Chance had a plan that he knew Hannah wouldn’t like. But it was the best one they had and she was going to have to trust him. She didn’t know about the drugs, about the slave her brother had become. Chance was going to keep it that way if he could but something like that could only be under wraps for so long and if he needed to bring it out to convince her that she needed to listen to him then he wasn’t above breaking her heart with a little discomfort to get her to play along.
“I want you guys safe,” Chance said to his mother and Scout.
They were sitting with cups of morning coffee in front of them. Link had already gone off to get things ready at the clubhouse, lay the groundwork for Chance’s crazy plan that was probably going to get him punched square in the nuts by Hannah but he’d cross that bridge when he got there. She was still asleep, and they decided to let her sleep. For the time being.
“None of us are safe,” Scout said. “That’s the way these things go.”
“What’s going out on the street his dangerous,” he said. “They’re stealing women for one and they won’t hesitate to hurt me with that. I know you both are strong and capable but I don’t want you to have to be in a position to prove that to anyone else.”
The women sighed, looking into their coffee cups. He could tell them what was what. He could order them. He was the chapter president, he didn’t have to ask anyone’s opinion. But he respected them both too much to move forward on plans without asking their advice. The cover he came up with was a good one, at least to outsiders. Introducing Hannah as his old lady would look right on track to anyone outside the gang. Anyone too close would know that it was a farce. Chance had made little secret of his dislike of ever having an old lady. He’d seen what it had done to his mother. He watched Ben and Scout like a hawk but that didn’t mean he magically changed his mind for himself.
It would keep her safe and provide solid motivation for the actions they were going to take. The gang would need a lot of convincing, however. So he mentally prepared himself for that, for the need to sell the entire situation. Hannah would definitely want to kill him. He couldn’t pretend he wasn’t secretly elated at the idea of holding her hand, hugging her close, maybe even finally kissing her. It would be an act, a way to sell the deal and the show, but he wasn’t going to complain. He needed any chance he could get to work through his tension and pent up energy. It was better than masturbating every night and getting nothing accomplished.
He took a sip of his coffee, thinking of the best way to sell this entire situation to Hannah in a way that wouldn’t get her to say no right away. The fact of the matter was, she didn’t have a choice. If she wanted safety, if she wanted her freedom, she had to trust him and be willing to do some things that were going to make her uncomfortable. It could be worse. He could be ben or some other man, completely ready to not keep his hands to himself and put them wherever he damn well pleased. He was going to treat her right, be respectful, and she needed to trust him.
“I can think of at least eight ways this is going to go wrong,” Scout said.
“Well I think of more ways than that for things to go wrong if we don’t do this.”
“Far point but making decisions under pressure when you think you have no other choice isn’t incredibly smart either,” she said.
“I’ll do what I have to,” he said.
“And that, right there, is the dangerous mentality I’m talking about,” she said, throwing back what was left of her cold coffee.
“This isn’t a debate,” he said. “I’m giving you warning because you deserve to know and I want you safe. That’s all. My mind is made up. Link’s already got the plan in motion.”
“Good to know this conversation mattered so much.”
Kat chastised her daughter and Chance got up from the table, rolling his eyes. He expected as much thanks for looking out for her. She was never the type to show gratitude in normal ways. He always couldn’t exclude the influence Ben was having on her decision making and opinions lately. That was a conversation they were going to have to have when all this was done. And by talk he meant he was going to give Ben a hard punch in the face for all the complaining he’d been doing.
But for now they had to only get through the next few days. And that started with telling Hannah the truth about the plan.
She walked out of the bathroom around eight in the morning. She was still dressed in the sleep clothes she’d been borrowing. They were a pair of Chance’s gym shorts from school and a Dallas Cowboy’s t-shirt his father got him once for a birthday long ago when he could still fit into clothes that small. She’d thrown her hair back into a messy bun and the pale spots on her face mixing in with the blotchy red told a story of her washing her face with cold water before walking outside, her eyes still weak from sleep. She took one sniff of the coffee and seemed to perk awake, however.
