by Lane Hart
Fast Eddie limps down the stairs next, holding up the boys behind him. His old ass is slower than Turtle in the mornings, and he’s struggling to catch what’s left of his brown hair and pull it back into a ponytail when he hustles past me.
Miles, our enforcer while Ian is locked up, is right behind Eddie, and I stop him just long enough to rub his bald dome. “For good luck,” I tease him, knowing how much it irritates him. He just shakes his head and makes room for Gabriel, Abe’s younger brother, who is thankfully a bit smaller than his sibling.
Gabe pauses by me for a moment, casting a critical eye at the vine of black and white roses tattooed on my upper arm. “You need to get over to the shop and let me touch that up for you, man. You’ve been getting too much sun, so those lighter areas are fading badly.”
“Later,” I tell him shortly, waving him on into the room. Gabe runs our tattoo parlor and is always super critical of any ink he didn’t do personally. It’s not my fault he was still a teenager when I got my sleeve done.
I step back to make room as War brings up the rear of the line. If Abe is almost too tall for the clubhouse, then War is too damned wide. I swear the boy is broader than he is tall, and he’s not a short man. I can’t even see a phone in his thick hand when he drops it into the bucket; and when he pats my back to usher me into the room, my feet almost leave the ground.
“Listen up!” Torin says, slamming his gavel down from the head of the table to get the guys to shut up and pay attention. I’ve barely gotten the doors closed, but I’m all ears. I want to know what the fuck’s going on with my brother; and now that we’re all gathered, we’re going to sort this out.
“Some of you may have heard about the wreck on highway seventeen that happened yesterday.”
“Yeah.”
“Yep.”
“Uh-huh.”
Most of the guys agree or nod their heads in agreement.
“Well, it seems that our VP went a little cowboy on some meth dealers.”
The guys slap their hands on the table in approval while I can’t help but think to myself, How the hell does Torin know that they were meth dealers?
“Our stepsister Jade got a call from a reporter this morning,” Torin says, making my heart start beating triple time.
“Sasha called Jade?” I ask aloud, and the room goes silent.
Torin’s eyes narrow in my direction. “Yeah, Sasha Sheridan. How the fuck do you know the reporter?” Before I can respond, his eyes lower to my left pec that remains covered as usual, and he answers his own question since he’s seen it before. “Oh. So that’s the same Sasha as…?”
“Yeah,” I mutter. “One and the same.” Since Torin was off in the Army when Sasha and I were together, he doesn’t know all the details, just the overview — we dated, I wrecked my bike, she got hurt, and it ended.
“Sasha? The sexy blonde reporter from channel seventeen?” Dalton pipes up and asks from the other end of the table.
“That one,” Torin agrees.
“Damn, Chase,” Dalton drawls. “You hittin’ that fine ass bombshell?”
My glare makes the pretty boy prick cower. “Right. Sorry I asked,” he mutters.
“Anyway,” Torin says. “There’s a witness who saw Chase’s cut since he wasn’t smart enough to take it off before committing capital offenses in broad fucking daylight.”
“The assholes threatened Torin and the rest of us,” I say in my defense, so they don’t think I was just being a hothead going off half-cocked like usual. “I had to follow them and didn’t have time to ditch the cut.”
“Who the hell were these assholes?” War, Torin’s Sergeant in Arms, asks, because it’s his responsibility to stand between Torin and any fuckers who try to kill him.
“Hector Cruz’s guys,” Torin responds, and again I’m wondering how the fuck he knows all this. “Jade and the reporter have put a few things together,” he explains. Then, eyeing me, he says, “History or not, we can’t have this reporter…chick broadcasting our shit all over the state and bringing more heat on us.”
My teeth grind together because I’m pretty sure he was gonna call her the reporter bitch but caught himself at the last minute.
“The cops haven’t even been to question our Wilmington charter, which means they don’t have shit. We can’t have her doing their job for them,” my brother adds.
