Jayce (The Chaos Chasers MC Book 2)

by C. M. Marin

  It’s Max who is slouched on a couch, his bare feet propped onto the coffee table and his eyes flicking regularly between the cartoon he’s watching and the game console trapped in his hands.

  “Can you even win at your game when you play while watching TV?” I ask him as I walk through the room.

  His gaze darts to me in surprise before flicking back to his game as he speaks. “I’ve worked on it. Camryn says the key to making progress is to practice. I think she’s right,” he shrugs, and I snicker.

  This kid isn’t even seven years old. I’ll be sure to tell Cam how attentive he is to her advice.

  “Go ahead, then. Practice,” I chuckle as I stroll my way to the kitchen.

  When I push through the door, Melvin is standing in front of the dishwasher, loading it up.

  “Do you miss your prospect chores that much?”

  He scoffs, not looking my way as I get busy pouring myself a good cup of the coffee that’s thankfully ready. “No fucking way. This is just what happens when you have a little brother who still doesn’t know the difference between week days and weekends. But Liam and Alex shared breakfast with us today before they left.”

  My motions freeze as soon as I hear Alex’s name, and when the rest of his sentence comes out of his mouth, my hand tightens around my mug.

  “What? Where did they go so early?”

  “Dallas,” he answers, apparently unaware that I’m about to go apeshit. “To get the rest of Alex’s stuff from a storage unit.”

  “Just the two of them?” I ask him, but since he didn’t say any other name, the answer is clear.

  “Yep.”

  “That’s fucking dumb,” I growl. “We’re sort of on lockdown, and he leaves with her and no back-up?”

  I don’t know why it comes out as a question, because it’s not.

  “They’ll be safe in an SUV,” he says.

  “No fucking guarantees of that, even with an SUV. Fuck,” I snarl.

  I hope to fucking God nothing goes down. If something happens to her… I’ll have Liam’s fucking head. Brother or not.

  Fuck.

  Why the hell didn’t she tell me they had planned a trip to Dallas today? I would have gone with them, for fuck’s sake. An internal snort resonates loudly in my head right after that question popped up. She would rather have had her own eyes ripped out of their sockets than had me tagging along. That’s why she didn’t say a word about it.

  “Want some eggs and bacon? There’s some left,” Melvin says, pulling me away from my fearful thoughts.

  “Yeah, thanks, I’ll have some,” I grumble.

  My mood has gone south in a heartbeat. And I’m the only one responsible for it. Alex might have been keeping me at arm’s length since she got back, but I’m the one who let her go a long time ago. I sent her on her way like she had never meant a damn thing to me. I cut her out of my life without so much as an explanation.

  It all went down three weeks after my family’s funeral. Alex had to go back to Dallas to start her final year of college. The very same evening, I sent her a text I knew I would send her before I even kissed her goodbye and watched her climb in a car with Liam. And I broke up with her. Yeah, I broke up with her through a fucking text. She was right last night when she yelled at me that what I did was throw her away. It made me feel like less of a bastard convincing myself that I let her go but kicking her out of my life with no respect was what I did. Of course, she called straight away. But I didn’t pick up. Not the first time she called, and not the several following times. I didn’t reply to her texts either. After a handful of first ones, I even deleted them before reading them. So, it didn’t surprise me to see her storm in the club the very next day even though she had to get ready to start her classes. And I saw the hurt and confusion on her face. She was angry, too. But I didn’t cave. I did what I had to do.

  I don’t want you in my life anymore. Get that through your head, and go back to Dallas.

