Once home, I dropped my cut on the leather recliner before heading back to the bedroom to change into workout clothes. I needed to rid myself of this energy and some time with my weights and punching bag should do the trick.
Elle had curled into one end of the couch with her book, she didn’t even look up when I passed through on my way to the workroom attached to the garage. Strange. Maybe she was as unsettled as me because it was unlike her to be so quiet. I’d converted the workshop into an exercise room with a treadmill, free weights, punching bag, and speed bag. I’d added a pedestal bag for Elle to practice her kicks on.
After an hour with the weights, my muscles hurt but my body still buzzed in that uncomfortable way. What the hell could I do to get rid of it? No way could I sleep, and the idea of vegging out on my couch sounded worse than sleeping. Maybe a ride on my bike.
I wiped the sweat off with a towel that I dropped in my washing machine as I passed through the garage. I needed to change clothes if I planned to ride tonight, but I didn’t want to wake up Elle. However that wasn’t a problem because she was still up, reading in the same place I’d left her.
“Why aren’t you asleep?” The question sounded sharper than I’d intended.
She laid her book on the end table. “Not tired.” Questions simmered in her eyes.
“What’s bothering you?” I was drawn to her even though next to her was the last place I wanted to be. My insides were too raw to be near Elle.
She turned so her back was against the black leather arm rest of my couch. “You.”
Damn. Why was she playing coy? “What’s the deal with the short answers?”
“I don’t think you want my questions or my long answers.” She slumped when she said it as if it was some kind of personal defeat. “So, I was trying to give you that.”
As if I’d turned into a masochist, suddenly I had to know what she was holding inside and why she wouldn’t tell me. Maybe her words would be the impetus I needed to push away, find the distance I longed for. What an asshole thought, but I was a desperate man.
“What questions?”
Cocking her head to the side she studied me a long moment before dropping her head. With her hair covering her face, I couldn’t see her expression.
“Why do you think you failed them? Why does that eat at you so much?” Her gaze met mine. “Who made you fear that you’d lose them if you failed them?”
Son of a bitch, she’d nailed it on the head. I stood and walked away. “I don’t want to talk about that shit.” I stormed into the bedroom to find my riding clothes, but her questions had slipped under my defenses, gnawing on me. Or maybe it was what had eaten at me all damn night. I collapsed on the bed, sitting with my elbows on my knees. I let my head fall into my hands, trying to silence the doubts her questions had unlocked.
No one stood by me, not my girlfriend in high school, not my family, not the Old Man even though he’d brought me into the club. Dogg stood by me but then he’d left. Did some maggoty part of me think my brothers would turn away from me if I hadn’t found Gerald? That I had to prove my worth to them, over and over, to earn the trust they gave me. No, I wasn’t that fucked up.
I was tight with a lot of my brothers, but none of them were close to me, not like Jericho, Dare and Bear were, or Delta and JoJo for that matter. In fact few of us formed real tight bonds, but maybe that was because we were too fucked up. There’d been a time Jericho had tried to bring me into his circle, when I was just a prospect, but I’d craved the Old Man’s approval too damn much.
My restlessness grew until I couldn’t stay still. I paced then found myself back in the living room, anger simmering under the raw edges. “You don’t really want to know those answers.”
She marked her place and closed her book before looking up at me. “I told you all that festered in me that night. You need to do the same.” No heat or judgment, just the raw truth. “I’d thought maybe you’d share with one of the guys, but it’s clear you didn’t.”
“We don’t talk about shit like that,” I scoffed, starting to turn away.
“You can tell me anything.” The sincerity in her voice stopped me cold.
Yearning for something I’d rarely had tugged me backward until I’d crossed the room to her. Staring down into her somber face, I knew I could talk and she’d listen, but some shit couldn’t be unheard or unsaid. It was a risk I hadn’t taken since the night I’d told Dogg my whole sorry story. Of course, I’d been drunk, which made everything easier. Too easy. That had been the last night I’d been drunk for four years.
