by Marla Monroe
What about Jackie could possibly have put that look on Gunner’s face again? She seemed nice enough from the few minutes he’d known her. She hadn’t acted turned off by their being bikers, only cautious and maybe a little afraid.
I don’t know what’s going on, but I’m sure as hell going to find out before Gunner gets himself hurt or, worse, all of us in trouble if his head isn’t in the game.
He’d have a talk with Scoot tomorrow after Jackie had worked a few hours to see if the other man noticed anything strange about her. When he’d finished talking to her and she’d left, Hawk had asked him what he thought about the woman. All he’d said was that she seemed smart and very confident she could handle the jobs.
If that didn’t shake something loose, he’d have a talk with her. Worse came to worse, he’d have to go to the prez over it and see what he wanted to do. Hawk didn’t want it to get that far, but Gunner’s sanity and the club’s well-being came first. His friend would be pissed off and either beat the fuck out of him or give him the silent treatment for a while—then it would all blow over. Still, Hawk didn’t like hammering away on the trust they had for each other.
When he rode down the single-lane road leading to their clubhouse, he prayed Gunner was there and hadn’t gone off riding at three in the morning by himself. Wasn’t safe for any of them to go off alone these days and definitely not at night. To his relief, his cycle was parked in the normal spot. Hawk waved at one of the prospects standing near the bikes as guard for the night.
The clubhouse looked a hell of a lot better than it had when they’d lost half their members in an all-out war several years back. Terror and Rage were good for the club and had solid ideas to keep them pretty much on the straight and narrow. So far, they’d bought the bar, were in partners with Bear at the gym, were opening a parts store, and were expanding the bike shop to include custom work and hot rod repairs.
Along with that and working toward setting Settler’s Point up as a sanctuary, they’d managed to enlarge the clubhouse and update everything, so it was comfortable with several small suites for out of town guests and when a brother needed to stay overnight. They encouraged all the club members to buy or build houses in the area instead of bunking at the clubhouse all the time.
Rage said it showed a commitment to the community and would gain them respect as contributing to the town instead of respect out of the fear. Some of the guys didn’t much care how they got their respect, but as he’d gotten older, the looks he used to get from people made his soul tired.
“What’s crawled up Gunner’s ass?” Loco asked as soon as he walked into the community room.
“Don’t know. Why?” He ran his hands through his hair to rake it down after pulling off the helmet.
“Stomped through here like a damn bear then roared at KK when she asked if he wanted some company.” Loco pulled KK closer and kissed her cheek.
“He’ll settle down. Everything’s up in the air right now with the plans and now talk about the One-Niners. Cut him some slack for a few days.”
He sure as fuck better settle down, or I’m going beat the reason for his attitude right out of him.
“Why the hell would he be worried about those mothers?”
“It’s just one more brick in the wall, Loco. It’s all good.” Hawk bumped fists with him before walking toward the kitchen.
As soon as he entered the room, Hawk stopped dead in his tracks.
* * * *
Gunner heard someone walk into the kitchen but didn’t bother to look up. Instead, he filled his glass from the half-empty bottle again and turned it up. It burned nice and sweet going down, hitting his stomach with a punch that warned him he’d regret this later. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about later. Later might never come. Right then all he wanted was to feel warm again. He needed the cold, the bitter arctic chill that had razor sharp claws cutting into his soul to just be gone. Completely, entirely gone for good.
“You just left a bar, and now you’re going to start drinking again?” The anger in Hawk’s voice didn’t bother him in the least at the moment.
“Couldn’t get a good buzz on when I had to drive back here, now could I?” He poured another glass of whiskey, not bothering to cap the bottle afterward. He was only going to have to take it back off again in a minute.
“I’m not your fucking mother or your priest, so I’m not going to lecture you, Gunner…” he began.
“Then don’t! Shut the hell up and keep on walking.”
“But drinking isn’t going to solve whatever has your britches twisted, man. You know that.”
Gunner grabbed the bottle, thinking briefly about throwing it at the man but thought better of it. No reason to waste perfectly good booze on the asshole, no matter how pissed he was. He just wanted the fucking memories to disappear and take that damn woman with them.
Why? Why did she have to show up in this town of all the shitholes in the state when he was just starting to stop remembering? Why did it even matter in the first place? She was nothing to him. Once she earned enough to pay for the repairs on her truck, she would be gone. Good fucking riddance.
“Don’t shut me out, man. We’ve been through hell then dove into purgatory together. Spit it out and let’s deal with it. What’s wrong?” Hawk pulled out a chair and sat across the table.
Gunner sighed and capped the bottle. He wasn’t going to be able to enjoy getting his drunk on anyway. Standing, he slid the bottle of numbing oblivion back into the cabinet and quietly shut the door. It took a few seconds for him to swallow down the pain, but once he’d managed, Gunner sat back down to look at his friend for nearly twenty-five years. They’d grown up together, hidden from their fucked-up dads together. They didn’t keep secrets, but some things were just too painful to dredge up again.
