RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) (7 page)

“He said,” she continued smugly, “that your mom came outside and she was acting all drunk and crazy. You know, like she does?” It was true, Debbie had seen my mother out of control on more than one occasion. Most of the neighborhood had. “And, he said you think you’re some kind of princess, but your mom is trash and you live in a trash house.” She gave me a pout of mocking sympathy. “So, you know, I just didn’t want you to think he liked you. Because he doesn’t. Obviously.”

The blood began to rush in my ears as she flounced away.

In a daze, I fell into the driver’s seat and tried to process what she had said. I knew Debbie had told me all this to hurt me; I was under no illusion about that. But it didn’t matter. I also had no doubt that Caleb had said it.
Princess
. It was the word he had called me when we were at the hot springs together. That couldn’t be a coincidence.

I didn’t leave my room for the rest of the weekend.

When Monday came, I couldn’t make myself get up and go to school. My mother barely noticed. On Tuesday, I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer, and trudged my way toward the campus, steeling myself for the inevitable moment I would see him again.

Caleb had the gall to act like nothing had happened when he showed up at my locker that morning. It was as though he had never said those horrible things Debbie told me he did. But I knew better. I was through being such a naive little idiot, to think someone like him would ever have been attracted someone like me. I didn’t know why he had gone through all that trouble just to humiliate me, but I didn’t need to know. All I needed to know was that he had done it.

I screamed at him to leave me alone, loudly and crazily enough that anyone around would hear me. All he could do was back away. Even though it was humiliating to have caused such a scene in front of my peers, I didn’t care. All I cared about was that he knew he would never, ever get the opportunity to hurt me again.

After high school, I fled to Seattle, spending the summer impoverished in a closet-sized room I rented in a house close to campus. I worked part-time in an ice-cream shop until school started and I could move into the dorms.

During the years I spent at the University of Washington, I rarely went home except for a week at Christmas break to see my sister and her new fiancé, and to check in on Mom, who was growing increasingly erratic and belligerent. I felt guilty for staying away, but I couldn’t bear being there, either.

Eventually, I met my future husband, David, and we married about a year after I started my first “real” job, as a PT in a private clinic in Seattle.

Things with David were rocky pretty early on in the marriage, and I probably would have left him within the first year, except I got pregnant with Zoe. I kept at it, trying to make it work so that my child would have a father, but it was no use. Not long after she was born, it was obvious that David was completely indifferent to being a father. In fact, he made it clear he resented that he was no longer my main focus.

His verbal abuse, which I had tried to tolerate throughout the short duration of our marriage, became physical one night when he came home from a bar and wanted me to have sex with him. When I told him I was too tired and he was too drunk, he threw me against a wall outside the hallway of the nursery.

As Zoe woke from the noise and began to cry, I realized I couldn’t stay in the marriage any longer. I couldn’t raise my daughter to believe that the way David treated me was the way a man should treat his wife.

A week later, I found myself hiring a lawyer and signing the lease on a small apartment near my work.

I
would never have come back
to Colorado at all, except for my mother’s declining health. My sister Patricia tried to help, but she had her own husband and children to take care of.

Zoe and I were relatively mobile, I had a job that was in demand, and there was a silver lining in getting away from Seattle and David for a while, so I packed us up and moved us back into my mother’s house.

A few months later, we moved Mom into a treatment facility, where she stayed until her death.

And now, in spite of my vow to never come back to my hometown all those years ago, here I was. Reliving my awkward past in the very house where I had grown up.

S
ighing
, I flipped off the TV and went to rinse out my now-empty wine glass. I was exhausted from thinking about all of these painful memories. I never would have thought Caleb Jackson could still have the ability to make me feel so vulnerable. But apparently, deep down inside, I was still the awkward girl I once had been where he was concerned.

Ah, well. At least now, Vanessa would be taking over as his PT.

And maybe, just maybe, it was time to think about moving back to Seattle after all. I had been letting inaction make my decisions for me, and lately had been leaning in the direction of staying here in town, but I certainly wasn’t obligated to. I still had plenty of professional contacts in Washington, so getting another job there probably wouldn’t be too much of an issue. I even had a friend who was opening up a PT clinic there, and I was pretty sure she’d be thrilled to have me on board.

Zoe would be crushed to leave Mrs. Hayes and her playmates at pre-K, but I knew kids were resilient. And maybe right now would be a good time to make the move, before she was set to start kindergarten in the fall.

Yawning, I shut off the downstairs lights and trudged up the stairs to bed. I’d think more about it in the morning.

I
knew
I’d struck a nerve with Eva when I’d called her princess. I wasn’t lying to her when I said it just slipped out. Until that moment, I’d totally forgotten that I’d ever called her that.

But as soon as the word was out of my mouth, the memory of how it had all gone wrong between us came flooding back.

And one look in her stricken eyes told me it had come flooding back to her, too.

