Winston: Savage Kings MC - South Carolina

by Hart, Lane

  “And you wouldn’t rather be doing anything else?” I ask.

  “No,” he says immediately before adding, “Well, if I could do anything, I would race cars, but I’m too fucking big to fit in a Formula One.”

  “Really?” I say in surprise. I knew he loved driving like a maniac, but I didn’t think he actually wished he could be a race car driver.

  “Yeah. I’m almost six foot four. Most drivers are less than six feet. If they make the car any bigger, it’ll be heavier and slower, so I guess I’m stuck fixing cars.”

  “You could work on the pit crew,” I offer.

  “Nah. It would be too fucking sad to be right there in all the action and not be a driver.”

  “Fair enough,” I say with a smile. “I guess I wouldn’t ever want to be a clothing designer if I can’t make it as a model because it wouldn’t be the same as being in the spotlight.”

  “You’ll make it,” Winston says with a squeeze to my shoulder. “In a few years, your face will be all over magazine covers and you’ll be famous.”

  “I hope so,” I agree with a sigh. “And maybe in a few years you’ll have your own garage?”

  “That would be sick,” he agrees. “Working for myself instead of someone else calling all the shots. I could hire a few mechanics so I could take days off whenever I fucking feel like it.”

  “Like you would ever take days off,” I scoff. “You worked tonight just to avoid my party!”

  “I should’ve been there,” he mutters.

  “Why weren’t you?” I ask, but he doesn’t respond after several long moments. In fact, I can feel him slipping away from me even though he hasn’t physically moved an inch. “Whatever. It doesn’t matter. I’m glad you didn’t come because if you had, I doubt I would’ve ended up in your bed tonight.”

  “Let’s not make a big deal about it,” Winston grumbles. “And it’s late. We should get some sleep.”

  “Yeah,” I agree, disappointed it’s not a big deal to him. It’s huge for me, an incredible night I know I’ll never forget.

  In fact, one night with Winston isn’t enough for me, and as I close my eyes, before I drift off to sleep, I can’t help but wonder if maybe it could be more…

  * * *

  “Wake up, Zo,” Winston says with a shake to my shoulder that pulls me out of a deep slumber. Rubbing the sleep out of my eyes, I sit up slowly and watch through the sunlight coming through the blinds of his bedroom window as Winston walks around the room in just his unbuttoned jeans, picking up dirty clothes and tidying up.

  I still can’t believe I’m waking up in his apartment, naked in his bed. His place, especially his bedroom, is a classic bachelor pad with no photos hanging on the walls, just the basic furniture—a black king-size bed and matching dresser with pieces of clothing hanging out of each drawer. A box of condoms and a few beer bottles are the only decorations, which of course remind me of last night. It’s hard to believe we were both completely sober when we had sex without protection. And while it felt amazing, we should probably not make that mistake again the next time.

  Oh, I can’t wait for the next time, when it hopefully won’t hurt as bad at first and only feel good.

  Is that why Winston woke me up?

  “You need to get going or you’re gonna miss your plane,” he says.

  “My plane?” I repeat in confusion before it hits me. “Oh. Right.” I’m leaving today for six months. And while it’s always been my dream, now I have a new one. “What…what if I didn’t go?” I ask Winston. “Do you think I should maybe stay?”

  His bare back is to me and his wide shoulders stiffen before he opens the closet door and tosses the armful of clothes into the hamper.

  “It’s all you’ve talked about for fucking weeks,” he grumbles, snatching a black t-shirt angrily off one of the hangers and pulling it over his head.

  “How would you know? I have barely seen you in weeks before last night,” I remind him.

  “Get your ass up and get ready, Zoe. I have to get to work.”

  “Wow,” I mutter. “So that’s it, huh? We’re not going to talk about what happened between us last night?”

  “We fucked. Big deal. It didn’t mean shit.”

  “It didn’t?” I repeat as my eyes start to burn. I would never mistake Winston for the sweet, romantic kind of guy, but jeez. The way he acted, the way it felt when we were together, how he held me so tightly in his arms all night, I thought it meant something.

