Haven: Renegade Saints MC (28 page)

Chapter Five

Charlotte

I pulled up into the driveway and turned off the engine, but I didn’t go inside right away. I just sat in my car and stared at the dark house. There weren’t any lights on inside, so I guessed my mother was already in bed. Probably, I should have just gone home, but I wasn’t ready to deal with Johnny and all the shifting emotions between us. The violence of that night clung to me still and I needed to soothe it away before I faced Johnny, because I wasn’t sure how I’d react to the excitement in his eyes when we were alone together.

Would I do the same as I always did, just fall into bed with him, spread my legs, and let him fuck me until I screamed his name?

Probably. That was the thing about me and Johnny, we’d been together so long and the love between us still wouldn’t go away. The passion wouldn’t either. Every time Johnny slid into me, it was like the first time, but so much better than the first time. I didn’t care where we did it or from what angle; didn’t care if he was rough or demanding or sweet and slow. I didn’t care, because so long as he was touching me, things couldn’t be bad.

Which was why I needed to put some distance between myself and him before I went home. I needed to think clearly and I wouldn’t be able to do that on a night like tonight.

My phone buzzed and I pulled it out of my jacket pocket to check it. I’d gotten a text message from Johnny.

Business tonight. Be home late. Don’t wait up.

I frowned as I read it. I’d received god knew how many of these messages since I’d first gotten involved with Johnny. They were little reminders that he was thinking of me, yes, but also warnings. Between the lines they said,
The cops might pick me up tonight, babe, but don’t come get me ’til you get the call,
or,
I’m taking care of a drug deal, official club business, and I’m not sure if the other guy’s packing,
or my personal favorite,
I’m going to fuck you hard when I get home, babe, because things were bad tonight and your warm body is the only thing that will bring me back.

That last one took me a little while to fetter out, but when I finally clicked to it, I knew to be ready. Sometimes it was by wearing something slinky or nothing at all; sometimes it was by undoing his pants and sliding my mouth over his cock until he came. It all depended on the message and how he was when he got home, but he was never disappointed. I took pride in knowing that I could fix whatever was wrong for him in that moment, but there was a growing part of me that wished there simply
wasn’t
anything wrong for him in that moment. Or any moment.

But I could only do so much, and so long as he was leader of the Unholys there would be trouble. It came with the business.

This message I wasn’t exactly sure of. I knew business was obviously something that either bordered on illegal or flat out
was
illegal and being home late meant he wasn’t sure how it would go. But don’t wait up? That seemed unusual. It sent a chill through me, making me wonder just how bad of a thing he was doing tonight.

Pushing aside my worry for Johnny and my general mood, I popped open the door to the car and stepped outside, closing it behind me. There was a single light still on in the kitchen, but it told me Mom definitely wasn’t up, because it was the light she left on when no one was home or she was asleep, but it was safe to come in. It used to be the light she left on for dad.

I used the spare key I had on my keychain to unlock the door, then headed inside. I was quiet, just in case Mom was already asleep, and locked the door behind me. I headed to the hallway that led to the back, careful to avoid the door that I knew led to my father’s garage. It was always locked now, but I didn’t want to remember the door or what was behind it, so I stuck to the right side of the hall until I reached my mom’s bedroom.

I was about to decide that she was just asleep when I saw the light come on from beneath the door. Her voice called out gently and muffled through the door, “Charlotte, honey?”

Mom wasn’t being lazy or overemotional or anything like that by being already in bed by the time I’d gotten home. Generally speaking, she was as tough as her husband had been and there wasn’t a soul who doubted it. Some of the guys might have whispered that it was grief that kept her in bed or that it was depression or something else like that, but those who knew the family knew that mom suffered from a leg injury years ago. She didn’t talk about it—I suspected it had something to do with the club and with Dad because she wouldn’t give me so much as a drop of information on what happened—but I knew that it caused her a good deal of pain every now and again. The injury itself had been from before I was born, but on and off it would flare up again. Now, as she was getting older, it was getting worse. Suddenly she was limping a lot more and some days she wouldn’t even get out of bed.

“I’m here, Mom,” I called, reaching for the door handle. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to talk right now, wasn’t sure if I could, but I knew it was better than wallowing in my own thoughts. Besides, my mom was perceptive. She’d know that something was up if I didn’t sit and talk with her.

I pushed the door open and found her sitting in bed, her legs up and a stack of pillows fluffed up behind her back so that she could sit up. We’d moved a television into the room not long after dad died; she said the noise helped to distract her enough to sleep at night. I had a feeling that the
pills
did more to distract her than anything else, but I didn’t force the issue. What my mother did was her own choice and nothing I said was going to change that. Especially since the more you prodded, the deeper she dug her heels into the ground.

“How are you feeling?” I asked, motioning towards her legs, which were covered up by several layers of blankets even though it seemed to me that the house was plenty warm.

She shrugged her shoulders a little, then reached for the remote control. She turned on the TV, but kept the volume all the way down so that all you really heard was the buzzing of electronics fill the room. “I’m alright,” she told me, but didn’t meet my eyes. It told me that she was in a lot more pain than she was letting on. “Why don’t you have a seat? Talk with me a bit. I haven’t seen you all day.”

I winced a little at that and hoped she couldn’t see it. She was right. I hadn’t seen her all day and I’d barely seen her yesterday. It made me feel guilty because I knew a lot of the time she didn’t get around much, and without someone home to help out, sometimes she wouldn’t get much done. Eating could even be a real pain.

