What the hell was wrong with him?
Why the hell was he doing this?
There wasn’t anything else I could do. He had made his choice despite how hard I worked to get him out of jail. I slumped into my car and choked back my tears, then cranked it up and backed out of his driveway. I couldn’t stay here and wait for him like some desperate piece of ass, even though something inside of me wanted to. I didn’t want to leave things like this between us. Not after what we’d shared.
And despite what he said, I knew it was something special.
But it couldn’t be. The rational part of me kept yelling that I couldn’t have feelings for a criminal. I was a lawyer. I put men like him behind bars when there was evidence to do so. My mind felt conflicted as my pelvis ached. Ached with the reminder of what we had just done.
Never in my life had I felt so torn between two worlds before.
I made my way back to my apartment and stalked in through the front door. I shut it behind me and made my way for the fridge, pulling out the opened bottle of wine. I popped the cork out of it and tipped it to my lips, feeling the alcohol fill my empty stomach.
Rose had been right. My emotional attachment to this case should’ve ended the moment the case was tossed out.
I walked out onto my porch with the bottle of wine to my lips. His arousal was still leaking from me, staining my panties and wetting my jeans. I sat in the chair on my small little porch, then looked out over the horizon towards the desert.
I wondered what Knox was doing. What trouble he was concocting with his club again and when I’d have to bail him out of whatever the fuck they would make him do next. I swallowed deep pulls of the wine, feeling the lightheaded sensation overcome me as I sat there. The sun was hot on my face as it hung low in the sky. It felt like lunchtime, but the truth was that the sun was about to set.
I’d spent my entire afternoon in the arms of a criminal who didn’t have any passion to change the course of his life.
I felt tears crest my eyes as the sun drenched my skin. But this time, I didn’t try to hold them back. I let them slide down my skin and find their death on my chest as I drained the wine bottle of its contents.
“Welcome to Redding,” I said with a snicker.
Hell of a crash course, I guessed.
Chapter 19
Knox
I slammed myself into the cab and told him where to drop me off. I didn’t want this asshole anywhere near the club, and I wanted to make sure if Monroe followed me she wouldn’t know where the lodge was. This was why I didn’t get involved with girls that weren’t associated with the lifestyle. Or our club, in general. They didn’t understand and they never would. Girls outside of this world had some sick notion that they could change us. Fix us. Put us on a right path towards a white picket fence and two and a half children. Those who hung around and were a part of this lifestyle knew exactly what they were getting into. They didn’t freak out when they started coming to terms with the fact that they’d fucked a criminal and had the best time of their life.
I was fuming as Monroe’s words rattled around in my head. Whatever that woman thought she could sway, she couldn’t. She was a good time and nothing more. It was time for her to go back to being our on-call lawyer whenever we couldn’t get in touch with Rose. And even though I was worried about this deal she struck with Diego, it wasn’t my issue anymore. She blew up at me for stupid shit and I wasn’t going to change over some tight pussy and being freed from jail.
That was her damn job.
It wasn’t like she did me a fucking favor.
I turned around in the cab and saw Monroe slam into her car. I watched to see if she would follow the cab, but instead she backed out of the driveway and turned to leave. Served her fucking right. She was a young little lawyer who was new to the game and thought it would be fun to have sex with the bad boy. She probably had some stupid ass client fetish where she did me a favor and I paid for her services in sex.
At least I left her with a memory that would be hard to top.
The cab navigated through the sandy streets of the desert. I had no fucking idea why Diesel was calling church now, but I figured it had to be important. And I had business to attend to. There was a rat we needed to smoke out. Someone in our club who was opening their fat mouth and talking about shit to other people. Hell, we didn’t even talk about our families to one another on a regular fucking basis.
What the hell made this shithead think he could talk about this shit to a friend?
And anyway, even if I did wanna stay with Monroe and try to make this shit work with her, how the hell could I protect her? I couldn’t even fucking protect Canyon and my mother. I couldn’t keep this out of this world no matter how hard I fucking tried. I trusted the wrong person and now police and the club were checking up on them every damn day.
How the hell was I supposed to protect Monroe if I couldn’t trust the men I rolled with?
Canyon. I needed to know Canyon was okay. I knew I was taking a risk by calling her, but I needed to hear her voice. I needed to know she was alive and okay. With a rat in the club, I was struggling to trust anyone. Diesel. Brewer. Mick. All of them. I was struggling just knowing I’d have to sit in a room with them and talk shit over now that I was out. I had no idea who to trust anymore, and for all I knew Canyon and my momma were dead.
Shit. I needed to call them now.
The cab came to a stop and I slid out my wallet. I handed the man some money then told him to leave the same way he came. I dug my phone out of my pocket and scrolled through my contacts, going all the day down to the name I had for my mother’s landline.
‘Zippy’.
So, no one who got my phone would know who the fuck it was.
“Hello?”
“Canyon. It’s me,” I said. “Color?”
“Blue and green, with a bit of white,” Canyon said.
“White? Who’s sick?” I asked.
“Grandma’s got a cough. We just got back from the doctor.”
