Exposed_A Bad Boy Motorcycle Club Romance

by Sophia Gray

  “I think I would like to watch some TV,” Abby said after a long pause. Lucy smiled and nodded before switching the television on.

  The rest of the room settled onto chairs, on the edge of the hospital bed, even on countertops so they could turn and watch shitty daytime television with Abby over the next several hours. They rushed to get her a snack whenever her stomach growled, and even opened her soda bottles whenever she struggled with them.

  Is this what it’s like, having a family? Abby wondered. She always used to think that finding a family would be frightening and thrilling all at once, but instead it was just… comfortable, even though it was unfamiliar. She almost felt safe. Almost.

  # # #

  Jagger

  As soon as Jagger got out of the shower, his beeper went off. It was Gareth, the Fire Captain, telling him to come in to the station. So now he was on his way to the fire department, even though he needed to get back to the hospital to check on Abby.

  Jagger sighed and stared at himself in the mirror. Even showered up, he looked like shit. Worry was written all over his face, and it was evident he hadn’t slept in a proper bed for several days now. He didn’t know how Abby did it. After spending days spread out on a hospital bed, only getting up twice a day to pee, she looked so beautiful, even if she was worn out and worn down. He ached to return to her, to give her anything that she needed. At the same time, he was terrified. The sick sensation of guilt burnt its way all throughout his digestive track from the top of his throat to the bottom of his stomach. He had no idea if Abby would ever even speak to him again, let alone forgive him. He knew he didn’t deserve her forgiveness, anyway. Abby had been right, the whole time. He was an overprotective, possessive Neanderthal, and his refusal to trust her even the smallest amount led to Abby almost dying. She was right not to trust him. She was right not to let him take care of her. He almost got her killed. No matter what happened, Jagger didn’t think he could ever forgive himself for that.

  Jagger pulled up to the fire department, quickly switching off the engine and stepping out of his car, moving quickly toward the front of the building. He wanted to get this over with, even if he knew he was going to deserve whatever lecture Gareth decided to give him.

  Gareth was waiting for him in his office, his arms crossed in front of his chest, staring down at the floor like a disappointed schoolteacher. “Hey, there, J,” Gareth murmured as Jagger approached him. “Why don’t you shut the door behind you?”

  Uh-oh. That was never a good sign. Gareth’s peppier conversations usually finished within a few seconds. There were never any meetings long enough to justify shutting the door. In any case, Jagger did as he was told and then stood across from Gareth, too nervous to sit down or stop scratching at his fingers with his fingernails.

  “Okay,” Gareth began, clicking his tongue behind his teeth. “Um, so you know what happened this week.”

  “I do,” Jagger said, aware that Gareth was referring to his house fire.

  “I have to report it,” Gareth said, still not looking at him directly in the eye.

  “To who?” Jagger asked, confused. Gareth was the highest authority in the county, maybe even in the state when it came to unsolved arsons.

  “To the police, Jagger. Listen… The other guys…. There’s a rumor going around and I can’t have you working with us again until I clear it.”

  Jagger had a suspicion that he knew what was coming. He had to hear it spoken out loud anyway. “What rumor?”

  Gareth sighed, his eyes sliding left, staring out of the window where several firefighters were eating their lunch, joking around together loudly. “Some people have pointed the finger at you, Jagger. For the arsons.”

  “The—the ones targeting Satan’s Blazes?” Jagger asked incredulously. “Why the hell would I set fire to my brothers’ houses?”

  Gareth shrugged. “Why does anybody do anything? Why does anybody ever light fires at all? I’d have to be a much smarter man to know the answer to that, Jagger. The point is, people are suspecting you now. Even people within your MC.”

  Jagger was speechless. He would never have guessed that members of Satan’s Blazes themselves might suspect him of the crimes. He’d been working so hard to help them, to protect everybody. How could his own family suspect him of something so crazy?

  Gareth kept going. “It’s… The situation with the nurse. It’s bad, J. It looks like… It looks like you locked her up because you knew your house was going to be targeted.”

  “I didn’t—I just didn’t want her to leave and get hurt, that’s all.”

  “That might be difficult to explain in court,” Gareth said.

  “Court?” Jagger parroted back, his brain uncomprehending the significance of the situation.

  “If the cops pick up on it, they could charge you with attempted murder. You guys just started messing around, right? From the outside, it could look like you got mad at your new girlfriend, locked her up, burnt the place down. Maybe it could even look like a copycat thing, like you did it trying to make it look like all the rest of the arsons.”

  “Gareth,” Jagger said, stepping a little closer to his boss. “Gareth, you know me. You know I would never do anything to put anyone’s life in danger, ever. You know that, right?”

  Gareth was quiet a moment, but at least he finally lifted his head to look Jagger directly in the eyes. “I know, son,” he finally said after a long pause. “But I don’t know if I can protect you from everybody else.”

  Jagger nodded, letting the words sink into his brain slowly. “You don’t have to, Gareth. It’s okay. Let the boys investigate me. They’ll figure it out,” Jagger said, even though he didn’t fully believe what he was saying. The boys hadn’t found the arsonist up until now; why would they suddenly be competent enough to find him now that Jagger was a prime suspect?

