If I Should Die: A Kimber S. Dawn MC Novel (15 page)

My nails bite into my clenched fist around the crucifix in my hand, and I mutter a curse, glancing around my old room for the hundredth time before settling my eyes on all the boxes packed and shoved in the corner by my doorway. Had I not tried to run away, had I kept my ass in Chicago where it belonged instead of letting the molecule of authority the assistant principal of Northwest Middle High and a pack of cigarettes in a lost bag scare me into running away, I wouldn’t have found myself back in Jacques’ path. For the second time in my short life.

And certainly that should’ve helped. Surely, that would’ve efficiently kept me from deciding midway through that a fucking
horrid
idea would be a great one, with even more tequila guzzled down my gullet when I caught sight of the boy from the bus station the day before I was slammed in juvy. The one night I needed everything I’d learned from my damned past to keep my head on straight and stay focused so that me, my sister, and my friends made it out of my sister’s damn idea alive…

Who decides to waltz back into my life on that just-so-fateful day? Obviously a few sheets to the wind, judging by the stumble in his swagger? But every bit as sexy as hell, like I remembered? Jacques. Fucking. Cain.

God. He is fucking beautiful, though. Like, oddly beautiful. No man with a face and a smile like that deserves the dimples and deep navy blues too. No man.

And what takes the cake? What takes the cake, you ask? It seems I’m not the only Blakeney daughter with biker boy issues. Would you like to know how Jacques knew who I was the morning after, before even I did? Before I could even properly segregate what was happening beneath my skin from what was happening outside my head and reallocate myself to reality?

Yeah, well—he might as well be my
step
-brother. The problems my mother kept having turned out to not have a single damn thing to do with her work ethic and mainly everything to do with her proclivity to men on motorcycles. Particularly Archer and Chase Cain. The two head honchos of Sons of Silencers, NYC chapter.  

I rub my temples, feeling tension an eighteen-year-old like me shouldn’t even recognize yet tighten in my shoulders, then pull my sunglasses back down on my face and grab my bag from my bed.

That was over a year and a freaking half ago.
Jesus, the stupidity.
I shudder at the direction of my thoughts before flipping my bedroom light off.

I haven’t dated—hell, I haven’t even kissed another guy since that night. I’m done with the dating game. Done! And it’s not like I’ve ever been the girl overtly obsessed with boys or finding the right one. Hell, I’m having trouble trying to figure out my own shit, and I don’t need anyone else added to that equation. Man or child that comes with man and intercourse. Yeah, ask Lauryn about that one. Crazy girl fell head over heels for some pledge or patch holder of the motorcycle club that night. Guy’s name is Zach. However, she got something a little different from her first time that night.
I know
! We were some V-card swiping whores, the whole lot of us that night! Thankfully though, only one out of the three of us walked away impregnated that night. And nine months later, Zach did the right thing and married my best friend, L. One week before my godchild, Abigail Dawn, was born. I smile thinking of the little chubby angel.

However, that’s not what I’m all about. That’s not my story. Sorry, people.

Have you met my mother? Insert hysterical laughter here. Honey, we’ve HAD no business procreating.

Plus...once you’ve had a masterpiece, THE masterpiece—to your piece, and it’s your first time? I’m not stupid. I know magic doesn’t happen in the same place twice. And losing your virginity probably isn’t supposed to feel like that. At all. At least, that’s what I get from the fact that the other girls’ first time stories don’t match mine. 

Cursing the things I’ve done in my past and praying like hell I learned from them, I make my way down the hall. “Okay, all packed. The movers said they’ll be by tomorrow, right, Grams?”

“That’s what they said,” she says as I step into the living room. She nods after she sets some boxes on a table by the front door then dusts her hands together. “And that’s that. Gotta say, Evie May, I’m pretty excited to get back to a place where ya face doesn’t hurt from the cold more months than not.” She’s bitching. She gets bitchy when there’s change coming. I chuckle at her, unable to help it.

“It’s not that bad, Grams. Come on.”

After we’ve loaded the last few boxes in the car, I pull down the hatch and sigh then look up and down the street I’ve called home for the last two years.

Ty headed to Daytona three months ago, ahead of us—around the time L and Zach found a house to call home outside Brooklyn. And actually, Mom’s been down in Florida since she and John got serious… gosh, in February it’ll be a year already. Her new boyfriend is cool, I guess. But to be honest, I haven’t really decided what I think about my mother and the person she is. So, it’s still baby steps right now. My mother’s boyfriend is a professor at a big college in Orlando, though. And while there is a drive from where Mom lives with John in Orlando to our new place outside of Daytona, it’s a drive I’m glad is there. Don’t get me wrong, I love my mother, but right now I’m trying really hard to learn to like her. Forgiveness first, then we’ll work on forgetting.

It’s funny, the older you get, the more resounding the difference between the two—liking and loving someone
—
becomes.

And poor Eden; she’s no better for having the time with our mother I didn’t get. I’m not sure what happened with her. Or when it started happening. I do know L hadn’t had the baby yet the first time she fell off the face of the earth. I don’t know. She just sort of disappears. And it’s not like she doesn’t get it honestly.

Damn, did I just think that?

