Finding Allie (7 page)

“I do.” Oh! The wedding words. I turn three shades of pink as I make the connection in my mind, and Chase smiles, laughter carrying on the wind.

“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” he adds, eyes twinkling. His fingers flex and he shifts his hips, looking up at the stars and away from me.

“No, no, I didn’t mean...I wouldn’t presume...I...” Stammering and yammering, I can’t shut up, protesting that I wasn’t thinking about marrying him, for goodness sake. Who marries a drug dealing motorcycle club vice president?

“You wouldn’t marry someone like me, you mean,” he spits out. I flinch. Can he read my mind? We seem more deeply connected than either of us ever realized.

“I didn’t mean it that way, Chase. Really!” The world begins to spin and the happy moon suddenly turns sinister. How did this wonderful night become so bad, so fast? Are we arguing? This feels like an argument. I’ve never argued with a guy before, and it feels awful. Like I did something wrong and I have no idea what, but will do anything to fix it. All I want is for Chase to pull me into his arms again but instead Chase’s eyes go cold.

What just happened?

“You have a thing against MC?” 

“What’s MC?”

He snorts and kicks the dirt. “Motorcycle club.”

“Oh, um...” The question catches me off guard, and butterflies live in my stomach by the thousands now. The night air feels like it is brushing against every part of my skin where Chase just touched me and is erasing all the amazing feelings we just shared. My body is screaming, my brain’s on fire and somehow, I’ve offended him.

Way to go, Allie.

“No! I would totally marry you!” I insist, eyes filling with tears from confusion.

“You would?” He makes a snorting sound, a laugh. “I don’t recall asking.” 

My turn to pull back. I feel like I’ve been stung. Am I just a joke to him? Is he acting like he’s hurt just to get me to say stuff so he can embarrass me? In high school the jocks would do that sometimes. Pick a shy girl and ask her to the homecoming dance, then make fun of her when she said yes. Is that what Chase is doing here? Playing a game of monkey-in-the-middle with my heart?

“Now you’re making fun of me?” I force my voice to go as cold as I can. My heart feels like someone is picking it up and dribbling it like a basketball inside my chest. Chase is looking at me with a face that I can’t read, and it hurts so much. 

Because seconds ago that same face was brushing up against mine, our bodies creating a whole new world. And now I’m standing on one side of an ocean and he’s on the other. It’s like the world cracked in half and we can’t put it back together again.

All over my silly comment.

I don’t like this. I don’t like feeling naked in front of him, like my heart’s just sitting there, exposed, and he can step on it any time he pleases. I turn away to go back in the house and crawl under the covers, hide away from everything and become a turtle again. In my shell, where no one can hurt me.

Maybe Jeff’s right. Maybe I shouldn’t ever leave. Maybe this is where I’m meant to be, living the same life as everyone else. Los Angeles is a silly dream for people too stupid to realize it’s just a dream. Who am I to think I can make it big as an actress? That’s a dream for women who aren’t rejected by men who’ve just kissed them.

Chapter Seven

“Good night, Chase,” I call back over my shoulder as I twist on my bare heel and start to run into the house.

A hot hand wraps around my wrist and I fall backward. His comforting arms are around me, keeping me upright. I fight to get out of his grasp because I feel so stupid. Did I really think this was someone I could be special with? He’s just toying with me.

“Leave me alone,” I rasp as the tears take over my throat, drowning me in salty sorrow.

“Never.” He lets go of my wrist, though. “I can’t stop thinking about you, and I’m sorry for what I just said. If you don’t want to be with me because you think I’m a dirty biker—”

I cut him off with an open-mouthed gasp, grabbing his eyes with mine. I don’t care that I’m crying and he can see it. “That’s not what I said! I would never think that about you!”

“But I am, Allie,” he says with a sigh, plunking down on a bench next to the house. “That’s all I am. A dirty biker whose gang deals drugs and whose father wants him to be the next leader.”

He’s so sad. His eyebrows turn down and his eyes look at the dirt, away from me. In the dark night it’s like he’s sitting in a confessional booth in a Catholic church, giving his confession. I sit next to him but don’t touch him.

With the back of my hand I wipe away my tears. “You don’t have to live the life your dad picked out for you,” I whisper.