I never did figure out why she decided over the course of a single weekend that she hated me. And frankly, she went so ballistic on me that Tuesday in school that I never even got the chance to ask.

After I dropped Eva off at her house that Friday, I rode away feeling a jumble of emotions I barely knew how to sort out. Mostly, I was bursting with elation that she had let me kiss her. The few hours I had just spent with her at the springs and on the back of my bike were some of the happiest I could remember in my life, and I couldn’t wait to see her again. I was dying to know whether the few days apart would make any difference in how she felt about me, and I was already running through different ideas of other places I could take her on my bike.

But mixed in with all that were the troubling feelings I’d taken away after witnessing that scene with her mom. It made me fucking sad as hell for Eva to get that glimpse into what must have been a pretty rough home life.

She hadn’t told me much about her family — only that she had an older sister in college, and that her dad had divorced her mom a long time ago and wasn’t really around much. I could relate to that. My dad bounced when I was two, and I hadn’t seen him since.

But unlike Eva, my home life was mostly pretty okay. I had two older brothers who were grown and out of the house, but my mom was a rock of stability. She had worked in a vet clinic downtown as their receptionist since I was a little kid, and had always managed to get home from work in time to make us kids a decent home-cooked meal. All in all, I had no complaints.

Riding home from Eva’s house that day, I didn’t know what I was gonna say about her mom the next time I saw her. I didn’t want to bring it up and make her feel embarrassed, but I didn’t want to ignore what I had seen, either, in case she needed someone to talk to. I just couldn’t work out what to do or say to make it better.

I guess I must have been pretty preoccupied about it that whole weekend, because the next day when I showed up at a party I’d been invited to at some chick’s house, a couple people mentioned in passing that I looked kind of serious. My buddy Joe, who avoided ‘talking feelings’ like the plague, even asked me whether anything was wrong.

I brushed them all off, saying it was nothing, and tried to turn my mind to partying.

I was a couple beers and a keg stand into the evening when Debbie Turner came up to me. She was, as always, dressed to attract the eyes and cocks of every guy in the room, in a tight black mini-skirt and a white tank top that showed off her fantastic rack. But tonight she just wasn’t doing much for me. I kept thinking about Eva’s sapphire eyes and her full, luscious mouth as Debbie flashed her wide pink smile at me.

“I saw you riding out of the school parking lot with Eva Van Buren yesterday. Sweet bike, by the way.”

Debbie’s mouth was close to my ear so I could hear her over the music, and her lips grazed my earlobe as she spoke. She could be kind of a bitch, especially to girls, but she had always been pretty nice around me. We’d fooled around a couple of times, and she never got mad when I didn’t call her afterwards.

“Yeah,” I said simply. “I took her on a ride. Hey, isn’t that your house across the street from hers?” I vaguely remembered being at Debbie’s house years ago in junior high, for some party she’d managed to throw when her folks were out of town.

She nodded. “Yeah. Did you guys go over to Eva’s house, then?” She gave me an enigmatic half-smile.

“Nah. Just dropped her off after the ride.”

My thoughts went back for the hundredth time to the scene I had witnessed with her mom.

I must have needed to unload some of what was on my mind, or maybe it was the beer talking, because I ended up asking Debbie about it. “Do you, uh, know much about Eva’s family?”

She wrinkled her nose slightly. “Um, yeah. They moved in when I was little. Have you met her mom yet?”

“Yeah… sort of.”

Debbie gave me a knowing look. “Crazy, huh?”

I was silent for a moment. I didn’t want to say anything bad about Eva’s mom, but I was still trying to figure out how to deal with what had happened when I saw her again on Monday. “Yeah, she was a little… rough around the edges.”

I glanced at Debbie. “I dunno, it was weird. Eva, she’s so delicate… elegant, you know?” I said. Someone had turned the music down, so I wasn’t having to yell. I continued, almost to myself: “The way she moves, she’s graceful. Almost like a princess. I guess I thought of her as living in some sort of mansion, or something. Like a castle. I figured her parents were rich, or something.” I had to laugh at how stupid I probably sounded.

Debbie snorted. “Hardly. My dad’s always bitching about how they have the worst trash house on the block.”

Instantly, I felt ashamed for talking about Eva behind her back like that. “Anyway. Eva’s pretty awesome,” I said quickly.

She took a sip of her beer. “Oh yeah? Are you gonna date her, or something?”

“Maybe.” I suddenly felt a little defensive. Not because I was ashamed to be with Eva, but because I didn’t
do
relationships. The longest I’d ever hooked up with a girl was two weeks, and that was back in eighth grade. But this was different. Eva was different. This was something I felt like I wanted to protect.

Debbie was looking at me curiously. “Huh,” she said finally, her lip curling. “I wouldn’t have thought Eva Van Buren would have what it takes to turn Caleb Jackson into a pussy.”

Before I could say anything in response, she had turned and walked away, her hips swaying in a way that said she knew that I and every other guy in the room were watching.