  “I hope so,” Gareth said, as unconvinced as Jagger secretly was. “Anyway. You’re off the squad for the time being, son. Just go home and get some rest.”

  Jagger wasn’t sure he even knew how to do that, but he just nodded, his eyes going unfocused as he pondered a life without the fire department. Jesus, I really fucked up, he thought to himself. If he hadn’t locked Abby in, none of the firefighters would have thought that he was capable of setting the fires. Now, he couldn’t even blame them. He’d done something so reckless, so selfish, so harmful that it wasn’t a giant leap to assume that he was capable of real violence. He thought about saying that to Gareth if only to ask Gareth to refute it, but he didn’t have any faith that the fire captain truly believed in him. Instead, he just nodded a few more times, turned on his heel, and walked out of Gareth’s office, heading back outside to his car.

  He knew he needed to rest. He needed to relax, stretch his legs, get his body back together so that his brain would start working again. Instead, he sped as fast as he could toward the hospital. Even if his coworkers and MC brothers believed he was a murderer, Jagger knew he could survive. He was a loner, someone who wandered off from the pack. He could live, but he wasn’t sure he could stand to live if Abby thought he ever meant to hurt her. He had to make sure she knew. He had to.

  # # #

  Abby

  The MC members left about an hour after dusk fell, leaving Abby in the dark. She wasn’t upset about it, though. After several hours surrounded by people, her skin started to itch in discomfort, and the room seemed to shrink around her. It still felt nice when she reflected back on the day, thinking of all the silly jokes and reassuring compliments that Lucy and the others said to her over the course of just a few hours. It was so nice, feeling like she belonged.

  She still didn’t know what she was going to do about Jagger. She had nowhere else to go except the compound, and the rest of the MC seemed welcoming enough, but she still had doubts. He’d hurt her really badly, even if he was torn up with guilt over it. Abby had spent so much of her life being a victim, even if she didn’t like to admit it. The truth was, maybe a little part of her
relished the opportunity to be pissed off, to have an available target on which to unleash her anger. Most of all, she was just conflicted. On the one side, she was furious, absolutely incensed that somebody had taken control of her like that, putting her in a position that could’ve gotten her killed. On the other hand, she was also so tempted to forgive him. That was the truly horrible thing. It would be so easy just to reach out and take his hand and tell him that it was okay, as long as he was sorry. Abby hated herself a little bit, for how easy it was for her to let go of it. She should have been tougher. She should have been forged out of iron, but she wasn’t. She was weak. She was soft. She relented. Despite all her performance to the contrary, she was a woman capable of love. That was the scariest thing of all.

  Abby was torn out of her introspection session by the sound of her phone on the little table next to her hospital bed, shrilling loudly. Who the fuck could be calling her? She already had the nurses here alert her various employers of what was going on. Her hand fumbled on the way to picking up the phone, accidentally knocking over an empty bottle of soda in the process before successfully scooping up her target.

  “Hello?” Abby half-groaned into the phone a second after pressing it up against her pounding skull.

  “Is this Abby Horton?” an unfamiliar male voice said on the other end of the phone.

  “Yes, who is this?” Abby replied, feeling her anxiety levels start to rise rapidly.

  “I’m the Fire Captain of Northwest county. I’m afraid I must give you some concerning news. It appears that you were intentionally locked inside Jagger Caldwell’s house… by Jagger himself.”

  “Yes, I already knew that,” Abby said, her tone a little irritated. Why was this random asshole wasting her time?

  “Oh, um, well, he is also under suspicion for twelve… now thirteen arsons connected to his motorcycle club.”

  There was a long pause, where Abby’s tongue struggled to find any words to reply to the Fire Captain. The words repeated on a loop inside her brain, getting larger and louder with each passing second. Jagger. Under suspicion. For arson. And now for Abby’s would-be murder.

  “Ms. Horton? Are you still with me?” the Fire Captain asked after a long pause.

  “Um, yes,” Abby stuttered, sitting up in her bed as sweat started to bead up along her scalp. “Um, why are you telling me this?”

  “I just want you to take care of yourself,” the man on the other end said. “Be careful who you trust.”

  Abby opened her mouth to reply, but before she could come up with anything to say she heard the line disconnect as the Fire Captain hung up. She slowly dropped her phone, letting it settle in her lap next to the television remote. She just stared down at her own hands, willing them to just. Stop. Shaking so she could do something with them, save herself with them, maybe.

  Just a moment later, the silence was interrupted again as heavy footsteps approached Abby’s room. She looked up to find Jagger lingering just inside the door, his hand still touching the knob behind him as if he was about to run out again at any second. He smiled softly at her, but it was a sad smile. His eyes weren’t full of light at all. They were dark. Abby couldn’t read what was there.

  “Did you try to kill me?” she asked without preamble. She hadn’t meant to blurt it out like that, but Abby supposed that was the only way she was ever going to say it out loud.

  Jagger’s face fell, his fake smile crumbling like a sandcastle in a tidal wave. “No,” he whispered, shaking his head even as it dipped low, his eyes focused on the ground beneath his feet. “No, I didn’t, Abby.”

