Retribution: A Motorcycle Club Romance (20 page)

I knew what she meant. I knew she
wasn’t talking about the little stuff. Not about how I’d told her she was
pretty, or that she had the best rack I’d ever seen. She was talking about
those three little words I’d said. The ones I’d lost sleep over, thinking maybe
I’d pushed it too far.

I love you,
I’d told her once, just to get her legs open. Or that’s what I told myself.
Because thinking any other way, entertaining
any
other possibility,
might make me back out. Might change my mind. Might fuck up all my plans to get
even with the man who’d used my mother until she was dead, and then traded in
her memory for a younger model.

My father inspired a rage so strong
in me that sometimes, I couldn’t see straight. Feeling anything for Iris,
anything at all, was a threat to that. Because every time I even
thought
about the
idea
of those feelings, my vision got blurry in an entirely
different way.

And that just wouldn’t do.

“Get out,” my father said. Despite
how low his voice was, it seemed to shake the room. “Get out of here, Slade.
And don’t you dare come back.”

Iris withered as I withdrew, covering
herself with her arms and legs while I pulled up my swim trunks. I risked a
look in her direction and my stomach sank. Those eyes were wide again, but not
with pleasure or sweet naiveté or even shock. They were wide with pain. Wide
with rage.

How could you?
her gaze said to me. I just gave her a shrug and watched her eyes get wet.

It didn’t matter how hurt she was.
The fact of the matter was that Iris was better off without me. I would have
told her as much, if she’d have listened. If my father would’ve let me stay in
the same room with her for one second more. But I knew neither of those things
were going to happen now, so I’d just have to say it to myself:
Come on,
Iris. This is the best thing that could’ve happened to you. Years from now,
you’ll look back and see. Splitting our parents up was something I had to do.
For me. For my mother. And in some ways, for you.

‘Cause being related to
Slade Jarvis? Now that’s a hell I wouldn’t put my worst enemy through.

My father moved to let me pass
without so much of a word. I thought I saw a few gray hairs glinting in the
sun, right around his temples, where there hadn’t been a single one before. I
held his gaze and my cocky grin, savoring my triumph, knowing that I’d done
what I set out to do. That I had
won.

I didn’t let him see it in my eyes or
in my swagger, but at the same time, I wondered to myself: if I’d really beat
my father, once and for all, then why the hell did I feel so shitty?

Why the hell couldn’t I get the look
on Iris Walker’s face out of my head?

~ ONE ~

Iris

SEVEN YEARS LATER

“Dad, come on. You know it’s the right
thing to do.”

My stepfather looked down his nose at
me, the wire frames of his glasses dangling precariously close to the tip. He
looked like he’d aged ten years in the past three days. Ever since Kellan left
home, our house had practically become a morgue.

You would’ve thought my younger
brother died, and maybe for Dad, that was, in a sense, true. He certainly
wasn’t the kid we once knew.

Dad shook his head and fixed his gaze
outside the breakfast nook window again, like staring at the front lawn would
magically make Kellan appear there. This was part of the Waiting Game, the one
our family always played whenever Kellan took off on one of his benders. He was
never gone for more than a week at a time—apparently, that was how long it took
for him to run out of drug money and come crawling back home on his knees,
begging for more. Or he’d call us from the drunk tank at the police station to
plead for bail money so he wouldn’t have to spend the night.

Whatever the case, my little brother
had a self-destruct mechanism set for seven days. No matter what else he got
himself into, we could rely on him to end up at our door a week later, just
like clockwork.

Until now.

Three days ago marked one week since
Kellan left the house. He’d used his usual ruse, promising Mom he was going to
a job interview or the Army recruiter or whatever it was this time. Kellan used
the guise of bettering himself as an excuse to relapse, and when his cellphone
went straight to voicemail that night, we braced ourselves for another week of
the Waiting Game.

But now ten days had passed, and
still no one could reach Kellan. Not even me. And I had one hell of a bad
feeling about this.

