Bear Mountain Biker : Shifter Romance (Bear Mountain Shifters) by Sky Winters (22)

He grabbed her by the arm and stopped her. “I gave it up,” he said.

She froze after he spoke, and then turned around. “Excuse me?” Her eyes were hopeful, but still reluctant to believe what she thought he was saying.

“That’s what I was doing these last few days,” he replied. “After I found out, I knew I couldn’t risk losing another child, and I knew you wouldn’t want me if I was still riding with the gang. So, I gave it up.”

Fresh tears stared springing into her eyes, and she quickly brushed them away. “Are you saying what I think you are saying?”

He smiled and took her face in his hand. “I want this,” he told her. “You, our baby, and everything in between.” She felt paralyzed, and then her knees started to buckle. He caught her when he saw her swoon, and pulled her to him. “I got you,” he told her.

They stood there on the pavement, at the corner of the street, and as the world went about its business, and the people passed them by, they remained fixed in the universe they had created. Calvin looked into her eyes, smoothed her check with the back of his index finger, and then his lips found hers. Trisha was never one to display emotions outwardly, or encourage public shows of affection. At the moment, she didn’t seem to mind doing either. She held onto Calvin, and received his kiss gladly. He crushed her to him, and transformed her earlier pain and anxiety to euphoric bliss.

When he let go the tears were still coming.  He chuckled and wiped them away with his thumb. “You have a lot of those,” he joked.

She sniffled and leaned back. “I guess so,” she said.

He put his arms around her shoulder and led her away. “Come on, let’s get you home.”

The two walked off home, an unlikely duo, attracting the attention of a few passersby. But they were incognizant of it as they basked in their newfound happiness.

************

“What are the odds?” she asked Calvin as the two sat together on the park bench. Aiden was busy chasing the neighbor’s dog and rolling around as he lost the battle continuously.

“What?” he asked, a contented sound pervading his mood.

“That you and I would be sitting here, doing this,” she said and leaned so she could rest her head on his shoulder.

He lowered his head and kissed her forehead, and his hand moved over her stomach that was now six months old. She no longer held the job at the bar, for obvious reasons. Calvin had sold his apartment for a bigger one, and the two were to move in together the following week.

“Neither did I,” he replied eventually. “I mean, I knew I didn’t want to be the head of the Devils for too long, but I didn’t see this coming.”

Trisha sighed contentedly, and smiled as she watched her older child. Life would not be perfect, and she didn’t wish for it. But they had each other, and at the moment, she needed nothing else.

THE END

Outlaw’s Baby

Changing lanes turned out to be harder than she thought as Joy signaled to the sleepy, oblivious drivers surrounding her that her exit was coming up. She found herself suppressing a short burst of anger toward them, until finally someone waved her in front of them. She smiled appreciatively, startled to discover that it was a friend of hers from high school, Mary Anne Jenkins. They didn't have time to acknowledge their bond as Joy pulled in front of her, onto the exit that would lead her to her rural hometown.

She hadn't been back home in over ten years. She'd been desperate to get out of the small town where it seemed like nobody could possibly understand her. They were all so close minded and simple, and there was a whole world out there that they couldn't possibly imagine. She felt an ache in her chest as she drove, passing by familiar landmarks as if they were images from an ancient dream. She hadn't known how much she would miss it, spending all her time in the city, meeting one wrong man after another. It had been exciting in its way, the adventure and danger of being with somebody so unpredictable and passionate, but all of them turned out to be far too self-absorbed, and wound up hurting her.

When she phoned her sister and told her about where she was at—broke and stranded after a man had taken her for all she had and moved on to somebody else, her sister had been concerned.

“You've been away from home for far too long,” Kayla said. “You forget what you deserve if you're not around the people who treat you right. Why don't you come and stay with me for a while?”

The offer had made Joy cry, and the next day Kayla had wired her some money so that she could afford the trip back home. The asshole had robbed her blind. She'd thought he was different from the others, but he had been the worst one yet. His name was Gordon, and although he'd been sweet to her at first —they all were—it wasn't long before the viper in him came out. He was awful to her and had scarred her in more ways than one, especially the night he decided to take off with all of her things. She'd tried to defend herself but it hadn't gone well, and his looks had clearly told her that if she called the cops on him, they would find her and she wouldn't get away with it.

 

She shuddered as she pulled into Kayla's driveway, his face in her thoughts until the screen door opened, and a tiny child hurtled toward her car. This must be her niece, Penny, a three year old bundle of energy. Kayla was bounding out shortly after, swiping the toddler up swiftly and carrying her over her shoulder as she approached Joy's beat up old car. Joy couldn't believe the old sucker had managed to make it through the long journey.

“Joy!” Kayla exclaimed, pulling her sister into a bear hug. Penny squirmed and twisted so that she could hold tightly onto Joy's head. Joy normally didn't like children much, but the chubby little arms around her head melted her heart.

“Hi sweetheart,” she said to Penny, planting a small kiss on top of her head.

The little girl smiled shyly and buried her head into her mother's shoulder.

“How was your trip?” Kayla asked as they carried Joy's few belongings into the house.

“It was long. I didn't expect what they did to that park. It's kind of sad,” Joy said.

“Yeah, they did that a while ago. I felt sad when I saw it the first time too. But you know, times change. They needed to do some maintenance and make sure none of the kids got hurt.”

“We never got hurt!” Joy exclaimed.

“Well, you know hover moms,” Kayla said with a wink, setting Penny down. Penny, a bundle of pure energy, was moving immediately, running into her little bedroom.

“Thank God you're not like that,” Joy said, sighing.

“She deserves to learn as much about the world as she can,” Kayla said with a shrug. “If you don't let them explore, it hurts them. Simple as that.”

“Yeah...”

Their conversation lulled as Joy looked around the living room. There was a picture of Kayla with her ex-husband Daniel holding a baby Penny between them. Kayla saw her looking and smiled sadly.

“It's not fair for Penny if I don't keep that up. She still loves us both.”

Kayla nodded as if she understood, but she couldn't imagine how hard that must have been for Kayla.

“I would never be able to keep a picture of an ex up on my wall,” Joy said, shaking her head.

“It's for the baby,” Kayla said with a shrug. “Besides, I like remembering that she came from a time of love, not the part that came afterwards. Anyway speaking of exes, did you hear about Zak?”

Zak. Joy pulled to mind the image of scrawny Zak from high school, the only boy who had ever understood her rebellious spirit. He wasn't the most popular, being the class clown and always jumping in the middle of fights caused by bigger and stronger boys. He was always sporting a black eye from this or that, hoping to protect the kids who didn't deserve to be bullied. Unfortunately that got him bullied too. He had been cute, though. And clever. He was her first crush.

“No, what about him?” she asked, worried that something bad may have happened to him. She could tell by the glimmer in her sister's eye that it was probably unlikely, but she couldn't help but worry.

“Well, he's changed,” Kayla said mysteriously.

“How has he changed?” Joy asked.

“He's an outlaw,” Kayla said.

“An outlaw?! How did that happen?”

“You'd probably never recognize him on the streets if you passed him. He's bulked up a lot, put some meat on those bones. If you hadn't left right after high school, you would have been shocked. Anyway, I guess he fell into the wrong crowd, and now they kind of hole up at the edge of town, acting like they own the place. I don't know what kinds of things he does, but the cops pretend he's not there. Probably paid them off or something.”

“Wow, I never would have guessed that. He had such a gentle way about him,” Joy said, her curiosity burning. She would have to avoid him, though. If the past ten years in the city had taught her anything, it was that bad boys were not for her.

“I know, it surprised us all. But you can see him riding around here on his motorcycle, scaring people into doing what he wants. I don't know how that happened, he used to be so reasonable.”

“Things definitely do change,” Joy said thoughtfully, gazing into the distance.

“Here!” Penny shouted. She had suddenly appeared from her bedroom, carrying an armful of her favorite toys. She dumped them into Joy's lap, her blue eyes shining.

“Thank you,” Joy said with a laugh. That had been unexpected

“She likes to share with people,” Kayla said apologetically, after Penny had disappeared again to rummage through her closet in case she forgot anything. “Especially people with good hearts.”

“How would she know that?” Joy asked.

“Kids just know,” Kayla said. They sat in silence and Joy sighed, reflecting on this and wondering if it was true.

Chapter 2

Staying with her sister brought back all kinds of old memories, and Joy found herself feeling more like herself than she had in the past ten years. They would stay up late gossiping and watching movies, taking turns playing with Penny and taking care of her. It was nice for Kayla to have a hand with baby responsibilities, and it was refreshing for Joy to be around people who didn't expect anything from her. She had been feeling depleted around others, but with these two, she could feel herself slowly starting to heal.

Penny adored her, which was strange. She had always assumed kids wouldn't like her, but maybe that was because she had never been around many of them. She found herself warming up to the idea of motherhood the more she stayed with Kayla and Penny. They would always have each other, a friend who loved them through thick and thin. There was nothing more beautiful than that, she decided, and then laughed off the thought. It's not like she would have a chance to be a parent any time soon. She was going to take a long break from men, because with the way things were going lately, they would be nothing but bad news.

“Joy, Penny and I are having dinner with Daniel tonight,” Kayla said, walking into the room as she put in an earring. “We do that sometimes. It's better to keep things civil, kind of stay in each other's lives. It helps Penny to see us getting along, and we can talk about how to take care of her the best, you know.”

“Oh wow, that's pretty mature of you,” Joy said with a laugh. “Will Rebecca be there?”

Kayla made a face and Joy laughed. Rebecca was Daniel's new girlfriend.

“No, we decided it would be best if Penny didn't meet her unless they got serious. It would just confuse her.”

“Smart move,” Joy said with a nod, and Kayla smiled at her.

“Anyway, as always feel free to help yourself to whatever's in the fridge. Or you could go out, the old diner is still open. We'll be back kind of late so don't worry about that. We're going to the movies afterward.”

“Okay, no problem,” Joy said.

When Kayla and Penny were gone, the house seemed too quiet. Ever since she had arrived, she had been constantly surrounded by them. If Kayla was at work, she was home with Penny. If there were errands to run, they went together. It was like old times, fun and exciting. It was nice to have a sister again.

But without Penny or Kayla, the house was too quiet and Joy began to feel like an outsider. She worried about how long she would be able to stay there without becoming a burden. She didn't have an income yet, though Kayla had gotten her a bunch of applications from shops around town. Joy had dutifully filled them out, and was waiting for Kayla's next day off, when they would go out on the town, return the applications, and treat Penny to ice cream.

The more she thought about the old diner, the more curious she got. Once her stomach began to grumble and she felt hungry she picked up her brown leather jacket and tossed it on, hopping into her old car and heading toward the diner. She knew the way by heart, even though she had never been to Kayla's house before. The small town was surrounded by countryside, and only a couple of streets boasted shops. There was the main street, where most things were, and the diner was a bit further off, near the turnpike so that it could attract out of towners on the road and looking for some lunch.

Chapter 3

Joy hummed as she drove, her mind turning back to how strange it was that she was in her hometown again. Everything had seemed frozen in time in her mind, and when she noticed that something had changed, anything, she felt a protective surge. How dare they change her town? Although she had been desperate to disown it and get as far away as possible, it was still where her roots were, and she wanted it to stay the same way that it had been imprinted into her mind.

Her favorite song on the radio began to play and she turned up the volume, singing along, feeling great as she soared down the country roads. She loved doing this as a teenager, there seemed to be no laws out on the open road, and she enjoyed feeling like she was completely alone, free to do as she pleased. The cops were rarely patrolling the country roads on the town’s outer limits, so she felt a rebellious old urge, familiar from her past, to speed her car up. She put pressure on the gas pedal and allowed herself to zoom down the road, singing her song loudly. She paused at a stop sign and glanced both ways before accelerating again.

Unfortunately, her car stalled. She cursed and tried to turn the engine over, but it didn't work. She was stranded.

“At least it's not too cold,” she told herself with a sigh, unbuckling her seatbelt to climb out of the car and lift up the hood of her car so she could take a look at her engine. Unfortunately she didn't have a clue what she was looking for, or even what she was looking at. She didn't have a cell phone, Gordon had stolen that from her too, and so she couldn't call out for help. All she could do was sit there, hoping somebody might notice her there. Or she could walk, but it would be a long walk, and if anybody stole her car, the last of her worldly possessions, she was sure to have a breakdown.

She decided to stick with her clunky old car, and climbed back into the driver's seat. She put the four way lights on dutifully, hoping that somebody would pass soon to help her. The idea seemed impossible though – especially after living in the city for so long where nobody trusted anybody else, and for good reason. She decided to give it an hour of waiting before heading out to get some help.

She tried to keep her mood light, knowing it wouldn't help anything if she got upset. Unfortunately as the hour ticked by, she ran out of ways to amuse herself and sighed. She locked her car doors and began walking. It seemed a little dangerous, but she had a can of pepper spray tucked into her coat pocket and had taken self-defense classes after one of her terrible boyfriends had decided to sucker punch her one day for not doing what he said. After years of dating good for nothing men, she felt like she could take care of herself.

As she walked, the temperature grew cooler and she shivered even though it was summer. She tried to distract herself by staring up at the moon. She hadn't seen the sky so clearly in years and years, and the bright glistening stars above her were enchanting. She paused, stopping suddenly to watch a shooting star fall through the sky. It was mesmerizing, and she found herself wishing subconsciously for somebody to help her.

A rumble of an engine met her ears and she turned around, squinting into the headlights of a motorcycle. It slowed to a stop, pulling over to the side of the road. The dark silhouette of a mammoth man stepped off the bike and walked toward her, his bootfalls heavy and clinking. He must have been wearing chains.

“That your car back there?” he called out, squinting at her. When he was close enough to make her out he stopped moving, his breath caught in his throat.

“Joy?” he asked incredulously.

She would have known that voice anywhere.

“Zak...”

The two of them stood staring at each other in the motorcycle's headlights. Finally, he shook his head with a laugh.

“When did you get here?” he asked, his voice rolling with pleasure and suppressed laughter. It was a sound she knew well – he was sincerely pleased to see her.

“About a week ago,” she said, walking forward. “I heard you're an outlaw now.”

Now he let his laughter escape from his lips, strong and rumbling, piercing her. She was finally close enough to see him and eyed him up and down. Kayla hadn't exaggerated – Zak had definitely put on some muscle. His arms were hard and his face had grown chiseled and lean. Whatever baby fat he'd had the last time she'd seen him had melted into a firm, handsome face and grown and expanded into rippling muscle. She couldn't take her eyes off of him. He'd grown a short beard, groomed tightly to his face, his dark hair grazing his shoulders.

She noticed a tattoo of a snake around his huge bicep and she looked into his brown eyes, still gentle but with a hint of steeliness that hadn't been there before. It gave her the same feeling as seeing the old park being renovated had given her – a tightening of the chest, but this time, there was more. She was intrigued, wildly attracted to him. She suddenly found herself wanting to know everything – how he had become the way he was. What had happened to him while she was gone?

“Yeah, in a manner of speaking. I prefer to see it as I don't take shit anymore.”

His deep voice found her in the dark, and she moved a bit closer to him. His eyes were dancing in the moonlight.

“So is that your car or what?”

“Yeah,” Joy said. “That's my piece of junk.”

Zak hopped on his motorcycle and she felt a pang of panic. Was he going to abandon her here, the same way she had abandoned him so long ago for a life in the city? But he just grinned at her.

“Hop on. Let me give you a lift.”

Would it be safe for her to get on the bike with him now that he was an outlaw? An outlaw who might feel like she had double crossed him? He had seemed to understand when she broke up with him, and gave her that same adventurous smile he had on now.

“Conquer the world, babe,” he'd said to her then. And she felt that he'd meant it. If he knew what she had really done – been used and abused by every man she'd been with since him – he would be sorely disappointed in her.

“Thanks,” she said, getting reluctantly on the bike. This was going to be interesting.

Chapter 4

“You ever been on one of these before?” he asked her.

 

“No,” she said, sitting close against him. Gordon had a motorcycle but he had never let her near it. She shook the memory of him away, suddenly very aware of the raw masculine power exuding from Zak. His spicy scent surrounded her, and she found herself fighting the urge to kiss him behind the ear like she would have done ten years ago.

“Right. Well just hold on tight, I won't let you go flying off anywhere. If you get scared just say so. You might have to shout. Keep your feet up.”

He reached behind himself and gripped her hands in his, pulling them around his thick, muscled torso and not releasing them until she was gripping him tightly. The nearness of his body was surprisingly intimate, and she was glad that it was dark and she was behind him, or he would have seen the deep blush crossing her cheeks. That was something private, something that she was not ready to share with this man, who she thought she had known so well. Now it turns out they were perfect strangers.

The whirring of the motorcycle engine filled the air, they attempted to have a conversation as they drove. She would yell close to his ear, and his deep voice would be carried by the wind to her.

“So where were you heading tonight?" he shouted.

