Raine Falling (Hells Saints Motorcycle Club) (16 page)

CHAPTER 39

J
esus. She was beautiful. In bed and out of bed. Goddamn crying her eyes out. She was so fucking beautiful he wanted to bury himself deep inside of her and never come out. And Diego owned Raine. She was his. He made that clear a whole lot of times in that hotel room. She had been hot for him. Willing and hungry. Soft in all the right places.

He had been watching her all afternoon. Every time she moved, he moved. Like some crazy stalker. He couldn’t help it. Everything about her fascinated him. The way she hung back from conversations until she was invited in. The way she listened, really listened, to what people said to her. The way she searched the room for him. Eyes touching but never landing on all the other dudes in the room until they landed on him. Then she would smile. And that smile went straight to his dick, but on the way down, it touched his heart.

Now she was sleeping next to him. After she had finished the adorable crying marathon where she had held on to Prosper like she was drowning. That flood of tears had soaked his shirt straight through. Diego had felt a surge of jealousy run through his bones so deep he felt something crack. Pinky moved him into the kitchen, and together they shared some reefer and what was left of the tequila. Pinky shared some more of Raine’s history, and Diego listened to every word.

Then they heard Prosper yell, “Coast is clear.” They also heard Raine giggle and knew that the crying jag was over.

Raine was pretty quiet on the way to the hotel, but once they hit the room she never stopped talking. She was so excited about that old photo book that he swore she was practically orgasmic. She showed him pictures and told him stories. She spoke more to him in the next hour than she had done the whole time he had known her, which he admitted wasn’t very long.

While he loved hearing the stories, his thoughts were mostly about getting into her pants. Every time she leaned in to point at something and her tits brushed his arm, he had instant wood. Her hair brushed against his forearm. He had to clench his jaw to keep himself reined in. He knew she was sharing something important, but having her was so new he couldn’t wait to have her again. And again.

So after the fourth page of pictures, he made his move. He took the book from her excited hands and excited her in a different way. Because she was so happy she was different this time when he took her. While she was willing before, this time she was eager. She undressed him and kissed him all over. All. Over. She stroked him and nuzzled him. She tugged at him and put her mouth on him. She climbed on top of him and rode him. First, slowly with a control that had him in awe. Then harder and harder. Her heavy tits bouncing while he came hot and hard inside her.

Then he flipped her over and took her again. Then over one more time. She felt his mouth on her and she opened wide for him. And he took his time. Tasting her honey, his tongue sliding over her clit and pushing its way deep inside her. God, she tasted sweet and clean and new. He fingered her and watched her face as she started building. Her eyes on his the whole time. Just when she was almost there, he took his fingers away. She shuddered and looked at him with those beautiful big blue eyes, pleading with him to finish her. He moved his big body over her smaller one and pulled her to him. He slung her legs over his shoulders and drove himself home.

CHAPTER 40

W
e were back at the farmhouse with Pinky and Prosper getting ready to head out to the services for Lilah. All I could think about was the incredible night, middle of the night, and very, very hot morning I had spent with Diego. Under him, on top of him, clasped tight to him, and every other way imaginable.

Wow.

I was dressed in my new blue pencil skirt, my new white blouse, and some seriously high heels. Diego had told me (yep,
told
me) to leave my hair down and I had. Minimum makeup, large silver hoops, and I was done. Diego had a new button-down white shirt under his cut and black leather pants that laced up in the front. He looked beautiful.

And I felt beautiful standing next to him.

The services were lovely. Pinky and Prosper had decided to combine the viewing with the church services and the church was packed. The church was progressive and allowed Pinky and Prosper to do as they saw fit to honor Lilah. There was a slide show, a number of eulogies, and the ceremony ended with Prosper and me playing guitar to one of Lilah’s favorite songs. “Hallelujah” by Leonard Cohen. I thought the last verse was particularly relevant. When we hit the chorus it surprised me to hear the congregation (such that it was, a sea of blond and leather) sing along.

CHAPTER 41

P
rosper, Diego, and Reno headed home two days after the services. Pinky had asked me to stay behind with her and Dolly to get things settled. I was happy to do that. Despite the tragedy of it all, those were some of the best days I had ever spent. Later on I would draw on these memories as a source of solace and strength. Glad to have had that time.