  Among other lovely things, that’s what I spit in her face that day. Those words, that my fucked-up state allowed me to bury deep in my mind, were the last ones I addressed to her before I ran out of the club, praying hard that she’d be gone by the time I was back. Knowing how stubborn she can be, I wasn’t sure she would be, so on an impulse, I decided to ride out of town. I ended up checking into some motel where I stayed for almost a month, only keeping Nate updated on where I was. I knew he’d keep his mouth shut even though he did tell me I needed to have my ass handed to me for what I did to Alex. But I was too numb, and so sure I was doing what I had to do, to care about what any of my brothers thought. Fuck, it seemed so right to put some distance between her and my fucked-up life back then. I just knew that if I were selfish enough to keep her in my life, she’d be the next one to end up with a bullet lodged in her chest. That image of her lifeless was so clear in my head back then that it made it difficult for me to breathe. The image was vivid. So much that it felt premonitory. I had to make her pull away from the club one way or another, and I knew she never would have if I had told her why I needed her to. She never would have listened to me if I had told her I needed her away from this world to keep her safe.

  And now, the more I think about it, the more I doubt being able to fix this shit anytime soon. If I ever can. She’s too guarded. But at the same time, she let me have her last night. She let her lust consume her. She gave in to her desire. That must mean something. It has to.

  A plate being set on the counter beside me hauls me out of my thoughts. I hadn’t seen him heating up my food, but he must have since it’s steaming. I seem to be lost in my own head often these days.

  Melvin limps away and goes to sit at the table.

  Trying to put aside my dread of knowing Alex is out there, even if she’s with Liam, I ask him, “How’s your leg?”

  “Hurts a bit. Alex looked like she wanted to tear my head off when she saw me cooking.”

  I snort. “Might as well get used to it.”

  Alex is a mother hen. Always has been. It has a lot to do with how she’s always lived with only men. She doesn’t remember the time where her mom was alive, and she spent more than a decade taking care of her dad and brother even though she didn’t have to. Then she ended up here at the club, surrounded by men who sometimes fight just for the fun of it.

  “Figured out that much already,” he smirks.

  “Want some coffee?” I ask him.

  “Yeah, I’ll have one more, thanks.”

  I grab another mug, get his coffee ready, and join him at the table. “Did they say when they’d be back?” I inevitably go back to Alex and ask him between two bites.

  “This evening. Said they didn’t want to spend the night there.”

  Relief courses through me. I wouldn’t have survived her being away for more than twelve hours, and I sure don’t know how I survived her being so far away from me for so damn long. More than a damn year. Being numb for the most part of that time probably helped. Then there was all that shit with Cam showing up and Rod trying to get to her that hit us, and it kept my mind preoccupied enough to not think much. Alex had already started visiting Liam less and less often by then, and right after the situation with Camryn was handled, I finally witnessed her beginning to move on. She started to date some proper boy from college, and even though I wanted to kill the poor fuck, I let her be. Time passed, then more time passed, and I just kept staying away. Simple as that.

  But now I’m done staying away. She might dream of biting my damn head off, but she’ll come around eventually. I’ll get her back. I’ll grovel as hard as I need to, but she’ll be mine again.

  Around a mouthful of eggs, I tell Melvin, “It’s a damn shame you’re not a prospect anymore, brother.”

  “I don’t share that opinion,” he chuckles.

  “Melvin, I’m bored,” Max whines suddenly, and I turn around on my chair to see him standing at the door frame, a hand and a foot holding the door open. “Can we go work on my bike now?” he goes
on, his pleading eyes directed at his brother.

  “Did you shut off the TV and put your game console away?”

  “No.”

  “Then you do that while I finish my coffee, and we’ll go to the warehouse.”

  A huge grin lights up the kid’s face. “Okay!”

  Like a whirlwind, he’s gone in a flash.

  “His bike?” I give Melvin a quizzical look.

  “Yeah. He wanted one just like mine,” Melvin grins. “A bit smaller and slower, obviously.”

  “What kind of work do you need to do on a six-year-old’s motorcycle?”

  I genuinely wonder.

  “Putting at least a hundred stickers on it. Gonna take me all fucking day.”

  Laughing at the look of distress on his face, I stand up and discard my plate, fork and mug into the dishwasher as I say, “Have fun with that. I’ll go for a ride. You guys call me if something comes up.”

  “You sure it’s safe to ride alone?”

  “I’ll be fine,” I say and leave the kitchen.

