Outcasts MC (Complete Series), page 25
I shrugged. “He’s a good guy,” I said. “I know that much, at least.” I was starting to feel defensive now, the good mood from that morning fading, and I hated that. I didn’t want to let her take that morning’s happiness away from me, but there was nothing I could do about it. Those good feelings were slipping away fast.
“Everyone has issues,” I finally said. “If you’re looking for the perfect guy, you’re going to be disappointed. But that doesn’t mean Kane is a terrible guy—it just means he’s got a past. We all do.”
Addison looked like she wanted to protest some more, but before she could, the bells above the door chimed. I automatically turned to see who it was, a smile pasted on my face, but my relief faded quickly when I saw none other than my father walking into the shop. My smile drooped, and I moved back behind the counter, needing that physical barrier between the two of us.
Maybe I could just treat him like any other customer. Just like my favorite defense attorney. Get him a drink as quickly as possible and make it clear he wasn’t welcome here.
I was partly intrigued to see him here, though. I was trying to remember if he had ever come through the coffee shop before. I didn’t even think he had been there when the place had opened. And I liked it like that. I didn’t have to deal with any of his negativity here. But at the same time, it made me wonder if there was some big reason he was trying to reconnect with me right now.
Maybe he even realized he wasn’t always right and that sometimes you had to let your kids do what they wanted to do with their lives? But no, that would be too much probably.
Still, I was curious.
But maybe he wasn’t even here to see me. Maybe he was here on official business. I tried to think about my papers, my permits, and everything else. I was pretty sure it was all in order, but maybe he was just checking up. He was the sheriff, after all.
“Can I help you?” I asked as he approached the counter.
Dad glanced over at Addison, nodding at her and then turning back toward me. “I was hoping you’d let me take you to lunch today,” he told me.
I frowned, folding my arms across my chest. It was just like him: no apology or anything, and no warning. He just showed up at my work, with no time to spare, and expected me to go to lunch with him? What the hell was that?
But at the same time, this was the most effort he’d made in forever. And if he had called me, or if he had messaged me, I honestly didn’t know if I would have answered him or if I would have agreed to meet him. So maybe this was the most effective way he could think of to get me to meet him for lunch. I couldn’t fault that logic.
I glanced over at Addison as well. I knew she wanted this, that she wanted me and Dad to put aside our differences and hammer out some sort of truce. It had been a long enough time coming, after all. But could I do that, just put aside my differences with him? Why now, when he had never been there for me before?
I realized if I didn’t go to lunch with him, though, I was going to keep wondering why he was so interested in connecting now. Maybe I’d get some clue if I went with him. I was also tempted to suggest a different day, just to be ornery. But then, I’d spend the rest of the week hating that looming meeting, wondering what he wanted to say to me.
No, better to get this over with. “Addison, can you watch the place for an hour?” I asked.
“Sure thing!” she said, a sunny smile on her face. I just hoped she hadn’t had a part in planning this. I knew she wanted the best for me as well, but I swear to god, if she was meddling in my life just like Dad, we were going to have to have some serious words.
Dad, of course, waited until after we had ordered food at the local diner before he started pulling out the big guns. I think he knew I wasn’t going to get up and walk out while the waitress was already at work with our orders. But my lips pursed, and my hands clenched into fists as soon as I heard his first real question:
“So how are things going with the coffee shop?” Dad asked. “It seemed pretty empty when I was there just now.”
I gave him a look. Of course, he wasn’t joking, though. “That’s because it’s late morning on a Tuesday,” I said, unable to keep the duh note out of my voice. “We were busy enough this morning with the work crowd.” And it wasn’t like it had been dead when he’d come in there, either. There’d been a couple of students in one corner and a middle-aged woman who came in there every so often to read a book while she sipped a latte.
Dad shrugged dismissively. “Bet you have to have a lot of customers through there in a morning to pay the costs if you’re only charging two bucks for a cup of coffee,” he said disparagingly. “You know those chain coffee companies charge twice that!”
“I don’t want to be just like those chain coffee companies,” I said, trying my best to be patient. It was another fight he and I had had, ever since I’d announced my plans to start a coffee shop. He wanted me to franchise so I wouldn’t have to build up my own company, so there would be some security if the place failed.
I still wondered if he had ever considered I might do a good job with this.
“If it’s going so well, have you considered selling the place?” Dad asked. “The economy is doing pretty well at the moment, so you could offload that and get on with whatever the next project is.”
I raised an eyebrow at him. “And just what is the next project?” I asked him flatly. Because for me, this was the project, the one that I wanted to keep working at—maybe for the rest of my life, but at least for now.
And Kane, I realized. Despite Addison’s misgivings, despite my uncertainty about things with him, he was a project I wanted to keep working on as well. Hell, maybe I’d even get a motorcycle license. Dad would probably have an apoplectic fit if he heard me say that. I fought to keep the grin off my face when I thought about it.
“You could still go back to school. Do something different with your life. You always had so much potential,” Dad maintained.
