Chapter 10
Zoey
As the guys hugged my neck and kept talking about how different I looked, I begged Rider to keep quiet. To keep his mouth shut and try to act natural. The last thing we needed was my brother finding out about us. About what we did the night before in the bar his club owned. The guys kept hugging me and picking me up off my feet, and I could tell it was pissing Rider off. I could see the way he gripped his beer as he sat there silently and watched everything unfold.
Then I saw the leather cut on his back.
It wasn’t the leather jacket I’d slid off his shoulders that night. It wasn’t the leather jacket he had been wearing in the bathroom when he took me against the wall. This was shiny and new… and it had The Fallen Reapers logo cut onto the back of it.
Shit. My worst nightmare had just come true.
Rider was the club’s new prospect.
“I cannot believe it’s you, Zoey,” Fender said. “You look fucking phenomenal.”
“Hey, that’s my damn sister you’re talking about,” Colt said.
“We’re not sticking our dicks in her. Just complimenting her on how she’s blossomed into a beautiful woman,” Bruiser said.
“Don’t you fucking use that kind of language around her. You hear me?” Colt asked.
I rolled my eyes as Colt quickly because distracted by the other guys.
I slid through the bickering crowd and made my way over to Rider. He was sitting at the table, silently nursing his beer. He was white-knuckling the glass as I slid into the chair Doc had been occupying, trying to make things look as innocent as I could for the sake of my brother. The arguing was getting loud, and Doc was trying to get into the middle of it all. I was pissed off with how all of this was already going down. Colt didn’t have any fucking reason to be this pissed off with how absent he’d been in my life
But I knew sleeping with Rider had consequences for him and the pledge he’d just taken.
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you were coming to this thing?” Rider asked.
“Because I didn’t know I was. And why the hell didn’t you tell me you were that Rider?” I asked.
“Figured if I was important enough to remember, you would’ve,” he said.
“Oh, don’t give me that shit. You really mean to tell me you recognized me a last night in the damn bar and slept with me anyway?”
Rider fell silent as the guys continued to argue over stupid shit. Sometimes I really hated the opposite sex and how petty they could get with stuff.
I looked out over the bar and noticed a couple of guys eyeing me closely. Grave and Jax were staring me down, and I was beginning to grow nervous. Their eyes kept darting between Rider and I, and I could see they were slowly putting the pieces together. I knew they would recognize me from that night. Especially since I’d fucking sat down with them at the bar. The rest of the guys were too busy arguing over the fact that someone said ‘dick’ in front of me, but Grave and Jax had their sights trained on us.
And I could tell by the way Rider straightened up that he saw it, too.
“You think they know?” he asked.
“Yep. I think they’re putting the pieces together,” I said.
“This could ruin everything.”
“No shit, Sherlock. It’s why I’m trying to keep it under wraps for you.”
“When the hell did you figure out you were coming to this thing?” he asked.
“This morning, when my brother invited me. I went home just in time to see Mom rushing off to her morning shift, and Colt was just… in the house. Like he didn’t fucking do anything wrong.”
“Wrong? What does that mean?” he asked.
“Nothing. I just get upset when I see Colt like this. He acts like the protective brother and shit, but the truth is this morning was the first time I’d seen him since I graduated. And before that, I hadn’t seen him for two years.”
“Two years?”
“Yep. I got angry with him as a kid for him never wanting me to hang out with you guys. It’s why I didn’t recognize you. I’d only met you twice, and you sure as hell didn’t look like this all those years ago.”
“No. No, I didn’t,” he said.
“He was trying to keep me safe. Away from all this shit. But I thought he didn’t want me around. Was embarrassed about me or something. We fought a lot over it, and it put a lot of distance between us. We fought the night before I left for college and I didn’t speak to him again until my junior year.”
“What did you guys fight about?”
“Stupid shit. I wanted to go hang out with him and the guys here that night. Have one last hurrah before I left for college. And he told me I was stupid for wanting to do that. He accused me of wanting to sleep with one of them and get free drinks and how I’d end up getting myself into trouble he’d have to bail me out of again. Like he’d ever bailed me out of anything in his life.”
“That’s a pretty shitty fight,” he said.
“It was. It still is. Every time I think about it, it pisses me off. And now I see him going at Bruiser because he said ‘dick’ in my presence and it’s all so fucking fake.”
“He does care about you. That’s how Colt is. He might not always be there, but when you need him, he is,” Rider said.
“Oh really? Then where the hell was he the night I called my freshman year? When I’d had sex for the first time ever and didn’t know what the hell had just happened?”
“What?” he asked.
“Yeah. Went on a date, got caught up in some shit, gave my virginity away, and wasn’t sure how I felt about it. I called my brother three times that night to try and talk with him. Left a voice message and everything. Never heard back from him.”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation for it.”
“Or the beginning of my sophomore year. When there was a fucking fire in my building That shit was all over the news. I was sleeping in my dorm when all of the sudden I was jolted awake by a fire alarm. Smoke was pouring down the hallway the firemen had to break my window to get me out. And where was Colt? Where was he when I was calling because some I’d just been pulled out of a fucking fire?”
“Zoey… I’m so sorry,” he said. The arguing behind me continued, and I just couldn’t take it anymore.
“Colt! Fucking knock it off!” I said.
Everything came to a halt as all the guys looked at me.
“I’m sorry,” I said as I looked at Rider. “I didn’t realize it would be this big of a deal for me to just come have lunch with my brother.”
