RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) (4 page)

I pulled up at the curb in front of the house she had indicated and shut off the bike, holding it steady for her as she got off. She took off the helmet and handed it to me. Her hair was disheveled, her cheeks flushed. She looked gorgeous. “Thanks, Caleb. I had a great time.”

I grinned at her. “Me, too. Maybe we could do it again sometime?”

She opened her mouth to answer, but a loud screaming cut her off. From the front door of the house, a woman emerged. The screen door banged loudly shut behind her. “God
damnit
, Eva, where the hell have you been?”

The woman was dressed in an ill-fitting T-shirt and a pair of worn jeans that looked like they hadn’t been washed in a while. “Get in the goddamn house, now!”

The woman’s hair was a shade darker than Eva’s, and her face was prematurely aged in that way that alcoholics and heavy smokers look, but the resemblance was still there. This had to be Eva’s mom.

“Get the hell away from that bike! What the hell is wrong with you!” she screamed. Eva glanced at me, her expression scandalized. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, and fled up the walk toward the house.

Brushing past her mother, she ran inside, the door slamming again behind her. The woman continued to yell, and began to berate me as the little kids stared at us in silence.

I didn’t know what to do, so I did the only thing I could think of. I strapped the helmet on the back of the bike, fired it up, and got the hell out of there.

I had never thought to get Eva’s phone number from her, and I didn’t know anyone who would have it, so I had to wait until Monday to see her. The weekend dragged by slower than any weekend ever had. And even though I got some invitations to go party with people, I found myself leaving early and riding the bike around restlessly.

Monday finally came, and I couldn’t wait until the first class we had together to see her. I went to her locker before the first bell, hoping she’d show up, but she never did. Disappointed, I went back before chemistry, when normally I would walk her to class, but she wasn’t there. She didn’t show up to chem, and she wasn’t in English, either. I had no idea what to make of it, and was antsy as fuck all day.

On Tuesday, I tried to play it cool, and showed up at her locker at my normal time. “Hey, Eva. Missed you yesterday.” I tried as hard as I could to act like I hadn’t spent the last three days on pins and needles. “Were you sick or something?”

When she turned to me, the look she gave me was one of pure loathing. “Do not talk to me.
Ever
.
Again
,” she hissed. Her eyes were cold, hard sapphires. “
Ever
. I mean it.”

“Eva, what—“

“LEAVE ME ALONE!” she yelled.

A couple of kids turned to look at us. I opened my mouth to protest, but she slammed her locker shut with a loud bang and stormed off toward our classroom. I stood there, not knowing what to do or say. I had no idea what I’d done. I had no idea what she thought I’d done.

All I knew is that suddenly I wanted to vomit.

I tried to talk to her a couple of times after that. But she was serious. She never wanted to hear my voice again. She wasn’t just playing some sort of manipulation game, like some girls would do to test how much you were willing to put up with to be with them.

Eventually, I stopped trying. I ended hooking up with Debbie Turner for a while to distract myself. Then the school year ended. I never saw Eva again.

I assumed she went to University of Washington, like she said she was going to. And that was that.

Until now. Here she was. It was ten years later, and she was ten times more gorgeous. And she still thought I was a fucking asshole.

And I still didn’t know why.

But I wasn’t about to go through that bullshit again. Eva Van Buren was the closest I’d ever come to having my heart broken, and I didn’t need that shit in my life. I preferred the never-ending stream of no-strings-attached pussy, thank you very much. I wasn’t the moony-eyed kid I had been back then.

Before I left the hospital, I had Cal come down with me to the third floor so I could set up my first PT appointment. Might as well get the ball rolling, I figured. They booked me for a ten o’clock session the following day, which they said would be done around noon. I was about to begin seeing Eva Van Buren every single day.

It was only six weeks, I told myself. Eight at the most. I’d done tougher things before.

Right?

I
sat
in the cafeteria by myself, sipping iced tea at a remote corner table and trying to stop my hands from shaking from the adrenaline.

I couldn’t believe that after all these years, he still had the power to make me feel like an awkward, humiliated teenager.

