Two
Samantha checked her ensemble in the floor-length mirror in the corner of her room. Another day teaching her first-year Shakespeare students, another conservative outfit she’d put together off the Kohl’s clearance rack. Oh Professor Walton, what a glamorous woman you are, she thought with cold resignation.
Today she wore a gray pinstriped pencil skirt, a white sweater set, and pumps with sensible, clunky heels perfect for a day spent at the lectern. Her dark blonde hair was in its usual thick braid, tidy now, but waiting to slip loose a piece at a time and grow wild over the course of the day. Her eyes looked dull behind the lenses of her glasses. Lenses that magnified the crow’s feet she was starting to have thanks to lots of late nights up reading.
She needed to get more sleep, drink more water, eat more vegetables.
She needed a makeover.
But she needed to get her little sister up, because Erin couldn’t afford to be late two mornings in a row on her first week of junior year.
Sam gathered her bags and headed down the hall. “Erin?” She rapped on her sister’s door. “Erin, sweetie, it’s time to get up.”
No response.
“Erin, come on.” She turned the knob, surprised to find it unlocked, and let herself into the room. “You know you can’t…” The words faded in her mouth as her eyes roved across the room.
The bed was made, or as close to it as Erin ever approximated, the quilts tugged up hastily, pillows stacked against the headboard. The closet stood open and hangers jabbed out of it like plastic bird wings. Clothes littered the floor, tops, cheerleading shorts, bras and panties. Makeup bottles cluttered the dresser. The sharp citrus note of spilled perfume shot up Sam’s nose and punched her in the back of the throat.
Erin wasn’t there.
~*~
A sound woke him. An awful clanging sound, like Christmas bells and someone beating on a copper pot with a spoon. Low and high notes, clinking and resonant, together. It tolled through his head, pushed at the sides of his skull, hit the back of his tongue again and again, gagging him.
He became aware of things slowly. The heaviness and pain in his body. The press of a hard surface beneath his cheek. He lay on his stomach, his head twisted to the side, his neck pinched. His skin prickled into gooseflesh and he thought he must be naked beneath whatever scratchy linen covered him.
He worked his eyes open like old shutters, and that was when he realized the source of the noise. A coffee mug sat in front of his face, and someone was stirring its contents with a spoon, the silver clipping against the porcelain as it moved, the sound magnified by his epic hangover.
“What?” he croaked, and didn’t know why he’d said it.
Tango’s voice: “Hot tea, with honey and peppermint. Walsh swears by it.”
“Yeah, I bet he does. Fucker.” With a grimace and a groan, Aidan pushed up on his arms and sat back. The pounding in his head intensified. The light, weak though it was, stabbed through the high frosted window above the bed and shot needles through his eyes.
Wincing, he glanced down at himself, confirming that he was indeed naked, and that someone had thrown a blanket over him, one that now trailed off his shoulders. He wrapped it tightly across his front and reached for the tea. It actually smelled good, so that was something, at least.
Tango sat on the side of the bed, long hair on the top of his head carefully gelled and styled, so a few pieces fell across his forehead. He wore soft colors, a white t-shirt with the Lean Dogs logo and rockers. His face seemed sharp and too-thin, his eyes a little haunted around the edges.
Or maybe that was just the hangover. Whatever.
The first sip of tea flowed soothingly across his tongue, proving that his English brother knew everything about everything, as if he’d ever doubted him. He took another sip and glanced over the mug at his best friend.
“What did I do last night?”
“Tried to choke Jasmine to death.”
“Shit.” More tea. “Did I dream it, or were you and Jockstrap and she…”
“Yeah.”
“Huh. How’d that go?”
“Pretty good up until that whole strangling thing.”
“Right.”
“She wanted it to be you.”
“Come again?”
Tango sighed, stared at the toes of his boots. “A while back, she asked if I’d ask you if…”
Aidan started to grin, and it turned into a gasp of pain as the movement plucked at his headache. “Shit. Yeah, okay, that woulda been fun.” Some faint memory from last night grabbed at him, tried to take a firmer hold. “Wait…did you…did you kiss me?”
“And you enjoyed it,” Tango deadpanned. “I’m a very good kisser.”
They held one another’s gazes a moment, Aidan’s watery with exhaustion and pain.
Then they both smiled together, sad, regretful smiles.
