CULVER: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel (15 page)

End
of Part 2.

If you’re enjoying this story, please take a minute to sign up for my
mailing list! I do giveaways, cover reveals, and advanced reader copies.
Click here to sign up!

And stick around after the epilogue to read my standalone novella “Taken
by Bikers” for free!

Flip the page to start Part 3.

PART 3

~
24
~

You thought you hit snooze, but you actually turned
your alarm clock off. You’re late now, and you didn’t do laundry when you
should have, so the only clean underwear you have has a big hole in it. You
can’t find any shoes that match. You brush too hard and cut your gums, and you
don’t have any time to get your hair to look decent, so you just put it in a
bun.

You’re halfway out the door when you realize you don’t
have your keys, and you don’t know where they are. Two minutes later, you find
them on top of the toaster. Why are your keys on top of the toaster, goddammit?
You get to the car and the engine won’t turn. You lean your head against the
wheel and think:
my life is a mess, my
life is falling apart.

Well, take it from me, that’s a rough morning, but
your life isn’t a mess, and it’s not falling apart. Your life is probably just
peachy. You don’t get to think that your life is falling apart until your biker
boyfriend follows you home from Vegas, gets held at gunpoint by your dad, then
admits that he’s trying to escape his own father, who just arrived at your
doorstep with a horde of scary men on rumbling motorcycles. That’s when you
really get to say “my life is a mess”.

Yes, when you look back from your bedroom window, out
of which you can see the gang of men on their bikes, and see your crumpled
panties on the floor, where the boy who shouldn’t even be in your room threw
them, and realize that you’re irreversibly screwed on pretty much all accounts,
then you get to think to yourself:
my
life is a mess, my life is falling apart.

Because at that point, it will be true.

~
25
~

“What are we gonna do? Boon, what are we gonna do?
Holy shit, holy shit, I have to call my dad, I have to call the police, we
gotta….” I said, panic hitting me like a champion heavyweight. Blood was
pounding in my ears, making the whole world sound muted, muffled. My hands were
shaking; hell, my whole body was shaking. I could barely focus on Boon’s figure
at the window, his face pale. He turned to me and I felt his strong grip on my
wrist; next thing I knew, we were running down the stairs and towards the back
of the house.

“Boon, wait, stop, my dad, my phone, we…”

“No time! There’s no fucking time, Samantha! They’re
not here to fucking negotiate, they’re here to fuck us up!” Boon said,
propelling me through the house at a neck-breaking speed. We reached the glass
doors that led to the backyard and I thought, foolishly, that Boon was going to
run straight through them. He stopped and fumbled with the handle. It was
locked, but in his panic Boon was just pulling at it.

“Wait,” I said, moving in front of him and unlocking
the door, letting it slide open. I turned to him, blocking the exit, clarity
starting to bleed into my frenzied thoughts. “We need to stop and call someone.
We can’t outrun them or…”

“Samantha, I swear to God, if you never trusted me
before, you need to trust me now. There’s no time.” I heard knocking on the
front door: a very, very, very loud and violent knocking. “You don’t know my
father. Now we have to GO!”

With that, he grabbed my hand again, pushing past me
into the backyard, dragging me along the manicured lawn as I stared back into
my house, hearing the knocking become a banging.
This is a safe neighborhood,
I thought to myself, vaguely, as Boon
pulled me through the backyard.
They
can’t hurt me here. They can’t hurt us in my home.

Just as Boon was pulling me through the hedges that
acted as a fence around our backyard, I saw shadowy figures in the hallway,
rushing towards us. And then we were in the next yard over, my heart racing, my
mind still foggy, Boon still pulling me along. I couldn’t see the house anymore
after that.

“Jesus, Samantha, you gotta hurry up, baby, please,”
he said, his voice desperate and fast. I turned back, facing forward now and
trying to walk as quickly as Boon was dragging me. We came out the other side
of my neighbor’s house; the street here seemed so quiet, so still and normal.
But Boon kept pulling me away.

He led me across the street to a car, grabbing the
handle and pushing me towards the front.

“Get in on the other side,” he said; the driver’s door
must have been unlocked, because he slid into the front seat and leaned over,
unlocking the passenger side. I stood in front of the car, looking at him
incredulously.

“I’m not going to get into a stolen car with you,” I
said, loudly.

