RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) (14 page)

“Good news and bad news,” she replied, Setting down her purse, she fell into an overstuffed easy chair with a groan. “The bug that she had turned into bronchitis. It’s a little more serious in older people, which is worrisome. The good news is, she’s generally pretty healthy, so there’s every reason to believe she’ll be fine with rest and plenty of fluids.”

“Is Mrs. Hayes gonna be okay, Mom?”

“Yes, pumpkin, she’ll be fine.” Eva smiled at her daughter. “But she’s not going to be able to take care of you for a little while longer.”

“That’s okay,” Zoe said cheerfully. “Trig can take care of me.”

Eva suppressed a grin. “I’m not sure Trig has time to babysit you every day after pre-K, honey.”

Without really thinking about it, I said, “We’ll work it out. If we can move around some of my therapy sessions, I can grab her from school on days you need me to, and watch her until you’re done with work.”

Eva stared at me, a curious expression on her face. “You’d do that?” she asked.

I shrugged. “Of course. You need help. I can help. It’s simple.” I thought for a moment. “Though you’ll have to show me how to hook her car seat into the truck.”

“Zoe,” Eva said then, standing up. “Trig and I are going to go in the kitchen and put the pizza away. You just keep watching your movie.”

“Okay,” she said, reaching for the remote control. I handed it to her and followed her mom into the kitchen, grabbing the pizza box on the way.

We had barely made it into the next room when Eva wrapped her arms around my neck, pulling me in for a deep, passionate kiss.

“You’re amazing, you know that?” she said breathily when she had pulled away.

“I don’t know what I did, but I’ll take it,” I replied, pulling her back to me. I pressed her against the counter, my hardness meeting her softness. She moaned into my mouth and pressed back.

I fisted my hands in her hair, pulling her head back to expose her sexy neck. My mouth moved away from hers and I grazed her sensitive skin with my lips and tongue. She gasped softly, then reached up and pushed against my chest. “We have to stop,” she whispered. “You’re going to push me past the point of no return, and there’s a five year-old in the next room.”

Reluctantly, I released her and stepped away. Eva looked down at my obviously hard cock and bit her lower lip. “That’s a shame to waste,” she said, shaking her head, reaching down to cup its outline through my jeans.

I groaned. “You are not helping the situation here.”

She giggled impishly and stroked me once, then pulled her hand away. “Sorry, couldn’t help myself.”

“Well,” I said, wrapping my arms around her waist and kissing her forehead. “I guess it’ll keep until later.”

She sighed and melted against me. “I meant what I said, you know. The part about you being amazing.”

“What did I do?” I asked.

“Offering to help me with Zoe while Mrs. Hayes is sick. I’m sure there are lots of things you’d rather be doing.”

“Eva.” I lifted her chin with a finger. “There is nothing I’d rather be doing than helping you out. Really.” I brushed her lips lightly with mine. “If I didn’t want to do it, I wouldn’t have offered.”

She nodded. “I believe that.” Her eyes were shining. “Thank you. For wanting to.”

Since there wasn’t much we could do about our sexual cravings with Zoe in the next room, Eva grabbed a slice of pizza from the box and set about satisfying another physical craving. “Mmm…” she moaned as she took the first bite. “I haven’t had that much to eat today. This is heaven.”

“Yeah, that pizzeria is my favorite one in town. Even their plain cheese is good.” I grabbed a plate from the cupboard, put the rest of the pizza slices on it, and folded the pizza box into halves, then quarters. While I was working, I remembered the phone call earlier.

“Hey, you left your cell phone here while you were at urgent care,” I told Eva as I opened the cupboard where she kept the trash and stuck the box in. “Zoe’s dad called.”

Eva stopped eating mid-slice. “What?”

“Zoe’s dad called. I thought it might have been you calling from someone else’s phone, so I answered it.”

“You had no right to answer my phone,” Eva said flatly.

“Look, normally I probably wouldn’t have, but I thought it might be you calling,” I repeated. “He asked to talk to you but I told him you weren’t available. But Zoe ended up telling him where you were.”

Eva’s face had turned hard and angry. “You let him talk to her?” she cried.

“Well, yeah.” I nodded. “He’s her father. I didn’t think there was a problem with that.”

“How did Zoe seem after the conversation?” she demanded.

“Not great,” I admitted. “It seemed to put her into kind of a funk. Hence the cheese pizza and Disney movie.”

Eva shook her head in frustration. “Dammit, Trig!” she cried. “David barely bothers to remember Zoe’s birthday. He hardly ever calls, and when he does, he almost never asks to talk to his daughter. Poor Zoe’s already lived a lifetime of heartache and disappointment from him.”

She shook her head, her eyes shining. “I try as hard as I can to protect her from that. And you just let him talk to her and disappoint her yet again!”

“Look, I’m sorry!” I spread my hands wide. “How the hell was I supposed to know?”

“You should know not to answer my phone!” she retorted. “You should know not to make decisions about Zoe’s life without asking me?”

“Jesus, Eva, calm down.” I looked at her in amazement. “I said I was sorry. It was a simple mistake.”

