Rage (A Thunder Gypsies MC Outlaw Biker Romance) (3 page)

My dad gave an impatient honk of the truck’s horn before I could get anywhere with the clerk. I hustled back to the vehicle, my face a bland mask that hid my irritation.

Five minutes later, the truck pulled into the driveway of our crumbling two-story house. Carrying the milk, beer and cigarettes, I got out of the truck and waited by the front door. Just as they did every night my dad picked me up, my cheeks burned with shame. I didn’t have keys to the house I lived in. I used to -- when my mother was alive and my dad didn’t much care whether or not I made it home from school. He took the keys away about a month after she died. He left for work after I left for school and I waited on the front porch, through snow, rain or sunshine until he got home. The only thing that changed after high school was that I had two jobs and he lost his.

“You didn’t do the dishes before you left.” He slid the key into the doorknob, twisted it then stepped inside, his thin frame blocking me from entering. “Or take out the trash.”

“Right.” Holding back tears, I forced myself not to blink because I knew they would fall and he’d score his second victory of the night. I shifted the twelve-pack to my other hip. “Let me get these in the fridge and then I’ll take care of the kitchen.”

Granting my carefully phrased plea to enter the house, my dad stepped to the side. Just before the door slammed shut behind me, I thought I heard the beckoning hum of a distant motorcycle. I shook my head, flinging the foolish notion like drops of water after a cold shower.

There was no bike. Even if my ears hadn’t been playing tricks on me, the bike wasn’t the one I wanted. Deep down, I knew -- the last Tilley brother had left Thunder Valley and there was no way I could follow.

Callan

Avery Watkins lived seven blocks from the high school we had attended as teenagers. I stashed my bike across the street from the school where nothing but acres of woods ran until the tree line broke onto the interstate. I used the trees as cover for three blocks as I traveled on foot to reach her house. For the last four blocks, I stuck to the streets with busted out lights.

Exhausted, my body fought me every step of the way. Tired as I was, I had to force myself not to run the distance from the school to Avery’s house. I told myself she was still alive, that the Gypsies were too busy hunting me down to realize someone at the bar had called the cops on them. If we were lucky, morning would come and go before they figured out they had a snitch. Hell, it had taken me three hours to piece together what must have happened. And I still didn’t have the puzzle completely solved.

I just knew that, if there was an angel in Thunder Valley looking out for me, she had red hair and sky blue eyes.

And I couldn’t leave her to face the wrath of the Gypsies once they managed to get a copy of the 911 call that must have been made. They’d hear her sweet voice and Little Red would know it was her from the first recorded word out of her mouth. He’d been sniffing after Avery the last six months, only my warning to him that I wouldn’t let her be drawn into the Gypsies forcing him to back off.

Hell, if I was okay with Avery being a biker’s old lady, she would be mine.

Approaching her house, I rubbed at my eyes and tried not to think of her that way. I was here to offer her a ride out of town and enough money to start her life someplace new. Someplace without me or any of the baggage I came with.

Seeing the lights on in her house at one in the morning, I stashed a bag I had carried with me then settled beneath the branches of a dying peach tree that ran along the border between her yard and the next one over. I hoped like hell there wasn’t a dog in either house that would start barking and alert the whole neighborhood to my presence. I needed to talk to Avery tonight. We needed to get out of Thunder Valley before the sun came up. Both our lives depended on it.

Knotting one hand in my hair, I watched Avery clean the kitchen and wondered if I could convince her to leave with me. It’s not like we were friends even though we’d lived in the same small town our entire lives and been only one grade apart. I hadn’t noticed her until high school and who knows if she noticed me back then or now beyond what beer to bring me at Freya’s or how I liked my eggs at the diner. She probably had no clue that I only ate at that dive or drank at the bar when I knew it was her shift.