“Well, consider it borrowing, then, Samantha, but get
the fuck in,” Boon said before his head disappeared; he was leaning under the
steering wheel, presumably preparing to hotwire the car. I slammed my hands
down on the hood. His head jerked back up.

“I’m. Not. Stealing. A. Car. We just have to go into
any of these houses, someone will be home and we can call the cops,” I said.

“The cops? Samantha, my dad eats cops for breakfast.
And anything they can pin on him, they can pin on me. I can’t call the cops on
them, Samantha, I just can’t. They’ll gang up and it’ll be my ass in a cell for
seventy years. Please,
please,
just
get in the car,” Boon said, leaning out of the window and looking at me with a
mix of fear and determination in his eyes.
 

I turned back to the house whose yard we had just cut
through and nearly pissed myself when I saw motion in the hedges; a tall,
leather-clad figure emerged, running across the lawn, and my mind was made up.
There really wasn’t time to go door-to-door looking for help. I raced across
the car to the passenger side and threw myself in, locking the door.

“Go, go, go,” I screamed. Boon held a bundle of wires
in his hand and I watched him match some up; the engine roared to life and Boon
grabbed the wheel, one foot pressed against the pedal. We skidded off down the
street and, turning around, I saw one, two, three, five, seven huge figures run
out into the street after us. We skidded around a corner, then another; I had
no idea where we were going and neither, presumably, did Boon.

“Where are we going?” I asked, my breath shallow,
adrenaline coursing through me.

“Somewhere safe. Any ideas? This is your town, where
can we go?” Boon said, glancing at me quickly. His knuckles were white from
clutching the steering wheel, his eyes dancing between the road and me. My mind
was racing, but it seemed like I was thinking in gibberish. Nothing really made
any sense. I felt tears begin to roll down my face.

I thought, suddenly, inexplicably, that I wished I’d
been wearing panties. They were still balled up on my bedroom floor. In my
house. Which had been broken into. And probably trashed. Maybe they were in my
room right now, tearing my curtains, breaking my picture frames, going through
my clothes, they’d see my panties right there on the ground…

The tears began to turn to sobs as my poor little
brain began to process the last five minutes. Those five minutes, when I looked
back on them, felt like hours.

“Samantha! Focus! Where can we go? There has to be
somewhere!” Boon yelled, reaching out one hand and grabbing my shoulder,
squeezing it. Despite everything else, the weight of his hand on me felt
calming, sturdy. I took a deep breath, closing my eyes.

My first thought was my aunt’s farmhouse, where my cow
and chickens lived, but if the club had been able to find
my
address, they could certainly find my aunt’s house.

“The Clamhouse,” I suddenly said, speaking even before
the thought was fully formed in my head. “We can go to the Clamhouse.”

“Okay, okay, what is that, and where is it?” Boon
said, squeezing my shoulder again. The Clamhouse was what we all called an
abandoned farmhouse on the outskirts of town. It was a place where people would
sometimes throw parties or bonfires. The origins of the name were murky, but it
was common belief that it was called “the Clamhouse” because it was someplace
boys took their girlfriends to have sex. In a fairly conservative town where
you couldn’t get a hotel room if you were under 18 and most fathers had
shotguns locked in their desk, sometimes you needed someplace to get a little
privacy.

Of course, I’d never been taken to the Clamhouse for
anything other than a post-football game party, but I knew there were mattresses
and blankets and things inside, and that it would be – probably – the best
place to hide out. We were driving aimlessly, and quickly, through my
neighborhood. I tried to make my brain work enough to figure out the
directions.

“Take a left here,” I said, knowing that we needed to
get on the highway. Boon followed my directions and soon we were zooming
through the city, headed towards the country. I looked out the window (the
stolen window) and felt tears returning, pressing against the backs of my eyes.

“I need to call my parents,” I whispered, turning to
Boon. “This is bad. I stole a car and…and…”

“You didn’t steal a car,
I
stole a car,” Boon said, not making eye contact.

“Well, then I assisted you in stealing a car,” I
snapped back, my nerves raw. “And my dad is the goddam sheriff, and I’m about
to start college, and…and…shit!”

“I know, Samantha, I know. Don’t you think I feel
guilty enough? Goddammit, I knew I shouldn’t have done this….I shouldn’t have
come here! I’m such a fuck up! And now I’ve got you involved…” He slammed his
hands against the steering wheel, his shoulders practically next to his ears
with all the tension in his body.

