Cocky Biker: A Stand Alone MC Romance Novel (Cocker Brothers of Atlanta Book 2) (14 page)

I
am a shell of myself
.

Lost.

No.

Worse.

I have nowhere to go.

The wind on my face was nothing like how I felt when he was by my side.

I am empty.

Numb.

Scared.

Is this what I have to look forward to?

A life where I hurt myself because of my past?

Do I deserve love?

I don’t know.

Those women at the Cipher’s home base were foreign to me. They were so confident in their men. Talking about private things.

“Fuse always bitches about how I’m crazy but when he comes back after a long ride, he’s always got tears in his eyes before he kisses me hello.” Melodi shared so openly. I think she was claiming him in front of me, but she had nothing to worry about. I could have told her that, if I’d found my voice. “They act all macho but they’re just little boys who want to be loved underneath,” she laughed.

While they all shared similar secrets, I stayed quiet. She hated that. I could tell she wanted the dirt on Jett, but what was my right? I couldn’t say how good he was to me. I couldn’t talk about him when I knew I was throwing away the only thing that had ever calmed my bones.

“What, you too good for us or somethin’?”

The other two women stared waiting for me to answer Melodi.

“No.”

“Big talker,” she muttered.

I got up and went out to the yard. As I passed by the kitchen, the guys were inside drinking beer and chowing down on even more of that delicious Jambalaya. Honey Badger was roaring about some shit they pulled in Tennessee while the other guys soaked it up. They paused as they heard the back screen door clang shut. Honey Badger poked his head out. “You okay, Luna?”

Hearing my real name surprised me. I guess Jett must have told him it. I couldn’t remember if someone said it when I was introduced. My mind was as thick as the outside fog, with anxiety. “I’m fine. Just need some air.”

With a knowing look, he rolled his eyes toward upstairs. “They’re just sniffin’ you out. Give it time.”

I nodded, unable to tell him I wasn’t staying past this night.

Especially since, as I looked out over the beautiful property, the spicy taste of dinner still in my mouth, I wanted to stay. I wanted it very badly. I wanted those women to like me. The Cipher men, too. I wanted this life. I wanted this family. I’d never had anything like this.

And I wanted Jett. I wanted to tell him I love him.

I love him deeply.

I was thinking up how to tell him I wanted to stay when he joined me outside. The familiar scent of him as he stood next to me lit my body up. The idea that we could start a life together was so intoxicating that I felt dizzy.

And then he gave me the bike and my old shit came up. I’ve had so many men try to give me things, with bad intentions.

I knew Jett wasn’t like that.

But old habits don’t go away just because you wish they would. I guess you have to work for that.

Watching him lose his mind, so hurt by my mistake, was terrible.

I didn’t have to be psychic to know that being without him would haunt me forever.

“More coffee?”

I blink back to present time and look up at the diner waitress who’s gotta be in her early sixties, but her hair and makeup are so done up she reminds me of Dolly Parton.

“What?”

“Coffee? Want some more?”

“Oh.” I push the cup toward her. “Yeah, thanks. Didn’t sleep well last night.”

“Oh, I hate that! Well, let’s fix you right up.” As she pours it I stare at the emptiness in the booth opposite me, seeing Jett sliding in and calling that waitress Alice just to make me smile.

“I see a lot of sad faces in here, but yours is the worst,” she mutters, setting the cup down.

Blinking back to her, I don’t say anything.

She sighs and glances around the empty tables, then she takes a seat. “What’s wrong, Sugar?”

“Sugar? Really?” I mutter. “Nothing. I’m good.”

“If you’re good then I’m the First Lady.” She taps hot pink nails on the table. “It’s gotta be a man. He cheat on you?”

“Nope.” My voice is dead. “And I don’t think he ever would.”

“So, it is a man that’s got your face all frowny.”

“I really don’t feel like talking. I’m not the type.” I pick up the coffee, smell it, then set it back down as she watches.

“You know what my nana used to say to me? She said,
God speaks to us from everywhere and everyone.
And I have to tell you, Sugar, the second I saw you sit down I thought what you needed was a mother.”

