Mouse: A Steel Paragons MC Novel (The Coast: Book 7)

by Hart, Eve R.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Mouse

  Days slipped by and I kept myself busy. I volunteered to go on the next run before Prez even handed out names. I jumped to do anything and everything he needed like I was a fucking prospect. He watched me with knowing eyes but not once did he say anything. Even as I kept coming back time and time again.

  I picked up a few extra patrols just to keep from letting myself grow restless. Though I didn’t think that Lake minded one bit that I asked to take his slot a few times.

  “We were starting to think you disappeared, dude,” Brand said one morning as I breezed into the kitchen to grab something to eat.

  I stopped dead in my tracks and noticed a group of my brothers sitting at one of the tables. Among them, Ky. For some weird reason, a hard swallow forced its way down my throat.

  “Been keeping busy,” I said as I snapped myself out of the weird frozen state that held me captive. “Lot of stuff to do. You think my ass just sits around eating bonbons all day?”

  I tried to joke.

  My laugh felt forced.

  I grabbed some leftovers and because I’d been feeling a bit lonely lately, I joined my brothers at the table.

  I knew I was the one to blame for the isolation but I couldn’t come up with a good reason why I should push them away right now. It wasn’t them. Whatever was going on with me had nothing to do with the club. It was all me.

  Something I needed to work through on my own but also I wasn’t allowing it to seep into my brain so I could even work on it.

  “Should be a quick run this weekend,” B-ry said with a lift of his chin in my direction.

  “Yeah, there and back. Are we staying the night?” I asked, having a feeling that he might want to stay there and hang with the brothers a bit. I hadn’t exactly gotten the details, though I should have had them by now. I was sure Iron had spouted them off in Church at some point, but I couldn’t recall anything right now.

  “Stayin’ the night,” he said looking at Ky. “South boys are having a cookout.”

  I nodded blindly as I shoved a forkful of food in my mouth. I chewed and swallowed but couldn’t even begin to tell you what it tasted like.

  “You alright?” Ky’s low and almost gravelly voice asked me.

  “Yeah, fine.” I tried to give him a smile but it felt shaky. And by the way he was eyeing me, I wasn’t pulling anything over on any of them.

  “Haven’t seen much of you since Ingram got back,” he said and his eyes practically drilled holes into mine as he pinned me with a hard stare.

  “Is she doing good?” I asked not bothering to acknowledge his cryptic statement.

  At that, his face softened and I knew he was thinking of Ingram and Chry. He loved his sister dearly. Anyone that would step in between that better have a good damn reason. And any man that dared to catch her attention, well, they must have a death sentence.

  As I started to think about it I became itchy. No man was good enough for her or Chry. Or so I thought. Maybe the universe would prove me wrong one day. But even if it did, they’d have to go through Ky, Chris, and the whole damn club first.

  “She’s settling in nicely. I think she’s really happy to be home.” He smiled. “She belongs here.”

  I couldn’t disagree with that.

  I had so many questions running through my head but I couldn’t open my mouth to voice them.

  I needed to know that she was really okay. That she felt safe and welcome. And that she was still moving forward.

  I’d seen hints in her letters of her stumbling backward. Of her questioning everything. I didn’t have the first clue what it was like for her, but I imagined that was all part of the process.

  I felt like her therapy sessions really helped her. Even though she said that her doctor didn’t really talk all that much, I could see how Ingram was being guided through working out everything. And yeah, she may not have gotten all the answers to some of the things she didn’t understand, but then again, I wasn’t sure she ever would.

  Truth was, I wanted to help her understand and maybe there was a small part of me that felt the need to grasp some of the things she had gone through. And maybe one night, I’d had a little too much to drink which led me to ordering a few books after I’d reread her letters for the umpteenth time. I couldn’t say that I regretted it though. I Just wished Cable hadn’t found out about that shit.

  What I learned was that crazy people were all different. Their reasons behind why they did the shit that they did, well, it didn’t make a damn lick of sense to me. The simple answer would have been that they did it because they could. They just had minds that were twisted and a way with words that could easily manipulate people with a weaker thought process.

  “Yo,” Sketch called out as he walked into the kitchen, his eyes on me. “You’re bitch is here lookin’ for your ass.”

  With a deep inhale, I moved my eyes to the figure pushing him to the side and walking toward me with a hint of fire in her eyes.

  “Hey,” I said as I looked up at Amber.

  “Hey,” she said back flatly. “That’s all you can say is, hey?”

  “I’m sorry, things have been a little busy around here,” I told her with a hint of softness in my tone. I pulled out the chair next to me as a peace offering. Amber rolled her eyes like she couldn’t stay mad at me and then dropped down into the seat.

  The table around us was oddly quiet.

  I felt Ky and B-ry’s eyes on me though I wasn’t looking at them.

  “Are you busy tonight, then?” she asked ignoring everyone else around.

  I huffed out a nervous laugh and as my hand moved to rub the back of my neck, I felt the heat hit my cheeks.

  “No,” I said with a shake of my head. “I’m all yours tonight.”

  I saw her body relax, the little flames flickering in her eyes retreating as she looked at me.

