Only Fool Riding (Sacred Hearts MC Pacific Northwest Book 7) Read online

  “Yeah.” My unlikely savior gave a nod, and I kept looking at the décor in here. It was very posh nineteen-fifties with the light fixtures and waiting area couches.

  A light tug on my arm had me following the biker into the restaurant and to one of the booths across from the bar. He sat me, back to the door, and slid in across from me where he could get a look at me.

  I was afraid I wasn’t much to look at.

  My hair was probably a mess from hanging loose, the hood of my sweatshirt having been blown back. Mousy and a brown darker than his, but otherwise unremarkable. I had some interesting eyes – blue in some light and against some colors I wore, but greener in others and with others… but right now, I bet they were red-rimmed and bloodshot, and I looked as crazy as I felt.

  I don’t know how to describe the feeling, honestly, but I could try. It was like… it was like feeling blasted apart, but at a certain point a freeze frame went into effect, so that I felt like I was trapped. Like everything had just stopped mid-explosion, but though the world and the blast had been stilled, the fire of it? The flames still ravaged the ragged hole left in the center of my chest where my broken heart was still feebly trying to pulse, the shattered bits and edges grinding into each other painfully.

  I flashed back to the night before to the fight with Devin, to me on my knees, begging him to be honest with me, to him screaming at me about how I was crazy, how I was paranoid, how what I thought was happening and what was happening were two different things and how I was living in my own fucked-up reality independent of everyone else and how I needed to stop being a paranoid bitch… but I knew what I’d found and I knew they weren’t mine.

  “Hey.”

  I ripped my eyes from the coins that were trapped under the lacquer or resin of the tabletop we’d been sat at and met deep set dark brown eyes that were shadowed by his furrowed brow. I put my hands flat on the table and dug fingertips in slightly, leaning back in my seat; flinching away from that angry look which almost immediately softened.

  “You’re okay, Angel,” he murmured.

  “What’s your name?” I asked.

  “I told you, my friends call me Blackjack.”

  “No, I mean your real name,” I said, eyes darting over his face.

  He sniffed, leaned back in his seat, and regarded me for a moment before giving in and saying, “Clint.”

  “Clint what?” I asked. I couldn’t tell you why it was important. I mean, it wasn’t really… nothing was important, but…

  “Clinton Nathan Shumway, okay? US Marine Corps veteran. You’re safe,” he said, and his voice had quieted.

  I slid my hands forward over the table, my palms making a squeaking noise as they rubbed over the high polish on it and he glanced down, his eye movement freezing and his brow furrowing again.

  “Sorry, I’ll stop,” I said and lifted my hands to pull them back into my lap, but his hand whipped out lightning fast. I flinched, but his rough fingers gripped mine from the second joint down with just the lightest touch. I froze and my gaze flickered from where he grasped my fingers to his eyes, which were intently searching my face.

  “Who did this?” he asked and with an equally light and gentle touch, he slid the stretched-out sleeve of my oversized hoodie up my too-thin wrist, revealing a leopard spotting of bruising in a ring around it that climbed up my forearm.

  I stared mutely into this man’s gaze and blinked once, slowly.

  “It was an accident.” The lie slid between my lips with practiced ease and he cocked his head slightly, his mouth turning down at the corners.

  “Oh, no, no, no, baby… it’s too late to put that genie back into the bottle,” he said with a sardonic little half-grin. “I just pulled you off of an overpass about to jump and I may not look it now – but I’ve been there. I know I may have been a little rough reeling you in up there, but these aren’t that fresh.” His tone dropped an octave and he glanced around our table to make sure we weren’t being overheard.

  “Tell me the truth, I can take it… and I promise I’m on your side.”

  I stared at him numbly across the table in disbelief and that was all I could do… simply stare for long moments. A waitperson came to the table and Clint, I mean Blackjack, held up his hand and waved them off, his thumb swiping back and forth gently over the backs of my fingers as he waited me out.