I wanted to tell him that quote I had heard one time, that a large part of potential isn’t just what you can do but what you want to do. But I didn’t think he would appreciate that. Instead, I raised one shoulder in a half shrug. “I like the coffee shop,” I said evenly. “And I have no plans to sell it at the moment.”
Dad stared at me for a long moment, then shook his head. “Well, what’s this about a boy? Addison mentioned something.”
I frowned. I was tempted to tell him that Kane and I weren’t dating, that it hadn’t amounted to anything. But I knew I had no chance of lying to him. Addison could catch me in my lies because she knew me so well, but Dad could catch me lying to him because that’s what he was trained to do for work. Still, I didn’t have to tell him anything. It was none of his business.
“Dad, I don’t want to talk about him with you,” I told him firmly.
Dad frowned at me. “I know you think you can take care of yourself. You’re a very strong girl. But at the same time, you know I’m just looking out for you. You don’t know who this guy could be.”
“Neither do you,” I said, raising an eyebrow at him. “You don’t know the first thing about him. You have no reason to suspect he might cause me any problems.” I paused. “He’s a good guy, and he treats me well. That’s all that you need to know.”
It might be kind of a stretch to say that, what with Kane standing me up on Sunday night. But I knew a little lie like that wasn’t going to set off Dad’s radar. Anyway, he was more intent on fishing for more information.
“What’s his name?” he asked.
I rolled my eyes. “Come on, Dad,” I said. “We both know that the moment I tell you his name, you’re going to go back to your computers at the office and look him up and find out everything about him.”
Dad shrugged. “Can you blame me?” he asked. Our food was delivered then, but that didn’t stop the conversation. He picked it right back up as soon as the waitress left. “Some guy is interested in you; I want to make sure you’re safe. There are a lot of bad guys out there. And we both know that you don’t always have the best judgment.”
I slammed my fork down on the table. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?” I asked. “It’s not like you’ve ever met any of the guys I’ve dated.” Not that there had been too many of them, and I had been cautious to keep my personal life a secret from him.
I wondered for a moment whether Addison had said something to him, but I knew she would have told me if she had. Just like she’d told me she had mentioned Kane to him by accident. So what the hell was he going on about?
The coffee shop, of course: “I know that rebellion has its appeal when your father is the law keeper in town,” Dad said, shaking his head. “And I know I’ve stayed quiet while you threw away all your potential on a trade job that just about anyone could do. But I don’t want to see you dating anyone who’s going to cause problems, for you or for me, just because you don’t want to end up like your old man.”
Dad’s mouth twisted bitterly. I decided that I’d had enough, right then and there. There was no healing here; we were just hurting one another more and more. And for no reason. I had nothing against him—I just didn’t want him to be a part of my life.
I stood up, even though I knew Addison would be disappointed with me. “Dad, it’s not that I don’t want to be you,” I said icily, my parting shot, “but you only want to have any involvement in my life when you’re trying to control me. It’s my life, though. And I’m going to keep it that way.”
I stalked out of there, leaving my mostly uneaten meal behind me.
I went the long way back to the coffee shop, needing to blow off some steam. I knew he was just looking out for me, in a weird way. I knew he didn’t want me caught up in something dangerous. He knew what was out there, the kinds of low-lives we had even here in Greenboro. But he couldn’t just show up in my life and demand to be part of it.
If I let him have his way, I’d be back in school tomorrow, studying something safe like science, something that was guaranteed to get me a job. And at the end of it, I would marry someone rich, settle down, and have the life I was “supposed” to have. He meant well. But more and more, it just felt like he was trying to run my life, to live it the way he wanted it to be.
I wasn’t going to let him do that.
I remembered bonding with Kane the night before over our troubles with our fathers. I wondered what he was up to today. Maybe his dad had come around and let him back into the business—whatever their family business was. I wanted to call him and ask. But when I glanced at my watch, I knew it was time to get back to the coffee shop. I had responsibilities there, and the lunch crowd would be starting soon. Addison could probably handle that on her own, but she didn’t need to.
I took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then, I turned my feet back in the direction of my shop. I spent the afternoon trying to forget my father had ever been in there. It was surprisingly difficult to do, even though he hadn’t even stayed long enough to get coffee.
19
Kane
I thought about calling Brea on Tuesday night to see what she was up to and if she maybe wanted to go out for dinner again. Hell, I thought about just showing up at the coffee shop around closing time and seeing if she was there. I wanted to see her. I definitely didn’t want her to think I was ignoring her now that we had slept together a couple of times. But at the same time, there was so much turmoil in my head at the moment that I wasn’t sure seeing her was the best course of action.
The more I thought about it, the more certain I was that I didn’t have anything to offer her in a relationship. Not right now. I was unemployed and skill-less, and even though I knew we weren’t serious yet or anything, even though it wasn’t like we were trying to build a family or anything, I still felt like I needed to have something more to offer before getting into anything more with her.
Besides, we hardly knew one another. Surely, I could survive one night without her, go one whole day without seeing her. Couldn’t I? It’s not like I was good company at the moment anyway. I shouldn’t inflict myself on her.
