RIDE (A Stone Kings Motorcycle Club Romance) (15 page)

T
he blowout
with Eva had been on Friday, so I had the whole weekend to stew about it before my next scheduled physical therapy appointment.

I spent a fair amount of it at the clubhouse. I’d been avoiding it for the most part, except for times when I needed to be there for club business. But lately my leg was feeling pretty good, and I was beginning to feel optimistic that I’d be able to start riding again soon.

When I stepped through the door of the clubhouse and walked in, a chorus of male voices greeted me. Grey, Levi, Repo, Trig, and Cal came up and clapped me on the back. Almost as soon as anyone could ask me how I was doing, shots of whiskey started to appear on the bar in front of me. It was the first time since getting shot that being here with my brothers felt like anything but a painful reminder of the life I was in danger of losing.

So, for a couple of hours, the memory of Eva mostly receded, and I was able to just enjoy being with my club. A couple of the hang-around bitches wandered over and tried to get my attention, but I wasn’t interested. I knew from experience that they were willing to do just about anything to please, but the thought of being with anyone but Eva sort of turned my stomach. So I pushed them away and got back to the serious business of drinking and forgetting.

Unfortunately, the “forgetting” part was made a little less easy by the appearance of a couple of the brothers’ old ladies.

Seton and Cherish stopped by to see their men on their way out for a girls’ evening. The two of them were dressed and made up to the nines. Seton was wearing a form-fitting black dress that would have made any one of the men’s heads swivel lecherously in her direction — if she wasn’t the property of Grey Stone. Her dramatic makeup accentuated her striking features and her flashing brown eyes.

Cherish was dressed in a slightly more modest but still sexy sapphire-blue dress that showed off her curves. The color made me immediately think of Eva’s deep blue eyes, and how beautiful she would look in a dress like that.

Conflicting emotions of lust and regret filled me as my dick jumped to attention. I looked away before Cherish — or worse, her man Levi — could catch my eye and think I was lusting after her.

I hadn’t seen either of the two women since I had gotten out of the hospital, and they both immediately rushed over when they saw me. I got a warm hug from Seton and a slightly more reserved hug and smile from Cherish.

As they peppered me with questions about how I was doing, I tried not to notice how Grey’s arm curved possessively around Seton, or how the famously quiet and aloof Levi bent down to kiss Cherish’s forehead as we talked. The little gestures of intimacy between these two couples who were so obviously crazy about each other were sort of torture to watch.

Not that I begrudged them their happiness. But I had come to the club to be distracted from thoughts of Eva, and this wasn’t helping. I was pretty happy when the two women left and I could go back to just drinking with my brothers.

In the six weeks or so since I’d been shot, I hadn’t had a whole hell of a lot to drink, and it turned out that I’d become kind of a lightweight. The shots we were throwing back for most of the evening took their toll, and I ended up spending the night in one of the upstairs apartments we kept for brothers and friends who needed a place to stay. Or to fuck.

It sounded like I was the only one up there not using an apartment for the latter that night, as the sounds of men groaning and women crying out in pleasure reached my ears while I tried to drift off to sleep.

I hung around for a good part of the next day, too, nursing a hangover that for me was pretty unusual. Toward the end of the night before, I’d gotten into a drinking match with Moose, and I was a little the worse for wear in the morning.

When the drinking started back up again in earnest that afternoon, I decided to take my leave and headed out in the truck.

Back at home, I opened up the garage door and took the second good look at my bike that I’d had since before getting hurt. My leg was feeling okay, and the numbness was all but gone except for the occasional fuzziness, but I resisted the temptation to go out on a ride. Still, I straddled her and sat down, lifting the Harley up off the kickstand and relishing the familiar weight of her. It wouldn’t be long now, I was almost sure.

Thanks to Eva.

I
’d made so
much progress that Eva had scaled back my PT appointments to twice a week, on Tuesdays and Fridays. When Tuesday rolled around, I almost didn’t go. The thought of seeing her after I’d stormed out of her house on Friday was pretty fucking unpleasant. But I made myself do it anyway. I was conscious of how much I’d almost lost, and I’d be damned if I was going to take any chances with my leg now.