I sat on the other side of the couch and stared forward, remembering the past. “Fear drives me.
“I get that because I spent years fearing I’d disappoint my dad because I wasn’t the son he wanted.” Her quiet words held the ache I felt. “Turns out he disappointed me worse.”
“Betrayed you.” Anger sizzled in me. “My parents walked away from me, didn’t ever really believe in me.”
Her jeans made a sound when she slid across the leather seat, until her knee touched my leg. I liked it there.
“I drank my first beer on my sixteenth birthday.” I remembered how freeing it was to be drunk, all the thousands of expectations gone. “Six months later, I was drinking as soon as I woke up, and I had two DUIs, both of which my dad swept away.” I glanced over to her. “He was the sheriff in Barden, had been since I was ten.”
“Sucks to be you.”
“There are a lot of expectations of the sheriff’s son, and they drowned me until I drowned them with booze.” I remembered the blurred months when I was never quite sober and often drunk on my ass. “I was out of control, and my parents put me in rehab.”
“Sounds reasonable.” Her words were just a way to let me know she was there.
“I thought so too, until they left. It was an extreme treatment center where aversion therapy was a primary tool.”
She gasped and clasped my hand. “What did they do?”
“Fed me alcohol and shocked me every time I drank it.” I hadn’t been a fan. “I was too stubborn, I drank until either the shock or the liquor knocked me out.
“One night I broke out of my room, the first night they’d denied me liquor, and broke into the room where they kept the hard stuff. By the time a nurse found me, I was passed out, they had to take me to the hospital to have my stomach pumped.”
“You should never have been treated like that.” The warmth of her hand in mine comforted me.
“When I was back at the treatment center, they decided to go the other extreme—straight detox, no meds or anything to help me through it.” I hurried on hating to think of the horrible week where I’d have gladly killed myself if I’d had the strength. “It worked, I guess, six weeks later I left clean and sober.”
I hadn’t even wanted to contemplate a drink, fearing to ever go through the hell of detox again. “I stayed sober almost a year, then on my eighteenth birthday, I got hammered, first time.” I remembered the high, how sweet it had tasted.
“Mom and Dad cornered me, told me they were shipping me back to that place.” The remembered fear raced through me now, making my pulse spike. “I knocked my dad down, and ran out the door. I moved to Ardmore, I mean, I was 18, they couldn’t make me go as long as I didn’t live with them, but I wasn’t sure about that. The fear chewed me up and turned me paranoid. I was afraid to leave my apartment to go to work.
“I’d always had a thing for the Brotherhood, I mean, they were the only ones who did whatever they wanted. All my life I’d grown up seeing them as an idea of freedom, chaos and freedom really. My dad hated the club, but they didn’t do illegal stuff so he had to put up with them.”
“Your club is totally legitimate?”
I frowned over at her. “Yeah, none of our businesses are illegal, not saying there hasn’t been any
of us do something illegal, but we don’t earn our living that way.”
“Sorry, so is that why you joined?”
I nodded. “And I wanted to piss my dad off, shove his nose in it. I mean, if you’re from town, you’re against the club, not a single person from Barden had ever joined the club until I did, not in the twenty-five years they’d been in town.”
It had been the best feeling in the world when the Old Man had put my cut on me. “Anyway, they accepted me as a prospect, it takes two years to earn your membership in the club. Jericho’s dad, we all called him the Old Man, ran the club then, and he put a bottle in my hand and kept me close to him. Now I know he was shoving my dad’s, the whole town’s, face in the fact that I’d chosen the Brotherhood. My dad went bat-shit crazy and tried to find any way to arrest the members. Hell, he had me in jail at least once a week.”
“How was that for you?”
“I was too drunk and too pissed off to really care.” I honestly remembered little of that six months of my life. “Then one night we were at the sex club and I’d been up and drinking for days. Next thing I remember, I’m in the hospital and Dogg is beside my bed. The Old Man had left me there, to die maybe, but Dogg found me and got me help.”
