Hearts: Motorcycle Club Romance (Savage Saints MC Book 7) Read online

  “It won’t,” I promised.

  It was a promise I could not make to myself, though. I knew myself too well. I knew that as well as I could hide my feelings, as well as I could ignore my desires, as well as I could trick myself… I couldn’t do it forever. There would come a point when the facade would come crumbling down.

  If I was careful, I could gently break apart the facade at a controlled and sustained rate.

  If I wasn’t, though, I would be far from the only one to suffer, fair or not.

  Chapter 1: Pork

  I sat in my high-rise apartment in Panorama Towers, just behind the Aria Casino and Resort, with Dom, my roommate, in the kitchen preparing us some pregame cocktails.

  On the TV, “Lost in Translation” was playing. I had a few slices of cold pizza in my lap, some empty bottles of beer scattered around, and, much to my annoyance, some used condoms that Dom had used in a revelry last night and failed to throw away.

  “Man, do you have to leave your mark like a dog in here?” I shouted as Scarlett Johansson’s and Bill Murray’s characters came back together after Bill Murray had taken a cab.

  “Hey man, when the dog needs to mark his spot, he doesn’t take the time to sniff what he’s done,” Dom said as he strode over to me with a glass of what looked like a Long Island Iced Tea in his hand.

  I just glared at him until he dropped the sarcasm, laughing and slapping me on the back.

  “My bad, bro,” he said.

  “Shit, for the number of times you keep me up at night, figure the least you could do is go to their place or just take them to the club.”

  “And have Mama get all pissy about it?” Dom said with a snort. “I’d rather fuck her on my bike going down the highway than have to deal with Mama’s wrath.”

  “You say it like she’d actually be angry,” I said, amused. “You realize that she’s much more likely to just give you shit but then let you do it? She’s like a bear without teeth!”

  “I know, and I’ve felt that bear’s paws,” Dom said. “As I know you have.”

  Oh, haven’t we all. Haven’t we all.

  “In any case, though, I do think we’re due for some fresh girls,” Dom said. “I’m kind of tired of the Panorama ones. Might hit up Spearmint Rhino. Maybe Sapphire’s?”

  I turned and looked at Dom with a cocked eyebrow.

  “You should grab a recorder and listen to yourself sometime, man!” I said. “Shit, you’re the only person in America I know of who goes ‘I’m kind of tired of all of these porn stars and strippers. Might go find some more porn stars and strippers.’”

  “Hey,” Dom said in as casual a voice as he could muster, sliding up to the window, giving himself an aura that he relished in. “Variety, my friend, is the spice of life. I believe it was the most interesting man in the world who said that. And if he didn’t, well, he just did.”

  I rolled my eyes. Dom’s confidence was more entertaining than anything else as long as you took it for what it was.

  It also helped that he, like me, understood the reasoning behind projecting such silliness as a mechanism for coping with the past.

  “Well, you can slam through pussy like they’re people on a track and you’re a train engine,” I said. “I, for one, am ready to bring her in to a nearby station.”

  “What… what?” Dom said. “I swear, Pork, your analogies and jokes get harder to understand every freaking day.”

  “I’m saying it might be time to slow down,” I said. “This life we lead, to say nothing of before, is hard enough and tough enough without the company of one lady; might be nice to have someone by my side.”

  I wasn’t joking, either, and I didn’t just mean Mama. The fresh supply of girls was nice… up to a point. I didn’t like stating what I had, especially in front of the club, but the recent tie-downs of Richard and Barber had me feeling more comfortable expressing that gut feeling out loud.

  Before, it would have been seen as crazy talk. We were bikers, and aside from maybe celebrity VIPs, club owners, and a handful of famous gamblers, we had the best access and the hottest women we could ever want. And don’t get me wrong, for the first couple of years in the club, I swam in so much of that, I almost drowned.

  But now, though? Now, as I thought about approaching my mid-thirties and beyond without anyone else? As I thought about wanting to leave a legacy to make up for my military days?