Then again, maybe she did and the quiet way she had about her was a mask for the disdain she felt about the Gypsies and, by extension, the disdain she felt for me. I couldn’t blame her. The MC wasn’t started as an outlaw club, but it had devolved to a group of one-percenters who hadn’t found a crime they weren’t willing to commit. That had happened slowly as Big Red moved up through the ranks to become the secretary-treasurer first and then the vice-president while my dad was still a free man.

As best as I could piece together, he roped in a few Gypsies for protection runs -- legitimate goods at first, but no one realized Big Red had put the squeeze on the companies, threatening the shipments with breakdowns and beat downs on their routes if they didn’t pay up. Then it was moving stolen goods, then drugs and guns.

I started to pace beneath the tree, grateful for the branches’ dark shadows that sheltered me from the moonlight. I didn’t need to spend the pre-dawn hours ruminating how my family’s life had spiraled into hell because of Big Red or how, knowing what a piece of shit the man was, I had nevertheless become a full-patch member of the Gypsies to keep protection on my brother and dad in prison. I just needed to acknowledge that these were issues I’d have to get past with Avery if I wanted her to trust me or believe I could keep her safe long enough for her to start over.

An extra body in the kitchen distracted me from my thoughts. I looked over to find that Avery’s dad, Joe, had joined her. Not to help her clean -- that would be too much work for the old bastard. By the unsteady gait, I figured he was there to grab another beer from the refrigerator. I checked the time on the big wall clock behind his head to see that less than fifteen minutes had passed since Avery took a cold one to him.

Reaching into the refrigerator, Joe pulled out a beer, popping the tab and slamming half the contents down his throat before the door finished closing. Turning, he leaned against the refrigerator. All his weight seemed to rest against the appliance as he watched Avery work.

Her posture had changed from a relaxed fatigue to alert and on edge. Two feet away from her in the small kitchen, Joe put the beer to his mouth, his lips moving in speech before he took another sip. Avery reached into her pocket and took some money out. Placing it on the counter without looking at her father, she went back to cleaning the dishes. She hadn’t spoken to the old man since he entered the room.

I closed my eyes, tried to let the black behind my eyelids wash down the anger rising up inside me. Instinctively, I knew what would come next. The signs were there. Long sleeves on hot days, the occasional scarf knotted around her neck when she was not the kind of woman who added flare to her outfits. If anything, Avery Watkins tried to be invisible.

Chest growing too tight to breathe, I opened my eyes.

Joe had his hand around Avery’s throat, just enough strength in his drunken arms to spin her. Her back hit the refrigerator door and then her head bounced hard against its surface. I stepped away from the tree and into the exposed area of the driveway, only Joe’s truck sheltering me from being seen by anyone out so late.

Somewhere in the few steps I’d taken, my hands had gnarled into fists. They started shaking as the old man’s free hand -- the one he wasn’t using to choke his daughter with -- went under Avery’s shirt. I staggered from the truck to the side door, losing sight of Avery and what Joe was doing to her as I slid the blade of my buck knife between the door and its frame. The old wood gave way with a quiet groan masked by Joe’s yelling.

You don’t keep money from me, you dumb cunt!

My lips pressed tightly together, my teeth threatening to penetrate the flesh. I wanted to bellow from the doorway, to roar at the old man to get his fucking hands off her. But if he knew I was there, his fate was sealed. I hadn’t killed a man, not yet. But it wouldn’t take much for me to kill Joe Watkins.

I don’t care if you got it down your bra or up your snatch -- it’s my money!

Yeah, I could kill him for that alone. If he saw me tonight, he was a dead man. But I didn’t want Avery to see me coldblooded or in a rage. If I murdered Joe Watkins, she would be too terrified to leave with me.

The door between the kitchen and dining room slammed and I heard a small sob break from Avery’s throat. I eased into the dining room from the dark hall and silently pushed the kitchen door open. She stood with her back to me, her shaking hands once again busy with the dishes and beer cans littering the counter.

