Thirteen
Then
Ghost had forgotten about the car. Damn it.
The night he dropped Maggie off at home and learned she was sixteen, he spent four sleepless hours tossing around in the dark and glaring up at the water stains on his bedroom ceiling. During that time, he went from feeling stupid and duped…to feeling like a shitheel and a creep. Had he really thought she was legal? At best, he’d figured she was eighteen. Did those two years make such a difference?
Well, they did legally. He didn’t want to go to jail over a piece of ass.
Not that she was a piece of ass. He didn’t think of her like that, even though it was dangerous not to, even though he should have. She could wear oversized leather jackets and as much lipstick as she wanted, she couldn’t hide what she was – a nice girl. The kind of girl that never hung around one-percenter clubhouses; the kind who only liked bad boys in an abstract, hypothetical way. The kind who did well in school, who respected her elders (even when they didn’t deserve it), and who thought missing curfew was the most heinous thing she could get up to. Innocent.
Maybe it was just one of the dark aspects of being a man: the way innocent sounded so good.
But he suspected it might be more than that. As his disastrous marriage to Olivia proved, he had a weak spot for the kinds of women who held him in contempt.
The only fix for it was to push her out of his mind and never speak to her again. But then he showed up at the clubhouse and there was the car. The car he’d washed and waxed and been planning to give to her.
All the Dogs were, if not talented, at least competent mechanics. Before the divorce, Ghost had been trying to wear Duane down on the idea of opening a garage. Oil changes, light body work, bike repair. Other clubs ran legitimate businesses, as a means to provide legal income for their families, and, if they were honest, to launder the money they made selling drugs. But of course, implementing that plan would have taken time and capital, neither of which Duane was interested in spending on, as he put it, “a goddamn money pit.”
Some of the guys took on small side projects, though, and the weedy backyard of the clubhouse had slowly been overtaken by clunkers. One of which wasn’t so much a clunker as a hidden gem that just needed a little TLC. Ghost didn’t want to keep it for himself, and he hadn’t invested much in it, so he’d decided to surprise Maggie with it. A girl that pretty shouldn’t be at the mercy of friends and predators when she needed a ride.
But then he’d found out she was sixteen…
Just damn it.
A shadow joined his across the pavement. “It looks good,” Collier said of the Monte Carlo. “I like the black.”
“Thanks.” It did look good, at least to Ghost. A shiny onyx black with two white racing stripes up the hood, across the roof, and down the trunk. It had come to him with the original mag wheels and they’d just needed polishing. He’d gotten a set of tires for cheap and bleached the white letters until they stood out like neon. Wiped down the whole interior and Armor-All’d the dash.
“Who’s it for?” Collier asked.
Ghost stiffened; on the pavement, his shadow drew up into a straight line. “Why’s it gotta be for someone? Maybe it’s for me.”
Collier snorted – and not unkindly. “That truck you drive around in hasn’t been washed since it was manufactured. This.” He gestured to the car. “This is for someone else. A paying someone…” he speculated. “Or.” And here he turned to give Ghost a mildly interested look, brows lifted in question.
“You don’t know me,” Ghost lied, grumbling.
“What’s her name?”
Ghost wiped his hand down his face, hoping he could somehow, miraculously, wipe away the shame that heated his cheeks. No such luck. “Who says it’s a girl?”
“Hey, I’m not judging you for it. I’m just glad you found one that makes you want to do something.”
“It’s not like that. It’s complicated.”
“Uh-huh.” Collier clapped him on the shoulder. “I’ll buy you a beer later and you can tell me all about it.”
Ghost nodded and left the car behind, still not sure what the hell to do with it.
~*~
“Maggie! Hey, Maggie!”
Her step faltered and she closed her eyes tight, exhaling a frustrated breath as she listened to the sound of footfalls catch up to her, the scuff of sneakers bouncing off the locker fronts. She frowned for as long as she could, then smoothed her expression and turned to face him, polite smile pinned in place.
“Hi, Vince.”
“Hey,” he repeated, beaming at her, face flushed from exertion. His eyes sparkled, and Maggie really wished they didn’t, or that he’d at least direct that sparkle toward some other girl.
