Homes & Gardens.”
I smirked. “Yeah. There was a receipt for a bus ticket. She’s leaving for New York at six o’clock. I’ll be waiting for her.”
Jamie’s eyes went wide. They were so clear, so beautiful. I wanted to stare into them forever. “She’s running away?”
“Looks like it.”
“I can’t believe she waited an entire week to do it.”
I never thought about that before. “What do you think that means?”
She rolled onto her back, a hand on her forehead. “Let me think. Let me think. What if, when she met up with this Scarecrow guy—nice name, by the way—he had her do things for him? What if she was working off a debt to him? I mean, let’s be honest. She didn’t have a lot of money. How was she paying for the drugs?”
“It’s not that expensive,” I pointed out. “There’s a reason it’s so fucking popular nowadays. It’s easier to get your hands on than other drugs, and cheaper.”
“That’s not reassuring,” Jamie muttered. “Okay, well, let’s stay with the debt theory. Maybe she was working something off all week, but there’s no way she could ever pay him back, so she’s running. Or maybe she was with him, doing whatever they were doing, but she stole from him. Do you think she would do that?” She looked at me.
“How would I know? She’s a stranger now. If the heroin was thinking for her, yeah, she could have. Junkies will do anything, especially shit they wouldn’t do when they were straight.”
“Okay, so we’ll go with that. Boy, she got in with the wrong person, didn’t she?”
“Yeah, no shit. It scares the shit outta me that she might’ve had him at the house.”
Jamie’s face went dark. “Don’t even say that to me, please. I can’t stand it.”
“Okay. Either way, she’s safe.” Still, I thought about the way Rae’s mom brought men into the house.
“If I stole from a scary guy like him, I would run, too. I’d want to disappear.”
“I thought that, too. New York’s perfect for it.”
“What are you going to ask her? I mean, when you find her—what’s the purpose?”
“I need to know how pissed he is. I need to know what she did with him, if he knows about Gigi, if he knows where she is.”
“Would you stop her from going? If it meant she would be safer when she got to New York?”
That stopped me in my tracks. I didn’t know the answer. “If I hand her over to him—if it’s that kinda thing, where she’s running away from him—and he won’t stop until he gets his payback?”
“Right.” She waited patiently while I thought about it.
“Fuck.” I covered my face with my arm. It was too much. Jamie moved closer to me, putting an arm around my chest.
“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you upset.”
I shook my head. I couldn’t talk—there was a lump in my throat—but I needed her to understand it wasn’t her fault. It was just that I hadn’t thought about that yet. I could either turn her over to The Scarecrow so he could do whatever the hell he planned, or I could let her go and maybe put Gigi in danger. The answer was obvious.
“Does it make me a bad person if I say I’ll hand her over to him?”
“No. It makes you a father. You’ll do what you have to. I know you will.”
I lifted my arm from my eyes and looked at her. She was so intense it almost scared me. “I’m not a father. You told me so yourself. I just fertilized an egg.”
She blushed but didn’t back off. “I was angry with you when I said that. You should know I didn’t mean it. I was scared and angry and frustrated. You weren’t a father before this week. Now, you are. I know you care about her. I know you’ll do what’s best for her because you’re not a bad person.”
I laughed a little before turning my face away. She had no idea the shit I did with my life. If she knew, she wouldn’t want to be in bed with me or anywhere near me. My list of crimes ran through my head. Setting fires. Beating men until they gave up secrets the club wanted to know. Scaring the shit out of people. Getting into fights and punching the shit out of people because it felt good—not to defend myself, but to hurt them. I’d wanted to hurt them. One of them died in the hospital later on. The club defended me, lied about where I was that night. Went after the owner of the bar until he lied and said I wasn’t there.
Jamie took my chin, turning my face back to her. “Don’t look away,” she whispered. “I know you’re not as bad as you think you are if you care so much about her.”
“You think I’m a bad guy. Admit it.” I smirked.
“You’ve done bad things. That doesn’t mean you’re a bad person. I’m sure of it.”
I wished I could believe that.
She raised herself up until she hovered over me, then lowered her face to mine. I let her kiss me, getting harder every time her lips moved, when I felt her tongue sweep across my mouth. She sighed when my tongue touched hers. Her tits pressed against me, and I ran my hands over her smooth skin. Her ass was firm, ripe. I squeezed it, pulling her closer until she rubbed against my hard, aching cock. We both groaned.
I didn’t take my time. I didn’t want to. I took her by the hips and lifted her until she was on top of me, then positioned myself at her entrance. She sighed, sinking down on my rigid length. It wasn’t sweet that time. It was fast, hard. I held her hips as she rocked on me, riding me like a cowgirl, grinding herself against me. I watched her tits bounce up and down, heard the little sounds coming from her.
She was what I needed, the release I needed. I lost myself in her, jerking my hips up to fuck her from below. She gasped every time we crashed into each other, faster and faster.
We took each other just like that, hard and fast, until we both exploded. She leaned over me, face in the pillow, and screamed when she came. I was coming, too, pumping into her one more time before I finished.
She was better than I imagined, better than anything I ever had before her—and I’d had a lot of women. There was something different about her. I couldn’t get enough. I knew I would want her again even before I finished coming. I wished we could lock the world outside and never stop, never even get out of bed. I wanted to forget everything but the way it felt inside her.
It was a nice dream, but just a dream. When I caught my breath and opened my eyes, I knew it was time to get back to business.
Chapter Sixteen
Jamie
“You don’t have to be here,” Lance said. Flash, Jax, and Slate looked at me out of the corners of their eyes. I knew they knew what I just did with Lance, and I didn’t care. We were all adults. I wouldn’t leave, even if I did feel a little bit of a flush in my cheeks when Jax smirked knowingly.
“Sure I do,” I said, sitting with my arms folded.
“Why?”
“Because this concerns me. I need to know if I’m ever going to get out of here and whether Gigi will be safe when I do.”
Lance sighed heavily. The sweet, gentle man I’d met upstairs was gone. He was all business again.
“Do you promise to keep quiet?”
“Absolutely not.” I grinned.
“Fine, whatever. I don’t have time to screw around.” He turned his attention to his crew. “I know where Rae is.”
“Where?” Flash asked.
“She’ll be at the Greyhound bus station in two hours. Her bus leaves at six o’clock.”
“Where does she think she’s going?” Jax sneered.
“New York. She’s running.”
“How do you know all this?” Slate asked.
“I found a receipt for a bus ticket at her house this morning. She only bought it an hour or two before I got there.”
“Holy shit,” Jax muttered. “So what? We’re gonna corner her there?”
“That’s my plan. I wanna find her, ask her what the hell’s going on. Why would she run away like this? Who’s after her? And when they can’t find her, are they gonna come after Gigi?”
I bit my lip, holding back my own questions and protests. I wanted to claw Rae’s eyes out for putting her daughter in this situation. I could tell from the look on Lance’s face that he shared the sentiment—then, to my surprise, I saw that the others felt the same, too. They all had affection for Gigi and wanted to keep her safe. I felt more secure when I realized that. They were tough guys. For once, they were putting that toughness to good use.
“So what do you want us to do?”
“I ne
ed you to be my eyes and ears. Chances are, somebody will be with her. I need to know if they’re watching from a distance. When I go after her, I don’t want them coming after me. I need one of you at the front door, too, in case she tries to run away.”
“Got it.” They looked ready for action.
“What happens when she tells you why she’s running? That doesn’t change anything,” Flash pointed out. “She’ll still gonna run.”