“I want to go to the old diner for dinner, I hadn't been there in so long and Joey's fries sounded perfect. That's out of the question now, they're probably closed or something. Everything around here seems to have changed.”

“Not necessarily," he said.

 

To her surprise, he speed up the motorcycle and before she knew they were parking in the parking lot of the old diner. She didn't know how she felt about having dinner with outlaw, but there was so much that she wanted to ask him about his new life, and it had been so surprisingly intimate to be with him on the motorcycle. She was reluctant to part his company, and found herself grateful for the excuse to spend more time with him and have a conversation where she wouldn't have to shout for him to hear her.

“Joy!” Joey exclaimed. “I haven't seen you in years. Come now, order anything you'd like on the house.”

Joey simply nodded at Zak, and returned to waiting on a couple who were at the counter.

Zak and Joy sat down comfortably at a booth, the same one they used to use in high school.

“This brings back memories," Joy said with a smile.

“Yeah,” Zak said. “Hey, isn't this where you dumped me?"

She looked up at him, her face falling in surprise and shame, but he was grinning and his tone was playful.

“Anyway, that was a long time ago. That doesn't matter. I'm really proud that you were able to go out and live your life. It's not something that most people from this stupid town are able to do.”

“Honestly sometimes I wish I would have just stayed put. You know they say curiosity killed the cat?”

He nodded.

“You've had a rough go at it, huh?” he asked her, his eyes suddenly gentle and serious.

 

“That's one way to put it,” she said.

“Well for now try to forget about that stuff. I want to hear about the good stuff. There must have been something you loved about your freedom right? Otherwise you wouldn't have stayed out there so long.”

Zak was right about that. She looked at him, searching her mind for the things she thought he might want to hear about.

“I loved that nobody knew who I was, or had any expectations of how I should act because of it. I was never confined by anybody else's rules. Except maybe the cops," she said with a laugh. His voice rumbled with deep laughter, and she realized how much she had missed him. “Tell me about you. Rumor has it you’re a no good outlaw. But what does that mean exactly? Am I going to get in trouble just for sitting here talking to you? Is a cop going to show up and arrest you?”

His eyes sparkled and his lips pursed into a small mischievous smile. She recognized the look from when he was about to beat her at a hand of cards, and he was happy but felt guilty about it because he wanted her to win too.

“I'm not sure you could handle all that over one little dinner," he said with a wink. “Besides, it's bad dining etiquette to talk about your felonies over the table.”

“I see. The strong silent type. How mysterious," she said wryly.

“Well, you don't really have to worry about me getting arrested. Me and the cops have kind of an understanding. I can help them do their job a little bit better than they can, and nobody around here causes trouble because we take care of things. We want to keep this town clean, so that's what we do, no questions asked. I do have a warrant out in a few other counties though, so I've got to keep my head down. Otherwise, I'm free as a bird."

 

“That sounds interesting. Thank you,” she said as Joey brought her huge plate of fries. Her stomach rumbled loudly and the three of them laughed as she dug into it immediately. It seemed that he remembered her favorite order and swiftly followed by bringing out her favorite cheeseburger and beer for Zak.

They quietly studied each other as she ate. He was thicker, but not fat. He had developed some strong, lean muscles and a chiseled face. His blonde hair looked really good grown out to his shoulders like that, and she found herself fighting the urge to touch it and tuck it behind his ears. He was wearing a cut off leather vest and a tight white V-neck T-shirt that showed off his strong pecks. His green eyes followed her wherever she went, the same way he would study her while they were dating in high school.

“So what is it like being back?” He finally asked her once she had cleared most of her plate.

“I've been staying with my sister and my niece,” she replied.

“Oh, I see them around sometimes. Your sister has a really cute baby.”

“Thank you, I think so too.”

Joy remembered fondly that Zak had a very soft spot for children. It seemed so strange that he would be a criminal now. She wondered what kinds of crimes he was involved in, but she was glad to know that he was keeping the town clean. His brother had overdosed and died when they were kids, so she could understand why he would take it upon himself to keep drugs out of their town. She just couldn’t fathom how he might do something like that, not the sweet kid that she had known so long ago.

 

She couldn't tell what he was thinking, but she had his full attention. The way he looked at her made her feel exposed, naked and vulnerable. It was nothing like the way they had looked at each other as kids. Both of them were more experienced now, with everything, and had become the people they always dreamed of being. She had taken a lot of effort to change as much about herself as she could, and she could tell that he had done exactly the same thing. He had seen himself as vulnerable and weak, and he had done whatever he could to change that.

Now he was feared and respected all over town, when most people had not even known his name. It was quite a difference, and for some reason, she had never been more attracted to anybody in her life. She wondered if it was just because of their history together, but she couldn't get enough of him. The way he looked at her and laughed. His strong, capable hands taking hers and squeezing them as if he could read her thoughts. His deep, soothing voice and the gentleness of his green eyes, the ferocity of his body and the way those eyes could harden in a heartbeat. She never wanted her meal to end.

He seemed to feel the same way. After they left the diner, they lingered under the moonlit sky in front of his motorcycle, quietly contemplating the strangeness of being so near to each other once again.

“Where should I drop you off?” Zak asked finally, after riding around in silence for a couple of blocks. They were both enjoying the peaceful night air and he hadn't wanted to ruin that. “I don't really know where your sister lives these days. I don't make it my business to stalk people the way some small towners seem to do.”

 

“Well, you could take me to the mechanic's, I can pay for them to tow the car and then call my sister to pick me up.”

“All right,” he said with a smile. They lingered for another couple of seconds, neither of them wanting to ruin the still perfection of the space between them.

Finally, he mounted the bike, waiting patiently for her to sit behind him. She did, wrapping her arms intimately around his waist. She felt him tense up at her touch and then relax into it, sighing softly before he started his bike and took off down the road.

As he drove, the air felt cool and soothing on her hot skin. She laid her head heavily on his back, imagining how different her life might have been if she had just stayed put in her rural hometown and allowed him to marry her and make her the happiest housewife on the block. It just wasn't a fate she could envision for herself. Although it seemed to work well for her sister, she just didn't think that it was what she wanted. It seemed that she was missing something; the urge to settle down with a man and live a normal life that the other girls seemed to share was something that she never had.

But having him right there, holding him tightly, feeling his familiar body so close to hers again made her close her eyes and breathe him in as she thought of how different her life might be. Would they have had their own house? A white picket fence? Dogs and children? The idea seemed absurd, but strangely enough, not unpleasant. But look at him now – there was no way he could balance any kind of home life with the lawless lifestyle he was living. There was no way it was feasible. She would have to get rid of those fanciful thoughts and just focus on the present.

The crisp night air rushed over her body, making the warmth of Zak's even more desirable. She held onto him, squeezing him as if making sure he wasn't a dream and he wouldn't disappear. He held one large hand over hers for one delicious moment before they pulled into the body shop. Zak dismounted, and she couldn't help but notice Zak's jeans, tight against his ass; how they curved into the forbidden V of his crotch. She forced herself to look away, hopping off the bike herself and standing on unsteady legs. The ride had left her feeling a little dizzy.

“Hugo!” Zak called.

A small, balding man that Joy recognized from high school popped out from nowhere.

“Hey Zak,” he said, a little too cheerfully. He must have been afraid, he was eyeing Joy and the motorcycle nervously.

“Listen, this pretty lady's car broke down out on N, do you think you could do a tow?”

“Oh sure Zak, no problem. Anything for an old friend.”

Hugo disappeared into the body shop and Zak turned to Joy.

“What he really means is, I owe you and I know it but let's not talk about it in front of the women folk. It's degrading.”

“Why does he owe you?” Joy asked, suddenly intrigued.

“Let's just say he was messing around with the wrong people and we helped him out. But only because he asked. Wrong place, right time I guess.”

“You mean that little pipsqueak tried brawling?” she asked with a bright, surprised laugh. It brought a grin to Zak's handsome face and she quickly quieted down before Hugo had a chance to come back and wonder what they were talking about.

“Something like that. He was flirting with the wife of one bad fucker.”

“That's pretty bold for someone so...”

“Mouse-ish?”

“Exactly.”

They'd been together a little over two hours and they were already finishing each other's sentences. She sighed up to the moonlight as Hugo returned, carrying a large ring full of keys. They clattered loudly as Joy and Zak exchanged meaningful looks, both of them quietly amused.

“You're going to give it a good look, yeah?” Zak said, squinting at Hugo menacingly.

“Of course, buddy, no problem.”

The too-cheerful smile on Hugo's face made them both flinch, and Joy had to hide behind Zak to keep from revealing the laughter trying to burst onto her face. When they were finally ready to leave, Zak revved the engine and sped off, and she finally crumpled into his back and cracked up. Zak couldn't help but join her, and they drove together, laughing like lunatics under the full moon.

Chapter 6

“Oh wow, the old lookout point,” Joy said breathlessly. She'd never been there on a motorcycle before, and they stared out over the scenery. It looked more beautiful than ever, the tiny town beneath them and the moon bringing an icy glow to the trees and the wildflowers as they perfumed the air with their intoxicating countryside scent. He'd taken a spontaneous turn toward their old favorite destination, now made a hundred times more captivating without the roof of a car to confine them.

 

“I thought it might be a good night to see the sights,” he said with a wink, hopping off the bike and offering his hand to help her do the same. He suddenly gestured to the sky and she looked up just as a shooting star flashed out of their sights. “Make a wish.”

Joy closed her eyes, thinking hard about what it was that she really wanted. All she knew was that she didn't want this night to end, not the perfection of the sky, the warmth of Zak's body as she embraced it. She couldn't think of a more perfect way to have spent the evening, even though it had started out feeling pretty bad. She wished that the feeling she had then would be able to last forever – or at least visit frequently. It was a peace she had been missing for ten years.

Suddenly, Zak's strong arms were enveloping her from behind, his warm lips sending shivers down her neck as he kissed her gently, savoring every bit of her as if he was afraid she might just disappear from him again. She moaned despite herself as his strong, experienced hands gently rounded the perfect curves of her body, not holding back or apologizing about their desire; just feeling the push and pull of her as she swayed against him in pure bliss. She suddenly felt the pressing of his longing against her backside and inhaled sharply as an overpowering desire to have all of him, right that moment, engulfed her.

She whipped around, and they stared into each other's eyes. His were gentle, but there was something different about them. He was no longer the guy who would take crap from other people, not even her. If she wanted him she'd better tell him. Otherwise he would hit the road. He might even just leave her there, stranded, to teach her a lesson. He was a bad boy now, maybe he would think that it served her right.

But her lips were on his, hot and panting as his tongue slipped inside her mouth, taking control of whatever was left of her self-restraint. He fingered her pleated skirt, a sassy number Kayla had picked out for her the week before, slipping his hands under; cupping her thighs in his big warm hand, expertly pressing all of her buttons until his fingers were damp and he couldn't hold himself back anymore.

With a small growl he unbuttoned her blouse, burying his mouth between her breasts, nibbling and sucking her nipples, holding her steady by the small of her back. Finally he lifted her, carrying her to his bike with one hand as he unbuttoned his jeans with the other. Joy gripped Zak's well-muscled biceps to steady herself as he pulled the panties and skirt down, dropping them onto the ground and plunging inside of her with one swift motion. She cried out with a gasp of shocking pleasure.

His handsome face grinned devilishly at her, sending another jolt of longing through her body as he gripped her ass, laying her over the seat of his bike, totally naked in the cool night air, tracing the curves of her breasts, from the warm area over her heart to her hard, erect nipples, with his fingertips. The gentleness of his touch contrasted with the power of his thrusting, and she closed her eyes, gasping as the pleasure overtook her.

“I love you,” she whispered, without meaning to. It was something she hadn't said to any man in the past ten years, and she surprised both of them by saying it. He paused for a moment, a look she couldn't pinpoint scurrying across his face. Then his lips were on hers and they were passionately entangled as he moved inside of her like an expert on her pleasure. Finally, she shuddered hard beneath him, an explosion of immense bliss flooding her body, and she cried out with a long moan. She could feel herself contracting against him as he continued to thrust, until her orgasm inspired his climax.

 

A sudden eruption, a feeling she'd never had before – she'd always been responsible and used a condom – the hot flooding of her insides with the sweet nectar of Zak's passion; the sensual contact of his body, flesh against flesh on hers, now slipping out, leaving her empty, dripping with hot seed. This was the way sex was supposed to feel, she decided, and allowed herself a moment to relish it before she sat up and looked Zak in the eye as he tucked himself back into his tight jeans and stared intently at her.

She was worried for a brief moment that she had been stupid and reckless, setting herself up to be used and abused. Her eyebrows furrowed and he seemed to understand exactly what she was thinking, because he smiled at her then, reassuringly.

“I love you too,” he said. And in every fiber of her being, she knew it was true.

Chapter 7

The next morning, Joy felt guilty sitting across the table from her innocent young niece and her sister. It was like being a teenager – told time and time again that giving into those temptations was wrong, there would be hellfire and brimstone to answer for if you did – and then finally having the night of your life and having to look into the eyes of the people who, although well-meaning, would have crucified you where you stood if they knew the truth. Only it was a little bit more shameful because the man she had been out with had been an outlaw, and she'd hidden the truth from her sister.

Zak had managed to drop her off just before Kayla and Penny arrived home. She found herself wondering if she owed the truth to her sister because they were sharing a roof, but at the same time she couldn't fathom talking about the experience she had just had, especially not in front of Penny. Or even with Penny in the house. It made her feel guilty.

 

And so she managed to avoid the topic until her second egg.

“Where's your car?” Kayla asked. She was doing dishes and had noticed it was missing as she gazed out the window.

“It broke down on county road N,” Joy replied.

“Oh really? Why didn't you tell me?” Kayla sounded worried.

“It's all right, I took care of it. I didn't want to worry you, and it seemed trivial. Besides, I was tired last night.”

The last part was very true. Her intense night of passion had left her winded. She wished she could fall asleep in Zak's arms like she had in old times, but it didn't seem like it was in the cards for her to do so any time soon.

“How did you make it back home without your car?” Kayla asked. It was the question Joy had been dreading.

“I got a ride,” she said vaguely.

“From who?” Kayla asked, suddenly a hundred times more curious. She could tell by Joy's evasiveness that it had the scent of forbidden fruit all over it.

“Zak found me,” she answered casually.

“Of course he did,” Kayla said wryly. Joy gave her a grin.

“Shush. Anyway we caught up at the diner and he took me to the body shop then brought me home. It was really nice of him.”

“Well you should probably be careful, he might think you owe him for it. He's not exactly the same nice guy you remember him being.”

Joy shrugged.

“It's not like we're eloping. If he wants me to pay him or something, I will. It's no big deal.”

“All right,” Kayla said, not entirely convinced. She glanced at Penny meaningfully before speaking again. “Hopefully he knows this isn't the kind of place he belongs.”

Joy was suddenly angered by the implication that Zak might hurt Penny, or be unwelcome by her family.

“He just gave me a ride home,” she said coldly. And that was the end of that.

After breakfast Joy headed up to the guest bedroom and flopped onto her bed. Penny came in after her and hopped up with her. Joy smiled despite herself; the child was adorable.

“Were you and mommy fighting?” she asked, her worried blue eyes boring into Joy's.

“No, honey. We were just talking about something serious, that's all. Grown-ups change their voices when things are serious, but it doesn't mean that we're fighting.”

“Zak is the mean motorcycle man!” Penny said, seemingly proud that she had pieced this together downstairs. Joy heaved a heavy sigh, feeling guiltier than ever about her tryst the night before.

“People make bad choices sometimes,” she said. “Even if they are really nice people.”

“Do you think he's nice?” Penny asked, her eyes wide. Any answer she gave Penny might completely change her view of life as a whole, so Joy would have to tread carefully.

“Zak is nice to the people he likes,” she said finally. This seemed to satisfy Penny.

 

“Is he mean to the people he doesn't like?”

“Yes,” Joy said truthfully. “But don't worry. I don't think he'd ever be mean to you.”

“Why not?”

“Because he likes me. So I think he would like you too.”

This cheered the toddler.

“Okay! I'm going to go play dragons now.”

“Okay.”

And like that she was off, leaving Joy behind with Zak's soft heart on her mind.

Chapter 8

Over the next two weeks, Joy and Zak began meeting at the diner on the weekends when Kayla met with Penny's dad. He picked her up until her car was fixed, and then they would drive themselves. He seemed to know that Kayla no longer trusted him, and tried to avoid her as much as possible. Who could blame her after the things he had done? Kayla had filled Joy in on some of them – gruesome and unbelievable tales though they were, but they must be true because Kayla wasn't prone to exaggeration or rumors. Some things she had even seen herself, like when he beat a man to a bloody pulp at a gas station for disrespecting an elderly woman and nearly knocking her over with his car.

“Yeah but can you blame him? If we had the power we'd do the same thing!”

“I know. A lot of things he has good reason for. He just goes too far.”