My eyes dart up to her face.

This woman just stabbed me with a knife I didn’t know she had.

Understanding she hit the spot, she nods, “I’m right, aren’t I?” With kindness in her crinkles, she leans over and puts her cold hand on mine. “Did she die?”

For some reason I don’t pull away. “Yeah.”

“How long ago?”

“I was ten,” I whisper, unable to look away even with my vision getting blurry.

“Oh honey, that’s too young!” She squeezes my hand really softly.

She’s wrecking me. And I can’t do anything about it.

“Just pretend I’m her,” she tells me.

“That’s crazy,” I mutter, trying to tug my hand back. She won’t let me. Her grip isn’t strong. It’s rooted in persistent kindness. “My mother wasn’t great at making decisions,” I confess before I know what I’m doing.

She takes a deep breath and nods once. “Well, talk to me like she was.”

“You’re not going to let me out of this are you?”

A sad smile appears. “No.”

On an awkward laugh, I shrug and squeeze her hand back. “You have to let this go. I’m not used to the whole touching thing.”

“No.”

“Jesus,” I mutter.

“Go ahead, Sugar.”

What do I have to lose?

“I used to know what I wanted to do with my life.”

“Which is what? What did you want to do?”

“Something you wouldn’t understand. But I did it. And now I don’t have a purpose anymore. I’m just…wandering. I’ve been traveling for eight days on my own and it didn’t have to be like this.”

“Why? You married? Did you run away?”

“No,” I whisper. “Not married. Just met someone who made my life…better.” My voice is so filled with regret and emotion that it’s only a low rasp now. “I broke his heart.”

The bell dings and she lets go of my hand out of instinct, a slave to the sound. A couple is walking into the diner, chatting about something. On a quick frown, she taps the table with her nails and whispers, “Hold that thought.”

As if I can think of anything else.

But she never comes back. The place starts filling up, and I scan for a wall clock to see why it suddenly got busy in here. Sure enough, there’s one over the register telling me it’s noon.

This must be how people feel in therapy sessions when their time is up.

Drinking down my coffee, I pull out Jett’s card and lay it down. My plan is to pay him back when I can get some cash. I’ll steal some soon. Not worried about that. There’s always some asshole in a bar who will try to make an unwanted move. Then he gets his nuts kicked in, my knee to his face as he bends over, and his wallet stolen before he can even grunt, “Fucking bitch.”

But Jett’s going to think I’m an even bigger bitch when he sees these charges.

Still…he hasn’t stopped the card. Huh…I hadn’t thought about that.

Aloud, I whisper a question I’d never thought to ask, “Is he tracking me?” The idea that Jett might be nearby, making sure I’m okay, or trying to think of a way to talk to me immediately kicks my heart into gear.

The waitress hurries over. She’s the only one on this shift. “I’m so sorry, Sugar! What horrible timin’!”

I hand over the card. “You helped.”

“Oh good!” She takes it and returns quickly for me to sign, too busy to notice a man’s name is on it:

Jerald Cocker.

Pretty sure I don’t look like a Jerald. And neither, in fact, does Jett.

No wonder he’s pissed at his dad.

Smiling at this thought, I wave to her. I’m almost out the door, the bell’s still dinging, when she touches my back. “Sugar, when you said you broke his heart. Do you know you broke yours, too?”

As the cook’s call, “ORDER UP!” she hurries away.

“
F
uck
, this is beautiful, man,” I tell my brother Jaxson, as we sit over coffee in his renovated barn-house home, a toasty fire burning across from us. “This all reclaimed wood?”

He nods and points to the high ceiling. “Had all this redone. The frame is the barn that stood here, but the roof was useless. Those joists and beams there? I got those off an old church in southern Georgia. Preserved well because the townspeople cared for it more than their own homes back in the day. Place was being demolished, so I took the wood. Also the shutters you saw outside.”

“You do all this yourself?”

“Hired guys, but I was in there workin’ with them. You know me.”

