"Doesn’t take away the fact we wish things were different."
I sighed. "Yeah." It was nothing but the truth, and I wasn’t even ashamed of it.
"You gonna come to the clubhouse, honey? I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t need help."
My brow puckered but I murmured, "Sure. It had better be worth my while though. It’s my day off."
"I know it is. But, you can always have tomorrow off as well. Perks of knowing the boss?"
"Nepotism makes people hate you."
"There have to be some advantages to being the fucking Prez," he grumbled. "How far away from the clubhouse are you?"
"Fifteen minutes?"
"Okay. I’ll be in the garage. Meet me there? I’m avoiding the clubhouse until you get here."
"What? Why?"
He didn’t answer, just cut the call, which pissed me off. Especially when he didn’t pick up after I called him back.
Grousing, wondering why the hell I was even going to the clubhouse when it was the last place I wanted to be, I drove there, well aware that if Cyan found out she’d be jealous.
I wasn’t sure why or how, but Cyan loved being at the clubhouse. I’d never noticed before because she was so sulky all the time in Jersey, but here, she was always pestering me to go there. Like it was a day out at the zoo or something.
The next time I messaged the girls back home, I’d definitely have to give Giulia some schtick about her ruining my daughter and making her less biker princess and more biker bitch. Things had been so crazy since the MC had taken over the diner, though, that I hadn’t had much time on my hands just to chat. Which, in all honesty, sucked.
MaryCat and I were hanging out when I had some hours to spare, but I missed the self-proclaimed Posse in West Orange. They were good women, loyal and true, and I was lucky that they included me when I wasn’t an Old Lady.
Determining that tonight I’d message them, I drove up the narrow, shrub-lined roads that led to the clubhouse. It was a one-way tract, which meant your hands were tied if someone other than a biker was riding down, which was, in my mind, a definite ‘fuck you’ to anything other than two-wheeled vehicles.
It was a little like the modern version of building a moat around a castle. Bottlenecking traffic in and out of the place would probably allow for guys to escape the law.
If that were required…
Ah, who was I kidding? We were talking about the Sinners. They weren’t a riding club. They were one-percenters.
I was relieved when I made it to the driveway, finding the gates open as I pulled straight into the yard. There was barely any room between the gates and the front entrance, so when I parked, I saw the door was open and that the clubwhores—AKA skanks—were all squawking about some shit or other in the hall.
Preferring to ignore them, I moved around the side of the building toward the area where I knew they worked on the bikes.
Not that I’d explored the place that much.
I’d come here a handful of times, stuck around for the bare minimum like I had when I came to help with MaryCat, then retreated home, unable to deal with the clubwhores.
I believed Storm when he said he hadn’t fucked them. The damn key to that padlock was around my neck like some kind of locket that housed a promise. It didn’t make me like them or what they represented. It didn’t make me comfortable around them. It sure as hell didn’t make me want to share oxygen with them.
The thought dampened my mood as I parked and caught a glimpse of Storm with a rag in his hands, wiping at his fingers. He twisted around at the sound of the SUV though, and there was no taking away from the fact that he was fine.
The plaid shirt was open, revealing his chunky muscles that felt so good against my teeth. I saw Cyan’s name on his pec—the letters I’d traced every time we made love—and looked down at his jeans and boots. He was dressed, but there was sweat on him despite the cold, plus a few smudges of grease and engine oil.
He looked, in a word, lush.
Everything about him drew me in, and I felt so much more stupid than a moth when it was close to a flame. This was intense, the need to touch, the desire to hold him—it didn’t seem to abate.
Frustrated with myself, I jumped out of the SUV and strode toward him.
His smile was warm, welcoming. It hit his eyes, those sad, sorrowful eyes that had gotten me into trouble in the first place all those damn years ago, and even now, mad at myself, I couldn’t hold back.
Happiness pierced that sorrow as he responded to my smile, and it was like a knife to the heart. Seriously. How could he do this to me? How could he look so broken and beautiful all at the same time?
My smile didn’t falter because seeing his joy made my heart happy, but I was determined to keep this meeting short.
"Everything okay?"
"Yeah."
He was, annoyingly, a man of few words sometimes.
I peered at his bike, the one Rex said was old because Storm prioritized his family over his ride—which meant some bikers did that, schmucks—and asked, "Is it broken?"
He shook his head. "Just changing the oil."
I took him in, those grease stains and oil marks, and found myself grateful he’d taken over doing the laundry.
Stuff like that was a bitch to get out, and I’d never been all that great with that chore.
My mom could sort through it like she was a pro, but for me, my whites turned yellow fast, stains never came out even if I overdosed a load with product remover, and don’t get me started on dryers—they never lasted longer than a year, and they always had to be fixed at least twice in that time.
I tipped my head to the side, wondering why he didn’t seem to feel the cold. It was frigid out here, but he was dressed down like it was in the high seventies rather than the low thirties.
"What’s going on?" Barely refraining from asking him to put on a sweater before he caught his death, a little because I wanted to carry on appreciating the view, a lot because I didn’t want to sound ninety, I peered at the clubhouse behind him and said, "You know I don’t like coming here."
He nodded. "I know. I was hoping to change that. Cyan seems to love it here."
"Cyan loves to fight here," I corrected gruffly.
"The kids fight," he admitted with an unashamed shrug. "Maybe they need to get it out of their systems?"
My jaw worked a second, but slowly, I lowered my head. "You’re right. She does love it here. She wants to come all the time."
"And you stop her?" He nodded. "I get it, Keira. I really do."
"I doubt that," I told him tightly.
"No, you’re wrong, I mean it. I made things very difficult for us by compartmentalizing my life, but I’ve never wanted you to be involved in this world. I always wanted to keep you separate from it—"
"So you could cheat on me," was my bitter retort, something I couldn’t have withheld if I tried.
Only, he shook his head. "No. Not because of that. If you’d ever shown any interest in coming, though, I’d have figured out a way to make it happen."
"Why then?"
"Because somebody once told me that you were out of place there."
My eyes flared wide and the hurt that hammered me was as brutal and as raw as the day that bitch Kendra had confirmed my worst fears.