Chapter 15

~ Declan ~

Ever ended up passing out once she had her fill of the Chinese food I’d brought to her apartment the night before. That meant I didn’t get any more of her sweet, fiery kisses. It also meant I wasn’t able to explain to her in depth what I meant about her being mine and me being hers. Instead, I had left her there, after putting her to bed and locking up. Once I had her settled in I ended up back at the clubhouse drowning my disappointment in a few beers.

“Thought you were going to be with your old lady tonight?”

“She was exhausted after working today,” I explained. “Passed the fuck out after she ate a little bit.”

My father huffed out a breath, and then took a solid look at me. “She passed out because of the work or the kind of work she was doing?”

“I don’t know, she seemed fine, just tired. I’m sure the emotional aspect of it is taking more of a toll than she’s willing to let on though.”

“Still, you’re here and not with her,” he stated as if I was once again doing something wrong where she was concerned.

It was then that I took a good, hard look at my father too. “Maybe you don’t realize this, but she’s never dated before,” I began explaining and it apparently caught my dad by surprise.

“That girl’s too pretty to never have…” He cut himself off, probably realizing the ‘why’ had nothing to do with her beauty or her personality and everything to do with the damage his own son had done to her. “Shit,” he hissed out. “You mean to tell me there wasn’t even one kid out there willing to fucking man up for her in all this time?”

“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you. So, now you know why I’m here. I don’t think she’d appreciate waking up to a man in her bed, her place, or whatever when she’s not ready for that yet. Definitely not when she was too out of it to consent to my staying there.” My father’s earlier glacial glare seemed to melt away only to be replaced with an emotion I couldn’t really place.

“You’ve turned out to be one hell of man, son. I’m proud of you.” With that, he heaved his large frame off the barstool at my side and patted his hand down on my shoulder, squeezing once before he moved away toward the door. “Going home. Your ma still has me in the doghouse, so I guess if I tell her you’re doing right by your girl I might be able to ride that fair bit of news right into her good graces again.” He winked at me before moving through the door and out into the night’s shadows. I just shook my head and asked the prospect behind the bar for another beer as I listened to my father crank up his Harley and head for home.

I was half way through my beer when the bitch sat down beside me once again. Apparently, Debra or Delphi, or whatever the hell her name was didn’t know how to take a hint. Hell, for that matter she just didn’t know what those pesky two letters “n” and “o” meant when a person put them together to form words.

“Hey baby, looks like you could use some real grown up company tonight,” the woman tittered as she spoke. I turned slowly to look at her. Once again she barely wore clothes, but had herself painted up with enough makeup she could almost make up for the lack of clothing if only she’d spread it out past her face.

“What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

“Oh, you know, there’s talk that you’re trying to get with the uptight princess who thinks she’s too good for this club. From what I hear, she’s not even old enough to drink either, so like I said.” She sneered my way in what I’m sure she thought was a sexier version of a smirk. She was wrong. “I’m here for all your adult needs.” Then she made the mistake of trying to touch me again. I leaned in real close to her, so close she probably thought I was about to kiss her, at least until she heard the venom I spat directly in her face.

“If you so much as fucking breathe my air again, or think that you have any right to touch me in any way, I vow to you that I will see you are escorted out of here and taken somewhere that will make even seeing the light of day torture for you. I will be sure that you are branded in such a way that no MC member will ever think of touching you again. The best you’ll get is some drugged out asshole that doesn’t know any better than to fuck with you. Now, get your ass out of this clubhouse, because if I see you again tonight I will make sure I’m the last person who does. You feel me?”

“You can’t talk to me like that,” she sputtered out as she began to back away, looking around for someone who would take her side.

“I just fuckin’ did, and you have a lick of sense in your head you’ll get the fuck out of here without uttering another word to me.” She spun on her heel, nearly tripped when her ankle turned wrong, and then limped her way to the door. One of the other whores went to check on her, and my mood – having been thoroughly tanked by the bitch – was just so that I wasn’t having any kindness bestowed upon her. “You checking’ on her?” I asked loudly.