Caleb Jackson had been the hottest guy in my high school class. Oh, there were other guys who were good looking, popular, and the like. But most of them, at eighteen, still hadn’t really filled out, and still acted and seemed more like boys than men.

Caleb, on the other hand, was already manly, in a way that was both thrilling and slightly terrifying. Unlike the boys on the football and wrestling teams, who spent most of their off hours in the weight room, Caleb was muscular in a way that didn’t come from time logged at the gym. His wide, strong shoulders tapered to a tight waist and abdomen. His thighs were lean, their muscles evident even under his jeans. His coal black hair was always slightly too long, and even in high school his face always sported the shadow of a full beard. Thick, sensual lips would curl into a panty-melting smile when girls would shamelessly flirt with him, and his dark, penetrating eyes seemed to burrow straight through you.

He was the subject of all my reluctant fantasies.

He was also completely out of my league.

I was pretty much the complete opposite of Caleb in school. Where he was an early bloomer, I was a late one. To the point that by my senior year, I was despairing of ever “blooming” at all. At barely 5’3”, I would never be one of the statuesque beauties that graced the halls of our school. I wasn’t a cheerleader; I wasn’t one of the popular kids. I was just a geeky girl with a 3.8 GPA and dreams of going to a good college.

I was no one that the likes of Caleb Jackson would ever notice.

Which is why I should have known something was up when he started hanging around my locker.

At first, I thought it was because Debbie Turner had the locker next to me. Lucky me, not only did I have the misfortune of living right across the street from that snotty wench, I also had to see her practically every time I came to get my books. Debbie was a raging bitch to any girl who didn’t kiss her ass, but butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth around any guy she thought was hot. She had been on the homecoming court, was one of the most popular girls in our class, and had dated the quarterback of our football team for a few months.

The first day Caleb showed up by our bank of lockers, I just concluded he had decided to make a play for her. So when he struck up a casual conversation with me, I actually wasn’t even nervous at first. I was assuming he was about to ask me about her, so I figured I was more or less invisible to him, anyway.

“Hey, Eva, what’s up?” he asked me as he leaned up against Debbie’s locker.

“Uh… not much. You?” I reached up to my book shelf, avoiding his eyes.

“Eh, you know. Just livin’ the dream.” His eyes twinkled, his tone slightly mocking. “You on your way to chem?”

“Yeah.” Chemistry was one of the two classes we had together.

“Want me to walk you?”

As we made our way to Mrs. Burch’s classroom, I could barely hear what Caleb was saying, with all the blood rushing to my head. I hadn’t even known he knew my name, much less noticed we were in the same class.

To this day I have no idea what I said to him, or if I said anything at all. All I remember was the sound of his voice, already deep and rich, like chocolate.

Caleb wasn’t “popular,” exactly. “Popular” was a word I would use to describe people who belonged to the clique that controlled the pecking order of our class. They were the ones who decided I was a geek, and that Carol Jackson was a nerd, and that Brook Brody was a burnout.

Caleb, on the other hand, didn’t belong to any one crowd. He mostly hung out with the tough guys who smoked cigarettes behind the bus barn after school, but no one thought to categorize him as a burner. He moved through the school to the beat of his own rhythm. Guys admired him. Girls… well, whether they’d admit it or not, I bet that most of the girls in our school would have done anything to be with him.

And even though I liked to pride myself on not being shallow enough to judge people on their appearances, I was right there with them. But even so, I told myself, for all Caleb’s easy charm and blatant sex appeal, he was just another guy, out for sex. He was just way more successful at getting it than most of them. Girls would whisper about him in the locker room, and I had overheard more than a few boasting that they had spent a hot, sweaty evening in the back of the old, black pickup truck he drove around.

As far as I could tell, Caleb himself never bragged about his conquests. But then again, he didn’t have to. Any girl who had been with him would be sure to broadcast it far and wide.

Except for me.