“I know, I’m sorry,” I told her earnestly, coming around the other side of the bed so that I could sit on the other side of her, one leg dangling off the edge and the other curled up beneath me.

She waved me off. “No, no, it’s fine. I wasn’t trying to make you feel bad,” she told me quickly. “I just meant that you’re my daughter and I miss you, that’s all.”

I nodded, but still felt guilty despite her absolution. I really knew I should be over here more often, but it was hard. Taking care of her was hard, though I tried not to look at it that way. For a while, after dad died, we hired a live-in nurse. She took care of mom, made sure she bathed and ate and did her physical therapy—for all the damn good it seemed to do—but that was expensive. I definitely didn’t have the money, but Johnny took care of it. He paid for everything from the nurse to the heating bill to the funeral arrangements. Everything. He made sure that Mom was well taken care of and I knew that she appreciated it.

I
appreciated it.

But money wasn’t grown on trees. It was earned and made through whatever means necessary, and after a certain point, there just wouldn’t be any more. That was the point that Johnny had reached. I never asked where the money came from or how he got it; I was just grateful that someone was taking care of my mom.

Now, things were harder. It wasn’t that I hated having to be here more or taking care of my mother in general, but things were complicated. Everything here was a reminder of my father and that bloody mess I’d come home to find.

Besides, I wasn’t a nurse and couldn’t provide better care than a registered nurse. It would be better to have someone who was trained in this stuff, not someone like me who had to go to internet search engines whenever I thought something was wrong, only to spend hours scrolling through pages that might be total and complete bullshit.

What kind of help was that?

“How was tonight?” Mom asked when I didn’t speak for a while.

I stared at the TV screen; some game show was on with bright flashing lights and people laughing hysterically. But I wasn’t watching. Instead I was thinking of Johnny tonight and the way his eyes had lit up and the thrill that had run through my body at the sight of him, just like always.

“It was fine,” I told her. Mom knew about initiations probably better than I did. She’d been in the club—as much as a biker’s old lady could be—since getting involved with my father. No one had expected him to marry her, she loved to tell me, but he did and they had a whole slew of badass bikers wearing leather jackets over tuxedos. She said it had been perfect, though I couldn’t say that I agreed with her.

“Fine?” Mom repeated, probably sensing more than anything else that there was something wrong. “What happened?”

I shook my head with a sigh and starting to tell her in earnest about the night. Mom wouldn’t let it lie if I didn’t, besides, I didn’t want her thinking that someone had died tonight. It hadn’t happened in a long while but it
did
happen sometimes. “Nothing, really. It was pretty much the same as every one before it. The guy’s name was Worm.”

My mother’s eyebrows rose in question. “Is he hot?” There was a tiny smirk tugging at her lips, but it was forced. I could see the tightness around her eyes and the sadness lurking in their depths. She was faking it in an attempt to convince me she was alright, but I knew better. She wasn’t over dad and maybe she never would be.

I scrunched up my nose to make a disgusted face. Worm might be brave or determined, but he definitely wasn’t
hot
. “No, definitely not.” I made a big open circle with my arms around my waist, indicating his size. “Huge and kinda sweaty, but he also had a hard night, so it’s hard to hold that against him.”

“Disappointing,” Mom muttered, but her eyes were on the screen of the TV and she’d dropped the smirk. “He made it, though?”

I nodded. “Yeah, he’s got a damn hard head. Seems like a decent enough guy.” I wasn’t really sure if that last part was true or not. Maybe he was a total asshole; maybe he was a saint. You’d be surprised how many of each the biker lifestyle happened to get.

Mom lifted her shoulders in a halfhearted shrug. I fell silent again. We both watched the soundless TV show, but I doubted either of us could say what had gone on in the last fifteen minutes of it.

Finally, it was again my mother who broke the silence. “Are you going to tell me what’s bothering you?”

No,
was my first thought, but then I considered that this was my mother and if there was anyone who might make things okay, who, maybe, could at the very least understand what I was going through, I thought it could be her.

“Worm took a real beating tonight.”

My mom frowned, looking over at me curiously. “They always do,” she told me seriously. “That’s part of it. If you’re not ready to take a beating, you aren’t ready for this kind of life, you know that.”

I did know that. I’d known that for a long damn time, but knowing it and understanding it were different, I thought, and now I wondered if I hadn’t recently stumbled onto understanding without realizing it.

“I know,” I told her, struggling to find the words that would make her understand what I was getting at, what was bothering me so much. “It’s just…it’s just that there was so much blood tonight and everyone was…
enjoying
it so much.” I thought of Johnny.
He’d
enjoyed it. I don’t think I’d ever really considered that before, but he’d
enjoyed
it tonight when he slammed his fist into that guy’s jaw. It made me shiver. “I don’t know why it bothered me so much tonight.”

Mom considered me in that way that told me she was trying to see right through to my brain, as though she could read my thoughts and decipher them for herself. She did this for a while until finally saying, “It’s a release. Some of those guys have to push everything down inside. Bad things, good things, just all of it. Some of them have trouble with their emotions or their personal thoughts. Some of them just struggle with life. The beatings…” She shook her head, then said, “They aren’t about the guy who’s
getting
the beating, no matter what anyone says. They’re about the guys who are giving the beatings. It’s about letting lose and getting rid of all that crap they’ve let build up and fester inside of them. It’s about walking away cleaner than when you walked in.”