“I was just... um, she’s hurt.”

“You can leave with her now. Get out! Anyone else concerned with the bitch who doesn’t understand the word no?” I glanced around and all the other whores looked away, knowing better than the first two, apparently. “As for the rest of you… Listen up! You approach a brother and he’s uninterested you walk the fuck away. Someone else here will be willing to screw you. It will NEVER be me though. And if any of you touch a brother without permission you are out of here for good. Period. Pass that on to any of the other bitches who aren’t around tonight.”

“Damn, brother, I get that you’re claiming the VP’s daughter as your own, but that don’t mean you gotta run all the fun off for the rest of us.”

“Jury, I’m pretty sure you have an old lady waiting for your sad ass at home, yeah?”

“That bitch is probably bagging half the town behind my back too,” he sneered.

“Sounds to me like maybe you should spend more time at home then,” I told him before he got fed up with my mood and moved to the other side of the room.

“I was about to come over here and intervene on behalf of Ever when I saw you lean into that broad. Then I saw your face, and damn am I glad I waited.” My brother hooted out a laugh.

“Since when are you Ever’s champion?”

“I always was before I cocked it all up,” he reminded me.

“Yeah, but then you cocked it up,” I reiterated.

“I fucked up bad, and I know it. I own it. Hell, everyone here knows, and blames me for every bad mood the VP strolls in here with, because nine times out of 10 his shit moods are about her and his lost relationship with her. Trust me when I say, there’s no forgetting on my part.”

“So, you thought I’d fuck around on her, seriously?”

“Nah, I just didn’t know how that was going to go down. That Daphne’s a bit off her rocker, man. T-Bone can’t come around without having to peel her off, and swears on the club that he’s seen her outside his apartment a time or two. She’s a fuckin’ leech.”

“Why the hell is she still around if T-Bone’s having issues with her?”

“Some of the other guys keep bringing her back around, because apparently she gives fantastic head or some shit. I hear she deep throats like a champ. No gag reflex.” My brother took the shot that had been placed on the counter in front of him.

I grunted my response at him as I finished off my beer. “Gonna crash in my room here for the night. Don’t let that bitch show back up tonight. If I come out here and see her, it will not end well for her or the dumb bastard who brings her back in.”

“Sure thing,” he told me as he tipped his second shot up toward me in a salute before downing it. “I’m glad she has you, man. I haven’t known how to fix things, to fix what I broke, you know?”

“I know, Jay, and it’s not entirely your responsibility anyway. You were still a kid too, and these guys should have fuckin’ stayed out of kid business, just like they make the kids stay out of club business. It’s done for a reason. They fucked up just as bad, so stop taking all the blame on your own shoulders.” With that I patted him on the back and then hauled my ass up to the room that was reserved for me while wishing the whole way that Ever and I were at a point where I could have stayed at her place and just held her tonight while we slept together.

~*~

A knock on my door woke me the next morning, and I was surprised when I saw my dad standing there. He wasted no time getting to his point though. “I’m headed over to Permanent Marks,” he informed me.

“Okay?” It came out as more of a question, because I wasn’t sure why he was letting me know. It’s not like I was ever privy to his comings and goings unless it directly involved me and club business.

He gave me a strange look before continuing on. “All the other guys have said that you’re always there when they get done to take her out or something. Figured you would want to know I was heading over so you could get ready.”

I smiled at my dad then. He really was going to try to make shit better, and that felt good. “The other guys don’t tell me when they’re going or when they’re done,” I informed him.

His brows scrunched together in confusion then. “How the hell do you know when to get there then? They say you always stroll in right at the end.”

I grinned again. “Zeke, sometimes Kane, let me know when she’s nearly done. Zeke did it because he figured she’d need someone to blow off steam with afterwards considering how emotional and personal this shit is. Kane, well, he did it begrudgingly as a favor to Zeke once.”

