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

  Good. It’ll make for an easier target. Less likely to hit civilians.

  There was always the chance this was a pincer attack. But we had Dom and Barber on the other side. Richard manned the middle, prepared to hurry over to whichever side needed the most help. It might have seemed like I had no support in my current position, but I didn’t need it. No one could match me in accuracy and calm under pressure when it came to guns.

  “Here they come,” Richard said. “Pork?”

  “Time to pork them,” I said.

  I heard groans. I wasn’t paying attention to them.

  The first Sinner came into my vision, followed shortly by about four other bikers behind him. It seemed to be too few in number—the Sinners weren’t going to strike with a number this small. They liked guerrilla, cheap, terrorist-like quick strikes, yes, but five was too small a number. They’d get wiped out.

  So for the moment, I held my fire in favor of reconnaissance of the area. It would still take them another five seconds or so to get into true firing range.

  “Pork,” Richard said.

  “There’s gotta be more of them,” I said.

  I scanned the area. I saw nothing.

  But then I looked into the buildings nearby. I saw the backs of some bandannas and some cuts from the Degenerate Sinners.

  “Hiding in the restaurant nearby,” I said. “Take ‘em out when they emerge.”

  “Roger that—”

  But by then, the first Sinner had come into range. I fired.

  I dropped him cleanly.

  But the first bullet was like the trumpet announcing the beginning of the battle. It was the war cry that awoke all of the guns, and within two seconds, I had to take cover as a hail of bullets came from the passing Sinners.

  “Got one!” Dom shouted.

  Two down. Three on the streets. Who knows how many more.

  For a brief moment, I came up, found my target, and fired. It was a little rushed, but I’d had plenty of experience with this. I knocked out my target, leaving just two bikers on the road.

  But then more men came out of the restaurants, as predicted. There were about a half-dozen of them, more than replacing the three enemies that we had managed to knock out.

  “Richard!” I shouted.

  “I see them!”

  Total warfare broke out right then, turning Sahara Avenue into a war zone. I felt like I was back in Iraq, with the bullets flying in this ghetto part of Las Vegas.

  And then I looked left and saw Mama roaring in, knocking out two of the Sinners in the streets. Dom hollered for her, but the battle was still ongoing. I focused on laying down cover fire for her to get to The Red Door safely.

  It was just as well, because a moment later, another half-dozen Sinners emerged from where Mama had come.

  “Hey, hun,” Mama said, climbing up next to me with nothing more than the pistol she carried with her everywhere. “Rough night, huh?”

  “Says the woman getting chased by a bunch of dudes with guns,” I said. “That sounds like a terrible date.”

  Mama always had a retort for me—it was one of the reasons I liked her. She didn’t just laugh at me; she engaged with me. But for her to not say anything right there felt, well, I couldn’t really consider it with gunfire going on.

  “More coming?”

  “That should be it,” Mama said. “I saw those six pull out a block away, but no one else.”

  “Then let’s pull in those six.”

  Mama finally looked at me with a confused look—the look of “what the fuck does that even mean?”—and laughed.

  “God, I missed you, Pork.”

  I saw you yesterday. But, hey, I’ll take the compliment however it comes, I suppose.

  With us on the roof and fully aware of their positions, we had the high ground, the cover, and the better weaponry. The Degenerate Sinners, realizing that all they were doing was prolonging their inevitable deaths, eventually got the right idea to run off. Dom and I managed to kill one each before they ran off; as soon as they were gone, we dragged their bodies for burning and their bikes to sell for later.

  We reconvened in the theatre, with Mama going in to bring the girls back out. Though some of them had been here when violence had broken out, many of them had not, and they looked ready to head home.

  “Relax,” Mama said. “There’s not a safer place in town than with these boys.”

  “Damn straight,” Dom said, flashing that too-goddamn-perfect smile of his. “Let’s get the music back on and the party back up!”

