Ride or Die 2

by Claire C. Riley

  I didn’t feel any better at hearing her words. On one hand I was pleased that she wasn’t letting him near her heart anymore, but on the other it really shouldn’t have fucking mattered to me either way. And yet it did.

  She thought he was a good man. But more to the point, she thought I was. How wrong could one girl be?

  I watched her go to the highway and start walking, her thumb sticking out as a truck rolled by. I scratched the back of my neck as I watched her, feeling like bugs were crawling around inside me, multiplying the further away she got. The world gradually getting noisier and noisier once more.

  “Fuck,” I mumbled to nothing and no one, kicking the dirt on the ground. “Fuck!”

  I watched as a truck started to slow down, hating that I would probably never see her again after that day. But what could I do? I couldn’t fucking keep her there. I had nothing to offer her and nowhere to take her. And I wasn’t a one-woman kind of man. Never would be.

  I turned away from Harlow and walked back to my bike, muttering under my breath the entire time.

  Chapter twenty-two:

  Harlow

  “H?” Casa’s voice cut through the noise of the truck pulling over and I looked to him as his bike pulled in front of the truck, warranting a loud honk of the trucker’s horn.

  “What is it?” I asked. I looked up to the trucker as he sounded his horn impatiently. “I’m sorry, I’ll just be a second!”

  Casa was staring at me, his dark eyebrows pulled into a tight V and his mouth twisted in…annoyance, irritation, confusion? I wasn’t really sure. He was such a hard man to read most of the time.

  “What is it? I’ve gotta go,” I said, holding on tight to my jacket. I didn’t have anything—just the clothes on my back. I was pathetic. But I wouldn’t always be like this. I had to believe that things would get better. I wouldn’t go back to the Bangers’ clubhouse. I wasn’t going to go home to my mom and dad. I was going to hitch a ride and see where I ended up. I’d get a job, a shitty apartment, and go back to school.

  I’d fucking make something of my so-called life, even if it killed me.

  Because seeing Dom again, speaking to him like I had earlier, had made me realize something…I was worth something. I did deserve more than this. And I would get it. No one was going to give it to me. I had to go and get it. For too long I had been sitting around feeling sorry for myself, but not anymore.

  I stared at Casa, seeing part of his façade slipping. Not by much, but enough so I knew that when he spoke next, he was being genuine.

  “I don’t want you to go, not yet.”

  I stared at him in silence, not surer what to say.

  “Can I show you something?” he asked. “A place.”

  I would have said no if it weren’t for the sincere look on his face—like this actually meant something to him and was important. Unlike most of the shit that came out of his mouth. I had no clue what he wanted me to see, but it wasn’t like I was in a rush. I was still deciding when the trucker beeped his horn again.

  “She’s staying, motherfucker, now move along.” Dom pulled out the gun from his waistband and aimed it at the trucker as he spoke, a darkness swallowing his features. The trucker let loose with a barrel of insults before driving away with another two beeps of his horn.

  I stared at Casa in exasperation. “There goes my lift!”

  He smirked, the darkness vanishing and that cocky smirk of his that made my stomach twist and my nipples harden, come back. “I’ll take you where you need to go. Later, okay?” He pulled out his cigarettes and lit one with a smile.

  I shook my head, annoyed at myself and him. “I don’t even know where I’m going anyway,” I sighed.

  “Home?” he prompted.

  “I don’t have a home, remember?”

  “Then what’s the fucking rush, H?” he said with a chuckle. “Come on, climb aboard the Casa Express!” He gestured to the back of his bike as he blew out some smoke. “I can promise you a good time.”

  I snorted out a laugh. “Is that another thing you get called?”

  “Yeah!” He laughed back and flicked his cigarette away. “Bitches love riding anything Casa.” He winked and I groaned.

