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

  “That is not for you to worry about.”

  “Oh?” I said, laughing.

  He literally couldn’t have said anything funnier if he had tried. All of the corny lines I invented in the world couldn’t compare to the statement that he had just dropped.

  “We came here for a reason, Pork,” he said. “That reason doesn’t include telling you all of the details. Let us be so we can do our job.”

  “Which is what,” I retorted. “To sell us out to the Sinners and take over Las Vegas? To take the cash cow that is The Red Door?”

  “You wanna call me a rat?”

  And there it was. It took an awful lot of guts for Krispy to say what he had, knowing the seriousness of such an accusation. If he said it, he must have been mighty confident in his position.

  Either I had misread everything, or he was one of the best bullshitters I had ever and would ever come across.

  “I wanna call you out for what you’re doing,” I said, even now cautious about using the word.

  “You can start by getting off my goddamn bike.”

  “You can—”

  “Pork!”

  Richard’s voice cut through the tension between us. I immediately got off of Krispy’s bike, and Krispy backed up. Richard approached, hands in his cut, glaring at me.

  “The fuck is going on?” he said.

  I gulped. I had to use the r-word if I wanted to have any standing in what I was doing.

  “Something going on between you two? Do I have another Barber-BK situation on my hands right now?”

  “No,” I said. “Because I know something.”

  “Do you?”

  Where the fuck did this come from, Richard?

  Maybe there is something I don’t know. He’s siding with Krispy… what the fuck?

  “Whatever you’re about to say, Pork, you better have perfect evidence for it,” Richard said. “I have a feeling I know what you’re thinking. But we all have things we need to do here.”

  Fuck me. Richard really is wheeling and dealing behind the scenes here.

  Or, on the other hand, he knows that if I say the word “rat” and I’m wrong, I’m as good as gone. He’s either saving my ass or Krispy’s ass.

  “I just want to make sure our California friends are aware of any and all threats in the area,” I offered up.

  “Yeah, can you do it without being on his bike?”

  “Not with—”

  I cut myself off, realizing I’d pushed my luck quite a bit already. Being flippant was fine in some situations; it would have been outright suicidal at this particular meeting.

  “Seems like we have a lot of unresolved tension here with the California Saints, and that falls on me,” Richard said with a grunt. “But right now, it’s obvious you two are having some sort of dispute. Krispy. Head home. Let me talk with Pork.”

  “You got it,” Krispy said.

  He very deliberately and brusquely bumped my shoulder as he walked by and then stared me down. I stared at him right back. I was going to expose him if he was, in fact, a rat and not some sort of undercover agent for us.

  He roared his engine to life, blaring its rumbling into my ear, and then sped off. As soon as he’d escaped the parking lot, I turned to Richard.

  “You know—”

  “Take off the next few days.”

  “What?”

  That was not what I expected. It was about the furthest thing from what I had expected.

  “I said, take off the next few days,” Richard said. “Right now, you need some space and a chance to destress.”

  “I—”

  That didn’t seem right. I wasn’t that stressed. I was pissed, sure, but I wasn’t stressed. Half the reason I joked as much as I did was so I didn’t lose my mind like some of the others would.

  And even if so, I probably needed to be stressed, given that it felt like something was being hidden from me.

  “Do whatever it is you need to do,” he said.

  To not come back until a few days later?

  What the fuck was going on?

  “I’ll take off next two nights, skip the parties,” I said.

  “That’s the idea,” Richard said. “See you Thursday.”

  When I left the parking lot, I felt decent. I felt like Richard had reassured me things would be fine.

  But by the time I got home, I was fuming. Did Richard not trust me enough to reveal everything? Obviously, the answer was no. But why? What was he doing? And did he actually know what he was doing? Did he have any idea Krispy was in cohorts with the Sinners?

  Maybe Mama would know.

  But I wasn’t going to say anything by text. Anything not in person could have been a risk.

  As soon as I got to Panorama, I texted Mama to let her know I was looking forward to seeing her tomorrow. I even used the name “Tanya,” the name I preferred to think of her by outside the club. It was a little compartmentalizing, sure, but it worked.

  It didn’t do much to cure my foul mood, though. I wasn’t sure anything was going to do that. In fact, as I sat at home, stewing, sipping on my rum and coke, thinking about the date tomorrow, I knew two things.

  One, it could be one of the best nights of my life.

  And two, even if that were true, I would still have to tell Mama what I had learned here at some point.

  Chapter 10: Mama

  I read Joseph’s text just before I fell asleep. It made me so happy to see it.

  It also made me pissed to know I’d have to wait until ten p.m. the next day to see him.

  * * *

  When nine-fifty p.m. rolled around the next day, I was sitting at the bar in Aces and Ales in Northern Las Vegas. We’d agreed to this time for the sake of all but eliminating the possibility that other Savage Saints would see us out and about, setting the rumor mill into full swing. This particular bar was also close to Summerlin, one of the nicest parts of Vegas, eliminating the likelihood that the Sinners would dare to come our way and stir up trouble.

