Ruined (The MC Motorcycle Club Romance Series - Book #1)

RUINED

THE
MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE SERIES

By
Alycia Taylor

Copyright
2014.
All rights reserved.

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CHAPTER
1

DAX

“I’m
gonna
hope we don’t
see you again,” the property officer said and handed me the last of my things.

All my pitiful possessions collected over the past
two years in a cardboard box.

“I’m not in any hurry to see your ugly face again,
that’s for sure.”

This officer was one of the good guys. Some of the
correctional officers had something to prove and some of them came in every day
and did their job. Hernandez had worked in the prison system for twenty-four
years. He didn’t have a damn thing to prove and even after all of those years
in service, he remembered that although we may be the dregs of society, we’re
still human; at least most of us are.

“Somebody coming or are they driving you out to the
Amtrak?”

“Nah, my mom’s coming,” I told him.

My poor mom.
I had put her through some serious crap over the years and she was still the
only one who made the trip up to Pelican Bay to see me every Sunday. Most of
what was in the box I held came in packages she sent. I left a lot of it for my
cellmate. He was still looking at another ten years. I was coming out after
two. I didn’t know if I would survive if I had to go another eight.

Hernandez turned serious and said, “Next time you
think about doing something stupid, give a thought or two to how hard this had
to be on her…and she stuck by you too.”

“I know H—Thanks! I won’t be seeing you, so take it
easy.”

I stepped into the sally port with the
transportation officer, Collins. Collins didn’t like his job and he really
didn’t like inmates. As far as he was concerned, paroled or not, I was still an
inmate. He treated me like one as he loaded me into the van. The only
difference was he
wasn’t allowed
to put the waist
chains on me. I think that pissed him off.

I, Collins and another parolee named Simons drove in
silence to the gates. It
was overcast
, but that was
the normal weather there. I was actually looking forward to getting back to the
heat in the valley. Crescent City might be a nice place to visit, but I didn’t
want to live there any longer.

My mother had to wait at the little “friends on the
outside” trailer to pick me up. They couldn’t release me inside the prison
gates to her. Simons was heading to the Amtrak. He was worse off than I was,
not even his mother wanted to pick him up.

I saw her blue Saturn parked as we approached. She
had an SUV, but she refused to drive it up there. She said it ate too much gas.
It wasn’t
like
my father couldn’t afford it, but Mom
was never one to spend frivolously.

She got out when she saw us and opened the trunk.
Collins stepped out of the van, opened my door, handed me my box and gave a
curt nod in my mother’s direction. Then he climbed back into the CDC van and
headed out to drop lonely Simons at the train.

“Hey,
Dax
,” my mother said.
 

She was pushing fifty, but she was still a beautiful
woman. She had light blond hair and it was natural, not from a box or a bottle.
Everything about my mother was natural, she wasn’t into the big fake boobs or
any of that like a lot of the “old ladies” at the club were.

“Hi, mom, how are you?” I gave her a kiss on the
cheek. She always smelled good too. She had worn the same perfume since I was a
baby. I didn’t even know what it
was called
, but
whenever I smelled it, it reminded me of her.

“I’m good now. I haven’t slept in two years, but
tonight I’ll sleep like a baby.” She smiled. I believed her when she said she
hadn’t been sleeping. She was a great mom and she wasted a lot of time worrying
about me.

I gave her a hug and asked, “Want me to drive?”

She laughed and said, “Get your ass in the passenger
seat.” She was a sweet lady, but when she told you to put your ass somewhere,
you did it.

My mom made small talk on the way home. She was spouting
a bunch of bullshit about all the people who were going to be so happy to see
me. They all knew where I was the last two years. Yet it was only my mom there
to visit on Sundays and holidays. If they had missed me even a little bit, they
would have at least sent a letter or a card. I just let her talk though. It
helped her to believe what she was saying. It helped her to believe there was
some good left in my father and the rest of the “family.” It was delusional,
but I wasn’t going to be the one to take that away from her.

“Have you heard from Olivia?” my mom asked suddenly.

“Nope.
Last time I heard from Olivia was just before I went into court for my
sentencing. What I heard from her was, ‘
Dax
, I don’t
ever want to see you again.’ I have to give her credit; so far she’s stuck to
her guns.”

“She was scared,
Dax
. You
were both so young.”

“I haven’t heard from her. Not a word. She didn’t
even come inside for the sentencing.”

“Did you reach out to her? Did you try? You could
have written to her or called her. She really loved you,
Dax
.
I’m sure she’d love to hear from you. I’m sure that whatever changes she’s made
in her life could be…readjusted.”

“I’m not the same kid who went in. I was a thin,
fresh-faced, respectable looking little kid back then, back when she told me
she didn’t want to be with a guy who was doing time. She didn’t want to be with
a felon. I look like an inmate now or at the very least, a hardcore member of
the MC. Whether I was guilty or not, I’m a convicted felon and that will be
with me forever. She’s not even going to see the same guy she used to see when
she looked at me. She’s going to see a guy who did hard time every time she
looks at one of my tattoos.”

“It’s the man inside
that counts
,
Dax
.” My mother truly believed that and she must have
seen something in my dad that I couldn’t see or she would have left him decades
ago.

“Let’s change the subject,” I told her.

It was hard for me to think about Olivia. When I
first
got locked
up it was all I did. I drove myself
crazy thinking about her, wondering what she was doing…if she was moving on
with her life.