I softened, realizing he was just as unhappy about the
situation as I was. And, frankly, he had a lot more to lose; I wasn’t going to
get in
real
trouble, but if Boon got
involved with the law…I didn’t know exactly how many skeletons he had in his
closet, but I imagined there were quite a few. Reaching out, I gripped one of
his hands in mine. His shoulders slowly began to fall, his breathing getting
even.

“It’s okay, Boon. You’re not…it’s going to be okay. I
mean, this is bad, yeah, I mean…really bad. But it’s not your fault. I don’t…I
don’t blame you. But…” I trailed off, knowing exactly what I wanted to say but
also knowing that saying it would only make Boon angry again.

I still wanted to go to the cops. It might be risky
for Boon, but I thought it was a much better option than trying to hide away at
the Clamhouse for who knows how long. I mean, it’s not like the gang was just
going to
give up
so quickly. They’d
found him once, and they’d find him again. So what, really, was the point in
hiding?

I considered, for a moment, giving Boon the wrong
directions. I could lead him straight to my father’s office. He would have left
for the day by then, but everyone there knew me, they’d all want to help.

It was this thought that brought to my attention
something I hadn’t considered before in the frenzy of our escape: my parents.
They should be getting home right about now, maybe a little bit later. Would
the whole club be there, waiting for them? They’d come home and see the front
door broken in and…

and a tribe of
murderous biker dudes in their living room,
I thought, the idea bringing a new batch of panic to
my heart. If Dad got home first, it might be okay, but Mom…but they’d have to
see all the bikes out front and know better than to go inside, right? I mean,
they weren’t stupid. But what if they hid the bikes? What if Dad decided to be
a hero? What if…

“We have to go back. Or to the police,” I said,
backtracking on the comfort I’d just tried to provide Boon. There wasn’t time
for comfort. I had to get back to my parents. I had to let them know I was
okay, and go straight to the police.

“Dammit, Samantha, we can’t!” Boon said, as rigid and
stressed as ever. He sped up slightly on the highway.

“But my parents!”

“They’ll be fine on their own, Samantha! They’re
adults. I mean, your dad is the damn sheriff! He’ll have the police there in a
heartbeat, and it’ll all be over soon, and then we can come back. I swear,
Samantha, just trust me on this,” he said, clearly trying to sound calm in a
categorically un-calm situation. I shook my head at him, wide-eyed.

“What the hell are you talking about? Then let’s just
go to the police station! I mean, if they’re going to get involved anyway…”

“Samantha, I
can’t
go to the police, okay? I mean, first off, you’re right, this is a
stolen fucking car.
And second off, I
don’t want to rot in a jail cell for the rest of my life. Trust me, these guys
are slick, they have ways of throwing you under the bus when they need to. If
anyone found out it was me…well, I’m pretty fucked as it is, but I’d just be
more fucked after that.”

I leaned back in my seat, closing my eyes and trying to
still my racing heart. I needed a minute. I needed an hour. Several hours. I
needed to think. Everything Boon was saying made sense…sort of. In some ways,
he was right. In other ways, I didn’t think he could be more wrong. Opening my
eyes again, I saw we were nearing the exit that led to the Clamhouse. Or, I
could let him drive a few more miles down and turn off at the section of town
where the police headquarters were…

“You want the next exit,” I muttered, barely loud
enough to be heard. After everything, I figured I could at least give Boon the
benefit of the doubt. Maybe he really did know what he was doing. Maybe if we
just hid out there for a few hours, a day at most, we could come home and his
dad would be in jail and it would all be behind us…maybe we could explain the
car...return it to the owners…it
was
kind
of a life-or-death situation, after all, and as long as we brought it back…

And, I mean, my father
was
the sheriff. It wasn’t like you could just break into the
sheriff’s house and not have every cop in a hundred-mile radius on your tail.
And Dad wouldn’t play the hero, I knew. I hoped. And Mom would see the bikes
and just drive right on by and call the police herself and…

I looked at Boon, studying his profile.
Is he worth all this shit?
The thought
surprised me. Of course, he wasn’t, really, was he? I mean, he was a great bed
buddy, and I still found myself consumed by desire for him, and he was really
funny and smart, and the way he looked at me sometimes made me feel so…so
precious. Cared for. Understood. But was he worth grand theft auto, and a gang
of marauding bikers chasing you?