Stand (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 7)

by Susan Fanetti

“No, like…” She tried to think how she could explain. “Like, I need to write a picture that’s in my head, something that’s stuck there and won’t come out. I need to write down in words what I see, describe it just right, so I can really see it as a picture. Give it substance. Otherwise, it’s like vapor, and I can’t get ahold of it and put it where it belongs.”

  “Yeah, I dig it. Cool. We’re like opposites. I’m pictures and you’re words, but we’re trying to do the same thing—make sense.”

  “Yeah, I guess we are.” She read the first paragraph of his draft again, and then the second. Before she proceeded, she set it on her desk and met his eyes. “Can I ask you something? You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

  “Sure, go ‘head.”

  “This feels like you’re writing with your heart. Do you know someone who got hurt driving drunk?”

  His head dropped at once, and he fiddled with the buckle on the strap of his pack.

  “You don’t have to say.”

  “My pops. He was laid off, and my mom was taking all the extra shifts she could. She got a double that day last minute, and I was at work, too, so she called him to collect my little brother and sister from school. But he was laid off and feeling bad about it, and he was pouring booze over his bad feelings all day. He picked them up alright, but on the way back on the parkway, he crossed the median and went head first into a moving truck. They all died right there. Moving truck driver was okay, though.”

  “I’m sorry, Ronnie.” She reached out toward his hand, but he moved it off the desk, out of reach.

  Instead, he offered her a halfhearted shrug. “Pops loved us. He was a good father. He tried hard. But he killed them, just like if he shot them in the head. People think they know when they had too much, but they don’t. You said we should write something important to us. That’s it for me.”

  “Okay. So let’s work on this so you can make it say exactly what you want it to.”

  ~oOo~

  Cecily got out of her Trans Am and closed the door. She stood in the street, leaning lightly on the side of her car, and looked over the open roof at the building before her. It wasn’t much to look at. Just a red brick box, two stories, four identical, wide windows, two by two on the front, perfectly symmetrical. A slab wood door, painted black.

  And above the door, the logo of the Brazen Bulls MC.

  What the hell was she doing here?

  She’d been to the clubhouse exactly once since her father had been killed here, and she barely remembered that particular adventure, except the anger and humiliation of it. For reasons only the drunken girl of that night could possibly know, she’d crossed into enemy territory with her eyeballs floating in vodka, and she’d woken up naked the next morning beside a goddamn Bull. No matter how handsome and sweet he might be, he was a goddamn Bull.

  So what the hell was she doing here now?

  The question was rhetorical; she knew. She didn’t quite understand, but she knew. She was here because she had to go back to Aunt Maddie’s, and she didn’t want to go alone. That was weird and stupid, but it was also true. Alone in that house for not even three months, she’d taken a slalom course toward the gutter. Since she’d been staying with Maverick and Jenny, she’d felt better, found level earth beneath her feet again.

  She’d wanted Maverick to go with her, but he’d left that morning on a run to Missouri.

  There was one other person she thought she could trust to be with her without making her feel too much like a scaredy-cat. He’d already seen her at her absolute worst, more than once. She’d treated him like crap, more than once, and it hadn’t seemed to have made him hate her.

  What did she think of Caleb Mathews?

  Well, he was hot. God, that hair. Long and thick and gleaming like black satin, it moved like liquid. His eyes were so dark brown, his pupils were almost invisible. A scar through one black eyebrow drew his left eye down just a touch, like he was always on the verge of winking.

  He wasn’t big and bulky like a lot of the Bulls, not all bulging, veiny muscles, but he wasn’t scrawny, either. A few inches taller than her five-seven, he was lean and firm. He wore no ink that she’d ever seen, though he must have club ink somewhere. Usually, she liked tattoos, and judged men without them as wanting, but Caleb had the most amazing skin—smooth and nearly hairless, its tone like dark honey or something. He’d probably hate to hear himself described like that, like food. But he did make her mouth water, so…

  While her father was alive, and he’d been a prospect, she’d been off at school, so she hadn’t known him well, and still didn’t. But she’d noticed him right away; how could she not? Not much older than she, and so damn pretty, and the Bulls’ first Native American prospect to boot? He was definitely noticeable, and she’d had a thought or two that, once he got his top rocker and the threat of death and dismemberment had passed, she might make herself noticeable to him.

  Then her father had been killed, his brains bashed in by a Bull, in the clubhouse, and Cecily hadn’t wanted anything from any Bull but their similar deaths.

  And then she’d drunkenly abased herself somehow in that very same clubhouse, with Caleb.

  And then there was the night that had started at Tempest.

  And now, here she was.

  What did she know about Caleb Mathews? Very little. But since she’d accidentally called him to rescue her, he’d popped up again and again, and he’d been decent. She’d been a cunt, and he’d been decent. Kind, even. More than that—he seemed to like her. Maybe he felt sorry for her—probably he did, and she loathed that thought. But right now, with Maverick gone, he was the only person she felt safe going to Maddie and Ox’s house with.

