by DD Prince
“Yeah, Dad’ll be miffed I ate the last of his stash. That’s all right, though. He’ll come bag another soon.”
I gawked at him.
He lifted the empty beer bottles from the table and tossed them into a recycling bin beside the garbage bin.
“Bag another?”
He turned to look at me.
“What kind of meat was that, Rider?” I asked, my stomach flip-flopping.
His mouth opened as a look of uncertainty spread across his face.
“Venison,” he said.
“Venison? As in…no.”
He cracked a half a smile, but sucked in breath.
“Deer?” I asked.
He stared at me.
“You fed me a deer? Like… like Bambi?”
“Ah fuck,” he rolled his eyes on his exhale, “Why am I not surprised?”
“The fuck is that supposed to mean?” I demanded.
“Babe. It’s meat. You liked it. Fuckin’ Disney.”
“You lied to me. It was a deer!”
“It was steak, Jenna. It just happened to be a venison steak.”
“I’m gonna puke.” I pushed past him and ran to the bathroom and stood there over the sink.
I stood there. And breathed. And shook my head. And waited.
I wasn’t gonna puke. Nothing was coming up. I conjured Bambi up in my mind all prancy and frolicky with fluffy little Thumper.
Still nothing was gonna come up.
I was thinking maybe I should make myself barf, so I could get it out of my stomach. No. I hated puking.
I looked at my expression in the mirror. I was still all puffy-eyed.
I couldn’t believe I cried in front of him! Hugged him and thanked him for dinner when he was feeding me Bambi. After having me kidnapped, chained to a bed, and having sex with me in my sleep even after telling me I sucked in bed.
I stormed out and went back to the kitchen. He wasn’t there.
I started washing dishes. Angrily.
I felt him behind me. He had my ponytail in his grip, his mouth went to my neck. I winced and shook him off.
“I take it our cease-fire has ended?” He ran his hand up and down my back.
“You’re damn right. I can’t believe you didn’t tell me that it wasn’t steak!” I faced him.
“It was steak.”
“Not beef steak!”
“So, it’s okay to eat a cow, not a deer. Ah. All right. I’ll remember that.”
I glared at him. He rolled his eyes at me.
“It’s actually not okay to eat anything that’s cute. If I think about Norman from City Slickers, I go off beef for months. I can’t think of them as animals. I have to think of it as groceries. I think about Finding Nemo or Finding Dory and I can’t even eat sushi. And I love sushi! And you just made me think of Bambi. After I ate him!”
“You can’t think of venison as groceries?”
“Not right now I can’t, because you didn’t present it the right way!”
He looked like he was dizzy from my words.
“You do realize that it doesn’t come from a grocery store. It comes from an animal.”
“Shhhhhhhut uppp.” I slapped his shoulder. “If I think about where it comes from, I can’t eat it.”
“You’re funny, baby. And you’re an elitist, too. Only eating ugly animals. I feel bad for those poor fuckin’ duck-billed platypuses.”
“No!” I pointed a sudsy fork at him. “Don’t even try to make me laugh. I’m serious! Away from me. I’m so mad I could throw something at you! Go. Let me wash up in peace.”
He backed away, shaking his head. “Whatever.” But, he was smiling.
I washed up in peace. Sort of. He didn’t bug me, but I made a racket. I was pissed. But I had peace, in a way, because I wasn’t under his intense gaze.
When I was done, I looked over my shoulder and saw he was asleep on one of the couches, a fire crackling away in the fireplace. Despite the racket I’d made.
I stood there and looked at him a minute. He looked pooped. And he looked good.
All the driving back and forth. Up half of last night helping Ella. Getting woken because his place was on fire. Driving back here and fighting with me after spending what was probably several hours at a hospital. Cooking dinner for me. Making a fire. Guilt washed over me.
I found a blanket in the bunkbed bedroom closet. I put it on him, that fist feeling tighter around my throat. I checked to make sure all the doors were locked, which they were, and then I went to bed.
***
I woke up to him climbing in with me. In the dark. He spooned me.