Joy couldn't let the stories deter her though, and had him on her mind constantly. She was drunk on him. It was like they were dating again, though they made no official declarations and hadn't said they loved each other again since the first time they'd met in ten years. That could have meant anything, right? It's not like they were exclusive, and she wasn't looking for another bad relationship. She had had enough of those. She even managed to tell Zak about Gordon, who surprisingly enough, Zak had already heard of. His face had hardened and he muttered something under his breath that she thought might have been something along the lines of, “I'll take care of it.”

Zak was always pleased to see her, his handsome face lighting up, his smile wide and welcoming; intoxicating.  They would speak for hours, but they hadn't had sex again. He would be a gentleman, sometimes kissing her, but he seemed to be testing the waters, figuring out how far they should go and never totally wrapped up in the moment the way they had been when they first reunited.

Then something strange happened. Joy missed her period.

At first she hadn't noticed, but by the next week she was in a full panic. She drove herself to the doctor's clinic right away, following the routine until they told her for sure that it was as she had feared the most – she was pregnant. Suddenly, the most pleasurable moment in her life to date turned treacherous. They should have used a condom – they shouldn't have acted so rashly. Fortunately she was still free of any venereal diseases, unless you counted a tiny embryo growing inside of your uterus a disease; which she didn't.

She drove morosely home, sitting heavily on the couch until Kayla returned from a playdate with a neighbor and noticed Joy's pale face.

“What's wrong?” Kayla asked, her face concerned.

 

“I'm pregnant,” Joy said, and she immediately started to cry. Kayla held her tightly. It had been a relief to finally say it out loud for the first time but it also made it real. And this was not a situation she wanted to be real. She was pregnant with an outlaw's child.

“Look. You don't have to keep it. You don't even have to tell him. It's your body, he doesn't have to know anything about it.”

This was the exact opposite of what Joy wanted to hear right now. She had expected her sister to be more supportive, although she was being supportive how she had expected Joy wanted her to be supportive. She'd always sworn she didn't want children, that her life would be over if she had kids, how she didn't want tied down to any man or child. She had worried that Kayla quietly judged her, but in reality, Kayla was just afraid that it was Joy who was judging the way she lived her life. Maybe she had invited her sister to live with them so that she could see what it was to really have a family, how it wasn't an obligation so much as it was a joy and a comfort.

“I'm not going to lie to him!”

“He's a criminal,” Kayla said patiently, as if she were talking to Penny.

“He's a good man,” Joy said firmly.

And with that she stood and the conversation was over. She was going to find Zak and tell him the news. She should have done that in the first place. She glared at Kayla as she left, speeding away toward the motorcycle club where Zak hung out; the one place she had never been and never had any intention of going. Until now.

Chapter 9

The motorcycle club was located on the outskirts of town, a couple miles east of the diner. She drove there quickly, parking next to a line of bikes in a dirt and gravel paved makeshift parking lot. There were more than she'd expected – there had to be at least twenty of them there. One in particular caught her eye, something was familiar about the red leather seat but she couldn't quite place it.

The building was an old bar named O'Riley's, and she sat in her car for a few minutes, breathing heavily. Was she really going to do this? It seemed so reckless. Dangerous. Everything Kayla said was true. But it was Zak. Zak who loved her. With his sensual eyes and carefree smile, the spirit that would defend an old woman he didn't know to the death.

She sighed and got out of the car, clicking the door closed quietly behind her. She knew her car would be conspicuous. They might have seen her coming from a mile away. Maybe she should have parked further down the road so she would blend in better.

When she walked into the bar, it took her eyes a few seconds to adjust. It was dim, no, dark. And loud. People were shouting, glass was breaking, and suddenly, shots were being fired. She ducked behind the bar, her eyes wide, though finally able to see. She squinted into the darkness and saw Gordon bound and gagged on the floor with a few of his buddies. They'd ridden over, she realized. That's why there were so many bikes. And the one that she recognized with the red seat had been his. The one he refused to let her anywhere near unless he told her to pose half naked in front of it for his camera. She'd only done it once, when she thought he was harmless.

Suddenly, Zak was there. His gorgeous, rugged body was crouched over Gordon, whose muffled screams were held back by the gag in his mouth. His eyes were wide and Joy couldn't help but think he looked ugly when he was pleading. No wonder the villains hated whiners so much. Suddenly, a huge buck knife was in Zak's hand and he was gripping Gordon by the hair, pulling his chin off the floor. He sliced a long red line in Gordon's neck and the man's strangled screams began to gurgle until finally he was dead on the floor.

The men in the motorcycle club hollered and whooped victoriously, high fiving each other and slapping Zak on the back. Zak didn't look very celebratory however, he just stared down at the corpse on the floor, contemplating it and frowning deeply. And then suddenly, he saw her, the fear on her face, and the confusion in her eyes. And she was running and crying, somehow by her car, now being enfolded in Zak's arms, shushed and rocked, cradled and kissed all over. She wanted to let her feel the comfort he offered, but he had been the one who had done it, he had killed a man right in front of her.

“I'm pregnant,” she finally said between gulping sobs. “But I can't let our child be part of something like that.”

Zak looked at her, his eyes wide with shock. He opened and closed his mouth.

“You're sure?”

“I went to the doctor's, they confirmed everything. But Zak, this can't be our life. She can't see you if this is your life.”

She was already sure she would have a daughter. Somehow it just slipped out and felt right.

She pulled herself out of Zak's embrace and got into the car, gripping the steering wheel with her hands shaking.

“You shouldn't drive like that, it's not safe,” he said, his voice faraway through the window glass. “Let me take you.”

 

Like hell. She tore out of the parking lot and headed home, as far away from him as she could possibly get.

Chapter 10

The next few months were hell. Kayla and Penny did the best they could to help her feel better. Kayla had assumed the baby was Gordon's, which was why she had reacted the way she did. Joy wasn't sure she wanted to tell the truth, but ultimately did anyway. Kayla was quiet for a moment, and then exhaled softly. She had nothing to say about it though, which Joy was grateful for.

She wished for nothing more than to share the experience of her pregnancy with the man she loved, but she couldn't get the images of him killing Gordon out of her head. That was something she hadn't told anybody about, especially not Kayla. But one night they were watching a mobster movie and Joy started crying uncontrollably, begging her to turn it off. She couldn't stop thinking about how Zak was a cold-blooded killer. It was too much to bear. And now he would be a father. What kind of world was it?

Finally she spilled the whole story to Kayla after making sure she swore not to tell. After she told her, she got an unexpected reaction. Kayla smiled, shaking her head. “That little bastard,” was all she said.

When Joy pushed her to elaborate, Kayla sighed, the smile still on her lips.

“It's just that...if I could have gotten away with it, I would have liked to do it myself.”

 

“What, kill Gordon?”

“Call it the Mama Bear in me. I protect me and mine. I guess Zak's the same way. But more macho. Because men are just like that.”

Joy stared at her sister, feeling as if something inside of her had started to thaw out and melt. She began to cry again, but for a totally different reason. Kayla smiled and stroked her gently, muttering something about how bad pregnancy hormones could be, and then sent her off to bed with a glass of tea.

She laid in bed, touching the bump where her child was growing. She loved it more than she had ever loved anything, even though they hadn't officially met yet. She sighed, crying softly as she thought about just how much she missed Zak. She had always missed him, right from the moment she left. But he couldn't come with her. He had to take care of his grandmother. He'd had it rough, it was no wonder he'd turned out to be such a hardass. But he acted from a place of care and love, and although he was rough, he had a good reason for everything he did. She couldn't think of anyone more suitable to look after her child as fiercely as she intended to. With a dad like Zak around, no harm would come to that baby.

The next morning when she woke up, she knew what she would have to do. She showered and dressed, then hopped into her car. She didn't even stop to have breakfast with Kayla and Penny. All that was on her mind was Zak.

Chapter 11

She drove quickly, parking her car in the same spot. The bikes that Gordon's gang members had were still there, at least parts of them. They'd smashed up some and salvaged the pieces. She was sure she'd find plenty at the body shop. She ducked into the motorcycle club, waiting a moment for her eyes to adjust. All activity in the room paused, and finally she could see several figures around her, each of them eyeing her curiously.

None of them seemed to recognize her, but they knew her car, and they knew that Zak told them not to mess with her if she came in again. They were supposed to get him immediately. It took about five minutes before Zak was standing in front of her. He led her past the bar, fumes of alcohol and cigarettes lingering in the air, and led her up to the apartment above the bar, where he lived.

It had the husky scent of a male bachelor, spicy and intoxicating, and surprisingly clean. If he smoked he smoked downstairs, and kept the apartment immaculate. Still, there were signs of his deviance all over the place. A pin up girl calendar on the wall, bike parts scattered here and there, weapons of several types placed proudly on the wall. She looked away from them and into his eyes.

“Are you okay? I'm glad you're here. How is the baby?”

“I'm fine,” she said, although in truth she felt like throwing up. It was a feeling she had gotten used to though, and swallowed it with finesse. “The baby is fine too. She's growing strong.”

“She,” he said, and his face glowed. She suddenly felt very ashamed of herself for keeping him out of the loop for so long. She had been afraid, yes, but having him there with her along the way would have been so much better.

“I haven't named her yet,” she said carefully. “I thought we could do that together.”

He stared at her, the meaning of the words hitting him hard. For the first time in ten years, she saw Zak weep. The first time was when she had left him in that town all alone, with nobody left to love him. Her heart went out to him now, and she touched his leathery cheek, wiping tears away and allowing him to embrace her. She almost groaned out loud, the feeling of him so near to her was powerful and perfect – everything she had been needing was right there all along.

“I couldn't fucking handle it if you left again,” he said softly. “You're all I had for so long. And then you were just gone. I think something in me snapped then. I figure if there's no love left for me, I've got no love left for anything else.”

“I know,” Joy whispered.

“But I love you,” he was saying, lifting her up gently, kissing her from the forehead to the baby bump, holding and caressing it as if it were the most sacred object on the earth. “And I love her. More than I've loved anything.”

“Me too,” she said. “And I love you. I never should have left. You're the only man I ever loved.”

And then they were kissing.

She let her hands slide up and down his body, dipping her fingers into the power over him that she knew her body had. He writhed pleasantly under her touch, grabbing her hands to kiss the fingertips and her palms, sending shivers as his soft kisses penetrated the thin, sensitive skin on her wrists. She tugged them away from him, her heart racing, and held him tightly, her palms roaming his thighs, resting over the rock-hard bulge between them, slipping in to hold it, bring it to her lips, and taste him.

And then he was on top of her, and they made love, not like the teenagers they were when they parted, but like the adults that had been through everything possible and not been broken. Their hearts were merged and their bodies knew it, elevating every sensation until they closed their eyes and came together, falling into bed and clinging tightly to the other's body, making damn sure that they would never be so far apart again.

Epilogue

“Mommy! Ella's walking!”

Penny summoned Kayla quickly, who ran into the living room. Zak and Joy were kneeling on the floor, Ella in between them. She was taking her first tentative steps toward Zak. As soon as she lost her balance, he was there, cushioning the space between Ella and the ground. He lifted her in the air, tossing her gently.

“Good job baby!” he exclaimed, kissing her on the nose. The baby laughed and clapped, and Joy grinned from ear to ear. Life had its ups and downs, but the one thing she knew for sure was that without her family, she would have nothing. But with them, she had everything.

She gazed lovingly at her sister, who had allowed herself to warm up to Zak once again and opened her home up to her sister and her family. Penny adored her Uncle Zak, and loved Ella even more. And although life was chaotic and crazy at the MC, there was nowhere to go but up. They would do what it took to protect Ella and keep the town a safe place for her to grow. That's all there was to it.

THE END

“That’s right,” Summer Jones intoned as she watched him leave. “Go crawling back to your high school- aged skank. See if something lasting comes out of that.” She slammed the door, not bothering to look as her now ex-husband Tom drove away from her in his red pick-up truck. She swiftly removed her wedding ring and her engagement ring from her finger, and slammed them down on the table before crumpling up into one of the chairs.

She finally allowed herself to cry. Her husband of five years had left her. She’d suspected that he’d been cheating on her, and he informed her that he had. “She’s twenty-five, and she can provide something for me that you can’t,” he’d told Summer shortly before ditching her and the life they’d made together.

This was an insult to Summer for a number of reasons. She was twenty-nine; she wasn’t exactly old yet by any stretch of the word. The ‘something’ he’d mentioned was children. Summer had been told by at least three separate doctors that she was not going to be able to conceive. Her body just did not release enough eggs. Some crap like that. She had gotten past it somehow, but apparently Tom had not.

Sobbing in her kitchen, Summer didn’t know what to do. At last, she called up her best friend Rose. She cried into the phone and could barely get any words out, but finally she was able to say, “He left me.”

“Oh, honey, I’m so sorry,” her friend said. “Did he say why?”

Thinking about his reasoning didn’t exactly help. “He said he wanted to be with someone who could have his kids. As if anyone would want to have kids with him!”

The truth was that she had wanted that.

She could hear Rose sigh. “Do you want to do something tonight? I’ll buy you a milkshake at the Shake Shack…”

Summer shook her head even though Rose couldn’t see that through the phone. “No, thanks, though. I’ve got work.”

“Work?” Rose asked, surprised. “No, no no. You cannot go to work. It’s Valentine’s Day and your husband is an asshole. You should not make your day worse by serving customers. No.”

Despite how much pain she was in, Summer laughed a little at that. “I have to go to work,” she said. “I’m not going to be able to pay for myself if I don’t keep working for myself.”

She told herself that Valentine’s Day didn’t mean anything to her. It was just some dumb holiday invented by both the greeting card and the candy companies. It didn’t hold any significance at all for her. Nope.

 

When she arrived at her place of work – a restaurant that also served as a small music-slash-poetry venue, and also housed a bookstore – Summer groaned when she saw the decorations that had been strung up, laid out and stuck to nearly every surface in the place that wasn’t going to be used for cooking. Pink, red and white were everywhere. She had never noticed before how evil the concept of Cupid was.

“Happy Valentine’s Day!” her manager Megan greeted her, giving her an uncharacteristic big hug. She was tall with wavy brown hair and blond highlights. She was about forty years old, and that was part of why Summer was both confused and chagrined at her boss’s enthusiasm for the holiday.

“I didn’t know you were so into Valentine’s Day,” Summer said, shrugging away from the hug as soon as possible. Maybe Rose had been right.

Megan let out a laugh. “I didn’t used to be, but now I’m engaged!” she practically shouted. She showed off the large, diamond ring on her finger, grinning from ear to ear.

Okay, now it seemed as though the world was playing a cruel trick on Summer. “Yay,” she said softly.

“Yay,” Megan agreed. “Okay, so, there are appropriate shirts for the evening for you to pick out and put on in the back. There’s a Valentine’s Day concert scheduled for seven-thirty. I’m going to have you start in the bookstore and then move on to being a waitress during the show. Does that sound good?”

None of it sounded particularly good to Summer, but she didn’t want to be alone on Valentine’s Day, thinking about the husband she had lost and feeling sorry for herself. The past five years hadn’t all been wonderful, especially not the last year of it, when Tom had been cheating on her and not even trying so hard to hide it.

With a slight nod, she went to the back and chose a red shirt. Red could be taken for something other than romantic. Red was the color of blood, of fire, of anger. Only when she put it on did she realize that it had a pink heart on it, right over where her body’s actual heart belonged.

She could deal with it, though. At least it didn’t have any words on it. As she looked at her reflection, she marveled at the fact that, aside from looking a little tired, it was hard to tell that her heart was actually broken. Her short, reddish-brown hair still curled up on one side and curled under on the other side, making her look lopsided in a way that she liked. She still had a solar system of freckles on her face and neck. She seemed no worse for wear. She was still Summer Jones, and she could pretend to be completely unscathed. Her blue eyes with flecks of gold looked sad, but their sadness could easily be mistaken for fatigue.

“The bookstore won’t be so bad,” she told herself under her breath. “It’s not like everyone is going to buy books about romance today. We have a lot of different kinds of books…”

After telling herself that, Summer gave her reflection a nod and went out to the sales floor again, ready to go ahead and stand at the check-out podium, pretending to be enthusiastic about the selection at Cabbages and Kings. It was a tourist sort of place, but it paid the bills and it kept her out of Mopeville.

The Philadelphia tourist trap was not exactly popping at five in the afternoon, however. So far, she and her coworkers, and the crew that set up the stage for concerts and poetry readings, were the only people in the place.

Suddenly, Summer heard the sound of a motorcycle outside. It wasn’t that rare to see and hear them in the city, but it wasn’t often that someone who rode a motorcycle decided to come into Cabbages and Kings. People who rode motorcycles were stereotypically ‘cool’ and ‘fearless.’ The people who went to Summer’s place of work were decidedly not those things. It was a restaurant devoted to nerds.

The front door opened and she peeked around the wall as it jutted out and obscured a large portion of the bookstore from the rest of the venue’s view. She could hear as the rider’s leather boots stomped towards her, however. The rider came into the bookstore before even asking about a table, which she did not understand.