  “My boyfriend and I get into these horrible fights,” I finally said, voice cracking. “He says I’m crazy, that I’m paranoid and being a bitch and all that I want, all that I’m asking for – begging for - is for him to pay attention to me… you know, like he used to.”

  I looked away, staring at the wall, eyes brimming with fresh tears. His grip on my fingers tightened and then his hand slipped away, back across the table and I don’t know… it made me feel all alone, bereft all over again.

  “Stupid, right?” I asked and finally got the courage to look in his direction again, half expecting to see him absently scrolling through his phone or not listening, but he was staring fixedly at me; gaze shuttered and face unreadable.

  “How’d you get the bruises?” he asked.

  I pursed my lips, unsure how much I should tell, how much I should share, but… but he was listening. I just so badly wanted to be heard that it outweighed my hesitation.

  I spilled my guts, everything just pouring out of me in a torrent, and he only stopped me but once to put in a food and drink order when the waiter came back to our table. He looked me over and asked me what I liked. I said I wasn’t hungry because I wasn’t. He told me too bad and ordered something for me anyway.

  I didn’t argue. I didn’t want to argue… I couldn’t honestly remember if I had eaten that day, or even when the last time I’d ate even was.

  When the waiter had gone and I’d been silent too long, he’d prompted me with a gentle, “Keep talkin’, darlin’. I want to hear this.”

  “It’s… it’s distressing, you know?” I asked, and he nodded.

  “I know, but it sounds like you really need to get some shit off your chest, and I’m here for it, so keep on with it. Tell me what else…”

  I told him everything. He would slow me down and tell me to breathe when I started to get too worked up and eventually that was all… there was nothing left to tell. Our plates had been brought, and they sat empty before us both. I thought the steak with a side of spaghetti was a little weird, but by the time it’d been set in front of us, I’d been ravenous and had devoured everything in sight.

  He leaned back at the end of my long tale and harrumphed, “Hmph, seems to me your boyfriend is an abusive prick, and you ought to run.”

  I blinked a long slow blink and kind of turned my head, trying to absorb what he’d said.

  “No…” I disagreed, but a sinking feeling was taking root in my chest. “I’m too much,” I said finally.

  “You’re not,” he said with a sniff. “Your boyfriend’s just a punk ass bitch that doesn’t know how to handle you. You want I should handle him?”

  I recoiled, my shoulders thumping against the high-backed booth.

  “No!” I cried. “I mean, I’m calm now,” I said and swallowed hard. “Devin is probably worried by now. I left my phone, and I should probably just go home…”

  “Tch!” Blackjack made a disgusted noise and shook his head. He looked up and to my left, like he was silently asking for patience or something, which, yeah, I sort of had that effect on people, Devin especially.

  I sighed and deflated. I didn’t honestly know what to do, what else there was. I mean, Devin had all of my stuff, like my important documents and things, hidden away in our apartment.

  “I don’t have anywhere else to go and he has all my things… like my important papers and shit,” I confessed, and the biker raised an eyebrow.

  “So, you do want to leave,” he said and cocked his head. I bit my lips together and felt my eyes well all over again. Finally, I let out a defeated sigh.

  “I’ll be okay,” I lied, and
I knew it was a lie. “I’ll get my things somehow and I’ll get out.”

  “Angel,” he said, and I cringed a bit.

  “That’s what he calls me,” I said quickly, and he stopped.

  “You haven’t given me another name to call you, darlin’.” His tone was gentle, soothing, like I was a scared cat in a corner and I couldn’t deny that it fit.

  “Ember,” I blurted. “Ember Richards.”

  He searched my face and nodded slowly. “Nice to meet you, Ember.”

  “Um, nice to meet you, too, Clint. I wish it were under better circumstances.”

  He made that scoffing noise of distaste again. “Tch! Blackjack, please,” he said.

  “Sorry,” I murmured, and he shook his head.

  “You’re fine,” he said gently.