I fell in love with her the first time I saw her. I
literally bumped into her my first day in college. I knocked her down, but she
dusted herself off and laughed. After I helped her up, I realized how pretty
she was. She had long, thick dark hair that hung down her back and big, deep
brown eyes that a guy could get lost in and I did. I got lost in them and
stayed lost in them, right up to the day she told me she wasn’t going to wait
for me. That she didn’t want to be with me any longer.

“How’s dad?” I asked, desperately reaching for
anything that would make me stop thinking about Olivia. The days of us being
two carefree college students were long gone and we would never get them back.
I learned the hard way that wishing things were different was never going to
make it so.

“Oh, well, you know your father,” she said. I had to
smile. That was what she said every time I asked about him.

Yes, unfortunately I did know my father. He was the president
of his motorcycle club. I’m not talking about your Sunday afternoon guys who
wear suits all week and need a little adventure type of club. I’m talking
hardcore, we own and operate a bar up front but we deal in drugs and guns and
anything else illegal but profitable in the back kind.

The club members called themselves The
Smokin
’ Jokers and their “territory” stretched for miles
along the northernmost part of Central California. I had grown up with it,
around it, but once I was old enough to choose I had refused to take part in
it. I had gone to college
like
my mom urged me to my entire
life. She wanted me to move on, to get out. She didn’t want me to live my life
the way my father did. I was searching for a better life for myself, but the
fact that I was the son of the president got in the way of that…as it had
countless times before.

“Is he at the clubhouse right now?”

“Probably.
It’s a little after four; the bar will be getting busy for happy hour at five.”

“Will you drop me there?” Don’t ask me why I wanted
to go there, why I wanted to see him. I couldn’t have explained it if I tried.
It must have been some weird DNA pull or something because there was really
nothing about him that I liked or respected.

“
Dax
, I don’t think that’s
a good idea. I was hoping you would come to the house with me and we can talk
about what your plans are now. I got a catalog from the college and fall
classes just started. I’m sure you could still get into one or two. I can take
you there tomorrow; we can make a day of it.”

“Mom, I do want to go back to school and we’ll talk
about it. But not tonight, okay? I turned twenty-one in prison, tonight I’d
like to walk in that bar and have a beer and see my dad and the guys.”

If anyone understood the pull of that man, my mom
should have. She was just afraid that my intentions weren’t entirely pure I’m
sure.

“I don’t want you to get in a fight,
Dax
.”

I laughed. “I’m not going there to confront anyone.
I really just want to see them. I’ve been gone for two years. Don’t you think I
missed my father…who by the
way,
never visited me, not
one time? I’m a big enough man to get past that without punching him in the
face.”

“He couldn’t stand the thought of seeing you in
there. It upset him,” she said, still making excuses for him.

She had been making excuses for him for twenty-five
years. She didn’t know what else to do. She was right about one thing; I bet it
did upset him
since it was his fault I was there
. He
was probably scared to death every day that I would give up and rat him and the
other guys out. I had known my dad was dealing drugs since I was fourteen. I
hadn’t ever been a part of it. Circumstance had put me in the wrong place at
the wrong time though and I had taken the fall…for all of them.

“I know,” I said.

I didn’t want to upset her. My dad gave her plenty
to be upset
about
. She didn’t need any more headaches
from me.

“I promise I just want to see them and have a beer.
No confrontation, okay?”

“Okay,” she said. “You’ll call me for a ride if you
need one? I’ll be up late.”

I laughed. “If I need one, I’ll call. You’re
supposed to sleep tonight though, remember? You’re going to run yourself crazy
worrying so much.”

“I love you,
Dax
,” she
said out of the blue.

“I love you too.”

It took us a couple of hours to get to the bar from
the Pelican Bay. When we drove up in front, the first thing I noticed was that it
hadn’t changed…at all. The sign that said “The Smoke Joint” was still hanging
tilted to the right
like
it had been since I was a kid.
The ugly light blue paint
was almost completely peeled off
in places and the rain gutters were hanging loose. You would think a bunch of
guys without real jobs would have time to fix it up every now and then.

The big windows still had a mirrored tint so you
could see out from the inside, but not in from the outside. They took care of
those. I couldn’t see a single scratch. The club needed their privacy. The lot
out front was filled with Harley Davidsons and the sum total of their worth
would far outweigh that of the property they were parked on. I took a deep
breath and looked at my mom.

“Be good,” she said with a nervous smile.

“Always,” I said as any good ex-convict son would.

I got out of the car and the gravel crunched
underneath my prison-issued boots as I made my way through the sea of hogs to
the front door. I hesitated for just a second. I didn’t let myself hesitate any
longer than that. If I did, I might have turned around and got back in my mom’s
car. She was still sitting, watching me. I could see her in the windows of the
bar. I guess it was going to take a while for us to get back the relationship
we had before I went to prison. The one where I was
her
grown up son and she trusted that I would get through the day without getting
arrested.

The big heavy wooden door still groaned like it used
to as I pulled it toward me, but the music coming from the jukebox was too loud
for anyone inside to hear it. The old jukebox was older than my
dad
and I was surprised it still worked. The music was
scratchy, but if you turned it up loud enough and drank enough beer, no one
really noticed. No one even seemed to look at me when I walked in; everyone was
busy bullshitting or making out. There was even an old, fat biker with a young,
hot babe out on the tiny little dance floor looking like they might do it right
there. That was enough to turn my stomach.