“What kind of cough? Is it a bark? Wet? Dry?”
“Daddy, you worry way too much,” she said.
“Just answer the questions, smart aleck.”
“It’s sinus stuff. Wet, but not in her lungs. The doctor gave her a daily pill to take to help her runny nose and her drainage.”
“Sounds… gross,” I said.
“It is. But I’ve got it under control,” she said.
“How are you guys doing?” I asked.
“Daddy, we’re okay. Stop worrying so much.”
“I’m going to worry because you’re my daughter and I love you. How are you doing? You getting grandma some soup?” I asked.
“Yep. There’s some chicken noodle in the fridge already. She made some homemade a couple of nights ago when she first started feeling bad.”
“Then heat her up some in the microwave.”
“I already am, Daddy. Geez.”
“Sorry, princess. Listen, are there still police officers checking up on you guys?”
“How did you know about that?” she asked. “Daddy, did you ask them to come? You have to stop being so overprotective all the time.”
“One, I’m not overprotective. I’m just as protective as I need to be for a man who has a beautiful daughter. And second, no. I’m not. But they are coming by to make sure you guys don’t need anything.”
“Yes, they’re still coming by,” she said. “One came by this morning. He was the one that helped me get grandma to the doctor.”
“Good for him. I’ll have to find out who it was and thank him.”
“His name on his badge was Alvez. I looked at it in case you wanted to know,” she said.
“You’ve always been a smart girl.”
“Daddy?”
“Yeah?”
“When am I gonna see you again?”
My heart dropped to my toes as I continued to walk along the street. I could see the lodge on the horizon with motorcycles lined up ou
t front. This walk was a fucking death march in the heat of the sun, but I was close to making it.
Close to having my damn bike back.
“Soon,” I said. “Someone’s got a birthday coming up and I was thinking about coming to visit.”
“If you do, could you bring that awesome ice cream from the store across town?” Canyon asked.
“Don’t I always come with the good ice cream?” I asked.
“It’s so good. And it’s the only place around here that has raspberry and strawberry sherbet combined,” she said.
“Then I’ll definitely come with it,” I said with a grin. “Now, you take care of your grandma, okay? I’ll call soon.”
“You better. I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, princess. What’s my speed dial number?”
“Two,” she said.
“Two? I got bumped?”
“No,” she said with a giggle. “The one on grandma’s phone doesn’t always punch in the first time. She moved it to two until we can get a new landline phone.”
“I’ll have one sent to the house,” I said.
“Grandma would tell me to tell you not to do that.”
“Then tell grandma the only thing she needs to focus on is getting better. I’ll have a new landline phone sent to the house by the middle of next week.”
“Thanks, Daddy. I love you.”
“Love you too, princess. We’ll talk soon.”
“Bye.”
I hung up the call and shoved my phone into my pocket. The clubhouse seemed to get farther and farther away, but it gave me a good deal of time to think. My mind kept going back to Monroe. To how adamant she was about me changing my life. That wasn’t the plea of some woman mesmerized by a good dicking. She really thought I could turn my life around. The issue was, I didn’t want to. I picked my family when I joined The Dead Souls. They were my brothers. My sisters. Men and women I did business with and thrived among. They had my back when no one else did, including the one-night stand that dropped Canyon off on my doorstep when she was no more than a year old.
If I knew where that bitch was today, I’d have a few words for her.
Her fucking loss anyway. Canyon was a wonderful, intelligent young girl.
And she certainly didn’t get any of those traits from her bullshit mother.
I didn’t know why Monroe was so adamant about changing me. The fire in her eye was unmistakable and the way she fought with me was unlike anything any other woman had done. Usually when I raised my voice, people backed down. I had a voice that could thunder across valleys and echo off fucking canyons. But she kept up with me. Toe to toe. With a fire in her eye and a point to prove.
I guessed that was the lawyer in her.
I walked up to my bike that was parked in the parking lot and ran my fingers along it. Fuck, I’d missed that thing. Sleek black with pale green accents and chrome detailing. I’d put a lot of money into this thing. I wanted to teach my daughter how to ride it someday. Maybe hand it off to her so we could do father-daughter weekend road trips or some shit. I wanted to take care of it so it could take care of her if she ever got curious about bikes.
But she sure as hell wasn’t gonna be a part of this lifestyle.
She was better than all this.
“Knox? That you?”
I looked up and saw Mick striding across the parkin’ lot.
“Holy shit, man. I’m so glad you’re back.”
“Hey Mick,” I said with a grin. “I hear ya tried keeping up my job while I was gone.”
I hugged the man and patted his back as he smiled into my shoulder.
“I hate your fucking job. You can have it back,” he said.
“That bad, huh? You gotta be strong when dealin’ with customer service. People will try to take advantage of you if you aren’t,” I said.
“Fuck that shit. I’d rather run the fucking numbers any day of the damn week.”
“Don’t worry. We all wanna let you do that shit. I hated math in high school and that shit hasn’t changed,” I said.
“Come on. Everyone’s waiting for you in the clubhouse.”