  Still, that meant that I had a good ten hours from the time I woke up to the time I saw Joseph, and that time was spent doing a whole lot of jack shit. Waiting around. Cleaning my apartment—you know, just in case he and I came back to my place. Thinking about the evening.

  Fantasizing about him.

  It’d been so long since I’d had good sex—and I didn’t mean the kind of sex that could be described in terms of positions, thrusting, or even orgasms. I meant the kind of sex where you just completely opened yourself up to the other person, exposed your soul as much as your body to them, and trusted that they weren’t going to hurt you in any fashion. I’d thought I’d had that with my boyfriend several years ago, but it was all an illusion.

  If I factored that in, I was pretty sure I’d never experienced sex like that.

  But if anyone was going to do it, it was Joseph Young.

  Assuming, of course, he didn’t get scared off as soon as I told him all of my secrets.

  The bartender came by and asked if I needed a refill of my drink. I was already halfway through drink number two of a blueberry vodka and water—a surprisingly delicious combo—and had my eyes glued to the Dodgers-Padres baseball game on. Not that that, mind you, meant I was actually paying attention.

  “There’s going to be a handsome gentleman joining me in a few minutes,” I said. “When he comes, hook us up with some drinks, would you? A rum and coke and another one of these.”

  “You got it,” the bartender, a burly, bald man with neck tattoos, said.

  He went over to the opposite end of the bar. My eyes followed him, mostly out of boredom. There was another couple at the end of the bar, but they looked so much more… so much happier than I was. They weren’t part of a club. They probably weren’t as wealthy as Richard and I had become through The Red Door, but if money bought happiness, then Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates would be the new Jesus and Buddha.

  It made me wonder if we could ever have that life. It was no secret that the
life of a biker was unforgiving and harsh, but that didn’t mean we couldn’t find some purpose in it somewhere.

  Right?

  “Hey, Mama.”

  Joseph’s voice, sung along like a song Kanye West had once done, reached my ears. I turned to him, bashfully smiled, and grabbed my drink.

  “It’s Tanya for the evening.”

  “OK, Miss Reed, whatever—”

  “That, I will slap you for,” I warned with a smirk. “Don’t go making me feel old. I’m already self-conscious about that; I don’t need further reminders.”

  Joseph looked surprised at that comment, but his attention quickly shifted to the fact that our bartender was now making us our respective drinks and had them placed out almost in record time.

  “You look surprised,” I said.

  “How did he know—”

  “Because I know, and I can treat you,” I said. “Now sit your ass down. It’s time you learned some things about me.”

  Joseph did so, looking happy and cheerful, although a couple of times, his smile dropped, suggesting that he was forcing it a little more than not. I didn’t ask about it, though, because I didn’t want to waste his time. I needed to get everything out before he had a chance to try to connect any further.

  “Joseph, I like you, but there’s a lot of shit in my past that, if you knew, I suspect you’d want nothing to do with me. And so, if we’re going to try to be anything, I need you to know right now. If this all scares you, I understand. You can stay in the club, and I won’t do anything to jeopardize your standing here. That is my promise to you.”

  “OK, I—”

  I put my hand up and cut him off. I finished my second drink with one powerful gulp, motioned for the bartender to grab me another one, and turned back to Joseph.

  “Let’s start with my childhood, shall we,” I said. “My real parents died when I was very young from drug overdoses. At least, that’s the story my foster parents told me. I was too young to know what actually happened. They could still be alive, for all I know. And the reason I say that is because my foster family was abusive. Horrible. Hit me. Thankfully, nothing sexual, but for how they treated me otherwise, it wasn’t like there was anything to be grateful for.”

  I shuddered at some of the memories. My foster mother slapping me because I’d failed a course in math. My father shoving me against the wall in a drunken stupor when I came home late one night. Was it any wonder that I didn’t trust people in general?

  “Growing up was hell on Earth,” I said. “Absolute fucking hell. Life as a child was not something I ever want to remember, nor do I try to. For the most part, I just block it out and pretend life began at seventeen years old. That was the age when I finally reached my breaking point and ran off.”

  “Why? What happened?”

  I wished there was a story behind it. I wished there was some great impetus where I got up, fought my foster parents back, and ran out, never to communicate with them again.

  Alas, the real story wasn’t so dramatic.

  “One day, my parents just didn’t come home,” I said. “I’m sure they did, eventually, but with me as old as I was, they knew they could just go off on vacation for a few days, and I wouldn’t die. Well, I said fuck it. I ran off. I was in Arizona at the time and ran all the way to Las Vegas. My plan, frankly, was to sell myself while I searched for work. I’d figure out the rest from there.”

  I took a second to gulp my new vodka-water mix. Joseph kept silent, patiently waiting for me to continue.

  “It was here that I met Richard. Richard was an absolute saint; to this day, he’s the only man I’ve ever met who didn’t want to fuck me right off the bat. I think it was because he was a kindred spirit of sorts, a man who had run away from home to avoid the bullshit of life and so-called ‘family.’ He and I protected each other and looked out for each other; even to this day, he’s the same way. Without him, I’d be dead.”

  “Wait, what?”

  Admittedly, maybe the statement was a slight exaggeration. But in terms of being dead inside without him? There was nothing exaggerated about that.