Ugh. It’s a story as old as high school drama. I know that now. At the time, though, it was the worst period of my life, masquerading as the best. Caleb started hanging out by my locker every day after lunch, and would walk with me to chemistry. After chem, he would wait for me and walk me to my next class, before heading off to his study hall.

Girls started noticing. It made some of them start talking to me, too. Suddenly, for the first time I could remember, I found myself almost popular.

Unfortunately, it also made some of them jealous. Girls who until then had basically ignored me started making little comments behind me in the halls, just loud enough so I could hear them. “Eva thinks she’s hot shit. She thinks Caleb actually
likes
her. God, how embarrassing for her.”

My face would grow beet red with indignation. But also with shame. Because, the thing was, deep down inside me, I had been starting to hope, just a little bit, that maybe Caleb
did
like me. That maybe this wasn’t some big cosmic joke that the universe was playing on me.

That maybe, just maybe, it wasn’t completely ridiculous that someone like him could see something interesting, even compelling, in someone like me.

But the words that were hissed behind me as I walked the halls had their effect. They were like the whisper of my deepest fears come to life. I began to act less friendly around Caleb. Indifferent. Mostly to prove to him, and to myself, that I didn’t really care about him all that much.

Weirdly, he seemed almost hurt by it. He didn’t stop coming by my locker every day, though. And one Friday after school, he even asked if I wanted to go hang out.

“Come on,” he urged when I demurred. “I’ve got something to show you. I think you’ll like it.”

I don’t know why I accepted, except that curiosity eventually overcame my fear of getting played.

We wandered out to the student parking lot, but instead of heading toward the back of the lot, where he usually parked, he turned me toward the front row, where the mopeds and scooters were. Eventually, he stopped in front of a large, low-slung motorcycle with a black tank.

“Wanna go for a ride?” he asked with a grin.

“What happened to your truck?” I blurted out, then reddened. I didn’t want him to think I cared enough about his comings and goings to know what he drove. “I mean, don’t you drive a truck?”

He shrugged. “I sold it.”

“But… what will you do when it rains?”

“I won’t melt,” he said simply. He nodded toward the bike. “So, what do you say?”

When I hesitated, he persisted.

“Come on. You’ll love it. Trust me.” He pointed toward the bike. “Look, I even have a helmet for you to wear.”

There was something about the grin he flashed me… so cocky, so confident, like he just knew I was going to say yes. And then he
winked
at me. What eighteen year-old guy does that? But whereas with anyone else, it might have been cheesy, that wink broke down my defenses.

I found myself smiling back at him. “Okay,” I said shyly, and reached for the helmet.

As we rode out of the parking lot, I still remember the burst of pride that leapt from my chest as a group of the popular kids, Debbie Turner among them, turned to stare at us. My arms were wrapped around Caleb’s waist, his body heat radiating from him. It was the first time we had ever touched, and being so close to him made me feel kind of dizzy.

I kept taking surreptitious little whiffs of his skin as we rode. He smelled like soap, and
man
. My previous experience with boys was limited to a seventh-grade fling with a boy named Scotty, who I used to hold hands with before school and whom I only ever let kiss me once before breaking up with him. As I sat behind Caleb, I wondered if he’d be able to tell how inexperienced I was if he kissed me. Then I silently berated myself for even letting myself think about the possibility that he would
want
to kiss me.

I spent the first fifteen minutes working myself up into a frenzy of nerves. Eventually, though, the beauty of the scenery whizzing by us began to force the panicked thoughts from my head.

As we rode past canyons and ravines, the wind rushing past, I found my body loosening up, becoming accustomed to the movements and speed of the bike. My legs were pressed around Caleb’s, and the flex of his thigh muscles as he changed gears or put on the brake made me grow hot and wet between my legs. It felt as though my whole body was crackling with energy. Every nerve ending felt like it was standing at attention, all of my senses on high alert.

I had never felt so truly alive before. It was absolutely exhilarating.

Eventually, the bike slowed, and Caleb turned in the direction of a large sign that read “Piñon Valley Hot Springs.”