As shitty as I knew it was going to feel to be around Eva, I trusted the hell out of her professional opinion. The weeks I’d spent as her patient had taught me to admire her expertise and count myself lucky that she’d been the therapist assigned to me. I was sure I’d done harder things than have to be around a woman I loved, who didn’t love me. I just had to suck it up and deal with it.

Because I did love her.

And it hurt like hell.

* * *

E
va was waiting
by the appointment desk when I showed up.

The look on her face was something I couldn’t quite get a read on. Her eyes kept searching mine, and I could hardly stand to look back. I didn’t know how to act like just one of her patients. Every time my gaze met hers, I couldn’t help but remember what they looked like when the pupils grew large and dark with passion. Every time she touched me, I thought of her fingertips grazing the skin on my cock as she teased me.

Just like the first therapy session we’d ever had, I spent this one half-hard and struggling to conceal how much I wanted to take her into the back room and fuck her. Only this time, I was sure she could read it in my face, and feel it in the heat the passed between us.

We spoke very little for the first half-hour or so. Finally, she broke the relative silence.

“You’ve made a lot of progress, Trig. I think you’re on the road to being done with therapy. I’m going to suggest we reduce these sessions to once a week, provided you’ll continue doing your daily exercises at home.”

Part of me wondered if this was Eva’s way of pushing me away as a patient. But I knew her too well by now to think that she would sacrifice what was best for someone she was treating.

Even me.

I nodded. “Great.”

Eva bit her lip. “Trig.”

I glanced at her. “Yeah?”

“I wanted to say I’m sorry. About the other night.” She took a breath. “I wasn’t being fair to you. I overreacted when you told me that David called.”

“That’s okay,” I grunted. I didn’t really want to talk about it anymore. Three days of trying to decipher what had happened had just left me exhausted and feeling like an idiot.

“No, it’s not okay,” she protested. “The more I thought about it, the more I realized that in your place, I probably would have done the same thing, answering the phone. You couldn’t have known who it was.” She shook her head. “And you couldn’t have known that I try to keep Zoe’s interactions with her father to a minimum.”

I nodded. “Okay.”

“Trig, please.” She put her hand on my arm. “Can we start over?”

I looked into her eyes.

“I don’t know, Eva,” I said, shaking my head.

And I didn’t.

I just wasn’t up for any more damn games.

Her eyes filled with tears.

“Can… Can I just invite you over to talk? Without Zoe. I’d… like to come clean about a couple of things.” Her voice quavered. “No expectations, or anything like that. I just want to talk.”

Shit
. I had no idea what more there was to say between us. True, she’d just apologized for getting pissed with me. Which was all well and good.

But still, the basic problem was still there. Eva had made it clear she didn’t even want to think about anything long-term between us. “
No past, no future. Just the present
,” she had said. At the same time, we had been spending almost every evening together.

And then there was Zoe. One minute, Eva was thanking me for helping her out with her, and the next she’s telling me to butt out of her life. It just felt like there were land mines all over the place. I had no idea what she wanted anymore.

All I knew was I didn’t want any more of this push-me pull-you shit. It was too damn confusing.

So, it was a mystery to me why, when I opened my mouth to tell her no, what came out was ‘yes’.

“Okay.” I shook my head slightly as I said it.
Jesus
. This was probably a huge fucking mistake. “When?”

She gave me a tremulous smile. “This Friday, maybe? I’ll make dinner. I’ll need to get a sitter, and I need to make sure with Mrs. Hayes that she’s feeling well enough to want to take Zoe into the evening.”

Friday. Three days from now. At least that would give me time to get some emotional distance. And at least Zoe wouldn’t be there. It was going to be hard enough to sit across a table from Eva telling me whatever the hell she thought she needed to explain. The only thing that would make it worse would be Zoe, pulling at my reluctant heartstrings. Making me wish I was more important in her life, instead of being just some guy who gave her a stuffed dragon and occasionally babysat for her when her mom was in a bind.

Because that was part of the problem. One I hadn’t even admitted to myself.

