Haven: Renegade Saints MC (32 page)

When she graduated high school—I had dropped out senior year to work full time at an auto shop—I thought she might go off into the world and leave me behind, but she took local community college classes and stuck with me.

Eventually, she got dragged into the club just like I had. It was inevitable; her dad was the Reverend, leader of the club. She was more accountant than anything else and keep the books balanced.

I always waited for her to leave me, to find someone better, but she never did. Instead, our relationship seemed to just grow in intensity. The sex got better every time we had it and I knew unquestioningly that I loved her. That kind of crazy love that drove you to do things you wouldn’t normally do. Things like beat a man within an inch of his life.

Specter didn’t love her like I did, no one did, but he wanted her and he wasn’t the kind of man who took kindly to “no.” I didn’t know what he said to her, she refused to tell me, but something happened that made her skittish around him. All she would tell me was that he told her he was interested and she told him that she wasn’t.

I didn’t bother asking him. He’d just say that nothing had happened.

“You sure that’s you talking?” Specter asked me finally, jerking me back to the here and now. His tone was even, though his face was red and blotchy. He was pissed, no question. I couldn’t tell if Charlotte had heard him or not or if he’d meant her to, but I knew what he was trying to say.

He always tried to tell me that she distracted me. I always told him to shut the fuck up.

“Let’s worry about it another time,” I told him, not interested in dealing with the issues that I knew wouldn’t wait for much longer. “Right now, I want to focus on that guy. I want to know who he was and if he really was a Berserker.”

Specter nodded his head. “I’ll find out.”

I had little doubt that he would.

Chapter Nine

Charlotte

I stood at the counter. The stovetop next to me was hot, the pan with the bacon in it sizzling and occasionally splattering grease back up at me. I had eggs going, too, and there was toast that I wasn’t paying attention to. When I finally caught it, it was already half burnt.

“Shit!” I said in annoyance, already a little frayed from last night. We hadn’t gotten much sleep last night after Specter had busted in, announcing that there’d been a prowler lurking just outside the house.

The memory of it all made me shudder. It had been awful.

But not everything about that night had been awful. The sex, of course, had been amazing. Johnny had always been a good lay and last night was no exception. I’d had girls, the bikers’ old ladies, tell me that I couldn’t really know if he was that good or not because he was the only man I’d ever been with, but I ignored them. I knew a good thing when I saw it—or felt it buried deep inside me—and I knew for a fact that many of them were merely jealous.

The other part about last night that stuck with me was Johnny’s words.
This is my last big deal. Things have gotta change, man.

I’d dreamt about those words again and again over the course of the last six months, and part of me couldn’t believe that he’d actually said them. I was waiting for him to come downstairs to see if things were different, if he’d meant those words, if he’d actually said them at all. He was upstairs taking a shower, washing away the memories of last night, I suspected. I’d do that soon, too, but I wanted breakfast ready for him when he got out first.

The toast wasn’t too bad, so I scraped off as much of the charcoal into the sink and spread a little butter over the rest of it. I called it good, even though it’d be a little crispier than either of us liked.

The eggs were done and I placed them on a plate with the toast, then added the bacon. I made sure there was a glass of milk with the whole thing, too, then waited. The water shut off only a little bit later and I heard him call for me from upstairs.

“Charlotte?”

His voice sounded slightly strained. I knew that part of the reason he hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before was that he was worked up over that guy who’d come to the house, but that was because he was worried for
my
safety not his own.

“Downstairs!” I called up to him, grabbing the silverware. I heard him coming down the stairs.

Johnny joined me in just a few minutes. He hadn’t thrown on a shirt yet and his hair was still damp from his shower. It took everything I had to keep the sudden and intense flare of desire low in my belly at bay.

God, how I wanted him.

“This looks good,” he told me as he took a seat at the table. I joined him and sent him a shy smile. I didn’t know why, but sex with Johnny always made me a little shy the next day. Once, he’d told me that he adored that, that it drove him a little crazy and made him want to take me all the harder the next time.

I hoped it was still true.

We ate quietly, but I couldn’t keep my thoughts to myself for long. He seemed…slightly different. More somber, quieter than usual, and it gave me hope that maybe he’d meant what he’d said last night. Maybe he really was ready to be done.

When we’d mostly finished and were just picking at our plates, I cleared my throat to get his attention. He looked up at me and I made myself be brave.

“I want out.”

He stared at me blankly for a long moment, as though he couldn’t quite make himself process what I was saying. He couldn’t make himself understand. Then, when he did, he looked almost
desperate.

“You want…you want out?”

I nodded. I reached across the table for his hand, squeezing it in mine. “Yes. I want us to go, together. I want us to finish with all of this and say to hell with it. Let’s just
go
.”

Excitement bubbled in me, thrilled by my confession and the prospect that maybe he would go for it. But then I saw the hard line of his mouth and the sadness in his eyes. My hopes withered and died in my breast.

This wasn’t going to go well.

“I’m sorry baby, but we can’t.” He picked up his glass of milk and took a big gulp, like that was all he had to say.

“What? But…why? You said—”

He interrupted me. “I know what I said, but I’m telling you now, we can’t.”

I felt anger swell inside me, starting slow, but growing in intensity quickly. I swallowed, trying to stifle some of it. I wanted to seem reasonable right now and a sudden angry fit wouldn’t help my case. “Why the hell not? I mean, what’s keeping us?”

He sighed and shook his head. “It’s just not the right time. It’s not what your father would have wanted.”

I froze. The anger that I’d been trying to keep down reared its ugly head viciously.
“What
did you say?”

“I said—”

But I cut him off. It had been a rhetorical question. “What the
hell
do you think you know about my father?”

