Macy had spent the past three days trying not to look Jimmy in the eye. She’d managed to make an excuse and somehow get out of sex with him too, but she knew full well that wasn’t going to last forever. She wasn’t sure what was going on, but Dax had something brewing and he was keeping Jimmy busy that week. But, when things calmed down, Jimmy was going to want sex. As long as she chose to live with him, saying no wasn’t really an option. She’d been relieved that morning when she woke up and Jimmy was getting ready to go on a ride with Dax. She was hoping that a day to herself, doing mundane things around the house, would be what she needed to clear her head.

Macy had grown up in the club. She knew that club girls had multiple sex partners and no one seemed to care, but she’d just never been able to wrap her head around that. As she watched her mother being passed from one man to the other and her father never having the backbone to stand up and claim her as his own, all Macy’d ever wanted was one man that loved her above all. She thought that would be Cody when she was a kid. He was never impressed with the way the men passed women around either. Then when Cody was gone and Jimmy stood by her when she felt like she had no one else, she’d thought it was going to be him. As far as she knew, Jimmy wasn’t fucking anyone else, but here she was…Miss Self-Righteous, living with one man and fucking another…and it was eating her alive. She felt so guilty about it that she had almost slipped up and told Callie, one of the club girls that she worked with at the veterinarian’s office twice a week. Callie had noticed her mood and asked about it, and it had been on the tip of her tongue. But she thought about her mother again. Nobody in the club had any respect for her. She had been thought of as just another outlet by most of the men in the club. When she overdosed, effectively taking her own life, Macy was ten years old. Her father barely batted an eye and as far as Macy knew, he never shed a tear. The thought of dying all alone with no one that cared, like her mother had, was more frightening to her than the idea of dying itself. She decided she couldn’t tell anyone. It would be another deep, dark secret that she kept to herself. She could only pray that Cody felt the same way…about everyone knowing. She also prayed for the strength to say no if he ever wanted to do it again.

She finally pulled herself out of bed and after her shower she set about straightening up the house and doing laundry. She was almost finished with the second load of laundry when her phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number but she answered it anyways. When Jimmy went on his “rides” with Dax, she always worried. It was better now that the club wasn’t in a war with the Sinners any longer, but you still never knew what they were going to get themselves into.

“Hello?”

“Hi, is this Macy Linden?”

“Yes, who is this?”

“This is Bobbie. I’m a bartender over at Spirits.”

The mention of the bar where she had sex with Cody in the bathroom automatically caused her stomach to clench. “Um…okay…”

“I found a wallet in the bathroom when I was cleaning the day before yesterday. It had your I.D. in it, but I didn’t know how to get ahold of you until today. I’m afraid maybe someone stole your money out of it, though. There isn’t any cash in it.”

“Oh! Well, I doubt that I had much in there, if any. I probably just dropped it. Thank you. How did you know how to reach me?”

“Oh, there was a guy here that night, I remembered seeing your boyfriend talking to him.”

“My boyfriend, Jimmy?”

“Jimmy? Oh, no…I thought you were with that other guy, Cody or something.” She was quiet for a minute and Macy had a flashback of a waitress looking knowingly at her as she snuck out of the bathroom that night, right after Cody had. Shit! The waitress knew what they were doing in there, and now she also knew that Cody wasn’t Macy’s boyfriend. Shit!

“So this guy told you to call Cody?”

“No—I mean, well, he didn’t mention any names. He said the guy had given him a ride that night and given him his number. He said to call him and he’d know how to reach you. That boyfriend stuff was my assumption, I guess. I’m sorry.” Well, now, she probably assumes that I’m a slut, Macy thought. Then she thought about Jimmy. He liked Spirits when he wanted a night away from the ranch. Now that this waitress knew Macy was obviously fucking someone other than her boyfriend, how long would it be before he found out? This was exactly why Macy hated to lie. The truth always came out.

“Okay, I’ll be down to pick it up in a while. Thank you.”

She put the phone down and stood with her back to the counter with her hand over her fluttering belly. That brought back a flashback from eight years before…the day she’d gotten the call that Cody had pled guilty and he was going away, for fifteen long years. She’d stood just like that, with her hand on her belly…but that was for different reasons. She had to go and pick up her wallet and then she’d have to figure out what she was going to tell Jimmy when he got home. Her ideas about having a productive day were quickly unraveling.