I had heard about the place, but had never been here before. My mother wasn’t exactly the type to take us on family outings. We bumped along a gravel road until we came to a group of parked cars, and he angled the bike in and shut it off. He motioned for me to get down, and I scrambled into a standing position awkwardly.

Caleb flipped down the kickstand and got off the bike. “It’s too bad we don’t have swimsuits,” he said to me, “but there’s lots of stuff to see hiking around.”

My face grew hot at the idea of Caleb seeing me in a bathing suit, and I heaved an inner sigh of relief that he hadn’t suggested bringing them.

I took off the helmet and handed it to him, then looked around. There were families splashing around in the springs, steam and spray rising from them. A smattering of young couples, a few of whom I vaguely recognized, lounged about on the rocks. The surface of the water bubbled. There was a faint smell of burning matches.

“It smells like sulfur,” I said in surprise. In spite of myself, I broke into a wide grin. “This is so cool! How have I never come here before?”

“I dunno, you tell me.” He nodded toward the springs. “Come on, there’s a place over here I want to show you.”

And then, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, he took my hand.

I’m not sure I had ever been so surprised by anything in my life.

As Caleb led me up a path to one side of the springs, I tried not to stumble, and hoped he couldn’t hear the crazy pounding of my heart in my chest. Everything seemed to suddenly fall away except for the feeling of my small hand in his large, strong one. The contact of our skin seemed electric.

I wondered if my hand would ever feel the same again.

Caleb stopped at a clearing with a view of the valley below, and evergreens extending upward to the top of a small hill. There was a bunch of stones that had been moved into a sort of low bench, and we sat down on it, my hand still in his. For a while, we just sat there, looking at it all.

For as nervous as I had been before, a strange sort of calm came over me now. It was all just so beautiful. I wanted time to stop.

But for two eighteen year-olds, time seems a warped thing — at once frozen stuck, and on the verge of racing out of control. As we sat there, I started thinking about the fact that in a couple of months, we would both be finishing high school.

“Caleb,” I said suddenly. “What are you going to next year? After high school?”

“Dunno,” he shrugged, unconcerned. “Haven’t really thought about it yet.”

We talked about my plans to go to University of Washington. He asked me why I was going so far away, and I almost told him. But my heart still wasn’t sure if I could trust Caleb Jackson, and anyway, I didn’t want to ruin this perfect moment by talking about things that hurt.

Still, something compelled me to talk to him — to confide, just a little, to this person who made me want to open to him like a flower.

“Have you ever felt like you were going to explode if you didn’t get out of your life?”

The words burst from me almost before I knew I was going to say them. I flushed red, wishing I could take them back, but then Caleb made it all right.

“Yeah. I have. Pretty often, in fact.”

I sighed. It felt like a bubble that had been choking me from the inside had just burst. To know that Caleb understood, just a little, what I was feeling — to know that sometimes, he even felt that way himself — made me feel close to him, comfortable around him in a way I never had with anyone else before.

“I just… I just want to go somewhere else,” I admitted. “I want the chance to be someone else for a while.”

He looked at me then, his expression intense. Slowly, so slowly, his hand reached up to my face. With an almost excruciating softness, his thumb caressed my cheek.

“I think who you are already is pretty fucking great.”

And then… he kissed me.

Even to this day, ten years later, I remember how it felt. The way his lips were soft and hard, cool and burning, hesitant and insistent. I’ve been in a few relationships since then, and I’ve even had a one-night stand or two, but there has never been anything like it since.

Maybe it’s because it was really my first kiss that wasn’t just a perfunctory peck on the lips. I don’t know. But just the memory of the heat between us, all these years later, can make my pulse race and my nipples harden with the intensity of it.

One of the things I remember most is Caleb’s eyes. At one point, when his lips had trailed down to my the neckline of my T-shirt, his hands caressing the outline of my breasts, he raised his head to look at me. For a few frozen moments, we locked eyes. The intensity of his expression communicated a rawness of need, almost as though he was baring his soul to me without saying anything at all. It was at that moment that I almost asked him to take me somewhere more private, somewhere we could be alone to say everything we wanted to say, with our bodies instead of our words.