He just grunts.

“No, really,” I insist. “What do you want? Who do you want to be, Chase?” Tentative, I reach for his hand to pat it, a comforting gesture. Something you do when you’re with someone you know really well.

“I don’t want to be the vice president of the Atlas Club, that’s for sure.”

He squeezes my hand. I keep it there. It’s where it’s meant to be, for now. 

Chase’s eyes are filled with pain and hope as he turns his head and looks at me, He tilts his head to the left, a pensive look aimed solely at me as his eyes search my face. “And I don’t want to deal drugs anymore. I never wanted to. My old man made me. Said I was nothing more than a biker, and born and bred for the open road.”

“Is that true?” I ask it on purpose, with a challenge in my voice.  

“Hell, no!” Chase snaps, looking at me like I’m nuts.

“Then do whatever you want to do. What would you do if you didn’t have to be the VP of Atlas?”

That shy grin re-appears, the look of a boyish, sweeter Chase. He blinks rapidly and clears his throat, twice. “I’d be a stunt man. In the movies. In—”

“Los Angeles,” we say in unison.

“Don’t tell me you want to be a stunt man there, too,” Chase says slowly, looking at me like I’m a little bit crazy. 

I laugh and squeeze his fingers. It feels so natural, like we’re meant to sit outside my house and hold hands after an argument at three in the morning.

“No. An actress,” I say, suddenly alarmed. Marissa’s the only person I’ve said that to. Ever. My mom died before I knew what I wanted in life, and telling Jeff would be the kiss of death. Mom worked as a nurse’s aide her whole life when she wasn’t helping him run the bar, but said she always wished she could be a make up artist. Smiled at the thought, a wistful look that makes me cry now. She never got to pursue her dream. 

I still can try.

Saying it to Chase makes it seem more real. It
is
more real, because sitting with him I feel like I can do anything. Like I’m more free than I ever knew was possible.

His eyes glow in the night as he looks at me, hand tightly clasping mine. He takes a long, slow, deep breath, the thin cotton of his t-shirt bunching as he lets the air out, his thigh rubbing against mine as he scoots closer to me and puts his arm around my shoulders.

“That’s better,” he says softly.

“Yes, it is,” I say before I can stop myself.

“Actress, huh?” He looks at me in a new way, narrowing his eyes, tilting his head, and evaluating me in a fresh light. “You ever acted before?”

“In high school plays,” I say with a shrug. “It’s not much, but I figure everyone has to start somewhere.”

He smiles, the joy in his face so dazzling it’s like the sun just came up out of nowhere. How can someone so big and dangerous, so scary-looking and brutal also have this softer, warmer side? 

People are so complicated.

“Same here,” he says, reaching up to stroke my cheek. “I have a video series on YouTube. I’m making a portfolio to show my stunts, and then I hope someone at a studio will see and hire me.” He frowns. “But first, I have to get out of Atlas.” 

“What do you mean?” I’m finding it hard to concentrate, because all my attention is on the points of contact where he’s touching me.

“You don’t just leave,” he says in a flat voice. “You can’t just take off from a motorcycle club. They don’t let you.”

“It’s like a gang?” I ask.

“Kind of. It’s really stupid and hard, and sometimes they come after you and kill you.”

“What?” Pure fear shoots through me like electricity. “If you try to leave the Atlas Club someone will hunt you down and kill you?”

“Yup.”

I think of Frenchie, of how evil he seems. Completely out of control. The kind of psycho who would take pleasure in hunting down Chase and killing him.

“Who? Who would want to do that?”

Chase reaches down and finds a stone on the ground. He picks it up and tosses it into the dark night. It disappears as if it was never there in the first place.

“My dad,” he says, so quietly I barely hear him. 

“Your own dad would try to kill you?” I ask, incredulous.

“Not try. He’d do it. When Galt Halloway sets his sights on something, he gets it. And if I try to pursue my dream and leave the club to become a stuntman, he’ll come after me.” Chase shakes his head. “It’s a Halloway trait. We don’t let go of the things we want. Ever.” Intense eyes meet mine and I know exactly what he’s saying as he leans in closer.

