Twenty-Three
Then
It was almost midnight, and she was cross-eyed, the words swimming on the page before her. She shut her eyes and rubbed them, white flowers bursting behind her lids.
They’d started before dinner, completely engrossed, long enough that Aidan had started complaining, and that Ghost had ordered pizza so she didn’t have to clear the table and cook. They sat on the floor now, across from each other, linoleum cluttered with loose leaf paper, and grease-stained paper plates. Aidan had been asleep for hours.
Ghost stretched his arms up over his head until both shoulders popped. He gave a satisfied grunt and let his hands fall into his lap. “Damn.” It was a pleased, tired, disbelieving kind of “damn” – the best kind. He surveyed the business plan spread out between them, touching the corner of a page. “You think he’ll go for it?” He looked a lot like Aidan when he was doubtful.
“I don’t know.” She didn’t think he would. “But you have to get the others to go for it. If everyone thinks this is a good idea, he can’t dismiss it out of hand.”
He blew out a breath that ruffled the paper. “I dunno.”
“You have to try.”
“I know.” The corner of his mouth lifted. “You didn’t need to go to all this trouble.”
She shrugged and the muscles at the base of her neck spasmed. “I might as well put all that studying to good use. Besides, I want to help.”
He blushed, just a little, adorable color on his cheeks, and ducked his head. “Yeah. Thanks.” He was bashful, looking up at her through his lashes.
She was exhausted, and sore from sitting, but she felt a tease of heat in the pit of her belly.
He held her gaze a long beat, until she felt breathless, like they’d never…like they weren’t already…
“You tired?” he asked, voice low and throaty.
Her body responded, a rush of wetness between her legs. She was tired, but now she was turned-on, too, so she shook her head.
“C’mere.”
She climbed into his lap, legs going around his waist, hands finding his shoulders. Her lips were poised just above his when the phone in the kitchen started to ring.
She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to his. “Ugh.”
“Let the machine get it,” he said, and kissed her. Kissed her mouth, long and sweet, his tongue sliding against hers. Kissed her jaw, her throat, lingering over her pulse point until her neck was weak.
The phone rang out to the machine – Ghost’s voice, curt and uninterested: “Leave a message” – and then…
“Margaret,” her mother’s voice said, and her heart stopped.
She pulled back from Ghost with a horrified gasp. Cold chills, shaking hands, racing heart.
“I went to a lot of trouble to obtain this number,” Denise continued through the answering machine, voice tinny and wavering, “so I hope you’ll call me back. It would be the polite thing to do.”
“Is she fucking serious?” Ghost whispered against her temple.
“We need to talk, Margaret,” Denise said with a sigh. “You can’t go on like this. Call me. Please.” The “please” sounded like it pained her.
The call disconnected and it was silent again, just them, her erratic breathing, and the hum of the fridge.
Ghost jostled her lightly on his lap. “Mags.”
She went limp against him, arms around his neck, his solid strength and warmth holding her up. “Oh my God,” she groaned. “Just when I start to forget that she exists…I’m so sorry she called here.” She turned her face into his shoulder, pressed her nose into the worn cotton of his shirt. “I don’t know who she had to bribe to get your number, but I’ll make her tear it up. I–”
“Baby.” He rubbed a soothing hand down her back, over the quivering muscles that framed her spine. “I’m in the book. All she had to know was my name. She’s trying to guilt you into thinking it took a lotta effort.”
“Really?” She groaned again. “Story of my life.”
He bundled her in close, hand slipping inside her shirt, and the skin-on-skin contact was immeasurably comforting. No one hugged in her family; physical comfort was a rare, and often awkward thing. She didn’t think she’d ever tire of touching Ghost.
“We should introduce her to my ex,” he said. “They’d get on great.”
“I dunno. Your ex was married to you, after all.”
He snorted. “Liv hated my guts. She liked fancy things, rich men, foreign cars. Shit knows why she ever married me, but she’s cold as ice. All about manners and fake shit. She’d love your mom.”