  But could she step into that clubhouse? Without vodka to lubricate her passage, she didn’t think she could.

  She was still leaning on her car, standing in the street, trying to find the courage to proceed up the sidewalk to that black door, when movement at the side of her vision caught her attention. The man in question, dressed in his Sinclair greens, his hair pulled back from his face, was crossing from the station to the clubhouse. At about the same time that she noticed him, he noticed her.

  He stopped and simply looked at her for a second; Cecily had the sense he was squinting. Then he changed course and came to her.

  “Hey,” he called on the way.

  “Hey.”

  He reached her and stayed on the sidewalk, keeping her car between them. “Is something wrong? Mav’s on a run.”

  “Yeah, I know. It’s you I’m here for.” She realized that she’d repeated Ronnie’s words from earlier in the day, and wondered if Caleb felt as nervous to hear them as she had. He’d flinched a little, so maybe. She had split his face open recently, after all.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “Nothing, just…I need to go to Maddie and Ox’s, and I was wondering…” Fuck. Now that it was time to ask the question, it seemed super-maxi stupid to need an escort to go back to that house.

  “Yeah?”

  There was a way to ask for help without asking for a bodyguard from her own personal boggart. “I could use some help. I haven’t been there for a while, and there’s probably a lot to do. I…would you be willing to help me out? If you’re not busy?”

  A grin grew across his face, showing his perfect white teeth. Everything on this man gleamed. Like he walked around with his own studio lighting. “Yeah, I’d be glad to. I just got off at the station, and all I was gonna do for the rest of the night is sit in the clubhouse and drink. Let me run in and take care of a couple of things, and I’ll be about five or ten behind you. That work?”

  She’d have preferred him to follow right behind her, but asking would expose her profound pussiness. So she smiled and nodded. “That’s perfect. Thank you.”

  With that grin still lighting the street, he turned and trotted toward the building. To the black door and the horror beyond it.

  Cecily got back into her car and drove away.
>
  CHAPTER NINE

  When Caleb pulled his bike onto the driveway at Ox’s house, Cecily was sitting on the front porch, like she hadn’t even gone inside yet. Her work bag sat beside her, and she was dressed in the same clothes, what he guessed were her normal work clothes—jeans and high-heeled boots, with a black blazer over a plain white t-shirt. She had her hair clipped in a loose ponytail; it draped in waves of fire over one shoulder.

  She was about as gorgeous as he’d ever seen her, in fact. Hotter like this than in those teensy dresses she wore clubbing, or in the Sunday-best dress he’d seen her in the night he’d escorted her from school.

  As he dismounted and came up the walk, she stood.

  “You locked out or something?”

  “No, I just…waited.”

  “Okay. So, should we go in?”

  She didn’t move. Her blue eyes looked just about everywhere but at him, and a finger of wariness strummed his spine.

  “Cecily? What’s up?”

  “This is dumb as fuck. I know it is. Please don’t give me shit right now, okay?”

  “About what? Sugar, what’s going on?”

  She frowned and finally met his eyes. “We had a dog named Sugar. Don’t call me that.”

  “Sorry. But what’s the problem? Is there trouble inside?”

  Without warning, Cecily dropped. She sat right back down on the porch at his feet, and dropped her bag again. “There’s nothing but trouble in there.”

  Caleb was thoroughly confused and still wary, but he turned and sat beside her, stretching out his legs and crossing one boot over the other. Her head turned an inch or so, and Caleb thought she was checking out his boots. Not that there was much to see—roughed-up, plain brown Durangos.

  “You wear cowboy boots.” She laughed a little as she made her observation.

  “Yeah, I guess. Why’s that funny?”

  “I think this might sound, like, racist, and I don’t mean it to, but…I’d think a Native American wouldn’t be so keen on cowboy stuff.”

  “They’re just boots. They’re sturdy. My brother and I have a ranch up home, and I need good boots. For riding, too. They didn’t come with a membership to the General Custer fan club or anything.”

  “Oh. Okay. Sorry if that was a shitty thing to say.”

  “It wasn’t. But don’t make assumptions. You can ask anything you want. Asking is better than assuming.”

  She nodded but didn’t say anything else.

  They sat there in silence until Caleb’s confusion became frustration. “Cecily, why are we sitting on the porch? What are you afraid of in there?”

  “Me, I guess.”

  “What?”

  She blew air noisily from her pursed lips. “The last time I was in there was the day after I hit you with the bottle. You sicced Maverick on me, and he came the next morning and made me go to his house.”

  Caleb opened his mouth to argue that he hadn’t ‘sicced’ Maverick on her, but she put her hand up.