It was intoxicating, seeing her walk around in his clothes, in his mother’s house. He could pretend it was real, pretend what he was about to convince everyone of was really happening. This might be what it looked like to be in a relationship with Hannah and it made him excited. The only thing keeping him from thinking about sexy it all looked instead of domestic was the presence of his mother and sister and the mortifying possibility of getting a hard on right in front of them.
“Morning,” Chance said gruffly. She turned and came over to the table.
“Morning. Any news?”
He cringed. Getting right to the point then. “Yes. Things are a lot more complicated than we thought.”
“That’s always what you want to hear first thing in the morning.”
“You asked.”
She sighed. “I did so lay it on me.”
He paused. “Are you sure?”
“What do you mean ‘am I sure’? We’re talking about my well-being and general freedom in life, I wouldn’t mind knowing what I’m up against here.”
Chance sighed and rubbed at his forehead. This might have been easier if he’d gotten sleep. He read once in an article that after you lose enough sleep your brain basically becomes drunk. He was feeling that now and the coffee wasn’t helping to sober or wake him.
“We found your brother in quite the state,” he said.
“Is he okay?”
He didn’t want to admit that his heart broke a little at the sound of how caring her voice was. He was in too far now. She wouldn’t stop until she knew. He might as well rip the band aid right off and call it a day.
“Turns out he double crossed us, a bit,” he said. “The Black Death know you weren’t his to sell and he convinced them they could extort the Knight’s by buying you. Meanwhile they’ve got him finding girls to sell to them in exchange for H.”
“H?”
“Heroin. It’s how they keep him coming back. It’s cruel. Basically he’s their slave now.”
Her face before this hadn’t exactly been chipper or happy but now it was positively devoid of any chance of light or hope for the day. She slumped back in her seat and stared into the inky blackness of her coffee mug. Those were the facts, Chance couldn’t change them, he didn’t have anything to do with them, but he could lay out his plan to try to make things better.
“First things first,” he said. “I’m enlisting the help of the rest of the club. To do that we have to put on a bit of a show.”
“A show.”
“I’m going to introduce you to them as my old lady. There’s a level of trust and respect there that they won’t cross and we don’t have to worry about anyone trying to go behind my back to get some pocket cash for themselves.”
“You don’t trust your own men?”
“I trust them with my life,” he clarified. “I just don’t think I trust them with yours.”
“Fair enough.”
“So when you’re ready and dressed we’ll head down to the clubhouse and plant those seeds.”
She didn’t object and for once Chance was wishing she would. Her objecting to something meant she still had spirit, still wanted to have a say in all these things. Now it just felt like she was going through the motions. He couldn’t blame her. It was a lot to deal with and take in in the span of two weeks. Her world had been turned upside down for reasons that had nothing to do with her. And she was still the one suffering.
He promised, silently, to her that even as his fake old lady he would treat her right.
***
Hannah stared in the bathroom mirror. She wasn’t sure what she was fighting. It wasn’t tears. She didn’t want to cry. She was passed the point where she would have cried if she was going to. Everything was upside down and she felt like she was just clinging to the edge of the Earth with her fingernails as it spun and spun and spun around the sun, falling through space and she might very well fly off of it at any moment. At this point the idea of being flung the Earth and into space didn’t sound so bad. She was losing a lot of what she had to live for anyway.
Her brother had turned junkie and kidnapper to pay off a gambling debt, had sold her to a prostitution ring, and she hadn’t been to class in over a week. Her dreams of becoming that lawyer were dwindling fast. It was a weird sort of discomfort when you became the thing you swore you were going to protect. She was not in a position to defend anyone when she, herself, was in so much danger already and relying on the good graces of a gang president.
Chance had shown no signs of anything cruel or evil lurking beneath. He had not hurt anyone, he had done nothing but kept her safe for this entire time. For this she was grateful. His family seemed nice and calm and normal, as normal as a gang hideout could be. He was not like the men she read about in her text book with tattoos across their faces and guns on their hips who rode around with the expressed purpose of terrorizing as many people as possible. He might even be one of the good guys, if she believed in the possibility of good guys in life.
