Kid: Cerberus MC Book 2 (7 page)

The bed calls to me like a long lost love as I walk out of the bathroom and back into the main part of the bedroom. I’ve spent so much time the last couple of months wasting away in bed, even more since losing Alec. If my stomach wasn’t trying to eat itself, I’d probably be more than tempted to continue the status quo.

I slide my cell phone in the back pocket of my jeans and head out to the kitchen to grab something to eat. Waking up in a new place, around people I’ve never met before is nothing new to me.

Even though I’ve been at the same foster home for the last three years, I’ve been moved around to at least five other homes before settling with the Stevens’. The only reason I’ve stayed there as long as I have is because I stopped telling the truth when the caseworker asked how things were, asked if I was happy, and asked if they were treating me okay.

Life at the Stevens’ was no walk in the park, but I’d never tell the caseworker the dirty details. It would mean being taken away from Farmington, away from Alec. I could endure a slew of wrongs as long as I had him. Since his death, I don’t even know how I wake up in the morning.

Laughter welcomes me as I draw closer to the kitchen. This situation will be much different than waking up in a foster home for the first time. I won’t encounter foster children on the other side of the wall. I’m pretty certain I’m the youngest one here, and only having met Kid, Shadow, and Rose, I have no idea how my presence will be received.

I cross the threshold into the room, and although the laughter and conversations don’t stop completely, they do die down a bit as everyone looks my way. Several of the guys are smirking at me as if they’ve been told some secret or joke I’m not privileged to. There are a couple of women in the room, and they nod in my direction and give me warm smiles. I smile back, but let my eyes wander, looking for the set of chocolate brown eyes I’ve been using as a safety harness.

He’s not here. I’m sure my disappointment in his absence is quite clear.

“You can sit over here, sweetheart,” comes from a guy in the corner.

I suddenly feel like the nerdy kid standing in the middle of the jocks and cheerleader’s table. All eyes are on me, judging me, trying to determine if I belong and finding me wanting.

I hear a throat clear roughly, and I jerk my head around hoping to see Kid, but my eyes land on a handsome guy at a table across the room. Shadow is sitting on one side of him and a beautiful blonde on the other side. He’s narrowing his eyes at me, and a slow tingle runs up my spine as if he somehow logged into to my personal database and is reading my entire life story chapter by chapter.

“Here, honey.” I look to my left and see Rose standing beside me with a plate of food. I take it from her hand and thank her sincerely. “Go on over there and have a seat,” she says pointing in the direction of Shadow and the mind-reading biker.

My steps falter only briefly because I see the woman’s face light up with a beautiful smile, and she raises her hand and waves me toward her and the men. I hold my head high as if nothing in the world can bring me down and make my way across the room, grateful I didn’t have to take the bald guy in the corner up on his offer for a place to sit.

“Kid better have super powers. Without them, he’ll never be able to stay away from that,” I hear one of the guys from a nearby table mutter as I walk toward the smiling woman. I pretend I didn’t hear it and keep on to my destination.

“Snatch,” the mind-reading biker says in a stern voice to the man who just made the off-color comment.

“Sorry,” I hear him mumble as I sit down at the table.

For fuck’s sake. I feel like I’m in high school all over again, except I’m dealing with mean scary bikers, not oversexed teen boys, clearly not much changes as men age.

I keep my head down, thankful for the reprieve from the other people in the room, but still not in the mood to talk. New people think asking questions about my life is just common courtesy. They have no clue just how fucked up it’s been, and at the end of the day they want pleasantries not the hard, bitter truth of it.

“Khloe.” I hear a man at the table speak, and I know instantly that it’s Shadow. I recognize his southern twang I heard for the first time yesterday.

I look up and reflexively smile back at him as I see a grin spread on his face.

“This is Emmalyn,” he says directing his attention to the female I’m sitting beside. I shake her hand when she offers it to me. “And this is Kincaid. He’s the club’s President.” He nods at me but doesn’t offer his hand.

“Nice to meet you both.” I drop my eyes back to my plate before adding, “Thank you for letting me stay here.”

“Well,” Kincaid says gruffly. “Kid seems to think you’d be more comfortable here than the foster home you’ve been assigned to.” I nod my head at him. “I trust his instincts, but I won’t tolerate any trouble in my club. He told me you’re eighteen in a month and will no longer have an obligation to the state?”

“Twenty-eight days,” I clarify.

“The stunt y’all pulled leaving the hospital without being discharged could’ve brought some real hardship down on the club.” I frown, feeling thoroughly chastised by the pseudo-patriarch of this organization. “Thankfully,” he continues, “I know a couple of guys down at the police station. They know you’re here. They’re not exactly doing backflips over the fact that a ward of the state is holed up with a bunch of bikers, but they’ve agreed to leave it be unless someone calls the police looking for you.”

I shake my head back and forth. “They won’t,” I vow. No one ever bothers looking for me. As long as I leave the Stevens’ alone, they leave me alone.

“Well, you’re welcome here so long as you’re not wanted by the police,” Kincaid finishes.

“Thank you,” I say as he stands from the table. “I’ll pay you back for the hospitality.” I have no idea how, but I’ll think of a way. I don’t make promises lightly. Too many have been broken to me in my lifetime. I’d never want someone to feel the sting of that pain when I don’t follow through.

“I have no doubt about that,” he says.

I watch him make his way across the room to the man who made snide remarks twice to me this morning. He leans in really close, and I can’t hear what he says to him, but I have no doubt it has something to do with me. The guy looks up at me and then cuts his eyes away quickly as if he’s just sinned and is being judged by God himself.