Debbie was the only person I ever talked to about Eva. A couple months later, when she and I ended up hooking up, I asked her if she had any idea why Eva might have freaked out the way she did. All I remember is, she said it didn’t matter anyway, since Eva would be off to college in a few weeks.

Then Debbie proceeded to give me a blow job that could have sucked the chrome off a trailer hitch.

* * *

T
he next day
when I showed up for my PT appointment, I found myself nervously waiting for Eva, for the second time in my life.

And for the second time in my life, it did not go at all the way I expected it to.

“Hi,” a thin, lithe black woman in a hospital coat said as she strode out into waiting area to greet me. “I’m Vanessa Washington. I’ll be taking over for Eva as your physical therapist.”

“What? Wait,” I protested. “This has gotta be a mistake. No one mentioned they were switching my PT when they called to change my appointment.”

“I’m sorry,” she frowned. “I would have thought they’d tell you. But it’s not a mistake.” She motioned toward the main exercise area. “Shall we get started?”

Shit. In a way, I should have been glad of the change. This new therapist, Vanessa, was freaking beautiful, but she wasn’t Eva. I could control myself around beautiful women, though. I wasn’t going to have to suffer through being reduced to an out-of-control horny teenager around her. It should have been a relief that I wouldn’t have to worry about sprouting wood every time my new PT touched me.

And as she began putting me through my paces, it became obvious she was good at what she did, too. All in all, I should have just thanked my lucky stars and let it go.

But she wasn’t Eva.

As Vanessa had me go through the various exercises to work different muscles in my leg, I started making conversation with her to see if I could worm some information out of her.

“So,” I said nonchalantly as I finished up a hamstring set. “Is Eva still here?”

“No, she’s gone for the day.” Vanessa nodded. “Good. Don’t strain. Just take it easy. Slow and controlled movements.”

I decided to take a shot at directness. “Do you know why she decided to ditch me as a patient?”

Her eyes met mine briefly, then flicked away. “I’m sure she felt that the two of you weren’t a good fit.”

Actually, I was pretty sure we
would
be a good fit, but I knew that’s not what she was talking about. My dick responded uncomfortably to a very inappropriate image that had just popped into my mind.

I tried again. “She got a boyfriend? Or a husband?”

Vanessa smirked. “Now, that would be unprofessional to reveal to you.”

Ha
. She was single. Vanessa wouldn’t have bothered to conceal it if she wasn’t. That meant I had a shot.

Wait, what the hell was I doing
?
A shot at what?

Without even intending to, my brain had shifted in a direction I was pretty sure was A Very Bad Idea.

After all, Eva hated me. Not only that, I was about as far from being long-term relationship material as it was possible to get.

I shouldn’t have cared one way or another about getting her back as my PT. And I sure as hell shouldn’t be thinking beyond that. Yet suddenly, there I was, scheming to figure out a way to get her back.

Not like I ever
had
her in the first place
, I reminded myself.

Vanessa had a hand on her hip, and was looking at me with her head cocked. “You okay?”

Apparently, I had been staring off into space.

Clearing my throat, I decided to go for broke. “Look. Vanessa. I know you don’t know me from Adam. But Eva and I, we have a… well, a kind of history. And she’s really pissed at me for something that happened a long time ago. But I swear to you, I don’t know what it is. And I want to try to make it right. But I need your help.”

Vanessa’s eyes bored into mine, searching. For a moment, she didn’t say anything at all, and I knew I at least had a shot of getting her on my side. So I went for it.

“Look, I’m begging you,” I continued. “Help me out. Maybe you could, I dunno, work on her for me? Try to figure out why she’s pissed, or try to get her to give me a chance to talk to her?”

She gazed at me intently for a few moments, her expression unreadable.

“Why should I help you?” she asked.

“Because I’m not a bad guy. I would never intentionally hurt Eva. I swear.”

She crossed her arms in front of her, frowning as she considered. “You got a job?” she asked finally.

I laughed. “I make a living.”

“You live in your mama’s basement or something?”

I snorted. “What do you think?”

She waited a beat, then sighed and rolled her eyes. “You better not make me regret this.”

Grinning, I held up my hand. “I promise. Scout’s honor.”

She snorted and nodded at my tattoos. “Don’t give me that.
You
were
not
a boy scout, I can guarantee.”

I laughed. “You got me there.”

V
anessa sent
me off with some exercises to do at home the next day, and a PT appointment for the day after that. She told me to give her some time to figure out a plan, and made me swear three more times I wasn’t going to hurt Eva.

But as I climbed painfully into the truck to drive myself over to the clubhouse for chapel that afternoon, I had to admit to myself that I had no idea what I was doing, or whether either of us was gonna get hurt. I hadn’t thought any of this shit out.

All I knew was that I had a very small window at having a second shot with Eva Van Buren. And I didn’t seem to be able to stop myself from throwing myself through it at full speed.