“I didn’t hurt her, did I?” Aidan asked quietly. “If I’d been in my right mind, I swear, bro, I never–”
“She’s a little shookup, but physically she’s fine.”
“Thank God.”
“Yeah.” Tango gave him a level stare. “I haven’t ever seen you like that. Violent with one of the girls. That was Mercy’s old game, not yours.”
Aidan swallowed more tea, kicking himself mentally.
“Tell me about Tonya.”
“She’s trying to trap me.”
Tango’s mouth tugged in a sideways frown. “No offense, but what the hell would she want to do that for?”
“She–” His mind went blank.
“She’s rich, she’s gorgeous, her dad has connections. She’s got everything she wants. What would she be trying to get out of you?”
Wasn’t that a giant slap across the face?
“Nothing,” Aidan muttered. “She wouldn’t want anything from me.”
~*~
“No, no, I’m not calling in sick.” Sam cranked hard on the wheel with one hand, her other occupied with the cellphone she held clamped to her ear. The battleship that was her ’83 Caprice dipped hard into the turn, brakes squealing. “I’m just going to be late is all. Can one of the TAs slap a sign on my room door or something?”
Her colleague, and new head of the English department, Conrad Pitts, sighed deeply. She could envision him taking his glasses off, rubbing at his eyes. “I can’t spare any of them. Look, Samantha, if you can’t make it in today–”
“But I can make it,” she insisted, panic ratcheting another notch in her chest. “As soon as I find my sister–”
“Listen, I don’t need the whole sad melodrama spelled out. I’ll notify your students they have the day off.”
She fumed silently, wanting to unload on him over the phone. But where would that get her? Fired? And since her mother worked at a fabric shop and her sister was a degenerate runaway, she couldn’t afford to lose the income all three of them depended upon.
So she said, “That’s fine. I’m so sorry.” And hung up with an inward snarl.
So far, the search was going nowhere. Erin’s cell went straight to voicemail, and none of the usual haunts had turned up any leads. At this point, Sam was half-convinced her little sister was passed out on the floor of Hamilton House, a needle stuck in her arm.
She hit the brakes and turned into the driveway of the modest two-story colonial where Erin’s best friend Julia lived. She was halfway up the front walk when the door opened and Julia’s mother, Heidi, stood in the threshold drying a casserole dish with a checkered towel.
“Samantha.” Her voice registered surprise. “Good morning. Were the girls supposed to carpool? I just put Julia on the bus.”
Sam shook her head, and knew her smile was tight. “No. I’m actually…” It stung to have to say these words to this kind of woman. Someone who was on top of every aspect of her household, who would never have lost a teenage girl out from under her roof. “I’m looking for Erin,” she said in a rush. “She hasn’t been by, has she?”
Heidi’s eyes widened. “Looking for her?”
“Yes.” Sam grimaced inwardly. “Have you seen her?”
“You mean she…” Heidi lowered her voice, as if she were saying something truly scandalous. “Ran away?”
“Gonna take that as a ‘no’ on the seeing her front,” Sam said.
“Oh no. She hasn’t been by here.”
“Thanks.” She turned to go, knowing there was no sense dragging out this oh-my-how-could-you-lose-your-sister conversation.
“You want me to call if she turns up here?” Heidi called at her back.
“Yeah.” Sam fought to keep the sarcasm from her voice. “That’d be great.”
~*~
Tea, and then coffee, and then a cold shower only went so far toward burning off the hangover haze. The slap of early autumn wind against his face as he rode in toward Main Street went a little further. But nothing sobered Aidan up like sliding into a booth at Stella’s across from Tonya.
What did he call her now? His baby-mama?
As with last night, she lacked her shiny veneer of outward beauty, and instead looked severe, bitter, and WASPish. Dark hair slicked back, lips pale, harsh cheekbones casting dark shadows across her jaw. She wore a loose sweater that was too warm for this time of year. Her hands were wrapped around a coffee mug, and her eyes flicked momentarily to him before dropping back to the table.
The sight of her was a double-shot espresso gut punch. He was instantly awake, all foggy remains of his hangover vaporizing.
“Should you be drinking that?” he asked as he got settled.
“It’s decaf,” she snapped, voice brittle enough to crack.
“Right. Helps you keep up the charade that way.”