She got dressed. She’d been allowed to borrow some clothes from Kat and Scout since she still only had the clothes she’d worn to work the night Chance brought her here. Now wearing their clothes might work out. She had no idea how to pretend to be some biker’s girlfriend. She didn’t know the decorum of it, if there were rules, a goddamn secret handshake. She threw on a pair of ripped up jeans and a Guns and Rose’s t-shirt. Over it she threw a denim vest hanging in the closet that had the Satan’s Knights insignia ironed on in a patch. She put on her make up a little darker than usual and ruffled her hair.
She looked in the mirror. What she saw was another woman entirely. She felt like Sandy at the end of Grease when she threw on all the greaser gear and put her cigarette out right in front of John Travolta who looked like he was ready to jizz his pants right then and there. She wondered how close Chance would be to jizzing himself when he saw her. She wondered also then how close she wanted him to be.
He’d almost kissed her. She’d almost leaned in to kiss him too. That was something she still hadn’t gotten over and now she was going to pretend to be his girlfriend in front of his entire gang. There was no way this was going to do anything to help solve the uncomfortable whirlpool of feelings she had brewing in her stomach when thought of his bright blue eyes and how helpful he’d been to her over the course of the past two weeks.
She sighed and stepped outside.
“Ta da…?” she said humorlessly as she walked out and spun in front of them, showing off the look.
“Convincing,” Kat said while Scout seemed to wear a face that internally said I’d wear it better but was smiling for the effort nonetheless.
Chance was silent and staring, his throat bobbing, swallowing. He blinked a few times to bring himself back and cleared his throat. Yep. Jizz face.
“Looks good. Let’s get going, we’re already late,” he said and ushered her out the door.
***
The club house was pretty much exactly as she imagined it would be. A smoky basement with a makeshift bar that certainly wasn’t up to code. They had three taps worth of beer and all of them were some cheap brand American brew. If you could even call it brew. The air was full of so much cigarette smoke that Hannah thought she might pass out from the headache it was causing. She had to work through it. A biker’s old lady wouldn’t turn tail at the possibility of second hand smoke.
“Where’d you pick this one up?” said some gruff older man with a leathery skin woman sitting on his lap. Hannah tried not to gag.
“The diner,” he said. It wasn’t a lie. “Couldn’t keep my eyes off of her.”
The man let out a wheezy laugh, flicking the butt of his cigarette onto the floor. “Don’t go getting smitten now.”
It became clear quickly that while old ladies wee girlfriends, wives, partners for their bikers, they were also trophies. Chance was showing her around like a purebred at the dog show. She tried not to bristle too much at it. It was part of the act, part of what they were selling. She needed to swallow her pride for a few minutes and pretend to be this person because it was the only way they were going to get a hold of the situation. She remembered what he said, how he feared they might try to sell her out if they knew the truth. She had to prove she was worth respect, worth Chance’s time, worth their protection.
So she clung to him tightly, keeping her arm locked with his. She held her body flush to his at every opportunity she got and he wrapped an arm around her. She wondered if he was just affecting this pose that seemed to make him feel powerful. He was standing taller, looking more confident. She kind of liked it. Instead of repressing that feeling she let it play across her face, let her eyes openly worship her man and look ready to fuck him in the bathroom at a moment’s notice.
“Okay, okay, enough small talk,” Chance called out to everyone. “Time for real talk.”
Everyone started to quiet down, the din of their murmurs coming to a halt. He stepped up onto the bar.
“You’ve all met Hannah. She’s important to me,” he said and few people let out wolf whistles and teasing laughter. “I expect you to respect her as you would me. To protect her. She is a part of our family now. Understood.”
“Sir, yes sir,” someone called out and the rest of the room responded in a cheers.
Chance looked at Hannah and met her eyes with his first genuine gaze all night. It was working, they were moving forward with their plans, whatever those plans ended up being.