Because without him, there was no his.
No Molly and Diogo, no Hudson, Milo, and Oliver.
No Fallen MC.
No Zeus and Loulou, King and Cress…
No Harleigh Rose.
What was I left with if I uprooted Nova from my life, roots and all, so that I had hope of one day planting another garden in my heart for someone who was capable of loving me back?
Nothing.
A fallow field.
So I stayed close, and I yearned.
Over the years, that closely guarded secret I’d concealed so long in my heart took form on my flesh. With each tattoo Nova inked on my skin, it seemed more and more obvious I was deeply in love with him.
The club knew.
Even, I thought, the Booths knew.
Everyone, save Nova himself.
Then I got lazy, I guess.
No, maybe I got daring. Maybe I wanted him to finally know the agony of my longing so that even if he didn’t return my feelings (and I knew he didn’t), at least my quiet suffering would be validated with notice and perhaps then absolved.
No, I got sloppy.
Which explains why I crossed a line I never should have crossed that hot summer’s night at The Fallen compound.
The club was throwing one of their epic parties, a barbeque for the families during the late afternoon that turned into a shameless, orgiastic feast of indulgences––drugs, rock, sex, and prolific drinking–– at night.
The entire front lot was crisscrossed with white lights, studded with tin tubs overflowing with ice lugged in by the hang-arounds and prospects who kept it constantly stocked with domestic beer and bottles of vodka, tequila, and gin. There were speakers linked up to Harleigh Rose’s iPod because she always had the best playlists, and currently AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” was blaring through the speakers. The Fallen compound included the clubhouse, Hephaestus Auto Garage and Body Shop, and an outpost for Edge Trucking. It was in the industrial outskirts of Entrance, so there was no one around at that time of night to file a noise complaint…and even if there had been, no one would dare.
The Fallen weren’t a crew you fucked with, especially over something as paltry as a club party.
It was late enough that the kids and most of the wives were gone. I was outside still, hanging with H.R., her brother, King, and his woman, Cressida on a picnic table we’d commandeered to play beer pong.
I wanted to go inside.
I wanted to go inside not because it was cold outside or I had to use the washroom.
I wanted to go inside because I’d seen Nova disappear inside half an hour ago, and we hadn’t hung out all night. It was near two in the morning, I had the opening morning shift at Eugene’s bar in eight hours, and I wanted to spend some of those with my best friend.
I was drunk enough that it seemed like a good idea to toss back my lukewarm Blue Buck beer and whisper to Harleigh Rose. “I’m going to find Nova.”
Immediately, her face collapsed into a frown. She held up a finger for King to wait while she talked to me, but he was already making out with Cressida.
“Are you kiddin’?” she hissed, blue eyes wide with incredulity. “Bitch, you know he’s probably in there with a club slut right now.”
I rolled my eyes. “He’s seeing Yolanda.”
She was the Russian transplant new-hire at Eugene’s. I’d known the second I saw her strut into the bar wearing a slinky black dress and heels higher than her IQ that Nova would be all over her the second he met her.
And I’d been right.
It was my best friend’s turn to roll her eyes. “You think that’s gonna stop him from banging some easily available tail tonight?”
“Why do you have to say it like that?” I asked, wrinkling my nose in disgust.
I wasn’t an idiot. I knew the club called Jonathon Nova, ‘Casanova’, for a reason.
But he was still Molly and Diogo’s son.
I didn’t think he’d cheat.
“Because, babe, that’s how bikers talk, and if you didn’t notice yet, I was raised by them. And news flash, you’ve been around long enough to get how it is. You go in there,” she pointed a finger at the shadowy open door to the clubhouse. “You go in expecting to find that man balls deep in club pussy.”
I knew what she was trying to do. Shock me. Hurt me so that I wouldn’t go in, but if I ignored her advice and did it anyway, then I’d be braced by her cruel warning.
It didn’t work.
There was too much hope in my heart and liquor in my veins to allow the pain, or the potential for it, to resonate.
Instead, I checked myself out, adjusting my breasts in the low-cut, suede, tasselled crop top, hiking up the low riding, high cut jean shorts I wore. My tattoos were on full display, the bunches of peonies from the left of my waist down over my hip and thigh, my right arm sleeve, the edge of the lotus and curving scrollwork between my breasts just a tantalizing hint beneath the shifting material of my top. In the last few years, I’d finally filled out, hips and ass round, breasts large enough to capitulate to gravity just enough to give me wicked cleavage even without a bra.