“Begrudgingly, huh?” My dad smirked. “Got some competition over there, do ya?”

“No, I fuckin’ don’t, because his dumb ass sat on his feelings too long. Now, he can choke on them, because as we’ve already discussed, she’s mine.”

Merc tossed his hands in the air as if surrendering. “All right, Deck, I hear you. So, long as you have that shit straightened out. Sounds like he’s done right by her as a friend though. All those guys over there have.” The pensive expression on my dad’s face made me wonder what he was thinking, but he didn’t make me wait too long. “Been thinking about asking those boys if they’d like to come hang around a bit, get to know all of us, see if they might want to prospect for a patch.”

“Not sure they have the highest opinion of the club right now, but I guess you could ask.”

Merc nodded. “I figured as much, but maybe they see we’re trying to learn from our mistakes and fix our shit. Sometimes, being willing to change speaks volumes above history.” He clapped me on the back then, something he was doing more and more since I came back home. “Come on, we’ll grab some coffees from that place across the street from the studio, and then you can watch your old man get inked.”

“I’m not supposed to watch. No one else is supposed to know what those tattoos are before the big reveal.”

“I’m sure Ever will share with you. Not that I’m asking you to spill the beans ahead of time, but I don’t think she’d keep it a secret from you if you wanted to know. Hell, it was your damn idea in the first place.”

It took roughly three hours for Ever to finish the ink on my dad’s upper right pectoral. It also took a lot of patience to watch her work on him without his shirt on. My dad may have been getting on up there in age, but he stayed fit, and it showed. It wasn’t even that I thought Ever would look at him in that way, but it made me realize her job was sometimes to work on fully naked, or damn near naked people. Some of those people were dudes. That did not take me to a happy place inside my head. At one point my dad chuckled, earning a reprimand from Ever about how he needed to stay still so she didn’t mess shit up.

“Sorry, just watching my son realize the downside to your job,” he told her.

“What down side? There’s nothing bad about my job.”

“I bet Deck would beg to differ,” my father teased, looking me right in the damn eye as his own crinkled in delight. Ever glanced back at me in question, but I just shook my father’s nonsense off.

“I don’t understand,” Ever finally stated as she got back to work on Merc.

“Yeah, see, he’s just now realizing I’m not the only man who will be in this chair in some state of undress or another, isn’t that right, Deck?”

I grunted, but didn’t dignify his dead-on accurate statement with a response, because what could I say without sounding like a complete and total caveman ready to bash my woman over the head and drag her off to my cave where no other cavemen could ever see her. Actually, that idea had some merit. Hell, our species hadn’t survived all this time for the lack of trying.

“That’s silly,” Ever told my dad. “No offense since you’re in my chair and all, but I don’t even think of my clients as people really.”

It was my turn to chuckle when a man in the next spot over told Zeke, “Damn that chick is cold.”

“I guess I just see a canvas and I go to work on making it beautiful. The frame holding the final product doesn’t mater, you know?”

“Perfect answer, babe,” I told her which caused my father to chuckle again.

“Stay still, or I’m going to dig too deep,” Ever scolded him again.

“Yes, ma’am. This is your show, girl, I’m just the canvas, carry on.”

I could have sworn I heard Ever sigh, “Men!” Judging from the way my father’s eyes crinkled with mirth again, I probably hadn’t heard that wrong either.

Once she was finished and my father was on his way, I swept Ever up and took her out to my bike. We ended up riding around for a couple hours, at her request, before we stopped at the beach to go watch the sunset. While we were there we ate the food I had stopped to get us at a local deli, and Ever told me about each of the tattoos she had done in this redemption and forgiveness foray with the club, and the members who had most wronged her. I told her I would keep the information secret, and knew that her telling me was a major deal, because she didn’t trust easily anymore. We sat quietly for a while after her explanation of each tattoo. I supposed we were both soaking it all in until she finally spoke again.

