Chapter Two
Olivia
Terrance and I were supposed to go to dinner, just dinner, but as usual, we ended up at The Smoke Joint. I didn’t know why he was so obsessed with the place. We had been right there in town, if he’d wanted to go to a bar we could have found a nice one. I really hated the place. I hated watching all the creepy old married bikers kissing and touching all over the young wannabe biker babes.
It was sickening.
Especially when I had to see Dax’s father. He was nice to me, but he didn’t even try to hide the fact that he messed around on his wife. He acted like he was above having to explain himself to anyone, even the mother of his child. Dax used to get pissed off about the way he treated her and he and his dad fought constantly. Dax used to get pissed off at the club and his dad for a lot of things before he started running drugs for them.
I followed Terrance over to the bar and sat down on one of the empty stools. He was still standing. The woman on the other side of me was a regular. I thought her name was Violet or something like that. She was an old biker babe who I thought used to do porn back in the day based on the rumors I had heard. She never made it to the coveted status of “old lady.”
I would never want to be called that, but to the women that hung around there, it was an honorable title. She shelled out quite a bit of cash in hopes of it. She had the biggest fake boobs I had ever seen and equally big, bleached blond hair. She smiled at me and I smiled back. Most of her bottom teeth were gone. I guess the cash ran out.
“I think I just want water. I’m a little too full from dinner for beer,” I said to Terrance.
He was still standing up and he was looking at something or someone over at Bull’s table. Bull was Dax’s dad and the president of the club that ran the bar. I glanced over in that direction but it was dark and all I could really make out was the shape of a man with a lot of beer bottles sitting in front of him on the table. It wasn’t Bull. This guy was too big, buff.
“Terrance?”
He didn’t answer me and he looked nervous. Terrance was a big guy with massive shoulders and arms and long legs. He learned how to fight at a young age and nothing seemed to ever make him nervous. If something did, I knew to worry myself.
Terrance grew up in the club. His dad was Dax’s dad’s vice president and they had both been in the club since before either of the boys was born. Dax and Terrance grew up playing in the back room of the bar together. I heard stories from both of them about it. They were mostly nice stories, but they both had their issues that I’m sure were caused by the darker side of it all too.
I could tell by the look on Terrance’s face that something was wrong. “Terrance, what’s going on?”
I glanced over at the booth again but he said, “No, don’t look at him.”
“Don’t look at whom? Who is that?”
Terrance turned back toward the bar and I could see his face in the mirror behind it. His dark brown eyes were wide and he looked like he had just seen a ghost. He was starting to scare me and I wanted to know what was going on.
I started to turn around again and he said, “Don’t look over there; it’s Dax.”
I froze. I didn’t understand…Dax? He couldn’t be there. He was in prison.
“What? Who’s Dax? That muscular guy over there in Bull’s booth?”
“Yeah, emphasis on the muscular guy,” Terrance said. “Shit! Did you know he was getting out?”
“Me? No! How would I know? I haven’t seen him since…jeez! Has it been two years already?” I tried to turn around again but Terrance actually put his hand on the back of my stool to stop me. “I don’t think he should be out yet. Wouldn’t Gail have said something or Bull? That guy’s too big to be him anyways and he has tats all over his arms.”
“It’s him, Liv. You don’t come out of prison without tats and muscles unless it’s in a box. It’s Dax.”
“Shit, maybe we should go talk to him,” I suggested.
“You think?” he said. “What are we going to do? Should we walk up to him and say, “Hey, Dax. Sorry we never came to visit you in the joint the two years you were gone, but look, we’ve been taking care of each other.”
Terrance looked nauseated.
My insides were quivering. I had done my best at least for the past year to put Dax and our life together out of my head. I was trying to concentrate on moving forward, with Terrance. He was a great guy and he deserved a woman that could give him all of herself.
I wasn’t over Dax, I wasn’t even sure if I ever would be, but I did a good job of not letting Terrance see or feel that. I walked away from him because I couldn’t be with a guy who would sell drugs. I also couldn’t be with a guy who would lie to me about it the entire year we were together and say he wanted no part of his dad’s life. He made such a big deal about not wanting his kids to be raised like he was and around the kind of people he was.
We had talked about getting married and having kids after college. He never let on that he had changed his mind. I didn’t know a thing about it until he was arrested. I wasn’t going to bring a life into this world with a drug dealer for a father. I glanced over to the end of the bar where Bull was making out with some girl younger than me. Look what kind of life Dax had; I wasn’t going to do that to my kids.
I sought Dax out in the mirror behind the bar. It was still too dark and shadowy for me to really get a good look at his face, but I could see his form better now that my eyes adjusted to the poor lighting. He was dressed in a white, wife-beater style tank, blue jeans and black boots. Dax still had his blond hair. I sighed, remembering how I used to love touching it.
Terrance was right about the muscle. His arms were huge, as big around as my thighs and he was stretching his tank to its limit across his chest. But the tattoos were the weirdest part. Dax always said he would never stain his body, but this guy had tattoos that ran down both arms and were visible under the neck of his tank which meant they went across his chest too.
