Ride or Die 2

by Claire C. Riley

  Table of Contents

  Chapter One:

  Chapter Two:

  Chapter Three:

  Chapter Four:

  Chapter Five:

  Chapter Six:

  Chapter Seven:

  Chapter Eight:

  Chapter nine:

  Chapter ten:

  Chapter eleven:

  Chapter twelve:

  Chapter thirteen:

  Chapter fourteen:

  Chapter fifteen:

  Chapter sixteen:

  Chapter seventeen:

  Chapter eighteen:

  Chapter nineteen:

  Chapter twenty:

  Chapter twenty-one:

  Chapter twenty-two:

  Chapter twenty-three:

  Chapter Twenty-four:

  Chapter Twenty-five:

  Chapter Twenty-six:

  Chapter Twenty-seven:

  Chapter Twenty-eight:

  Chapter Twenty-nine:

  Chapter thirty:

  Chapter thirty-one:

  Chapter thirty-two:

  Chapter thirty-three:

  Chapter Thirty-four:

  Chapter Thirty-five:

  Chapter Thirty-six:

  Chapter Thirty-seven:

  Chapter Thirty-eight:

  Chapter Thirty-nine:

  Ride or Die Series #2

  A Devil’s Highwaymen MC Novel

  By

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Claire C. Riley writing as:

  Cee Cee Riley

  Ride or Die #2 A Devil’s Highwaymen MC Novel

  Copyright © 2017

  Written by Claire C. Riley / Cee Cee Riley

  Edited by Amy Jackson = seriously awesome badass!

  Cover Design by Eli Constant of Wilde Book Designs = also an awesome badass!

  This e-book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each reader. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return and purchase your own copy.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or have been used with that person’s permission.

  Thank you for respecting the hard work that went into it and for purchasing this from a reputable place and not stealing it like a seriously un-cool pirate!

  About the book

  Ride or Die #2

  A Devil’s Highwaymen MC Novel

  Love can either destroy you, or bring you back to life.

  Dom, Casa, & Harlow

  1992

  Casa only cares for two things in this life: his club—the Devil’s Highwaymen—and sex. That is until he meets Harlow. She’s feisty, passionate, and doesn’t fall for his usual charms. She’s perfect for him…but she belongs to someone else.

  Harlow is broken; she has been for a long time. With nowhere to go, and worse, no one to go to, she’s become a clubslut for the West Side Bangers. That is until a chance meeting with her old friend and former lover, Dom, brings their worlds colliding together once more.

  Dom is on a one-way train to hell; the guilt of losing his soulmate is killing him—but he can’t tell anyone about it. That is until he finds a brief respite from his suffering in the form of Harlow, the woman whose heart he once broke.

  With all three set on their own self-destructive paths, they’ve only got one chance to make things right—but only if they can learn to forgive, and then to love again.

  The funny thing about love is, it’s both painless and painful, and not even death can end the suffering.

  Ride or Die Series #2

  A Devil’s Highwaymen novel

  By

  USA Today Bestselling Author

  Claire C. Riley writing as:

  Cee Cee Riley

  To mending broken hearts and finding our Happily Ever Afters.

  Prologue:

  Harlow

  I had never wanted anything more in my life.

  Not a home.

  Not a family.

  Not even the air I breathed.

  He was everything to me.

  And that’s what made his words hurt so much.

  “I’m sorry, Harlow,” he said, his tone more gentle than I was used to. “I just can’t do it anymore. What we’re doing—what I’m doing—it’s not fuckin’ right. You deserve more than this. More than I can give you.”

  He meant it, too. If I would have been too ignorant to hear it in his tone, I would never be too blind to see it on his face—in his gray eyes that had always seemed to speak to my very soul, but now only seemed empty. But his apology didn’t matter. It didn’t stop the pain his words caused. It didn’t stop my heart from shattering into a million pieces.

  “But—” I started to speak, but the words caught in my throat and I almost choked on them. I reached for him and he clasped my hand in his, holding me back while he tried to comfort me.

  He shook his head and his hair—hair that I had run my hands through a hundred times—moved over his left eye.

  “I’ve tried. Believe me, I’ve tried,” he said, his words full of regret.

  “But I love you!” I pleaded.

  He winced at my words. “I love you too.”

  “But not like that,” I bit out angrily, and he shook his head no.

  His shoulders slumped and he looked away from the hurt in my eyes and let go of my hand. “I gotta go, Red.”

  “So go!” I yelled. The truth was, though, was that I wasn’t angry at him; I was angry at myself. I had done this—this was entirely my fault. I had pushed him too fast, hoping we could somehow make it work. But in turn, I had pushed him further away from me. I took a step back and lifted my chin defiantly. “I said go.”

  He nodded his head and finally turned away from me. Each step he took was another dagger in my heart. I wanted to run to him and beg him, but what would be the point?