* * *

Cody had forgotten about his meeting with parole. They made it back to town after Dax’s “meeting,” right before two p.m. Dax and the guys headed straight for Spirits and Cody went with them. It was only when he stepped off the bike in front of the little bar that he remembered what day it was.

“Shit!”

“What?” Dax asked him.

“I have to meet my parole officer today.”

Dax looked at his watch. “At what time?”

“In half an hour. I almost forgot.”

“You need to write it down somewhere. If you don’t show up, they’ll be coming out to the ranch looking for you.”

“I will,” Cody promised. He got back on the bike and as he was pulling away Dax yelled:

“And don’t get stopped on that bike! We’ll get you to the DMV tomorrow.” Cody gave him a thumbs up before dropping his sunglasses and pulling out onto the street. He hoped that his parole agent wasn’t a hardass. He’d heard stories while he was inside about some of the guys ending up homeless because their parole agent didn’t want them living with their club…or they kept having the cops raid it because the felon lived there, and causing shit within the club. He told himself all the way there that he had to check his temper at the door. All that was going to get him was another ticket back to that hellhole he’d grown up in.

He parked a little way away from the state building and planned on telling his PO, if they asked, that he’d been dropped off. He entered the large reception area, filled with people, and took a number like the sign told him to do. He was about to take a seat when a petite blonde with huge brown eyes stuck her head out of one of the doors and called his name.

He got up and went toward her. When he was standing in front of her he said, “I’m Cody Miller.”

The pretty young woman looked him over and then stepped back and opened the door wider. He wasn’t surprised that she was dressed in the same black polo shirt and black jeans as everyone else there, but he was surprised that the gold embroidered stitching said, “S. Hoffman, Parole.” S. Hoffman was the name on the papers his CCI had given him when he got out of prison. He’d just assumed that his parole agent was a man. He had surely not considered that she might be a drop-dead gorgeous blonde.

“Serina Hoffman,” she said. “Follow me.” She had a no-nonsense tone to her voice and she walked with a confident air, not the least bit intimidated by the fact that a convicted felon twice her size was at her back. He’d known petite correctional officers when he was locked up, but he’d never seen one turn her back on an inmate. He supposed it was different in her line of work. Everyone out here was looking for that second chance, and assaulting your parole officer sure as hell wasn’t going to get you any points.

She led him into a small office at the end of the hallway and took her seat behind the desk. She looked surprised when she noticed he was still standing. “Sit down.” He sat in the black leather chair opposite her and glanced around. The office was not only cramped, it was messy. There were books and files everywhere, and she had to move folders and envelopes off her computer keyboard to pull up his information. “Okay, so first things first,” she said, making a few clicks on the keyboard. “Where are you staying?”

“I’m in Hanover…”

“Where? Give me an address.” Cody gave her the address of the ranch and she typed it in and then made a face at the computer. “The Southside Skulls? You’re living on that compound out there?”

“Um…well, it’s not a compound really, it’s a ranch…”

“Oh, so you wrangle cattle?”

“No.”

“Grow vegetables?”

“Um, I don’t think so…”

“Slop the pigs?” She was being sarcastic, and suddenly Cody didn’t find her as attractive as he initially had.

“No. I don’t do any of that.”

“Doesn’t sound like much of a ranch, then. Let’s call it what it is, shall we? Dax Marshall has built a pretty nice setup out there for his club to hide from the world, or at least the world of law enforcement…”

“His old lady is a cop,” Cody said. He wasn’t sure why he’d said that, but his PO didn’t look impressed.

“She was a cop. She’s not a cop anymore because she fell in love with an outlaw biker. Last I heard, she was studying to be an attorney. That’s kind of fitting.”

Cody was beginning to get annoyed. His CCI knew he was planning on living on the ranch, at least for a while. He didn’t have anywhere else to go. Why this bitch was giving him a hard time was beyond him. “Is there a problem with me living on the ranch?” he asked.

