Thirteen
Dear Calla, My best friend and I have always wanted to date a biker like in those romance novels, but we live in a community where every guy wears Polo shirts and khakis and drives around in forty-thousand-dollar cars. Where’s a girl supposed to find the rough and tough in the world when we’re surrounded by the pressed and polite? ~Signed Biker Girl
My knight in shining armor drives a Maserati.
Last night I had a biker dream. In it I was driving along a secluded highway with my arms wrapped around some nameless man. Sometimes he’d pat the back of my hand as if making sure I hadn’t fallen off, but that was the most contact we had. I just remember feeling safe, like nothing could touch me as we took to the open county roads going as fast as the bike would let us go.
Listening to the Zach Brown band through custom speakers on a heated leather seat is about as far from my dream as I could possibly get. As for my leading man, he wears an NBA jersey with—I’m pretty sure—designer sweatpants. He also has yet to blink. For the past hour, Ash’s fingers have been so tightly wrapped around the steering wheel that I haven’t wanted to interrupt his concentration. He’s also been checking the rearview mirror more than the road, so he’s either having a staring contest with Simba in the back seat or he’s scared of the dark, empty-looking road behind us.
His nervousness soon lends itself to anger as I replay the events of the night, letting my defenses build a wall against my vulnerability. The truth is I probably didn’t need to be rescued. Yes, I was hiding in the crawl space, but I told Ash he didn’t need to come. He was the one who insisted on coming anyway. Just like he insisted on leading the assholes to my home a few days before. All of this—every last bit of this situation—is his fault.
Folding my arms across my filthy yellow sundress, I stare out the window, watching the trees blur in my vision. “Do you have any tats?”
Ash relaxes the height of his shoulders as he leans over the custom console. Shit, he even has a personalized travel mug in his pristine cup holder. An MC gang banger wouldn’t drink coffee from an unbreakable mug, for fuck’s sake. He’d kidnap the barista by gun point and make her work for the gang.
He clears his throat. “Tats?”
“Yeah, do you have any?”
“Uh. No.”
I smirk. “Afraid of needles, are you?”
I pretend I’m cringing because it’s chilly and not because I’m being a bitch.
He looks over at me, too confused to take offense to my comment. “You have any?”
Shaking my head, I stare down at the dim blue glow coming from GPS. Seriously? A GPS? A biker would just sniff the air to know which direction to point his bike.
He’s silent for a bit while I mull over our conversation in my head. The ridiculousness has calmed a bit of my adrenaline, so I feel confident enough to unfold my arms from in front of my chest. My back muscles are engaged and my foot still taps against the perfectly clean floor mat, but my arms feel a tad looser as we pull onto I-95.
He makes an odd sucking sound between his front teeth. “I’d get a barbed wire.”
“What?”
He tilts his head to me, keeping his eyes on the road. “I’d get a barbed wire that snakes around my upper arm.”
I glance down at his shirt, imagining what his stupidly toned arms would like with a barbed wire. Hating the delicious visual now clouding my temper tantrum, I roll my eyes at his cliché response. “Of course you would.”
Shrugging, he says, “One of my chefs had one. Every time someone tried to talk down to him or put down his cooking, he’d cross his arms and the sleeves would ride up to show everyone the tat. Like clockwork, people would stare down at his triceps and react. They’d backpedal almost immediately. There was power in that tat.”
Now that sounds like my kind of hero.
I lean back against the seat and hum, trying to picture his chef. “Was he in a gang?”
“Gang?”
“Yeah an MC gang, a motorcycle gang.”
Ash scratches his five o’clock shadow. “He and his partner were part of a racing club, but they were just the normal two wheel bikes.”
“Partner?”
“He’s gay.”
“How gay?”
“Very.”
Pouting, I tap my thumb on my lap. “Know anyone else who has tats and likes to drive motorcycles?”
He shrugs, “I’ve got a bike.”
I turn back to face him, hating how the moonlight throws dark shadows along his cheekbone, making it easier to picture him on the back of a Harley. Fearing any slip in my façade, I arch my eyebrows and smirk. “Does it have training wheels?”
The moonlight shows a muscle tick in his jaw line a second before he smirks.
Refusing to be led astray by his arrogant smile, I close my eyes and stupidly picture him sitting on the back of a bike. Quicker than I would like to admit, I cover his body with full leather from neck to ankle. A helmet covers his good old American boyhood face, and in spite of the fact that I can’t see his auburn hair under the helmet, he looks damn hot. I imagine my inner thighs pressed in tight to his legs as we take every turn going ninety. My arms would ache with how tightly I’m holding on, but as we clear the freeway and drive down a secluded road, my hand would slip down his waist, over his belt buckle—
He interrupts my fantasy, sounding frustrated. “You’re fantasizing about a biker dude, aren’t you?”
Jumping slightly, I release the tight hold of my crossed legs. “Uh. No.”
He snaps his tongue against the roof of his mouth and shakes his head. “Am I anywhere in the picture? Do I at least get to be in the background, looking on disappointedly as you drive off into the sunset? I could even start choking on the dust you both leave behind.”