There was nothing wrong with Vince Fielding. He was polite, and pleasant-looking in a normal, sixteen-year-old boy kind of way. He liked Maggie – liked her, and not with an ounce of teenage coolness. Liked her so much, in fact, that he didn’t seem to care what she thought of him, and instead steered his charming efforts toward Maggie’s parents. He was fond of agreeing with her mother; agreed that Maggie ought to stand up straight, sleep in curlers, and speak charmingly of her cotillion classes which were, after all, “preparing her for a bright future.”
She hated him a little bit.
“So. Um.” Vince hiked his backpack up higher on one shoulder and fiddled with the strap, eyes cutting down to his toes, shy now that he had her undivided attention. “The winter formal’s coming up.”
Oh no.
“Yes,” she said, careful to keep her voice even. “In two months.”
“Right. But.” He took a huge breath and let it out in a rush that ruffled her hair. He’d had peanut butter for lunch, she could tell. “It’s never too early to start thinking about it, right?”
“Vince–”
He must have heard the rejection in her voice. His head snapped up, gaze pleading. “Okay, just hear me out. Real quick. Please.”
“I–”
“I already asked your folks if you could go and–”
“Whoa,” she said, louder than she’d intended. “You already asked my parents?”
“Well yeah. I know that they–”
“Stop.” She held up her hand to stave off his forming protest. “This is why I don’t want to go with you: you asked my parents first.”
He released a shaky breath; more peanut butter. “It’s respectful. I want them to respect me.”
His face broke her heart a little. Cracked it. But she didn’t feel bad enough to stop. Because Vince? He didn’t have to live under Denise Lowe’s thumb. His entire existence wasn’t reduced to pleasing a woman it wasn’t possible to please.
“Yeah, well, maybe that would be something you ought to worry about if you and I were together. This isn’t Victorian England – if you want to ask me out, then do it, and we can ask my parents afterward.”
He stared at her, breathing through his mouth. “So…”
“No, Vince. No. My whole life is tied up in cotillion, and teas, and dress-shopping. If I’m gonna go to the winter formal, I want to go as me. Not as my mother’s daughter.” She shook her head. “Going with you would be like having a parent-approved chaperone taking me. No offense.”
God, she was a bitch.
Vince was crestfallen. “I…Okay. Okay, I’m sorry, Maggie.”
She felt horrible.
But.
“I’m sorry, too,” she said, giving him a ghost of a smile. She reached forward and squeezed his forearm. “But trust me: when you like someone, it’s about them. Not whatever anyone else thinks.”
Thankfully, he didn’t follow her when she turned and continued on toward her locker. Her stomach ached, that familiar cocktail of guilt and regret. But she couldn’t change what she’d said, and didn’t want to. The second she turned eighteen, she was blasting her way out of her house; she couldn’t afford to become entangled with anyone who thought she should be content to stay there.
Her locker, as usual these days, was currently propping up Cody Brewer’s sizable shoulder as he made out with his latest conquest, one of the pep squad girls. Cody was the star wide receiver on the football team, tall, buff, squared-jaw, and the biggest, most unapologetic manwhore in the school. Maggie always wanted to hold that against him, but he was too funny and honest about it. He broke lots of hearts, but the girls should have known better; he never pretended he was looking for anything aside from a good time.
“Move, Codes,” she said without rancor, knocking his huge elbow with her own.
“Ah, shit,” he muttered as he pulled back from the pep squad girl’s mouth with a lewd pop. “You’re fucking up my game, Lowe.”
“Please. You have no game. Just a big–”
“Um, excuse you?” the girl said, all snot and peeled-back lips.
Maggie gave her a flat look. “You’ve got lipstick all over your face.”
The girl gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth. She managed to look mortified while glaring daggers at Maggie. “Call me,” she told Cody, and whirled away, stomping off with emphasis.
Maggie spun the dial and opened her locker. “I don’t know why you put up with them.”
“Them?”
“High-maintenance Barbie dolls without personalities.”
Cody chuckled and braced his shoulder against the locker next to hers, so he was facing her. “I don’t give a shit about their personalities. Also.” He leaned in closer, close enough she caught a whiff of Barbie’s perfume mixed with his cologne. “I saw you down there with Fielding.”