  “I mean it,” I said. “Richard will tell you I built the club, and while I did have the idea for it, there’s no me without him. We complemented each other. We love each other, but it’s not a sexual love. It’s purer than that. It’s a love forged by iron, hard times, and a shared past. Unfortunately, Richard couldn’t save me from the second horrid thing of my past, which was the one relationship that I had that lasted more than a few months.”

  And it should have been the one to end the soonest. But I was weak and vulnerable.

  “We started the Savage Saints a few years after we met, and in the early days, maybe our fifth member was this guy named Stewart Elliot. He was an asshole, but he could make people laugh. You know how Dom is cocky? Think that, but with a mean streak.”

  I hated the comparison because Dom was a good guy. A little too interested in pussy, but still a good man. But there was no one else in the club that even came close to what Stewart was.

  “Obviously, there’s the cliché of falling for the bad boy, which was exactly what happened. I could never fall in love with Richard. The other members and other men in my life were intimidated by me. But not Stewart. In fact, Stewart seemed to relish the challenge. He’d take me out, talk trash, make me laugh, and do everything he could to make me feel like a queen. But. It came at a price.”

  Again, memories came flooding back. Violent choking. Getting punched. Getting locked in a room.

  “For the first month or so, all was perfect. We had the occasional fight, sure, but nothing crazy compared to most normal, sane couples. But then, if Stewart didn’t get exactly what he wanted, he’d become violent. He’d lose his shit. He’d demand that I do things his way because he knew better. And what’s fucked up about this? I stayed in that for a few years.”

  I wasn’t going to cry remembering this. I’d shed too many tears thinking about him and what had happened for me ever to be affected in any fashion. But that didn’t mean I didn’t feel sad and like shit recalling what all had happened.

  “If I’d have any semblance of guts, I would have walked out and told him to leave,” I said. “But it wasn’t until Richard kicked him out for being a dick to everyone else that I finally had the excuse to leave.”

  “Did Richard suspect anything?”

  It was certainly possible. I’d never discussed the issue with him, and the more time that went on and the more things evolved, the less we talked about Stewart.

  “Who knows,” I said. “All I know is that when I dumped Stewart, that was the end of him. I never talked to him again. But he left numerous scars, bruises, and memories that I have fought like hell to get rid of. Which… brings me to the hardest thing yet.”

  Actually, that was glossing over the full truth of Stewart.

  But that wasn’t something that I could bring myself to face. If I couldn’t do that, then how the hell could I admit it to Joseph? At least he’d be in the same boat as I was, ignorant of how it might be affecting me.

  “About a month after Stewart finally left my life for good, I realized I’d missed my period. I had to go to a doctor—we weren’t big enough of a club for us to have a doctor on call with us—but he confirmed it. I was pregnant. It was a moment that, truthfully, I felt quite happy about. It was like my reward for enduring hell with Stewart was to receive new life, a life that I could mold into my image. Maybe my own life was a piece of shit, and maybe everyone I knew except Richard treated me like hell, but at least I could ensure that my little child would never have to experience the same. But…”

  I bit my lip. This was the one part of the retelling I had never quite gotten over. This was the part… this was the part that could make me cry.

  I resolved to do my best not to. If I did, well, I’d see how Joseph reacted. But the second date, even if I’d known Joseph for some time, was no place to start crying. It would have done a marvelous job of show
ing how crazy I was.

  “I miscarried,” I said after a pause of about a dozen seconds. “And the thing that hurts so bad about that, Joseph? The part that tears me up inside was that it wasn’t just my child that died. It was my hope for a normal life. It was, perhaps, my last chance at being a normal woman. I know some women say they don’t want kids, but I know for a fact those same women would never want the life I have, being in a biker club and all of that. And so I felt this was my chance at being happy, and it was gone.”

  I sighed.

  “I just took that as a sign from something or someone—God, the universe, my soul, whatever the fuck you want to say—that I shouldn’t have kids. That I’m too damaged and too broken to be trusted to raise a child. I want kids selfishly. I want to have that joy of seeing one born and raising it from birth, but I don’t trust my own body. And, frankly, I don’t even know who would want to come inside me raw. With all the crazy that I am?”

  I laughed. What else could I do that wouldn’t involve me crying miserably?

  “Is it any wonder that I deliberately push chances at love away? The only person who has ever loved me was Richard, and as I said, that’s a different kind of love.”

  I sighed. Joseph, to his enormous credit, had still not said a word. His eyes had never left mine. As far as I could see, the only thing in his world and on his mind at that moment was me; there wasn’t anything else that divided his attention. I had no idea why, but he was here still.

  “I’m telling you all of this, I believe, because you deserve to know what you’re walking into. I know there’s a part of me that probably is trying to self-sabotage us so I don’t have to risk another Stewart situation or another miscarriage. Yes, I know you’re not an abusive type. I pick up on that much more than I did before. I know you’re a good guy. But I can’t control my instincts. I can only react to them.”

  Joseph leaned forward, took my hand, and kissed it very gently before giving a soft squeeze.

  “I appreciate you saying all of this,” he said. “I do have one question.”

  “Go for it,” I said.