  Yeah, the thought of having someone by my side was nice. Pussy was great, but I didn’t want just pussy; I wanted a woman.

  “You’re fucking crazy,” Dom said with a laugh.

  And that’s why I had to wait until the club president and the SAA got hitched before I said such a thing.

  “Who are you gonna go for? Mama?”

  I laughed in exaggerated fashion at that. Dom and I shared many secrets that no one else in the club knew, but my affection for Mama, no matter how overt, no matter how obvious, was something I had not and would not confess out loud, not even to my roommate. Hell, not even Mama had explicitly heard how I felt, but that one was untenable, to say the least.

  “Mama is a club member, bro,” I said. “And do you know how many times she tells us to stay away from the dancers? Do you know how many slaps you and Barber got?”

  “Yeah, and now Barber’s knocked up one.”

  “I think it’s a little more than just ‘one.’ It was his high school sweetheart, after all.”

  “Yes, so sweet.”

  I think that was part of the way Dom avoided being anything more than an enormous player. At the first sign of softness, sob stories, or anything emotional, he immediately pretended he was too cool for it. It worked for him… for now. I knew everyone had their point where they would fall in love.

  Or maybe I was just trying to rationalize why I was acting this way.

  “In any case, Mama was not my high school sweetheart,” I said, chuckling at the image. I’d only known Mama as a badass woman in her thirties. I don’t think any of us, sans maybe Richard, knew what she was like before. “I could never touch her.”

  “If you say so,” Dom said, finishing his cocktail as he went back to make another one.

  He was leaving me the hell alone, and it was just as well. Dom knew when he was pushing too hard, just as I knew when I was being too corny.

  I turned my attention back to the TV. Bill Murray’s character was now walking away after whispering something in Scarlett’s ear, disappearing from her life. I put my hand over my mouth to stifle any noises that might emerged.

  As it turned out, my affection for Mama wasn’t the only thing that I had to keep a secret from the rest of the club.

  * * *

  “Who you got coming tonight?” I asked as we hopped on our bikes in the parking lot. “Any rhinos covered in spearmints?”

  “Wow, I’ve never heard that one,” Dom said with an actual laugh.

  “What about sapphires? Are we getting metaphorical gems or literal ones? Huh, huh?”

  “At this point, I’m tempted to give you a sapphire stone and tell you to put it on your chest so you can say you got laid with one,” Dom said. “But then I’d have to say that I was developing Pork humor and that just sounds mortifying to me.”

  “Oh, it’s fun!” I said. “You’ll laugh all the way to the grave! And isn’t laughter the best cure, after all? So maybe you’ll live for—”

  “OK, and I’ve reached my half-hour quota of Pork jokes,” Dom said as he put his helmet on. “To answer your original question, Brazzers was shooting in town. I went to see for myself—”

  I stifled the urge to joke if he had participated himself.

  “And invited some of the girls over. The only catch is that we have to bring a couple dudes, but the ratio is still like two to fifteen. And I have some friends from Panorama coming, yes, yes, make your jokes.”

  “Actually, I’m more just wondering if you’re going to have to go for a girl you’ve already had!”

  Dom rolled his eyes.

&
nbsp; “Do you rummage through the recycling bin when you get bored?”

  “Jesus!” I said.

  Dom and I were alike in a lot of ways, but one way we most certainly were not was in our attitude toward women. Dom could be… let’s say, a little superficial, while I considered myself a little more thoughtful, even if I came across flippant at times.

  “I’m just saying, you’d go find something new,” Dom said. “Come on, let’s go.”

  I rolled my eyes and turned my engine on at the same time as he did. We slowly pulled out of the parking lot, slowly drove over the bridge, slowly went to the nearest highway exit… and then gunned it at full speed for The Red Door.

  We weren’t stupid about our driving. We made sure that we only raced each other if we had a clear shot. But boy, once we did, it was on.