His kiss cements it, a sweet intertwining of tongues that says so much. My hands cling to his sandy waves and my cheek rasps against his beard. It tickles me as I sigh with pleasure. He is thorough, giving so much more than he takes, and when we pull away from each other, breathless, we touch foreheads and pant, trying to maintain control.

I don’t like maintaining control anymore, though.

My hand finds his muscled thigh, tight and strong under his frayed jeans. I stroke it, then move in long brushes, getting closer and closer to the next place I want to explore.

Chase makes me want to learn so much more about the world, starting with his body.

In the distance, I hear a car’s engine. Chase’s head shifts just an inch to the right, ear cocked. He hears it, too.

“What time is it?” he asks.

“I don’t know.”

“Bet it’s your stepdad, coming home from the bar.” He stands, pulling me up. “Listen, Allie. You want what I want. We both want to get away from these lives other people picked out for us. My dad keeps screaming at me to stay away from you, but I can’t.” He frowns, holding my hands in both of his, eyes like deep pools of quiet sunshine. “I won’t.” 

“You shouldn’t,” I agree, standing on tiptoes for a final kiss. He reaches for the nape of my neck and we go into this place where it’s only me and Chase, just our bodies and souls, and the rest of the world fades. 

The engine gets louder, but still far enough away that it’s not a crisis. Yet.

Chase pulls back and looks in the direction of the engine. “Damn. I gotta go. No use in creating more trouble for you.” I wish I could argue with him, but he’s right. If Jeff catches Chase here again, it’ll be
huge
trouble for me.

“This’ll have to last until we see each other again,” Chase declares, then pulls me in for a kiss so thorough I think he’s licked my toes.

As fast as the kiss ends, he’s gone into the night, running toward a small culvert on the edge of Jeff’s property. I reach up and press my fingers to my lips, as if I can hold on to Chase’s kiss a little extra longer by doing that.

I see headlights coming toward the house and sprint back inside, up the stairs, climbing into bed and under the covers before I realize I have filthy feet. Oh, well.

My heart races as Jeff parks his car, the front door to the house creaking open quietly. I’m always asleep when Jeff works the bar this late. I never realized he was quiet. That’s nice of him, trying not to wake me up. It makes me soften a little toward him. Maybe he’s not such a big old jerk after all.

And then I hear a voice that isn’t Jeff’s.

A female voice.

And it’s someone I know.

My eyes go wide in the night as she asks, “Allie here?”

“She’s asleep. Just like all the other times.”

The woman giggles. It’s Heather, one of the barmaids at Jeff’s bar. I’ve known her since, well, forever. I can’t think of a time in my life when I’ve not known her. We don’t work together much because of different shifts. 

More giggles. Then Jeff makes a groan that I know, but I only know what that sound is because Chase made a sound an awful lot like that earlier this evening.

Oh, gross.

I shove a pillow over my head as hard as I can, because I don’t want to hear Heather and Jeff having actual sex right now.

Not now.

Not
ever
.

Jeff’s voice comes through the pillow, though. He’s being nice and talking in a low, smooth voice. The kind of voice men use when they want to get in a woman’s pants.

I reach for my nightstand, hand flailing because I’m blind, still hiding under the pillow. There. Got it!

I grab my old MP3 player and stuff the earbuds in my ears, starting a song as fast as I can. The technobeat booms in my ears, drowning out the rest of the world.

Just like kissing Chase did.

I’d much rather be kissing Chase right now, but with him gone, this will have to do.

Chapter Eight

I call Marissa the next day from the bar while Jeff’s out doing something in Blythe, just across the Arizona and California border. It’s the nearest town, and still a twenty-mile drive. This gives me plenty of time to talk and figure out last night’s nightmare.

Last night’s
dream
. Chase appeared out of nowhere, coming to my house for me. Me.  

“It’s a Halloway trait. We don’t let go of the things we want. Ever.”

His words haunt me.

“Allie!” Marissa sounds so happy to hear from me. Jeff doesn’t let me have a cell phone unless I’m running an errand for him, so I have to use the house phone. “How are you? Getting close?” 

“Close to what?”

She chuckles. “Moving out here?”

An image of Chase floats through my mind, his name imprinting in the echo chamber of my heart. “Yes! Soon, I hope.”
And maybe I’ll bring someone with me.
 

The thought makes me smile.