Eva Van Buren had stolen my heart. But so had her little girl.

I
was more
nervous than I could ever remember being in my life.

I had spent three days trying to think of the perfect meal to prepare for Trig. Something that said, “I’m sorry, please forgive me,” but also, “I know this meal is really delicious, but I really didn’t spend hours and hours fretting over it in the kitchen trying to impress you.”

In my desperation to make something that would wow him, I broke my cardinal rule: never make an untested recipe for guests.

I found what looked like an absolutely scrumptious recipe for “easy Beef Wellington” that I was pretty sure he would love, given what I’d seen of his food preferences. Unfortunately, I underestimated how hard “easy” would be.

By the time Trig was scheduled to arrive, I had managed to overcook the beef but undercook the pastry that enveloped it. Instead of a fluffy, golden-brown crust, I was staring at a soggy, lifeless blob when the doorbell rang.

Panicking, I looked toward the direction of the front door and briefly considered pretending I wasn’t home, but it was no use. The perfect dinner I had envisioned was not going to happen.

It only made things worse that when I opened the door, Trig was standing there looking hotter than I’d ever remembered.

As always, he dressed simply and casually, but there was something about the dark gray shirt he was wearing that brought out the deep cast of his eyes and showed off his muscular chest in a way that made my stomach clench.

His handsome face was expressionless, his eyes neutral, as though he didn’t know me from Adam. My heart sank a little when I saw it.

“Hi,” I said a little breathlessly. “Come on in.”

Thankfully, I had already gotten dressed so he wasn’t seeing me in the stained tank top and sweats I had been wearing earlier. The pink sundress I had chosen did a pretty good job of showing off the better parts of my figure while hiding others.

Unfortunately, the last few minutes in the kitchen had left me sweaty and flushed. The artful tendrils I had arranged around my face clung to my cheeks, which were now probably flushed the same color as my dress.

I pushed my hair out of the way and stood back from the threshold so he could come in. I noticed he hadn’t said anything by way of greeting, which only made my nerves worse.

“Sorry, make yourself at home,” I said, indicating the couch. “I have to go deal with something. I’ll be right back.”

I fled into the kitchen, and tried to get a quick glimpse of myself in the door of the microwave. What little I could see wasn’t promising.

“Smells good,” Trig called politely from the living room.

“Thanks,” I cried. I opened the oven door again and looked at the unappetizing mess in front of me.

“Uh, just a minute!”

What was I going to do? The meat was cooked but somehow the crust wasn’t. In desperation, I took the pan out of the oven and transferred the wellingtons to another clean one, then turned on the broiler. A minute or two under that heat was the only thing I could think to do.

“Looks like you’re having a little trouble in here.”

Trig’s voice so close behind me made me jump and squeal. I turned around to see his face. His eyes were still emotionless, but just a hint of a smile tugged at one the corners of his mouth.

“I… Yeah. I guess I was a little ambitious,” I admitted. “It’s supposed to be Beef Wellington.”

“Huh. Never had it before.” He eyed it curiously.

“Well, I’m pretty sure it’s not supposed to look like this.”

He frowned. “Can you just take off the wrapping part, and then sear the beef?”

“I dunno.” I cocked my head skeptically at the pan. “It’s probably a better option than what I was going to do, though.” I turned off the broiler and grabbed a pan from the lower cupboard. “Thanks for the idea.”

“I’m sure it will be good,” he shrugged. “Hell, it’s beef. What’s not to like?”

Thankful for his easy-going nature, I relaxed just a little bit.

“I suppose you’re right,” I replied. “Oh! I’m sorry. Do you want something to drink?” I nodded toward the fridge. “There’s beer, of course. Or wine, if you prefer.” I nodded toward the bottle of red that I had already opened to calm my nerves.

“I’ll go with beer, thanks.”

I had made sure to stock the fridge with a six-pack of a kind that I knew he liked. He twisted the cap off the bottle and I grabbed my glass, then hesitated for a moment. Swallowing, I bravely held it up to him.

“To honesty,” I said, looking him in the eye.