“Are you serious?” She tipped her head back far enough to read his expression. He never talked about his ex-wife; there was zero evidence that a woman – and a picky, snobbish one at that – had ever lived in the apartment. If it wasn’t for Aidan, Maggie wouldn’t believe she’d ever existed.
He gave a facial shrug. “Yeah. She’s living with some guy who owns a bank or something now. They have a housekeeper.”
“Are you serious?” she repeated, and he fidgeted under her.
“She really traded up, huh?”
“No.” When he gave her a skeptical look, she said, “Ghost, no. Absolutely not. My mom is the kind of bitch who doesn’t love her own family if their table manners aren’t up to snuff. She cares more about what the neighbors think of her than her own immortal soul. If the house caught on fire, and we were all inside it, she’d save her jewelry and then politely request that the fireman bring out her husband. If they could. She berates the waitstaff of every restaurant she ever goes to. My mom is awful. And if your ex is like her, then damn, you don’t need that in your life. I feel sorry for the poor asshole banker she’s haunting now.”
It wasn’t until she finished her rant that she realized she was way out of line. But Ghost was smiling, so she didn’t care.
“I think maybe I traded up too,” he said, chuckling.
She made a face.
“The bitch couldn’t cook, didn’t clean, was a shit mom.” He leaned forward and bumped her nose with his own. “I’m serious.”
It was amazing, she thought, how she could go from despondent to joyous in just moments. That was because of Ghost – she wasn’t sure she’d known what joy felt like before he came into her life. Or maybe it was a case of her coming into his life; she was the original instigator, after all.
She smiled; their faces were so close his features were blurred. “Me too. So don’t go trash-talking the man I love.”
It hit them both at the same moment: what she’d said. Love. They slept in the same bed, and she was playing mommy with his son, but the L-word was still a big, big deal.
Ghost pulled back another fraction, so they could really see each other with clear eyes. His were dilated.
It felt like she waited forever, poised on the edge of embarrassed panic.
His throat jumped as he swallowed. “Me too. You know that, right?”
She did. She nodded.
“I do,” he said, for emphasis, hand sliding up the back of her neck, cupping her nape. He pulled her in for a kiss that was different from every one that had come before it. When their lips met, she thought I love him, and he loves me, and it wasn’t just a meeting of lips, but a pledge. An acknowledgement of what they felt for one another, and what it meant: that they had each others’ backs, that they would defend, and support, and protect one another.
Maggie had never experienced anything like it in her short life. Something mutual. Something that meant so much to both parties. Sealed with a kiss.
She speared her fingers through his hair – silky-slick, the curls looping around her knuckles – and opened her mouth, invited him in.
His tongue licked between her teeth, hot velvet, heavy and whiskey-flavored.
He loved her. The knowledge was better than acing a test, better than winning an award, better than her early college acceptance letters. There was nothing fake about him kissing her, nothing stiff, or formal, or forced. She didn’t have to pretend, here in his arms. It was easy. Good. Right.
She didn’t realize she bit his lip until he pulled back with a hiss, tonguing away a flash of blood. His eyes were black, heavy-lidded. “Shit,” he murmured, and dove back in.
Taste of copper, bright and thrilling. Messy kisses, now, sting of teeth and rasp of tongue. He put his hand on her face, angling her head, urging her jaw to open wider.
She melted. Each time they did this, it was better than the last, more familiar, easier to find the spots that made him growl and lean into her. Easier for him to touch her just so, and get her wet and panting.
He eased her down onto her back, paper crackling beneath her.
“Not the plan!” she laughed against his mouth, and he lifted her effortlessly, twisted and laid her back on the carpet of the living room floor, well away from their hours of hard work.
He crawled over her, braced up on his hands, his blown-black eyes staring down into her face. “You’re beautiful.”