  He’d decided.

  He’d chosen.

  And I had lost.

  I watched him walk toward his bike and sit down on it with a heavy sigh, as if the weight of the world was on his shoulders. Then he dragged his helmet onto his head and started the engine. We stared at each other, the throaty rumble of his bike the only thing filling the empty space between us. And when I couldn’t bear it any more, I turned and started to walk away.

  I listened to his bike start to ride away and I turned back, my heart in my throat. He didn’t look back, not even once, and I knew I would probably never see him again.

  I was suffocating on the sadness and grief I felt as I called for him, a part of me dying as the distance grew bigger between us.

  “Please don’t leave me,” I sobbed.

  But it was too late.

  He had made his choice, and I would have to accept that. I wrapped my arms around my body and cried harder as I stared at the Devil’s Highwaymen logo on the back of his cut until he crested the hill at the top of my road, and then he was gone.

  Chapter One:

  Dom

  I had no right to make her come back with me. But seeing Harlow again, and knowing that I was at least partially to blame for her being in the state that she was in…I couldn’t leave her behind.

  She clung to me tighter as I leaned my bike into a corner, her face and tits pressed up against the soft leather of my cut, and her thighs clinging to the seat. I swallowed, wondering if I was making the biggest mistake of my life. No, I’d already made that with Butch. But this might well be the second biggest.

  I’d broken Harlow’s heart once be
fore, damn near killed her and myself because of the pain I’d put us through. I didn’t want to do it again. I fucking couldn’t do it again. Because I had a feeling in my gut that this time we wouldn’t be walking away wounded; we wouldn’t be walking away from this disaster at all.

  Back then, I had gotten on my bike and ridden away from her and forced myself not to think about her ever again. No matter how much I missed her, or needed her.

  Until last night.

  Until the feisty little redhead whose heart I had broken years ago turned back up and forced me to see exactly what I had done to her when I left.

  I expected her to be angry, or sad. But she wasn’t either of those things. If anything, she was indifferent to it all. Playing along like both of our lives weren’t a fucking joke. Like she was happy, and this was exactly how she had envisioned her life playing out.

  So I played along too.

  We’d talked for hours, never mentioning the past, only talking about the present or the future. We slept and I’d held her in my arms like it was the most natural thing in the world to do. Like we’d never been apart.

  And after a while, the parts we were playing, they felt hella real. And it was almost like I was human again. Almost like I was alive.

  Harlow had always had the ability to do that—to make me feel like I was more than just the monster that I had become. That was something that obviously hadn’t changed. Because having her here, close to me, I at least felt semi-human again. I could think clearly for the first time in months with the anger and hatred burning inside my gut like I was going to explode. And I could feel things again—things other than just the almost-numbing emptiness that losing Butch had left me with.

  I was being selfish by taking Harlow, there was no denying that, but I needed her, and I had a feeling that she needed me too. But taking her away from the Bangers’ clubhouse like this, and bringing her back into my world, that could open up all new problems for me. Yet despite knowing that, there had never been any chance of me leaving her behind. Not again.

  “You okay?” I asked, turning my head to the side so she could hear me.

  I felt her nod and her arms squeeze me tighter. And her arms around me gave me strength—a kind of strength that I hadn’t felt like I’d had since before Butch’s death. I felt in control of my life again. I felt sane, whereas I had felt anything but for months.

  Butch’s death had done things to me that I might never recover from. Fuck, Butch had done things that I might never recover from. But I had to move past them now. I had to at least try.

  I was still in love with Butch. He may have been gone, but he still had a firm grip on my heart, and more than likely always would. But Harlow, the feisty little redhead from my past—she was always the girl that made me see who I really was.

  She used to be my best friend.

  But that was all she could ever be to me.

  And that was the one thing that had torn our friendship apart: I couldn’t ever give her what she wanted. Because what she wanted was me—heart, mind, and body.

  *

  I watched Jesse pull into the Garage and I tipped my head to him to let him know that I’d catch up with him later on. I needed to take Harlow back to my house and figure shit out before I could deal with anything else. If I took her to the clubhouse, looking like she did right then, she’d be eaten alive within minutes. And then all I would have accomplished would be to take her from one shithole to another.

  I headed down the highway, continuing until we got to my place—a small two-bedroom house near Pine Lakes. My home was nestled into the surrounding woods, with a small driveway that you would pass if you didn’t know it was there. The yard was overgrown, the paint was faded, and the gate hung limply on one hinge.

  I pulled my bike to a stop and cut the engine, and looking up at the rickety two-story house, for the first time I was ashamed of it. I had grown up with a large family—three brothers and two sisters—and they meant the world to me. Mom and Dad had worked hard all their lives to provide for us all, but even then there hadn’t been enough money to go around. Clothes were shared, toys were broken, and food was rationed. But we had each other, and that’s what had really mattered.