He looked at his hands. He just couldn’t look at the pity he knew he’d see in Hawk’s eyes when he said it. He could handle just about anything, any emotion, any pain, any disappointment, but he couldn’t handle the pity. Never had been able to even when he’d been a child.
“When I looked at her after she got off your bike at the garage, she reminded me of her. I’d been trash talking about the little hitchhiker all the way into town, wanting to mess around with her, see if I could talk her into sticking around for a while when it punched me in the gut. I just can’t deal with it, Hawk.” He fisted his hands over and over again, watching his knuckles grow white then blood-red.
“I don’t understand, Gunner. She doesn’t look one bit like Peggy. How could she remind you of her?” Hawk shifted in his chair.
“Her eyes. She had that same, almost dead look that used to tear me up every time I saw it. Always made me feel like a failure. Like I should have been able to do something.” He looked away. “I just couldn’t handle seeing that again.”
“There was nothing you could do for her, man. We’ve been over it before. Peggy was always a little broken. Even before the miscarriages. You know that.”
He finally looked up. “Doesn’t make it right. I should have been there. I could have stopped her.”
“Yeah, like you’d stopped her how many times before? There would always have been a next time and a next time until it happened and you were there. It was inevitable, Gunner.” Hawk drew in a deep breath and leaned back in the chair. “I just wish we’d realized she was sick before things got serious between you.”
“I knew what she was going to do, Hawk. I had a gut feeling, but I was tired of her games, and we were in the middle of a war that was about to come crashing down on us. I should have gone back instead of waiting.” He shook his head and stood. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Gunner walked out of the kitchen and down the hall that led to the old part of the clubhouse. It was where the guys slept or took the girls back for fun and games. He had no need for anything more than a bed and access to a toilet. All he wanted to do was sleep. No dreams, no nightmares, just sleep.
He chose the first room that had an
open door. Checking to make sure the sheets had been changed, Gunner shut the door with the toe of his boot then locked it and grabbed the back of his T-shirt and pulled it over his head and off his arms before dropping it at his feet. He sat on the creaky bed and pulled off one boot then the other, letting them drop with a muted thump on the floor.
Her light brown eyes reminded him of a timid doe, suspicious of her surroundings. For a brief second, he’d seen arousal and maybe even a little bit of longing before the darkness, that pit of emptiness took over. That’s when he’d known that she was just like his dead wife. One look at the scars on her wrists told him that he’d been right. Not again. Never again.
What the hell am I going to do with her working at the bar? I can’t fucking avoid the place since we hang out there and talk most nights. I can’t look at her and know what she’s done and probably going to do again without it eating me up inside.
The real kicker was that he was attracted to her for some stupid reason. Something about the way she moved and the defiant way she’d tried to hide her fear drew him close. It made him want to wrap her in his arms to keep her safe then fuck her brains out to hear the wild screams he knew would be there. Only Gunner knew nothing he could do would ever keep her safe from herself. He couldn’t hold her enough or love her enough to change whatever demons she fought deep down inside where no one else could touch but her.
He unfastened his belt and the top button of his jeans then stretched out on top of the covers with his hands clasped behind his head. No use in getting comfortable. He wouldn’t be getting much sleep now.
Chapter Six
“Two burgers with the works and a large order of fries!” Jackie was going to hear that order in her dreams. It was just about the same order she’d gotten over and over again since she’d clocked in at three.
It was nearly six and her feet already burned from standing on hard concrete for three hours straight. She dreaded the next eight she still had to go. It was the fucking boots. If she’d had decent shoes with some cushion, it wouldn’t be as bad. She swore that she would make sure and buy a pair before she returned to work.
So far, everything had gone smoothly. No one had complained about their order or how long they had to wait for it. It had been a good four years since she’d cooked short order, but it wasn’t rocket science or fancy meals. She could handle flipping burgers and dropping fries. Waiting tables didn’t bother her either. She could do that in her sleep no matter how busy they got.
No, it was Gunner, the guy who’d tried to buy her way out of town for her. Why hadn’t she taken him up on the offer?
Because I don’t take charity when I can earn what I need, and I sure as hell don’t take handouts.
But Jackie knew she could have paid him back once she’d found a job in a different town. It had been his attitude that had pissed her off. She didn’t follow orders from strangers who weren’t her boss, and she absolutely didn’t from sanctimonious bastards like a damn biker. What the hell was up with that, anyway?
She refused to allow even an inkling of the truth that she was attracted to the asshole figure into it. Jackie could admit to a little infatuation with his buddy, Mr. Sexy as Sin Voice. That she could accept, but not his royal ass-ness. He didn’t figure into it one bit.
The snort escaped before she could stop it, eliciting a giggle before she realized her fries were going to burn if she didn’t pull them up.
“Need another order of fries, Jack,” Duke shouted through the opening.
It hadn’t taken long for Duke and the other waitresses to accept her nickname. They got a kick out of using it, especially when she ended up taking the orders out herself so they wouldn’t get cold waiting for one of them to have time to take the meal to the table. The customers checked out the name tag on her shirt twice before giving her a long, puzzled look.
She’d told one table that she was just filling in for Jack and using his shirt. She was fairly sure they had believed her. Chrissy, one of the waitresses, had laughed and slapped her on the back before telling the others what she’d done.