  “Look,” he says, bracing his palms on his hips and refusing to look me in the eye like before. “We both knew you were leaving today. It wasn’t a secret.”

  “So, you don’t want me to stay?” I ask, the words burning my throat as I hold back tears.

  “No, I don’t. In fact, that’s the only reason I fucked you in the first place.”

  “It-it is?”

  “Nothing says no strings attached like putting thousands of miles and an ocean between us a day later. It was fun, now it’s over and done. Time to move the fuck on.”

  “You’re an asshole.” A tear escapes and runs down my cheek. His brutal words are cutting me wide open.

  “You’ll be sucking off some French-speaking asshole in no time, I bet. And it’s summer break. You know how much I love fucking tourists. Here today, gone tomorrow, and nobody expects me to call them.”

  “I thought I was different,” I admit with a sniffle.

  “Well, you’re not. Let’s just pretend like it never happened and pray our parents don’t ever find out,” he remarks. “Fuck it. Get a shower if you want. I’ll have one of the guys at the shop bring your car over by the time you’re done. See ya in six months.”

  “Yeah. See ya,” I mumble, even though he can’t hear me because he’s already on his way out the door, ready to move on and forget the things we did together last night.

  But I’m not. How can I be when he just ran over my heart and crushed it into a million fucking pieces?

  Chapter Four

  Winston

  Ten years later…

  The day started out like all the others. I snuck out of a hot brunette’s hotel room, showered at home, worked on a few bikes at the Savage Kings MC’s Harley dealership, and then joined the rest of my brothers who wear the skull king patch on their cut at our clubhouse for a meeting.

  Same old, same old.

  Most guys would love to walk in my shoes for a day, but to me, it’s nothing more than going through the motions, keeping myself busy to avoid thinking about the one person I can’t forget, no matter how hard I try. Weeks, months, years go by and still, she’s never far from my mind. I keep waiting for the day I won’t spend all my free time worrying about her, but I’m not sure if it’ll ever come. In fact, Zoe’s been on my mind more than usual recently after the kidnappings. And that’s the one topic our Savage Kings’ meetings always come back around to.

  “It’s been three months since Tessa’s kidnapping and we’re no closer to finding the assholes responsible than we were the day we found her,” Roman, the president of the Savage Kings and the closest friend I have, says when we’re all gathered around the table. “I was hoping we would have the fuckers off the streets before Tessa finished up her stay in the facility, but I’ve let her down.”

  “Tessa is going home, back to Raleigh? Why the fuck didn’t she tell me?” Verek asks in a rush as the entire mood at the table quickly shifts, thanks to the one topic that hangs over all our heads like a dark cloud. While none of us know the victims other than Tessa, who we met through Roman’s girl, Charlotte, it’s impossible not to feel for the poor girls or stop ourselves from imagining she could’ve easily been one of the females in our lives—our mother or girlfriend or stepsister…

  “Tessa’s checking out at the end of the week and then coming to stay with me and Charlotte until she feels safe enough to go home,” Roman informs him, scratching at his reddish-blonde beard. “How can she or the other women ever feel safe when the bastards who hurt her are s
till breathing? The answer is, they can’t, which is why I’ve asked Danny to work his IT magic and let us know if there are any similar kidnappings in the surrounding states. He’s had a few hits up in North Carolina and Virginia, but we’re still trying to figure out if it’s the same suspects or not. I’ll let you all know what we find out and if we need to head north to talk to some witnesses ourselves.”

  Since the kidnappings, I’ve wanted to hop on a plane and fly up north, just to lay eyes on Zoe and make sure she’s safe. I haven’t seen or talked to her since the morning she left my apartment for Paris. I’ve convinced myself that’s the only reason why I constantly stalk her social media accounts several times a day, to make sure she’s still alive and well. The girl couldn’t have picked a more dangerous profession for a woman. It’s like she went into modeling to drive me fucking crazy. I have a reoccurring nightmare about her father getting a call that she’s been hurt hundreds of miles away instead of being here, all because of me. If she were home, I could watch over her and protect her, but she refuses to step foot in the state.