  “Okay,” she said clearly pleased with my answer.

  My brothers stood almost as if they were one. B-ry pinned me with a hard stare.

  “We ride at noon,” he said like I somehow would forget that.

  “I’ll be ready,” I told him in a firm tone. I didn’t need to remind him that we were equals but it irritated me that he was treating me like this.

  His comment bothered the piss out of me because I had never not shown up when I was supposed to. I may have spaced out on the details a little bit lately, but I knew the when and where. It didn’t matter how much shit I had in my head, I’d never let my club down. B-ry knew this. Hell, everyone should have known it. So I didn’t have a damn clue why he felt the need to point it out like that.

  They left and the room grew silent for a moment.

  I tried to shake off my sour mood but I felt like I was failing miserably.

  “Something is up with you,” Amber said, her body turned sideways to face me.

  “Maybe,” I said and my brow scrunched up in confusion.

  “You need to talk about it?” she asked, and though I knew she wasn’t thrilled about the idea of me getting into the deep stuff, she’d listen if I really needed her to. Maybe? I was pretty sure she would, anyway.

  I felt like I could probably talk to her about anything. She wouldn’t get upset or judge me. In fact, I knew she’d understand most of the things I couldn’t share with anyone outside of the club, not that I would ever go into any of that with her. The only problem was, I didn’t know what the hell was going on in my head to even begin to form the words to explain it.

  “Don’t know,” I said with a shrug.

  Not bothered by my reply, she shrugged back and snagged a piece of chicken from the half-eaten plate in front of me.

  Then she went on, telling me about some shit drama going on at her work. I listened and tried to be as comforting as I could be. I threw in my two cents about the whole thing but I wasn’t sure if it was one of those times that she was looking for advice or just needed to vent.

  Not long after that, we went to my roo
m. I grabbed a beer and we watched a movie. I think I had a couple more beers as the images played on. Amber had a few herself and as the credits rolled, I let out a long yawn.

  “Tired?” she asked as she cut the TV off.

  “Yeah,” I said as another yawn slipped out. “Guess all the runnin’ around is catching up with me.”

  “Can I stay?” she asked with a softness in her tone.

  She’d been drinking so it wasn’t like I was going to let her drive home anyway.

  Seeing my head nod once, she got off the bed and undressed. I sat up and shucked my pants, tossing them carelessly in the corner of my room where my dirty clothes pile was.

  I looked at the mound of dirty clothes and thought how I’d been saying for months that I needed a basket to put that shit in.

  I wasn’t messy but my room wasn’t exactly spotless. I looked around and noticed a bunch of clean clothes sitting in the chair at my desk. How long had they been there? I couldn’t say but I knew at this point they were so wrinkled that if I cared, they would need to be put back in the dryer again. There was shit on top of my dresser. Crap that I’d brought down here from back home. I’d been here a few years, but I still hadn’t really organized the stuff. There was also a stack of framed pictures and posters that I’d been meaning to hang up forever, too.

  Shit.

  I realized that while my soul felt settled at this chapter, I was still missing something. I hadn’t made this place mine. Hell, the walls were still white in their bareness. This room was fucking boring and I was just now realizing that.

  “Something on your mind?” Amber asked and I watched as she snatched up one of those clean but wrinkled shirts and tossed it on.

  My lids closed and opened rapidly and I shook my head.

  “I must be really tired,” I told her as she made her way back to the bed and slipped under the covers.

  She knew I was brushing it off but she let it go.

  Once we were settled in, she placed her head on my chest at the same time her hand came to rest on my stomach. I reached over and flicked off the light then my arm bent to prop up my head.

  I stayed awake a while longer listening to Amber’s soft breathing as she slept.

  Sometimes I got a little lonely, I wasn’t one of those people that was satisfied with a million different hookups. I wasn’t saying that I had to be in a committed relationship to have sex, I just had to have some sort of connection beyond sexual chemistry.

  Growing up in the Gray Fort chapter had opened my eyes to a lot of things. Most of my young life, my mom tried to keep me away from the club, but that didn’t mean I was dumb. I had eyes and I fell in lust with my first club girl at the ripe age of twelve. Spent so many nights thinking about her when I was alone. My dad wasn’t to let things slide. So when he saw me watching her at one of the club parties that was supposed to be family friendly, he took me somewhere quiet and sat me down. The birds and the bees conversation was pretty straight forward.

  “Son, I get it, I do. You have all these weird things going on with your body and your pants get tight when you look at tits. But know that you are too young to do anything about it unless it’s with your hand. Got me?”

  “Yeah, dad, I got you.”

  “Good. And when the time comes, you make sure to wrap that shit up before you go in. I don’t need no grandbabies any times soon. And you never know what these girls are doing, don’t want to have an itchy junk for weeks. Feel me?”

  I didn’t really know what he was saying but I still told him I did. I figured when the time came, if I didn’t get it all by then, I could go back to him and ask. We were pretty close and I knew he’d teach me all the things I’d ever need to know. I was young and my dad was my hero.