“I was gonna say,” I smirk, intimating that my older brother would never let another man do his job.

He smiles, staring out eight feet high windows onto the farm he owns, hazel eyes filled with memories. “Pretty much every day they’d come back expectin’ yesterday’s job finished by me while they were home eatin’ dinner.”

I chuckle, because I can see him doing that. “I bet. Did they slack off?”

“Nah. Made ‘em work harder. They didn’t like me showin’ ‘em up. Got the job finished a few weeks earlier.”

“Fuck,” I chuckle, “That never happens.”

“With incentive, it does. Ego inspires.”

“That it does.” I set my cup down on his rustic coffee table that’s got a manly and solid iron foundation, and walk to the fireplace to throw another log on. “I could live here.”

“Why don’t you?”

Throwing him a look over my shoulder, I grab a poker and break up the charred wood. “You know what I do.”

“I only asked because I knew you’d say that.”

Laughing loudly, I toss a new log on and walk to stare at the view. It’s a foggy morning, just like back in Louisiana, and of course that makes me think of her.

“I met a woman, Jax.”

“No shit?”

On a long exhale, I mutter, “Yeah. Didn’t work out though.”

“She didn’t like you gone most of the year?”

Huffing through my nose, I shake my head, only seeing Luna’s face. “She’s a loner.” At his low laugh, I spin around and point at him. “Don’t say it!”

“Taste o’ your own medicine?”

“You fuckin’ said it.” I grumble. “And you should know, buddy.”

He shrugs and kicks his boots onto the coffee table, making sure not to knock over my cup as he takes a sip from his own. I love his style, not just in how he restored this old barn with the combination of rock, metal and reclaimed gray and brown wood, but also in his dishes. Those mugs have big handles meant for a man’s hand. You feel good drinking from them.

“I know I’m a loner, Jett. You know you are, too. That’s why it’s funny to me that you’re heartbroken over a woman who’s just like you. Not funny, but…you know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” I mutter, walking to one of the beams and leaning on it. “But those women on the road didn’t know me long enough to love me. They just loved the idea. And the sex.”

“They sure do get hung up on the sex, don’t they?” he mutters from personal experience.

“I don’t think enough men give it to them the way they want it.”

“Yeah,” he smirks. “Also women want what they can’t have. If they think you can’t be tamed, damn if they don’t want to lasso and tie you upside down with a brand on your butt.”

“Except the one you wish would do that.” We stare at each other.

“How long you know her?”

“That’s a complicated question. Gonna take a while to answer it.”

“I’ve got all the time in the world,” he says with patience.

Even though it’s only six in the morning I ask, “Got any bourbon?”

“Just talk.”

“Fuck,” I mutter, and launch into it. Jaxson listens intently, asking questions when he needs clarity, and dropping his feet on the ground to lean forward and soak it all in. I tell him everything. No detail is spared. I make sure to tell him all the good things about her, and the bad. I’ve been dying to get this off my chest. It feels like I’m dead inside. I needed Jax.

Known him my whole life, which sounds weird, but he was there when I was born. The others came after. We had some time alone.

The twins were a unit beneath us in age, so Jaxson and I have a closer bond than with the others. Growing up we were their leaders, but now that our brothers are all grown, I’d say none of them follow us in any way anymore. They’re all their own men.

Jaxson’s quieter than I am. He has a wise soul. Never asks anyone for anything. He’s out here on this farm all by himself and likes it that way.

I’ve got my club and we rarely stay in one place for long.

So while we’re both strong, we’re different.

But we get each other.

He understands that when I say Luna is the one for me, I mean it.

“What’re you gonna do, Jett? Made any decisions?”

“Yeah.”

“What?”

“Nothin.’ I’m doin’ nothin.’ She’s got my card and is charging up hotels and food, but I’m leavin’ it alone. She’s got no one. She’ll find her way. Get a job or steal the money. Hell, I don’t know. Probably steal it, I guess. I can’t see her workin’ under some boss. The only consolation I have is I know she’d never sell herself in any way. Hell, after what she’s been through? She’s only been with three guys. I’m the third.”