  When I had bought my first bike, I had been proud as hell. For the first time I owned something and it was all mine. Then, working more and more with the Highwaymen, the money started rolling in. I saved until I had enough money to buy this place, and then the pride I’d had when I bought my first bike was nothing in comparison.

  This was a house. A home—my home. I didn’t get to stay here too much, as I liked to travel, and if I was being totally honest, it was easier to travel and hide who I was.

  But now as I looked at the place, I realized how much I had let things slip. Not just the paint and the weeds, but the house itself. I had always intended to build an extra bedroom and extend the kitchen. Maybe even put in a damn pool at some point, because why the fuck not. But I’d done nothing with the place. I’d let it fall into disrepair and ruin.

  I turned to look at Harlow, one hand on the back of my neck as I rubbed it in embarrassment. But where I expected to see disgust on her face, I saw pride.

  “This is yours?” she asked, her voice timid as her gaze strayed from the house back to me.

  I nodded. “It’s not much, but you’re welcome to stay here for as long as you need, Red.”

  Her face lit up as the familiar nickname slipped from my lips and then she threw her body at me, wrapping her arms around my neck. I held her close, feeling her small frame meld to my large one, her feminine scent washing over me, drawing me close and making me feel at home.

  “Thank you, Dom,” she whispered against my neck. And she sounded so sincere, so real, that I squeezed her back, enjoying her being so close to me.

  I knew then that she was going to heal me, but I might just break her damn heart again.

  “Anytime,” I whispered back. “Come on, let’s get you inside. I’ll have to order in some food because I haven’t been back here in a while.”

  I pulled out of the hug and took her hand in mine, leading her up the path and toward the front door. I fished the key from my pocket and unlocked it and pushed the door open. I wasn’t sure what I expected to find when I opened that door. All I knew was that I hadn’t been home in weeks. I’d slept everywhere but there, because there brought back too many memories.

  I waited for the familiar pang of grief to hit me in the heart, like it did whenever I had to come back there, but this time there was nothing. I looked back at Harlow, my gaze glancing to our entwined hands. She smiled at me expectantly and I pulled her gently inside.

  The house was cold, and dusty—as if it had been years, not months, since someone had properly lived there. But that’s all it had been: months. Months since Butch was killed. Months since I lost my best friend, and the man I was in love with but had been too scared to do anything about. Months since my world shattered around me.

  All it took was one moment in time for everything to change. For lives to be ruined. For paths to be forever altered. One small change that had catastrophic repercussions to everything and everyone. Some people call it the butterfly effect. I call it bullshit.

  I led Harlow through the house, showing her the kitchen and the bathroom, and eventually the spare room where she would be sleeping. It was a mess, since my brothers and sisters crashed there from time to time and I never cleaned it. But Harlow didn’t seem to care.

  We stood in the doorway of the room, her leaning against one side of the doorframe and me leaning against the other. Her red hair hung around her heart-shaped face in knotty rags, and her makeup was smeared across her eyes. She was skinnier than she used to be, but she also had bigger tits and hips that any man would love to grip ahold of. She was still beautiful, though I doubted she was as innocent as she had once been.

  “I have to go back out. Club business. I’ll leave some cash in the kitchen. Order yourself something to eat. Sleep, shower, wa
tch TV. Do what you need to do.” I turned to walk away from her, not sure what else there was to say.

  “Dom?” she called and I looked back.

  I raised an eyebrow in response.

  “When will you be home?”

  “I’m not sure,” I said, looking around my house with new eyes. Home. That’s what she had called it. Yet to me it had never been anything but a house. I looked back at her. But Harlow…she was always home to me. She was always my safe place. “I’ll try and get back tonight, if I can. But there’s shit going down, I can’t—” She raised hand and cut me off.

  “It’s okay, I know you can’t talk about club business.” She smiled, and I nodded and pursed my lips.

  “Make yourself at home,” I said, and made my way down the stairs. This time without looking back.

  “Okay,” she called after me.

  I walked into the kitchen and pulled out a wad of cash from my pocket before dropping it on the counter, and then I made my way back outside to my bike just as my cell started ringing.

  I climbed on my bike and answered my phone, listening to Charlie going hysterical on the other end. Shooter had gone on a rampage, almost killed some guy who had been putting his hands on his woman. Brother was in a holding cell now and it wasn’t looking good. I shook my head, wondering how everything could have gotten so fucked up in such a short span of time.

  My life was fucked up, but I had a feeling it was about to get even worse. Still, at least I had Harlow here now. I pulled my helmet on and started to ride to Charlie’s house, thinking about Butch and how fucking pissed he’d be that I’d let Jesse fuck everything up for himself so much. But what could I really do to stop him? Jesse was a walking, talking, fucking nuke. The man was set to obliterate everything and everyone in his path. There was no curing that kind of grief.