CHAPTER EIGHTEEN | ACE
“Look at what the bats dragged in!”
I had just parked my bike on the driveway and shoved my boot against the kickstand when I heard Bingo’s voice. I glanced up and sure enough, there he was, waving from the front porch of his house.
He still hadn’t made a full recovery, but he looked a hell of a lot better than he had the last time I saw him. He stood on his own two legs now, albeit with the help of a cane. The cuts and bruises that marked his face and limbs had healed and faded, and the color had returned to his skin.
There were still signs of the trauma; his front tooth was chipped, giving him a gappy smile, and his arm still hung in a sling. But other than that, he looked damn good for a man who had been run off the road and left for dead a month ago.
“Bingo!” I said, slapping his outstretched palm in greeting, then pulling him in for a hug.
“Owww, my arm!” he howled in pain and cradled his injured arm protectively. I immediately released him from the hug and stepped back.
“I’m sorry, man,” I said. “I didn’t mean to—”
“Gotcha!” Bingo cackled, stretching his lips into that gappy grin again. “I’m just fucking with you.”
“You’re a piece of shit,” I rolled my eyes.
“Blame it on this damn house,” he shook his head. “I’ve been going stir crazy being holed up in here 24/7. I swear I’m starting to wish that SUV had just finished me off.”
“Don’t say that, Bingo.”
“You don’t know what it’s like!” he groaned in exasperation as he pulled the front door shut behind him, then led me around the concrete walkway towards the front of the garage. “Do you have any idea how many episodes of the Steve Wilkos Show Daisy has made me sit through?!”
“What’s that?”
“You know… Steve Wilkos!” Bingo said meaningfully. “It’s that show where people hash out all of their personal bullshit on stage in front of a studio audience. ‘I didn’t know my girlfriend was a man’ or ‘I’m pregnant with my husband’s best friend’s baby.’”
“Jesus,” I shook my head, chuckling at the thought of Bingo and his old lady watching trashy daytime TV shows together. “Why the hell would people go on a show like that?!”
“I don’t know,” Bingo shrugged. “But I’m not sure you’re in any position to judge.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well from what I’ve been hearing through the ‘ol grapevine, it sounds like you walked right into a Steve Wilkos storyline of your own.”
I froze on the sidewalk and my eyes shot up to Bingo.
“‘I married the spy that was sent to take me out,’” Bingo said. “Does that sound about right?”
“She’s not a spy. And who told you about all of that, anyways?!”
“I’m injured, I’m not fucking dead,” Bingo snorted. “I still talk to people.”
“Sorry,” I said quickly. “I guess I just figured the club would keep that on the down-low.”
“I’m still part of the club, you know. I have a right to know what’s going on.”
He stopped when he reached the garage door, and he bent down to shove his key into the door handle. When he started to roll up the door, I stopped him.
“Let me,” I said, taking over.
The door rolled up, and daylight flooded the garage. I immediately inhaled the familiar aroma of gasoline and engine oil.
In the center of the garage, Bingo’s bike was propped up on a stand. The body still had a few scuffs and scratches, but it had made a remarkable recovery. I whistled, impressed.
“The bike looks better than you do,” I joked.
“I’ve been spending a lot of time out here, fixing her up,” Bingo nodded. “I was out here working before I could even wipe my own ass. I had no choice. I had to escape Steve.”
I chuckled under my breath and strode into the garage, inspecting Bingo’s repair job. The dollar sign Mr. Money had scratched into the gas tank had been buffed out. Now it just needed a fresh coat of paint, and it’d be as good as new.
“Have you taken her for a spin yet?” I asked.
“Not yet,” Bingo shook his head. “Daisy hasn’t let me out of her sights long enough.”
“Where is she now?”
“She’s running some errands. She knew you were coming by, so she figured I’d have a chaperone.”
“Well shit, if I had realized that this was a babysitting gig, I would have charged you for my time.”
“Fuck off,” Bingo rolled his eyes, tossing a grease rag at me. Then his smile faded and he said, “So what’s really going on with this wife of yours, huh?”
“Nothing,” I said, rubbing the back of my neck and staring down at the grease-stained garage floor. “It’s just an arrangement that’ll cover both of our asses. That’s it.”
“So you don’t have feelings for her or anything like that?”
“Feelings?!” I scoffed, feeling my neck prickle with sweat. “Jesus, Bingo. Do I look like the kind of guy who gets feelings?!”
“I’m just asking,” he shrugged innocently. “I mean, she is your wife.”
“Yeah, well she’s still an agent,” I said. “She has no business getting involved with a guy like me. And vice versa.”
“I hate to break it to ya, but you’re already involved. You’re married!”
“And that’s gonna change as soon as we take down Mr. Money,” I said. “She’s already got the annulment papers drawn up. All I have to do is sign on the dotted line, and it’ll all be over.”