  “Fine, but I’m not staying long, and you have to take me wherever I need to go afterwards.” I pulled on my jacket and climbed on behind him, wrapping my arms around his waist tightly so I didn’t fall off. He smelled good, like smoke and oil and something musky. I hadn’t noticed before because I’d been too upset, but I couldn’t miss it now, and my nipples grew hard. I just hoped he couldn’t feel them through the back of his cut. I rested my cheek against his back, breathing him in.

  “Gonna have to hold on tighter than that, girl,” Casa growled out, his tone deep and full of unmistakable lust. He reach down and took my hands before pulling my arms tighter around him and I practically groaned as my breasts pressed tighter against his back. “There, that’s better.”

  Was it? I wondered. Because I could hardly breathe being this close to him. And not because of how tightly he was forcing me to hold on, but because being so close to Casa was like walking into a room where all the air had been sucked out. Because Casa, and his beautiful, dirty mouth, had stolen the air from it.

  Casa was a dangerous man. Not just to the people he chose to cut down for the love and loyalty of his club, but to my heart. It should have been frightening—to be that close to someone so dangerous, after all, I’d been down this one-sided love path with Dom—yet I was not afraid of him. He made me feel alive in the most beautiful way, making my skin prickle with excitement every time he spoke. Or worse, when he touched me.

  Because with Casa, there was no such thing as an innocent touch.

  “Gonna have to say the magic words, H,” Casa said with a chuckle.

  “Magic words?” I asked, pulling my face away from his back to peer up into his face as he looked down at me. “What magic words?”

  He tutted. “They wouldn’t be magic if everyone knew them, H.”

  “Well then how will I…” An idea came to me and I laughed. “Final call for Mars?” I asked hesitantly.

  “There you go,” he said with another chuckle.

  I felt his stomach muscles move under my grip as he laughed, which sent a delicious shiver straight to my core and my nipples hardened even more.

  “You know that’s a ridiculous password, right?” I smirked.

  “Magic words,” he corrected seriously.

  “Whatever.”

  He smirked back. “Told you, girl, you’re from Mars or some shit because there ain’t nothing normal about you or this situation.”

  And the way he looked at me made it clear that this was all new to him too. For a split second his façade fell away, and his gaze spoke more truths than I’d ever been told in my lifetime. But then I blinked and it was gone and the cocky biker bullshit was all I could see.

  Though I couldn’t deny that all the cocky biker bullshit suited him, I wanted to see more of the man that was behind the mask.

  “Gonna ride now, H.” He winked. “You good?”

  I nodded, because with Casa I was more than good. I pressed my cheek against his back again and squeezed him close as he pulled out of the parking lot and the world passed us by in a blur.

  *

  We drove for several miles in silence, just the wind rushing past me and the roar of his bike between my thighs, vibrating all the way to my core. Eventually we pulled down a side street and followed it for about a mile until most of the buildings and warehouses looked like they were so old they were about to fall down. We dodged between trash cans and right through the center of an abandoned warehouse that looked like it was just barely standing upon four stilts. A small part of me worried for my safety as we rode and the streets got grimier and quieter, but then Casa’s muscles would flex and I knew I would be all right.

  He slowed the bike to a crawl as we passed people crouched together in a doorway before he finally brought the bike to a s
top. The people in the doorway looked over at us, and a shorter man who looked like he’d last eaten six weeks ago quickly scuttled off inside the building. One of the other men, an older-looking man with a long gray beard, came toward us.

  “It’s been a while,” he said, nodding at Casa. “We began to worry you weren’t coming back.”

  “Been busy with the club. Everything still good, Jack?” Casa asked.

  The older man’s gaze slid to me and he smiled, revealing a mouth full of rotten gums. I smiled back at him just as the smaller man came running back out of the warehouse with a backpack. He came over to the bike and handed it to Casa before giving him an expectant look.

  “Everything is just as you left it. Scratch here almost let some punks go over it a few weeks back, but I sorted him out, showed him how things are done around here. He’s new, but he’s a fast learner,” Jack talked, nodding down to the other man, who I assumed to be Scratch.