“Hey,” he whispered into the back of my neck, gathering my hair and lifting it out of the way. He kissed the back of my neck, and I shivered.
I blinked in the dark a couple times.
“Rider, don’t.”
“Freezin’ in here. I need your body heat.” He kissed me again and wrapped both arms around me.
His fingers wove together with mine near my hip and that made me blink a couple more times. My ear was on his bicep.
I closed my eyes and snuggled in and dozed back off.
***
I woke up and thought he was gone, but then my hand moved around and landed on his arm. He was here. He’d just rolled away.
I rolled into him and spooned him and put my cheek against his bare back, then fell back to sleep.
***
I woke up at what felt like the crack of dawn. Alone. My phone’s text alert was going off. From far away.
I dashed out to the living area and saw him standing there, bare chested, in just a pair of track pants, looking at my phone sitting on the coffee table, a muscle ticking in his jaw.
I picked it up. He grabbed it from my hand and pointed at me.
“Gimme my phone,” I hissed.
He handed it to me and pointed. “Be good.”
I slapped his pointy finger. “Don’t point at me.”
His eyes narrowed, and he slapped my butt. “Don’t hit. I hit back, remember?”
My butt was stinging. I backed away from him and read the text on my screen.
A text from Daniel Sotheby.
“Sorry to text so early, but wanted to ask if you wanted to meet for breakfast today before work. What do you think?”
I put the phone down and walked to the kitchen to put the coffee on. The clock on the stove told me it wasn’t that early; it was almost 9:00.
Rider was standing there, leaning against the counter. I could feel his eyes on my back.
“Not gonna text back?”
“I can’t exactly text him to make a date if I’m not there, can I?” I retorted huffily.
I started washing yesterday’s coffee out of the pot.
He pressed up against my back full-body. I locked tight.
“You’re not making a date with him for when you’re back, either.” He moved my hair all to one side and massaged my neck and then kissed it.
My eyes widened.
“Oh. Aren’t I?” I asked, busily cleaning the pot, trying (and failing) to ignore the goosebumps.
His teeth sank into where my throat met my shoulder. I hissed.
“Quit biting me!” I had an ugly hickey on my throat and several sets of bite marks from him. Like he was part vampire or something.
He let go of me. “You’d better not.”
I spun around.
“Or what?”
“Or I’ll find him.” He moved forward, pinning me against the counter. “And I’ll let him know you’re not available. With a strong message, if need be.” He put both hands on the counter’s edge by my sides. Caging me in.
I rolled my eyes. “Since when am I not available?”
“Since here and now. Right now. Let’s discuss it. You and me.” He took a step back, folding his arms across his chest.
“What you and me?” I snapped.
“The you ‘n me you wanted,” he said. And he looked like he was serious.
&nb
sp; I stared, my expression cold. “You don’t want monogamy and monotony, Rider.”
“What if I do want monogamy. What if you’re showin’ me it’ll be anything but monotony?”
I glared at him. “What if I don’t want it?”
“Because you saw some bullshit video? It was just a game and it was before we met.”
“Okay, how ‘bout this?” I said, dumping coffee into the filter and hitting the buttons to make it start. “Imagine I was the girl in that video. Would you want anything to do with me? Even if it was from before we met? If you saw that, or even saw a tame version of a sex video of me with a guy, would you want a relationship with me?”
His expression dropped. His eyes worked over my face. And then his shoulders dropped a little. Not a lot, but enough that I noticed.
And I immediately wanted to take it back. Against all logic. Because it was obvious right there and then that he wouldn’t. Not ever.
“Oh, and I’m the hypocrite?” I challenged.
He moistened his lips. “So, you can’t let that go? Even if it had nothing to do with you, because I hadn’t laid eyes on you yet, and was just a game? What shoulda been a harmless game while I was unattached and wasted? I wore a condom. Never kissed her. And she wanted it. Got tested afterwards, too, to make sure. But seriously, if that’s all you can think of when you look at me? Then maybe I’m kiddin’ myself here.”