She didn’t question it; when he said it, he meant it. He thought she was beautiful, and it had nothing to do with what she was wearing, with her hair or makeup or any of the reasons she’d been called beautiful before.
She reached up to frame his jaw in her hands. “You are too.”
He bent his head and kissed her collarbone, followed its path to the tender hollow of her throat. Down. Down to her breastbone, nosing at her shirt collar, pulling on the hem so he could reach more skin, the lace edge of her bra. She closed her eyes and let her fingers slide into his hair again: heat of his scalp on her palms, heat of his mouth at the tops of her breasts.
For the very first time, the prospect of talking to her mother didn’t fill her with cold fear. For the first time, she didn’t feel alone. She had Ghost now – not just a friend, not just a boyfriend, or a way to pass the time, but a partner.
The sensation of being cared for and wanted and appreciated was almost better than sex.
Almost.
~*~
Their business plan – in his mind it was “theirs” instead of “his,” because at this point, he was having a hard time envisioning a personal future that didn’t involve Maggie Lowe – was seven sheets of printer paper, stacked and folded up tight enough to cram into his wallet, no mean feat. It made his back pocket feel unaccountably heavy as he climbed off his bike the next morning and walked to the clubhouse. His side hurt badly, his face hurt – and looked even worse than it felt, two black eyes and a spanning patch of bruises across the bridge of his nose that made him look like he’d beaten a pair of sunglasses onto his face – and he was stone-cold sober. Anticipation sat acidic on his tongue, and his heart beat too hard. He was going to have this conversation, though, and he wasn’t going to be muddy-headed when he did it.
The clubhouse was its usual mix of post-party and pre-party, which was to say, an unmitigated disaster. Ghost didn’t look at any of it, walking straight through to the office and pushing open the cracked door without knocking.
Duane was at the desk and glanced up, face betraying nothing. Expressionless, his gaze traveled down to Ghost’s boots and back up again. “You’re alive.”
“Yeah. That disappoint you?”
“No.” His look said Ghost should know better. But that would imply he actually gave a damn about him, something Ghost doubted. More than doubted.
Ghost shut the door behind him and leaned back against it. “I think you owe me an explanation,” he said, insides jittery like he’d had too much coffee. He’d practiced with Maggie that morning, rehearsing what he’d say to his uncle, but he was no less nervous for it.
Duane stared at him.
Be direct, Maggie had said. Don’t give him a chance to twist your story.
“Which one of us were you hoping would bite it?” he asked. “Me or Roman?”
Duane frowned. I don’t have time for this shit, his expression said. “What the hell are you on about?”
Doubt prickled at the back of his skull. This was what Duane always managed to do: take all his hours of self-convincing, all his piled-up evidence of his uncle’s hate, and dismiss it with a single look. Ghost would nurture his suspicions for weeks at a time, sure that Duane hated his guts. And then a single word, a tender callused hand against the back of his neck, and family was all-important again; Ghost was the paranoid idiot, and not Duane, never Duane.
But not today. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. Don’t let him get to you, Maggie’s voice repeated in his head. If he loves you, make him show it.
And if he hated him, make him show that, too.
He lifted up the hem of his shirt and flashed his bandages.
“Shit,” Duane said, without inflection. “How deep is that?”
“Deep.” Ghost heard the nervous tension in his voice and pushed through it. “Better than a gunshot wound, though, and that’s what almost happened.”
“Yeah, Roman told me,” Duane said, looking back to the ledger in front of him. He reached for the glass at his elbow: Scotch, no doubt. “Guess we won’t be selling to the Ryders from here on out.”
And that was it. Conversation over.
That’s what Duane wanted, anyway.
“It was one of their crew I shot that night Roman got hit.”
He got a noncommittal humming noise in return.
“Duane!” It came out a shout.
His uncle lifted his head, annoyed. “It’s too early in the morning for all that yelling bullshit.”
“We almost got killed last night.”