  “I’m glad you did. I wasn’t then, but in retrospect, I needed it. I guess it was the second, or maybe the third time you saved my ass. That’s why I’m freaked about going in there. Staying alone in this house, I got lost in my head somehow. I don’t know. Too much time alone, nobody paying attention to what I was doing, a bunch of shit in my head I’ve been beating back for a long time broke free. I guess I’m afraid it’s all waiting for me in there.”

  She’d thrown an Absolut bottle, among other things, at him more than a month earlier. “Has anybody been in there since then?”

  “I don’t know. I think Mav, maybe. But I don’t know.”

  “And you need to go in today why?”

  “I got an email from Maddie. She trusted me, and I’ve fucked it all up so hard, and I can’t even write her back because I don’t know what it’s like in there.”

  He’d had similar thoughts about the way she’d treated this house, and he’d been pissed, but now he only felt sorry for her. Without thinking about it, Caleb took Cecily’s hand. “So let’s go in and see. We’ll deal with whatever we have to.”

  Standing, he tried to pull her to her feet as well, but she resisted. “Why are you so nice to me? I’ve been a hag to you.”

  “I told you a couple weeks ago. I like you.”

  “Why?”

  Caleb sat back down and held her eyes with his own while he sorted out the answer. “You’re sad.” Fuck. That was a terrible way to say it.

  “You’re into me because I’m sad? Dude, that’s fucked up.” There was no hostility in her tone; she was teasing more than anything, but she was honestly surprised as well.

  “No, it’s…you’re sad, and it makes you angry, and…I don’t know. I guess I just understand it? Like, I relate? I don’t get people who can be happy when things are shit. All that positive thinking bullshit, it gets me down. I don’t trust people who only see the bright side of everything, who tell themselves their life is good while they’re sitting in shit. If they’re lying to themselves, how can you trust anything they ever say or do? I like people who rage when shit is fucked up—and who laugh when things are good, too. So…I guess I like how your feelings are always so out in front. I can trust that. Yeah, you can be a total bitch, but it’s real. I get it.” Feeling self-conscious after all that word vomit, Caleb shrugged. “Also, you’re beautiful.”

  Cecily threw her head back and laughed. “That was the world’s most anticlimactic compliment.” Still smiling, her eyes sparkling with it, she added, “But it was a great answer. And you’re gorgeous.”

  Caleb smiled and leaned a bit closer. “So I guess you don’t hate me anymore?”

  “I never hated you. It was the club I hated.”

  “Was? Past tense?”

  “I’m trying to work through it. Mav keeps giving me heart-to-heart talks. He’s wearing me down. I think he’s trying to stand in for my dad. Which is a little weird, since I was totally in love with him when I was a kid.”

  The mention of Maverick brought to Caleb’s mind the one and only night he’d spent with Cecily, and the beating he’d taken for it. He’d deserved that beating. If he kept his mouth shut right now, they were onto something interesting, he could feel it. But he couldn’t take another step until they had it out over that night. So he took the risk. “Can I ask why you won’t accept my apology for that night in the clubhouse?”

  Her smiling face dimmed at once. “Caleb, why? I told you I don’t want to talk about that.”

  “I guess I don’t understand why not, if you don’t hate me. Why run from this? You charge straight at everything else. I just want you to know—”

  She hit him, barreling both fists into his chest. “Stop! You’ve said it. You’ve tried. You’ve done whatever duty you think you have, so just fucking drop it. Please.”

  “But you won’t accept it.”

  Drawing her legs up close and folding forward, wrapping her arms around her knees, Cecily made herself as small as she could. “Did you force me to go there? Did you force me to drink so much? Did you drag me upstairs by my hair and hold me down?”

  “Shit, Cecily! No! But you were…and I should have…”

  “I know. I get why you feel bad. I guess I’m glad you do. You’re a decent person, so you feel bad. I don’t mean that what happened, if you’d been with another girl than me, wouldn’t have been what you say it is. I get it all. But for me, I can’t be a victim. I can’t be your victim. Do you understand? So don’t apologize.”

  He did understand, sort of. But he’d just told her he didn’t like pretending something was different from what it really was. That was the kind of shit that rose up and took a big bite of your ass. He’d just told her he liked her because she didn’t do that. Still, she would not be budged, and there was a road opening up before them, one they might ride together, at least for a little while. He could give her this pass. He owed it to her.

  So he said, “Okay. It’s dropped. I won’t bring it up again.”

&n
bsp; Sun pushed away her clouds, and she smiled again. “Thank you. Let’s go inside and see what monsters I left in there.”

  ~oOo~

  The house didn’t look bad at all. The bloodstains were out of the carpet in the living room, and everything was tidy and dust-free. The plants didn’t look so hot, and there were a few marks on the wall where some of her missiles had struck, but otherwise, the house was in good shape.

  They stood in the entry to the kitchen, and Cecily chewed on her bottom lip as they took in the calm scene. A tented pink card rested on the table—from the housecleaning service. Stepping away from him, she picked it up and studied it much longer than it would take to read the few words on it.