I crept closer, not wanting to startle her but knowing she might scream when she saw me. As near as I was, I could smell a mix of her flowery scent and the stale sweat and beer of Joe from how he had his hands on her. It was blasphemous for those two smells to mingle.

She hadn’t stopped crying. Her rough breathing and the clatter of dishes and flatware as she rinsed the soap off camouflaged my footsteps and the rustle of my clothing. Without thinking, I quickly reached around and clamped my hand over her mouth.

I expected at least a small struggle, but the knife surprised me.

Avery

Back to dole out more abuse, my dad covered my mouth with his hand, his body behind me. Fresh tears stung my eyes and blurred my vision. It was too much -- the words he’d said earlier, the way my throat still hurt from how he’d held me against the refrigerator, or the way his knuckles had grazed the underside of my breast as he rooted around the bottom band of my bra for my tip money. On top of all that, I felt more alone in Thunder Valley than I had since my mother died, maybe even lonelier. Callan was gone, without knowing or caring what I’d done for him.

Every last drop of poison I’d ingested over my life bubbled like acid to the surface of my skin, the hiss and pop rising in a chorus of NO! No, I would not allow the old man to touch me again. No more punches, no hair pulling or slaps or pushing my face into a cushion until I passed out.

No!

My hands searched in blind fear through the water in front of me until my fingers closed around the handle of a steak knife. God help me, I wanted a bigger knife -- one like the carving knife with its long blade and sharp point, but that was in the cutlery block a good three feet out of arm’s reach.

The steak knife would have to do. I jerked it from the water, quickly transferred it to my right hand and flipped it so the tip pointed at me. Before I could jab at my father’s arm, he captured my wrist.

“Damn it, Avery,” a masculine voice growled low in my ear. “I’m not here to hurt you.”

My fingers went numb, either from Callan’s hard grip or the realization that it was him.

Crap, I’d almost stabbed him!

The knife dropped into the sink. I started to shake, my body’s reaction as violent and exaggerated as if I’d had gallons of ice water dumped on me or fallen in the lake mid-winter.

Removing his hand from my mouth, Callan spun me then wrapped his arms around me. He pushed my face against his chest, muffling any chance I had of screaming had I wanted to.

“Just listen to me,” he whispered. “If you don’t like what I’m saying, I’ll go.”

I nodded against his chest, his hand still pinning my head to his body. He relaxed slightly, his fingers knotting in my hair as a precaution. The decrease in his tension didn’t stop my shaking. If anything, I shook harder.

Callan probably had the entire Gypsy horde out looking for him and he was in my house.

Why?

“Shh,” he soothed. He released his light grip on my hair to run both hands over my back.

I pressed closer to him. I clutched at his t-shirt. I tried to say something, to ask him why he was there, but my lips quivered too much to shape the words and I knew I couldn’t control the volume of my voice. Anything I said would come out as a shout and potentially draw my dad into the room if he was still conscious.

Callan grabbed my face and forced me to look at him. “I would never hurt you. But if he comes in here, he’s dead. So you have to calm down.”

I nodded again, still not trusting myself to speak. Rage burned in Callan’s eyes, showing me the danger to my dad’s life was real. My cheeks burned as it dawned on me why Callan was threatening to kill him.

“You saw?” I whispered.

“Saw...yeah.” His hands gripped my head a little tighter, scaring me for a second before he dropped them to his side. “Heard him, too.”

His gaze cut toward the kitchen door. Seeing the anger that heated his skin and narrowed his face, I had a moment’s vision of Callan grabbing the carving knife from the block and going into the front room. He was at the tipping point of losing it, the assault he had witnessed just one component of a day that would send anyone else over the edge.

Reaching up, I placed my palms flat against his massive chest. “Forget him. Tell me why you’re here.”

His eyes softened when he looked back at me. His mouth opened, then closed in reconsideration. I could see him talking to himself inside his head, maybe rehearsing what he wanted to say to me.