The line of his mouth grew thinner, sharper. “I know a lot, baby. A lot.”

“You don’t know shit!”

He shook his head. “I know why he died.”

The air in my lungs left with a sudden whoosh, and for a moment I was so breathless that I felt light headed. Were we talking about his suicide? I knew what the note said, but that didn’t mean anything. It didn’t mean a damn thing and I—

“You…” But I couldn’t get anything else out of my mouth.

He took a breath. “I know why he died, but I can’t tell you, not yet. Not now.”

He looked torn, conflicted over something, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t interested in what
he
was feeling. “What
right
do you have?”

“Cherry—” he tried, and that only made things worse.

“I fucking
hate
that name!” I spat at him, tossing the dishes in the sink just so that I could look away from him. “I’ve always fucking hated that name.”

It was an old nickname from high school, one I’d picked up reluctantly. As a freshman, it hadn’t bothered me because I thought it sounded cute and I had always thought that Charlotte was too fancy, too uppity to suit me. But by sophomore year, I’d realized that it was because guys were always talking about popping my cherry. They’d snicker behind my back and stare from across the courtyard, then when I caught them you’d think they’d be ashamed, but all they did was stick out their tongues lewdly at me, implying what they wanted to do.

It wasn’t fair for me to get pissed off at Johnny for that; he didn’t know what it meant or why I hated it. But I was already angry at Johnny. I was
furious
with him and then he used
that
fucking name and it was all I could do not to reach out and actually strike at him.

I started to scrub at the dishes, turning on the water so hot that it all but scalded my hands, but I didn’t care. The spark of pain felt good. It felt better than the tearing of my heart at Johnny’s words. I wasn’t ready to talk about Dad or why he was dead. I just wasn’t ready.

I heard the kitchen chair legs scrape across the linoleum floor and heard as Johnny’s heavy footsteps moved towards me, but I didn’t look back at him. My eyes stayed focused on the sink and the dishes and the water. I wanted to be mad at him, dammit, and I knew he was about to try and convince me not to be.

His large, rough hands slipped over my upper arms, gripping tightly, but not so tight that I couldn’t jerk out of his grasp if I wanted to. Johnny was a lot of things, but he would never keep me somewhere if I didn’t want to be there.

At least, I didn’t think so.

“Charlotte,” he said soothingly, his voice apologetic and deep, though he would make no real apology. That much I knew already. “I need you to trust me, baby. I know it’s hard right now. I know you’re hurting, but I need you to try. I promise it’ll make sense in the end, but right now, we have to do it my way.”

“Damnit, Johnny,” I whispered, feeling hot tears well in my eyes. But I still didn’t look at him. “Just tell me now. Please, just
tell me
.”

I imagined him shaking his head, felt his grip tighten, then release me. He took a step away from me and I suddenly felt cold. I didn’t want him to let me go, no matter how angry or upset with him I was. “Johnny?”

“I can’t. I’m working on it and I’ll tell you, I promise, as soon as I need help. You’re just going to have to trust me on this one, baby.”

I pursed my lips tightly shut, knowing that it was a lost cause. I wanted to push and push, to poke at him until he caved, but I knew better. Once Johnny made up his mind about something, that was it. If he didn’t want to talk about it anymore, he wouldn’t. Not until he decided otherwise. There wasn’t a damn thing I could say or do to change that.

Even so, I couldn’t help the whisper that left my lips. “He was my father, Johnny.”

I heard him sigh. “I know. You’ve just gotta hang in there a little longer, baby. I’ll make this right.”

Except that I didn’t believe him. I knew he meant what he said, but things were so fucked up that I didn’t think anything could make any of this right ever again. I heard his footsteps as he left the kitchen. He might have said something else so quietly that I couldn’t hear, or maybe he just left in silence, but it amounted to the same damn thing. He wasn’t going to tell me the truth about what was going on and it left me in a bad spot. It forced me to consider options, and I didn’t like that.

Why won’t you just come with me?
I thought miserably as I took the rest of the dishes to the sink.
Why won’t you just come with me and we can go together?

I couldn’t think of anything,
anything
in this world that would make staying worth it. And I couldn’t honestly believe that my
father
would have wanted me to stay. How could he have? How? He would have wanted me safe and happy, and that wasn’t the kind of things I would get here.

But Johnny wouldn’t go and now I had to think about other things. Things like,
If Johnny won’t go with me, will I have to leave on my own?
And,
Can I really do this forever, even for the man I love?

I didn’t have answers for those questions yet and wasn’t sure I wanted to find those answers anyway.

I finished scrubbing the dishes and then rinsed them off. I dried them and put them up, thankful for the menial task and the distraction it gave my mind. Ultimately, I finished quickly and had to face the day. I headed up the stairs, resolving for a shower. The door to the bedroom was cocked just barely open and I knew Johnny was in there. I debated for a split second about whether or not I should try another go with him, but ultimately decided there was no point. I resigned myself to waiting, at least for a little bit, until Johnny told me what was going on.

Dipping into the bathroom, I ran the water and stripped down to nothing. When I was naked and my hair was brushed out, hanging down my back, I stepped underneath the spray and for a moment pretended like it was enough to wash away everything that had happened in the last six months.

It wasn’t, but it was nice to pretend.

I scrubbed myself clean, taking care around my nether region which was still red and sore from the incredible sex the night before. I washed my hair and shaved everywhere. I spotted several dark bruises as well as some lighter ones, noting that they took the shape of hand and finger prints, a perfect match to Johnny’s.

I shivered, acknowledging that even as angry and desperate as I was feeling, I still enjoyed the way Johnny and I indulged in each other physically. If I left—a tiny sob escaped me at the thought—I wasn’t sure I’d ever find something that good again.