But Eva wasn’t having it. I had no idea why she was taking this the way she was. I was trying to figure out what to do when she interrupted my thoughts.

“Wait. You said that Zoe told him I wasn’t here?” she asked. Her voice was sharp.

“Yeah.”
Oh, shit
. Somehow I sensed this was about to go from bad to worse. I leaned against the kitchen counter. “And…” I said slowly, “Zoe sort of told him I was your boyfriend.”

“What?!” she yelled. Alarmed, she clapped her hand over her mouth and glanced toward the living room.

Well, no use trying to back out of this now. “She said I was your boyfriend, and that I was watching her while you were out,” I explained. Eva’s eyes widened. “But come on,” I continued quickly. “How bad can it be? What’s the big problem that he knows you have a boyfriend?”

Whoa
. Eva and I had certainly never had the “relationship” talk, and here I was basically saying I was her boyfriend. Above and beyond the question of whether that’s what I actually was, this was probably about the worst possible time to be having that conversation.

“Oh, my God,” she muttered, clapping a hand against her forehead. “That’s just great.”

“For Christ’s sake, what the hell is the problem?” I demanded. “Why is this freaking you out so much?”

“Look, Trig.” Eva’s voice had grown cold as ice. “We were just trying to keep it light between us, right? No past, no future. Just the present. And now, here you are, butting into my life and messing everything up like a bull in a china shop.” She took a deep breath and let it out. “I think you should go.”

The sick drop in my stomach was overshadowed by a wave of anger. “Are you fucking kidding me?” I asked in disbelief. “Two minutes ago, I was amazing and you were thanking the hell out of me for helping you out with Zoe. And now I’m butting into your life.”

Shit had started to hurtle out of control between us, and I had no idea how to stop it. But she’d told me to go. And if I was that easily dispensable to her, then maybe that was just what I should do.

I stood up. “Fuck it, then. Damn right I’m going, princess.”

Eva tensed instantly. The nickname had just slipped out, and I didn’t bother to apologize for it.

I took a step toward her but didn’t touch her. “You need to figure out what you want, Eva. Do you want a man in your life who’ll be there for you, who you can trust? Or do you want someone you can just fuck and then push away when he gets too close?”

Words were tumbling out of my mouth before I could stop them. I barely understood the implications of what I was saying until I’d already said it.

I was telling Eva I wanted to be her man. The one she depended on.

I should have been embarrassed, baring my heart like that. But I wasn’t.

Even though I was baring it to someone who obviously didn’t feel the same way.

I turned to go, glancing at her one last time. “Either way, I guess it’s not gonna be me.”

And with that, I walked out of Eva Van Buren’s house.

I
was so
upset I was shaking.

I watched Trig storm out of my house not knowing whether to cry, or scream, or throw things.

Or run after him.

That last part? Yeah, I didn’t expect that.

I was absolutely furious with him for answering the phone and talking to David. I was even angrier with him for letting Zoe talk to him. My ex-husband was manipulative, emotionally abusive, and controlling. Whatever he had been calling about — and I assumed it probably had something to do with money — I knew it hadn’t been to talk to Zoe. Which meant that he had asked for her in order to worm information out of her. Information which she had been too young and innocent to realize she was giving him.

And now as a result, David was in possession of knowledge I did not want him to have. I wanted my ex-husband to know absolutely nothing about my personal life. And I sure as hell didn’t need him knowing that I had left Zoe alone with some strange man.

Never mind that I knew implicitly I could trust Trig with her. And I knew, too, that David really didn’t give a damn who I left Zoe with. Hell, he barely remembered he even
had
a daughter most of the time. But he was a born opportunist, always looking to exploit a situation to his advantage.

My ex-husband was more than capable of using this information as a tool to manipulate me, either simply by holding it over my head, or by threatening to take me back to court on the grounds that I was neglecting Zoe. He would never want full custody of her, I knew. But that wouldn’t stop his vindictive nature from pushing for it just to gain the upper hand.

One way or another, I was pretty sure I hadn’t heard the last from David on this subject.

I was suddenly exhausted as I tossed the last pieces of pizza into a container and threw them into the fridge. I wandered out to the living room and sat down tiredly next to Zoe, who was once again engrossed in her movie and barely noticed I was there.

“Mommy, where did Trig go?” she said absently as she watched the screen.

“He had to leave, honey,” I fibbed. “He’ll be back sometime soon.”

Or would he?
Instinctively, I had just lied to Zoe once again about one of the men in her life. I told myself I was doing it to protect her, but I wasn’t so sure. If things had just ended between me and Trig, wouldn’t it be better to just tell Zoe the truth? Wouldn’t it be better to rip the bandaid off right away, instead of allowing her to keep hoping in vain that he would remember to care about her, like she still did with her father?

And then, swirling around with everything else in my mixed-up head, was the fact that this whole untimely episode pushed the question of just what Trig and I were doing together to the surface.

Trig said Zoe told David that he was my boyfriend.

Of course Zoe thought that. Why wouldn’t she? Trig had been over here so frequently that Zoe automatically asked when he was coming over now, even on nights when we had made no plans to see one another. Zoe absolutely adored Trig, and I had done nothing to temper that adoration, which in retrospect had been a huge mistake.