Pinky and Dolly brought me right into the fold. We had long mornings sitting at the coffee table poring over the treasure book of photographs that Prosper had rescued from my childhood. Some of the pictures were events I remembered, some I didn’t. There were pictures of my mom and my dad and Claire and me as babies. Candid shots. Claire and me in a bathtub, Claire sleeping in Dad’s arms, my mom pregnant with Claire and holding my hand and smiling that sweet, sad smile that I remembered so well. If the pictures and the memories made Pinky uncomfortable, she didn’t let on. I loved her so much for that, my heart was near to bursting. What a gift they had given me. Claire and I had mattered; we had been seen. We had been loved. I couldn’t wait to share them with my little sister.

Pinky decided to put the family home up for sale. We helped her do that. The three of us drove into town and met with a realtor. The realtor came out, assessed the property, and told us what we needed to do to get a fair and quick sale on the house. We did those things. Pinky hired some painters and had the kitchen floor replaced. We spent the week packing and cleaning and threw a lot of stuff out. A lot. There didn’t seem to be much that Pinky wanted to keep as reminders of her childhood. I completely got that.

Once I walked in to find Pinky sobbing in Dolly’s arms. When Dolly’s eyes met mine it was with mutual understanding. Not one of the three of us had had an easy life. Packing up the remnants of that kind of life could dredge up a whole lot of muck. That week poor Pinky was knee-deep in it. That’s why, Dolly explained to me later that day, Pinky had needed her girls with her at this time. Dolly thanked me for being there.

Her girls. Thanked me.

I wondered how it could be possible that these two brave, generous, loving women didn’t know what a gift their acceptance and love meant to me.

Over the week I spent with Dolly and Pinky, we shared a lot of our history. It didn’t happen all at once, and there was no pity party. It happened in between moments of laughter and tears. Between morning coffee and late-night margaritas. Pinky shared some hilarious moments with Prosper. I laughed until I cried. Dolly, not to be outdone, also shared stories about her man. Big badass biker stories in their testosterone fits and macho moments. They also shared their tender, most loving memories and that had made me cry in a different way. I wondered for the millionth time what it would be like to have a man love me, really love me, the way these women had been loved.

CHAPTER 42

W
hen I returned to the compound with Dolly and Pinky, things began to take on a sort of rhythm that felt good. I continued to live in Prosper’s rooms and continued to work at Ruby Reds. Pinky and Prosper still owned the lake house, which was about twenty minutes away in the direction of Reds. Prosper explained to me “in the days when he was whoring and drinking” that he spent a lot of nights at the clubhouse, but now he mostly wanted to be where Pinky was.

He went on to say that while I could consider those rooms mine, he figured eventually I would want to have more of a place to stay. He wanted me to know that I could consider the lake house my home if that was something I wanted. Wow. I wanted that. I
so
wanted that. But that was something Claire and I had to decide together. My little sister was never far from my mind and always,
always
in my heart.

My days were filled with Reds and the rest of the time I was at the compound. It became easy for me to be there. I was getting to know the brothers and their women and they were getting to know me. Slowly. I still kept to myself a lot, but eventually felt myself being drawn in. Prosper and I played music together in the evenings a lot and gradually I became a part of the firelight and laughter that I had feared as a child. Sometimes I would help Jules cook. Pinky and I decided to start a garden. Nice.

Things were good. However, there was much I had left unsettled back in Willows Point. I knew that I would have to face it eventually. Claire and I were going to plan what came next. It had always been Claire and me. We planned what came next and this brief parting made no difference.

So my life was in a holding pattern.

Diego. He was gone on some MC business when I had gotten back. He called me every day and just checked in.

So our calls basically went like this.

“Hey, Babe.”

“Hey.”

“How’s it going?”

“Pretty good. You?”

“Pretty good is not an answer, Babe.”

“Oh.”

“So, I’m gonna ask you again. How’s it going?”

“Not bad.”

“Babe.”

He’d ask me a few questions about my day. He never divulged much himself, so at times the conversation felt stilted and forced. I tried not to think too much of it. Really, our relationship thus far had been based on sex and arguing. Or so it seemed. I wasn’t sure where Diego fit in my life or
if
he fit in my life or
if
I fit in his.

And I gave Ellie some thought.

I did.

I thought a lot about Diego’s relationship with her. I had been around the club long enough to know the difference between the old ladies, the girlfriends, and the whores. Most times the guys would have all three. Some even had the added fourth, which meant a wife at home with kids. Fidelity was not in the Badass Biker Dictionary. Except maybe for Crow, and who knew what that was about.