She groaned and shoved her books into her locker. “I don’t want to talk about him.”
“You know why he keeps sniffing around, right?”
“He’s persistent?”
He leaned in closer and pretended to sniff at her. Close enough that awareness prickled up the back of her neck. Laughing quietly, he whispered, “You smell like virgin.”
Maggie slammed her locker shut and took a step back. “Shut up.”
He backed up and shrugged. “Hey, I’m just saying. You want to get rid of him? You gotta go and get yourself ruined, babe.” He winked. “You need somebody to help with that, just let me know.” He grinned and pushed away from the lockers, walking off in a lazy, kingly way that said he knew how many eyes were always on him.
“Prick,” she muttered, without heat.
But she didn’t think he was wrong.
~*~
“Sixteen?” Collier asked, brows shooting up to his forehead. “You’re shitting me, right?”
“I wish I was.” Ghost poured himself another beer from the pitcher in the center of their table. He loved Bell Bar all the time, but he especially loved it in the middle of the afternoon, when it was just them, the jukebox, and a handful of day-drinking regulars who kept to themselves.
“But…you didn’t do anything. Right?”
He’d overfilled his glass and sucked beer foam off his thumb.
“Ghost,” Collier prodded. “You didn’t do anything, right?”
“I kinda kissed her.”
“Kinda?”
“Kinda a lot.”
“Jesus,” Collier said, and sounded tired. Like it was work being Ghost’s friend.
It was.
“I didn’t mean to,” Ghost said, as if that somehow made it better.
“You get that you could go to jail for even that, right?”
“I know.” He sucked down half his beer in one go, gasping for breath afterward. “I just…” He had no excuses, so he fell silent.
“Ghost,” Collier said, dropping his voice, shifting to the edge of his stool. “You know I love you, brother–”
“But?”
“I hate watching you screw yourself over. Again. And again.”
“I don’t know what to do,” he admitted in a small, broken voice. “Everything’s going to shit, and I don’t know how to turn it around.”
If ever anyone in his life had had all the answers, it was Collier. But now, his best friend just gave him a sad look. “I’m sorry.”
“I shoulda listened to you, back when you first met Olivia and said you didn’t like her.”
“Hold on. I said she wasn’t my type.”
“And what did that mean?”
He shrugged. “I didn’t like her. But you can’t think like that. If it weren’t for her, you wouldn’t have Aidan.”
“Yeah,” Ghost said, and didn’t know which was worse: being a bad parent, or wishing he wasn’t a parent at all. Sometimes, in the dead of night, he stared at his ceiling and wished he’d never met Liv, even if that meant Aidan wouldn’t exist. It didn’t get any lower than that, he figured: wishing your own kid out of existence.
“It won’t be shitty forever,” Collier reasoned. “Aidan’s gonna get older. Duane’s gonna step down or die someday.”
Ghost felt a grin threaten. “Not a nice thing to say about your president.”
“No, it’s not.” Collier topped off his own beer. “My point is…”
“I hear your point,” Ghost said with a nod. “I get it.”
“Good.” Collier’s tone had a finality to it, like he was glad they had that matter settled. “What we gotta do–”
“Oh no.”
“–is find you a new old lady. Those groupies are gonna kill you, my friend.”
“I hate them,” he admitted.
“You always have. You never gave a shit about anything that came too easy.”
Ghost finally smiled, really and truly, because his friend was right. Which maybe explained why he couldn’t stop thinking about Maggie.
They finished the pitcher, threw down some bills to cover it, and ventured back out into the world.
“Shit,” Ghost muttered, sliding his sunglasses into place. Emerging from the smoky, nighttime darkness of the bar into the bright white of late-afternoon felt like stepping into a solar flare. It was long moments before the dancing spots cleared from his vision and he could make out the familiar landmarks.
And something else familiar.
He spotted a flag of honey blonde hair across the street. Maggie was wearing tan cargo pants, brown loafers, and a rust-red sweater that highlighted her figure, the one that belonged to a twenty-five-year-old temptress rather than a high school kid. She had her Ray-Bans on again, and walked with her arms folded tight across her middle, head down.