  Casa opened the backpack and glanced inside before handing it to me. I didn’t know what was inside but I trusted Casa so I slung the backpack over my shoulders.

  Casa reached into his pocket and pulled out a small silver wrap of tinfoil before handing it over to the older man. “When I’m leaving, there’ll be more,” he said with a firm nod, and both Scratch and the older man backed away with quick nods.

  Casa pulled away from them and drove for another quarter of a mile until the warehouses dwindled off, leaving a narrow dirt road. Up ahead, there was a small abandoned hut on one side of the dirt path and a shallow stream running past it. An old bridge ran over the top of the stream, though going by the looks of the structure it wasn’t safe to drive or even walk over anymore.

  He shut off the engine and I climbed off the bike onto unsteady feet before looking around me and wondering what the hell we were doing there—or why Casa had decided that the creepiest and most dangerous part of town would be the ideal place to bring me.

  And then I saw it.

  I walked slowly toward the bridge, the sun shining bright and heavy in the sky but not making it to the shadowed area under the bridge where the most beautiful paintings were painted onto the walls.

  No, not painted. Painted was too simplistic a word.

  This was art.

  Beautiful, raw and dirty, art.

  It was simplistic, and yet also intricate in its simplicity.

  It was a visual masterpiece as the colors and shapes splashed and morphed together to form one cohesive and stunning color explosion.

  It was beauty hidden within the ruined, and it was perfect.

  I turned in circles, looking left and right and up and across as the colors wove along every piece of that bridge. I walked through the sludge and the water, oblivious to the dirt under my boots because I was so in awe of the beauty all around me. It was breathtaking.

  “Whaddya think, H?” Casa whispered from behind me.

  I blinked away the tears that had formed in my eyes and turned to look at Casa, completely breathless. I opened my mouth and closed it several times trying to form the words, but nothing would come out.

  Casa dragged the hat he always wore from his head and stuffed it into his back pocket as he walked toward me. I hadn’t realized I’d even walked underneath the bridge—only that the artwork had called me to it like I was its willing slave. Casa stood by my side, his own gaze looking between the paintings and me.

  “Who did this?” I finally managed to squeak out, my eyes wide.

  He smirked at me, a softness washing over his hard edges. “I did, girl.”

  “Shut up!” I laughed and pushed him. Of course he didn’t move an inch, and his unwavering look told me everything I needed to know. “You’re serious, aren’t you? You really did this?”

  “It’s just a couple of pictures,” he said, shrugging off my words like he was embarrassed. He started to turn away from me and I grabbed him, forcing him to look at me.

  “Casa, these are fucking amazing,” I said, holding his gaze. Shivers trembled down my bare arms, my heartbeat thrumming in my chest. “So fucking beautiful.”

  He chuckled. “Love a woman who talks dirty.” He winked.

  “You have real talent!” I looked up at the ceiling, staring at the picture directly above our heads. It was of a half-naked woman, a slash of cloth barely covering her breasts. Her eyes were closed, her face showing so much pain. She felt real. Like I could reach up and touch her, my fingers grazing upon a real cheek.

  “She’s my favorite,” he said, his voice throaty and rough. “She’s—” He hesitated and I looked back down at him, my own gaze colliding with his. He shrugged. “It don’t matter.”

  “It does. Tell me,” I said, feeling my heart constrict in my chest.

  I was jealous of this woman only seconds ago—a woman who wasn’t even real. Now I knew that she was real, my heart felt like it was going to punch out of my chest.

  “That’s my mom,” he said, his features soft. Innocent. He looked up at her again and I followed his gaze. In that second he was a little boy, staring up at his mother in wonder and awe. Everything about him was all-devouring in that moment and I felt my heart practically implode as I stared at him, seeing someone different for the first time.

  “She’s beautiful,” I said.

  He looked back down at me and shrugged. “I guess.”

  “I’m serious, Casa.”

  “It’s just paint. Just colors and shapes, nothing special.”

