Shift (The Disciples' Daughters #2) (4 page)

Pulling up to the farmhouse on the outer edge of Hoffman, Oregon felt like stepping back in time. Just the sight of the old house made me feel like I was a kid again, driving up with Dad ready for a cook out or a day in with one of the brothers watching me. It made me flash back to my teenage years with another man next to me—or maybe he was still just a boy—when we would drive beyond the structure and find places to disappear for a few hours.

“Where are we, Momma?” my reminder that I was definitely not the younger self I was envisioning called from the backseat.

I turned to look at Emmy, who was using her little fists to make an uncoordinated attempt at rubbing the nap she’d just taken from her eyes. “This is where we’re staying,” I told her.

“Where are all the other buildin’s?”

My poor, sheltered city girl. Emmy had only left the Portland city limits a few times in her short life and those were still trips to the suburbs. She’d never been anywhere where only one building stood in the entirety of the visible landscape.

“They’re all far away,” I explained. “Roadrunner and his friends own all this land.”

“Wow.” Her little face was the picture of childhood wonder.

“There’s plenty of space for you to run around,” Roadrunner put in.

Emmy swung her head around, looking out the window at every angle she could, taking in her new domain. “I can play anywhere?”

“Same rules as the park,” I said, waiting for her to reiterate the rule I’d made her memorize. She didn’t disappoint.

“I haft’a be able to see you.”

“Good girl.”

At least that was one worry out of the way. The other couple thousand rioting around in my head would just have to keep at their torture for the time being.

As Roadrunner pulled up in front of the three-story house, I focused on the bikes and a couple cars parked in the tamped down grass out front. I tried to place a rider to each bike, but it had been too long to be sure. The only one I was certain of was the Harley FXR. That one belonged to Roadrunner. It was obvious by the emblem of the cartoon character that shared his name, the same image adorning the back of his prized car.

“Are you living here now?” I asked.

Roadrunner had always been the type to spend most of his hours at the clubhouse, but he’d also owned a small house in town. It was just a block away from the house I’d grown up in.

“Nah,” he answered. “Had the boys haul my girl over here on one of the flatbeds from the garage. Means I can leave the truck with you so you’ve got a way to get around until we figure out something better. I’ll have her and the bird until we sort you out some wheels,” he explained.

“The bird” was his 1972 Plymouth Roadrunner. His first love. I couldn’t say how many times I’d heard him tell the tale of finding the beaten up thing and the labor of love that was restoring her to pristine condition. There was a reason his road name was what it was. That car was a part of him.

The prospect of driving the pick-up intimidated me since I’d only ever been behind the wheel of smaller cars, but I was far from a crap driver. Dad wouldn’t have stood for that. By the time I was sixteen, I was proficient behind a wheel or a set of handlebars.

“Thank you,” I said. It was starting to sound like a never-ending refrain, but that didn’t mean it was not worth repeating. Roadrunner was doing more than I could ever ask for. A thousand thank-yous didn’t seem to scratch the surface.

He looked at me and I saw the dismissal ready to come from his lips, the assurance that I didn’t need to thank him again. Then his face grew so soft, it froze my lungs. “You’re welcome, Firefly.”

Crap. I was not going to start any waterworks. I held his gaze for a moment, but only that before moving to open my door. Just being back on this land had my emotions swirling around enough. Holding myself together was priority number one.

While I unlatched my rug rat from her car seat, Roadrunner dashed up the few steps to the porch, then inside. A moment later, he emerged with two more bodies at his back. Both men were ones I recognized. The first was Stone, the Disciples’ President. Stone was the kind of silent, deadly looking giant you might guess was at the helm of a MC. He kept his graying-brown hair cut with military precision, but his beard was not kept with the same care. He was huge, a solid wall of muscle, and he could make even strong men want to run off like frightened kids.

Of course, he was a lot less intimidating when he was smiling that way. You couldn’t so much see the actual smile beneath his scraggily beard, but the effect was still there in the curve of his mustache and the lines around his eyes.

Just behind him, with his trademark indecent smirk, was Daz. In a club full of men who weren’t bonded by vows of celibacy by any stretch, Daz still managed to stand out as a man whore. And he reveled in the title. It was in his swagger, in the way everything about his appearance screamed “just fucked”, and the overwhelming innuendos he wove into conversations like prepositions.

