Charlie
“Fine,” I snapped, pushing Nicolette’s hot little hand away from my pulsing hard-on. “Fine, you fuckin’ happy? I’ll take you somewhere else! Just stop this,” I said firmly. “I don’t have time to deal with your shit anymore.”
Nicolette sank down into the seat. The relief on her face was unmistakable, and she closed her eyes and let out a long sigh. “Oh, Charlie,” she said softly. “Thank you. Thank you so much.”
“Try to sleep for a while,” I advised her. “I’m gonna pull out a fuckin’ map and think of somewhere to go.”
Nicolette’s face paled. “I don’t want to go to California,” she said. “No matter where we go, it can’t be there. Charlie, I can’t go back to that state!”
And I can’t go back to that state, either, because your abusive boyfriend is gonna kill me when he realizes what I’ve done, I thought as I reached across Nicolette’s slender lap and into the glove compartment for a bundle of maps. No matter what we do now, we’re fucked.
“Where are you thinking?” Nicolette ran a hand through her long hair. Her round eyes followed my every move, and suddenly I got the feeling that despite what I’d said about promising to take her somewhere else, she probably didn’t trust me. Not that I could blame her; I was the one who’d kidnapped her.
“There’s a town in Utah, St. George, that’s right over the border,” I said. I glanced up at the mile marker signs on the highway. “That looks like it’s about two hours away. Utah sound good?”
Nicolette nodded. Her lips were white and bloodless. “Yeah,” she said softly. “That sounds good. Thank you, Charlie.”
“Don’t thank me yet,” I growled. “I haven’t done shit yet. And this car might not even get us to Utah.”
I didn’t want to tell Nicolette, but when I’d taken a look under the hood, I hadn’t liked the way things were going. The car was an old piece of shit – part of me wondered if Jack had done this on purpose. Sent me on a wild goose chase to fetch his old girl with a shitty heap of junk for a ride.
But the other part of me didn’t think Jack would have done anything so vicious. I wasn’t even sure I believed Nicolette about some of the shit she’d been saying. She was desperate and scared, sure. But Jack couldn’t be that bad. Jack was the guy who’d taken me in and given me a chance when none of the other bikers in town would even look at me. He was the guy who’d given me a life as a Steel God. I wasn’t about to turn on him just yet.
“But we’ll try, right?” Nicolette’s voice was perky and hopeful. She’d stopped crying, and her cheeks were beginning to glow pink once more. She was about as beautiful as I’d ever seen her, strapped into the passenger side of the shittiest car I’d driven since I’d patched into the MC. “We’ll try, won’t we? We’ll make it, I promise.”
I snorted. “And what are you planning on doing to support us, huh? You gonna work as a waitress? In some diner?”
Nicolette crossed her arms over her chest and looked indignant. “No,” she said. “Well, maybe. I’d do anything, really. I mean, I have to support myself. And the baby.”
I licked my lips and sighed. “Nicolette, don’t worry about that right now,” I told her. I folded the map and stuffed it between the windshield and the dirty dashboard. “I’ll take care of you, okay? Don’t fuckin’ stress about it anymore. You got that?”
Nicolette slouched in the seat. “I can’t let you do that,” she argued. “I’m not going from man to man. I want to do something for me!”
“Well, we can figure out what to do after the baby comes,” I said. “You’re gonna make yourself sick if you keep thinking about it now. You got that?”
Nicolette nodded miserably. “Okay,” she said. She ran a hand through her hair and pulled an elastic off her wrist and twisted her hair into a knot at the back of her head. “Fine. Can we just go, already?”
As I pulled back on the road and pointed the car in the direction of Utah, I kept sneaking glances over at Nicolette. She was slouched down in the seat and staring out the window, one hand resting on her belly. I hadn’t noticed it before – definitely not when we were fucking. But I could tell she was pregnant. Her breasts were swollen and her lips were pink and glistening. She was radiating, glowing. I knew some of it had to have come from her anxiety, but this was more than that.
“We should get there in a couple hours,” I said.
She didn’t say anything. The car filled with an uncomfortable silence so I fiddled with the radio knob, tuning to a country station peppered with static.
My ass was numb and sore by the time we pulled over the Utah state line. Nicolette looked at me with wonder.
“We’re really doing this, aren’t we?” Nicolette’s voice was soft and slow, like she’d just woken up. “We’re really going off on our own.”
“And we’re gonna raise that kid,” I said, pointed to her stomach. I wanted to talk to her – I wanted to find out everything in her head, what she was really thinking. But she was silent; there was none of the pleading desperation that she’d shown a few hours before.
I still wasn’t willing to digest everything she’d told me about Jack. And I had no idea what I was gonna do about the man himself. He’d kill me if I showed up in Carlsbad without Nicolette. I thought about what she’d said: lie, and say she’d fled elsewhere. Well, Jack would just put me back on tracking her. And then I’d have to lie again, and this whole damn thing would just get even messier.
The town of St. George was slower, sleepier than I’d expected. It was small and picturesque, with a hospital on the outskirts. A few houses, the rocky red cliffs in the background. It looked like small-town America, like the places I’d bounced through as a teenager before settling down on the farm in California.
“This is pretty,” Nicolette said. She rolled down the window and stuck her hand outside, swirling her fingers in the arid air. “Where are we going?”
“We’ll find a hotel for the night,” I replied. “And in the morning, I’ll get out there and start looking for a place for us to rent.”
“I can pay,” Nicolette said quickly. She pulled her purse up. “I have a credit card, just in my name. You shouldn’t use your card. Jack could track us here.”
I stared at her. “You’re sharper than you look,” I told her, not sure I was able to believe it myself.
She blushed and ducked her head. “Thanks,” she said softly. “I tried to get everything in order before I left. You know. So I wouldn’t have to go back for any reason.” She licked her lips and her smile faded, like she’d suddenly just remembered about my trying to kidnap her. I knew right then that any intimacy built between us could be torn down in seconds. All she’d have to do was think about the way I tricked her.
She could never trust me. I wished I could go back in time and stop myself from ever listening to Jack, but I knew that all I could do now was work on trying to make things as right as possible.
I pulled into a local motel, the headlights of the car bouncing over the wall.
“You want me to go in?”
Nicolette shook her head. “I’ll go,” she said. “Just give me a second.” She climbed out of the car and stretched her arms high over her head. In the dim light of the parking lot, her body was mostly obscured. But I felt a jolt of hot lust searing through my body when I remembered those sweet curves, how she’d felt like hot silk in my hands. And tonight it might happen again. I couldn’t stop the thoughts from coming, but the first one was like a bolt of lightning that opened the floodgates.
Nicolette sashayed into the office, plucking at the seat of her jeans. I licked my lips as I watched her bend over the counter and ring the service bell.
Ten minutes later, she opened the passenger door to the car and tossed a key at me. “You’re in twenty-one,” she said. “I’m on the other side of the motel. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I blinked. “We’re not…we’re not staying in the same room?”
Nicolette shook her head. “No,” she said. “We’re not.” She laughed and stood up with her hands on her hips. “Charlie, come on. You kidnapped me! Like I’d fall asleep in front of you.”
I climbed out of the car and slammed the door so hard the whole body shook. “Fine,” I snapped. I pulled the key out of her hand. “You better be up by nine. We’ll look for a place to live together. But we’re not staying in this shit heap for more than one night. It looks like it’s fucking filled with roaches.”
A small smile played on Nicolette’s face. “Nine is fine,” she said sweetly. “See you in the morning.”