One Chance, Fancy (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 5)

Prologue

I am not lazy. I’m physically conservative.

-T-shirt

Phoebe

Phoebe, Age 15

My feet dragged as I walked to my doom.

It wasn’t anything bad—at least not to most people. To me, though? Yeah, I’d rather be at home reading a book, or possibly at the lake fishing. Hell, I’d even take camping over this—a club party. A motorcycle club party.

It wasn’t anything wild. Just a thing with friends and family.

See, my grandfather was the president of the Dixie Wardens MC, Benton, Louisiana chapter. My father, Sam Mackenzie, had dragged me here.

It wasn’t that I didn’t want to see my grandfather—because I did. It was because I didn’t like parties. I didn’t like big crowds, and I most definitely didn’t like the loud crap they considered music.

It was inevitable.

I’d be leaving the party tonight with a headache.

Then again, my mother had graced our entire family with the ability to get a headache at a moment’s notice. Honestly, it was more routine for me to have a headache at this point than to not have one.

My sisters, Piper and Pru, who were twins, easily disappeared into the crowd and started making the rounds, greeting family and friends.

I, on the other hand, wound my way around the outskirts of the party until I found my grandfather.

I would say hi, I would find a quiet spot, and then I’d pull out my Kindle and read while hoping nobody bothered me.

I found my grandfather at the far end of the large, open structure. The building we were in tonight used to be an airplane hangar, so there was more than enough room for the hundreds of people that were milling about, laughing and carrying on.

Some of those people had drinks in their hands while others had their arms wrapped around their loved ones.

I kept my eyes down, not meeting anyone’s gaze hoping that if I kept eye contact to a minimum, nobody would stop me.

I was right, it worked.

I arrived at my grandfather’s side just in time to hear him say to the man standing on the other side of him, “How’s Benson doing?”

Dixie, the man that he was talking to, was one of the oldest members of the MC and had about thirty grandchildren at this point.

“He’s definitely not happy that he was forced to come,” Dixie muttered, his eyes going somewhere into the darkness.

I followed his gaze but didn’t see anything—or anyone—anywhere.

“Maybe y’all should stop forcing us introverts to come,” I suggested, walking up to my grandfather and wrapping my arms around his waist.

He wrapped me up tight and gave me a good squeeze before loosening his hold.

“Hey, girl,” my grandfather said. “Happy birthday.”

I smiled. “Usually when it’s one’s birthday, they get to do what they want. They’re not forced to come to a party.”

“Your father knew I wanted to see you,” he said, his eyes lit with humor. He knew just as well as I did how much I hated crowds. “And I wanted to give you a birthday present.”

He pulled a box out of his back pocket, and I looked at it suspiciously.

“What is it?” I asked, making no move to take it.

“Jesus, she’s harder to give presents to than Benson,” Dixie muttered, sounding amused. “I tried to give him a bike today and he told me to shove it up my ass.”

I blinked.

“Umm,” I hesitated. “That was…sweet of him.”

Dixie burst out laughing. “He was mad because I paid off the rest of the loan. He wanted to pay it off on his own. I wanted him to have a goddamn bike that didn’t break down halfway to work every day.”

“Didn’t his mother try to do that, and he refused to drive it until he could pay off the loan himself?” my grandfather, Silas, asked.

“Yes,” Dixie muttered. “But I figured if I told him it was a gift for his birthday, he’d be willing to take the bike. Let’s just say that he wasn’t.”

“He’s a proud kid,” Pops muttered. “You should’ve known that he wasn’t going to take that.”

“Maybe,” Dixie admitted. “But Jesus Christ, it’s hard watching that boy struggle. He’s going to school full-time and he’s working full-time. All the while he’s making it on his own, but only by the skin of his teeth.”

I felt like I was missing part of the story, and I wanted to know more.

It wasn’t every day that someone turned down a motorcycle because he was wanting to do it all on his own.

Hell, I hadn’t turned down the free vehicle my parents had given me.

Granted, it was my mother’s old truck, and it was twice as old as I was, but it was still in perfect condition and would suit my purposes perfectly. That, and it was my dream vehicle.

“Kid’s hell-bent to make it on his own. There’s nothing wrong with that, Dixie,” Pops told him. “Not everyone can be perfect like my Phoebe.”