Daz offered me a nod and kept moving to the back of the truck to unload. Stone, however, came right to me.

It surprised even me when he pulled me into a tight hug. Stone had been around my whole life and I held none of the fear he inspired in most people, but he didn’t tend to be the most touchy-feely of the men I called my uncles.

“Welcome back,” he said as he stepped away.

“It’s…” I hesitated. I couldn’t necessarily say it was good to return. If I could help it, I wouldn’t be here at all.

“It’s alright, you don’t have to front. Weird being here again?” he let me off the hook.

“Very.”

“I want you to know we’re working on this,” he said. “I swear to you, we’re going to keep you safe, and we’re going to get this…” he trailed off and eyed Emmy for a moment, “situation sorted.”

I nodded, not sure what to say. I still only had a vague idea of what the situation was seeing as it was “club business”. In that silence, Emmy decided she’d had enough of being out of the conversation.

“Hi,” she greeted with a bright smile.

“Hello, little one,” Stone answered.

“I’m Emmaline,” she said, extending her hand. How she understood handshakes and introductions was beyond me. Maybe she was watching too much TV.

Stone did her one better. Reaching out, he turned her hand so the back was facing up and bowed to place a kiss on it. If it weren’t for the gruff biker look winning out, you might have thought he was a prince.

Emmy giggled, and squealed, “It tickles!”

Stone smiled as he pulled away. “I’m Stone.”

Emmy’s hand came back toward us and she laid it over her heart. She was going in for her kill. “I’s so nice to meet you.”

And another one bites the dust.

Stone was grinning at her bigger than I had ever seen. Not to be outdone, the king of charm himself came swooping in.

“Well, hello, pretty lady,” Daz said, flashing her a cheeky smirk.

For a moment, I could swear Emmy was sizing up the competition. It was as if she could tell Daz was a flirt and was going attempt to outmaneuver her. She was not about to have that.

Before she could make her move, Roadrunner spoke up. “Careful, Daz. You might’a met your match with this one.”

In my arms, Emmy started to fuss. Her silent demand to be put down was odd. Usually, she was all about vocalizing her thoughts. Still, I set her down without question. She immediately stepped up to Daz and extended her arms in the air. The look on Daz’s face, the panicked way his eyes popped open, had me biting my lips to keep from laughing. Daz was not a kid person. I think he was uncomfortable with them out of a basic fear of some woman he’d one-nighted showing up with one of his own. I had to hand it to him, though. He only froze for a second before lifting my girl into his inked arms.

Without hesitation, she grabbed onto his stubble-shadowed jaw and gave a smacking kiss to his right cheek.

“Well…fuck,” Daz muttered.

“Daz!” I reprimanded. “Could you not swear in front of my three-year-old?”

“Right. Sorry. Shit—” His eyes went wide as he did it again. “I mean…
oops.
” Emmy giggled. “Just don’t repeat anything your Uncle Daz says,” he told her. “How ‘bout that?”

“Untle Daz is funny,” she went on laughing.

“Uncle,” I corrected.

“Untle,” she repeated while nodding at me like she had it under control. I just shook my head. There was no arguing with her.

Daz looked to Stone and Roadrunner. “See? I can’t keep the ladies off me.” Then, he turned with my girl and started walking inside.

“You can’t keep her, Razzle-Dazzle,” Roadrunner called after him.

Daz flipped him the bird behind his back. “I’m her uncle. It’s called babysitting.”

“You can’t use my daughter to pick up women,” I told him.

“What good is being an uncle then?”

I heard Emmy’s laughter. She might not have understood the conversation, but the animated way Daz talked was enough for her. “Oh yeah, that’s what’s good about it,” he muttered.

Totally sunk. He was just another victim to her charms.

I stayed with Stone and Roadrunner while they each grabbed a box from the back of the truck. I had Emmy’s backpack of things to keep her occupied in the car and one duffle I packed with some basic necessities we might need before we could get to unpacking.