“But you didn’t. What’s your point?”
“My point is that I once saw you cut a guy’s ear off ‘cause he scratched your bike.” That had been a dark night: Nevada desert, blazing drum fires, peyote or some shit thick in the air. Screaming, blood on the sand. “But when the Ryder clan tries to kill us twice, you don’t give a shit. You oughtta be beating the war drums, and you’re not. Which means you know what happened. In fact, you wanted it.”
He was panting by the end, chest heaving, side splitting. It was, without question, the most daring thing he’d ever said to the man. The most insubordination he’d ever displayed.
Duane cocked his head to the side, face impassive. “Is that what you want the story to be? That I tried to have three of my boys killed and make it look like a deal gone wrong?”
Ghost sucked in a breath, caught off guard. He and Maggie hadn’t discussed the possibility of the conversation taking this turn.
“The president who betrays his own club? His own family? Huh?”
“Just one,” Ghost said, faintly.
“What?”
“You weren’t trying to kill all of us. Just one, Ryder said. Blood-for-blood. Like in the Bible.”
Duane’s expression shifted, then. A tightening of his jaw, quick flash of something feral in his eyes, flared nostrils. “Sit down.”
Ghost did, heart pounding. Finally, it felt like something real was about to happen. Probably something irrevocable he didn’t want to witness. But.
Duane sat back in his chair with a deep sigh and drained his Scotch. Set the tumbler down with a soft thump and met Ghost’s gaze, his own the least guarded Ghost had seen it in a long time.
“Roman’s a weasel,” he started, shocking Ghost. “I know it, you know, everybody does. Suckup bastard’s got his head shoved so far up my ass I can taste the shit he puts in his hair. He’s ambitious, yeah? Real ambitious – got his eyes on my chair at the head of the table…and he’s already making plans for when he has it.”
“What do you mean?”
“He’s been reaching out into the underworld community. The Ryders. The Russians. The cartel. Been making long-distance calls to New York on the clubhouse phone, too stupid to think that I’ll see the damn phone bill and know it.”
Ghost wondered if he hadn’t been drinking after all, because the room seemed to spin. “I don’t…”
“He’s trying to set up alliances with other outlaws, going around me to make bigger deals and grow the club that way.” He snorted. “You’re always bugging me about a garage. Roman just went out and got himself some new friends.”
Ghost couldn’t rectify it in his mind – not the going around Duane part, that was almost expected; in his experience the brown-nosers of the world usually had something to hide. But the idea that Duane hadn’t put a stop to it the moment he figured out it was happening.
“How long has this been going on?”
“Six months, give or take. That guy you shot? He was a Ryder, yeah, got spooked, didn’t know who you guys were, acted like a dumbass and paid the cost for that.”
“When we walked into that warehouse last night…Roman knew they’d be pissed at us?”
Duane nodded.
“But you told them–”
“Roman told them. He set up that deal, not me.”
“But why did you let him?”
“Because I’m going to make an example of him.” The feral gleam was back; bloodlust, Ghost thought. “I’m giving the asshole just enough rope to hang himself, and then I’m going to let him swing for the whole club to see. You think I’m gonna what, give him a slap on the wrist? Chew him out in private? Nah. What he’s doing, he’s gonna pay for that. It’s gonna be the scariest, most embarrassing moment of his life when it all comes to light.”
An effective lesson, no doubt. But in the meantime…
“What do we do with him ‘til then?”
Duane shrugged. “Watch our backs.”
“Why didn’t you tell me this before?”
“I didn’t know I could trust you?”
“Fucking really?”
“Your head’s not here.” Duane thumped the desk with a finger for emphasis. “Maybe you ain’t a traitor, but you don’t care about this club.” Angry, almost petulant.
“That’s not true.”
“You haven’t proved you give a damn.”
“This club’s all I have,” Ghost huffed. “I got no job, no income, no family.”
“What about that Maggie of yours? You got her?”