  Hypocritical, I know. I’m leaving the club alone when I was just blaming Liam for doing the same. But staying here all day with my head full of thoughts of Alex will likely drive me crazy. When I leave the still silent club, everyone clearly enjoying their Sunday morning in bed, it’s hard enough to talk myself out of heading to Dallas, so if I idle around here all day, I’ll lose my sanity before she makes it back home. I can’t allow myself to go after them now. I can’t push her too far. She’ll flee even farther.

  As I straddle my roaring bike, I give in to the urge of grabbing my phone and type a text to Liam.

  Me: Be fucking careful.

  Knowing he won’t answer, I stash my phone back into my pocket, put my helmet on, and barrel out of the club. Riding into the chilly morning air, I breathe a little easier. Fear for Alex follows me but being on my bike always soothed me. Not as much as being inside my girl while I have her pinned underneath my body, but still.

  There’s nowhere in particular that I want to go, so I just ride aimlessly, letting my instinct take over. And I’ve been on the road for a while when I realize where my instinct led me. Gripping the handlebars tightly, I keep driving despite the chaos of emotions slamming hard into me and churning wildly inside me. Anger, grief, loneliness, anguish, coldness… These and so much more all clash together in me. They probably haven’t left me for the past year and a half but pushing away feelings is something I learned early on. The world I was born into has its way of hardening you. It’s inevitable. Even though what happened last summer with Cam and what happened to Alex isn’t an everyday occurrence―far from it―the MC life forces us to witness such sick shit sometimes that a solid shell is required to handle it. It’s only where Alex is concerned that I ever let myself feel fully. She has her own way of doing that to me. Now that she’s back, some feelings are back, too, and they’re going to be hard to suppress. And maybe that’s why my bike took me here.

  The lake.

  Maybe it’s all linked. My family. Alex. Maybe it was time I come back here.

  My dad, granddad and uncle’s last wishes were to be cremated and their ashes scattered around here. The three of them loved this place. Isaac bought a cabin here a long time ago after renting it for ten years. He and my grandma spent a lot of time here enjoying the peace and quiet of the woods. My grandma even died here. Fucking cancer. That’s when my granddad bought it. After he lost her. He did it because she loved it here. I used to love it here, too, but now the place holds a depressing aura to it. Yeah, being back here is kind of depressing.

  Once I’ve reached the lake shore, I drop on the sand near the water while doing my best to ignore the lump growing in my throat.

  “I fucked up, guys,” I sigh into the growing silence.

  Isaac and my dad would have patted me on the back, asking me what’s up, while Billy would have grinned at me saying something along the lines of “Who hasn’t, boy? Who hasn’t?”

  Billy was eleven years younger than my dad, and even though he had his head in the game when shit was going down, he was less serious than him most of the time. He could easily have been Ben’s brother in that way. He liked to party hard and never settled down. Maybe he would have at some point if he had gotten to live more than thirty-five years, but there’s no use to wondering about that now.

  “Sorry, I didn’t come sooner,” I tell them. It feels weird―if not creepy―to speak to them not knowing if they can actually hear me, but I go on anyway. “Maybe you already know we’ve taken care of that bastard. He’s no longer breathing. Took him out myself last summer, and damn if pulling that trigger didn’t feel fucking good.” I smile faintly as I say, “We got Camryn, too. She’s awesome, Dad. Just wanted you to know that I’ll protect her no matter what. Same for Nate.”

  Same for the rest of the club. But it’s useless to say it. He knows that. Protecting our own is what we’ve always done. Blood family or club family, it’s all the same.

  “Fuck, I miss you guys. It’s just not the same without you around the club.”

  And it won’t ever be again. They’ll stay gone, and I’ll live my life without them around. Nothing will ever change that.