“Yeah.”
“Agreed.”
“Absolutely,” the guys around the table agree.
“She won’t be a problem,” I assure them, but the truth is I haven’t spoken to Sasha in ten years, not since I fucked her on my bike before we were supposed to elope. Even if I get on my knees and beg her to keep her nose out of this mess, she doesn’t have any reason to do me, the man who abandoned her, any fucking favors.
Still, I can at least warn her that she’s on Torin’s radar and that I can’t protect her if she keeps sticking her nose where it doesn’t belong. She should know damn well that I can’t protect her from shit, or she wouldn’t have ever been laid up in that hospital for weeks, going through God only knows what kind of pain because of me.
I wanted to be there for her. Hell, I tried to be there for her, spending days in the waiting room to see her, but her father made it clear that Sasha said she never wanted to see me again, and that she blamed me for every second of pain she was going through.
This time I won’t let her down. I’ll make sure that she stays clear of this shitstorm that Torin’s gotten himself into. Which means, whether she likes it or not, it’s time for me to finally pay her a visit.
Chapter Seven
Sasha
“Hi, Daddy!” I say to my father when he answers the phone.
“Hi, sweetie. How did your interview go this morning?”
“Better than I could’ve hoped!” I tell him as I walk to my car in the airport parking lot. “The panel I met said that they need to talk to my producer at WBRL and then I would probably be hearing from them in a few days, with an offer!”
“That’s great, Sash. I’m happy for you. Finally getting your big break,” my father says. “We should celebrate.”
“Yeah, and we will soon,” I promise him. “But I’m sort of beat from all the traveling yesterday and today, so maybe this weekend?”
“Sure, sweetie. We’ll see you then. Love you,” he says.
“Love you, too,” I reply before ending the call.
While I’m excited about the new opportunity, I’m also a little nervous about making the move to the national news.
God knows I’m self-conscious. Of course, everyone in the public eye is somewhat, but because of my scarring and the changes in my face that aren’t my own, I’m super sensitive to the comments assholes sitting behind their computers at home make on social media.
I wish I could avoid those sites altogether, but it’s part of the job, socializing and drawing the public in so that they turn on their televisions to WBRL every night.
Still, the whole time I was away, and even when I was in the interview, my mind was wandering. I couldn’t stop thinking about the story I uncovered right before I left town. And I was curious to see what Jade came up with and if she would tell me if she had something on the Savage Kings, or if she would protect her stepbrothers. So far, her only response was to acknowledge that it was Torin in the photos.
Tomorrow I’ll worry about the drug kingpins and the MC. Tonight is too perfect and beautiful not to climb in my car and enjoy riding home with the top down in my convertible, the warm coastal breeze blowing through my hair.
While the classic convertible that my dad and I rebuilt together isn’t as thrilling a ride as being on the back of a Harley, it’s as close as I can get since I can’t exactly see myself ever getting my motorcycle license. And even after the accident, I would ride again. Maybe most people would swear off the “deathtraps” for good after they go through as much pain and as many surgeries as I have, but it wasn’t the bike’s fault I got hurt. It was the drunk driver
who has served his time and paid for his mistake — in more ways than one. I wasn’t entirely surprised seven years ago when I heard that Chase had gotten arrested for beating the man nearly to death the day he was released from his three-year prison sentence.
While I considered going over to have dinner with my parents tonight, I just feel like being alone after the cramped plane ride home. I know they’re not exactly thrilled with the idea of me leaving here to travel the world, reporting from war zones and all other types of dangerous places, but they’ll still support me, like they’ve always done. I don’t know what I would do without my parents always being there for me. After the accident, I even felt guilty for worrying them during my “rebellious phase”, as they called it. They all but chanted, “Told you so” every day that Chase was absent in the hospital, and I hated admitting to myself that they were right about him all along.