The man I love, she’d said, and meant it; he’d seen the truth shining up at him in her eyes. “Yeah, but I gotta take care of her, don’t I? I can’t do that without the club.”
Duane smiled, wide and cat-like. “Now he sees it.”
“What?”
“That you need me. See, this is what I’ve been trying to tell you. You’ve been so fucked up since that bitch left you, you haven’t been able to see what’s right in front of you: you can’t get by without the club, which means you can’t get by without me.” He looked pleased.
Ghost chewed at the inside of his cheek, frustrated, feeling strangled for reasons he didn’t understand. “Yeah, I need you,” he said, grudgingly. “But…”
“But what?”
“I want to pitch my garage idea to the club again. A real business plan this time. Profit margins and all that.”
“Profit margins?” Duane laughed, brows shooting up. “Look at you.”
“I’m serious, Duane.”
“I can see that. Alright, alright.” He grabbed the bottle off the corner of the desk and poured another finger of Scotch in his glass. “You can bring your profit margins to church, lay it out for us. No promises.”
“I just want a chance. That’s all I’m asking. I can convince everyone.” He prayed he could.
“Fine.” Duane toasted the air. “In the meantime, don’t say shit about Roman to anyone. Understand?”
“Yes, sir.”
He left the clubhouse victorious…but greasy-feeling. Like satisfying a deep hunger with a cheap roadside hamburger that didn’t settle right on his stomach.
~*~
By third period on Wednesday, Maggie had already made up her missed work from the day before. School wasn’t difficult, she just didn’t enjoy it. She ate lunch alone, Rachel eyeing her from two seats over, paging through her chem notes.
When her last class let out, she headed to Stella’s Café.
She’d made the phone call that morning. “If you want to talk, I can spare a few minutes after school.” Cool, disinterested.
Denise had faltered for a moment, then said, just as cool, “Fine.”
Maggie had chosen the venue, and the time.
Rita hadn’t wanted to pick Aidan up from school, but had agreed with a sour grumble.
Maggie parallel parked the truck – it took three tries and a lot of swearing – in front of the café and sat a moment, willing herself to go inside. She didn’t want to show up first. She didn’t want to do this at all.
She wondered how Ghost had fared with Duane, if he’d gotten past the you-tried-to-kill-me portion of the conversation and into the business pitch part. She shook her head; here she was worried about her mom, when Ghost thought his uncle had tried to kill him. There was no comparison that didn’t make Maggie look like a sad wimp. Her mother was just a woman; chances were good she didn’t have a gun in her purse. And she loathed public scenes – the whole reason Maggie had refused to go by the house.
She took one last deep breath. Me too, Ghost had said. Because he loved her. She could do this. And went inside.
Stella’s had once been a boring diner with vinyl booths and cracked tile floors. The new owners, Stella and her husband Julian, were Italian New York transplants intent on turning the sad space into something rustic and authentic. They’d already put in pastry cases and a fireplace, were midway through renovations, the walls now a buttery fresco.
Maggie preferred the patio, open air, flow of traffic, trill of birds. But Denise didn’t like sitting outdoors; the breeze always messed with her hair. She was seated at a booth halfway down the long bank of windows, glass of ice water in front of her, menu unopened. She worried an Equal packet between her fingers and snapped a laser gaze to Maggie as she entered.
It struck Maggie, as she walked to the table, that her mother looked sad sitting there by herself. A bitter, joyless woman who loved no one, and therefore had no one. Maggie had seen mothers and daughters out to lunch before, laughing, linking arms and bumping hips, friends and not just family. But Denise judged everyone, disliked everyone, and cared for nothing saving the cold pearls around her neck and the varnish on her fingernails. The worst part was that she didn’t know she’d driven everyone away; didn’t care that her country club friends were fake.
“Hi, Mom,” she greeted as she slid into the opposite side of the booth. “How are you?”