He was dressed in a typical biker outfit. Besides the black leather boots, he wore blue jeans and a black leather jacket with more than a few chains jutting out of it. He carried a black helmet under his arm, but so far all she’d been able to make out of his face was that he had sandy, slightly curly hair.

“Please let me know if I can help you,” Summer said to him, keeping her voice bright even though she was curious and surprised by this customer.

Scanning the shelves, he appeared to be jumpy and in a hurry, and she thought that he would just ignore her like nearly all of the other customers she greeted. He kept his back to her and she gave up any hopes of having a brief conversation with him. Her mind drifted back to her husband – ex-husband – and what he was most likely doing for his Valentine’s Day…

Two police cars drove past the building, sirens blaring and lights flashing. As soon as they were gone, the biker guy turned towards her. He gave her a look of relief. His eyes were as brown as Valentine’s chocolates. She hated herself for making that connection. He was younger than she had expected. Most of the bikers she saw around town were middle-aged.

“I am looking for a present for someone really picky,” he said. His voice was much gentler than Summer had anticipated, too.

She smiled at him. “You’ve come to the right person, then,” she said. “I’m probably the pickiest person here. What sort of things are you thinking?”

He pulled a book by Neil Gaiman off the shelf. “She loves Douglas Adams,” he explained. “I’ve heard good things about this author. Would you say they’re similar?”

Summer smiled and put her hands behind her back so this handsome biker wouldn’t see that she was fidgeting with her fingers a little bit. She picked at her nails when she was nervous. Right now, she was nervously excited. She loved to discuss books with people, which was why she had chosen this geeky job in the first place.

“That depends,” she said. “That’s a little bit more macabre than Hitchhiker’s… I would go for this one.” She snatched up a different book, one that was co-written by Terry Pratchett. “This book is golden. It’s funny; it’s metaphysical but not really in such a sinister way. Though it is about Armageddon.” Summer smirked at him. “But if she likes Douglas Adams, she probably likes books about that.”

This attractive biker was frantically shopping for a female on Valentine’s Day. Summer couldn’t help but feel somewhat disappointed. She couldn’t even flirt with a stranger today! The oxymoronic mixture of his biker attire and cherubic face intrigued her.

“Hey, thanks,” the guy said. He put back the book he’d been holding, and took the one she offered. He was taking her suggestion. At least Summer could count that as a small victory.

Once she’d led him over to her podium and he’d paid for the book with cash, he looked at her as if for the first time. “Are you doing anything tonight?”

Oh no, she thought. The last thing she needed was yet another cheater in her life. “But you just bought a present for…”

“For my little sister,” he finished for her. He flashed a grin and Summer held onto the podium, doing her best to make it seem like a normal thing to do and not something that was necessary in order to keep her legs from giving out.

Whoa, but he had a gorgeous smile!

“Oh,” she said. “Well, I’m here the rest of the night.”

He leaned in a little so that only she could hear him. “Can you not be?”

Summer looked around, blushing. No one else was even near them or paying attention. Some people had started to come in and be seated in the restaurant, so the staff would be busier over there. She knew that she had a waitress shift later during the concert. She also knew that Megan was so very into the emotions of the day this year, so there happened to be a chance that she could leave, if she gave the appropriate excuse…

“Tell me your name first,” she said, watching him as he tucked the brown-bagged book into his back pocket and put his helmet back on his head. “I don’t want to spend Valentine’s Day with a guy if I don’t even know his name.”

There was that smile again. He looked her straight in the eye. “Eric,” he said, keeping his already velvety voice soft and secretive as though his name was something that mere mortals weren’t supposed to know.

She kept her eyes on his and swallowed nervous-excitedly. “Summer,” she said. “Like the season.”

CHAPTER TWO

Heroes Just For One Day

As expected, Megan squealed when Summer asked to have the night off for an impromptu date. She called in someone else to cover for her, but it turned out that there were more than enough people working there as it was and they would be able to handle the crowd that Megan had imagined would come for the show. Summer wasn’t really worried about that; she just hoped losing out on a night of tips for this Eric guy was going to be worth it.

“Have you ever been on a motorcycle before?” he asked her as he tossed the bagged Gaiman book into his motorcycle’s storage space under the seat. He pulled out a spare helmet and closed the seat back down so it was secure.

Summer thought about it. She could lie and say that she had, of course she had, but she did not want to start their… whatever this was on a foundation of a lie. She didn’t want to lie just to seem cool; that was the sort of thing she had sworn off ever since it had gotten her into trouble once in high school.

“No,” she said, shaking her head. “I’d never actually even thought about it befo—ahh!” She let out a screechy yelp as Eric lifted her up and placed her, gently, onto the back of the seat.

He laughed at her reaction, looking around to make sure no one had overheard and thought something bad was going on. “Calm down,” he said. “I’m not going to let anything happen to you.”

She blushed a little but smiled at him. He climbed onto the seat in front of her and made sure that both of their helmets were securely clipped on before kicking off.

“Can I see your license first?” she asked him.

“What are you, an undercover cop?” Eric asked with another laugh. He pulled out his wallet and handed over his card. It wasn’t his actual license, though. It was like a business card.

Summer read over it, smirking and narrowing her eyes at him. “Eric Daniels, The Celestial Sentinels, VP.” She handed it back to him. “What the hell does that mean?”

He grinned, placing the card back into his wallet and his wallet back into his jeans. “It’s a motorcycle club,” he said. “And I’m its vice president.”

With that, he started the engine and took off down the street. Letting out another squawk, Summer grabbed on tightly to his middle. It felt weird to her to be clutching this stranger, but she did not exactly have another choice.

“Where are we going?” she yelled over the sound of the bike’s growling motor. She realized that she had assumed it was a date, he hadn’t exactly said it was. Now she berated herself for not asking these important questions before hopping on his motorcycle and riding off into the night.

Suppose he was planning to kill her?

Then she remembered his kind face. No, he couldn’t be like that. He was surprisingly sweet for a guy who rode this fast, loud deathtrap.

“It’s supposed to be a surprise,” he yelled back. “I hope you like beer.”

She smiled. “That didn’t really answer the question, but okay.” She rested her cheek against his back as Eric skillfully drove her around, through all of the looping streets of the city. He took her away from the city center and she was starting to wonder if his plan was just to take her back to his place, but then he stopped the bike outside of a small dive bar.

“Sunny’s,” she read on the glowing sign.

Eric helped her down off the motorcycle and stored the helmets away under the seat. “It’s not the most romantic place, I admit, but I had a feeling that you’d gotten enough of Valentine’s Day from the way your store was decorated.”

Summer grimaced. “Yeah… Today’s not exactly my favorite holiday.” Especially not anymore.

He opened the door for her and she went inside. As she had anticipated, it was a small, dark place, more like a cellar that the bars she usually went to. It was made primarily of bricks and it smelled of cigarettes and booze and fish. Eric led her to a booth near the bar and they sat down, her across from him. She wished that it was a little lighter in there so she could see his face better.

“Why is today not your favorite holiday?” he asked her, looking over the menu and stealing more than a few glances up at her. “Did your job wear it out?”

She shook her head. She didn’t really want to go into what had happened with Tom. It was still so fresh, and she had a feeling that this handsome biker guy did not want to know that, until very recently, she had been married.

“I’ve just never had a lot of good luck on this day,” she explained. “It might not even have anything to do with the holiday. Maybe February 14th is just a cursed date for me.”

Eric raised his eyebrows a little at her. “Aww, well, I hope this won’t be considered a cursed date.”

So it was a date!

A waitress came over before Summer could comment on that. Eric ordered himself a beer and looked to her to see what she wanted. “I’ll have a Stella,” she said. Belgian ales were the only kind of beer that Summer could really stomach.

Once the waitress was gone, Eric leaned forward towards Summer. “Do you want to split a spinach and artichoke dip or something?” he asked. “I don’t know how hungry you are, but I’m starved.”

She smiled and quickly read through the bar’s offered appetizers. Her stomach growled a little. Normally, she would have taken a break at Cabbages and Kings and had her dinner there. “That sounds good. I might get a sandwich or something, too, if that’s okay.”

Eric smirked an attractive, sideways smirk at her. “Of course that’s okay. I brought you here for dinner.”

“I know, but… Why?” She blushed a little, grabbing at a packet of Sweet n’ Low just to have something to fiddle with while they waited for their drinks.

“I thought you were cute,” he said. “And I figured that a cute girl like you shouldn’t be spending her Valentine’s Day alone in a small bookstore.”

The waitress came back to deliver their bottles of beer and ask about what they wanted to eat. Eric ordered the spinach and artichoke dip. Summer ordered some hummus.

He seemed amused by that. “It’s practically the only way I’ll eat fresh veggies,” she explained, sticking her tongue out at him. “It’s funny to me that you think I’m cute. I could say the same thing about you. When you came into the shop, I thought you looked way too innocent and sweet to be riding a motorcycle.”

“Oh, looks can be deceiving,” he countered. He took a long sip of his beer.

Summer nodded. “So, who came up with the name ‘The Celestial Sentinels’? It’s not the toughest sounding name. No offense.”

He gave her a confused look. “Who says all guys who ride motorcycles have to be tough? Anyway, it’s pretty heroic to be a guard…”

She supposed that was true. “What do you do when you’re not guarding?”

He chuckled darkly. “Drink your beer.”

Summer took a sip, smiling at the taste. She didn’t drink very often, but boy did she feel like she had a pretty good reason to tonight. “My husband left me today,” she said softly, frowning at her bottle. When she looked back up, she noticed that Eric was giving her a sympathetic look.

“Why the fuck would anybody do that?” he asked, surprised and disgusted but keeping his voice low like she had because it was not the kind of conversation that everyone in the bar needed to overhear.

She shrugged sadly. “He wanted someone younger, I guess.”

“Younger?” he asked. “How old are you? …Er, if that’s not impolite. You don’t have to answer.”

“I’m twenty-nine,” she answered.

“Pfft,” Eric said. “That is definitely not old. I’m thirty.”

Summer smiled ever so slightly. “That’s ancient.”

Their appetizers came and distracted them for a few moments. She dipped a piece of celery into the hummus and ate it with a satisfying crunch. They shared the two dips and the assortment of things with which to eat them, reaching across the table when necessary.

“I’m a security guard,” he said. “Well, I was… I was fired. Let go, they called it. So I am currently looking for a new job.”

She cringed a little. That was slightly off-putting. She wasn’t sure she wanted to be dating a guy who was currently unemployed, but maybe she could help him with that. It wasn’t as though unemployment was so rare these days. “What are you doing for money for the time being?”

Eric bit his lip and slowly shook his head. At first, she thought that meant that he had no idea, but then he answered. “I have some saved up,” he said. “It’s not ideal, though. But I’ll be all right. Enough about me. What do you like to do when you’re not selling books?”

Summer let out a little laugh. She and Tom used to do a lot of things, like going on long walks and seeing movies. Lately, she hadn’t done much of either thing. She’d become a bit of a homebody. She sometimes wondered if it was depression over what she considered to be a defect. She could not have children, and that made her feel like a failure for some reason. She knew she wasn’t. She told herself she wasn’t. But she didn’t fully believe it.

“I used to hike a lot,” she said, keeping her feelings to herself. “I wasn’t hardcore or anything, but I’d go out for long walks and explore forests and stuff.”

He smiled. “You eat hummus and you love nature,” he said. “I’m dating a hippy. This is becoming a set up for a joke,” he teased. “A biker and a hippy walk into a bar…”

She finished her bottle of beer and, stopping the waitress, asked for another. She also ordered the avocado sandwich she had been eyeing. “What’s the punchline of the joke?” she asked.

Leaning across the table, Eric kissed Summer on the lips. She kissed him back, feeling as though the beer and something else were now going to her head.

They kept on drinking their beer. When her sandwich arrived, she ravenously ate it, hoping that she didn’t seem like a drunken pig or anything. She was hungry and she didn’t often have an excuse to go out and enjoy something she hadn’t made herself.

Eric watched her eat the sandwich, smiling at her and helping himself to the remnants of dip that remained on the plates before him.

“Do you mind if I say something?” he asked suddenly. He seemed pretty tipsy by now, but he was still forming sentences okay, which relieved Summer because she did not want a ride home with an inebriated motorcyclist, even if he was the vice president of a club.

She shrugged, swallowing a piece of sandwich before responding. “Go ahead.”

“I think your husband must be out of his mind insane to leave you,” Eric said. “Especially on Valentine’s Day. I mean, who does that?”

Summer looked down at her plate. “I don’t think he cared what day it was, really. I think it had been a long time coming.”

Eric shook his head, irritated with her ex and he had never even met the jerk. “Well, I guess it’s probably bad to say, but I’m glad that he walked out on you today… Because otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to take you out.”

She blushed, smiling a little. “That’s one way of looking at it.”

CHAPTER THREE

Making Love With His Ego

As soon as they were done with their food – and definitely done drinking their beers – Eric led Summer out of the restaurant and back to his motorcycle. He got their helmets out of the storage space. They put them on. Summer felt very giggly all of a sudden. “What’s the plan now?” she asked him. “What else is on your Valentine’s Day date agenda?”

He smirked and helped her onto the bike. “Wait and see,” he said, getting on in front of her.

Wrapping her arms around his waist was much less awkward when she was tipsy. She was much less concerned about who he was or what was going to happen when she had some booze in her.

They rode off down more sloping streets. At one point, she let out an excited, “Wheeee!” that made him laugh. Their motorcycle finally stopped back outside of Cabbages and Kings. She took one look at the place and made a face. “I don’t want to go back to work now,” she complained.

Eric shook his head, smiling at her. “This is where we met. I don’t know where you live.”

She grinned at him, blushing faintly. “You want to see where I live?” she asked.

He nodded and she rattled off her address. He put it into his phone’s GPS and turned up the volume. He wouldn’t be able to look at it, but he’d be able to hear the directions. At least, he hoped so.

As the bike took off once more, Summer hugged him around the waist and rested her cheek against his back, smiling. She didn’t care that he was unemployed anymore. He had saved the day for her and made her feel better. She felt determined to help her Celestial Sentinel find a new job.

Once they reached her house, Eric parked his bike in her driveway. He helped her off the bike and she excitedly took his hand. Last time she had been in her house, she’d been miserable. She wanted Eric to fix that now, too.

“Wow, this place is big,” he said, looking around. It was a house with two bedrooms and a master bedroom. It was clearly more space than one girl could possibly need.

“It was bought with a family in mind,” she told him, closing and locking the door behind them. She tossed her keys onto the nearby kitchen counter and shoved her hands into the back pockets of her jeans.

Glancing at the pink outline of a heart on her chest, Eric came closer. He brought his face to hers and kept his mouth teasingly close to touching her mouth. “Do you still have a family in mind?” he asked her in a whisper.

She shook her head slightly. “I should warn you right now that I’m damaged goods,” she whispered back. “I can’t have kids.”

He lunged at her within that small space and suddenly his lips were on hers. He kissed her hotly and deeply, letting his tongue gently dance against hers. “You’re not damaged goods,” he said after he’d broken away, resting his forehead against hers. “You’re exactly what I’m looking for.”

With that, he lifted her up into his arms and carried her through the house, finding the master bedroom without much difficulty since it was the only room with a bed in it. He placed her gently down onto the bed and lay down so that he was practically on top of her, kissing her and running his hands all over her stomach and breasts and waist.

She pulled off his leather jacket and tossed it to the floor before reaching down and undoing his fly. Bringing out his penis, she took it into her mouth and licked and sucked at it, making Eric moan as he got even harder.

After a few minutes of a blissful blowjob, he moved away a little and pulled off her jeans and panties. Then he ducked down between her legs and returned the favor, running his tongue all over her clit and lower lips.

“Ohhh,” she moaned. “Oh god!” Tom had never done this for her. He’d never been too concerned with giving her orgasms and making her want sex with him. Which was weird, considering that he’d wanted to get her pregnant.

Tom was a dick.

Eric successfully got Summer nice and wet. Then he sat back up, fingering her a little as he smirked sweetly. “Are you ready?” he asked. “Do you want this?”

Summer nodded eagerly. It felt so good to be asked. She hadn’t expected biker boy to be so polite to her. She wasn’t sure what his deal was, but she liked it. “Yes,” she said. “I definitely do.”

With her permission, he slowly pressed himself inside her. She let out a gasp and lifted her legs, wrapping them around his middle. “You’re tight,” he said with a slight groan. “It has been a while, hasn’t it?”

She smiled up at him. “I was waiting for you to come along and stretch me.”

“Stretch you with my big cock?” he asked playfully.

“Mmhmm, with your big cock.” She writhed a little against him, her head spinning from the alcohol and the pleasure.

Eric licked his finger tips and brought them down to her clit, fingering her as he thrust inside her. Summer closed her eyes tightly as she suddenly came. “Oh, Eriiicc!” she bellowed. She felt as though fireworks were going off in her brain but it was dizzying and wonderful.