I stayed away from the girl posse. Despite everything, or maybe because of everything, I was still a watcher. When it came right down to it, I honestly and truly didn’t know what really had gone on between Diego and Ellie. Sure, Diego had denied anything serious between the two of them. But I wasn’t stupid and neither was Ellie. Crazy mean maybe, but she was no dummy. Ellie didn’t seem like the type who would have stuck around if she hadn’t felt there was some
there
there.

I didn’t trust that she would just walk away from Diego or from what she thought was going to be the life of an old lady. The way some women dreamt of a house, a husband, and a minivan full of kids, these biker chicks dreamt of wearing property patches and filling in the back seat of a Harley.

She was gone. For now. But I had
no
doubt.
Not one shred of doubt
that we hadn’t seen the last of the train wreck that was Ellie. I just wanted to make sure I wasn’t in her path.

I didn’t talk about it, didn’t feel the need to share, and tried not to think about it. The Winston sisters had survived a lot.
A lot
. Claire and I had barely survived what it took to grow up healthy and whole in a house headed by Jack Winston. Sitting here, now in our safe place, I was mad at myself for not seeking out Prosper earlier.

The years after my mother died hadn’t been pretty. Not by a long stretch. Despite the promise that Prosper had made to my mother, he should not have brought us back to my father. Jack just didn’t have it in him to be the sole caretaker of two little girls. Jack’s version of doing what “the good daddies do” basically meant instead of going out to drink, he stayed at home to drink. Sometimes I had found myself furious with my mother. Had she really been that naive about the kind of man my father was? She never ever should have made Prosper promise not to separate us from Jack. In doing so, she had sentenced Claire and me to a life I couldn’t imagine that she would have wanted for us.

Nobody had ever touched us. Jack had kept us safe in that way. Our house was a safe place to be in
that way
. Even when his friends came over. The rough, big, loud, shadow people. They stayed outside. “Not even to piss,” I heard him say once. “You don’t go in that house where Maggie’s babies are, not even to piss.”

Maggie’s babies. Not his. Maggie’s. Except for the fact that Claire and I had the exact shade of his deep violet-blue eyes and shared his long thin nose, I had often felt such a disconnect from our father that I doubted our parentage. I had spent a lot of time that summer at the lake house searching Prosper’s face hoping to find some resemblance to us. It didn’t escape me that Prosper was about as far as you could get from the perfect father figure, but he would have been better than Jack. By a lot. At eight years old, I knew that.
At eight.

So because our father basically sucked, our only hope had been me. Sure I could have used that address that Prosper had given us years ago. But the straits never seemed dire enough. I was cooking and cleaning and getting Claire and myself off to school as far back as I remembered. Oddly though, there had always been enough money to get us through. Thank God.

Getting Jack to remember to pay the bills, however, that was another matter. After having the electricity shut off twice, I knew I had to step up. So at the tender age of ten years old, while other kids were playing with dolls and going to birthday parties, I was teaching myself how to manage the household finances. I would put together little envelopes once a month with the amount due on them. My dad would fill the envelopes with cash, and I would go to Petey’s Variety where for an extra three dollars you could pay your utility and cable bills.

Our dad never once made me worry about not having enough money. Although he was gone sometimes, he never seemed to work at anything steady. We paid for everything in cash. Everything. Doctors, dentists, and one trip to the emergency room when I fell out of a tree and broke my arm. These were all paid for in cash.

My father also kept two guns in the house; they were both loaded. One he placed in the drawer by his bed, and the other was, of all places, taped behind the toilet. Claire and I knew never ever to touch them. Knowing they were there never made us feel safe. They made us feel the very opposite of safe.

You would think that with the men we had for role models in our young lives, Claire and I would have had the sense to look for something better. Neither one of us dated until much later. Just like with the friends thing, our situation hadn’t exactly been conducive to dating the boy next door. We kept to ourselves. When we finally made that leap, we both picked men who abused drugs and then abused us. Yep, Baby Sister and I were not too smart when it came to choosing men.

Now here I was in the heart of Wrong Man City. The irony did not escape me. But here in that City Of All Wrong were also Pinky and Prosper. There was also the Viking God, who made the best home fries I ever tasted, and who winked at me when he thought I was sad.

And there was Diego. Who I was hoping wasn’t Mr. Wrong at all. Who I was beginning to hope, with all my heart, was the man I could finally make a home with. I was hoping that, in the heart of the City Of All Wrong, I had finally found my Mr. Right. Maybe.