  “What should I do?” I asked softly, and I don’t know what I wanted him to say. Probably anything to spare me the decision. My heart plead for him to say ‘well you should probably…’ with an inserted option of anything but going back to Devin or to make the decision on my own, but of course it was the lesser of those two evils that he chose.

  “I can’t tell you that, darlin’. You have to make that decision all on your own. You tell me what to do and I’ll do it.”

  I nodded solemnly and asked, “Why didn’t you call the cops on me?”

  Again, with that noise!

  “Tch! Cops don’t do shit. They would have called you an ambo and shipped you off to the headshrinkers and social workers. The hospital would have put you on a grippy sock vacay and piled you up with a bunch of mind-control substances, turning you into a fuckin’ zombie.”

  “You sound like you speak from personal experience,” I said, a bit taken aback by the vehemence in his tone.

  “Yeah,” he said with a blasé little shrug. “We all have our demons. Some people let themselves be consumed by them and others learn to play nice with them.”

  “I take it you’re the latter kind of person?” I asked.

  Again, he shrugged and simply looked at me, wordlessly. I realized with a jolt after the silence stretched that it wasn’t that he just wasn’t going to confirm or deny anything either way – it was that he was waiting for me to make some kind of decision.

  “I guess right now I just want to go home,” I said, defeated, shoulders slumping.

  He nodded slowly and said, “I’ll take you wherever you want to go.”

  I nodded and sniffed. “Thank you,” I whispered.

  “For?” he asked, arching an eyebrow.

  “Pulling me down off that overpass,” I said. “For listening to me?”

  He grunted. “Mm, for all the good any of it did,” he said and ouch…

  “I’ll get out,” I promised. “I just—”

  “Have to try one more time?” he asked.

  More like I had to get my things – my ID, my birth certificate, my social security card – all the things Devin had hidden in a safe place and that I needed to locate – also, I needed to find someplace else to go.

  Leaving wasn’t as easy as just not going back. I knew this wasn’t good, that this wasn’t healthy, but neither was a permanent solution to what should be a temporary problem.

  I knew that now. Now that I had calmed down. Just talking about everything made me feel better. Loads better.

  “Come on,” he said, looking at the check and peeling off a couple bills out of his wallet and laying them down.

  I nodded, warmed up and just ready to go home and start working on an exit strategy.

  “Where am I taking you?” he asked out at his motorcycle, the horizon starting to get light with the first hint of dawn.

  “Summit Ave on Cap Hill,” I said.

  He nodded and got onto his bike, fishing in one of his pockets.

  “Look, you change your mind, or you ever need to get the fuck outta there for a few before shit gets too real or whatever, you call me. My cell number is on that,” he said, handing me a business card.

  I looked at it and all it read was Blackjack, with his phone number and the Sacred Hearts MC logo in the corner.

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Can’t get you to change your mind? Let me beat the shit out of him?” he asked, and I shook my head.

  “I think that would just make things worse, don’t you think?”

  He barked a laugh. “Not for me – certainly for him, though.”

  “I meant me,” I said softly with a softer, sadder smile, and he looked me over and nodded.

  “Suppose you’re right,” he mumbled.

  “I’m grateful,” I said, and he nodded and hefted his helmet over his head, putting it down over it and clapping the visor shut. He stood the bike up and fired it up and waved me onto the back. I got on behind him, his card safely stowed in the back pocket of my jeans.

  I pointed, he turned, and we roared up Denny onto Capitol Hill. I pointed, and he made elegant sweeping turns down roads and up streets, winding our way sideways across the hill face above I-5 until I tapped him on the back of the shoulder and pointed out my old brick building. It was a small block of apartments called Summit Inn and they were far overpriced for what they were… but it was home. Sort of…

  He killed the motor, let me off, and called out through his helmet, “Sure I can’t get you to change your mind?” I shook my head sadly.

  “Can I call you?” I asked before he went to start the bike.

  “That’s what the card’s for,” he said, and I took a step back onto the sidewalk and halfway to the steps leading up into the old building.