“What the fuck? I thought they were—”
“The Old Man is cruel and a rotten bastard, that’s why he doesn’t run this club anymore. I just had to learn that lesson the hard way. I was so busy looking for approval, I didn’t care about anything else.” Those words hurt to say, but it was the truth.
“Is that when you started training to be a sex master?”
I grinned at her choice of words. “Yup, Dogg took me in and made me follow his rules, one of which was I couldn’t drink again until I’d become a Master. He helped me through the worst of the withdrawal, then began teaching me. Hell for a solid year, I didn’t even step foot in Barden, hoping that’d cool things down between my dad and the club. It didn’t.”
“So that was the end of your family?”
I nodded. “After I earned my cut, after my dad had lost his job as sheriff, I went to them, but my parents met me with a shotgun at the front door, told me never to come back.” I hadn’t expected a warm reunion but their reaction had cut me deep.
“Dogg left later that same year, he retired from the club, and I started managing it.” I had learned by then how to manipulate the Old Man into doing whatever I wanted. Dogg had taught me that and so much more.
“Then, I got the go-ahead on the bounty business, right when Pixie’s dad skipped on his bail. It was my first case, and I couldn’t catch him. It ate at me bad. I’d failed my family, and now my brothers. I never once considered that Gretchen was telling him things, probably others too. I mean we’re a pretty easy group to spot.” That pissed me off to have been blinded by such an obvious thing. “Most of the time our status as members of the Jericho Brotherhood unlocks doors, but not this time.”
“You think you’re God?”
“I am almost perfect, but no, not him.”
She scowled at my attempt at humor. “I didn’t see one person there looking like you had screwed up. They were thanking you, happy for you, glad you got someone who’d hurt one of your own.”
I shook my head.
She smacked her hand over my mouth, climbing onto my lap. “Do you agree I read people well?”
I nodded.
“Am I a good judge of character?”
I nodded again. She was a helluva lot better than me at reading the people she bonded, in fact, I wished I was as good as she was.
“Do I lie?”
I paused, then shook my head. She’d never once lied to me even when it would have been easier for her.
Removing her hand from my mouth, she stared up at me. “Then believe me when I say what you’re feeling is just your past trying to fuck with you. No one thought you’d failed, or that you were too slow. It was truly a celebration.”
I hugged her to me, unable to form words. The restlessness disappeared along with the anger, and all that was left was some deep feeling for Elle, one I refused to examine let alone name. Normally, all this crap was locked down tight, not even a passing thought, but since I’d met Elle, too many of those locked-down parts kept surfacing.
Once she had her company, then I’d be back to normal. My life could continue uninterrupted. A hollowness opened inside me because I wasn’t sure I wanted that life anymore.
Chapter Twenty-One
Elle
Our relationship shifted after Rebel had told me about his past, we’d grown closer in intangible ways. After spending six weeks under the same roof, it seemed like a year. I liked living with him and working with him even more, which was why I planned to spend the next two days in Dallas without Rebel. I just had to tell him.
We enjoyed a late breakfast before we headed to the Brotherhood clubhouse. He had a meeting and I planned to spar with Marr. I hadn’t told him that part either. He placed a stack of pancakes in front of me that I would never finish. “Eat up.”
“You know I only can eat two of these.” I poured hot syrup over the four pancakes. I’d never thought to heat up syrup when I’d had pancakes at home. Of course, those were frozen pancakes I reheated, but still, hot syrup made a difference.
“Trisha, the new office assistant, starts tomorrow. You plan to be in the office?” I started, hoping to work my way to the trip to Dallas.
“You show her.”
“I won’t be here, I’m going to Dallas for a couple of days.”
His head shot up. “I’ll go with you.”
