Hearts: Motorcycle Club Romance (Savage Saints MC Book 7) Page 6

  I snorted at that. Don’t jinx it just yet, Dom.

  “Later, player.”

  Chapter 6: Mama

  There was something about seeing outsiders that just made the threat seem so real.

  We’d never needed help. Richard and I, when we started the club nearly two decades ago, had prided ourselves on not needing help. It was something that we took ownership of, the two of us coming from places that we wanted nothing to do with. The only person we relied on was each other; we never, ever asked for help from someone we didn’t know.

  And yet, here we were, faced with an enemy too great in number for us to deal with, too willing to fight outside customary norms, and too willing to create public disturbances for us to deal with on our own. The unthinkable had come. Richard had had to go outside for help with the club.

  It was no fucking wonder I was so stressed. Were we already screwed if we were asking for help like so? Were we going to bloat ourselves to the point of being untenable? What sort of ego battles would sprout beyond Barber and BK? I almost wanted to hit Joseph harder when he came to me during our poker break, but I pushed it down. Just because I was stressed didn’t mean that he deserved to feel the same way.

  When I finally did get to sleep that night, it wasn’t until the sky had already begun to turn a different shade of blue. I was used to running on such little sleep, but that didn’t mean it was without importance. I was a cranky bitch with sleep, so being without it was not something anyone wanted to see.

  I woke up to something, though, that brought me unexpected happiness.

  Joseph messaged me. I hadn’t yet looked at the content of the message but waking up to see that he’d sent two texts already was the right kind of way to start the day.

  “Two questions,” his message read. “One, do you agree we should keep this on the DL? And two, coffee and drinks today?”

  Boy, he wasn’t kidding about wanting to make this work, huh?

  Let’s put a little bit of panic into him and see what happens, shall we?

  I immediately wrote back, “Too late; I told everyone.” I saw that he read the message immediately and started to reply. I wrote back “Kidding” as quickly as I could before he panicked too much. I thought of sending an emoji, but that seemed like child’s play. I wasn’t going to send some stupid emoji when I was a walking bitch face.

  “Had me scared there, was afraid I’d have to quit early!” he wrote back. “But what about meeting up later today?”

  I knew that I wasn’t ever going to hear the end of it if I said no. We still had the club to go to tonight. Maybe we would have been better served waiting until a Tuesday or a Wednesday.

  Or, maybe, by having the date now, it ensured we wouldn’t do anything too stupid and could keep it contained. If feelings did blossom, it would give us time to let it organically grow. If they didn’t, then we could escape to work easily and try to keep Joseph in the club.

  “Starbucks, five, off Rancho Drive,” I wrote. Then, just before sending it, I added, “Don’t be late.”

  True to form, as if waiting hand and foot on me—which, for some reason, with Joseph, I found attractive—he immediately wrote back.

  “What if club members see us?” he wrote. “Let’s go somewhere the club wouldn’t see us.”

  Sneaking around Las Vegas. A forbidden romance.

  Hmm. There is something quite appealing about that, isn’t there?

  “Sure,” I wrote back. “Green Valley Parkway, just off 215. Starbucks there.”

  “Four-thirty? So we account for the drive?”

  You’re just pushing me to hang out longer, aren’t you?

  Not that I mind too much. Not that I’m going to say no to that.

  “Sure,” I wrote. “See you there.”

  * * *

  As I got prepped for my date later that afternoon, as I tried my best to stay even-keeled, I couldn’t help but realize that there may have been a lot more riding on this date than I cared to admit out loud.

  I’d survived an awful lot in my life that not only did I not feel I had to apologize for, but I also did not feel like I had to explain it to anyone. I’d run away from a foster home at seventeen years old. Along with Richard, I’d survived the streets of Las Vegas until The Red Door became what it was. I survived an abusive boyfriend in my early twenties, and as if that wasn’t enough, I survived a traumatic miscarriage very late into my pregnancy. It was my story; it made me who I was, and I was proud of it.