Rider shook his head as the entire room stared at us.
“Bruiser said ‘dick.’ So what? I’ve had dick before. Plenty of it. I’m not about to hop on Bruiser’s, but this fighting you do whenever you think someone has slighted me is getting old. I can take care of myself. Get off your high horse,” I said.
“No one should fucking talk like that to you. And what the hell do you mean ‘you’ve had plenty of dick’?”
“I’m a woman, Colt. With a job and a car and health insurance and sass. I have needs, and I make sure they’re tended to. Don’t start this shit with me today. I came to have lunch with my brother and hug the necks of men I haven’t seen in years because you were the one that kept me away from them. That kept me separate and pushed into the shadows because of whatever bullshit reasons you tell yourself at night. Stop getting so damn defensive. If I need you, I’ll call you.”
“You’re my fucking sister, Zoey.”
“Then start acting like a damn brother when it’s important,” I said. “Not just when you need to save face.”
I whipped my eyes over to Grave and Jax and gave them a disgusting glance. They looked away from me, bowing their heads towards their feet. They were going to keep their mouths shut on this if it was the last thing I did with myself. Suddenly, I wasn’t in the mood for food. I didn’t want to each lunch or sit in this fucking bar and play family when my blood was boiling.
I looked over at Rider as he cast me a worried glance.
“Congratulations on that leather cut. Make us proud,” I said.
Then I slid from my seat, walked over to the bar, and ordered myself a beer.
I could feel everyone’s eyes on me as I walked away from the group. The place I had wanted to be a part of all my life now seemed tainted somehow. I could feel the tension growing in the room as I hopped up onto a barstool, my mind coming to a screeching halt as tears sprang to my eyes.
“Can I sit down?” Colt asked.
“Free fucking world,” I said.
The bartender slid a beer my way, and I caught it in my hands. Colt watched my every move, analyzing me the way he did others he didn’t know. That was the icing on the cake. The fact that my brother had to read me in a way he did strangers. We had spent so much time apart that we’d both grown into people neither of us recognized.
And I hated that fact.
“Caught that beer pretty good,” Colt said.
“Shit happens when you work in a bar,” I said.
“You worked in a bar?”
“Yep. For the last two years of my college career,” I said.
“Did you enjoy it?”
“Hell yeah. Awesome tips, especially if I showed a little cleavage. The tighter my pants, the larger the tips. It paid for the few loans my scholarships wouldn’t cover and gave me enough money to set aside for after college.”
“Sounds like you were good at your job then.”
“I was. I miss the place. It felt the most like home.”
I looked over at my brother and saw him nodding his head. He was trying his best; I knew he was. But I was still angry, and I wasn’t willing to let it go yet. I’d choked it down for years, telling myself it didn’t matter. Telling myself, I could make friends that would become family. Telling myself that when I graduated, Colt would see me differently.
But he didn’t.
He still saw me as that fifteen-year-old girl with thick eyeliner and glitter lip gloss.
“I knew the past few years with us have been rough,” Colt said.
“A way to put it, yes,” I said.
“But you’re always gonna be my little sister. And men can’t talk to you that way.”
“I’d rather have men tell me the truth then feed me lies just to keep me happy,” I said.
“So, you’re okay with someone talking to you like that? With some man saying it’s okay for him to do whatever the hell it is he’s doing because he’s not ‘sticking his dick in you’?”
“If I’m not, I can take care of it myself. I don’t need my absent brother stepping up to the plate because he’s weirdly possessive.”
“I’m just trying to keep you safe.”
“That’s not your job,” I said. “It’s my job to keep me safe. It’s my job to support myself. Your only job is to cheer me on and lift me up whenever I call on you. And I’ve called on you many times over the years. And the only thing I got was your voicemail.”
“I’m sorry, okay? Things were shitty between us and even shittier at home. Mom and Dad fought, and shit was kicking up with the club. You never came home to visit, so what the hell was I supposed to think?”
“That the tension in the house was why I didn’t want to come home,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean you couldn’t return my phone calls. Shit, Colt. I called you when stuff got real for me. When I lost my virginity and when my whole dorm was on fucking fire. When I was at my most fearful and needed my brother’s voice in my ear. And you weren’t there. For any of it.”
I tipped my beer back and guzzled as Colt’s eyes watched my movements.
“I don’t want your apologies,” I said as I slammed my beer bottle down. “I just want you to be better. To hear what I need from you and have you take it to heart. What men say to me don’t matter. I can banter and be crude with the best of them. It’s just how they communicate, and it doesn’t bother me. If you did, this would be different. You know what does bother me?”
“What?” Colt asked.
“You fucking not listening. When I call, you need to pick up. At the very least, your ass needs to call me back. Okay? We can fucking start there.”
“Okay,” he said. “I promise.”
“Now, go get that new prospect of yours some fucking food. Man’s got some muscles. He needs to eat,” I said.
“What were the two of you talking about earlier?” he asked.
“How fucking pathetic you looked yelling at everyone,” I said with a grin. “I still can’t believe that’s Rider Rider.”
“I know, right? Fucking had me in bug eyes when he came home from his first deployment. You wanna come over and have some food?”
“I’m gonna get some fresh air first. Too much testosterone in this place. I can’t breathe.”
“Okay,” he said with a grin. “But get some food and sit with us. Talk with us. Update us on shit. I wanna know what’s going on in your life.”
“Good. Because I’m ready to talk about it.”