Shuffling through the entry, I kept my gaze down as I held the door open for both men. I needed that moment to brace. Without a doubt, I knew looking into the living room of the farmhouse was going to be hard. I spent more days than I could count in that room and I knew, as well as I knew the Disciples, it would not have changed much. The brothers weren’t exactly interior decorators. Unless a piece of furniture broke beyond repair, it stayed where it was. The constancy had been comforting as a kid, but I found myself wishing it weren’t true anymore.

When the two men were through the doorway, I took a deep breath, turned into the room…

And froze.

Flowers. Everywhere. On the couch, piled into the corners of the room, all over the living room.

“What the…”

“Yeah, those’ll be gone soon,” Stone said over his shoulder. “Deni organized for us to take them over to the hospital.”

“But what are they all from?”

“The wedding,” he answered.

Before I could ask what wedding, Roadrunner spoke up. “Forgot to tell you about that. Gauge and Cami had their wedding here over the weekend.”

Wait. Gauge and Cami?

“Cami, as in—”

“As in my baby girl got hitched to a Disciple,” Tank cut me off. I turned to see him coming out of the kitchen with his arms full of…a little boy? Before I could ask, Tank went right on speaking. “Sorry I couldn’t meet you at the door. Little Levi decided he needed feedin’ now.”

“Levi?” I asked, already making my way toward him.

Tank grinned at me like he was king of the world. “My grandson.”

I dropped the duffle bag and backpack to the floor as Tank’s big arms extended the little boy my way. I’d guess he was about a year old. He was bigger than Emmy had been at that age, but Gauge wasn’t a small man. There was no doubt who his father was, even though it had been years since I had seen Gauge. Levi had his dad’s deep tan coloring, his dark eyes, and his mess of black hair. The resemblance was so absolute, I saw none of his mother in him.

“Gauge’s genes were dominant, huh?” I mused.

“Thank fuck for that.” My head snapped up in confusion at Tank’s words. He read it right away. “He’s not Cami’s. Not by blood, at least. But the papers just went through and he’s her son now.”

Jeez. A lot had happened.

“I didn’t even know Cami and Gauge knew each other.”

Cami had grown up with the club as well. She was a few years older than Gabe and I, but we were like cousins. There weren’t a lot of kids around, so age differences were set aside. Cami left for college at eighteen and essentially never came back. From what I’d known before I left, she started seeing some guy Tank was not at all fond of and they were living together. She never came back to visit and Gauge hadn’t become a brother until after she’d left.

“That was my doing,” Tank said, a note of pride in his voice. “I’ll let Cami tell you the story when she gets back in town. Gauge took her on a ride out for a few days for their honeymoon. Didn’t want to leave Levi for too long. They’ll be back tomorrow night.”

I was about to formulate some version of how I was looking forward to seeing her so I wouldn’t cause an awkward silence—which was my standard way of handling things—when Emmy came running into the room.

“Momma! Momma, it’s so pretty! You hafta see!”

Having no idea what could be “pretty” in a house full of bikers, I handed Levi back to Tank and followed her down the hall. Most of the rooms were upstairs, but there were a couple at the far end of the main floor. Back in the day, they were used as storage rooms. Gabe used to sneak us down that same hall, into those unused rooms. No one came looking for us there…

Crap. I needed to shut that down.

I focused on Emmy and her palpable excitement as we approached one of the rooms. The door was open, so I followed her as she turned in.

I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

What had to be a whole new set of furniture filled the room. Had to be, because no one living in the house would have been using a white wood framed canopy bed with pink gauzy curtains. The shelves on one side and the dresser with little tiara-shaped handles were likewise not in high demand.

They’d done this for us. They’d gone out of their way to make a room fit for a princess.

I could just imagine a group of these men in well-worn jeans and leather cuts, bearded and tattooed, walking into a furniture place and asking for the girliest set they had. The image was funny enough to hold back the threatening tears.

“It’s a pwincess room!” Emmy declared, in case I hadn’t gotten that.

“I see that, baby.”

My eyes swept over the whole room again, my chest constricting. I’d never been able to give her that. I’d tried. Every day since I found out I was pregnant, I had tried to provide my daughter with everything. We’d gotten by, but I’d never been able to give her something so luxurious. All the furniture we had was second hand. We got what we could from resale shops and garage sales. Her room at home was a mismatched nightmare, but it was what I could afford.