  But I recognized that for many people, it was too heavy a story. It was a story that would scare off even the boldest, most audacious of men. Actually, it would likely scare them off first, since they had their pick of girls. Sure, I had a nice body, and I knew it, but that only drew the men in at first; if I actually wanted love or something corny like that, then my internal scars—and, in one particular area, my external scars—were bound to scare would-be suitors away.

  There was a weird dichotomy in my head in which I recognized the need to appreciate this chance. I couldn’t waste it, no matter what. If there was even a small chance that Joseph and I could work out, it was one I had to take. But on the other hand, I also recognized that I couldn’t have picked a harder person to fall for, given the dynamics of us being in the same club.

  Fall too hard, and inevitably, trouble would brew within the Savage Saints. Push away too much, and I might never get the chance again at love. I suppose it said a lot about my love for the club that this was even a debate—most women my age would probably not feel anywhere close to as conflicted as I did.

  It didn’t stop me from going, though, and so I arrived at Starbucks at four-fifteen. I remembered what I’d thought about Oscar from the previous date, but I didn’t really hold Joseph to the same standards as I had with him. With Joseph, I just expected him to arrive at four-thirty.

  It meant, of course, that he showed up just two minutes later, pulling up on his bike. When he took off his helmet, I couldn’t help but admire his thick shoulders, his broad body, his mean but sweet face, and his thick, black beard.

  “Damnit, I was supposed to come first,” he said, intentionally giggling at his joke.

  I rolled my eyes but humored him anyway. Would I have done the same in front of the club? Probably not.

  “Whatever, Joseph,” I said. “How are you?”

  “I’m marvelous now that you’re here, Tanya,” he said. “Can I call you Tanya?”

  “Please!”

  The thought of hearing my potential lover call me “Mama” was fine when this wasn’t going to possibly turn into something romantic. When it was… well, all sorts of Oedipus complex images came to mind, none of them something I wanted to consider.

  “I could think of a different nickname for you if you’d like,” he said. “If I’m Pork, maybe you could be Potato? Or maybe you could be Sweet Potato?”

  “Did you not hear me call you Joseph?” I said with a laugh. “I mean, shit, are your ears still ringing from that bike ride? Do I need to slap some hearing into you?”

  Joseph looked surprised. I didn’t think anyone had called him Joseph within the club in ages.

  In our defense, though, Pork just stuck so easily, it was all but impossible not to call him that. So, too, was Mama. Looks like we’re not seeing each other as Savage Saints anymore, but as a man and a woman.

  “I think the coffee is going to slap me wide awake!” he said. “Speaking of, you don’t have anything. We should change that. What do you want?”

  “I’m good,” I said, and I meant it. I just wanted the company for a couple of hours before we had to head to The Red Door. And so far, Joseph was delivering in spades.

  “Well, I am great, but I’d like to be perfect,” he said. “So I will be right back.”

  With that, he moved by me, placing a hand on my shoulder. It should have meant nothing, or at least it should not have provoked a strong reaction of any kind.

  But as I was rapidly learning from the previous few days, “s
hould have” did not align that often with “actually did” with Joseph. He had an effect on me that defied how I interacted with almost every other man out there.

  The shoulder touch sent a warm rush through my body. It was absolutely silly. I was thirty-eight, not thirteen! I’d fallen in love—albeit with the worst possible man I’d ever known—I’d had sex, I’d done just about everything I could have.

  And the thing was, the shoulder touch was just the beginning. Because now I was becoming self-conscious about turning around and looking at him. I wanted to admire his looks and his body, but I didn’t want to look like I was acting creepy in eying him up. I wanted to feel his muscles from his forearms to his calves, but I didn’t want to preemptively do it and fall into something too fast.

  I was very much Tanya Reed right now. Mama was too tough and too badass to deal with this shit. She was not a projection by any means, either; she was very real. But she was also very absent right now.