Traffic isn’t bad on the highway now that the sun is starting to set, so it doesn’t take long to get home. I pull my car into the garage and then try to decide what frozen dinner I’ll be making tonight. They all suck, but I have to watch my weight or people will start asking me on Facebook if I’m pregnant.
God, sometimes I wonder if being in the spotlight is worth the trouble.
The first stop is my bedroom where I change into a pair of blue pajama pants and a white tank top, relieved to take off my bra. Then, I head back to the kitchen to pop my calorie-controlled meal into the microwave and then grab a bottle of wine from the pantry to celebrate my successful interview with myself.
When I turn around and come face to face with a bearded man sitting as still as a statue at my counter, I scream so loudly I temporarily go deaf.
And like an idiot, my fingers lose the grip on the bottle of wine. My one and only weapon at this moment falls to the floor and shatters on the tile.
“Hi, Sasha,” the man says calmly. Running his hand over his beard, he says, “You need to get better locks.”
Standing there frozen, all I can do is stare at him. Automatic bodily functions like breathing have ceased to exist. And I’m utterly speechless as to why this random man would be sitting in my house like he’s a welcome guest.
“Fuck!” he exclaims before he suddenly jumps up and starts around the counter toward me. He’s even bigger when he’s standing, well over six feet tall with thick, tattooed arms and a massive chest that makes me certain he could easily snap me in half. “You’re gonna cut your feet on the glass,” he says in his deep, grumbly voice as he reaches for me.
“S-stay the fuck away from me!” I warn him when my voice decides to work again as I start walking backward.
“Stop moving!” he shouts before softening his voice. “You’re standing on glass, sweetheart. I shouldn’t have snuck in, but I didn’t exactly think you would invite me in if I came to the front door.”
His voice is familiar, especially the term of endearment. And then there are his eyes that are a soft green like ferns, that aren’t looking at me maliciously but with affection.
“Chase?” I ask aloud.
“Oh, fuck. You just now recognized me? Wow. Okay. Sorry,” he says, running his hand over the beard again and stroking it several times like it’s a nervous habit. “Guess I do look a little different with the beard, huh?”
“What the fuck are you doing in my house? How did you get in here?” I demand as my chest heaves up and down in fear, shock, and anger at him standing here in my kitchen, talking to me so normally, like he never fucking destroyed me.
…
Chase
God, I had forgotten how gorgeous Sasha was in person. The camera lens doesn’t do her any justice. Although, I do miss the point of her chin and nose from before they were altered with surgery because of the accident. I really hate that my phone with all the pictures of her on it was crushed that night, leaving me with nothing but my memories of the old Sasha from my past.
And she doesn’t seem nearly as glad to see me as I am to see her.
“You need better locks,” I tell her again when she asks how I got in. “The back door was a piece of cake with a credit card. You need, like, deadbolts and chains and shit. Something to at least slow a burglar down while you grab a gun.”
“What?” she asks, her voice shaking. “You…you’re standing here, in my kitchen, talking about how easy it was to break into my house?” Her face begins to turn red with fury. “What I need is to not have some asshole barging in without my consent! And you…you of all people have some nerve coming here!”
“Slow down, sweetheart,” I tell her. “This visit isn’t about us or the past.”
“Oh really?” she asks, crossing her arms over her chest. My eyes are drawn to where her nipples are poking through her top clear as a bell, because she’s not wearing a bra.
Fuck me.
Focus, Chase!
“Can we go talk in the living room where we’re not stepping on glass?” I ask, gesturing down at her bare feet that are standing in puddles of red wine with shards of glass just inches away from cutting her up.
“No!” she exclaims. “We don’t need to talk! You need to get the fuck out of my house!” she yells before she turns toward the sink and grabs some paper towels.
“At least let me clean this mess up since it was my fault,” I tell her.