  The rules were simple. Whoever got to the club first got to pick the girl that the other would have to hit on first. And they had to give it an honest effort—deliberate self-sabotage was grounds for drinking or more female punishment. I had to win this game every time, and it had nothing to do with not wanting Dom to pick an unattractive woman for me. Every woman at our parties was attractive; it was just a matter of to what degree.

  Rather, I just liked having the option to talk to Mama. And tonight, I especially did not want Dom to send me on a goose chase for some Brazzers porn star I’d only vaguely heard about before.

  We only had three exits to go from Panorama to The Red Door, though, so these races were often decided by who hit the accelerator first. Our bikes hit the same top-end speed and handled the same despite me having about fifty pounds on Dom; we’d even had our bikes tested to confirm that we were on even ground.

  He and I were about even after the first exit, but I had the advantage of being on the inside so that I could get to the exit first. Technically, the race ended at the exit, even though The Red Door was another left turn away; there was a red light off the exit that was rarely in our favor, and it made little sense to continue the race when both of us were just sitting there, flicking each other off in a competitive spirit.

  At the second exit, he tried to swerve and scare me into slowing down. Too bad for Dom, I’d seen this tactic before from him. He wanted to win bets, but he was not going to kill me in the process.

  And besides, I’d seen some much scarier shit in the SEALs. One tiny guy on a bike riding at me didn’t scare me. I’d have Dom be roadkill faster than his bike could get within striking distance of me.

  Actually, his maneuver not only didn’t work, but it also backfired on him; he wound up having to slow down himself, and I coasted easily to the final exit. This time, the light was actually green, but that meant little as I took a victory lap, allowing Dom to pass me as he got to The Red Door first.

  “That’s some bullshit!” Dom said as we both walked to the front entrance of the club.

  “What is?” Mama said from the front door.

  We hadn’t even noticed her driving in. Maybe she wasn’t there before. Maybe she knew I was coming and had emerged.

  Or maybe I was just trying to rationalize everything to make me look good, and there wasn’t anything to it.

  “Dom’s just mad because he lost,” I said. “He had to smell my shit as I went by him.”

  “I got here first!” Dom said. “The deal is whoever got to The Red Door first.”

  “See, that’s the title of the race, but—”

  “Mama, can you slap his ass?”

  “I ain’t slapping anyone’s ass here, boy,” Mama said. “I’ll slap his face later if he misbehaves. But he’s a good boy.”

  “You hear that,” Dom said with a snort. “You’re a good boy, Pork. You’re not a bad boy like me.”

  “I can be with a certain attitude!”

  Dom and Mama both rolled their eyes. As if making the point, Mama raised her hand, but she just chuckled as she dropped it.

  “Catch me inside,” Dom said. “Let me know who I have to go back to tonight.”

  Dom shut the door behind him. I turned to Mama, who was in the middle of puffing a cigarette. I felt like this might be a moment where I could finally say how I felt. Maybe I could at least ask her out to coffee. Maybe—

  “Aren’t you going to follow him in, Pork?”

  Maybe I can get pushed away like always seems to happen.

  “I mean, I could, but then I’d be less Pork and more Dork following the jock—”

  “Oh, for fuck’s sake,” Mama said.

  She “slapped” me then, more just playfully patting my cheek.

  “Just go and put him out of his misery. Then you can come and talk to me. Would ya? He’s gonna raise hell if you let a wild dog loose.”

  “Good point.”

  I hurried inside, in part because Mama had said I could come and talk to her once all of the shenanigans were done. And already, the party was in full swing.

  Loud music was playing; the DJ set up in his booth like he usually was. Girls were already dancing with each other and with some of the club members on the stage. In a corner, Richard and Barber sat with their respective women. Poor Cassie and Natasha looked so far out of their scene, they might as well have landed at a foreign country.

  And there I saw Dom standing at the bar, his right forearm leaning against it, taking in the view.

  That, or he was just waiting for me and knew what every woman here was like.

  I walked over, put my big hand on top of his head, and looked around.

  “You’re welcome to kill me,” Dom said. “That might be a better fate than having to go back to some of these girls.”

  “Let’s see…” I said. “Who would be the most awkward for you to go back to?”