He clung to her as she came, then pulled her t-shirt off of her and sucked at her right breast, speeding up his movements. She felt a rush of something as he came inside her. Summer smiled at Eric, feeling a bit delirious, and he kissed her.

“There’s nothing damaged about you,” he whispered, carefully pulling out of her. “You’re perfect.”

She watched, breathless, as he got out of the bed and went to the bathroom to clean himself up.

When he came back, Eric got into bed again and cuddled with her. She was used to being alone after sex, listening as the silence became filled with snores. She didn’t expect to be cuddled afterwards. It felt nice, though she didn’t quite know what to do now.

“Is your Valentine’s Day going better for you now?” he asked her, kissing her cheek and the side of her neck as he held her close.

“I think my year is going better for me now,” she answered, smiling at him and taking his mouth onto hers. After a wonderful make-out session, Summer shivered. “It’s not fair that you get to keep your shirt,” she said, only pretending to complain.

He sat up and removed his black t-shirt, handing it over to her. She took it, grinning an impressed grin, and put it on. It was small and tight on him, which helped to show off his muscled body. On her, it was long and loose enough to cover her private bits. It fit like a nightgown, and it was made even better by the fact that it smelled like him.

“Do you want some tea or something?” she asked him, standing up and rubbing her face in an effort to get her mind working again and stop thinking about sex.

That was hard to do when he stood beside her, naked.

She looked down at his sizable cock and blushed, smiling. “Here.” She picked up her red shirt with the pink heart on it and handed it to him. “You shouldn’t have to be cold either.”

Eric put her shirt on and she laughed. It didn’t exactly cover him up, but it sure was funny and cute. “I’m going to stretch it,” he said, sounding almost embarrassed.

That just made her giggle more. “I don’t care. Do you think I want to wear that shirt to work again?”

Summer went into the kitchen to make some tea and he followed her. He sat down on one of the bar stools that she kept by her little breakfast bar. He hissed somewhat at the feel of the cold surface on his bare butt.

“So, I’m curious,” he said as he watched her put the kettle on the stove and select two tea flavors from her pantry. “What do you work in that restaurant if you hate it so much?”

She thought about it. “I don’t really hate it. ‘Hate’ is too strong of a word. I actually really like working in the bookstore part. I’m glad I met you there. I just… Well, who likes working in a place where the clientele is so largely tourists?”

Eric shrugged. “But bands play there.”

“Mostly crappy bands,” she argued. “And most of the time, we just have open mic nights. I’m starting to think that I should just work in an actual bookstore.”

She realized that she was complaining about her job to somebody who didn’t have a job and immediately felt regret. “I’m sorry. A job is a job, I suppose… What sort of thing would you like to do, now that you’re an unemployed guard and not a full-time guard?”

He smiled a little at that. “Well, I probably shouldn’t guard anymore.”

They both laughed softly. She poured the hot water over their peppermint tea and brought a mug over for him, sitting beside him at the bar with her own mug of cinnamon apple tea. The smells of both flavors mingled in the air and were invigorating. “There could be a career in your motorcycle interest,” she suggested. “A lot of places could use delivery people. Does that sound horrible to you?”

“Nah, it doesn’t sound horrible,” Eric replied. “That’s a good idea. I was also thinking that I could be a roadie or something, since we were talking about the bands that play at your place. I guess I’d have to get a car for that, though.”

Summer sipped her tea, thinking. “You could always join the staff in my place, who handle the sound and set up for shows.”

Eric snapped, smiling at her. “Now that’s a great idea.” He took a sip of his tea and moaned softly. “And this is great tea. You are really good at stuff. I’ve clearly picked out the right girl.”

She blushed, pleased and flattered.

“I don’t know where your ex-husband gets off letting you think that having kids is the most important part of being in a relationship,” Eric said. “And what’s even more incorrect is that he made you think there was something wrong with you for not being able to have kids. He’s an asshole. I’m sorry.”

It comforted her just to know that Eric didn’t feel the same negative way about her predicament as she did. She needed to stop thinking of it as a predicament anyway. It was just life. Someday, if she wanted, she could adopt some kids. She wasn’t so old yet that she even felt the major call to be a mother.

“No, you don’t have to apologize. He is a colossal asshole. And I’ve found someone better.” She kissed Eric and gently stroked his hand with her fingertips.

After they finished their tea, they went back to the bedroom and went to sleep, nestled warmly in each other’s arms. It felt amazing to be in someone’s arms again, and no matter how much she told herself she deserved it, she couldn’t help feeling like she was also completely blessed. She couldn’t wait to tell Rose and see what her friend would have to say. Rose would probably say something about karma and signs. She loved that this time Rose had been right about her relationship and it hadn’t actually come back to hurt her much. She was going to be okay.

Her Valentine’s Day had been the best one she’d experienced so far. And the evidence of it would come in the morning, when she rode to her work on the back of Eric’s motorcycle to retrieve her car.

CHAPTER FOUR

Don’t Fake It, Baby

For a time, it seemed like everything was finally working out for Summer. She had a sexy, new boyfriend who cared about her. Work was going okay and had stopped annoying her so much now that Eric was in the running for a job there. She’d signed her divorce papers and sent them off to be signed by Tom and processed by their lawyers. She had nothing to worry about anymore.

She came home from work one evening to find Eric sitting on the couch. This in itself wasn’t so odd. They basically lived together now. But, instead of watching TV or looking for jobs or something like usual, he was just sitting there, watching her.

As soon as she was fully in the house, he rose up from the couch. “We need to talk,” he said.

Oh no. Those were never good words. “Okay,” she said hesitantly though trying to keep her voice bright. She set her purse on the kitchen counter and went over to him. She gave him a hug like she always did when seeing him after work or after a few days of time apart.

He gestured for her to sit on the couch and she did so. He sat beside her and took her hand. “There’s something I need to tell you,” he said. “Something I haven’t been forthcoming about, but there’s a good reason why…” He sighed.

Summer was concerned. She didn’t want their happy little bubble to burst, but something was up and she knew that it was upsetting Eric. Was he secretly married? Her mind was racing, trying to figure out what it was. “Well, if there’s a good reason, then I’m sure it can’t be that bad.”

“Before I met you, almost right before I met you, I robbed a convenience store.”

Well, shit. It was that bad.

Her eyes widened at him. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I lost my job and I didn’t know what to do. I was running out of money…”

She moved away from him, staring at him incredulously. “And then you thought it would be a good idea to buy a book from me?”

Eric looked down. “Originally, I was planning to rob your store, too… I made up an excuse to get you to open the register. But then I met you and I just couldn’t go through with it.”

Summer stood up and pointed to the door. “You need to leave,” she said.

“I haven’t stolen anything since.”

“Get out!”

Without another word, he got up and went to the door. He grabbed his helmet from where it hung on the coat stand. He put it on with a decisive snap and was gone.

She put her head in her hands and sank back onto the couch, crying. Why couldn’t she ever have something nice? Why couldn’t she ever get a good guy, instead of a bad guy in disguise?

At first, she wanted to call Rose but she didn’t want to go crying to her friend again. She felt like the only times she ever called Rose up was when she needed to complain about some injustice that had been done to her.

The phone rang and, for a moment, Summer thought that maybe Rose had sensed a disturbance in the Force and was calling to check on her, but it was Megan instead.

“Hi, is Eric around?” His name felt like nails on a chalkboard to Summer.

“No, he doesn’t live here anymore.”

Megan let out a sigh. “That’s a shame… Do you have a number where I can reach him?”

Summer remembered numbly that he had applied to work at her place of work, and she suddenly was overcome with the desire to not let that happen. “I don’t, actually, sorry. If this is about the job, he changed his mind.”

She hung up, crying again. She knew that she was going to have to answer for that down the road, but she didn’t want to think about it right now. Everything just hurt.

 

Megan was understanding when Summer finally went back into work and explained the situation – omitting the part about robbery. She was mad at Eric for deceiving her, but she did not want to get him in trouble. “That was something that was a bit worrisome,” Megan admitted. “Coworkers who are also dating can be a bit messy.”

Summer looked down at the floor, not wanting to talk about it anymore. Megan patted her back gently, understanding that as well.

At least Valentine’s Day was over. The storestaurant was decorated for Easter now.

For two weeks, Summer went through life feeling like a zombie. She’d go to work, she’d come home, eat dinner and go to sleep. On the rare occasions that she just worked an afternoon shift, she’d go to work, come home, stare at the internet for hours before it was acceptable to eat dinner, and go to sleep.

Rose knew that something bad had happened, but she didn’t pry. “You can tell me anything,” she said. “The good, the bad and the ugly.”

“The world hates me,” Summer told her sadly over the phone.

“Aww, no it doesn’t,” Rose said. “It’s just giving you a lot of speed bumps right now. But you’re getting past them.”

“My period’s late,” Summer intoned.

Rose struggled to come up with an answer for that. “It’s probably just stress. Your period skips months sometimes.”

That was something that Summer was well aware of. She was in a rut and she didn’t know how to get out of it. She didn’t feel like doing anything anymore. She didn’t feel. This house that her parents had willed to her was starting to feel as empty as her schedule.

“Maybe I should get an apartment,” she told herself one morning.

As soon as she got out of bed, she felt sick to her stomach. She rushed into the bathroom and threw up into the toilet, making it just in time. Her head was throbbing and now she was sick to her stomach over nothing.

Suddenly, she wondered something.

She called in sick to work and went to a convenience store to buy a pregnancy test. As she waited in line, she briefly thought about Eric and wondered if this was the store he’d robbed. It didn’t seem like a guy could make a whole lot of money working there, let alone breaking into its register.

Once she was home, she peed on the stick and left it on the sink’s edge. She didn’t wait around to see what it said but instead went back out into the living room to see what was on TV. She didn’t want to think about the implications of what the stick might tell her.

Summer couldn’t be pregnant. She had a condition. Several doctors at several different clinics had told her that her chances of conceiving were very low. It was why her asshole of an ex-husband had cheated on her and left her. She couldn’t be pregnant. No.

But the stick on the sink said otherwise.

Stunned and in a flurry of rushing excitement, she called Rose.

“Yeeello,” her friend said, friendly as ever.

“RoseI’mpregnant.”

“Summer? What?”

She took a deep breath. “Rose. I’m pregnant.”

There was a long pause.

“Are you sure?”

“I just took a test! It says I’m pregnant!”

Rose let out a little, excited shriek. “Um, do me a favor. I’m in the car right now on my way home from work. Get another test and take it, and wait for me before you see the results. I’ll be over soon!”

Summer did as she was told. She went into the convenience store, shaking this time instead of feeling so grumpy and upset. She felt more scared and confused than anything else at the moment. She bought a different brand of pregnancy test.

As soon as she was home, she peed on it and left it on the coffee table, not looking at it. She read articles on her phone about pregnancy, false positives and polycystic ovary syndrome. This was not supposed to have happened. She was supposed to need hormone therapy and stuff!

There was a knock at the door and she ran over to answer it, feeling too jittery to sit still. She wanted to have a baby, but she’d spent so long telling herself that there was no way… Now that she had apparently proven herself wrong, she wanted to laugh and cry and celebrate.

Rose, her tall friend who looked like Barbie would if Barbie was a hippy, stood there and grinned at her on the threshold. Summer gave her friend a hug and welcomed her inside. “Did you do a test?” Rose asked.

Summer nodded and gestured to the little plastic stick that was waiting for them on the coffee table. It had been long enough to confirm or deny things. “Ugh, I don’t want to look.”

Rose took her hand as they walked over to the living room and sat down on the couch. “There are false positives sometimes,” she said, trying to prepare Summer for bad news, just in case. “Would you like me to look?”

Summer nodded, feeling tears well up in her eyes. She didn’t want to let herself get too excited. As it was, she was still going to be in a pretty awful situation. No one knew why she’d broken up with Eric, but he was a thief. An outlaw! She couldn’t actually be with him, even if…

“It’s a plus,” Rose said with a grin in Summer’s direction. “Girl, you’re going to have a baby.”

Holding each other’s hands, they screamed happily together and hugged.

“Oh my god, this is so WEIRD!” Summer said, laughing and crying at the same time.

“Congratulations,” Rose said, laughing and clearly so happy for her best friend. “You should schedule an appointment at your gynecologist pronto. In the meantime…” She suddenly looked at Summer with a more serious expression. “You need to tell Eric. It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to know that it’s Eric’s baby.”

Summer sighed and nodded a little. “I know. The problem is I don’t know where he is. It’s been nearly three weeks since I last saw him. Nearly a month. Who knows what he’s up to now or if he’d even have any interest in me or our baby.”

Rose looked like she wanted to say something but was holding back.

“What?” Summer asked her, prodding her a little with her shoulder. She had a feeling that she knew what her friend was going to say. Or, rather, ask.

“If it’s okay for me to ask now, why did you two break up?” Rose asked, predictably. “You seemed so happy together. You were always telling me about how sweet he was. What happened?”

Summer felt so conflicted about him now, about everything. She had kicked him out of the house without really listening to him. She had flown off the handle. True, he had stolen. He had committed a crime. He was probably a wanted, at large person. And that was troubling, to say the least. But he promised that he’d never do it again, and she’d sent him away.

What if he’d fallen into a life of crime because she had kicked him out and broken things off with him?

“He… stole some things,” she said hesitantly. “Not from me. It was in the past. But something boiled up inside of me when he confessed that. I didn’t want to be dating a criminal. I’ve had enough of assholes.”

Rose’s eyebrows went up. “Well… Did he kill anyone?”

Summer chuckled bitterly. “Not that I know of.”

“I think if he confessed, there’s nothing for you to worry about,” Rose said. “As long as it wasn’t his job or main hobby or anything.”

“Oh no, he seemed pretty remorseful. And that’s kind of how I’m feeling now,” Summer said sadly. “He told me that he was planning to rob Cabbages and Kings, until he met me there and I changed his mind.”

Rose nodded decisively. “You need to call him.”

Summer sighed again and gingerly touched her tummy, wondering what her tiny, unexpected baby looked like at that moment. “I would if I could, but he doesn’t have a cell phone.”

CHAPTER FIVE

I’m Happy, Hope You’re Happy Too

Not wanting to take another day off from work so soon, Summer went to visit her gynecologist after work the following day. “What seems to be the trouble?” Dr. Paulsen asked pleasantly.

“I realized I was late, so I took two pregnancy tests,” Summer explained. “And they both came out positive… I was under the impression that I couldn’t conceive and have a child of my own.”

The doctor smiled at her. “Oh, that’s great news! There’s really never a never when it comes to pregnancy, unless you’ve had your uterus or ovaries removed. Polycystic lowers your chances by a lot, but it doesn’t make it completely impossible. Let’s see.” She took out a cup and a pregnancy test. “Please take this into the bathroom and fill up to this line. Then bring it back.”

Summer took the cup into the bathroom. The problem was she didn’t have to pee. She had a hard time making herself pee on command in these situations. Images of Niagara Falls came to mind, but she struggled to get anything to happen. Closing her eyes and through sheer force of will, she managed to get just enough urine out of her and into the cup, just reaching the line of red marker.

She carried the cup back to the doctor, feeling proud of herself and silly because of the reason. Dr. Paulsen took the cup from her, carefully, and placed it on the moveable table that contained an array of medical instruments that Summer hoped the doctor wouldn’t be using on her. Ripping open the pregnancy test package as if it was nothing, Dr. Paulsen plopped it into the cup.

“How many partners have you been with?” she asked as Summer lay down on the uncomfortable table with stirrups. “Any risks of STDs?”

Summer thought it over carefully. She hadn’t used a condom with Eric. That had been the only time… “I’ve been with four partners in my life. I’ve only been without a condom once. And… Tada.” She laughed a little. “I’ve been tested before and everything was fine.”

“Do you want me to test you again?”

She shook her head. “I’ll talk to my… I’ll talk to my most recent partner about it. I am going to have a lot to say to him.”

The doctor smiled and wrote something down. Then she lifted up the pregnancy test to look at the results. “You definitely need to tell him that he’s going to be a father.”

 

How does one find someone when one doesn’t have their phone number, email address, or anything? Summer suddenly realized that she barely knew the young man that she had fallen for. They’d had a great night, a hot night of passion, and had started to form a sweet life together and she never asked him for a way to contact him. It had satisfied her to know that he’d be waiting for her at home and, if he did leave for a while, he’d come back like a loyal pet, ready to be fed and sheltered again.

God, I’m so stupid.

Then, suddenly, she remembered one piece of info that she did have. His motorcycle club. “What was it called again?” she asked aloud, with no one around to answer her or even offer up a suggestion.

It was something about stars. The Celestial something… The Celestial Sentinels!

A quick Google search led her to their website. She chuckled. It was wild to her that a group of guys with motorcycles had a website. They took donations and had membership fees and everything. “Wow,” she said under her breath, shaking her head.

She spotted Eric in one of the group shots. He was smiling at the camera, his cherubic face so familiar and handsome. He was a great deal younger than several of the others, but that just made him stand out more. Vice President Eric Daniels.