“No shit? Man, I have no idea how many women I’ve had.”

“Me neither.”

“It makes sense with her childhood. How old is she?”

“I never asked. Late twenties, I think. Looks like Penelope Cruz and acts like a Lynx in a cage after the sedatives wore off. And when she looks at me I want to eat her alive. I love her. I fuckin’ love this bitch.”

Jaxson nods, looking somber. “I’m sorry, man.”

“Just gonna have to live without her. I was doin’ that before we met.” Turning back to look at the farm, I mutter to myself, “Just feels different now.”

He lets me sit in it for a minute, but won’t let me wallow. Changing the subject, Jaxson says, “I told mom you were on your way. Called her last night before you got here.”

“You guys get tired of reportin’ my whereabouts?”

His normally serious face breaks out into a slow grin. “With a family as big as ours, we always report on each other, Jett. You remember how it was before you went on the road…” He smiles at the memory. “…that one time when Jason was dating Becca in high school and she took his virginity. Shit—”

“—Jason told Justin first and then it was like three minutes before Mom hugged him and embarrassed the shit out of him by calling him a man!”

We’re both laughing so hard now that Jaxson stutters, “Jeremy fuckin’ shouldn’t have told her! But oh man, that was funny!”

“So fuckin’ funny! So good!”

“Jason’s face!”

“I know! I’ll never forget it!”

When the laughter dies down, Jaxson glances to the fireplace and stares at it for a while. “Wish Jeremy could be here for the wedding.”

“He’s in Syria again?”

“Yup. Just flew in. God better watch over him.”

Over the crackling fire a hawk’s distant cry sounds. As though it was an alarm for Jaxson, he stands and grabs up both cups, heading for the kitchen. He moves like a cowboy, real slow. Trustworthy. The layout is wide open so I can watch him over the stone island that houses four gas burners and a modern oven. In silence he pours more coffee while I turn back to the view and let the calm of the farm slip into my veins.

I wonder how my brother would do as a Cipher. The fighting would be different. He’d probably talk the fuckers we run up against, out of it, with his well-known powerful calm.

He’d never back down from a fight – I know that from experience. We’ve come up against some heat in the past. Atlanta knows the Cockers, and while most look up to us, they don’t all like us. There’s jealousy since our family’s blood runs deep in this city, goes way back. And money has never been an issue, which pisses some off.

None of our ancestors squandered what they made – there were no gamblers among us, at least not when it came to money. They invested and saved and grew into an estate that would be passed down.

We’re not the Rockefellers, but in an affordable place such as Atlanta, we’ve done well.

In some ways The Ciphers are like that, we live well but carefully. We don’t squander. We save. Hell, that’s one of Scratch’s main gifts, making money grow and last so that we have a foundation. He and Mona handle the Louisiana branch. They’re a team. Smart, together.

They’re gonna have to teach one of us what they know.

Thinkin’ on it, I’d be the perfect choice for them, with my history of caution. Overspending has never been my thing, thanks to my parents teaching me to respect the power of the dollar.

I guess that’s one thing my dad did, more than my mom.

He always said, “If you don’t need it, save the money for what you will need – or better yet, what you’ll really
want.”

Great fuckin’ advice.

As Jaxson ambles back over with a couple of full and steaming cups, he cocks an eyebrow at me. “What’s with the smile?”

“I missed ya, Jax.”

With a thoughtful gleam in his eyes, says, “Missed you, too. This woman…what’s her name?”

“Sunshine,” I answer without even thinking of calling her Luna. “Though I should have called her Storm.”

He gives a low chuckle and takes a sip. “Wanna milk the cows with me? They’re gonna be hurtin’ if I wait much longer.”

“Fuck yeah, I do!” I hit our cups together. “Teach me how.”

As we head out, I cock an eyebrow at him. “Is this gonna make me think of her?”

Jaxson chuckles, “You’re sick.” After a second, he admits, “Probably.”