“Fine.” Denise dropped the packet and pulled her hands back into her lap, leaning back away from the table. “Are you sleeping? You don’t look like you’re sleeping.”
“I’m a little tired,” Maggie admitted. “A normal amount.”
“Is he letting you sleep?”
“Stop,” Maggie said, calmly. She felt calm. The image of her mother as sad had been more settling than any pep talk. “Can’t we just have a normal conversation?”
Denise reeled back as if she’d been slapped. Her tone was low, but vibrating with anger. “You never would have dared to speak to me like that before.”
“Maybe that was a mistake,” Maggie said, still calm. She’d decided the only way to handle this was with a level head, without emotion. “You talked to me like a pet dog because I acted like one. I’m a person, Mom, with my own thoughts and ideas.”
“I know that.”
“Did you know that I hate cotillion? And FBLA? And going dress shopping? And girls like Stephanie Cleveland?”
A waitress arrived, and Denise pressed her lips together, silent as Maggie ordered a cappuccino and a sandwich.
When they were alone again, Maggie said, “Look, I don’t want to fight. Okay? Can we just talk?”
Denise wrestled with herself for a moment, turning words over in her mouth, jaw working. Finally, she said, “I have some questions.”
“Okay.”
“Is he a Lean Dog?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what that means?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know?”
“Yes, Mom.” Better than you, she added silently.
“Are you sleeping with him?” Small tremor in her lower lip.
“Yes.” There was no sense lying about something like that. No one would believe they were living together and not having sex.
Denise took a shuddering breath. “Why him?”
“I like him. He likes me.”
“There are lots of boys you could like.”
“Maybe,” she conceded. “But ‘like’ is a weak word. I want to do more than like someone.” She turned it back around with: “Why did you marry Dad?”
“Because he was well-educated, respectful, and successful.”
“We have different standards, then.”
“Obviously.” Her eyelid twitched. “You’ve stopped all your after-school activities.”
“They’re not important.”
“They will make you a better, more well-rounded person.”
“According to your standards.” She wasn’t going to admit that her education had already served her in this new crazy biker life of hers.
Denise closed her eyes for ten full seconds, breathing deeply, during which time Maggie’s food arrived. Then she said, “What do you want?” her voice rough.
Maggie paused in the act of picking up her sandwich. “Excuse me?”
“You aren’t happy at home. You think I’m overbearing. What will it take to bring you back where you belong? Is it a car? A larger allowance? What?”
She was stunned. She set her sandwich down and wiped her hands on her napkin, palms suddenly clammy. “This wasn’t a stunt.”
“Of course it was.” Denise looked wounded. “You wanted to punish me, and you’ve accomplished that. Let’s be done with it already.”
“Ghost and I–”
“Listen to yourself. Ghost. That isn’t even a real name. It sounds like something you’d call an actual dog.” She dropped her voice to an irate hiss. “He’s a piece of shit, Margaret. He’s beneath you. Can we please stop the charade now? You’ve made your point.”
“Mom,” Maggie said, as carefully as she could manage. “I love him.”
“That’s impossible. He’s trash. Worse than trash. You can’t love trash.”
“Stop talking like that about him.” The first tremor of anger crept into her voice.
“Or what? You’ll run off and live with him? You’re already doing that. The only way it could be worse was if you were carrying his baby.” She made a horrified face. “You aren’t, are you?”
Maggie threw her napkin onto the table and slid out of her seat. “This was real productive, Mom, we should do this again.”
“If you walk away now, don’t expect anything from me ever again,” Denise threatened, chest heaving, white teeth gleaming between the blood red slashes of her painted lips.
“Don’t worry, I never expected anything from you.” She turned away and walked out of the restaurant without looking back.
Her hands were shaking when she climbed into the truck, but still, she didn’t look toward the windows, didn’t hesitate. She started the engine and peeled away from the curb, heading back to her real life, and away from this plastic farce that was finally, finally over.