The only phone number listed on the page was for the club as a whole. It looked to be a membership information number. Summer plugged it into her cell phone and pressed ‘call.’

After fifteen minutes of listening to a garbled Eagles song that served as hold music, someone finally came on the line. “Celestial Sentinels,” a gruff, older male voice said.

“Hi,” Summer said, suddenly feeling nervous and doubting that this would even work. “I was wondering if you’d be able to help me. I know a member of your motorcycle club and I need to get into contact with him. Do you know how I could reach Eric Daniels?”

The man suddenly became more friendly-sounding. “Oh, Eric? He’s just started in some new band, last I heard. The Pink Hearts.” He rattled off an email address and Summer quickly wrote it down.

She wrote an email, hoping that this would be the right course of action.

 

To: [email protected]

From: [email protected]

Hello, this is strange but I’m hoping you can help me out. I’m trying to get in touch with Eric Daniels. I was told he’s in your band. This is Summer.

She couldn’t believe she had let him get away. Especially now that she was pregnant. And now it might be too late to get him back.

There was no response to her email.

The next day, she went to work. It was another concert night. It was also the last time she’d have to see the Easter decorations that she’d slowly but surely gotten sick of. A music venue slash bookstore was no place for the cheesy decorations that looked more like something a person would see in Hallmark.

This time, she had to start out as a waitress, working the floor as the open mic night bands set up. Joy. She was just giving a table their welcome and specials spiel when she looked up and saw the name on the drum kit.

The Pink Hearts.

Her jaw dropped nearly to the floor. A shiver went through her.

“Miss?” one of her diners asked, looking at her like she’d perhaps gone psycho.

She shook her head, trying her best to remain calm. “And, finally, my favorite, the lamb burger. I’ll give you guys a few moments to look over your menus. Can I start you off with any drinks?”

When she brought her table back their drinks, she took her time, hoping that by lingering she’d be able to see this open mic band take the stage. How long had Eric been in a band? Had he quickly cobbled it together in the weeks that followed their breakup?

Suddenly, the name made sense. The red shirt she had worn, with the small, pink heart on the chest.

Summer brought a hand up to her chest, over her heart. Her cold and jaded feelings about the restaurant, Valentine’s Day and everything melted away from her. She could forgive him for his law-breaking. She had forgiven him.

He came onto the stage, carrying a sparkly red guitar. He messed with the mic and Summer caught his eye. The left corner of his mouth rose up a little and he smirked at her. “Hey,” he said into the microphone. His voice reverberated through the mostly empty restaurant.

Not caring anymore about her table or appearances, Summer carefully climbed up onto the front of the stage and stood in front of him for a moment. They looked at each other. His sandy hair had grown shaggier, but otherwise he appeared pretty much the same. She didn’t imagine that she struck him as looking different either. She brought a hand to her lower belly for a moment, then leaned into him and wrapped her arms around him in a hug.

Eric readily hugged her back. A whiff of pine-like cologne filled her nostrils. He felt strong and sturdy against her, as he had all the times she’d ridden his bike and clung to him for safety. Even now, she was clinging to him for safety. But there was something else, too.

“I’m sorry,” she said into his neck. “I’m so sorry. I’m so stupid. You… I’ve missed you.”

He pulled away enough to look into her eyes. He was still smiling.

Getting up onto her tiptoes, she kissed away his smile.

“I’m pregnant,” she whispered into his ear.

His big, brown eyes got even bigger. “But I thought you couldn’t…”

Summer shrugged, smiling at him. “Apparently, there is no never.”

Grinning a large grin that matched his large eyes, he hugged her gently. “That’s incredible,” he said. “You’re incredible. Baby…” He suddenly looked over and noticed that the crowd down below was still waiting. “I’ve got to sing now, baby, but stay right here. The first one’s for you.”

Leaning forward towards the microphone, Eric spoke in a sexy growl she instantly wanted to hear more of. “It’s a privilege to sing for you here tonight on this stage. This is the place where I met Summer. And this is a song that I learned and wanted to play for Summer. And now… Here she is and here it is.”

She walked away so she was still on stage, but more to the side so she could watch him play and be near him. She was mystified. He’d mentioned wanting to be a roadie and now, here he was, a fledgling rock star before her eyes.

Love is the opening door
Love is what we came here for
No-one can offer you more
You know what I mean
Have your eyes really seen?

He played a four-song set, joined on the stage for his last song by two other guys: a bassist and a drummer. They were close to his age and Summer wondered if he had met them in his club. The small band played sweet covers of classic rock love songs.

When their set was done, he came off stage to meet her again and greeted her with a kiss.

“Do you live in New York now?” she asked him, her voice thick with emotion. She had a feeling that if she didn’t speak up now, she might lose him forever and never get another chance. New York City was not so far away from Philly, but she didn’t want him to be far away at all. It had been confusing and messy for her at first, but she knew now that she and Eric belonged with each other. There had been way too many signs along the way for her to be wrong in that.

“I don’t really live anywhere,” Eric replied, giving her a sweet and sexy smile. “I live in a van mostly.”

“You live with me,” she said. “Please come home, Eric. I don’t care if you rob the national treasury.”

He laughed. “I don’t rob places anymore. I gave that up after that one time. Now I mostly just rob people by making them pay to hear my bad playing.”

She leaned in and pressed her forehead against his. “Come home and be with me… and our baby, eventually,” she pleaded. “I overreacted because I was scared.”

Eric shook his head slightly. “You overreacted because you didn’t want to be hurt again,” he said. “I don’t blame you for that. I don’t want to hurt you…”

“You won’t,” she said, kissing him and keeping her face close to his. “You won’t if you stay,” she whispered.

He gazed into her eyes. He clearly worried about her feelings. “You want me to stay with you again?”

Summer nodded. “It’s where you belong.”

He kissed her lips, gently gliding his tongue along hers. Unless she was mistaken, she felt a rush in her tummy as though their miracle baby was responding to the kiss, too.

“Come on then,” he whispered. Taking her hand, and with his guitar slung over his back, Eric led Summer outside to his waiting motorcycle.

After he got the helmets out, she surprised him by climbing onto the large bike all by herself. She looked at him, biting her lip expectantly, and patted the seat in front of her.

“Let’s go home.”

THE END

“We need to talk,” Zach told Allie over their dinner.

Uh oh. That particular phrase usually did not begin a good conversation. Allie Reynolds and Zach had been dating for two years. They were out to celebrate their anniversary. After barely surviving her teen years, Allie felt as though she’d finally found the one. But now, she guessed, he disagreed.

“This past year has been great,” he went on.

If it was so great, why are you dumping me?!

“But honestly, my heart’s just not in it anymore. I can’t be your knight in shining armor. I can’t go on feeling as though, if I should do anything wrong in any way, you might relapse.”

Allie shook her head quickly. “Oh, no. Zach, it’s not like that. I don’t need saving. I didn’t even know you felt like I did.”

He frowned a little at her. “Allie, when we met, you were a mess. If you weren’t high, you were drunk. If you weren’t drunk, you seemed pretty depressed… I know, underneath all of that, you were just scared. But I can’t be your rock for you any longer. You rely on me too much and it’s… stifling.”

Slowly moving her eyes down to focus on the checkered table top, she could feel the tears rushing in.

“Do you understand?” he asked her. His voice was so gentle and caring. She couldn’t believe he was doing this to her, on their anniversary of all days!

“I don’t,” she replied.

Zach patted her hand. “Well, you will,” he said. He stood up from the table, abandoning his plate full of the remnants of burger and fries. Abandoning her. “In time, you will. Let me go pay the check. I’ll see you around, Allie.”

That statement was such a lie. “No you won’t,” she said under her breath. He was going out of her life. He was leaving her. After she had come so far and they’d been so happy, he was leaving her.

Allie pushed her plate of food away from herself and left the diner. She hadn’t cleaned her plate as well as he had, but it didn’t matter. Like hell was she going to just sit there alone, with all of those judging eyes of the other diners now on her. She threw her coat over her shoulders and went out into the chilly late February air.

Underneath her long but slightly thin coat, she was wearing a little black dress, her short brown hair in a bob with bangs swept across her brow in a slanting style. In her blue eyes, she wore contacts and they were now stinging as they mingled with her tears.

They had arrived by Zach’s car. Now, without him, she would have to walk home.

What an asshole.

Thankfully, the restaurant was not too far from her Portland apartment. It was not exactly a city meant for walking, but there were crosswalks and walk signs. She’d be all right walking home, provided the drivers were paying attention and there were no scary homeless guys to jump out of the shadows at her.

When she was a user, she’d spent a lot of time out and about. It was how she found dealers and how she made friends, strolling the streets and chatting with fellow patrons of nightclubs and bars. Now that she was out of that realm, Allie wanted to stay out. In fact, she was starting to think that a change of scenery wouldn’t be so bad.

When she finally trudged through the doorway into her apartment, she collapsed onto her black couch-bed, letting her heavy metal front door slam shut on its own. Now that she was alone, safe at home, she sobbed into her pillow. “That asshole!” she yelled, punching at the back cushion of her couch. She’d left the bed unfurled. The last time she’d been on it, that morning, she and Zach had made love. She was so fucking happy.

Now she wanted to burn the couch-bed and anything else he’d touched in the place. They hadn’t lived together. She was glad of that now, because there wasn’t going to be any kerfuffle with the landlord. But everything just hurt now. He may not have lived there with her, but he had been there so often that he may as well have.

She even missed the random piles of clothes that he would leave everywhere.

Allie didn’t want to let herself be sad and mopey about Zach. She didn’t want to give him the honor of making her feel like shit. She decided she was going to take action and move on right then and there.

It had been many years since she’d last done it, but she got out her phone and logged onto a dating app. She was going to find someone to hook up with. A rebound would be good for her. She could take her mind off of things. She could be with someone again, someone who made her feel good and someone who wouldn’t expect her to be there afterwards. Sex without the commitment of years.

After flicking her finger through several guys who seemed too sincere or too nice for what she wanted, Allie’s eyes fell on the profile of one Lance Chase. She arched an eyebrow, smirking at his pictures. He had dark hair and brown eyes. There was a sort of James Dean look to him. He wore leather jackets and rode a motorcycle. When she read his bio, she laughed to herself. He was the VP of a motorcycle club: The Tomahawks.

“I highly doubt that your real name is Lance Chase,” she said out loud, as though he could somehow hear.

She swiped right on his profile, deciding that he was the one she needed right now. He was sexy, casual and nearby.

She hoped she’d read it right and that he was in Vancouver, Washington. Allie was not driving all the way to Canada.

 

Lance was a tall man with a lean, muscular body. He had several tattoos including a tomahawk on his upper left bicep, a roaring panther on his right pec and a large, colorful Joker card on his right calf. Not all of his tats had a real inspiration behind them; some of them he’d just picked out because he thought they looked cool. But those three mattered to him for different reasons.

He had coffee-colored skin, brown eyes and dark, almost black hair. He looked very much like a Native American, and that was because he was the grandson of one. His grandfather was a member of the Nez Perce tribe in Washington. Lance did not know much about it, beyond the fact that it was cool to get to say he was an Indian and have it be true. He wasn’t one of those “2% Cherokee on my mother’s side” posers.

The Tomahawks were his motorcycle club. They were more like his band of brothers. Everyone in his club had some sort of problem with substance abuse. Maybe someone’s parent was a user and treated them like shit because of it. Maybe someone was a former user who had sobered up. Maybe someone was still a user and was trying to be better by allying himself with people who would understand and be able to offer them guidance and comradery.

For Lance’s part, he had been free of drugs for three years. He still drank and smoked on occasion, but he no longer touched cocaine and heroin. That was a good thing, because the drugs nearly killed him.

He and his motorcycle club rode their bikes to raise money and awareness about substance abuse and its victims. Lance was pretty damn proud of what he did. It wasn’t his job or anything but he sure wished it was. His day job was working as a pizza chef in this place called The Blind Onion. It wasn’t much, but it paid the bills and he got free pizza out of the deal.

What he still wanted out of life was a girlfriend. Sure, Lance had been in many short-lived relationships over the years, but he was hoping for something lasting. He wanted to sweep a girl off her feet, take her for a ride on his motorbike and feel real love. That was why he signed up for the ridiculous dating app. That was why, during downtime at meetups with his club, he could be found head down and eyes focused on his phone’s screen, browsing potential dates and hoping that at least some of them would be interested in him.

Once such potential date was this girl named Allie Reynolds. She looked cute in her pictures. She had short, brown hair that curled slightly outwards and bangs that sloped across her face, nearly covering her left eye. Her eyes were big and blue. She seemed to be a fun-loving person. She was smiling in nearly every picture. Lance liked that. He didn’t want to be with another depressing person. He’d spent too long in the game, trying to find someone who would make him happy. He wanted to be with someone like Allie… If she would have him.

He swiped right on her profile and then received a message from the app. She had apparently swiped right on him, too! That meant that they could message each other now. The only problem was that he didn’t know what to say.

 

Allie was gleeful when her phone alerted her to the fact that the biker dude had liked her back. He had been quick about it, even. She could send him a message, so she thought it out carefully. She didn’t want to come across as desperate or slutty… But she didn’t want to just say ‘Hi’ either. That was not a good conversation jumping-off point.

Suddenly, she smirked a little. Why not go ahead and say it?

“Is Lance Chase really your name?”

She hit send before she could talk herself out of it. Now, she just had to wait for him to respond. He was local, so at least they were in the same time zone.

He sent back a message almost instantly.

“Lance Chase DuBois, but don’t spread that around too much. I’ve got a reputation.”

Allie laughed. “What kind of reputation is that?” she asked in her next message. She could tell that a guy who rode motorcycles probably had a bad boy image. That was the sort of thing she was looking for at the moment. Someone who wouldn’t be looking for anything other than one fun night.

“You probably don’t want to know,” he replied.

Grinning, she messaged him back without hesitation. “Let’s see about that. Meet you in Vancouver for drinks? You name the time and place.”

It took a little longer for a response to come that time. Allie decided to use the pause to go into her closet and pick out something attractive to wear. She did not want to meet him in her little, black dress. She took that off and threw it into her hamper, still thinking that anything to do with Zach needed to be cleaned and burned.

She was standing there, naked and going through her wardrobe when her phone’s notification sound went off again.

When she picked her phone back up and read over Lance’s message, she got excited. They would be meeting at a pizza place the following evening, and from there it was “TBD”…

Allie sank back down onto her couch-bed, cradling the phone in the palm of her hand as though it was now some fancy, important piece of her new man friend. The following evening was a Saturday. That made things infinitely easier.

“As long as TBD doesn’t stand for ‘To Be Dead’, I’m in,” she joked back.

Zach had royally screwed her over, but she was going to have good, excited dreams tonight.

CHAPTER TWO

The Blind Leading The Blind

 

Allie drove for about an hour to arrive at the place Lance Chase DuBois had specified, some place called The Blind Onion. It was apparently a pizza place, and she was always willing to eat pizza. She parked her car in the lot nearby and strolled inside. There weren’t many diners in the place. In fact, aside from her, there appeared to only be one other person in the place.

Oh, please don’t be Lance, she thought as she eyed the guy subtly and sat as far away from him as possible. He was older, at least fifty, wearing a trucker hat and a wife-beater. Allie preferred to sit by the window and the front door in case she would need to quickly make an escape.

Thankfully, Lance had messaged his number to her so she could call or text him as soon as she’d arrived. She pulled her phone from her purse and chose to text him so this strange man wouldn’t hear her and get any ideas.

She didn’t know why she’d become so paranoid. She supposed it had something to do with being in a different place. Even though that was what she’d wanted out of this. A new place and a new person…

Just then, she heard the sound of a door opening up in the back. She swiveled around in her chair and craned her neck to see the tall, dark and handsome man ambling towards her. He had shaggy, black hair and brown eyes. Allie hadn’t fully realized how exotic-looking he was until this moment.

This is more like it.

Lance smirked at her. “Allie R?” he asked, even though he had a smug sort of look on his face. He knew it was her.

Allie nodded anyway. She wanted to give him the pleasure of knowing he was correct. She wanted to give him all kinds of pleasure… “Lance Chase?” she asked, grinning a dimpled grin back at him.

“Yep,” he said. He took a chair at her table, turned it around and sat in it backwards. Then he offered a hand to her and she shook it. “Thank you for driving up here. How was your ride?”

“Ah, it was no problem,” she replied, waving that away as though forty-five minutes and a tank of gas were nothing. “It’s nice to finally be out of Portland. Do you work here?” She noticed that he came from the back, where the people making the pizza worked, so she assumed.

Lance laughed and nodded. “Very perceptive. Yes. My shift just ended. Do you wanna go somewhere else? This place is good, but I wouldn’t mind getting away now.”

“I can’t blame you for that,” Allie said. “I’m easy. What did you have in mind?”