“We don’t have any other choice,” I
continued, even as my stepfather looked away from me to his newspaper. “Not one
that I see, anyway. We’ve already called all the hospitals and police stations.
And I doubt you or Mom are going to be able to smoke him out. We need a bigger
gun.”

My stepfather snorted. “Fine choice
of words.”

I sighed and closed my eyes. It had
been seven years since my parents caught me and Slade in the pool house, doing…
what we’d done. Dad had sworn me and Mom to secrecy, along with Slade. Kellan
was never to hear a word of it, and when Dad kicked Slade out the next day, he
used Slade’s going off to Harvard as the perfect excuse. Still, for all his
talk of secrecy, he was so obvious with his disdain for his own son that
everyone knew how he felt. He thought Slade was an asshole. Dangerous. And
maybe he was.

But he was smart, too, and capable. And
there were times were he had been incredibly sweet and kind to me.  I hated the
idea that it was all just an act to screw me, literally and figuratively, just
to get back at his father and my mother.  When he first left I clung to the
belief that those were true parts of him, and that what he’d done at the end
had just been him acting out in… whatever.  But over the years, after never
hearing from him again, I’ve all but lost that hope.  Maybe he was the complete
jerk that his dad seemed to believe him to be.

One thing is for certain, Kellan had
never stopped looking up to him, even when Mom and Dad basically forbade us
from even mentioning Slade’s name. I knew my little brother felt abandoned,
like he’d lost one of the most positive male influences in his life almost as
quickly as it arrived. He’d never been the same after Slade left. That day
marked the beginning of Kellan’s downward spiral.

Slade might be the only one of us who
could bring Kellan home. Knowing that was one thing. Convincing my parents it
was true was another.

My mother sat down at the table with
us, two mugs of coffee in her hands. She handed one to my stepfather and said,
“Kellan’s life is enough of a mess as it is, Iris. Adding yet another unstable
element to the mix… I just can’t see how that would make things any better.”

“Exactly,” Dad said, kissing my
mother’s cheek before taking a sip of his coffee. “Kellan needs roots. He needs
someone who can set a good example.” His eyes darkened and his brow creased. A
shadow of a memory flitted over his face. “Not someone who forces himself on
his own family.”

“He didn’t force me,” I mumbled, and
not for the first time. This was a regular argument, once upon a time, but over
the past few years it became obvious he was never going to change his mind. I saw
my stepfather start to open his mouth and quickly added, “And anyway, that’s
not the point. The point is Kellan doesn’t know about that. All he knows is
that the big brother he looked up to more than anyone else in the world just
disappeared from his life one day, and that you wouldn’t even let him ask why.
He’s not going to come home if either of you go after him. It’s obvious who he
needs.”

My stepfather leaned close to me over
the table, lowering his voice and squeezing my mother’s hand so tight I saw his
knuckles whiten. “If you think I’m inviting that…
person
into my home,
after what he did to us, to
you
…”

I furrowed my brow in disbelief.
“He’s your son,” I reminded him. “And he’s a doctor. You don’t know what kind
of trouble Kellan’s into. Mom found pills in his room just the other week. Who
knows how long that’s been going on? He needs
treatment,
Dad.”

My stepfather sat back and his face
fell. He eyed my mother through his periphery. “Is that true?” he asked her.
“About the pills?”

I looked at my mom. She averted her
gaze.
Shit.
I didn’t know she hadn’t told him.

When she failed to answer, my
stepfather let out a long sigh through his nose. He looked out the window again
at the empty drive, at the absence of my brother’s car, at the clouds moving in
over the horizon. A storm was coming. Maybe in more ways than one.

As much as my mother and stepfather
didn’t want Slade here, I didn’t want him around even more. It wasn’t because
he’d “forced” himself on me—I was a willing and eager, albeit naïve,
participant in what happened between us. But being played for a fool, having my
heart torn open, being
used
just to settle some kind of score Slade had
with our parents? I never wanted to see his smug, arrogant face ever again. No
matter how handsome it was.