A boy walked beside her, sandy-haired and still soft-edged with childhood. It made her seem older by contrast, and impossibly younger, this evidence of the kind of guy she ought to be kissing instead.
Ghost didn’t realize he’d made a sound until Collier touched his arm and said, “Whoa. Down, boy.”
He was growling, a low tight sound in the back of his throat. He stopped the second he registered the fact, swallowing hard.
Collier followed his gaze. “Is that her?”
“Yeah.” He forced his hands to relax, uncurl from the fists he’d balled up at the idea of her kissing that doofus walking beside her.
“Okay. Is that her boyfriend?”
“No. I don’t know.” His boots fidgeted across the sidewalk of their own accord.
“Well probably for the best – hey! Aw, damn it. Ghost!”
Whatever else Collier said was drowned out by the sound of a passing car as Ghost charged across the street.
~*~
On Wednesdays, like today, Maggie had her Young Knoxville meetings. It was a club that met once a week, an off-campus extracurricular that kids were “encouraged” to attend by their parents. In Maggie’s case, encouragement had begun at age twelve, when she’d been driven to the church rec center, hustled into a chair, and told that her future was counting on her participation. It was the sort of thing that looked good on college applications: a group of young, ambitious Knoxville social elite tackling charitable projects on their own initiative.
Maggie thought the charitable causes were worthwhile. But she didn’t appreciate the pomp and posturing it required to put them together.
Also, being a part of something like this since age twelve didn’t exactly breed contentment.
Every Wednesday, she took the bus to the center of downtown and walked the quarter-mile to the Methodist church, where her dad always picked her up at exactly six.
Today, because life just wanted to fuck with her lately, she’d stepped off the bus to the sound of, “Maggie, hold on,” only to find that Vince had followed her.
“I wanted to say I’m sorry,” he said as they headed up the sidewalk. She didn’t look at him, not wanting to encourage this line of discussion. “For earlier.” He made an aborted hand movement she caught from the corner of her eye, like he’d started to reach for her.
“Don’t worry about it,” she said.
“No, but…you’re pissed at me. And I don’t…I don’t want that.”
You smell like virgin. Cody’s words came back to her, and she shuddered.
Vince noticed. “Oh, are you cold? Here, you can have my jack–”
“No, it’s fine.”
“No, I can–”
“Mags,” a voice called from the street, and she froze. Ghost. She was a little bit ashamed that she knew him by voice alone, and more ashamed that it mattered to her.
She lifted her head and saw him step up onto the sidewalk and out of traffic. Somehow, in the last few days, she’d forgotten how good he looked. His dark hair was windblown, and he needed to shave, a dark shadow of stubble along his strong jaw. He was wearing a black thermal Henley under his cut and a battered leather motorcycle jacket, broke-down jeans and boots. He could have stepped out of a vintage-inspired Calvin Klein ad, but the patches on his cut told a different story. A more sinister one.
She tried to swallow and found her throat was too dry. She wasn’t going to greet him, not after the way he’d left things. The ball was in his court, and she intended for it to stay there.
Beside her, Vince made an involuntary sound of alarm in his throat, taking a step closer to her.
“Where you off to?” Ghost asked. When he stepped in front of her, he eclipsed the afternoon sunlight that beamed into her eyes. That felt significant for some reason.
Her pulse had gone from a steady thump to a wild flutter. But she forced a cool mask in place and shrugged. “Wherever sixteen-year-olds go.”
His mouth tugged down hard in the corners. “That’s not how I meant it,” he said, and she wondered if he meant now, or the other night, when he’d run away from her.
The weight of her backpack seemed to intensify; she was hyperaware of the straps cutting into her shoulders, reinforcing their age difference.
“Look,” she started, and he stepped in closer. She smelled beer; he’d been in Bell Bar, obviously. In the middle of the day. God, he was so much trouble.
Vince stepped in front of her, his shoulder trying to cover her face, and he tipped his head back to look up at Ghost and demand, “Who are you?”