“No, I need to do some house maintenance and want to spend some time with Jess.” There, I put up a strong boundary. We’d spent too much time together. If this continued, I’d never be able to leave his side.
“Is this to get out of training Trisha?” He glared at me.
“Partially. It’s your damn office, you train the help.” I pointed my fork at him. “You aren’t so sneaky. I know you’ve been using me to fix the stuff you’ve messed up there.”
“I’m new, and you’re not.” He grinned at me with both his damn dimples. I was a sucker for his dimples.
“Now Trisha is new, and you can train her,” I reminded him. “I’ll be home, I mean back up here, by Saturday at the latest.”
His grin widened. “You could take Marr or Pixie with you.”
“I am capable of going to Dallas on my own, besides I’m seeing Marr today.” I filled my mouth full of pancakes.
“Why?”
“For a visit,” I said once I’d swallowed.
“What kind of visit?” His voice darkened. “She didn’t convince you to try out her dungeon?”
“God no,” I squeaked, not even sure what a sadist did in a dungeon. “We’re going to spar, we’re both black belts, and you go too easy on me.”
He looked much more interested. “Sparring? Where?”
“None of your business. You have your own meeting.” I crossed my arms. Truth be told I didn’t know where because Marr said we’d figure it out when I got there.
“Be careful.” He kissed me before he picked up my plate to rinse.
“Why don’t you eat breakfast at the club?” Mama had told me about breakfast and had hinted I could cook, but I told her she didn’t want me to cook.
“I don’t like biscuits and gravy. It’s what we have on Thursdays.” He placed both plates in the dishwasher, rinsed out the sink then dried it. I liked his neat streak. “Ready to go?”
Riding on the back of Rebel’s bike was amazing. I loved it, just another thing I’d miss once our save-my-business marriage was over. We parked next to a bright red bike. Walking down the row of bikes, I wondered how many of them had women who rode tandem. I was jealous of Mama, Marr and the others who had their biker for rea
l. Even being Rebel’s property would be worth it if he really loved me.
I blew out a breath, trying to dismiss my stupid thoughts. The inside of the club was as eclectic as the bikers eating there. Every table appeared different than the next, no color scheme or theme tied the place together. But the bikers looked even more different, some had the typical long hair and full beards I expected, others looked military, and even more defied definition. Rebel, for example, looked like the boy next door more than a dangerous biker, not that I’d ever tell him that.
Marr stood beside a table of food talking with Mama. I gave Rebel a peck on the cheek and tried to pull away, but he held my hand, walking me over to Marr.
“Keep her safe, and don’t bruise her too bad.” Rebel basically handed me over to Marr, like I was some kind of child. I didn’t like this part of the club because it made me feel incompetent and somehow weak.
He gave me a much deeper kiss before he strolled away. Arrogant man, anyway.
“So where are we going to spar?” I asked her.
“You’re really doing this?” Mama frowned at me. “She’s mean.”
“Why doesn’t anyone think I’m mean?” I was frustrated by the way everyone treated me. I could kick ass and did so on a regular basis.
“Let’s go out in the grass on the side of the building.” Marr arched an eyebrow at me. “Unless you want to go to my dungeon?”
I gulped. “The grass is great.” I wasn’t sure what a dungeon looked like, but I pictured the medieval kind and decided to stay far away.
Staring down at her wicked boots, I added another condition. “No shoes.”
“Of course. Jeans give you enough flexibility?” She eyed my clothes. I wore what I did all the time—jeans, T-shirt and boots.
“Yup, sure you won’t fall out of that?” I pointed to the leather bustier she wore with jean shorts.
“Will it distract you if I do?”
“Not really.” I laughed. “Let’s go. I haven’t had a decent workout since I left Dallas.”
“Who do you spar with there?” Marr led the way through the kitchen, a huge industrial deal, and through a side door. There was a wide lawn and toward the back a porch swing hung on swing set poles. I leaned against the concrete block wall to remove my boots and socks.
Bail Out Page 18