My chest started to burn.
“Is that all you think of when you look at me, Jenna?”
I stared.
He stared back.
This was it.
Showdown.
His burner phone started to ring a loud, shrill, annoying ring.
“Better go answer that. It might be an emergency,” I said softly, grateful, strangely, for the interruption.
He took a big breath and turned around and moved away.
I felt my shoulders slump. I closed my eyes.
He said Hello. And then he asked, What? And the what was said with alarm. He held the phone a long time. I watched from the kitchen and saw his expression drop, his eyes close, and his fingers pinch the bridge of his nose.
“Where’s Joelle?” he whispered. “Brady still with her? Right. Be there in a bit.”
He put the phone down and took a couple of big breaths. So big his shoulders moved up and down with his breaths.
Dread spiked in my belly.
“We gotta go,” he said, moving toward the bedrooms. And then, he abruptly turned and headed back to the table, looking frazzled. He grabbed the phone and was dialing. “Spence. Call me back.” He was dialing again. “Deacon? Where the fuck are you? Call me.” More dialing. “Dad? Call me. Someone call me. Fuck.”
I followed.
“What’s wrong?” It wasn’t good, whatever it was.
He stopped in the doorway of the bedroom and then I watched him take a big breath and then his fist struck the wood paneling with unleashed rage.
I jumped back.
He slammed into it again and again and again.
I backed up more.
His eyes cut to me. I was just standing there. Frozen. Scared.
“The Jackals got Jet,” he told me.
I covered my mouth with both hands, eyes wide.
“Edge’s old lady. They left her in front of the gates to our clubhouse.” He braced himself on the doorframe with both palms. His eyes aimed at his feet.
“Left… her?”
“Her body.”
I felt my knees give way. I went right down on those knees to the rug.
“They raped her, they wrote our names on her body. And they left her fuckin’ dead on the ground at our gates. Her throat was purple.”
His hand was bleeding. The wood of the hallway had multiple splits and a big hole in it.
“You have to let me protect you.” He dropped to his knees in front of me and grabbed my shoulders. He was squeezing too hard. “You have to let me.”
I nodded a little.
“We gotta go. I want to know my sister’s safe. It’s you and her.”
“Me and her?”
“Scoot doesn’t have a woman. They got Edge’s woman. Lick’s dead but Jojo isn’t, though they almost took her out. They called off their hounds on Ella, but even still. D won’t fall down on the job of keepin’ her safe. And there’s you. Because of me. I won’t let them get you.”
I stared, emotion clogging my chest, my throat, my brain.
“I’m sorry. I’m fuckin’ sorry this shit is your problem, but baby, let me protect you. Please.” He put his hand around the back of my neck and rubbed his thumb up and down my throat, staring at it.
I nodded.
“Let’s go,” he said.
“You have to clean that.” I grabbed his hand. “You’ve probably got splinters.”
He kissed my forehead and held my head there. Tears burned in my eyes. I wouldn’t let them fall. If I did, they might never stop.
He let me go and then moved into the bathroom and I heard the water running.
I quickly tidied and got my dirty clothes that I’d worn when we got here. I stayed in yesterday’s sweat pants and hoodie and put on a fresh pair of borrowed socks and my Converse. I grabbed a ponytail holder and two to-go mugs and filled them with fresh coffee. He was outside, talking on the phone. I popped my head out.
“One sec,” he said into the phone, and his eyes came to me.
“How do you take your coffee?”
“Black. Thanks, gorgeous.” His attention went back to his phone conversation. “Yeah Dad,” he said, and I went back inside, finished up the coffees and turned everything off. I did a walk-through, turning lights off and met him at the Charger with my purse and my laundry bundle.
When I got in, it was already running, the heat on. It was extra chilly outside.
He moved back inside the house and I waited. And that was when my hands started to shake. I’d kept busy and focused between that scene in the hallway and now. And now, my brain had a chance to let the fear set in. My hands shook hard. My whole body was trembling. He came back out with a Duffle bag and locked up.