Ghost’s gaze shifted to Vince in a slow, deliberate way, a muscle in his jaw jumping. Maggie couldn’t see his eyes, but she could feel the heat in them. It wasn’t the sort of look anyone would want to be on the receiving end of, but Vince, social idiot that he was, stood up straight and stared back.
Maggie put a hand on Vince’s shoulder. “Why don’t I catch up with you tomorrow at school?” she suggested. “We’ll talk then.”
But he didn’t budge. “Maggie, do you know this guy?”
Which was the wrong thing to say.
Ghost smiled. All teeth and cruel intent, more of a snarl. His laugh sounded like a growl. “Better than she knows you, I’m betting.”
Vince puffed up his chest, bristling with indignance. “This guy,” he started, and Maggie had had enough.
“Stop.” She shoved his shoulder, harder than she should have, and earned a startled look in return. “Just go.”
“But…” He cut himself off this time, eyes wide and wounded. “Maggie,” he whispered. “That’s a Lean Dog.”
“I know. Please.” She tilted her head toward the street. Begged him with her eyes. Please just leave me alone. Please, please.
He took a trembling breath and shrugged out from under her hand. Betrayed. Sad. “This isn’t you, Maggie,” he said, and finally walked away.
Maggie watched him go, ignoring Ghost for the moment – at least pretending to. His presence was palpable.
Vince stuffed his hands in his pockets and crossed the street. He didn’t go far, though, propping himself into the doorway of Ace Hardware, watching her not-so-covertly through his eyelashes, head ducked.
“Please tell me he’s not your boyfriend,” Ghost said. “’Cause damn.”
She glared at him. “What do you care? You made it very clear you think I’m disgusting.”
“No, I think you’re delicious. It’s the whole me-going-to-jail thing that gets caught in my throat.”
“You…what?”
Someone her own age, even Cody Manwhore Brewer, would have blushed and backpedaled after a comment like that. But not Ghost. He pushed his shades up onto his forehead and looked at her in a way that made her feel very young, very vulnerable, and way in over her head.
He grinned at her, sharp and feral, eyes crinkling at the corners. “You heard what I said.”
And she had. That was the problem; the words were pinging around inside her head like her skull was a pinball machine. Delicious. There was something so casually sexual about it. She felt the tendons clench in her neck as her whole body tightened.
Every time she was around him, she felt like there were so many things she could and ought to say, and that any attempt to lecture him would earn her a laugh and a wink. He was infuriating. And he was gorgeous. He called her delicious and she wanted to lean forward and let him snap her up like the Big Bad Wolf.
Ruined, Cody had said. She smelled like a virgin and she needed to be ruined.
For a moment, staring up at Ghost’s dark, smiling eyes, she allowed the fantasy to spin out. Getting herself involved with a man like this, with an outlaw, the scourge of the city, she wouldn’t just be looked-at askance; she’d be completely ostracized from all her current circles. Imagine: a girl who’d dallied with a Lean Dog being allowed into all the upper-middle-class charity clubs and cotillion balls. Inconceivable. Her mother might even disown her.
The idea left her breathless and sick – with want. She was an idiot, but she wanted that. To just be left the hell alone already. To not strain her back beneath the weight of others’ expectations. Not a boy in school would tag along after her if he thought she belonged to a Dog; no one was that brave or that stupid.
She had no idea what sort of face she was making, but Ghost’s dark grin widened; he looked like Aidan when he smiled, she thought with a sudden pang.
“What?” he asked.
“Where were you just now? Before you came over here?”
He shrugged and glanced away. “Why?”
“You were in Bell Bar, weren’t you? You smell like beer.”
“How’s a good little high school girl know what beer smells like?”
“If you’ll remember, you’re the one who got me to try whiskey for the first time.”
He made a face and turned away from her, scrubbing a hand back through his hair. “Shit. You can’t say things like – like first time. Sixteen. Fuck, I’m so stupid.” He moved as if to walk away from her.
“Ghost.”
He paused, back to her now, but listening; he vibrated with the tension of waiting.
“Why did you walk over here?”
He heaved out a deep breath, turned his head to look at her over his shoulder. “Believe it or not, I was gonna try to sell you a car.”