Slade was the walking, talking
embodiment of everything I’d tried to forget for almost a decade now. I’d done
a lot in the past seven years. I’d graduated from college, started my own
business as an interior designer—no, screw that, I had a
thriving
business, and that was even more impressive than just starting one. I was a
smart, beautiful, self-possessed young woman who didn’t take shit from anybody,
and Slade Jarvis was everything I wanted to leave behind.

But he was exactly what I needed—what
our family needed—right now. And I’d do anything for Kellan if it meant keeping
him safe. Surely, my parents felt the same way?

“Slade stays out of this,” my
stepfather said, and my shoulders slumped. “He’s done enough damage. And if
Kellan needs saving, he’ll get it. Just not from my degenerate son.”

I looked to my mother, pleading with
my eyes, but she only shook her head. My stepfather’s word was law, one of the
many reasons I’d moved out right after high school, and probably one of the
many reasons Kellan dropped out. There was no arguing with him once he’d made a
decision of this magnitude. It was his way, or the highway.

And we all knew what Kellan thought
of that.

I leaned back in my chair, glancing
out the window at the coming storm. Great. Once again, it was up to me to make
the sacrifices and be the adult. Once again, I would have to put myself on the
line, and knowing Slade, I’d be the one who would have to live with the
consequences too.

I had to find my stepbrother, the
last person on earth I wanted to see. I’d have to do it without our parents
knowing, because if they found out, there would be hell to pay. And when I did
manage to find Slade, I’d have to hope that he was different. Selfless.
Grown
up.
And hopefully not so hot anymore, either.

Because that part of me that wanted
answers, the part of me I’d spent seven years trying to hold at bay? Yeah, that
part of me would wake right up with just one quirk of Slade’s full, soft lips.
Lips I knew way too well.

Lips that, if I was being honest with
myself, I still dreamed about.

Here’s hoping this
doesn’t turn into a nightmare,
I thought as I mentally
prepared myself for what I was about to do. One thing was certain: I was going
to need a plane ticket, and balls of fucking steel.

Slade available now on Amazon

Now here’s a taste
of Trust

TRUST

CHAPTER ONE

"If
I win, I get the girl."

It
was said so matter-of-factly that it didn't register with me until I heard it a
second time, after Harrison asked him to repeat it.

"You're
in over your head, kid, that much is obvious," the other man continues,
eying the small stack of chips left in front of my boyfriend
meaningfully.  He had just shoved a large stack of his own chips into the
pot that more than eclipsed what Harrison had in front of him.  "Instead
of risking what you have left, which isn't much, I'm suggesting we change the
stakes.  You win, you get everything in the pot."

With
the chips he had just added, that would more than cover the heavy losses
Harrison had accumulated in the last couple of days.  "But if I win,
the girl comes home with me."

This
time I knew I heard what he said and it sounded just as ludicrous as it did
originally.  Obviously he was joking, or crazy, if he thought Harrison
would agree to something like that.

The
man lifts the dark sunglasses he's wearing up and off his face as he shifts his
gaze up to me.  His eyes are a cobalt blue, sitting beneath short blond hair
and above a finely chiseled, unshaven jaw.  Under normal circumstances
he'd be drop dead gorgeous, but the fact that he is calmly trying to negotiate
a price for my ass makes him decidedly less so.

I
glance down at Harrison who is also looking up at me.  I expect to see a
familiar grin on his lips, the one that tells me we are both sharing the same
joke.  But what I see is something else entirely.  One of his
eyebrows is raised, and his green eyes are staring at me intently, as if he is
either considering this ludicrous proposal or asking for my permission.

I
shake my head slightly with a frown, annoyed that I even need to give my
opinion on the matter.

Harrison
looks back at the poker player across from him.  "Deal," he
finally says.

It's
just a single word, but it's the only one needed to crash my whole world.

So
many things seem to happen at once in the moments that follow, my senses seem
to jumble with time itself and I don't even know in what order everything
occurs.