“No. I’ll clean up while you show yourself out,” Sasha huffs. Squatting down with the whole roll and giving me a clear view right down her top, she starts spreading the towels out to try and soak up the red wine. The fact that it looks like blood covering her feet and hands sends me right back to the night of the wreck.
Shaking my head to clear those thoughts, I tell her, “Look, I just came by to tell you that you need to keep your nose out of that shit that went down the other day.”
Pausing in her cleanup, she leaves the towels alone and stands up straight. “It was you, wasn’t it? You caused that wreck. You killed a man!”
I fucking hate how her blue eyes look wary of me, seeing me as the bad guy I am, rather than the man she once loved.
“You don’t need to worry about that. This is some dangerous shit, Sasha,” I warn her.
She crosses her arms over her chest again and says, “I can’t believe you and the Savage Kings are dealing the meth that’s killing people. You should be ashamed of yourself, Chase Fury!”
“What?” I say in surprise. “We’re not dealing shit. The Kings are trying to keep it out of our city.”
“Don’t lie to me, okay? You are dealing, and I have proof.”
“What proof? What do you know?” I ask. “Tell me everything you’ve found out, then I want you to leave this shit alone and go back to reporting about the sand castle competitions, or what the fuck ever fluff pieces.”
“Hector Cruz is the meth kingpin for the whole east coast, and I’m pretty sure that those guys you shot at…that guy you killed, worked for him. There’s also the photos I have of Torin meeting with Hector…"
“Bullshit,” I say since I don’t believe that for a second. The only drug the MC deals in is weed, and soon that shit will be legal. We have a hard and fast rule about not touching any of the hard stuff.
“Really, Chase? I tell you I have photos, and you still think I’m lying?”
“No, I didn’t say you were lying,” I clarify. Fuck, I love hearing her say my name again, more than I should. “You’re misinformed or got the wrong guy. You’ve never even met Torin.”
“You’re right. Maybe it was one of the other presidents of the Savage Kings. We all make mistakes. So, how about I get my phone and show you the photos to let you see for yourself?”
“Yes, let me see them so I can tell you that you’re wrong,” I tell her, having no doubts that she is mistaken on this.
“Even Jade admitted it was Torin. She said she was going to talk to him about it,” Sasha informs me.
Motherfucker. I guess Torin left that part out of our meeting.
“Go get the phone,” I snap at her, because I c
an’t fucking take her standing in all this glass any longer while throwing around accusations about my brother. My brother, the former Army corporal who lives and breathes being on the right side of the law whenever fucking possible. But if it was a Savage King meeting with Hector, the club needs to know who, so we can beat his ass into the ground for breaking one of our rules.
“Wow, you’ve really upped the asshole attitude over the years,” Sasha says with a shake of her blonde head before she tiptoes out of the kitchen and disappears down a hallway.
While she’s gone, I gather up all the red soaked towels and shards of glass and toss them in the trash can next to the counter. The mess is only halfway clean when Sasha comes back into the room with her phone.
“Wait over there,” I tell her when I see her in the doorway. She rolls her eyes but actually listens, waiting for me to come to her.
“Here,” she says when I’m right in front of her, the closest I’ve been able to get in a decade. When her cute button nose wrinkles in revulsion, I know she’s smelling the cigarette smoke on me and still disapproves of the habit, making me want to quit cold turkey. And how is it that she stills smells exactly the same, that sweet apple scent making my mouth water? You’d think by now I would’ve gotten over her, stopped wanting her, but it’s the exact opposite. I’d give anything to touch her. But, knowing she’s not a fan of the idea, I keep my hands to myself and look down to take the phone from her.
That’s when I see it…my name, written in small, black cursive letters that have started to fade.
“I, ah, I thought you had that removed,” I tell her, barely refraining from touching the ink.
“What?” she asks, then looks down at her outstretched hand. “Oh.” Seeing it, she slaps her other hand over the letters.
“L-laser removal surgery isn’t cheap,” she says, then clears her throat, which was always her tell for when she was lying.