I ignored that little part of my brain that reminded me that this could be my last night. Tomorrow, I was going to go talk to Greg and the Savages, see what they wanted to do with me. If it was death, I would take that. I didn’t like the idea of it, and I didn’t think I deserved it. But if it meant I could save Otis and Dax and the Outcasts from whatever the Savages were planning otherwise, then maybe that was just what I had to do.
If it really was my last night, I wanted to spend those hours between dusk and dawn with Brea, making her cum over and over again, until she was raw with overuse, boneless with weary pleasure. I wanted to drift off to sleep in the early hours of the morning and wake up when it was time for her to go to work again, with her head on my chest, that small, soft smile on her face.
The thought I might never get that again hurt me like a physical ache in my chest.
But if tomorrow was my last day for this world, then it was probably better to keep her out of it, either way. Better that she never knew what happened. I didn’t want her to think she had done something wrong, that I had just quit calling her and disappeared on her. But more than that, I didn’t want her to know the truth: that I had killed a man and now had to atone for that with the leader of a gang of thugs.
So I hadn’t called her, and I hadn’t stopped by the shop, and on Wednesday morning, I woke up on my own after a restless night of sleep. I tried to think of all the things I was supposed to do in a situation like this. “Put my affairs in order”—wasn’t that the phrase? But what did that even mean?
It felt overly dramatic to keep thinking of this as the day I died. I didn’t want to get dressed thinking these were going to be the clothes I was wearing when Greg killed me. Not least of which because I didn’t want to think of how Greg was going to kill me. Would it be quick and painless, just a bullet through the skull? Or would he want to hurt me first, to make up for the loss of his guy? I didn’t know.
And I didn’t want to think about it. If I thought about it too much, I wasn’t going to be able to go through with this.
But I did call Dax. “What’s going on?” Dax asked immediately when he picked up. “Where are you?”
“Everything’s fine,” I said. “I just wanted to tell you that I love you, and I want you to tell Otis I’m sorry I was such a failure.” I hung up before he could say anything else.
I knew Dax would try to tell me not to go, that we would figure out some other way to fix things. And to be honest, this wasn’t even about rejoining the club at this point. It was more that I had been thinking about it and realizing just how unfair it was on the rest of the guys, that all this weight was coming down on them. All because of me. All because of my mistake.
That fucking night. If I had been five minutes earlier or five minutes later, that guy, Rich, might have gone after someone else. If anything had been different—if I had taken a different path, if I had seen that stupid tattoo before I beat him to death, if I had realized he was one of the Savages—maybe I would have been more careful. But I’d been in a rage, and things had just spiraled out of control.
It was time for me to fix things now. I couldn’t let the Savages go after Otis, not because of me. And I definitely couldn’t let Dax and Victor and the rest of the guys get dragged into a fight with the Savages on one side and the sheriff on the other side, all because of me as well. I didn’t want to see all of them carted off to jail, and I definitely didn’t want any of them to end up dead. No, I had to fix this.
And Greg wasn’t up to negotiate over it. He wanted my head, and I was going to deliver it to him.
I thought about calling Brea, but what would I say to her? She wasn’t like Dax; I couldn’t just tell her that I loved her, or that I might have loved her if we’d had a little more time together. I didn’t know what to say to her. I didn’t know how to explain. So again, I didn’t call her, and I didn’t swing by the coffee shop.
Instead, I headed right for the Savages’ clubhouse.
When I got there, though, I was surprised to see flashing red-and-blue lights outside the place. I stared as two burly police officers dragged Greg toward one of the police cars. He looked pissed, his face practically purpling with rage. “You really don’t want to do this!” he snarled. “Just think of what could happen to your daughter.”
If the sheriff had a daughter, it was news to me, but I didn’t really know much about the man. Still, I watched the scene play out in front of me, a weird sense of déjà vu going through me. This was so similar to when Otis had been dragged off to the police station, but as far as we knew, the sheriff and the Savages were playing the same side at the moment. I couldn’t imagine what Greg must have done to shift the scales so far in the opposite direction so quickly.
Not that I was upset about it. I had bought myself at least another day. I doubted that Greg would be locked up for long. Same as Otis, he’d be bailed out of there within a day or two, whatever it was that they were holding him on.
But for now, I couldn’t very well tell him I was the one who had murdered Rich. I felt relief course through me. It wasn’t considered shirking my responsibilities or avoiding the consequences of my actions when there was really nothing I could do differently. Right?
Before I could contemplate the scene for any longer, a van pulled up behind me, and a hand snaked out, grabbing the back of my shirt and yanking me inside. I blinked in the semidarkness, wondering just what the hell had happened. I wasn’t exactly a small guy; in order for someone to drag me inside of a van, they had to be a pretty large guy.
Which meant…Savages? Had some of their guys seen me come up to their clubhouse? Were they wondering what connection I had to their leader being dragged off by the sheriff? That wasn’t exactly the reason I was there, but I supposed one reason was just as good as another.