  He sounded like he was telling the truth. Did Abby even know him long enough to tell the difference between the truth and a lie? Did she know him at all?

  “Why did you come here?” Abby asked. “What do you want?”

  Jagger was silent for a moment, leaning his head against the doorframe as his eyes stared off into the distance. “I want… I wanted to see if you were ready to come back.”

  “To you?” Abby whispered, afraid to say the words too loudly, like someone else would hear them and laugh at her, laugh at the idea that anybody wanted her for real.

  “To the compound,” Jagger said. “You have a place there if you want, no matter what. Lucy and the girls love you.”

  It was true. The MC women had taken a shine to Abby, making her feel at home even in the hospital, her personal hell. But going to the compound… That would mean she would have 24/7 access to Jagger. They would run into each other a lot, which meant they would probably become intimate again. Abby couldn’t trust herself with that, not when every time her shield fell she was emotionally slashed to pieces. She wasn’t a glutton for punishment. She wanted it to end. She wanted it to stop. She wanted all her suffering to finally go away. She was tired of torturing herself.

  “Jagger,” she said softly, watching his shadow move in the darkness in response to her voice. “Jagger, I’m sorry. I can’t. I can’t go back.”

  “Okay, that’s okay, I understand. You have to feel safe,” Jagger said, nodding quickly as if he was trying to convince himself. “Where are you going to go? A hotel? I can pay for it. I owe you so much more than that, but I can start there. You can pick out a 5-star one if you want.”

  Abby shook her head. “No, no, I can’t… I can’t be with you. I can’t be around you. It’s not safe, Jagger. It’s not…” She trailed off, uncertain of what she was trying to say.

  Jagger sniffled a little, and Abby wondered if he had a cold or if…. She couldn’t allow herself to think of him crying because then the old instincts would kick in, the impulse she had inside of her that always made her take care of men when they hurt. She couldn’t take care of him. She couldn’t look after him, no matter how badly she wanted to. “Okay. I understand,” Jagger said.

  “I need you to go,” Abby said, her voice wavering as she said it. “Please, Jagger. I can’t be around you. Please. I need you to leave. Please. Please. If you… If you ever cared about me, just go. Please go.”

  Jagger nodded again, as if he was glued to the wall and the only thing that could move was his neck. After a minute his entire body went still, as if he were a painting or a shadow that Abby had dreamed up. “I do care about you. Please remember that,” Jagger said before he turned and walked out of the room, shutting the door behind him as he disappeared, out of Abby’s life.

  Abby slowly lowered her body back down, flattening it against the mattress. She curled one of the pillows around to her front, while pushing another one behind her, so that she was sandwiched in the middle of them, feeling like she was being hugged by a giant marshmallow. She breathed in and out deeply, evenly, as powerfully as Abby’s lungs would allow. She waited till all the noise in the hallway dissipated, till everybody in the ward went to sleep. Then, and only then, did she allow herself to cry.

  Chapter Seven

  Jagger

  Jagger drove back to the compound as quickly as he could, swerving in and out of traffic and causing at least two people to honk at him in frustration. He didn’t care. He had to get home, he had to get there as fast as possible, or he was going to go out of his mind.

  He finally drove into the compound parking lot, rushing out of his car and running toward his bike. Several people tried to wave him over, but he ignored them, pretending that he hadn’t seen and wailing away on his bike. He knew he needed rest. He needed sleep. He needed to focus.

  Fuck that, he told himself. Fuck sleep, fuck rest, fuck everything that wasn’t the investigation. Getting the arsonist was the only thing that mattered now to save, both his ass and Abby’s, not to mention the entire MC. He had no other choice, and now there was nothing else standing in the way.

  Practically flying down the road, he finally arrived at the first suspect’s house, letting his engine go idle as he stopped a house’s length away. He tried to stare into the window or one of the open bullet-holes for a sign of Bruce, but there was nothing; all the lights had been turned off. Jagger cons
idered walking up to one of the windows and trying to peek at the old man while he slept, but there was always the chance that he was waiting in the dark with that gun, ready for Jagger to come for him. It was too risky to try on his own, Jagger realized. Abby had been right; This wasn’t a one-man mission.

  He shook his head, trying to clear his mind of all thoughts of Abby. It was a waste of time now. He had to stay away from her. It was what she deserved. Above anything, he wanted to help her feel safe. If the best way to do that was to ensure that he never saw her again, he’d have to deal with it. He was used to losing things.

  In any case, he couldn’t do this on his own. He needed at least two, maybe three other people on hand. For one, the suspects already knew that Jagger was after them. He couldn’t easily spy on them during the day without attracting attention. The other MC members might blend into a crowd more easily, allowing Jagger to keep tabs on the two of them at once. He honestly felt stupid that he hadn’t thought of this before. He figured he’d be able to handle the arson cases himself, protecting everybody without any help. Well, that strategy was a bust. He couldn’t afford to do everything on his own anymore. As he got back on his bike and headed toward the second suspect’s house, he quickly thought up a new plan. He’d use Tony, of course, in addition to a few other guys that could be trusted, Henry, Lee and Cash, in order to keep watch on the suspects at all times.