His brow furrowed, confused. “Okay,” he shrugged. “To honesty.”

As we drank, my nerves started to come back. I knew Trig had been wary of accepting my invitation to dinner, and he definitely was keeping his distance from me. I had gotten so used to his open physicality, the heat of his presence, that his cold, aloof attitude tonight made it feel as though the temperature had dropped ten degrees.

I found myself beginning to lose my nerve a little, and poured myself another glass of wine to try to get my courage up for the conversation ahead. So much was riding on this evening, and I was terrified of how it all might turn out.

Over the last three days, I had finally started being honest with myself about my feelings for Trig. The truth was, I was in love with him. And I was absolutely terrified that tonight, I would find out something about him that would mean I would have to walk away from him.

But what terrified me even more?

That I would find out he was the real deal, but he would decide to walk away from me.

We set the table mostly in silence, then sat down to eat. The beef un-wellington was a little overdone, but like Trig said, it was still beef. He complimented me on the meal, and even cracked a smile when I confessed how long it had been since I had prepared a meal of strictly grown-up food.

I had made dessert, too, but Trig said he was too full to have any, so I carried the plates back to the kitchen and we moved to the living room couch. The mood, which had lightened a bit during dinner, shifted subtly now. We both knew the reason we were here, and there was no putting it off any longer.

Sitting next to him felt unusually awkward. I had touched him so many times, first as his therapist and then as his lover. I knew his body so well, and yet there seemed to be an unbreachable distance between us, even though he was so close I could practically feel the heat radiating from his body.

“Trig,” I began, “I wanted to apologize again for blowing up at you about David’s phone call. But…” I took a deep breath. “I also wanted to explain some things to you. About why I act the way I do.”

“Okay. Go ahead.” His face was unreadable, impassive.

Here goes nothing
.

So, I told him.

I told him how much I had dreamed of having a stable family life growing up. How my sister and I had never had a father to speak of, and how our mother was never much of a mother to us, either. How I told myself I would never put my own children in that position.

I told him that when I met David, he seemed like he’d be the perfect man to fit into the ideal picture I’d painted for myself. He came from a well-off upper-class family; he had just finished ophthalmology school and gotten a coveted place at a prestigious eye clinic in Seattle. He said he wanted children and a family.

I was attracted to David in part because my whole life had felt so unstable and out of my control, and David seemed like the opposite of that. What I hadn’t seen was that he had no real interested in marriage and a family. What he really wanted was the appearance of success, and a wife and child were part of that picture.

His controlling ways, his possessiveness, eventually made me realize that I was at risk of losing control of my life and subjecting Zoe to an upbringing that would teach her that girls and women were meant to be nothing but pretty, docile, and without opinions of their own.

I told him how I had had to claw my way out of that marriage to gain my life back, and how I was terrified of losing myself again. That I was terrified of trusting.

“You told me I have to figure out what I want,” I said, my voice nearly a whisper. I hadn’t been able to look him in the eye since I started talking. I fixed a point on the coffee table, as though I was alone in the room, talking to myself.

“You said I needed to figure out if I want a man in my life who will be there for me. Someone I can trust.” Finally, I turned to him, meeting his eyes with difficulty. “The truth is,” I said, brushing away a tear, “I want someone to trust. But I’m terrified to let myself be vulnerable again.”

Trig’s eyes were locked on mine, but he didn’t move.

“Eva,” he said. “Why are you so afraid? David is one man. Only one man, out of all the men in the world. Why would you let him make you afraid of everyone else?” He frowned. “Why would you let him make you afraid of me? Of
us
?”

I shook my head, a shaky laugh escaping me as I wiped away another tear. “Well. See. There’s the second thing I wanted to talk to you about.”

My heart was pounding in my chest. I was so afraid he’d laugh at me. So afraid he’d think I was being ridiculous. But even worse… so afraid that he wouldn’t tell me the truth.

“There was someone else who hurt me once.” I glanced at him. “His name… was Caleb.”

Trig’s eyes widened, but he didn’t interrupt.