Her eyes flashed, a cold, seething shade of blue he suddenly found repulsive. “What the hell’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means I was the one who broke up with you, and it pissed you off, ‘cause you’re a goddamn princess. So I’m gonna need more than your word for it.” He gave her a tight, false smile. “No offense.”
One of the usual waitresses breezed past and patted him on the shoulder. “Hi, hon, the usual?”
“Yeah, that’d be great, Mona.”
When the woman was gone, Tonya pinned him with an icy glare and reached into her purse, withdrawing several folded sheets of paper. “Here.” She shoved them across the table toward him. “Is that proof enough, asshole?”
It took him a moment to figure out what he was looking at: paperwork from Knoxville OBGYN. Test orders. Results. An old-fashioned stick test and a blood test, and both had come back positive. The next one was a grainy black-and-white abstract he couldn’t make any sense of.
“Sonogram,” Tonya explained. “That’s my uterus.” One of her manicured nails touched the picture, a pale speck. “That’s the fetus. So,” she said, withdrawing. “Proof.”
The fetus.
All the air left his lungs in an explosive exhale, and then he couldn’t take another breath. Eyes fixed to the little blip on the picture, the tiny dot that was a life…that he’d created…the café and everyone in it faded. He could have sworn he felt the wind on his face, because his skin was being scraped all over, even beneath his clothes.
He knew how the whole make-a-baby thing worked. Not just the physical aspect; he understood that for parents, there was something wonderful about contemplating bits of themselves in new humans, growing in bellies. He’d overheard Mercy giving Michael some sort of father-to-father pep talk once: “It’s you, and it’s her, and it’s perfect, ain’t it?” He hadn’t known, not really. Hadn’t felt that deep kick in his gut, heard that little voice that said, “That’s a part of you right there, boy. That’s your blood, your flesh.”
He heard it now. Loud and clear. Something cosmic was happening to him in this café booth, and he hadn’t been prepared for it. Couldn’t seem to breathe properly.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” he asked, dazed, clenching the sonogram tight between his fingers as he lifted his gaze to Tonya.
Her mouth pinched up tight. “They won’t be able to tell that for a while.”
“Oh.”
“It shouldn’t matter.”
He’d had all these visions of himself being a total asshole to her, self-righteous and furious throughout this meeting. But he was crumbling. “I mean…” He heard the softness in his voice, and hated it, but couldn’t seem to stop. “It’d be easier with a boy. But I’m not saying a girl’s bad or anything.”
She took a slow sip of her coffee and stared at him with such coldness. “You misunderstand me. It won’t matter, because neither one of us are going to be its parents.”
He swore the floor tilted beneath his boots. “What…”
“I’m giving it up for adoption. I’m already looking into agencies.”
He opened his mouth, and…nothing.
Tonya sighed and rubbed a spot on her forehead, like she was tired, stressed, and put out with him. “Shit. This was a stupid idea.”
He could only stare at her.
“Aidan, listen, I didn’t tell you because I wanted to involve you. I genuinely wanted you to know that the next time you tear a girl’s dress open and ride her bareback in a motorcycle garage, there’s a good chance you’ll wind up a father.”
“I…”
“And next time, it won’t be me, but some grabby, lovestruck biker groupie trying to trap you.”
“We…”
“Take this as a life lesson. Always use protection.”
He slapped his hand down on the table and coffee sloshed out of her mug. The condiment bottles rattled and patrons turned their heads sharply to see what the noise was about.
Tonya sat back in the booth, eyes widening.
“What in the hell are you talking about?” he hissed.
She dampened her lips, composed herself. Hardened her stare. “I’m seeing someone. Seriously. He’s one of the investment bankers at my father’s bank. If things work out, he and I will want to have children some day. Children of our own,” she said with emphasis. “I’m not heartless. I’m going to find the child the best parents I possibly can. But I’m not going to keep it.”
He swallowed with difficulty. “Because it’s mine.”
“Because it’s the product of lust and anger. That’s no way to start a life.”
“Do I get a say?”
She made a sound in her throat. “What? You want to be a father? Won’t that get in the way of your stripper-fucking and binge-drinking? That club of yours is no place to raise a baby. Consider it a kindness, me keeping the baby away from you.”
“I…” He couldn’t believe she was saying this, any of it. Her words were precise, unemotional…and completely brutal. Give her child away? Act rationally about the life growing inside her? That wasn’t Mags, wasn’t Ava, wasn’t even Holly, Mina, Nell.