“Aren’t prison tattoos black?” I asked stupidly.
Terrance looked at me like he couldn’t believe I was thinking about something so stupid. I was trying hard to convince myself that the stranger in the corner wasn’t the man who used to be the love of my life. If it were him, life as I had come to know it was about to change…again.
“No,” Terrance said simply. “Not anymore. That’s old school. It’s him, Liv. I need to go over there. He’s looking right at us.”
This time I didn’t let Terrance stop me. I turned all the way around and realized that he was looking right at us and it was most definitely Dax. His signature jade green eyes had always been his most captivating feature. They were huge and surrounded by long, blond eyelashes. The first time I saw him I had trouble looking away. However, this time I could see him looking at me, questioning. I felt my face burning and I found the courage to turn away.
“I’m going over there,” Terrance said. “I have to talk to him. I owe him that much.”
Before I had a chance to respond or protest, he headed across the crowded bar. I didn’t expect it to go well and I really didn’t want to watch. I couldn’t stop myself though. It was much too loud in there with the music, the talking, and the laughing to hear anything. I watched anyway.
Terrance casually strolled over to him. Dax was still looking at me until Terrance got right next to the booth and then he switched his attention to my new boyfriend. I couldn’t see well, but I didn’t see a smile on his face as he looked up at Terrance. I saw Terrance smile and watched as Dax said something with a look on his face that told me I was probably better off not being able to hear him.
Terrance was moving his hands as he talked. It was what he did when he was trying to make someone understand his point. I didn’t think Dax got it because he suddenly stood up. He pushed Terrance in the chest.
I read his lips as he said, “Fuck you, Terrance.” The bar got quiet, except for the music. The two men stared each other down, but no one intervened.
I could tell by his posture as he came back over that he wasn’t mad, but he was hurting inside. Whatever Dax said to him had hit home.
Dax stood there and watched him for a minute and then he looked at me. He picked up a beer from the table and chugged it and then stormed out of the bar. I saw Bull look at him over his shoulder as he left, but he didn’t go after him—no one did.
“He’s pissed, of course,” Terrance said, dropping down onto the stool next to mine.
I put my hand on his shoulder and we sat for a minute. I wanted to say something to make him feel better but I doubted there were words for that.
He finally said, “He’s been my best friend since we were two. We did everything together, we learned everything together. I practically lived at his house after my mom bailed. He was locked up and alone and I didn’t once go see him. What the hell kind of best friend is that?”
“Terrance, you can’t blame yourself.”
“Why not? He blames me. He just told me what a motherfucker I am for first abandoning him and then for fucking his ex-girlfriend in the meantime. You know what, Olivia? I had no defense for it either.”
“It’ll be okay.” I tried to convince him. “He probably just needs some time to readjust to things. You and I didn’t do anything wrong. Dax and I broke up before he even went to trial. You and I didn’t start dating for another year after that. Besides, you didn’t put him in prison. He did that to himself.”
The look on his face gave me the feeling he knew things weren’t ever going to be all right between him and Dax. I didn’t think I had ever seen him look so sad.
“You don’t date your best friend’s exes, it’s an unwritten rule. I don’t know what the fuck I was thinking.”
I sighed. It was going to suck. Not only was Dax back in town for me to deal with but now Terrance seemed to be rethinking our relationship. I was head over heels in love with Dax back then, before he screwed up and went to prison. My whole life was wrapped up in him, all of my hopes and dreams.
After he got busted, I tried going on like things were normal, but I just couldn’t do it. I was failing my classes because I couldn’t sleep at night thinking about him in jail. I finally just quit. It got to be too much.
I started working a day or two a week for my uncle at the motorcycle shop. It was the shop that Dax’s dad and Terrance’s dad and all the other MC guys took their bikes for modifications and repairs.
Terrance worked for Bull and his dad. He didn’t touch any of the illegal stuff, not that he’d even admit any of that was going on. I’m not sure if he really believed it or if he was just loyal but he wasn’t like Dax. He didn’t talk about any of that other stuff we all heard the whispers about.
What he did for them was bring in the bikes when my uncle was to work on them and picked them up when he was finished. He ran parts back and forth and I saw him almost every day. At first he was my link to Dax. I didn’t want to call his mother because I knew she would try to convince me to stick by him. I wasn’t going to be her and Dax be Bull in twenty years; no way.
Terrance filled me in on Dax’s trial and his sentencing. I had gone to the courthouse, but I couldn’t bring myself to sit in there and hear a judge remand him to prison. Besides, they always brought him in to the courtroom in an orange jumpsuit and shackles and I hated seeing him like that. That night, as Dax was on his way to prison, Terrance sat up with me all night while I cried and he told stories about Dax. He loved him as much as I did.
Terrance and I became friends and then lovers…and it just stuck. But now, I had a feeling things were about to change. Terrance had a lot of guilt. I wasn’t even sure he wouldn’t break up with me. I had my own issues with Dax being back. I wouldn’t admit this to anyone, but just those few minutes of looking at Dax across the bar made me want to run into his arms. I hadn’t let myself think about how much I missed him or how much I still loved him for a really long time, until now.