“I think…” my voice broke, and I had to clear my throat twice to continue. “I think I was a little in love with him, back in the day. He made me feel things no other boy did. And for some odd reason, he seemed to like me, too.

“One day, he took me on a motorcycle ride. It was…” I paused, pushing down tears. “It was probably the best day of my life up until that point. Caleb was really, really nice. I felt like I could talk to him. And,” I smiled at the memory, “He was my first kiss.”

“Eva…” Trig began.

“No,” I shook my head stubbornly. “Let me keep going.”

He nodded and sat back, staring at me.

“When we drove back to town from the hot springs, my mom… my
drunk
mom came flying out of the house and started yelling at me in front of the whole neighborhood. In front of
him
.” I stifled a sob. “I had never been so embarrassed in my life. In fact, I’m not sure I’ve ever been so embarrassed since. I couldn’t imagine what Caleb must have thought of me. I felt so exposed.” I shook my head. “All I could hope for was that somehow, somehow, it wouldn’t make any difference.

“Well,” I continued, my voice turning bitter. “I found out later that it
had
made a difference. Debbie Turner, who lived across the street, told me.” I risked a glance at Trig, whose stare had turned intense. “You remember Debbie, don’t you? I’m sure you do. If I remember correctly, you and she dated for a while after that.”

I pushed down my anger enough to keep going. Here it was: the moment of truth.

Finally, I looked him in the eyes. “Debbie told me that you
told
her about what happened! That you told her I acted all high and mighty, like a
princess
, but in fact I was just trash like my mother!”

Trig’s eyes grew wide. “Jesus, Eva!” he cried. “I never said that! I never, ever would have said that!” The shock on his face was evident.

“No?” I retorted. “Then how did she know you had called me
princess
, Trig?” My anger began to bubble over, even as a tiny part of me began to doubt myself. “How could she have possibly known that, unless you told her?”

He shook his head in disbelief. “I don’t know, exactly… Eva, for fuck’s sake, you’ve got to believe me! It was so long ago, but Christ, I
know
I didn’t say that.” He leaned forward and took my hands in his, not letting go when I tried to pull away. “Eva, I was fucking crazy about you. I swear to you. I never would have said that.”

He looked off into the distance, remembering. “Yes, I will admit, I was shocked when your mom came outside. But Jesus, I didn’t judge you for it! I was just sad for you, knowing that you’d have to go inside and face that. And there was nothing I could do for you! You have no idea how damn helpless I felt.” He grimaced at the memory.

I wanted to believe him. Oh, how I wanted to believe him. But how could I? I
knew
he’d talked to Debbie about me. There was no other explanation for that.

“Why did you talk to Debbie?” I cried. “She always hated me, her family always looked down their noses at my mom. If you wanted to protect me, then why would you tell her something she could throw in my face?”

He looked at me in surprise. “Eva, I didn’t know that! I didn’t even know you were neighbors until that night.” He frowned in concentration, then continued. “I do remember talking to Debbie about you, a couple days later at a party. She came up to me and said she noticed us leaving the high school on my bike. I think I’d had a few drinks by then, and all I could think about that weekend was you, and seeing you again.”

His eyes widened. “Shit, I do remember her asking me about whether we’d gone to your house, and I must have told her I called you
princess
. You were always so elegant, you had this way about you like you were just so much more together than most kids our age. I admired you for it. Hell, Eva, I never, ever would have used that word as an insult about you.” His eyes pleaded with mine. “You have to believe me, Eva. Whatever happens or doesn’t happen between us. Please believe I would never have done that to you.”

My head felt like a heavy weight on my neck. I didn’t know what to think. For so many years, I had thought of Caleb Jackson as a horrible, two-faced liar, and the first boy to ever break my heart.

Now, with Trig sitting in front of me, his eyes beseeching me, I started to realize that the version of events I had carried around in my heart all this time might not even have been real.

I had never marched up to Caleb back then and demanded that he explain himself. I had just assumed that, like my father, he was not what he seemed and couldn’t be trusted to stick around when things got tough. The heartbreak I had experienced made me afraid to trust again, until David. And then David had hurt me again, confirming my worst fears about men in general.