  The DJ started playing again. Some of the girls did leave, but the vast majority of them just took a couple of minutes to warm up. In no time, it was back on, our way, I supposed, of telling the Degenerate Sinners they couldn’t interrupt the party.

  But I didn’t give two shits about the party. I had who I wanted to see back here.

  I saddled up next to Mama, nodded to her, and smiled.

  “So,” I said.

  “So,” she said back, leaning against the wall.

  I decided I was going to be a little more aggressive and assertive in what I wanted. I put my arm against the wall above her head, using my size to get closer to her. She seemed to enjoy it a bit from the expression on her face.

  “You saved our asses,” I said. “And then, in a way, I saved your ass.”

  “You did, did you? Tell me, Pork, how did that happen?”

  “Simple, cover fire,” I said. “I laid down the fire that prevented the Sinners from shooting at you while you sped to The Red Door.”

  “So it’s not because I’m Superwoman?”

  “Not with that attitude, because you are,” I said with a chuckle. “But yes, I will get greedy here and claim a little bit of the credit.”

  “Greed’s only good on Wall Street, hun.”

  “And when it comes to people you like.”

  Mama’s eyes locked into me so hard that moment, I thought that she was going to lean up and kiss me. I really, sincerely, honestly did. I mean, it would have been hard to top a line like the one I’d just said.

  “And what does that mean?”

  Mama’s tone suggested she was waiting for me to say something more.

  “It means that I’m going to also get greedy and ask you for that coffee date,” I said. “After all, I did prevent you from dying. The least I could get is to see you outside of The Red Door.”

  Mama stared at me with curiosity. I would have killed to know what was running through her mind. Was she thinking about me in a positive way? Was she debating how the hell to get away from me? Was she trying to figure out if she could let me down in a way that still left me feeling good?

  I was usually pretty good at reading people. I didn’t always say it out loud, because people didn’t like feeling so exposed and called out, but I usually could tell people’s intentions. But with Mama, goddamnit, I had no idea.

  “Didn’t I tell you already that I keep my home and work life separate?”

  “Like how much separated are we talking?” I said. “Like an inch? A mile? Because some separations can be leaped, others run—”

  “I knew I should have spoken literally to you,” Mama said with a laugh. “I swear you have an uncanny skill to just latch on to anything I say and make it funny.”

  “You mean if you’re literal, I can’t be funny? Does that mean I can’t be literally funny?”

  “Goddamnit, stop!” Mama said as she laughed.

  Her genuine laugh tickled my stomach. It felt really nice to hear it from her. It wasn’t a sound that came often, and that wasn’t just for me.

  It was like, just like the rest of us, she had appearances to keep up, and God forbid she show anyone anything other than her full, confident self.

  “You’re cute and sweet, even if I do have to smack the shit out of you sometimes.”

  “So you’re saying I shouldn’t eat anything so I shouldn’t have any shit for you to knock out of me?”

  Mama’s face dropp
ed. OK, maybe now I was pushing my luck.

  “Pork, you’re very sweet. But not right now. OK?”

  With that, she leaned forward, kissed me on the cheek—such a tantalizingly close thing, but unfulfilling—and then moved past me to say something to Richard.

  This shit was getting old. I didn’t mean Mama rejecting me, though that was getting old too. Rather, the fact that I kept falling into stupid-ass humor like that as a default and as a fallback was killing me. It made me easy to dismiss as a clown.

  I couldn’t keep getting rejected. I couldn’t keep being seen as the clown. I had to take some risks, let my guard down, and try to make something with Mama on a serious level.

  The thought terrified me. It really did. My humor made me easy to like and got me attention. My humor bridged many a gap and made things easy for people to relate to me.

  But it also made it too easy to miss the real Joseph Young.

  If I wanted to take a risk with Mama, it was nothing to joke about.

  Chapter 4: Mama

  “What’s going on with him?”

  I didn’t need to turn around to know whom Richard spoke of. There was only one possibility.