  What started out as just a six-month adventure launched her career on the runways for several years, after which, she started doing provocative photoshoots.

  It sucks worse because I know I’m not the only one she’s avoiding. My mom and her dad have visited her in New York a handful of times, but she doesn’t ever come home, not for holidays or during the summer. I tell myself her refusal to spend time with our family year after year has nothing to do with me, but I can’t help feeling that it does. That it’s my fault for how I treated her.

  Fuck, I know I hurt her. It killed me to pretend like I didn’t give a shit about her and send her on her way that morning. I did what was best for her and now she’s gone but still lingering around this town like a goddamn ghost. A sexy, mysterious ghost that manages to haunt me from miles away by sending me each and every one of the twenty-five magazines she’s featured in. The packages show up out of the blue, in a plain manila envelope with no note and no return address; just the postage stamp with a New York zip code and her looking like a sex goddess inside.

  “That’s all I have for today, and if there’s nothing else that needs to be brought to the table, we’ll adjourn and go have a few beers,” Roman says at the end of the meeting before he slams his gavel down.

  I don’t know about the rest of the guys, but I could definitely use a few drinks to try and forget the dark cloud that makes me obsess about Zoe.

  Why my stepsister continues to torment me, or what she expects me to do with the images of her sprawled out half-naked, and occasionally completely naked, I’m not sure. I probably won’t ever find out since she didn’t return my calls years ago, and I eventually gave up on trying to contact her.

  I should throw the dirty images away, I know that. But I’m a sick son of a bitch who keeps every single page in a locked chest in my garage. Not only do I keep the magazines, I look at them all the fucking time because I still miss her like crazy.

  So, while I’m used to seeing Zoe’s face and body everywhere, I never expected to see her sitting topless on a Harley behind the fucking Savage Kings’ bar.

  “What the fuck?” I stomp around to the other side and rip the two-page centerfold down from the bulletin board, sending push pins flying everywhere. “Who the fuck did this?” I yell at the guys. “Was this you?” I ask Leo, who tends the bar. He vehemently shakes his head and backs away from me as I ball the pages in my fist. “Then who the hell was it? Tell me, now!”

  “Dude, what’s your problem?” Cannon strolls up to the bar and asks in his annoying laidback drawl that matches his blond, surfer boy looks. “Zoe Donahue is hot as hell, ask any guy in here.”

  “Oh shit,” I vaguely hear Roman mutter from his barstool before my blood pressure skyrockets, turning my entire body a dark shade of red, including my vision.

  I’m considering how exactly I’m going to hurt Cannon when Roman rushes to block my way from behind the bar. “Whoa, whoa, whoa. Everyone, just calm down,” our president says, holding us both at an arm’s length away since I’m about to vault over the bar to get my hands around the other man’s neck. “Cannon, apologize.”

  “What? Why should I apologize?” he asks. “It’s the truth.”

  “You need to apologize because Zoe Donahue is Winston’s sister!” Roman explains to him, using the words I couldn’t find in my rage.

  “Oh shit,” Cannon says with a wince before he squints his brown eyes at me and smirks. “Now that you mention it, I do sort of see the resemblance, other than the tits…”

  “She’s my stepsister!” I yell so loudly my throat burns.

  “Apologize, Cannon. Now,” Roman demands. “We don’t hang up posters of anyone’s half-naked stepsisters in the clubhouse from now on, agreed?”

  “Fine, I’m sorry, man. But I wasn’t doing it just because she’s spank bank material,” Cannon says, causing my teeth to nearly snap from the force of which I’m clenching them. “We booked Zoe for an event over at the dealership. I thought you all knew that.”

  “Bullshit,” I grit out, refusing to get my hopes up. Why would she come back now, of all times?

  “Seriously. She’s coming to take pics and sign autographs next weekend,” Cannon explains. “How did you not know that if you’re her family or whatever?”

  “Zoe hasn’t been home in ten years. There’s no way she’s coming back just for some publicity stunt.”