“You’re going to fit in here just fine, Jack,” Duke had said. “Just keep away from Gunner and everything will be good.”
“Right,” she muttered under her breath after returning to the kitchen. “And I’m the Easter Bunny.”
She had a short lull before eight. Jackie cleaned the kitchen so she wouldn’t have as much to do later. While she worked, she tried to make plans for when her truck was ready. She wanted to eventually make it to Farmington, Missouri. A distant relative on her mom’s side lived there. Her mom had always talked about how much she missed her aunt Beany. They’d called her that when they hadn’t been able to pronounce her real name, Beatrice. At four and five years of age, Beany’s name stuck until she moved away to get married.
Her mom said Aunt Beany would come back to visit until Mom had married Joe. Then after a few years, she didn’t come back. Mom had told her that Dad hated Beany because she fussed at him all the time. Beany hadn’t approved of the way Joe treated them. Jackie could easily attest to that. He’d been a mean drunk and a poor provider. Half the time it was her mom who’d worked to put food on the table, which meant she and her siblings were home alone with their dad all day.
Jackie could remember very little about her aunt since she’d only been about five when there’d been that big fight. Her dad had told Aunt Beany never to come back, or he’d make her sorry. She remembered her mom begging her aunt just to go so there wouldn’t be any trouble. And she’d gone. As far as Jackie knew, her mom had never talked to her again, though there had been a few letters here and there. Jackie and the others tried to catch the mailman before her dad so they could hide anything that was addressed to their mom.
The memories burned in her gut just like always, but they were nowhere near as hard to live with as the ones that came later. Those she kept under lock and key. Those had no room in her world anymore. She was starting over, without those terrible secrets to pull her down.
She didn’t plan on staying with her aunt Beany. Jackie just wanted to see her again. Maybe just to prove that there had been someone who had loved them back then when it didn’t feel like there was anyone who cared. Her mom had believed that everything would get better one day. She’d believed it right up until the end, when Jackie’s dad had finally snapped and gone on a shooting spree.
Jackie looked down and realized she’d been drying the same spatula for the last few minutes. She hated it when she got lost in the memories. They didn’t do her any good. She needed to forget it all and stop going back through them like picture albums. All it did was reopen old wounds. Old wounds that didn’t heal led to infections that slowly ate away at you from the inside until it was too late to get anything that would heal them.
“Hey, Jack! I’m going to close the kitchen down a little early tonight. We’re swamped out here. Go ahead and shut everything down and help wait tables. They can live without their burgers and fries, but they can’t live without their booze.” Duke’s chuckle reminded her that she was alive and living a new life.
“Be right there.” Jackie quickly double-checked the fryers and the grill then locked the padlocks on the freezer and fridge.
By the time she’d changed from her full apron to the shorter one, she could hear the increasing noise level as people crowded in to visit, listen to music, and drink, not necessarily in that order.
“Where do you want me?” she asked, Duke.
“Help me behind here for now. I can’t keep the trays filled and handle the bar at the same time. Don’t know what the hell is going on in town, but someone left the gate open.”
Jackie laughed and got to work. When shift change came at nine, she was exhausted and still had another five or so hours to go. She could already feel the blisters on her feet and figured there would be even more before she made it back to the hotel.
“Jack, this is Gail. She’ll show you your section and fill you in. I’ve got t
o leave it with you until Randy gets here. Then you can let him take over, and you can hit the floor. Great working with ya’, kid.” Duke gave her a soft punch in the arm and pulled off the bar apron he wore to step down and walk toward the back of the room where the rest of his club sat talking.
“Jack?” Gail asked with a raised brow. “How’d you end up with that name?”
“Name’s Jackie, but it gets shortened to Jack all the time. Doesn’t bother me, though.” She shrugged. “Okay, what do you need?”
* * * *
Gunner swung his leg over the back of the bike and pulled off his helmet. He’d put off coming for as long as he could. Hawk had made him promise he’d show up before ten and he had. Twice now. It was a quarter of and this was it. He couldn’t pass the place by one more time.
Never in his adult life had he ever felt this uneasy about something. Even all the years the club had been into some nasty shit he hadn’t known a moment’s fear. There’d been days he’d dreaded what was coming or had known it was going to be bad, but fear hadn’t entered into it. Not once.
Well it did now.
If he hadn’t been attracted to the woman, Gunner was certain it wouldn’t have given him a moment’s hesitation. He’d have shaken his head, hated that someone felt that desperate then gone on with his life without it cutting into him like it did. The problem was that he liked what he saw with her curvy, wide ass and those mounds of happiness sitting on her chest. He knew she’d be soft and comfortable in his arms and beneath his head.
The way she moved had nearly mesmerized him, and the sight of her wrapped around Hawk on the back of the bike had nearly caused him to come in his jeans. He’d always admired strength, and even though she’d been nervous and a little afraid, she’d remained calm and tried to stand her ground. She’d even surrendered with an air of control. It had fascinated and drawn him to her like a bear to a beehive. Only her sting had been much too close to home for him.