  “He’s getting more aggressive with wanting to go out with me,” I said. “He keeps asking me for coffee. Normally, he dances around the subject and doesn’t say anything. But right now, he’s getting pretty persistent.”

  “Desperate?”

  That… may have been an accurate word, but it wasn’t one that I wanted to ascribe to Pork. He wasn’t wrong when he said he’d saved my life, or at least protected me well enough. A man who had saved the life of a woman wasn’t desperate in asking for a coffee or a drink.

  “No, Oscar was desperate,” I said, which was true enough of a statement.

  “Who is—”

  “My date from earlier,” I said. “He was weak. Showed up late, bragged about his job. Maybe some girls would have found him hot enough to ignore the warning signs, but I wasn’t having any of it. He kept trying to make it work. That’s someone desperate.”

  “Fair enough,” Richard said. “Have you thought of going out with Pork?”

  Well, put that way, I supposed that maybe I should. If Richard was asking more out of curiosity than he was condemnation, that wasn’t a bad sign, was it?

  “I think about a lot of things,” I said. “But that doesn’t mean I give more than a second—”

  “OK, I get it,” Richard said. “Mama, just do you. OK?”

  I nodded as Richard started to smile, seeing Natasha waving to him. I nodded to her and turned back to him.

  “I’m not going to let this club get broken up by something as silly as love,” I said, wondering as I spoke why I’d gone straight to love and not something more in the middle like a hookup. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I’m not,” Richard said. “I’m more worried about you letting something fester than you letting something happen. Anticipation will kill us before anything else does.”

  How right you are, Richard. How fucking right you are.

  * * *

  Even with all of those thoughts, nothing came of any interaction that evening with Pork or anyone else. Pork went home early; in fact, early meant no more than about five minutes after I left him to speak with Richard. He didn’t look frustrated, though. Quite the opposite.

  He looked determined.

  But for what, I couldn’t say. It didn’t seem to involve me since he didn’t return or text me again. So, I stayed until late, making sure all of the girls went home safely or found a man to sleep with, and then headed home on my bike, watching the sunrise before I passed out until later that day.

  When I awoke, it was four p.m. I killed time for an hour watching TV, flipping on “Her” on Netflix before I headed to the clubhouse, turning it off just as Joaquin Phoenix’s character realized that Scarlett Johansson’s computerized character was actually speaking to multiple men across the world. As usual, Richard and I were the first ones at the club.

  “What’s on the docket today, Mr. President?” I said with a smirk as I kissed him on the cheek.

  “Hey, beautiful,” he said. “The Green Hills Saints are going to come in tomorrow from Cali. They’re bringing with them two dozen. Trace Cole, their president; BK, whom you’ve met; and Krispy, one of their officers, are all coming, along with many of their members. I think The Red Door is going to get a little bit crowded for a couple of weeks.”

  “Oh, fun,” I said. “I’ve always wondered what we’d all be like if we were actually in California.”

  “Well, there won’t be any women.”

  “Please,” I said with a hand wave. “You say that as if I know how to be friends with other women. They’re barely better than men. Many of them just take what the man says and run with it.”

  Maybe I just don’t like people in general. The way life’s been since before, and the early years of knowing Richard, that’s not a bad way to feel.

  “Well, then you’ll be in paradise dealing with all the gentlemen,” Richard said with an eye roll. “We’ll be discussing ways to take out the Sinners for good. We can’t have them running around Las Vegas. Apparently, the local newspaper is running stories about rising crime in our area. Mario can only cover for us for so long.”

  “Well, tell the police chief to sit his hurried ass down and smoke a blunt or something,” I said. “We can’t—”

  I paused when, upon opening the door to the clubhouse, I saw Pork sitting there by himself, sipping on a drink. He had one leg crossed over the other, suggesting a casual pose.

  But the intensity radiating from him suggested he was anything but casual. In fact, it seemed very unlike Pork right now.

  “Mama, can I speak to you alone for a minute?”