  “Look, man, I don’t know why she’s coming to town. I just know that she is. We got the signed contract and put her on the schedule,” Cannon says. “Our billboard of her advertising the event has been up in Conway for weeks. Haven’t you seen it?”

  “I live down in Surf City and come into work from the highway. How would I see the billboard in Conway?”

  “Because everyone else has! Right?” he asks. The guys standing around, silently drinking and watching our argument, give a slight nod of their heads.

  “Cancel,” I order him.

  “What? No way!” Cannon refuses. “It’s too late to get our deposit back and customers are expecting her! It’s the kickoff for the summer!”

  “I’m your goddamn VP and I’m telling you to fucking cancel, or I’ll kill you with my bare hands!”

  “Jesus!” Roman mutters. “Just…give us a minute.” He grabs me by the shoulder and escorts me into the chapel where he shuts the door behind us.

  “I can’t believe this is fucking happening!” I grumble as I brace my hands on the back of my chair, too pissed to sit down. I’m not entirely sure what’s more surprising, that Zoe’s finally coming home or that she’s going to strut around in a bikini in front of hundreds of men, including my MC brothers.

  “On the chance this question gets my head bit off, I still have to ask it,” Roman starts as he sits down and reclines in his seat at the head of the table. “Why are you so worked up about this, Winston? Zoe’s a grown woman and she’s been taking nude photos for years, right?”

  “Yes,” I grit out.

  “You don’t have to go to the event if you can’t stomach seeing her in a bikini.”

  “I won’t have to worry about seeing her because you’re going to cancel it!”

  “I can’t do that, and you know it,” Roman responds. “The twins have probably already spent thousands promoting the event. Cancelling could cost us customers and make people think we’re not men of our word.”

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” I scoff at him. “Men of our word? Bit of a stretch there, prez.”

  “It’s just a few hours and then it’s done. To be honest, I think you’re blowing this whole thing out of proportion.”

  “How would you feel if it were your girl all the guys in town were going to get a picture taken with…a picture with her in just a skimpy bikini to jerk off to later?” I ask him.

  “Now that was fucking uncalled for!” he complains, his jaw clenched tight and fists balled up on top of the table, like he wants to hit me for
even suggesting such a thing.

  “That right there, that rage you’re feeling, that’s how I feel about Zoe doing this!”

  “Oh fuck,” Roman mutters, leaning back and slapping his palms on the table. “You’re jealous.”

  “No, fuck no! I’m just…protective of her since she’s younger than me.”

  “You’re about to snap the back of the chair off!” he points out. “Just admit it, this goes way beyond being a protective brother.”

  “Stepbrother!” I remind him yet again. “And if I do admit that shit, then would you cancel?”

  “Probably not, no,” he remarks, making me growl in frustration. “I’m just trying to figure out if this shit is what you’ve been all twisted up about for years. You’ve been a grumpy bastard since we became friends and I’ve always wondered why. It would be a relief to know if there’s a root cause and that it’s not your default asshole personality.”

  “Oh, fuck off.”

  “Admit it,” Roman says. “You’re in love with your stepsister.”

  “I’m not in love with her. I haven’t even seen her in ten goddamn years!”

  “That’s the thing about love, though. Time doesn’t mean shit. It doesn’t ever stop or go away if it’s the real deal, does it?” Roman remarks.

  “You think you’re a fucking expert now that you’ve been dating the same woman for a few months?” I scoff.

  “The truth hurts but you can’t run from it,” he says. “It’s Zoe’s choice if she wants to take her clothes off for the cameras. If you’ve got a problem with it, take it up with her when she’s back next weekend and not on your MC brothers. Got it?”

  “Yeah, got it,” I grumble. “Just, keep your mouth shut about this.”

  “When you say this, are you referring to the fact that you want your stepsister?”

  “Go to hell, prez!” I growl before I stomp out of the chapel, with Roman’s chuckle hanging in the air. I head straight outside to the parking lot before I commit murder. Standing next to my bike is where I finally pull out my phone and call my mom.