  Joseph sat down a few seconds later with a hot chocolate.

  “In this kind of heat?” I said, narrowing my eyes.

  “I mean, it’s hot weather, hot chocolate, hot you.”

  Oh, good grief. But I let it go with a mere smile.

  And then… silence.

  What could we talk about? It’s not like we needed to know about each other’s jobs or our backgrounds. We knew each other pretty well, though to be clear, the ethos of Savage Saints was that things were on a need to know basis, so it wasn’t like I knew Joseph’s entire story. He definitely didn’t need to know mine.

  But it felt like it would have been very forced if we’d gone from just making jokes about the other being hot to some serious topic. It would have felt unnatural.

  Then again, what was ever natural and normal in my life?

  “So this is the part where we talk about our jobs, right?” Joseph said.

  “I was literally just thinking about how we can skip that step,” I said. “I don’t know, this is kind of weird, I’m not going to lie.”

  “Then let’s make it weirder,” Joseph said. “My name is Joseph Young. I’m from Phoenix, Arizona, and I went to college at Arizona State while in Navy ROTC before I became a SEAL. I’m—”

  “What is this, a goddamn AA meeting?” I said with a snort.

  “You’re supposed to say, ‘Hi, Joseph Young,’” he said.

  Goddamnit, Joseph, why do I like your stupid sense of humor so damn much?

  “Hi, Joseph Young,” I said, trying to keep a straight face but failing rather miserably in the process.

  “Good! After the SEALs, I found myself wandering around before I landed here. What’s your story?”

  That was not the complete story, if only because “found myself wandering around” was vague. We’d picked up Joseph when he’d been bartending and was looking to get into something of more of a brotherhood, but there wasn’t much else to it. He knew how to use guns, how to fight, and how to bring levity to the group. I resisted at first—and still did, somewhat—but I recognized the balancing act between my serious, crass words and his playful humor went a long way to helping club morale.

  “What’s my story, huh?” I said, knowing that, at most, I’d probably tell ten percent of it. “Let’s see. Ran away from home at seventeen. Met Richard here. The two of us eventually founded the Savage Saints. Built up the business. And… been here since.”

  “That’s very interesting,” Pork said, pretending to be a journalist on the prowl. “Tell me more.”

  I laughed.

  “Only if you tell me about your time in the SEALs.”

  Joseph suddenly went very cold and very dark. The humor vanished from his eyes, like someone doing a cutover on a TV screen, and any puns that were on the tip of his tongue got swallowed.

  “I had an easy life before then,” he said, his voice becoming very monotone. “And then I made some mistakes in Iraq that made life hard.”

  “Why?”

  But Joseph didn’t say a word, instead looking down at the ground. Too far. Too far for right now.

  “Because I moved to a rock in Las Vegas and found myself between it and a hard place. Get it? Rock and a hard place? Eh? Eh?”

  “Oh, Joseph,” I said with a smile.

  He had a way, even when it was obvious he was dodging hard subjects, of making everyone around him feel like his best friends. Conversation with Joseph was just so easy.

  Too easy, almost.

  But then again, was that something to be concerned about? If the worst that I could say was that Joseph Young communicated in too lighthearted a manner, wasn’t that exactly what I needed given how shitty my life had been?

  I supposed that maybe that had something to do with my fear of him leaving the club too easily. If he was so easygoing, he wouldn’t feel so tied down. That was the idea, at least.

  “You know,” Joseph said, clearing his throat. “As much fun as it is to sip on this still-warm hot chocolate and talk, I can’t help but wonder if we could do something more… exciting.”

  “Oh?” I said, now very curious.

  “Yeah, I think we can take some risks, have a little fun,” he said, leaning forward. “I’m thinking you can come somewhere besides here with me and we can go all in. What say you?”

  There was no way that Joseph was making moves this aggressive this early. I’d seen him at the parties with women. He might have sealed the deal in under half an hour twice in the years he’d been here, and that had mostly happened at the beginning. No, this had to be a joke.