“We’re glad that you’re here,” Emmalyn says beside me. “Don’t let the guys around here get you too riled up. Every one of them is honestly a big teddy bear at heart.” She gathers her things and stands from the table. “Besides, they’d never try to steal another one of the guys’ girls. You have nothing to worry about.” She pats my back as she walks away and follows Kincaid out of the room.

I don’t even have the energy to analyze her statement, so I look over at Shadow. “Where’s Kid?” I ask as he sets down his empty milk glass.

He shrugs. “He left late and never came home last night. He does that from time to time. He’ll show back up eventually.”

Shadow collects his dishes and leaves me sitting at the table alone. “Morning, Snap,” I hear him say before leaning in and kissing a pretty redhead on the cheek as she walks into the room.

Just when I think my day is looking up, I notice the shirt she’s wearing, which just so happens to be the shirt Kid was wearing yesterday.

I clear my throat softly to keep a sob from escaping. He’s not mine. I have no claim to him at all.

He called me beautiful
.

He never even hinted that he wanted anything more than to offer me a place to stay.

He called me beautiful
.

I’ve somehow allowed the idea that he’s attracted to me into my head. I’ve read the situation completely wrong.

He called me beautiful
.

Hastily, I get up from the table, dispose of my uneaten food into the trash, and make my way back to my room. Emmalyn is standing in the doorway as I slide past her. I nod my head in her direction, but I don’t say anything as I pass. I know if I try to talk right now I may cry. Crying in a room full of bikers is the very last thing I need to deal with right now. I want to wallow in self-pity more than anything now. I know it’s childish. I know being a grown up does not include getting upset because some boy doesn’t return your feelings.

I didn’t even consider that I had feelings for him until I saw that woman in his shirt. I shake my head, trying to ward off images of them together that have somehow snaked their way into my brain. I close the door softly and fall face first on the bed. Twenty-eight more days until I’m able to do anything and everything without restraint.

I had to leave last night. Knowing I was only a few doors down from Khloe was a special kind of hell for me. Not even in a sexual way. Well, not all sexual.

I vowed only to let Snapper suck me off last night. I fingered her to orgasm; I am a gentleman after all. But when my dick was standing at attention again twenty minutes after blowing into Snapper’s incredibly talented mouth, I knew further action had to be taken. Snapper offered to help me take my mind off of whatever was bothering me, and I accepted.

Only it didn’t really help. The sex was top notch; it always is with Snap, but it felt… empty. I wore her out and had no other choice but to leave her sleeping in my bed. I tried to get some sleep, but I tossed and turned for well over an hour. When I let the idea of going down to Khloe’s room creep into my head, I knew I had to get out of the clubhouse before I did something completely stupid.

I grabbed my keys and headed out into the brisk night air. What began as a quick ride to clear my head turned into an eight-hour round-trip to Albuquerque, and all I have to show for it is a sore ass and a small bag of gourmet chocolate.

I park my bike in the clubhouse lot and stretch my back as best I can. I stop near the front door to scratch the top of Ollie’s head as he stretches out in the sun.

“Such a hard life,” I mutter making my way inside.

I smile when I see Em sitting in front of the TV writing furiously in a notebook. Her head bobs up and down as she listens to the man on TV talking about vegetables or some shit, and then she lowers it again and scribbles on the paper.

“Hey,” she says noticing me only when I sit down beside her. She reaches over and grabs the tablet that houses the apps to control the entire entertainment center. She pauses the show and looks back at me.

“What are you up to now?” I ask looking up at the screen and seeing some old man holding up an overly large squash on the screen.

“I’m thinking of taking up gardening.”

I laugh at the absurd idea, but stop suddenly when she shoots daggers at me with her eyes. “I think that’s a great idea,” I amend.

Worst idea ever. Just a few weeks ago she thought the place needed to be livened up some and bought several house plants. I look across the room at the drooping ivy and shake my head. Thank God Ollie can beg for food, or he’d be rail thin by now.

“I got you these,” I tell her and hand over the signature gold bag from her favorite chocolate shop in Albuquerque.

“Truffles?” She asks enthusiastically even though she knows the answer. I watch her pull one out and take a bite. Expensive chocolate is supposed to be savored, but according to Em, the faster you chew it up the better it tastes. Women. I’ve never even tried to understand one.

“Khloe was looking for you earlier,” she says around a mouthful of chocolate.

I remain silent, unsure if I even want to open the door to the whole Khloe situation with Em. Out of everyone in my life, I know that Em would be the best one to talk to, but if I begin, it gives the situation more power than I have the energy for right now.

“She didn’t seem too happy to see Snap in your shirt this morning at breakfast.”

Fuck. Talk about a kick in the nuts.

I scrub my hands roughly over my face, still finding it weird to have hair growing on my face. The door I didn’t even want to crack open has just been blown off its hinges with Emmalyn’s statement.

“I should’ve woken her up and made her leave before I left.”

“Why would you hide the fact that you slept with Snapper from Khloe? Are you ashamed?” Emmalyn raises an eyebrow at me, waiting for an answer I’m not one hundred percent certain of.

“Seems that way,” I answer honestly. Ashamed. Disappointed in myself. I have no idea where this self-recrimination is coming from, but I know I don’t like how it feels sitting in my gut. “It’s a new feeling for me.”

“She’s very young,” Emmalyn says stating the obvious.

“She’ll be eighteen in a month, and it’s only a six-year difference between her and me. That’s not all that bad,” I correct defensively.

“Twenty-eight days.” I look at her confused. “She told Diego this morning that she’s eighteen in twenty-eight days.”

“I hate that I wasn’t here to introduce you guys.”

“No big deal,” she says with a shrug. “She seems like a nice girl.”

I cringe at the word
girl
. It’s the same word Emmalyn would’ve used for a twenty-five-year-old, so I know she doesn’t mean anything by it, but still…
girl
makes my stomach turn.