“What was your name again, dear?”
“Christa. Christa Kimmel. You can count on me to be here next week, dad, same as always.” I leaned down and gave him a quick peck on the forehead as his lips formed a confused smile. “I don't care how hard anybody makes it. I'm never going to stop loving you.”
That night, I stared into my empty refrigerator. My stomach growled, pissed that I hadn't fed it anything since the roast beef sandwich Shirley gave me. I turned away in disgust, gulping two big cups of water to take the edge off.
Dad was safe for another week, the only thing that really mattered. But I couldn't stop wondering how I was going to keep living like this.
Something had to give. It always did. Bad luck caught up to me with trouble right by its side, always wearing a Grizzlies MC cut.
I'd been in deep before I got into trouble with the Redding club. Fang and his monstrous brothers tortured me because I'd been tutoring this teenager, Jackie, younger sister to Missy, who'd been claimed by Brass. He was the VP now, but he'd been one of the main traitors then, leader among the men who ended up destroying Fang and taking over the club.
Well, at least there was one less demon in the world. Not that it did me much good.
The awful memories weren't the only thing that kept haunting me. Every few weeks, Rabid came by, quite possibly the only man I didn't mind seeing with the murderous bear patch on his leather. His club sent him around to make sure I wasn't going to go to the cops about anything that happened during Fang's overthrow.
They didn't have a clue I'd been avoiding pigs since I was fifteen. I'd been wild, and I'd made dad's life a living hell for the next few years. Guess it went with the territory growing up a biker's daughter without a mother to straighten me out.
The stupid shit I'd gotten into wouldn't have wrapped around my neck like a noose if it didn't keep compounding. At eighteen, I hitchhiked my way up to Klamath Falls and made the greatest mistake of my life.
I was young and stupid. I thought I understood outlaw motorcycle clubs since dad was in one, but I didn't really know crap. My teenage brain couldn't even compute borrowing six figures from one with double digit interest.
I thought I was tough and wild. Thought I could run a bar without letting the Grizzlies MC walk all over me. I completely wilted the first time they wanted me to launder money through them.
Their President, Rip, got in my face, close enough to feel his beard's tangled bristles. He reminded me exactly what I was – their bitch, not a real businesswoman.
I had to get out. I ran, and ran the bar into the ground, leaving a real accounting mess behind. The whole thing fell apart within a year, but the debt remained.
I should've seen it coming. I'd been a smart girl, a trophy winner and a gifted kid before I flushed my brains down the toilet for adventure. I'd still managed a perfect score on the SAT even when I was fucking off.
I should've seen it coming, but I was too young, too na?ve. Too strung out on hope and smarts. I didn't realize I was missing the magic ingredient – bravado – until it was too late. Some lessons have to be learned on the streets instead of in schools, I guess.
My head knew it. My heart refused to listen.
The years after Klamath went by in a blur of failures and intimidation, and there I was at twenty-three, slaving away for these savages I'd never escape.
God, what I would've done for a good drink to knock me on my ass. The gifted brain I'd never done anything good with sure loved to think. It never shut up unless it was doused in poison. And so, I suffered another evening alone, resisting the urge to pick up my cheap pay-as-you-go phone and call up Rabid.
I still had his number – he'd insisted on me taking it, the same way he made me promise to call him if anything came up between his visits.
He tempted me to pour my heart out. Maybe more than that too.
The boy – no, the man – was handsome. Six feet tall, broad shoulders, short dark hair and pristine hazel eyes to match. Lickable was too weak a word for how his clothes clung to the sculpted muscle underneath, the kinda hard, rugged strength a man gets with violence, rather than pumping iron.
He couldn't have been much older than me, but his face had experience and wisdom. He wore a confidence that said he'd avoided all the stupid things I'd done in my youth.
When I let it all lay out, Rabid was a fucking conundrum.
He excited me as much as he scared the hell out of me.
I hated being attracted to a brother in the Grizzlies MC at all. Too bad loathing the dark men behind the bear patch hadn't stopped me from admiring anything dark, masculine, and heavily tattooed.
That was Rabid to a tee. Rabid the brave, Rabid the biker bastard, Rabid the enigma who got into my head during dark hours like these, nudging me to learn more about him.