I walked with Mick as the two of us entered the lodge. The guys got up and hollered their hellos, then embraced me as Diesel sat and smiled. I was happy to see the guys. I really was. But I couldn’t shake the fact that I was hugging a damn rat. The only men in my club who knew about Canyon were the men I was sitting around.
And that boiled my fucking blood that one of them was playing nice.
“Good to have you back,” Grave said. “Thought I was gonna have to take out some guards to get you out of there.”
“You really like spilling blood, don’t you?” I asked.
“When the time’s right,” Grave said with a smirk.
“The fuck? I thought they killed you in there,” Rock said. “I hacked into the security footage. They fucking did a number on you.”
“Gonna take more than a few pussy assholes to take me down,” I said.
“How’d you like those guards on C-block?” Brewer asked.
“Ah, so you were responsible for the nice guards,” I said. “Why the hell didn’t I put that together?”
“You were too busy working through broken ribs, that’s why,” Diesel said.
I looked over at my friend and I could see a spark of frustration in his eye. Something had gone down between me getting out and me getting here. I embraced my friend and hugged him tightly, then he moved his lips to my ear and began to whisper.
“Whittling it down.”
I nodded my head, letting him know I knew what he was talking about. I was the last at church because he was trying to get a read on everyone. Diesel was a notorious softie. Didn’t enjoy the sight of blood, didn’t enjoy throwing punches, and sure as hell didn’t enjoy killing people like Grave did. He wanted to settle things over alcohol, food, and conversation. But what he was good at was reading people.
I mean, eerily good.
Someone could come in with a different-colored mud on their shoe and he could rattle off where they’d been, how long they’d been there, and who they had been with.
No fucking joke.
And that meant he was putting his skills to good use. Getting the guys alone with him so he could analyze them. Compare it to how they interacted when they were around me.
Smart ass man, that one.
“Okay, enough with the ass kissing,” Diesel said. “We got shit to talk about.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“Short and sweet? The Black Saddles are being very quiet about Blaze’s death. There’s a body, and because of Brewer’s connections with the police in town he was able to get a copy of the coroner’s report.”
“Fucking knife wound in the man’s back,” Brewer said.
“So, Blaze was murdered that night. He was in that body bag,” I said.
“Yeah, but you didn’t put him there,” Mick said. “Someone else did. Someone else who was there that night.”
“I don’t wanna hold my breath on them being silent about it for long. I know The Black Saddles are shit, but they aren’t psychopathic. It takes some serious issues to kill one of their own, especially a prospect. I don’t suspect they’ll be silent about his death for long,” Diesel said.
“Either way, someone set Knox up to take that fall,” Mick said. “We can’t ignore that.”
“He’s right,” Grave said. “And that lawyer girl can toss around things like government attorneys all she wants. But someone had to set Knox up for that in order to keep him in jail as long as he was.”
“So… what the fuck do we do?” I asked. “We gotta figure out who set me up.”
“That’s why we’re here,” Diesel said. “You on board for something like that?”
“Hell yeah I’m on board. You think I was gonna let this shit go?” I asked.
“I didn’t know what the hell you were gonna be up for,” Diesel said. “Your bruises are still fading and you’re still
walking with a slight limp.”
“I’m fine. Been through worse,” I said.
“Better man than I am,” Mick said. “I would’ve been begging for morphine and crying like a little bitch.”
“At least he ain’t scared to admit it,” I said with a grin.
“I think we could all use some food,” Diesel said. “Why don’t we head to the bar, get some sandwiches and some drinks, and start brainstorming what the fuck we’re gonna do from here.”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” I said. “Food in jail ain’t even fit to feed a fucking dog. I’m ready for a decent burger and something other than fucking treated sewer water.”
Chapter 20
Monroe
I was frustrated with Knox. How the hell could he just go back to a life like that? It was what put him in jail in the first place. Did he not give a shit about that? It was like a petulant toddler that put his hand on a hot surface and kept doing it. What the fuck was he getting out of this? Why would he want to continue living a life like that when he was given a second chance?
I had put my reputation on the line for him. Fought with my new bosses’ time and time again to get him out of that place. I had to do things I was nowhere near proud of doing in order to get the information I needed to set him free. Most lawyers would’ve helped cut him a deal and let him rot in prison. But not me. That wasn’t acceptable to me and I made it known.
And this was what he went and did? After fucking me against his damn wall?
It made me angry. Angrier than I’d been in long time. But as angry as I was at him for being involved with his club still, I couldn’t stay mad at him. Every time I allowed my mind to wander and every time I closed my eyes, I saw him. I saw his bruised and battered body lying in that hospital bed and I woke up with this fear in my chest. This panic that took forever to subside.
As much as I hated the life he lived, I felt a connection with him.
What type of connection, I wasn’t sure. But I couldn’t get him out of my mind. He was in my dreams and in my thoughts. There were moments that happened and voices I heard that made me think he was around the corner. There were points in my days where things happened and I wanted to call him and tell him about him.
Knox (Dead Souls MC Book 1) Page 12