Thinking it over, he suddenly snapped his fingers. “There’s this great bar up the street from here called The Corner Pub. It sounds all Irish and shit, but it’s not. It’s more like a sports bar. They’ve got live music sometimes, and pool tables. Does that sound fun?”

Allie certainly appreciated that he wanted to do what she thought sounded fun, instead of just dragging her along with him to places. She needed to prove that she could be adaptable, too. “Sure,” she answered. “Sounds fun. I parked my car out front.”

“Ah,” he replied. “Do you want to go for a ride on my bike?”

Sometimes, Allie’s mind could be quite innocent. She imagined him riding a bicycle for a moment before realizing that he meant his motorcycle. Of course. That was what vice presidents of motorcycle clubs rode…

“Sure,” she said, a little bit more hesitantly that time. “I’ve never been on a motorcycle before.”

“It’s like riding a bicycle,” Lance said dismissively, smiling.

Ha ha.

He assured her that her car would be safe in the parking lot and led her out back to where he’d parked his bike, in the employee lot. His motorcycle was a black Harley Davidson. She didn’t know what kind. She didn’t care what kind.

“I only have one helmet,” he told her, “but you can wear it since you’re new.”

That was both gallant and crazy of him. He handed the helmet to her and she readily put it on even though she wasn’t even on the bike yet. Lance chuckled as he looked her over. “How old are you, if I can ask that?”

Allie eyed him. “Twenty-five.”

He suddenly sighed, relieved. “I was starting to worry if you were in high school. I’m thirty.”

“It says our ages on the app,” she pointed out.

That just made him chuckle again. “Like anyone pays attention to that.”

Without really giving her any warning, he lifted her up and placed her on the motorcycle. So far, so good. It didn’t fall over and crush her or burst into flames or anything. At least not yet. Calm down, she mentally admonished herself. Remember, you’re going to fuck this bad boy later. He won’t want to bang if you keep acting so jumpy.

Lance mounted the bike in front of her and took her hands, placing them around his midsection. “You’re going to want to hold on tightly to me now,” he said. “And then, after several drinks, you’ll want to hold on even tighter.”

She was pretty sure she knew what that was supposed to mean.

 

They arrived a few minutes later at The Corner Pub. The ride had been extremely fast and loud, and she was pretty sure her heart was going to be hammering in her chest for hours, but she thought it was exhilarating. After he carefully lifted her up and off of the motorcycle, he took the helmet back and placed it into the storage space under the bike’s seat.

“After you,” Lance said, holding the door open for Allie.

This man was confusing. He mixed bad boy with gentleman so effortlessly. It was sort of jarring.

Allie went into the noisy bar. There were about a billion TV screens around, showing football and hockey at the same time. People were gathered around each of the screens, cheering for the various teams. Lance took her by the hand, not even trying to talk to her over the loudness, and led her over to a place at the bar.

She sat on a stool and he sat next to her, leaning close so he could hear her and she could hear him.

“What do you want to drink?” he asked her loudly.

Looking up at the menu on the wall, she thought it over. “A strawberry daiquiri,” she yelled back.

Lance smirked at her and ordered the drink Allie requested as well as a beer for himself. They drank together for a while, watching the games on TV as well as the people who actually cared about the games. It was a little awkward to be in a raucous sports bar like this with someone she didn’t know, but there was something thrilling about it, too. She’d wanted a stranger, after all.

“Do you mind if I smoke?” he asked her.

Allie shrugged. “Not really. Everyone else around me is doing it.” She stuck her tongue out at him.

Grinning, Lance pulled a pack of cigarettes out of his back pocket and took one out, placing it between his lips. He put the pack back before retrieving a lighter from one of his front pockets. He lit his cigarette and Allie watched as it briefly illuminated his face. There was a slight, green ring around his pupils. His eyes technically weren’t brown at all. They were hazel.

After several drinks and several cigarettes, Lance turned to her. His breath smelled like Marlboros and Budweiser – a smoky, reedy smell.

“Do you want to play pool?” he asked her.

“What?” she asked back.

“Do you want to play pool?!” he asked, louder and with more urgency.

She licked her strawberry lips. “Sure!” she yelled back.

Carrying their half-full glasses of alcohol, they wove in and out of the people and tables until they found the segment of the bar that was devoted predominately to billiards. Allie wasn’t very good at pool, but neither was Lance, she soon found out, so it was okay. They were both so drunk and silly-feeling that it didn’t much matter whose ball was whose or what the rules were.

After about an hour of pool, he turned to her. “Do you want to go back to my place?” he asked her.

“What?” she asked back, downing the last of her daiquiri.

Lance drained his beer glass and set it on the pool table as though it was just a coffee table or something. “Do you want to go back to my place?” he repeated, louder.

“Oh,” she said back, louder as well. “Sure!”

Allie felt as though her head was filled with air and her neck was a string. A balloon. She felt like a balloon. She kept forgetting what was going on, and then remembering, and then forgetting again as Lance took her outside and somehow managed to get her situated on his motorcycle.

Everything started off surprisingly okay, she thought. Lance revved up the engine and they took off down the street. They passed The Blind Onion. They passed a lot of buildings. They were going very fast. She didn’t know where she was going because she was drunk and not from there, but it all must have been okay because Lance was a motorcycle rider in a motorcycle club. He had to know what he was doing.

About three streets away from The Blind Onion, Lance drove his motorcycle into a telephone pole.

That wasn’t how this was supposed to work, Allie thought as she fell off the motorcycle and landed on the cold, hard concrete.

The good thing was that she was wearing his helmet. The bad thing was that that meant he wasn’t wearing his helmet. But Lance was soon standing and rushing to her, so that was a good sign that he was okay.

She was lying in the deserted street in her little pink skirt. Her black tights had a hole in them now. Her knee was skinned and bleeding. But she was okay.

“Oh my god, Allie, I’m so sorry!” Lance kept saying. He was clearly panicking.

Allie slowly got back to her feet. Bloody knee aside, she felt fine. Dizzy and shocked back into sobriety, but otherwise fine.

“What the fuck, Lance?!” she said in lieu of letting him know she was fine.

He continued to look her over, fretting over whether or not she was hurt. She finally had to laugh a little. “I’m okay, Lance. Just… What happened? How did that happen?”

Lance appeared defeated. He looked down at the concrete, embarrassed. “I got distracted by something for a second, I guess… The next thing I knew, we were on the ground. I’m so glad you’re okay. I promise you, Allie, this never happens.”

She smiled at him and put her hand on his shoulder. “Well, you can’t say that anymore, because it clearly does happen… Is your bike okay enough to get us home?”

He nodded and helped her back onto it. The motorcycle was hefty and made of sturdy metal. If it had any damage to it, she couldn’t see it right now, though it was dark outside.

As he drove her along the rest of the way to his apartment, she wondered if what Lance had said about her car being safe was true, or if that was something she should be dubious about as well…

“Here we are,” he said, parking his motorcycle at the end of a long driveway. He lived in a fairly squat apartment building. Allie couldn’t help wondering how much the apartments cost, considering there were only five in each building that made up the complex.

She took a deep breath. Stop judging your one-night-stand, she told herself. After tonight, none of this is going to matter.

CHAPTER THREE

Your Psycho, Vertigo Shtick

Lance held the door open for Allie and she went inside, telling herself to be cautious but not too cautious. After all, she had wanted this. She had asked for a night like this, so why was she feeling so nervous now?

“So how did you get into the whole motorcycle club business?” she asked him as he led her into the kitchen and sat her down at his table.

He opened the freezer and got out the ice tray. Wrapping three cubes into a paper towel, he placed it onto Allie’s knee. He did so without even asking if she needed it.

She hissed a little, but it felt good to have the pain numbed off of her. Her hands still shook a bit from the adrenaline rush and the shock from the fall. “Thanks,” she said.”

“It’s not exactly a business,” he said with a smirk. “But I joined because my friends were there. I guess it was a bizarre kind of peer pressure.”

“Mm,” she said. “But do you regret it?”

“Not at all.”

Once her hand was holding the ice pack, he let go and moved to sit beside her. However, it wasn’t long before he was leaning back towards her. Their lips met and he slipped his tongue into her mouth, gliding it around and finding hers.

She hadn’t been anticipating a kiss like this, but now that they were here she was not complaining either. Allie kissed Lance back and brought the hand that wasn’t holding onto the ice up to his cheek, stroking his face with gentle fingertips.

Before long, the makeshift ice pack was forgotten. He lifted her up into his arms and carried her over to his couch. As soon as he’d laid her down, she shimmied out of her skirt and tights. He removed his pants and shirt and leaned over her, continuing to kiss her deeply and sensuously.

Gripping the bottom of her t-shirt, he lifted it up over her head and sent it floating to the floor. Her bra soon followed, and then he latched his mouth onto her right breast, sucking and biting.

Allie let out a little hiss. She grabbed the top of his boxers and yanked them down. After a dizzying few moments, they were there, naked. Two strangers, making out on a couch.

She did her best not to think of it that way. He was sexy and hot as hell, and she didn’t have anything to lose with him. She wouldn’t be losing money or her heart, and certainly not her virginity… So she gave in to the kisses and sucked in a breath as he spread her legs apart and went between them, thrusting his big, thick, exotic cock into her.

“Ohh,” she moaned into his ear. The couch was small enough that they really had to cuddle up in order to stay on it. And what better way to cuddle than while fucking?

Lance lifted one of her legs up to his shoulder and held it there, pinning her other leg down beside him. He started thrusting quickly, somehow getting his full length inside of her little, tight pussy.

Her cheeks went hot as she felt his cock against her g-spot. Allie bit her lip and erupted into shouts as she came. “Lance!” she bellowed. “Yeah! Yes!”

Smirking at her, he pulled out and lightly smacked the side of her ass. “Turn around,” he said.

Allie was a bit confused, but curiosity won out and she did as she was told, turning over and standing on her knees and arms as Lance plowed into her from behind. He reached out and grabbed her boobs, squeezing and rubbing at her nipples. “Oh, yeah, do you like that?” he asked her.

She did. She hadn’t had sex ‘doggie style’ in quite a while. Her good boy ex-boyfriend never did things like that unless she begged him too. “Mmhmm, yeah,” she moaned back at Lance. “Faster!”

He thrust himself inside her and she gyrated backwards into him, swiveling her hips in time with him. Before too long, he was frantic in his movements. He pulled out of her again and, grabbing her, flipped her over again and resumed fucking her from on top.

Howling, Allie lifted her legs and he bit her left calf. If her knee still hurt, she wasn’t feeling it at all. Her back bucked away from the couch cushion as she came again. Lance threw his head back and yelled. “Yeah, come for me, Allie!! Yeah! YEAHHH!”

She felt him come inside her, his cock throbbing against her pulsating walls. He lay there on top of her for a few moments, waiting for their hearts to stop beating so quickly. Then, he pulled out of her and stood up on the floor.

Eye-to-eye with the one eye of his penis, Allie gave it a kiss. She didn’t know why, it just felt like it needed to be done. She smirked up at him.

“That was wild,” she said. “You’re forgiven for the concrete tattoo on my knee.”

He laughed. “Do you need more ice?”

She shook her head. “I need a shower… Can I use your bathroom? Does it have a shower?”

Nodding, Lance gestured down a hallway off the kitchenette and living room. “It’s not much, but it has hot water, so whatever.” He shrugged.

Allie got up and went to the bathroom, doing her best to walk in an alluring fashion so he’d keep thinking about her body. He smiled at her and went into the kitchen to get himself a glass of vodka and lime.

Now that they were here, Allie didn’t know what to do next. Did she leave by climbing down the fire escape? Did she leave while he was sleeping? She’d never done this sort of thing before, but she was pretty sure that ‘one night stand’ meant that she needed to be gone by morning.

Being a bad girl had been so much easier when she had cocaine to satiate her nerves and allow her to be more loose and crazy. Now she felt the neurotic kind of crazy.

 

When Allie came out of the shower, wrapped in one of Lance’s fluffy, black towels, she found him sitting in the kitchen with a cup of coffee, waiting for her. The coffee smelled like bananas. He smiled when he saw her. “Hello again. How was your shower?”

Even though he had seen her naked only a few minutes ago, she felt shy about him seeing her in this state of undress. “It was nice…” She felt like planning her escape wasn’t going to work if he was still awake and looking at her like a friendly host. Perhaps she should have vocalized that she’d wanted a hook-up and nothing else. But, then again, he did buy her drinks and food at the bar. She didn’t want to be a bitch about it.

“Your coffee smells like bananas,” she added awkwardly.

Grinning proudly, Lance held out his cup towards her. “Would you like some?”

She came over and took the mug from him. She sniffed it. It smelled like bananas and chocolate.

“Taste it and see. If you want some, I’ll pour you a whole cup.”

Allie took a sip of the great-but-unusual-smelling coffee. “Wow,” she said. “Okay, yes please.”

If they drank coffee, there was a high probability that they would stay awake even longer, thus moving her quick escape to later tomorrow morning. Allie sighed. As long as she didn’t have to see him again, she supposed that she didn’t mind his attention. This Lance guy had turned out to be sweeter than expected.

Smirking, he lit a cigarette and went over to his coffee maker to pour her a cup. “So, what’s your story?” he asked her, carrying over the filled cup and exchanging it with the half-drunk one in her hand. “Are you from Portland?”

Allie nodded, taking a good long sip of her coffee. She was going to have to look this flavor up when she got home. “Born and raised. I’m even a frequent shopper at Powell’s Books.”

Lance laughed. “Wow. I have no idea what that is.”

“What about you?” she asked him, sinking into a chair at the kitchen table again even though she was still just in a towel. Her wet hair was dripping onto her, into the mug and onto the tabletop. She needed to dry before clothes were necessary again.

He didn’t seem to mind.

“I’m from here,” he said. “I’ve spent most of my life explaining, ‘No, not the Canadian one’ to people. It used to be frustrating, but now it’s mostly funny.”

He coughed suddenly and spat into the sink.

“You know, you should probably stop smoking,” Allie said. “Speaking of things you hear all the time.”

Lance ran his fingers through his hair, his cigarette now at odds with his coffee cup. “I know,” he said, taking the cigarette out of his mouth with one hand and sipping more coffee with the other. Once that action was successfully executed, he placed the death stick back between his lips and puffed a big cloud of smoke.

“I started smoking later in life, if you can believe that,” he said. “I went from being addicted to heroin and cocaine to being addicted to nicotine. Fffftt. But I guess we’re all addicted to something.”

Allie understood that. Oh boy, did she understand that. And she did not need an addict in her post-addiction life.

She finished her coffee much faster than she really wanted to and set the mug down on the table. “Yeah,” she said. “…I should probably get going.” The clock on the wall told her that it was three in the morning. She wondered if that was correct or if he hadn’t changed the batteries.

Lance shook his head. “No, don’t leave so late. It’s dangerous. Here, why don’t you sleep on my couch bed and I’ll make do in a chair?”

Sighing, she looked at the clock again. He did have a point. It was only going to get later… And she had an hour’s drive she’d need to take in order to get home. She supposed the original, unconscious plan she’d had was to stay the night with him. But that was before she’d discovered the past drug addictions.

At least it was in the past.

“Okay,” she said with a little nod, resigned to this new plan. She got out of her chair and went back over to the couch bed, to gather up her clothing and sit somewhat away from him under the guise of doing that.

As she slowly put her clothes back on, Lance watched her. She was a pretty little thing.

This time, she neglected the tights. After all, they had a galaxy of small holes all over one of the legs. She hadn’t landed as softly as she thought at the time, probably because she was so in shock. And so drunk.

Even though she drank a mug of coffee, the alcohol and the stress from the evening were still making her sleepy. She realized that it was a good idea to stay and not go out driving when she felt this way. Lance was so sweet that she could forgo the walk of shame and just simply walk back to her car tomorrow.

Then she realized she would probably be riding on his bike again tomorrow, to get back to her car… She hoped that the ride wouldn’t be quite so bumpy in the morning.

She went into the bathroom again once she was dressed, and hung up his towel. She’d been clever enough to pack a toothbrush in her purse, but she’d left her contacts case and solution back at her place.

Removing the thin plastic from her irritated eyes, she just threw the contacts into his trashcan. They were a nuisance anyway.

CHAPTER FOUR

Suckered In Too Far

Allie’s alarm went off on her cell phone at seven a.m. She awoke, groggy and disoriented before remembering where she was and whose couch bed she was on. Shutting off her alarm, she looked around and found Lance asleep in one of the nearby chairs in his living room. It was one of those wooden, straight-backed chairs, so it didn’t look too comfortable but he had found some way to manage it.

As quietly as possible, she got out of the bed and put her shoes on. Her face was a mess and so was her hair, but she didn’t want to stay longer than necessary. She’d slept in her clothes and needed to get home to tidy herself up before work the following day. Data entry, secretarial stuff didn’t exactly require looking fancy, but Allie was professional! And she looked anything but at the moment.