  Richard shot me a warning look, but there was nothing to warn me about. I knew this was going to involve him confessing some feelings he had inside, and there wasn’t anything I couldn’t handle about it.

  “Of course, hun,” I said. “Follow me to the dressing room. Girls won’t get there for another hour and a half or so. Richard.”

  “Go ahead, beautiful.”

  Pork scowled a little bit at that, which I had never really noticed him doing before. Then again, I hadn’t ever noticed him acting this way when there wasn’t a fight going on of some kind.

  I led Pork to the dressing room, shut the door behind me, and nodded to him.

  “Whatcha got, bucko?” I said.

  “Look, I know I’ve asked you for coffee a few times, and I know it’s easy to reject me as being the playful clown or whatever,” he said. “But I need you to know I am very serious about this.”

  I bit my lip and didn’t say anything. I had a feeling he had a few things he needed to get off his chest, and I wasn’t about to be the one to interrupt him right now.

  “If you still don’t want to go out with me, fine. I’ll leave this as is and not say anything else. But I’m asking you out as a serious person. Not as Pork, the clown. But as Joseph Young, Navy SEAL, college graduate, all my flaws, all my great parts, everything. I like your attitude, your charisma, your honest, everything.”

  And I like that you take my slaps, my groans, my warnings, and you just keep charging ahead. You’re you because of who you are, not because of how you think I would want you to be.

  “I just need to know, Mama. I’ve liked you for some time, and I can’t keep going on like this. I need an answer. If your real answer is no, so be it. But I hope your real answer is yes.”

  I took a breath to make sure I chose my words carefully. If Pork—or, in this case, Joseph—was choosing his words with caution, then the least I could do was to take my own words equally seriously.

  “You got guts, Joseph, I will give you that,” I said, making sure to say his real name. “You also are handsome. You can be serious. But most of all, you aren’t afraid of me. I know I can be a , but despite my repeated attempts to shut you up or control you, you don’t take it. I respect
the hell out of that.”

  I took another deep breath. I rarely had trouble looking people in the eye, but I was nervous for how he’d react as soon as I said what came next.

  “If we do this,” I said, which might as well have been my way of saying yes. “Then we need to go really, really, really slow. And you need to recognize that at any moment, without any warning, seemingly for no reason, I can decide to cut this off. Because, hun, you’re hot as hell—you really are—but I’m not fucking over the club for you. The club comes first. If this ends in any way other than perfectly, you’re the odd man out.”

  For just about anyone in the club, that would have been an unfathomable risk. I didn’t mean that this had to end in marriage, or he’d be out; I just meant that if he had any lingering feelings, if we ended in a fight, or if we were unable to go back to the way things were now, we would kick him out. It was cold, but it would be necessary.

  “I know,” he said almost immediately. “And I’m OK with it. I know this is a risk, but it’s a risk that I’m willing to take.”

  The fact that he spoke so quickly left me a little dumbfounded. Should this have been a little more concerning for him? Didn’t he fear a little bit the idea of getting thrown out of the club over a bad romance?

  “Why?” I asked. “I’m no one special. I’m not some girl that’s going to make your heart swoon. I’m a bad bitch, Pork, I mean, Joseph. I’m not going to be someone you’re going to want to take home.”

  “I don’t have a home to take you to,” he said. “Well, not literally, I do have a home, but I’m not here to make jokes. I’m just saying that I know what I like. And what I like is you. I’m mature enough to handle it. If it doesn’t work out, then I’ll go on my way.”

  There seemed to be something left unsaid that Joseph was hinting at. No one who joined this club ever wanted to leave; we treated our members far too well for anyone ever to want to do anything other than be a lifelong member. We’d had a couple have to retire out, but even then, we kept them in shape and took care of them.

  Maybe it was just because he was naturally easy-going. Maybe it’s because he looked the most “normal” of us—all of his tattoos, I knew, were hidden from daily view, visible only when he was shirtless or naked.