  It was always a joke.

  Well, on the surface, it was always a joke.

  “I say let’s go,” I said. “I say show me what you have in mind.”

  * * *

  “Twenty one!”

  I shouted in joy as the dealer threw down a king on top of my ace, giving me blackjack.

  OK, I had to admit, I didn’t think Joseph meant that we’d go and have sex when he spoke the way he did at Starbucks, but I didn’t peg him for taking me to the nearby casino, Green Valley Ranch, and putting me on the tables. But here I was, a cocktail in one hand, chips in the other, and Joseph’s congratulatory scratch of my side. I squirmed when he did that, and he delighted in seeing me giggle like so.

  He’d actually discovered it by accident when I stood up, and he’d meant to put his hand on my shoulder. But now that he knew of it, there was no way he was going to stop.

  We’d only had one cocktail a piece, knowing that we had a ride back and a full evening ahead of us for “work,” but for right now, we were just two adults having a flirtatious date. I liked scratching his arms; he liked squeezing at my side. The alcohol certainly helped, but so did the fact that we’d danced around each other for some time.

  “Looks like lady luck is on your side right now,” Joseph said. “Not so much mine.”

  “I’m sure she’ll come back around,” I said.

  “Or,” Joseph said. “She just knows there’s another lady in her place right now and she’s not going to win over her.”

  I laughed nervously at what was said. It wasn’t a nervous laughter, more just the butterflies that came from any romantic encounter.

  The butterflies that I had not experienced in a long, long time.

  We played at the tables until about six-fifteen p.m., at which point Joseph escorted me to… the top of the parking deck?

  But to my surprise, it turned out to be the perfect spot to view all of the Las Vegas Strip.

  “Everyone wants to go to the casinos,” he said. “But no one realizes the best views are actually in the parking decks. It’s like how the best things in life are often staring you right in the face, but you keep looking for something glitzier.”

  It wasn’t lost on me that he said this as he was staring right at me.

  “You know, Tanya, I feel extraordinarily happy right now,” he said. “I’m usually a happy person, but I’m not always a content person. But when I’m with you, I become seriously happy and seriously conten
t.”

  “Joseph…”

  I suddenly realized he was stepping forward, and I was pressed up against the wall of the balcony. There was no getting away from this now. There was no image to put up, no other club members around, nothing to prevent what Joseph was about to do.

  “I want you to feel some of that same contentment.”

  He put his hands on my side, locking me where I was. He leaned forward.

  Like no one did.

  No one loved me.

  And I didn’t love anyone.

  In this world, in this life I’d given myself, I couldn’t be Tanya Reed.

  I had to be Mama.

  At the last second, I turned my cheek, giving Pork—yes, Pork now—the corner of my lips at most. He pulled back, confused.

  “I thought—”

  “I’m not ready for that,” I said. “I warned you I’d have to go slow. I’m sorry, but you know better.”

  I was too harsh to him right now. I was being too mean to myself. But it was absolutely true that I wasn’t ready for this.

  “I understand.”

  Do you, though, Joseph? Do you?

  Because if I barely understand my desires and wants, why should I believe that you do?

  Chapter 7: Pork

  I was disappointed.

  But I wasn’t defeated.

  Tanya was right. I did have to acknowledge that she needed to move slowly. A kiss on the first date might have been the appropriate speed for some people. For her, it most certainly wasn’t. I didn’t know much of her, but I knew enough to know that her guard was so fierce, it was like trying to break an iron shield with a wooden sword. Pure force wouldn’t work; an alternative approach was required.

  “We should get going,” I said, acknowledging that as much as I wanted to try to push a little further, I couldn’t and shouldn’t. Not for what I wanted with Tanya. “Shall we ride together?”

  “We can,” she said. “But doesn’t that seem unnecessary? Aren’t we trying to avoid attention?”