For a moment, the crushing sense that I had been failing her made me feel about a foot tall.

I ducked back into the hall as Daz helped Emmy rip open the moving box full of her toys. She was going to town on it, getting everything unloaded at top speed. She wouldn’t notice if I was gone for a while.

Standing in the hall did nothing to clear my heavy heart. It only reminded me of where I was. The club had been there, right where it always was, ready to welcome me back. I could have come home with Emmy years ago and the brothers would have taken us in. They would have helped us. She could have had this for years.

It wasn’t just the room. The physical gifts were only the smallest piece of what I was mourning. What really hurt were the relationships she missed out on. I grew up with a dozen uncles and now she would know what that was like. We were barely in the door and even Daz was sunk by her.

I kept that from her.

But I couldn’t have come back home, could I? I was forgetting the big issue, but I wouldn’t be able to for long. We would have to see each other at some point.

“You okay, Ash?” Roadrunner asked from behind me.

I turned back toward the room, trying to keep the emotions that felt like they were exploding inside of me from my face. “Just a bit overwhelmed,” I answered.

“We wanted her to have a room she was going to be comfortable in,” he explained. “We had to get furniture either way, there was nothing in here.”

Now Roadrunner was going to try to downplay the enormity of what they had just given my daughter, as if it meant nothing. It wasn’t nothing.

“Thank you,” I said, too overwhelmed to find any words that would come close to what I was feeling.

“Momma?” Emmy called just before her blonde curls popped around the doorframe. “You gotta see! You got a room, too!”

I tried to hide the mortification at what she was saying. Kids said crazy things. I could play it off, but only if I didn’t give the truth away.

“Yeah, baby,” I said in as even a tone as I could.

“There’s even a bed! A big one! So you can sleeps in one, too!” she kept right on with her excitement.

“Yeah, baby. Why don’t you keep unpacking? Uncle Daz probably doesn’t want to unpack your stuffies himself.”

Luckily, she followed my suggestion right away. Unfortunately, I knew the damaged had already been done.

“What’s she talking about?” Roadrunner asked.

Crap.

“It’s nothing.”

“Ashlynn Mae,” he said in warning.

With a deep breath, I looked up at him. “I couldn’t afford a two bedroom apartment,” I said, hoping that would suffice.

“So you two shared that room?” he asked, but he knew the answer. He’d seen Emmy’s bedroom.

“Not exactly.”

Roadrunner simply raised his eyebrows, his waning patience obvious.

“She’s getting older. I thought it was important that she have a space she could identify as her own as she grew up. She needed to get used to doing some things alone, like sleeping.”

“And where did you sleep?”

“The living room.”

“
Where
in the living room? I was there, Ash. I didn’t see a bed.”

“The couch,” I said, giving him the answer he already knew.

Roadrunner rubbed at his eyes like he had a headache setting in. “At least tell me it was a fuckin’ pull-out.”

I wanted to lie. So much of me wanted to tell him it was. Would he ever know otherwise? Probably not. I just couldn’t lie to Roadrunner, though. “It wasn’t.”

“Goddammit, Ash.” He started pacing while gripping the sides of his head. He was pissed. Seriously pissed. Pissed to the point where a casual observer would question my sanity at being in a little hall with him. But Roadrunner would never hurt me. He’d never lay a hand on any woman, but it was more than that. He hated the very idea of me hurting in any way. That was what had him so upset. “Why didn’t you call? Come home? We would’ve taken care of you.”

It was the same question that had been beating around my brain just minutes before.

“I know, but I couldn’t.” My eyes moved to the bedroom door where Emmy had disappeared again.

Coming back to the club was never something I’d intended to do, especially not with Emmy in tow. There were too many questions I couldn’t answer where she was concerned. I had no idea how we were going to do this as it was.

Roadrunner shook his head in a frustrated way. I knew he understood I was keeping Emmy away, but he didn’t understand why, and I couldn’t explain that to him.

With a great sigh, he came to me and pulled me into his arms.

“You’re here now. We’ll take care of you both,” he said.

He was right; we were here now.

How was I going to leave all this behind again?