  “Shut up,” I said seriously, making him raise an eyebrow at me. “Casa, these paintings, they’re so alive! I feel fucking breathless looking at them. I can’t even put into words how they make me f—”

  Casa leaned over and cupped my face in his right palm before grabbing my waist with his left hand and tugging my body close. My heart skipped, my knees shook, and I waited for him to kiss me.

  But he didn’t, though I could see the urge to in his pained expression. Instead, he stood there, his hands on me, holding me upright so I didn’t fall over.

  One look like this from Casa and I knew I was under his spell. I’d been fighting the feelings since I met him, but this look sucked me right under.

  I finally understood why he was called Casanova.

  Casa’s fingers were kneading my waist, and he stared deep into my eyes. I waited expectantly, thinking he’d say something filthy or corny, but he said neither. Instead he sucked in his bottom lip, his gaze speaking a thousand things, his forehead furrowed in confusion like he was trying to work out some complex puzzle.

  “I’ve never brought anyone here before,” he said. “I come here to think. To escape from all the noise and bullshit in my head, because it gets so fucking loud in here, H.” He moved his hand from my waist to tap the side of his skull for emphasis, and my body cried out for his touch again. Thankfully, like he sensed my body calling for him, he put his hand back where it had been. “But mostly,” he continued. “I come here to remember shit, you know? My past, where I came from, and everything in between. Because we can’t ever forget where we came from, H. If we forget that, then we forget who we are and then we forget where we’re going.”

  I stared at Casa in awe.

  Who the fuck was he?

  This man who was so rough around the edges that he could cut metal with his tongue if he chose to.

  This man who was a walking billboard for sex and degradation.

  This man who openly admitted murder and bloodshed, and his enjoyment in it.

  This man who was now talking like a poet and looking at me like he was Michelangelo and about to paint the mural on the Sistine Chapel.

  Casa was a mystery to me. But one that I wanted to peel back every layer of until I reached his core. He was a mystery that I wanted to uncover in the best possible way.

  Chapter twenty-three:

  Harlow

  “Why am I here, Casa?” I asked, my words soft.

  We were practically nose to nose, our bodies so close that they could be forgiven for being mistaken
for one body. All I could think about was his hands on my waist, the deep need in my core, and the hardness of his erection pressing into my stomach.

  A slow smile came to his face. “To motherfucking paint, girl,” he said, with his usual finesse.

  Casa held onto my waist with one hand, and began to pull me over to a small wooden table I hadn’t noticed before with his other hand. He took the bag from my shoulder and dropped it onto the table before crouching down and opening it.

  He pulled out spray paints and brushes, and looked up at me with a grin. I backed away with a shake of my head.

  “No way, no fucking way! I can’t paint on this! You’ve seen my awesome painting skills—they’re nonexistent. I can draw and I can sew, and I can cook, but painting is like my fucking kryptonite. The paint never does what I want it to do!”

  Casa stood up and laughed, his hand wrapping around my waist and pulling me back toward him forcefully. “Told you I love it when you talk dirty, H.” He grinned and I couldn’t help but grin back. “I’m going to paint you, girl. All you gots to do is sit there and look pretty. Should be damned easy since you’re an A fucking student at looking pretty.” He winked, and I blushed fiercely.

  I looked up at the paintings all around us, completely overwhelmed by everything. The day had just been one huge pile of confusion, from waking up happy in Dom’s arms to fighting with him and leaving—and now to ending up in a dangerous warehouse district with Casa, of all people. Nothing had gone the way it should have, but I, more than anyone, should have known that that wasn’t always a bad thing. That sometimes, the best things came when you were least prepared or expecting them.

  “But why?” I asked, my gaze sliding back to his.

  He frowned and kept on smiling. “Because I like to keep a memento of the beautiful things in this world. And if you’re really leaving and I might never see you again, I want to be able to see you whenever I choose to without driving hundreds of miles to stare at you from across the street.”