  “Fuckin’ good,” he said as he slung his arm around my shoulders and pulled me in for a hug. “I’ve been with the club girls before. But I gotta say, I love your mom with all my damn heart, and once I had her, I didn’t even want to look at anything else. Remember that. Easy pussy is nice, but being with someone you care about is so much fuckin’ better.”

  Yeah, never said my dad had a way with words. But a lot of what he’d said that night stuck with me. I think it was a combination of his words and seeing loose sex all around when I was at the clubhouse that made me feel a little differently about sex. When I got older, I started spending more time at the compound and got a chance to witness first hand how crazy the nights got there. I wasn’t shaming those who liked to get it and go, by any kind of means. Maybe it was the fact that none of them really seemed satisfied at the end of the day that made me wise up.

  It probably didn’t help that I was a shy kid, even when I was an awkward teenager trying to follow in his father’s footsteps. That was how I got my name, actually. I didn’t say much the first few years of my life and the brothers had joked that I was as quiet as a mouse. I tended to scurry off like one too when I felt like the attention was on me.

  Needless to say, I wasn’t that kid anymore. But the name still fucking stuck.

  This chapter was a bit milder. I liked it better that way. I think being submerged in the club back home made me shy away from casual sex. Or maybe I was just that kind of person from the get-go.

  I shut my thoughts down. There was no sense in trying to explain things I knew I didn’t have the answers to.

  But I could admit that it was nice to have Amber here some nights. Just having someone by my side while I slept was sometimes the kind of comfort I craved.

  With a long exhale, I let my lids fall heavy and close.

  Not long after that, I drifted off to sleep.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Ingram

  I was home. I felt it the moment my feet hit the sandy paved driveway. The scent of salt water filled my nose the same time the stickiness of the humidity in the air washed over my skin and I felt a calm wrap around me so tightly.

  The drive here had been long, or it felt longer than it was. Traveling with a toddler wasn’t exactly the easiest thing in the world, but I did it and now we were here.

  The moment I walked into Chris and Ky’s house, I felt a warmth I hadn’t felt in nearly two years. Only now it seemed to be warmer. Everyone had been there to welcome me back. And the best thing was that no one treated me oddly. I wasn’t an outcast. I wasn’t some strange girl that had been sheltered her entire life. I wasn’t a teenage girl that had ended up pregnant and lost and scared out of my mind.

  As they all hugged me and smiled, I felt whole.

  The best part was, I’d been back nearly three weeks now and that feeling hadn’t waned.

  Despite being a little nervous about returning, I had support everywhere I turned. I had family and friends. Cami and Laurel acted as if I hadn’t even been gone. Well, except for all the questions of what I did while I was away. We had talked a few times while I’d been away but I could tell they were trying to give me the space I needed to figure out the answers I was seeking. Now I was back, and the world instantly felt right.

  At first, I stayed at the beach house. I didn’t leave because I needed to settle in. Oh, and Chris basically hogged all my time. Which, I didn’t mind at all. I thought of him like a big brother. A big cool brother. While Ky was my actual brother, he was more of that overly protective type. The truth was, the two of them were all I could ever ask for. They complemented each other so well and when Ky got too big brotherly, Chris was there to calmly get him to take it down a bit.

  Even if Ky didn’t come right out and say it, I could see the relief on his face now that I was back. I knew he worried about me. I mean, he went crazy when I told him that I wanted to go away. He got into a fight with Mouse and everything because he didn’t want to let me go.

  Mouse had been a good friend then. I didn’t know why I found it easy to tell him all the things I tried to keep buried, but I did. I supposed I could have blamed it on all the hormones from having a baby and whatnot, but I didn’t really think that was it. So like an amazing friend, Mouse d
id some research and found Glow Woods Sanctuary. He had one of the other club members look into the facility to make sure that it wasn’t some fake place. When he found out it wasn’t, he sat me down and told me all about it.

  The name threw me at first. Mouse explained that part of it was an animal sanctuary that helped to rehabilitate injured wildlife and then release them back into the wild. But the other part was set up for people like me. People raised in controlling cult-like environments or had been severely abused by their caregivers. I think they wanted to have a place that felt safe for us and not have a name that shouted why we were there.

  However, now that I’d been back, it hadn’t quite been the reunion I’d hoped for. I wasn’t blind, I saw the distance Mouse put between us at my welcome home party. Oh yes, it hurt me very much and I might have cried a little that night after I shut myself up in my room.

  I didn’t know what to think about it but then again, what could I really expect? That I would come back and our friendship would pick up where it’d left off? I realized then that I didn’t know much about what went on with him while I was gone. Ky and Chris talked about their friends when they came to visit but there was never much detail. I got the highlights and it seemed that they didn’t really have many of those on Mouse.

  There were letters that he sent me where he seemed standoffish. I saw it and I was just grateful that he finally started sending me letters back. I really hadn’t expected him to. Although, I couldn’t deny that I was maybe holding out hope that each day the mail arrived with something for me.

  Then it came. I remember being so shocked that I ran to my room and opened it right away. It was short but there was a hint of the man that I knew in there.

  He didn’t write me back every time but his letters always came when I needed them the most. I think that was what counted over everything else.