  “I fucking hate your guts right now.”

  “You’d love my guts; they let you eat more food than you could ever imagine.”

  “Hard to argue with that.”

  Dom’s voice shook just a tad when I turned to one girl: a jet-black-haired gal who was about Dom’s height, wore a tight red cocktail dress, and had curves spilling out from just about every angle.

  “Who’s the gal in the red?”

  “Jenna, oh, fuck.”

  “Sold! To the girl in red!” I said.

  Dom turned to me and, I swear to God, he growled.

  “You have no idea what you’ve done,” he said.

  “That’s why I want to do it! I don’t want to watch a movie I’ve already seen. I want a sequel!”

  “Fuck off,” Dom said, but true to his word, with a massive gulp of his Long Island, he headed over to the woman.

  I let the scene unfold for a few seconds. Whoever this Jenna girl was, Dom was clearly not happy to see her, which just made me that much happier. Jenna, for her part, had a more inquisitive expression on her face than—

  “Well, hello there.”

  I paused, looked to my right, and saw a beautiful red-headed girl looking at me, her body leaned forward so I could see her breasts all but falling out of her shirt. Goddamn, she was beautiful.

  But she was not Mama. And I wasn’t saying what I had back at the apartment just for the hell of it.

  “Hi,” I said. “How are you liking the party?”

  A favorite tactic of mine to get away from people I didn’t want to talk to was to get boring really quickly. If I didn’t live up to the image that many people had of Pork the prankster, the joker, the terrible pun guy, they usually went off in their own direction.

  “It’s good,” she said. “I am kind of lonely, though. All my friends are with the boys. Would you care to keep me company?”

  You couldn’t have made it more obvious if you put an “I’m horny for you” flashing neon sign over this girl’s head.

  And yet, just then, I saw Mama walking by toward Richard and Barber, and I couldn’t have cared less about the redhead. I was more concerned with the woman I liked.

  There was an unfortunate truth to dealing with Mama and the other girls here. While I had a practically unli
mited pool of girls to hook up with, I, unfortunately, had a very, very, very limited pool of girls I could date. For one, though I was by no means ugly, I didn’t consider myself handsomely sexy like, say, Richard or Dom. I didn’t have a past with anyone that could magically come back into my life like Barber. My job with the Savage Saints and The Red Door meant that most of the more wholesome girls wouldn’t want anything to do with me.

  In short, it had to be with Mama. Because if not her, then who?

  “Hello?”

  “What? Oh, sorry, zoning out like a construction site,” I said, one of my go-tos for lame jokes.

  “No, you’re fine,” she said.

  Much to my relief, she walked away, approaching Walker, our normal doorman on club nights. I was pretty sure that I was the only member of the Saints alone at that moment, and I wasn’t the least bit upset about it.

  In fact, I could even argue it worked out for the best because Mama waved me over. I joined Richard, Barber, Natasha, and Cassie, the three of us couples sitting around, bantering, talking shit to each other, and joking.

  It was nice to envision what this would look like in the future. It was nice to think about when the time would come for us to be a thing.

  Because as I sat there, telling terrible jokes and corny lines to everyone, I determined something that was the natural conclusion of my thoughts about dating earlier. I didn’t just want to date Mama.

  I would.

  I could ignore the thoughts and feelings before through sex or just saying I’d find someone else. But no longer. No longer could I just be the puppy on the sideline, looking hopelessly at her while I hoped for her to change her mind.

  No, I was going to stop being Pork the joker and be Joseph Young, the man who would take her.

  I got such a chance a couple hours later when Richard announced he and Natasha would retire to their room in the clubhouse. Barber had already left an hour earlier, having taken his pregnant gal back home. I turned to Mama with a smirk on my face and confidence in my eyes.

  “You know, sitting here, seeing these two couples interact,” I said, “makes me jealous. So jealous, in fact, that I’m going to become like them. And I’ve determined that you, Mama, should be my plus one. Let’s say you and I grab coffee tomorrow, shall we?”