Hunter: MC Romance (Hell Reapers MC Book 1) (24 page)

I steeled my expression, offering nothing but a frigid glare, “I don’t need your warnings, Holly. So please,” I said, “let it go.”

Hunter sat the glasses of beer down on the table as Holly and I stared one another off, a storm of invisible sparks between us.

***

Setting down the box of Licht chocolates on my mother’s nightstand, I smoothed out the kinks in my blue skirt that weren’t truly there.

“Thanks, Blue Jay,” she said, taking a sip of her water.

“It’s no problem,” I replied, “I always think of you when I see them, so I had to get you some.” She loved the ones filled with caramel and raspberry, so naturally I could never stand the raspberry, because mother daughter reasons, I guess. I sat there in my chair and found my gaze settling on my mom’s white blanket.

“Honey?” She asked.

“Huh?”

“You okay?”

“Yeah…”

“Yeah?” She asked incredulous.

“It’s just, I don’t know,” it was hard to find the words that my heart so desperately wanted to spit out. “There’s this guy, mom.”

For the first time in a long time, I saw something in her change. Something good. Her eyes rounded and she perked up, “So that’s what has gotten into you,” she noted like it was a fact written on my forehead she’d so kindly neglected to mention.

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I’ve seen the way you act, the way that you’re smiling and you’re distant and the anger that came off of you that night.”

I twisted my nose to the side, my face scrunching up tightly, “I would’ve told you about him sooner, but it’s just so complicated. He had me get up on stage and sing during Karaoke night at this place, and god Mom it was just so freezing. So amazing.
He
is so amazing.”

A tight smile graced the lines of her face, “I can tell that he must be, with the way you blush like you do.”

I hadn’t even felt the red kiss my cheeks, “So not blushing,” I insisted, pushing out a sigh, “He’s everything I never knew I needed, mom.”

“That’s how it works, kiddo,” she wagged a finger.

The cloak of sadness wrapped itself tightly around me, and I felt like I had dragged a dozen moody clouds with me into her room. “It can’t be though,” it sounded like I was pouting. I just wanted the comfort of my mother’s words.

“Why not?”

“Because, my boss wants me to rip him and his club apart. He’ll hate me, mom. And it just fucking kills me, because he’s so sweet and stupid and, smart and…everything.” I was resigning myself to defeat now, the small lights of hope being snuffed by the encroaching darkness. I whispered, “and it just can’t be.”

“The only boss that you have to listen to is yourself, Jessica,” she reminded, her hand reaching over to me and grabbing at my wrist.

I brought my head up that I’d not even registered had sunk, looking into her eyes. If it was my choice, if I didn’t have so much on the line – if it was anyone else but
her
. I’d tell Gates to screw himself, in so many ways. “I can’t,” I whispered, the tears stinging at my eyes. “If I decide not to throw him and his club under the bus—“

“His name, dear,” Mom reminded, “tell me his name?”

I smiled, “Hunter.”

“A good name.”

“A better man,” I tried to blink away the pain.

“If you love him,” she said, “then you’ll know what to do. If he loves you, then the both of you will find a way.” It didn’t feel that simple. It made me feel weak to think that I was so madly in love with the man, and to say it aloud felt like it would make me only the weaker.

But I felt it all the same. “I do,” I said so softly I wasn’t sure that she heard me, “love him, that is. Can you love someone so quick?”

“Love is much like life, Blue Jay. It’s all made up as we go along, we can only go with what we feel. If you hold love in your heart for him, then yes. If you do not, then no. Either way,” she coughed and then cleared her throat, going for her water and sipping from it. “Either way, don’t you dare beat yourself up for feeling something.”

The dagger found my breast and I shook my head, “It’s not how I feel for him that scares me. I mean it does. But…it’s how I feel for him and the people that I care about, that I love – namely
you
.”

“Jessica,” she started, her hand finding mine again, “I won’t always be around.”