That was his own mother. Down to the letter.
“He’ll just turn out like you!” Olivia had shouted at Ghost, all those years ago, when they’d thought Aidan wasn’t listening. “I don’t need that kind of poison in my life.”
“This is for the best,” Tonya said. “If you’re smart, you won’t fight me on it.”
He –
“Oh my God!” a female voice erupted beside their table, jerking him out of the moment. “Oh my God, thank God! You!” A girl put her hands on the table, leaning toward him. She was blonde, pretty in the way that made other girls jealous, and dressed like a rockstar groupie. Her black-lined blue eyes landed on him and she took a deep, gasping breath. She couldn’t be eighteen, had to be school-age.
“Oh look, another of your mistakes,” Tonya quipped.
“You’re one of those bikers my sister hangs out with, right?” the blonde asked him, expression frantic. She’d been crying, cheeks shiny with tear tracks. “Right? The Dogs, or whatever?”
“Uh…” His brain wasn’t working right.
“Sam. Samantha Walton? She’s my sister.”
“Sam. Right.” He shook off some of his fog and looked at her more closely: black tights ripped at the knees under Daisy Dukes; white tank top that showed her purple bra; glitter in what was left of her makeup; crazy teased hair. He frowned. “You’re her sister?” It didn’t seem possible this chick was related to quiet, thoughtful, glasses-wearing Samantha.
Sam. Her named echoed in his head and his chest ached. Before Tonya dropped the bomb on him last night, he’d been starting to think about Ava’s blonde professor friend differently. He was starting to see her, really see her, and he –
Well, that didn’t matter now, did it?
“Yeah,” the sister said. She sniffled hard and wiped at her face, lip quivering. “I just…like…I need some help. My boyfriend broke up with me, and I don’t have a ride, and my cellphone’s dead…”
Aidan sighed. “Hold on. Take a pill. Do you need a ride?”
She nodded, unable to speak as tears filled her eyes.
Another sigh, this one deep, exhausting. “Alright, I’ll take you home.”
Tonya took that as her cue to leave, sliding out of the booth. “Don’t worry about what we talked about,” she said as she stood. “It isn’t your problem.”
Problem.
His child wasn’t his problem.
Sam’s sister plopped down into the spot Tonya had abandoned and burst into noisy tears, preventing any retort on his part.
Tonya walked like there was a broom handle shoved up her ass as she left the café, sliding her sunglasses into place, superior, wealthy, and untouchable.
“Wait here,” he told the girl. “I’ll be right back.” He dropped his cell on the table as he stood. “Call your sister, tell her we’re on the way.”
He caught up with Tonya on the sidewalk out front, and he gripped her arm tighter than he’d intended, spun her to face him.
Her sunglasses slipped down her nose, exposed eyes that had gone wide with surprise. Maybe a little fear.
“Not my problem?” His voice was a growl, and that surprised him. “Do you honest to God think you can dump this on me and then walk away? Say it’s not my problem?”
“I think,” she said through her teeth, “that I can count on you to be a no-account, blue collar biker, and forget about responsibility. Don’t tell me you want this child, Aidan. I know you don’t.”
“I have the right to figure that out.”
“No.” She wrenched her arm out of his grasp. “You don’t. And if you touch me like that again, I’ll call the cops and tell them you threatened me.”
This time when she stalked off, he let her go.
~*~
“He’s got dark hair. And it’s curly,” Erin had said over the phone, and Sam had immediately known which biker her sister had sought help from in Stella’s.
She braced a shoulder in the open back door and listened to the growl of a bike come up the street. “Yeah, Mom, she’s home,” she said into her phone, and heard her mother’s huge sigh of relief on the other end.
“Oh, thank God. You’ll get her to school?”
“Soon as I get done chewing her out.”
“Sam, you’re the best. Love you, baby.”
Sam’s smile was thin and frail as she disconnected the call. Was she the best? Would the best let her sister slip out of the house? And then miss a whole day’s work?
Nope.
The growling grew more intense. Thunderous. And then stopped altogether. Aidan followed Erin up the back sidewalk to the door, and he looked as mouthwateringly delicious as he always did to her. Mentally, she’d closed that door. But her body had its own ideas, heat flaring in the pit of her stomach as she watched his long strides bring him closer. Maybe every girl had that one crush, that one physical ideal she never shook, and for her, that was Aidan Teague.