  He fired up the bike and I sighed, watching him ride away… my unlikely savior.

  2

  Blackjack…

  I thought a lot about Ember and while I’d told the guys about her in passing, I kept it well out of earshot of the club’s women. I didn’t want them descending on the incident like a bunch of gossip mongering… well… women. I don’t honestly know why it was even important to me.

  It was colder than a fuckin’ witches’ tit out there as the seasons changed from fall to winter, and the winter was only getting deeper when I got the call from an unknown number. Usually, I just ignored that shit. They were usually just fuckin’ robo calls – but something in my gut told me to answer this one, and so I did.

  “Hello?”

  There was a long enough pause that I thought sure I’d duped myself and this was just another robo call when her voice came over the line.

  “Blackjack?”

  “Yeah? Who’s this?” I asked, needing to be sure.

  “I-it’s Ember,” she breathed. She was silly enough to ask me, “Do you remember me?”

  “I remember,” I said quietly, and I couldn’t really keep the disappointment out of my voice when I said, “I didn’t think I would ever hear from you again. It’s been a couple of months.”

  “Yeah, well, it um took me that long to get away,” she murmured and she sounded… wounded, somehow.

  “Where are you?” I asked. “Someplace safe?”

  “Um, yeah, now… I’m at Harborview. I’m supposed to go to a domestic violence shelter, but they said I shouldn’t call anybody once I got there and… and I’m scared.”

  “Scared of what?” I asked, clenching the phone and knowing that the bastard was on law enforcement’s radar and outta my reach – at least for now. There would come a day when he wasn’t, and I’d carpe fucking diem when that shit happened. For now, I was zeroed in on what Ember was saying.

  “…they believe me now, but I don’t… I don’t know. I don’t feel like I should be taking up resources that someone who really needs it but I don’t have any place else to go or anyone to talk to that isn’t really one of Devin’s friends and…” she took a breath, and I could tell by the soft warble in her voice she was getting worked up again.

  I made a few calculations in my head before finally sniffing and asking her, “Do you want me to come get you?”

  She couldn’t get the phone away from h
er mouth fast enough for me to miss the sob that got out of her, and I felt a hot, fierce well of anger. I leaned back in my seat at my desk at home and said, “Take your time, darlin’. You just say the word and I’m on my way.”

  “Yes, please,” she finally said. “Yes, please come get me. I don’t want to go to that place.”

  “Okay, I’m on my way. You got a social worker or anyone else sitting near you that I need to talk to?”

  She took the phone away from her face and I heard soft conversation, her lilting question to someone unknown in the background. The phone was passed and the unknown person got on the line. “Hello, Mr. Shumway?”

  “Yeah,” I said, gritting my teeth against my given name.

  She introduced herself as a social worker with the city of Seattle and University of Washington Medicine and ran through a bunch of shit that basically boiled down to Ember being good to go as long as she was released to someone who she felt safe with who was willing to provide a safe place for her to stay and an address or what the fuck ever.

  I bobbed my head, remaining polite when what I really wanted to do was snap at the bitch to get to the point.

  When she put Ember back on the phone, I told her, “Hang tight. I’m on my way to come get you. When I do, we’ll get you all taken care of.”

  “Okay,” she murmured, and I got off the damn phone and shot a text to Mav, dictating it into my phone for expediency’s sake while I divested of my cut and hung it off the hook on the inside of the door of my hall closet. I hated that, but I didn’t want any suspicious looks from any hospital staff or whatever.

  I wanted to ride, but I took my work truck instead, figuring if she was in the hospital about to be released to a domestic violence shelter, then she might be hurt enough that riding wouldn’t be in the cards for her.

  It wasn’t too late, but it was dark as fuck outside as was customary, being this far north in the dead of winter. We were past the Solstice, but not by much. The only reason I knew about it was because Mace’s pagan ol’ lady wouldn’t shut the fuck up about it and its significance the other night when she got herself lit up like a Christmas – I mean, Yule tree.