Shrugging, I release the grip on my hemline. “I guess every fantasy needs a little background. Sure, yeah, I can try to squeeze you in.”
“Whew,” he says on a breath. “Thank you.”
He fidgets with the satellite radio and settles on a pop station. When he starts singing off-key with Justin Timberlake, I let my smirk drift down into a frown.
Scrubbing my hands down my face, I groan. “Ash. Look. I’m being a bitch. I really do appreciate you and your brother coming up and making sure I was safe. I mean it. You were right. I don’t have many plan B’s in my life and you saved my ass.”
I pat his shoulder like I’m his coach saying good try, buddy. “But nothing has changed. I don’t want your help, and I definitely do not want your pity. I think I’m going to take off for a little bit, wait until this all settles down and give myself a long-deserved vacation. I already have the Greyhound website up so you can just drop me off. You can go to that property of yours to hide out or have a press conference to separate yourself from all of this. Make whatever decisions you need to make for you, but I still don’t want to be a part of it.”
Ash is quiet for a long time. For a man who probably couldn’t sit silent through a funeral, I’m a bit worried about his thoughts. The muscles on his forearm bulge out against the skin, and his jaw is set in such a hard line that I’m afraid it will break through the skin. In a word, he looks dangerous. Exactly like someone who’d sit on the back of a bike and tell the whole world to fuck off with just a sidelong glance.
He turns the wheel sharply, sending the car into the emergency lane and then slams on the brakes. My head snaps forward and even in his anger, he has the presence of mind to throw out his arm as if to protect me from going through the windshield. Dust rolls up and over the hood of his car while I stare out the windshield with my mouth open and my breath coming in short pants.
When he speaks, his low voice rumbles through the car, and I shift closer to the passenger side door. “People have been telling me what to do all my life. Whether it’s what I should think, what I should feel, who I should be. I’m getting fucking tired of people not trusting that I have my own mind.”
He releases the steering wheel and turns to face me. The dim light from the dashboard reveals a stranger, a man cut with hardened features. He runs a hand through his hair and shakes his head, his eyes looking a little wild. “You tell me I shouldn’t pity you. I shouldn’t feel sorry for you. Glad you think that little of me, but I’m a fucking human being, Calla. I don’t feel sorry for you, but I damn well feel sorry for the twenty-eight-year-old who had her entire fucking life ripped from her. Yeah, I feel sorry. I’m sorry if you want someone else riding in on his bike, but the bike is in the shop. I will never be the guy who drops you off on a fucking Greyhound bus so that you can continue running while I sit in my fully furnished cabin just so I have the luxury of not feeling uncomfortable. Fuck, Calla. No.”
His eyes bore into mine, holding me still, making sure I feel every inch of his conviction. He must see something in my wide-eyed expression, because he puts on his blinker and pulls back onto the road.
I blink a few times and then sink into my seat. My body is in such a frenzy that I can’t even see the speedometer. I’m panting, so visually turned on by the man who has just stripped down every single one of my defenses. I don’t move. I’m not even sure I can. I’m not afraid of Ash, but I’m afraid of myself. If I move, if I shift, will I throw myself onto his lap? Will I use his broad chest to cry on or cling to his lips as if trying to breathe in his words?
Instead, I sit completely still, watching the muscles in his jaw constrict and then relax, giving me insight into the torrent of his mind. I jump when his phone announces that Jackass is calling and Ash presses a button on his steering wheel.
“Yeah?”
Cole’s voice fills the speakers. “She all right?”
“She’s breathing.”
“You have a plan?”
He pauses. “Yeah.”
“Your plan suck?”
One corner of Ash’s lips tip up into a pained grimace. “Don’t all of them?”
“Dammit,” Cole hisses. “I’m not going to Dad’s grand opening on my own, jackass, so don’t go getting fucking arrested or killed. You’re always looking for creative ways to get out of your responsibilities. Remember Rethers’ wedding?”
Ash doesn’t say anything, but I notice the loosening of his hand on the steering wheel.
Cole answers his own question. “Watch that kid, Calla. His plans royally suck.”
I should say something snarky, but I don’t want to fracture whatever bond seems to join the brothers in the silence of the car.
Cole goes quiet before saying, “Lawyers are flapping their wings and Dad’s got a plan. You call the family in if you need help, yeah?”
When Ash doesn’t respond, Cole sighs and says, “Right.”
Ash presses a button, and the music returns.
I don’t know what happens or why I feel this intense need to fill the silence with my voice. I also don’t know why I ask the stupidest question imaginable. “He just said you should call the family in. You guys in the mafia?”
Ash shakes his head, but every part of his stiff body tells me I just made the dark mood even darker. “You don’t need to organize crime to know loyalty and respect. Once you stop looking over your shoulder, maybe your head will get screwed on a bit tighter. Maybe then you’ll stop fantasizing about the pieces of shit in our world and learn to rely on the people deserving of your trust.”