  “But I think I’m getting my shit together. Nate says it’s about time,” I snicker out a sad laugh before saying, “Alex was shot not so long ago. No doubt in my mind that it’s the Spiders. We’re working on finding proof to take Rod’s successors out, and in the meantime, I’ll try to convince Alex to stop wanting to rip my balls off every time she runs into me. Because that’s where I fucked up. I let her go. Worst mistake of my life, if you ask me. Not that the guys didn’t try to wake me the fuck up. Pretty sure Liam still dreams of beating the shit out of me. Anyway, I finally woke up, and I want her back, but I’m still scared shitless to lose her.” I blow out a weary breath. “Don’t know fucking anything anymore,” I admit to the empty place.

  I only know that Alex is mine and that I came too close to losing her for good.

  When I found out that my dad gave up his own daughter to protect her and respect the wish of the woman he loved, I thought I had made the right decision letting Alex go a year before. But now that this isn’t as clear as it used to be, I wish I could talk to my dad. I wish he could tell me what he would have done in my place. I wish he could tell me what he would have done if Mary hadn’t died. Would he have gone after her? Was he trying to find her before he got her letter? I wish he had talked to me about it. I wish he could help me just one more time. Because if I’m dead set on getting my girl back, I’m also still fucking terrified to keep her next to me and have to watch her get hurt again. Seeing what happened at the bookstore again would most likely kill me.

  “Fuck, Dad. I wish you were here to help me figure this shit out. I guess I’ll have to figure it out all on my own.”

  But deep down, I can’t help wondering if there is even any use in thinking about this for hours. Thinking about it wouldn’t change the fact that I have to get her back. Maybe what I need to do is stop thinking and find a way to deal with the fear of losing her while trying to get her to forgive me.

  Hell, I can’t even decide which one is going to be the hardest task to achieve.

  Chapter 11

  Alexia

  “Is everything okay?” Liam asks me as my gaze is firmly set out of the SUV’s window, watching the scenery passing by us quickly.

  We’ve been driving for more than thirty minutes already, but we have a long drive ahead of us, and I have to admit that it must not be fun for my brother to have such quiet company. Especially considering he’s doing me a favor by going to Dallas to pick up the rest of my stuff. But I’m just completely out of it this morning.

  “Sure,” I lie.

  Well, I’m only half lying. It’s not that I’m not okay per se. I’m… My head is like a huge box full of so many different thoughts that it seems to weigh a ton. To describe my inner state rather clearly, I’d say that I don’t know what I am. Good, not good
, pretty good… I just don’t know how I feel. And even if I were able to find the right words to explain to Liam that it’s last night that messed with my head like this, it’s not like I could expect him to have an objective opinion about my predicament with Jayce. He never confided in me about the change in his relationship with Jayce, but the few times I had come back to visit after the break up, I barely saw them addressing each other. It was the only proof I needed to know that things were heated, or at the very least tense, between them.

  There’s one thing I know for sure. Last night was a mistake. Plain and simple. A mistake that I didn’t find the strength in me to avoid making. I know I shouldn’t have let myself fall into his arms so easily, but it only took his lips connecting with mine once, and I was gone. He was right there in front of me, and I couldn’t deny the building need swelling thick deep in my belly. Even now, my skin is still tingling with the memory of his hands on me, and my breathing shortens when I think about the animalistic glee his eyes burned with as he looked at me. I can’t push away from my mind the sensation of his warm breath against my pussy, his wet lips fastening harshly around my clit, and his tongue licking at my crying flesh like it’s been craving to taste it forever. And hours after he was inside of me, I can still remember how good it felt to have his cock filling me again. For endless minutes of bliss, he plunged into me hard and deep, claiming my body like it had never ceased to be his. My head knew I was racing dangerously toward a slippery slope, but I couldn’t refuse his tender yet raw touch. His soft yet rough kisses. It all sent me flying into a world where only fireworks of mind-blowing pleasure and a whirlwind of striking sensations exist. I never wanted any of it to stop.

  “You didn’t sleep in my room.”

  His assertion pulls me out of my thoughts. I’m not taken aback by him broaching the subject, but after we went through our breakfast with Melvin and Max and the first half hour of our trip without talking about it, I had started to hope that there was an unsaid agreement between us on avoiding it altogether. Apparently not.