Her eyes snapped to Erin. The sixteen-year-old cheer squad dropout was wearing an eighties-inspired rock getup, showing too much cleavage, leaving nothing to the imagination. Her face was damp with fresh tears, her makeup smudged, but Sam forced herself to look beyond that, and focus on the transgression.
She blocked the doorway with one hand braced on the opposite jamb. Erin ground to a halt and lifted her head, gaze wavering between defiant and heartbroken.
“Explain,” Sam prompted.
Erin chewed at her lip, fidgeted her hands together.
“All of it.”
She sighed. “Alright, fine. Fine. Jesse picked me up in front of the Coulson house–”
“After you snuck out the window.”
“Yeah.” She rolled her eyes. “Anyway, he picked me up, and we were supposed to go…” She bit her lip again, eyes dropping.
“Parking?” Sam asked.
“God, no one calls it ‘parking’ anymore.”
“Hooking up. Whatever,” she said firmly.
Erin rolled her eyes and pressed on. “Jesse said we were going to Hamilton House. Parker, and Adam, and Tyson were gonna be there.”
Sam’s brows shot up, anxiety spiking. Her sister had willingly gone where there would be a group of Jesse’s no-good friends? How had she not seen the terrible direction that could have gone?
“So we went,” Erin continued, “but then we got there, and there’s this other dude, who’s like, totally old.”
“How old?” Sam asked.
“Like…old as him.” She jerked a thumb over her shoulder at Aidan, who rolled his eyes. “And he had all these bags, and they were drugs, or something, and Jesse gave him money and…it was just weird, okay? And I didn’t like it. So I told Jesse I wanted to leave.” She sucked in a deep, quivering breath, tears welling. “And he didn’t want to, and we argued. He told me I could walk, and he called me a bitch.”
Sam swore softly under her breath. “And you walked back into town?”
Erin nodded and dabbed at her eyes. “I was gonna use the phone at Stella’s.”
Over her sister’s trembling shoulders, Sam met Aidan’s eyes, sent him a grave, silent thank you.
“And now,” Erin said with a sniff, “Jesse probably won’t ever talk to me again.”
“Let’s hope so.” Sam stepped aside. “Tonight, we’re going to have a major conversation about how wrong all of this was, but right now, you’ve got to get to school. Go change, and be ready in ten minutes.”
“But my hair–”
“Ten minutes.”
Erin, for once, seemed to realize the gravity of the situation and ducked into the house without further argument.
When she was gone, Sam released a tired breath and deflated against the jamb. “God,” she muttered, rubbing the back of her neck. The stress and worry had drawn her tight as a bowstring, and she ached all over. Then she looked at Aidan, shocked he was still here, very glad that he was.
“Thank you,” said. “I’ve been looking for her all morning. Thank you so much.”
He propped a foot on the cracked concrete of the back step and shrugged. “I figured you were going nuts somewhere.” He gave her a bare smile. “She came up to me at Stella’s, and I thought…” His face twitched, like he was self-editing. “Well, I didn’t think she’d been doing anything she shoulda been.”
“Decidedly not.” She frowned. “Is someone selling drugs out of Hamilton House?”
His face blanked over.
“Oh come on, Aidan. You know that if anybody’s selling anything illegal in Knoxville, the Dogs know about it.” She gave him a level look. “Is there a dealer working out of that place?”
“Honestly, I have no idea. But I’m gonna go check it out.”
“I want to come with you.”
He snorted. “Yeah. No.”
She was too wired to back down. “If you don’t know about it, then it can’t be club business, can it? I want to see where my sister was. I want to know what the hell’s going on with that loser she’s dating.”
“Don’t you have work?”
“My classes got canceled. Let me drop Erin off, and I’ll come with you.”
He studied her a moment, almost as if he was considering. Then said, “Nah. You don’t need mixed up in that kinda shit. I’ll scope it out, and let you know what I find. If I can.”
She started to argue, but thought better of it. She wasn’t going to seek his permission, but she wasn’t going to seek an argument either.
“Aidan,” she said as he started to turn away. He paused. “Thank you again. Really.”
His expression softened fractionally. “You’re welcome.”
She stayed leaning against the doorframe, watching him disappear, listening to his bike start up again. The world was too quiet when he was gone.