“I guess that remains to be seen,” she said. She pulled open a drawer and pulled out a Ziploc baggie with a plastic cup inside. “Here,” she said, handing it to him. “Go piss for me.”

“I wasn’t in on drug charges.”

“Did I ask if you were? Every one of my inmates proves to me that they’re clean every time I see them. You have a problem with that, Miller?”

He thought about the joint he’d just shared with Jimmy earlier. He didn’t have a problem with it, but she might. He didn’t say anything however; he just took the cup and stood up. “Where at?” he asked.

“Out this door and to the right. First door on the left. Don’t turn on the water and don’t flush the toilet. Leave the sample in the bathroom. You can wash your hands in the hallway.”

Cody went across the hall to the bathroom, the whole way fuming about the way she talked to him. He got treated better by the guards that took care of him in prison. It was going to be hard for him to not tell this bitch to go fuck herself. He pissed in the cup, put the lid on it, and left it on the wooden counter before leaving the room and washing his hands in the hallway. When he got back into her office she was staring at the computer again. She didn’t look at him or wait for him to sit down before saying, “Do you have a job yet? And by job, I don’t mean polishing bikes for Dax Marshall or being a gofer…”

“I get it,” Cody said. “No, I don’t have a job yet.”

“What are you planning on doing?”

“I don’t know. I never had a job before I went in.” She looked up at him then and he thought he might see just a slight bit of empathy in her eyes. It was so slight as to almost be invisible or imagined.

“Well, you better start filling out some applications for flipping burgers or something. The next time I see you, I want you to have a job.”

“Okay.” Cody almost asked her what her problem was…why she was talking to him like he was a piece of shit…but it would have been redundant. Even before he went to prison, that was the way people in the community talked to him. It was one reason why he wanted so badly to ride with the MC. The Skulls demanded respect, and respect was one thing Cody had never fully achieved from anyone. When Keller was alive Cody was a full-fledged fuck-up. In prison, he was protected by the affiliates of the club, but they did that because of the respect they felt for Dax, not him. Outside, the community wasn’t making any secret of how they felt about the club and its members, and apparently his parole agent wasn’t going to either.

“I’m going to go over some of the common reasons why a parolee can be found in violation, okay? Write it down or record it if you must. I don’t want you saying later that I didn’t tell you something.”

Yeah, definitely not hot any longer. “Okay.”

“Your residence, and in this regard Dax Marshall’s residence or clubhouse or wherever you sleep, can be searched at any time of day or night without reason and without a warrant. If you want to leave the county, it has to be approved by me, and I’m sure you can guess that an approval from me won’t come easy. I want you to have a job by the end of the week and if not, then enroll in school full-time. If you quit your job, get fired, drop out, or get kicked out of school you have five days to notify me. If you change your residence, you have five days to notify me. You will obey all laws and that extends to paying your parking tickets and not littering. Do you understand all of this, Cody?”

I’m not a fucking moron. “Yes.”

“Oh, another thing. You were convicted of manslaughter using your fists and feet. So, no fighting, no knives, guns, or weapons of any kind. This extends to your residence, so when you get back to that compound you might want to have a talk with Mr. Marshall.”

“I’m sure Dax doesn’t have any weapons on the property,” Cody said, suppressing a smile. What he was sure of was that with so many felons on the property, he kept them well hidden.

She snorted and said, “Look, I’m not here to bust your chops. What I’m here to do is: number one, protect society from dangerous criminals and number two, help turn you into a productive member of that society. Sometimes, and I’m not saying this applies to you, people come to me in their twenties or thirties and I’m the first disciplinarian they’ve had outside the prison walls. They have no idea how to integrate into society, and the ones that don’t follow my rules don’t need to worry about it because they end up right back behind prison walls. With that being said, if I were you I’d do my best to find someplace else to live. Because in my experience there is no such thing as a fully legitimate motorcycle club.” Cody didn’t say anything to that and after a long, hard stare at his face she said, “You can go. See you same time next week here, unless I decide to visit you in the meantime.”

Cody got up and left, and on his way out to the bike, he couldn’t help but feel like he was still in some form of prison with people telling him what to do and how to do it at every turn. He wondered if that ever stopped, and he wondered how long he’d be able to stand it if it didn’t.