“There was another death,” he said as we backed out.
“No,” I breathed. This was surreal.
I’d only minutely been exposed to death. Dad’s elderly aunt. A neighbor who passed. A couple of the people at Ella’s gran’s nursing home. And it’d always hit hard, but not like this. Not as a result of murder.
“Ben Costner. Jackal. Found in a dumpster back in Aberdeen.”
I frowned.
“They’re tryin’ to frame us. Costner was Kailey’s old man.”
I gave him a confused shake of my head.
“Kailey. The cunt in that video.”
I winced.
“He was a pawn. The Jackals are trying to take us down. This is war.”
“Where are we going now?”
“Pickin’ up Joelle from the house and you and her are getting locked down in the Sioux Falls clubhouse.”
I bugged my eyes out.
“Um, I have to do hair and make-up for a wedding this weekend, and…”
“Jenna, honest to God, the last fucking thing I need is to fight with you about this.”
I moistened my lips. “This is someone’s wedding. The biggest day of her life, Rider. She’s counting on me. I know what she wants. No one else knows, and if I could just…”
“No.”
“Ri---”
“NO!” He slammed his hand on his dash board and I jolted. His knuckles were already a mess from the wood paneling in the cabin. He’d wrapped them with gauze, but the gauze was all bloody.
I folded my arms across my chest and decided to give it a few hours. Let him calm down. People were dying. People were scared.
I was scared. Scared was an understatement.
10
Almost an hour had passed in the car with him and I was having a quiet but kind of intense internal freak-out.
A woman had died because o
f that video. Died. Brutally, by the sounds of it. Shit was real. Way too real.
A woman in a relationship with one of the guys (I didn’t know which guy, the long-haired guy or the guy with the faux hawk) was dead. Scooter had been raped and beaten. And Scooter was a guy! This shit was real. And it was swirling around me.
Ella had been kidnapped and nearly raped. Rider’s sister had landed in the hospital because of one of those guys and she could’ve died.
The only two people not affected so far were us two. Unless you counted that Rider was affected, because he was related to Jojo and in the same MC as the other three guys. And me affected by being kidnapped, but by the Doms instead of the Wyld Jackals (Thankfully). Would Rider or I get hurt before this was over? What would make the other MC call this feud off?
And I was anxious about the wedding, too. That bride, Kendra, was going to go ape-shit if her hairdresser didn’t show up. She had a complicated up-do. And she wasn’t a bridezilla, per se, but she was picky. As she should be. It was her wedding day! When my time came, if it ever did, I’d be a total bridezilla.
It took me four up-dos to find one she loved and not to be a brag, but I was good at the up-do. Not all hair stylists are created equal. It was going to be the most important hair-day of her life. She did not deserve to be flaked out on. She deserved those intricate braids, those curls, the pearls and gems in her hair that made her cry and hug me when I showed her.
And no matter what emergency I had, there was no way she wasn’t going to see this as a betrayal.
She’d lose her mind if I texted her and told her I couldn’t come, sending her the pics of our practice run and telling her to give them to some other stylist. It seemed petty to think about that right now when comparing it to rape and murder, but this was that girl’s wedding day, and she didn’t know about all this other stuff. Bottom line: I didn’t want to let her down.
And would I even have a salon when all this was over? My parents could sell my salon, leaving me jobless and homeless. And that would also screw with Pippa’s livelihood. And the promises I made to Ella to help her out with hours while she was looking for another job. The cab company had cut her hours, so she was relying on me.
I felt sick to my stomach. And neither of us had spoken the entire ride so far.
We were pulling up to a large ranch-style bungalow with a triple garage in a nice neighborhood. When we stopped in the driveway, a bleach-blonde late 40s early 50s woman wearing jeans, a pink tank top with excessive cleavage (and a black bra), and high-heeled boots (and what looked like yesterday’s make-up), was standing there and talking to Brady, her body language looking angry. She dashed for the car, dropping a leather jacket on the ground. She looked like strung-out biker broad trash.