Cautiously and quietly, she crept to Lance’s front door and walked outside. She didn’t want to wait around for him to wake up, and she wasn’t exactly keen on getting back on his bike right now, so she decided to just take a cab to The Blind Onion. Besides, she wanted to feel like a responsible, rational adult after last night’s craziness.

Gosh, her head hurt.

When she found her car and got in, she remembered that she needed to wear her glasses because her contacts were gone. Luckily, she had packed her glasses into her purse along with her toothbrush. She had used some forethought at least. She wished she’d used more forethought about the exact type of bad boy she was hooking up with but ahh well. Live and learn. It was too late to change that now.

She drove home, glasses on and pedal to the metal. That coffee he’d shared with her was good. She would need to invest in some of that, she thought as she yawned. Flavored coffee made her like coffee way more than she ever did when it was plain.

She was quite relieved to be on the road again, and she was determined to not give any more thought to Mr. Lance Chase DuBois.

 

Unfortunately for her, Mr. DuBois wasn’t ready to be an afterthought. He apparently hadn’t gotten the memo that one night stands involved one night with the person, not multiple nights. Not dates.

“Can I see you again?” he texted her a day after her ‘drive of shame’ home.

Allie thought that the app she’d used was meant for hook-ups and nothing serious. She supposed that she could have been wrong. In any case, she should have talked to Lance about what she wanted. She realized that now. And now she definitely felt like a bitch, because he wanted to pursue whatever they might have…

“I can’t,” she replied, deciding that honesty was the best policy, even if it hurt. She had to remove the Band-Aid at some point, right? She didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but she couldn’t let him hurt her. She didn’t have a lot of faith in them working out as more than just a one-time thing.

“Why not?” he asked.

She was very glad that they were texting. Actually talking over the phone would be more personal, and there’d be more likelihood of her chickening out and saying yes to something she really should say no to.

“Because I don’t want a bad influence in my life. I used to be addicted to drugs, too. I’ve been doing so well lately. I can’t go back to that. I’m sorry.”

A bad boy looked appealing on paper, but allowing him to take over her life would be too much. He was sexy and kind, but he was also a hot mess. She didn’t want someone who smoked to avoid shooting up, and she didn’t want someone who was in a motorcycle club that did god knew what.

Oh god, she was starting to wonder if she had made a terrible mistake in spending an evening with him!

About a month later, her heard hurt again; like the hangover headache, but worse. Allie was pretty sure that hangovers didn’t work like that. She was about a week late on her period too, so she decided that a quick trip to the pharmacy was in order.

Great, she thought. Getting pregnant from a one night stand is just what I need.

She got the stick and followed the instructions. Sure enough, she was knocked up. By a stranger she had met on the internet. A motorcycle-riding, tattooed, ex-druggie, no less. As much as she didn’t want to, she knew that she needed to go see him again and let him know about their baby.

It felt so weird to even think about it as theirs.

“Hey Lance,” she texted to him instead of just showing up, unexpectedly. “We need to talk.”

She was already getting into her car as she told him this, so it wasn’t as though she would back out if he didn’t answer or said no.

Allie was grateful when he did respond, however.

“Yo, okay. Your place or mine? ;)”

He was joking with her now. That was possibly a good thing. It meant that, a month later, he still cared enough about her that seeing her wouldn’t be an annoyance or anything.

“I’m driving to see you,” she replied. Then she slipped her phone into a pocket of her purse and started her car. The long drive wouldn’t feel so long. The fact that she was dreading their conversation would make time go by so, so fast.

She told herself that there was a chance things would work out well. After all, Lance was a recovering addict, not an addict-addict… right? If they were both getting over the same sort of thing, wouldn’t they be able to help themselves? This could actually be good. The problems had arisen between her and Zach because she was a former user and he wasn’t. He got tired of helping her get over things. But Lance wouldn’t get tired of her… He’d understand.

At least, she hoped he would.

When she arrived at his place, after carefully checking her GPS at every stoplight, it seemed, she realized that he wasn’t home. His bike wasn’t in the driveway. Before blaming him for being gone, she reminded herself that she hadn’t told him when she’d be there and she couldn’t therefore assume that he’d be at home all day.

“I’m here!” she texted him. “Where are you?”

“The boys and I are having a club meeting at the onion,” he replied. “There’s a key under my doormat.”

Allie took that as a sign that she shouldn’t go to The Blind Onion and confront him at the moment. She found the key and was about to just let herself inside his apartment, but she wasn’t planning to stay over. She didn’t want to be a booty call, if that’s what he was thinking.

Plopping the spare key into her purse in case she would still need it, she got back into her car and drove to The Blind Onion anyway. She wasn’t afraid of a bunch of biker guys. This was important!

However, when she stepped into the pizza place, shit was going down. There was what appeared to be the endings of a fight happening. Guns and knives were drawn. The air in the room was intense, and smelled more like beer and perspiration than pepperoni.

“Oops, sorry,” she said when all eyes were suddenly on her. The jingling bell on the front door hadn’t worked in her favor. “I guess you’re closed.”

The guy in the dead center of the room pointed his gun at her and scowled.

Allie wasn’t going to be able to just back out of this one.

“Any of you punks know this chick?” he asked the group of other men who were gathered around, standing with their fists clenches and their various forms of weaponry out.

At last, she spotted Lance. He was standing near the front door and he backed towards her a little bit, shielding her from the gun. “She’s with me,” he said. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”

“Now I’m only going to say this one more time,” the big guy with a gun growled, rounding on the rest of the group and brandishing his gun in all of their faces. “Vinnie here owes me three thousand dollars… I score for Vinnie, he pays me. That’s how it’s supposed to work.”

Allie assumed that the guilty-looking, rat-faced guy was Vinnie.

Lance had told her that the motorcycle club was made up of his friends. Some friends…

While the scary guy with a gun was distracted by this Vinnie person, Allie crept back out of the restaurant. She took off running as soon as the door jingled again behind her. She didn’t bother with her car, but ran as far up the street as possible in order to get away, knowing that the guy wasn’t going to chase her down while he had a whole bike club to antagonize.

Once she was far enough away, she stopped and pulled out her cell phone. She called the police and reported a man with a gun in The Blind Onion.

Lance hadn’t had a gun. She didn’t see him holding any weapons, actually. Was he insane? Or was he just smarter than the rest of them?

She texted him that she’d alerted the cops and to meet her back at his house. She needed to talk to him and then she would be out of his hair for good.

The cops showed up and arrested several of the people at The Blind Onion, most importantly of all the drug dealer who’d been threatening all of them. The officers questioned Lance, but did not take him in because he was unarmed and was working in the establishment.

Two hours later, he was able to lock up and head home. He didn’t know what Allie needed to speak to him about, but he had a feeling that she wasn’t planning to be his girlfriend now; not after what she’d just witnessed.

Lance arrived at his building and managed to nap a parking spot directly next to hers. Cutting off his motorcycle’s engine, he dismounted and stored his helmet inside the seat. He trudged up the stairs of his building, not sure what to expect and not looking forward to whatever it was.

It had been a pretty shitty day.

“Hey, Allie,” he said, giving her a sweet smile as he came inside and shut the door behind him. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

She’d been sitting on the couch bed, but she quickly stood up when he came through the door. She was not smiling. “What the fuck was that all about?” she asked, her voice a shouted whisper. “You told me you had kicked your drug habits!”

He put his hands up defensively. “I have,” he replied. “But some of the members of our club ain’t so lucky, okay?”

Her face suddenly softened from a frown to a pout. “I was really scared.”

“I know,” he said. Lance came to her and wrapped his arms around her in a hug.

She rested her head against his chest. It felt good to be held like that, even though she was going to be losing it in just a few more moments.

“I came here to tell you two things,” Allie said, looking up into his brown eyes. “First of all, and brace yourself… I’m pregnant.”

His arms loosened and he gaped at her.

Well, this was not a severance from him. It was quite the opposite, in fact!

“And secondly,” she said with a sigh. “I don’t think I should see you anymore. You’re too dangerous.”

CHAPTER FIVE

Coffee And Cigarettes

A long period of silence followed as Lance looked at Allie in disbelief. At first, he thought that he had misunderstood what she was saying, but there was no mistaking the fact that she’d said she didn’t want to be with him because he was dangerous. After working so hard to make his life better and more suitable for a girlfriend like her, the last thing he wanted to hear was that word. He had changed a lot since he was a user. And he was willing to change even more if it would make her happy. His mouth went from shocked and open to an agitated frown, but then he smiled and laughed a little. It was a hostile sort of laugh. A ‘you’ve-got-to-be-kidding-me’ kind of laugh.

“You know I’m right,” Allie said. “Unless your brain temporarily shut off back there, you know what your life is like. It’s no place for a child. I’ve been trying so hard to change my life around. This is the reasoning I’ve needed.”

Lance continued to smile at her. She couldn’t tell if it was menacing or goofy. It was right on the line between those two types of smile.

“Right after the police came and questioned me, and took a bunch of my friends away… I quit the club.” He looked her in the eyes. “You’re right. It’s not a good place to be in, surrounded by former addicts who are still struggling. I can’t stay clean if I’m around them… I want to clean up my act. Not just for you, but partially for you.”

Allie didn’t know what to say. “You like me a lot, huh?”

He nodded. “Yeah. Is that bad?”

She looked down, blushing. Before the baby, she might have said yes. After all, she was trying to just have some fun and didn’t want to be in a relationship. But now… Well, fate hadn’t really given her a choice.

“No, it’s not bad,” she said. “I suppose we do have more in common than I expected.”

He went to her and gave her a hug. “It’s all going to be okay,” he said. “I promise. We’ll work together to make the best little happy existence we can, okay?”

She looked into his eyes, sizing him up a little. He was so handsome and kind. She didn’t want to blame him for shit he couldn’t help. The dealer had been there to threaten one of Lance’s biker club friends, not Lance. And Lance hadn’t been packing heat or anything quite so ludicrous.

“What are you going to do now that you’re out of your club?” she asked him. She did not want him to give up riding his motorcycle or being in a club with his friends, she just would prefer it if he be more selective with who he spent his time with. There had to be motorcycle clubs around there that weren’t so destructive. Maybe he could join a pizza-lovers motorcycle club?

He shrugged. “Start a new club, I guess. Fly solo for a while til I figure things out.”

Allie smiled at him. “Well, you don’t have to fly solo. You can fly duo. With me.” She smirked slightly. “That sounded better in my head.”

Lance laughed. “Aw, that’s cute. I thought for sure that you were never going to want to be on my bike again.”

Shaking her head, Allie released herself from his hold and went out to the kitchen to make herself some of that heavenly banana-flavored coffee. “As long as you promise me that you’re not going to drive it drunk ever again, I’ll ride with you.”

The coffee maker only made about two cups at a time. As she stood in the kitchen to guard the coffee as it was made, she gazed over the kitchenette and the living room that she could see from her vantage point. They both lived in small, cramped, studio apartments… That was going to need to change. A lot of things were going to be changing.

“Can we take it one day at a time?” she asked him.

Lance smiled and let out a soft chuckle. “That’s the only way to live.”

 

Since Allie had a better job and Lance’s experience as a pizza chef was more flexible in cities, they decided to search for a two bed-room apartment in Portland instead of staying in Vancouver. They both dealt with the wraths of their separate landlords and were eventually able to move in together in an apartment building that was a short walk away from Powell’s Books and Voo Doo Donut, in the heart of Portland.

He hung out on the couch, applying for jobs while she went to work. It wasn’t a solution, but it was a start.

One evening, Allie sat on the floor with a package she’d received in the mail from IKEA, trying to make sense of the instructions. “This is supposed to be a crib,” she told Lance.

Looking over the laptop at her, he grimaced. “It looks like a pile of sanded wood to me,” he joked.

“It would look better if you’d come down here and help me,” Allie retorted.

Lance closed the laptop and set it aside, sinking down to his knees from the couch and crawling over towards her. He kissed her neck and cheek, still not exactly helping.

She let a soft giggle escape her. “Lance, this crib isn’t going to build itself.”

“Mm,” he replied through a kiss. “But I have some good news and I want to celebrate with you.”

Allie pulled away from him to look him in the eyes. “Good news?” she asked. “Normally you tell people what the news is before you try and celebrate.”

“Sorry. I’m not used to having good news to share.”

She picked up one of the wooden slats that were meant to form the crib’s sides and hit him with it, with a light thwack.

He chuckled. “A baby of mine is going to be able to eat through that.”

“TELL me the news!” Allie shouted, but she was laughing. It felt good to live with someone again. They were taking things slowly, but she could not deny her continued attraction to him. Crib-building aside, he was showing her that he could be just as dependable as her goody-goody ex.

Lance cleared his throat and started helping her assemble the ridiculous, Swedish-crafted cradle. “I got a job,” he said. “And the mythical Powell’s Books.”

Allie’s eyes widened. “Whaaat!? But have you even been there?”

He laughed. “No, I got the job purely based on my ability to imagine the place.” He pretended to tap her head with another of the wooden slats. “I went there for an interview while you were at work. I just didn’t say anything about it because I didn’t want to get our hopes up for nothing.”

Her jaw dropped. That was so impressive. “I have to admit, I’m jealous. I love that place. Oh, my god, Lance! Congratulations!”

Beaming proudly, he nodded a little. “Now can we celebrate?”

“How do you want to celebrate?”

He answered by dropping the wood he was holding and making out with her on top of it. The pile of wood was not much of a pillow, but there was something kinky about making out on top of their baby’s future bed.

After several minutes of that, Lance finally – and a bit awkwardly – got back up onto his feet and then lifted Allie up into his arms. He carried her to the empty bedroom that was going to be their baby’s nursery. But for the colorful animal wallpaper, there was no evidence of the room’s intention yet. That was for the best, considering Lance’s intention.

Placing Allie gently down on the blue-carpeted floor, he threw off his shirt and unfastened his pants. As he got on top of her to continue making out with her, Allie pulled his pants off of him and he grabbed at all of her clothing. They kissed amidst a frenzy of flying fabric but, before long, they were naked together.

Lance pressed himself inside of her and thrust his cock against her walls, but he was slower this time. They were sober this time, which was a nice change.

She looked up at him as he took his time with her, exploring around and not being so rough. Gasping, she smiled at him. “It’s nice to not have an exit strategy this time,” she murmured into his ear.

“You don’t need an exit strategy,” he whispered back, shaking his head and placing a finger into her mouth. “Just like I’m never going to exit you, if I can help it.”

Allie laughed softly, licking his finger and sucking at it.

They fucked each other nice and slowly for a few moments before he pulled out and lifted her up, bringing her over to the back wall of the nursery room. She put her hands up against the wall and moaned loudly as he inserted his throbbing penis into her from behind.

Lance had an insatiable desire for making love to her from behind. She felt like she could get used to it… particularly when he licked his fingers and brought them to her clitoris. He stroked and flicked at it until she was barely able to keep standing.

She came and held onto the wall to keep from falling. His hand was now surely covered with her female juices. “Aaaahhhh!” she shouted. Their shouts and moans echoed throughout the empty room and the still-spacious apartment. All of a sudden, he spun her around and held her up against him, putting his cock back inside her and holding her as he stood, ramming into her and watching as her face contorted in indescribable pleasure.

He tightened his grip on her hips, practically drawing blood with his fingernails as he held on and came inside her.

“Ahh, shit!” he yelled, closing his eyes. “Whooo.”

Slowly and carefully, he lowered Allie back down to the floor and pulled out of her. He squeezed her boobs for a moment, gently getting her nipples good and hard before he walked out of the nursery and back to the pile of abandoned wood.

Allie gathered up her clothes and carried them back out to their living room. She got dressed while Lance worked to put their crib together.

Once the crib was built and didn’t fall apart at the slightest touch, they beamed at each other and carried it into the nursery.

“One item down,” Allie said. “And so, so many more to go.”

Lance smiled and put his arm around her. “Well, at least he or she won’t have to sleep in a drawer.”

 

When Monday came around again, Allie was pleased to be joined by Lance in the kitchen at seven a.m. She poured a bowl of cereal for them to share and they sat together, eating chocolatey cereal and drinking the chocolate and banana infused coffee. She had become addicted to the stuff, but it wasn’t the bad, dangerous sort of addiction.

He could have his cigarettes if she could have her coffee.

Once their breakfast was over, they went downstairs to the parking lot and got onto his bike. She hadn’t been on it since their accident, but as she hugged him and they took off down the road, she realized that she trusted him.

Lance drove the motorcycle responsibly and got her to her office building in no time. “My shift doesn’t start for, like, three more hours,” he confessed then, smiling a sideways smirk at her. “I just wanted to be with you.”

Allie smiled and blushed. “Careful, Lance Chase. Don’t forget your bad ass reputation.”

He chuckled. “It’s Lance Chase DuBois,” he said. “And I’m making a new reputation.”

“Oh really?”

“Yup,” he said. “I think I’m going to start a motorcycle club for Portland dads. That’s how bad it is.”

Allie laughed, but she knew he was serious. And she loved him for it. THE END