“But I need you to be,” I sucked in a sharp breath, and it came out all funny and ragged – and a pressure built up in my nose. “I’d do anything for you.”

“Do anything for
you
,” she insisted, “let me worry about me.”

Everything hurt, and I only found myself stuck further between that terrible rock and a hard place.

Chapter 24

Hunter – One Night Later.

I pulled Jessica’s naked body closer to me, so that she could lay her gorgeous head on my chest. “You gonna tell me what’s on your mind there?” I punctuated my next words with a series of kisses, “my very, very sweet firecracker.” I’d been trying to get her to spill her guts ever since we hooked up tonight, but that girl was like the night river – carrying her burdens down the cool of her stream beneath the cover of night. For as much as I tried, she would put up those walls and try and change the subject.

“I’m alright,” she insisted, circling my chest with her index finger and placing a few kisses there too. Each motion of her finger, every ounce of her love that she poured into those kisses; it made me feel alive, made me feel strong and good and just damn happy to be around.

“So you never knew your parents?” She inquired.

My shoulders shifted, “Be lying if I said that I was okay with not knowing them,” it hurt to think about, hell it hurt even more to talk about it. But with Jessica, I wanted to be clear about everything – I wanted to spill all the secrets that I was. That I’d bottled up over the years, the days that I’d been spending without her. Pain raked across my chest and fire twisted through my veins. I’d never spoken the words out loud, but the thorn of feeling pricking at my heart was starting to make me go insane. You were never supposed to fall for this chick; supposed to be keeping your head up, worrying about the club and getting your patch.

Scolding myself could have been my born profession, had I not met Brad back when I was nineteen.

“You have no idea where they are?” Jessica asked.

“Not a clue,” that was truth, through and through. I’d written a letter for my father a couple of years back, hoping to one day give it to him. Course, that day never came – and most of the time I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to or not anyway. “Most of the time, I’m not sure how badly I want to see them. Other days? It’s all I can think about – or well, it
was
all that I could think about.”

Jessica’s cute little smirk widened at what I was implying. “I want to tell you something,” she started.

“You can tell me anything, Jess,” I placed the back of my hand along her cheek, stroking with affection. “Seriously, I’m not just saying that.”

“I appreciate that,” she whispered and then cleared her throat, her eyes sliding over and away from me before returning. There was an almost imperceptible field of hesitation that cloaked her. “I don’t talk about it, like, ever. But…my mother’s dying, Hunter.”

My gut twisted and this terrible heat shot up to my throat; felt like the room grew smaller and that my little girl weighed twice as much as she did. The bones in my body wanted to crawl away from me.

“Her insurance representative keeps telling us there’s nothing that can be done, not without ponying up our percent of the bill. Never done a damn thing wrong in her day, and they won’t move a fat finger to help her.”

I lifted myself onto my elbows and looked down at Jessica, my eyes studying her face, “How much do you guys need?”

She just shook her head, “Too much. They keep telling us that continuing the chemo now would just make things worse, they want to do some kind of break-through nano therapy. Send in little robots to kill the cancerous cells, I don’t know.”

“Tell me how much you need, Jess.”

She swallowed, giving me a look of that haunting neck, “Eighty grand, rounded up.”

“Christ,” the club was well off, but a figure like that wouldn’t be easy to come up with on the spot – not with our current assets. Things would have to be liquidated, payments weren’t always done on a bi-weekly basis; just the nature of the business. I wanted to promise her that I’d change into my street clothes right now, drop down to the bank and put that money in her hand.

I wanted to. God I did.

But I knew that she could see it in my eyes, that there was no way something like that could happen overnight. Could feel the fucking crushing sadness just radiating off of her, and so I held her tight, letting Jessica bury herself in my chest. “I’m sorry baby,” I offered low and true, “I’m so sorry that you and your mom both have to go through that. It’s not fair. It’s not right.”