Eden took off not long after she came back into my life. To be honest, between the place she has at her dad’s and the ever open spot she has at Mother’s side now that the judge had granted Ilsa joint custody of not only Eden but me. She shares Eden’s portion of custody with her biological father, and mine with my grandmother. That’s what that conversation revealed, too, if you were wondering. The one that was hanging over my lost innocence. Yeah—remember
that night
? And that conversation?

The law and the judge could’ve called it the new color purple for all I cared. Or my Grams, as we sat there and read the papers Ilsa Blakeney set on the kitchen table, laying them out slowly, like she was revealing evidence or some crap. After the long drawn out conversation involving pointing fingers and tears between the two women, Eden and I just stared at one another, wide-eyed and thanking God’s graces the night before wasn’t being mentioned. We blinked. But that’s about it. My sister and I blinked during our staring contest and I chewed another hole through my lip to match the one from the night before—err...that morning.

And when all the words were spoken, and all the tales were told, there still weren’t all the answers I always hoped against all hope for. Right after I prayed my bedtime prayer…just like every single night.

Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

If I should die, before I wake, I pray the Lord my soul to take.

I forgot whatever it was that Ben and I were screaming at each other about before we both walked into the steeple. I forget, because that’s kinda what the fuck happens when you walk in and find your pops face down in a puddle of his own vomit while the fucking life is being seized out of him—literally. He was having a goddamn seizure when Ben and I walked in through the double doors.

I’ve never moved so fast in all my life. I was pissed,
ticked the hell off
one minute, and more scared than I’ve ever been in my damn life the next.

So when I say I was relieved when the dust settled later that night, and all the brothers pulled out of NYC with Bentley Cain and his rally, I’m being dead fucking serious. But it didn’t touch the relief I felt a few weeks later when Pops was DC’d from Mt. Sinai hospital with a clean bill of health, and one new simple rule: No more coke for Pops. Apparently that shit’s bad for your blood pressure.
Pops’ only response on the way into the MC club, while being wheeled up a ramp some of the new prospects built was, ‘Huh, I didn’t know that.’ And something along the lines of, ‘Won’t happen again.’ And he can bet his old ass it won’t. Nor has it, for the last two damn years.

“Did the Canadians say one way or another yet? I need to know if the shipment can run, Jackie boy. Otherwise, I wouldn’t ask.” Dreads holds his hands up like I’ve got my nines pointed at him. Which, I don’t—in case you were wondering. It’s rare that they’re out these days. Thank fuck, so I don’t have my nine millimeter glocks pointing at him. The pussy. (And I’m just fucking around; I love Dreads. He’s become more than a brother and we’ve grown much closer than I hoped we would over the last few years.) It’s just sometimes he’s too much of a kiss-ass.

While it was the Seattle chapter of SOS that ended up taking Unc in, the Canadians weren’t very respectful of the way my pops handled the situation. But thankfully, that was another bullet the club somehow dodged. And around the same time, when we dodged the one that Pops damn
old
partying habits almost capped us with, the cold war that was brewing settled the fuck down. I don't know if I should thank the seizure, or the rally that caused the partying, which caused the seizure. But either way, the shit with the Canadians settled down the night Pops was admitted into Mt. Sinai for acute heart failure.

And the longer I’m in the position I’m in, the more I fucking realize I’m not ready. I’m nowhere near ready to run this MC garage shop, nor this club, without Pops. No fucking way.

“It’s all good, brother,” I tell Dreads before heading towards the back of the garage. The garage part of the MC club has always been one of my favorites. Working on bikes, getting grit and grease caked in the skin of my hands so deep it don’t wash out for a week. Working with my hands, taking something that doesn’t work—a shattered engine block, crashed and wrecked body damage, motorcycle repair. That’s my shit. Making something broken beautiful and new again. That’s why on nights I don’t have women in my bed, as rare as it is, I can usually be found in the six car garage with half the lights out—tools and impacts fucking everywhere around me and a half put together bike.

When I get to my office off the back of the garage, I toss the envelope of bike keys on my desk before answering the phone. “MC, garage. This’s Jacques.”

“Hey, man. Arch called, said Sgt.’s neighbor is bitching about a lot of bikes roaring up and down the streets along Rox’s,” Dreads’ voice informs me over the line. “You want me to handle it?”

“Nah, man. I got it.” I glance at the calendar on the wall. It’s about time I perform my weekly husbandly duties anyway. “I got shit at the house to do. Just close up the shop. Make sure the insurance company’s called on the Chopper too before it heads out. I don’t want Mike getting any more free labor off the brothers. His fucking kid brother ain’t even been patched in yet for a year.”

“You got it, boss.” He doesn’t ask twice. Efficient, that motherfucker, Dreads.

***

It takes me less than half an hour to finish up the duties that only I can. And once all that unfortunate business is taken care of, after I wave goodbye to the few brothers in the yard, I jump on my bike and head out to Rox’s.

And don’t fucking ask. Because it’s too long a story. But I’ll hit you with the recap—Rox; I love Rox. What once was semi-romantic has now grown into more of a sisterly love on my part. And I’m an asshole; I don’t have the heart to tell her she’s wasting her time. She never bitches about the other girls, either. Which is good, because there’s quite a few. And I stopped any bullshit that would lead Rox to any grand illusions long ago. I haven’t fucked with Roxy since we dated, and that was three years ago. Despite what she thinks, I’m not making her my old lady. But who am I to keep a girl from her dreams by telling her different?