“It’s so beautiful here. I wonder what people who live in the middle of the country would think seeing this for the first time? Can you imagine growing up somewhere and never getting to watch the sun set from the water, or the moon rising over it while the sun leaves a trail of warm orange and pink clouds behind as it dips low in the sky?” She shook her head. “Before I moved here to be with my dad, I hadn’t seen the ocean. My mom never had the time to take us on vacations. She said she’d had her fill of the beach at any rate and that if we were going to go somewhere it would be the mountains, or a lake somewhere that didn’t have sharks or gators.”

“When was the first time you got to go to the beach?”

Ever smiled so brightly then that I actually needed to hear the story that put that look in her eyes and turned her lips up that way. “About two weeks after I got here the kids were in school, and I refused to go that day, because all I could think of was that my mom was gone and the woman in the house I lived in didn’t even like me. I was so sad.” She glanced up at me long enough to show me that the ghost of that little girl’s sadness still lived inside of her.

“Lucy came to my room after a couple hours, and she sat down in the chair across from my bed. At first she didn’t say anything, but then she asked me a question. ‘If you could go anywhere, see anything that might make you happy where would you go?’

“I just looked at her for the longest time trying to figure out if it was a trick. I had heard horrible stories about things that happened to kids while they were trying to find my father. I was in this group home, and some of the kids hoped to get fostered out of there, because the hated it, but the others wanted to be there because they said the foster homes were places where children went to be broken. I wondered if Lucy was going to break me, you know?” Ever shivered, and I pulled her closer to me. Her skin was warm, so I knew it was just the memory chilling her insides. “Finally, I figured I didn’t really have much to lose anyway, so I told her that I’d never been to the beach and it was always my dream to go.” She smiled again then. “Lucy jumped up off her chair and clapped her hands, looking super excited. I remember her shouting, ‘awesome,’ and then telling me, ‘that’s something I can do something about.’”

“She took you to the beach,” I stated as Ever snuggled back into me with her back against my front and her face turned so she was breathing her warm breath into my neck causing my skin to ripple with goose flesh.

“Yes, she took me to the beach. We spent the whole day together that day. She took me to buy a bathing suit first, then we went to the water, and she led me over to the waves. They were small that day, thankfully. I got to jump around in them like an idiot while Lucy clapped and laughed with me. It was one of the best days of my life, and when I grew tired we sat there and just talked. She asked me about my mom, and I told her all kinds of things. We made a deal that day that Lucy would be whatever I wanted her to be. A friend. A mom. Whatever. She said no matter what I thought she was to me I would always just be one of her children now, no different from Toby or Anna. Then we watched the sun set over the small sand dune, and before we left she pointed out the moon rising over the water.”

“Lucy’s a good woman,” I stated needlessly, because Ever knew that better than anyone in this world.

“She is. She’s the best. She’s been my mom longer than I had my real mom now, you know?” I did know. I kissed the top of Ever’s head and held her a little tighter. I still didn’t understand how she’d gone through seeing her own mother die, to being thrown into the family she was, the club, and everything that happened afterward and yet she remained one of the sweetest people I knew.

As we were walking back to my bike I got a message that there was an important club meeting in an hour. “Damn those bastards,” I hissed out under my breath. I hadn’t told Ever yet, instead I just got us back to her apartment and walked her up the steps to the landing.

“Do you want to come in?” Ever asked as she gazed up into my eyes. I hated to dash the hopeful look, especially since I thought I knew exactly what she was hoping for.

“I can’t, because what I think might happen if I do is not something I have time for tonight. There’s a meeting in thirty minutes, and I have to be there. I already got the summons earlier when we were leaving the beach. Her body deflated, and it was almost a physical thing as I watched her shoulders slump inward a little. “Ever,” I called her name to get her attention and alleviate whatever doubt had crept in her head.