“This isn’t how it was supposed to be,” Jessica lightly sobbed, her fingers digging into my lower back, her head pushing hard against me. She sucked in a ragged breath.

“It’s gonna be okay,” I told her, “I got you. Whatever you can come up with, me and the club? We’ll do right by you, we’ll get you where you need to go. Do you hear me?” I stroked my fingers against the scalp of her resplendent head. “Nod if you hear me, baby.”

She nodded, quietly and sullenly as a mouse – I could tell that she wasn’t one to ask for help, wasn’t one to usually need it. I kissed the crown of her head and then rubbed my hand along her exposed back, feeling the smoothness of her silken skin, “We all need help every once in a while,” I told her, “the only time you can be brave, is when you’re ready to admit it.”

“I’m tired of being brave,” she squeezed me tighter than I ever thought possible and broke down right in my arms. Her retriever Barristan hopped up onto the bed and made sure to show his signs of support.

I held and consoled her throughout the next hour until she finally managed to work up the strength to lift herself out of bed. “Thank you,” she said, her hair spilling across her perfect breasts and semi-hard nipples. “I think I’m going to take a shower, been dreading it for the past fifteen. Did you want to join me?”

“Yeah,” I yawned and stretched my arms out across the bed, her dog sidling over to me and pooling into a ball of fur. “I’ll join you in a minute. Feelin’ lazy.”

She smiled, “Okay, don’t fall asleep on me,” her eyes slid between the dog and me.

I brushed my hand against the pup’s head, “This big fur baby here might get the best of me, Jess. I don’t know,” a chuckle rumbled from my throat.

She just rolled her eyes and turned, heading off to bathroom – which was conveniently located in the master bedroom. Jessica didn’t seem quite as apprehensive about it, and she entered through the bathroom door, partially closing it; I could make out the sound of the shower. Didn’t sound like she had moved into it just yet.

The dog rolled on his back to the left, then right; then left again, and right another. Yeah alright I get the picture, bud. I moved my hand over to his belly and gave him a long series of pets and scratches before lifting myself out of the warm and comfy bed. The bed that smelled so deliciously of that girl.

I couldn’t help but smile. Spying one of Barristan’s toys on the floor, it was some tug-of-war bone made of thick rope. I grabbed it and waved it at the dog, who immediately perked up in attention. Tossing it across the bed, the toy thumped loudly against Jessica’s heavy, wooden, dresser desk.

Barristan woofed excitedly and loped over towards it.

Jessica called out, “What was that?”

“Nothing,” I announced innocently, striding over towards the dog who promptly picked up the toy and sat on his hind end, looking up at me expectantly. “Good boy,” I praised with some thick exaggeration, thinking it kind of funny how we treated animals like everything that they did was as important and groundbreaking as pooping outside instead of in.

On top of Jessica’s desk was an assortment of objects. She had a vanity mirror and some lights attached to it that were off, a couple of neatly stacked papers and some various make-ups. Eyeliner, blush, a bottle of women’s vitamins. There was something on the desk that pulled my eyes though; there was this black and white composition journal with a blank face.

I leaned against the desk with one hand and pulled on Barristan’s toy with the other, listening to his play growls as he tugged against what little force I exerted. Curiosity pricked at the back of my brain, and I looked over to the bathroom door where I could hear the intense pattering of water.

Yanking at Barristan’s toy, I smirked and looked over to him. “You’re pretty strong, boy,” and as the words left my lips, he somehow managed to rip the toy’s end free of my hand – promptly hiding himself beneath Jessica’s bed. “Hey that’s rude buddy,” a small laugh escaped me and I felt something press at my heart; felt this whimsical heat that trailed itself along my spine.

I wasn’t the typical person to snoop, but I knew so little when I wanted to know so much. I convinced myself that if it was too personal, I’d just close the book. And that I would only look for just a moment, that it was just to sate my lizard-brain nature.