“Except… it won’t really be over, will it?” Bingo challenged me. “I mean, she’ll still know who you are. She’ll know all about the club, all of our secrets… how do you know she won’t spill the beans as soon as those papers are signed?”
“I could destroy her just as easily,” I pointed out. “If the Gaming Commission caught wind that their star agent was assisted by an outlaw motorcycle club, her career would be over.”
“Ahh,” Bingo nodded thoughtfully. “Trust; the cornerstone to every healthy marriage.”
I rolled my eyes and shook my head.
“So…” Bingo’s lips curled up into a mischievous smirk, “Did you kiss her?”
“What is this, junior high?!”
“You totally kissed her, you sick bastard!” he elbowed me in the ribs with his injured arm, then immediately winced in regret.
“I think you’ve been taking too much Oxy.”
Bingo ignored me and went right on grinning that goony grin of his. He puckered his lips and blew several noisy kisses in my direction, then he asked,“Did you sleep with her, too?”
“I’m not answering any more questions.”
“Bull shit! You dragged all of us into this mess. This is official club business now!”
“What I do with my dick is nobody’s business.”
“That all depends on where you stick it,” Bingo shrugged. Then his face got serious again, and he rubbed at his arm.
“You okay?”
“Fine,” he said dismissively. “It’s just a spasm. The pain comes and goes.”
He leaned back, taking a seat on an overturned milk crate, and he continued to massage his arm through the thin fabric sling.
“We’re gonna get the guy that did this to you,” I promised him. “We’re gonna get revenge.”
“I know,” Bingo nodded, wincing. Once the pain had passed, he glanced up at me. There was a solemn expression on his face, and his voice was low and meaningful.
“Listen, Ace… we’ve known each other for a long time now. You’re like a brother to me, and I know you feel the same.”
“Right…”
“So I’m just gonna level with you,” Bingo said. “There’s no shame in falling in love.”
“Here we go,” I rolled my eyes.
“Just listen!” Bingo insisted. “I don’t know what’s going on between you and Agent HotLegs, but I do know that you look like a john in a whorehouse whenever you talk about her.”
“I do not!” I stammered defensively. Then, “What the hell does that even mean?!”
“Your face lights up. You can’t stop yourself from smiling. Hell, even your ears perk up like a puppy that just caught a whiff of a ribeye steak.”
“I think you’ve been watching too much Steve Wilkos…”
“I won’t deny that,” Bingo conceded with a nod. “But if Steve taught me anything, it’s that true love can prevail, even through the most unlikely of circumstances.”
“Right,” I rolled my eyes. “Because ‘I’m having the milkman’s baby’ is a love story for the ages, right?”
“You know, Daisy and I didn’t have much in common when we met,” Bingo said, switching tactics. “Her old man was a retired cop. He wanted her to go to college and become some big shot lawyer or doctor. Then she met me.”
I had never heard this story before. There were a lot of things that Bingo liked to joke around about, but Daisy wasn’t one of them. He kept their life private. I always figured that was his way of protecting her. Not that she needed protection; she was a spitfire, and she had no qualms defending herself.
“She was one of those perfume girls at the mall,” he continued. “I walked in the store lookin’ like the Grim Reaper’s errand boy and all of her little coworkers scurried away from me like I was contagious. But she just smiled and looked me right in the eye. She wore this bright red lipstick and a little white smock. Her name tag that said ‘Daisy,’ I decided right then and there that she was my new favorite flower.
“I’d never loved something fragile before, but I was fucking smitten,” he chuckled at the memory, shaking his head. “I must have been gawking for ages right there in the women’s perfume department.”
“I’m surprised she didn’t call security,” I teased.
“You know what she said to me?” Bingo asked, ignoring my joke.
“What did she say?”
“She said…” his eyes sparkled, and he lowered his voice to a seductive purr to mimic Daisy’s voice. “‘Would you like to try a sample of Daisy?’”
“That was very… forthcoming.”
“I thought so, too,” Bingo nodded. “Then I realized that the perfume she was spritzing samples of was called ‘Daisy.’”
“So what’d you do?”
“What do you mean, what did I do?!” Bingo scoffed. “I walked out of that damn store smelling like a fucking Daisy.”
My eyebrows shot up in amusement as I imagined Bingo strolling through the mall in all black leather, spritzed from head to toe in women’s perfume.
“But I also walked out of there with her phone number,” Bingo added. “And I loved her every day since. It wasn’t always easy, and sometimes it felt like the entire world was against us. But when you love someone, you make it work.”
I didn’t know what to say, so I just nodded slowly and sighed, staring down at the concrete. I didn’t know what I felt for Sienna, but I did know that we were a lot different than Bingo and Daisy. There was nothing normal about our arrangement. Maybe the whole world was against us, but that didn’t mean that we were fighting for the same things.
Bingo must have noticed how uncomfortable I was, because he pushed himself up from the milk crate and cleared his throat:
“Enough talking,” he said. “What do you say we take this beast out for a test drive, huh?”