“Baby, when I’m with you for the first time, it is not going to be a rushed tryst. We are not going to have any interruptions, and my phone will be turned off and our schedules cleared for at least three days.” That made her laugh. “You laugh, but I’m completely fuckin’ serious. Once I’m able to fall into you in a physical way, I don’t think I’ll be pulled back out so easily.” The blush that crept up her neck and heated her cheeks just made her all the more beautiful in that moment. I leaned in and kissed her deeply. When we came back up for air it was past time for me to get gone. “I promise you, we will be together soon, and it will be on both of our terms or not at all. I have to get going for now, babe.” I turned and started clomping down the steps before I heard her call out to me again.

“Deck,” I turned and saw the wary hesitation in her features. I cocked my head a little, trying to figure out what it was she wanted to say that had her doubting herself. Before I could ask she simply said, “Ride safe!” Then she locked herself away in her apartment, and I was left to wonder what she’d really been about to say to me.

~*~

“This better be important,” were the only words that needed to be said when I walked into the clubhouse after leaving Ever to her damn doubts about us.

“What crawled up your ass?” Crow asked as he tipped his head towards the room where we normally held church. “Everyone’s already inside. They’ve been waiting on you to show.”

I glanced around the common area and noticed that there were plenty of other brothers chilling out and wondered who the hell this meeting was for if not the entire club. “What’s going on?”

“Well, if we can get our asses inside I’m sure all will be explained to you.”

We entered church and I noted that the only people, aside from me, were the ones who Ever had tattooed. It did not bode well, especially after I promised Ever I wouldn’t reveal anything ahead of time.

“What’s going on?” I didn’t bother hiding the harshness in my voice as I asked the question.

“Calm down, son. We’re just here to get a consensus, because some of the people in this room wanted to get an early peek at what Ever put on us, so we aren’t completely shamed in front of the club and family when we do the reveal.”

“You all promised her!” I yelled at them. “Each and every one of you fuckers promised when you set out to do this that you would do it her way or not at all. This isn’t even about the tattoos. If you do this, she will have no faith in you. Nothing will be fixed. It will all have been for nothing, except to prove what she already thinks… that you don’t care enough to go through with it.”

“Easy for you to say since she didn’t ink you up with her emotions,” Crow sniffed.

“She didn’t have to ink me up with her emotions, because I didn’t betray her,” I reminded him. That shut his shit right the hell down.

“I know this can’t be easy for you, since it seems we’re putting you in the middle, but…”

“There is no but, and you are not putting me in the middle, because if you do this I won’t be a part of it.” I stared my father right in the eyes as I spoke the words to let him know exactly what I meant by them.

“Over an early peek at a tattoo?” My dad scoffed.

“No, it’s about your integrity. I will not stand beside men who can’t be trusted to keep their goddamn word!”

My brother stood then. “I told you all it was a bad idea. I am happy to wait, and I feel like I’m the one here who should be worried the most about what she put on me.”

“We’re all thinking those same thoughts for our own reasons, J-Bird,” Double-D told him.

“I can tell you this,” I said quietly, trying to gather my patience. “I know what each of the tattoos is already, and none of them are embarrassing in any way you could possibly muster up in your imagination. Everyone already knows what they’re about, so if that causes you embarrassment – the way you treated Ever in the past – then that’s all there will be, and it’s embarrassment you earned for yourselves at the expense of a child’s trust. The art you will display on your body is all tasteful and then some.” I sighed, running my hands through my hair to push back the length that had grown so much since I left the Army. “If you do this, if you decide to take an early peek, then you not only don’t trust your brother’s word, but you don’t trust the girl who has never done anything to earn your distrust or disrespect, and you will lose us both in a permanent way.” With that, I walked out of the room, and decided to go stay at my own house for the night. I didn’t want to be under the same roof as them if they chose to destroy everything I’d been working towards healing.