Of course he’s not my boyfriend
, I told myself stubbornly. But we had been acting for all intents and purposes like a couple lately, and so of course Zoe had picked up on that.

Which raised the question: Was Zoe right?

For all of my protestations, to myself and to Vanessa, I had been acting like a lovesick girl where Trig was concerned.

And if we were essentially conducting ourselves exactly like two people in a relationship, then did it really matter what I called it? Wasn’t I just lying to myself when I kept telling myself that I didn’t want any attachment to him? Wasn’t I pretending to hold myself back, when in reality I had already taken the plunge?

No
. The voice in my head was sharp.
Just because you’re sleeping with him — just because you enjoy being around him — doesn’t mean anything more than that
.

I had let myself get in too deep emotionally, I realized now. But the rational part of me — the part of me that feared losing control more than anything — told me it was time to cut ties.

I hadn’t exactly been fair to Trig, I knew. Maybe he actually did think he was my boyfriend. And I’d be lying to myself if I said that part of me didn’t thrill at the words he had said, indicating that he wanted that with me.

“You need to figure out what you want. Do you want a man in your life who’ll be there for you, who you can trust? Or do you want someone you can just fuck and then push away when he gets too close?”

Trig’s words echoed in my head over and over. Was he really saying he wanted to be the man in my life who was there for me?

We had never once talked about the future when we were together. I avoided any discussion of it like the plague. But that wasn’t because I didn’t want a future with him, I realized. When I allowed myself to think about it now, something in my chest literally began to ache with longing.

No, it wasn’t because I didn’t want a future with him.

It was because I
did
.

But I couldn’t afford to lose control. I couldn’t afford to take the chance.

Little by little, I had begun to forget the pain that Trig had caused me all those years ago. I should never have let myself forget that. Pain was a teacher we couldn’t afford to ignore. Pain was what taught us to stay away from danger. Pain was what taught us the stove is hot. I should have known, from long experience, that we ignore the lesson pain teaches us at our peril.

But I knew from bitter experience, you needed to be careful what you wished for. Because when you got it, it was often the exact opposite of what you hoped it would be.

My marriage to David had been all about trusting my husband, and then being deceived, over and over. It had been about losing control of my life, and having to fight and scrape to get it back again.

If I was honest with myself, I already had stronger feelings about Trig than I ever remember having for David. The way we moved together as one when he made love to me made me ache inside just to think about it. The way he made me unafraid to let go, to give in to the passion between us. I had never experienced those things with another man.

And when I was with him, those feelings were exhilarating. But they were frightening, too.

Fighting to escape my marriage and come out the other side intact had been one of the hardest things I had ever done. I wasn’t sure I would survive letting myself fall for Trig, and then finding out he wasn’t to be trusted.

And then there was Zoe. I couldn’t afford to put her at risk for more heartbreak. Better for her not to have a male figure in her life at all, than bring another one into it who would just disappoint her.

Not that Trig had done anything to hurt Zoe, I had to admit to myself. For a man who hadn’t spent a lot of time around children, he was a natural with her. And Zoe absolutely adored him.

But her adoration was all the more reason to be afraid, wasn’t it? The more she loved him, the more she could be hurt by him. I remembered back to the first months of my separation with David. How she had cried on the days that Daddy was supposed to be coming to take her for the afternoon and didn’t bother to show up. I couldn’t put her through that again.

But Trig would never do that to Zoe
.

The thought came unbidden to my head. And as much as I hated to admit it, I knew it was true.

Still, if we broke up, it would be unreasonable to expect that he would keep seeing her. He wasn’t her father, after all.

No, he’s not. And he’s not a thing like David, either
.

Ugh. It was almost like having Vanessa in my head, this little voice that had started arguing with me. My mind went back to the last conversation I had with her about Trig. How when I tried to tell her about how he had hurt me, it started to sound so small and insignificant.

This anger and pain, which I had nursed inside me for all these years, started to sound like no more than silly adolescent drama. I had been embarrassed to reveal how the hurt still lived inside me, and even more so when Vanessa pointed out that most of the embarrassment was all in my head.

She was right that I had never heard anything about Caleb’s remarks from anyone but Debbie Turner. If he had wanted to hurt me, wouldn’t he have spread it around to the whole school?

Or, maybe he never said what Debbie said he had.

Until Vanessa pointed out that possibility, it had never occurred to me.

I wandered around like a zombie for the rest of the night, distracted by my thoughts to the point that I barely heard most of the things Zoe said to me.

After putting her to bed and reading two stories with her, I went back down to the living room and lay on the couch, staring out the window at the darkened street. I wished in spite of myself that I could hear the sound of Trig’s truck pulling into the driveway.

I missed him.

Finally, I stood up and started up the stairs toward my bedroom with a sigh. I didn’t know what I was going to do.

But one thing was becoming increasingly clear to me. As reluctant as I was to admit it. I hadn’t been fair to Trig. All along, I had been judging him based on the actions of two other people, instead of his own. The first was an emotionally abusive husband I never should have married.

And the second? An adolescent boy, whom I never gave a chance to explain.