Still Standing (Wild West MC 1)

I closed both doors behind me, turned, and was pleased to see it was far cleaner than the one at the Dive. Even the towels looked clean-ish. If not freshly laundered, they didn’t look like lab experiments.

I went to the toilet, and lifting the shirt in preparation for my next activity, caught sight of my hip and stopped dead.

Already angry purple and maroon bruising covered my hip and upper thigh, dark scrapes scoring through it.

I moved to the mirror over the vanity and looked at my face.

I then closed my eyes.

But I could see what I saw in the mirror on the backs of my eyelids.

Swollen eye, swollen cheekbone, cut lip.

Not nice.

It started coming back to me and I opened my eyes to shut it out.

I couldn’t relive it. I couldn’t go back there. I needed to use the bathroom and then get to a phone.

So I focused on that, did my thing, washed my hands, walked out of the bathroom and through the bedroom, and I did this holding myself delicately.

The pain was constant, and I felt lightheaded.

I needed food.

But I needed to phone Tia first.

I walked through the door and was assaulted by sunlight. Big, wide windows which showed a stunning, if surprising, view of pine trees, a slope covered in pine needles, at the bottom of which was a meandering creek.

Amazing.

But…this was not Phoenix.

Where the heck was I?

I also noticed there was a big square deck jutting from the front of the house.

I further noticed I was standing on a landing that was four steps up from a large living space that was partially hidden due to the two side rooms of the landing jutting out to it, but I could see it included a living area and a kitchen.

The landing had several doors leading off it.

Buck’s room was at the end beyond the wall to the kitchen.

The landing also had a set of open-backed stairs up to what looked like an attic space.

I saw the steps down to the open space and headed that way.

When I hit the bottom, the full big kitchen came into view to my right, living room to the left.

Ink was sitting on the couch, but his gaze was aimed at me.

There was a woman sitting at a stool at the counter that delineated the kitchen from the living room.

She wore a thin, tight, gray thermal, a jeans miniskirt and biker boots, and had long, gleaming, dark brown hair.

Her head was bent as she texted on her phone but suddenly her neck twisted to look at me, and I saw she also had on a lot of jewelry, a lot of makeup, and she was very pretty.

Maybe I wasn’t at Buck’s.

Maybe he’d dropped me off at Ink’s.

“Hi,” I said softly.

The girl swiveled around on her stool and dropped the phone to the counter, but my attention swiftly shifted to Ink.

This was because he got up and came at me, his long legs eating the distance. He was there so quickly, not to mention he had a face like thunder, I was taken aback enough at all that was him coming at me that I did not retreat or even move.

I tipped my head back and bit my lip (but stopped doing that immediately when the pain spiked through the cut there) when his big hand came up to cup my jaw lightly.

“Jesus, babe,” he whispered, his eyes on the left side of my face, “they did a fuckin’ number on you.”

If you told me Ink’s touch could be light, I would have called you a liar.

If you told me Ink’s expression could be kind, I would have called you a liar about that too, and maybe even burst out laughing.

But both were true.

I felt tears sting my eyes.

“Don’t be nice to me,” I whispered back.

“Babe,” he murmured.

“Hi, Clara, I’m Lorie,” the girl said, thankfully breaking the moment. Ink’s hand dropped and I looked to see her standing by him. “Buck said, if you wake up, we need to get some food in your belly. Do you want some soup?”

Wow.

Bikers and their women could be nice.

Really nice.

Who knew?

Well, I guessed I did, since, except for my chilly initial reception, that was all I’d experienced from them.

“I need to use the phone,” I told her.

“I’ll get it for you, but maybe you should sit down,” she replied.

“Thanks,” I whispered.

She moved into the kitchen and I moved to a stool.

Ink moved too, to the fridge, saying, “Buck’s got loads of grub, Clary, you can name what you want. So what do you want?”

Clary?

No one had ever called me Clary.

Why did I find the sound of that so lovely?

“Um…” I mumbled as Lorie came to me with the phone. “That offer of soup sounded good.”

“Get her some soup, beautiful,” Ink ordered gently, closing the fridge.

“No probs,” Lorie answered, handing me the phone. She then went to a cupboard, opened both doors, and recited, “You want chicken noodle, tomato or mushroom?”