Fearless Read online

  This handful of women, the brave few – they were the old ladies. Not club girls, not strippers or Friday night entertainment; they were the wives, the tried and true, the loyal helpmates and partners. All of them in this room now were old ladies…except for Ava. She was the only club daughter – the only one who’d stuck around, anyway. And once upon a time, she’d entertained the foolish idea that she too would don the title of wife, and join the ranks of her mother and friends.

  That had been before…

  “Ay Dios mio,” Bonita said. “Who is this young man? Muy guapo.” Her eyes and mouth were open in shocked delight. “Maggie, you didn’t say she was bringing a man home!”

  “I’m guessing you’re Ronnie,” Maggie said, folding her arms and cocking her hips at an angle that was somehow regal, if hips could be such a thing.

  Ronnie, in more comfortable territory now, extended a well-groomed hand. “Yes, ma’am. Ronnie Archer.”

  Maggie accepted his shake; Ava recognized the pleased twist to her mother’s smile. “Did she warn you what you were walking into tonight?”

  Ronnie half-smiled and tipped his head. “A retirement party of some sort, right?”

  Nell laughed and another balloon began to fill with a hiss of released gas as she fitted it to the nozzle. “That’s close enough, I guess,” she said. “But I promise you, honey, you ain’t never seen a retirement party quite like this.”

  To punctuate the statement, a clatter of wheels behind them heralded a hangaround pushing a wheeled trolley of beer cases in from the back hall. He had two friends behind him with similar trollies, stacked to the top with Budweiser, Miller, and Michelob. All domestic, no imports.

  “We’re expecting almost two-hundred,” Jackie said. She pulled a strip of tape from between her teeth and secured her half of the banner. She hopped down from the stool and shook out her short cap of straight red hair. “We’ve got guys from as far as New Hampshire, and some of NOLA’s here.”

  She glanced up the moment the last words left her lips, gaze coming to Ava. “Oh, by the way…”

  “Aidan told me,” Ava said with a sigh. “It’s fine.”

  Jackie winced, the freckles across her nose scrunching. “Sorry.”

  “There’ll be too many people here for it to matter,” Mina said. Little pixie Mina with her hip-length dark hair and soft doe eyes. Always helpful, always sweet.

  Nell knotted a ribbon around her latest balloon and sent it careening through the air toward a cluster of its friends with a bump from the heel of her hand. She pulled a bored face and swatted at the air. “No one remembers all that and no one cares about it. Don’t worry about it, sweetheart.”

  “Right.” Ava nodded. “I’m not worried.”

  When she met her mother’s gaze, Maggie was giving her the pained look that always accompanied this topic of conversation, that wealth of maternal sympathy and sadness.

  “I’m not,” Ava insisted, and knew Maggie didn’t buy it for a second. She didn’t buy it herself, if she was honest.

  Bonita turned to Maggie. “Are you sending her home?” Then to Ava. “Could you bring back your madre’s silverware – what do you call it–?”

  “Caddy,” Maggie said.

  “Yes, caddy. Could you bring it?”

  “Sent home?” Ava asked.

  “I thought you could unload your bags,” Maggie said, “and I need you to bring me a change of clothes. Is that alright?”

  Ava nodded. Ditching her bags at the house was a good idea. “Sure.”

  “Oh, wait,” Jackie said. “Would you mind stopping at the convenience store? I need another of those little Bic lighter sticks.”

  “Okay.”

  By the time she headed back to the truck, Ronnie in tow, she had a list of things she needed to buy and find. That was the thing about being the youngest, and not being an old lady, but a daughter: she was the go-fer.

  “So if it’s not a retirement, then what is it?” Ronnie asked as they emerged into the sunlight of the parking lot.

  “It is a retirement.” Ava checked her list with a little face. She’d be lucky if they got back before dark. “James is getting up there in age and his hip replacement didn’t go so well. So he can’t ride anymore, which means he needs to step down as president. My dad’s VP, so he’ll take his seat. James is retiring, yeah – and he’s also giving up his seat at the table, his right to vote on club issues, and all his power as president.” She glanced at Ronnie, trying to gauge the questions in his eyes. “That’s a big deal for him,” she said. “For the whole club.”

  Ronnie sighed and it was a tired sound.

  She felt a sharp twinge of guilt. He didn’t understand this world – didn’t want to, most like – and she wasn’t sure she possessed the objectivity or grace to help lead him into it slowly. Girls like her, she guessed, who came from shady families, married rich boys and pretended their relatives had never existed. They didn’t glory in their pasts the way she did, like pathetic children with unhealthy fetishes.

  God, she disgusted herself sometimes. What would her professors think – the smiling dean who’d congratulated her over the phone for getting into the UT grad program – if they could see her in leather and denim, moving amongst a crowd of outlaws, while debauchery reigned and smoke rolled thick? What would Ronnie’s reaction be if he ever clapped eyes on the man who –

  She stumbled to a halt. She might have grabbed at Ronnie’s arm for balance; she wasn’t sure. Her breath left her lungs in a sudden rush; her pulse became a hummingbird, beating in the tiny vessels of her ears.

  In the parking lot, still lingering in front of her truck, Aidan and Tango had been joined by three of their brothers. Two of them were of average height and build, nondescript, but possessing of the usual amount of MC aura. The third, though…the sight of the third made her veins scream inside her skin; every nerve felt shredded.

  Six-five, his build a blend between Marvel superhero and fleet track athlete, his hair a shining, silken jet that gleamed blue in certain lights, his features prominent, sharp, unforgiving, his skin like warm smooth cappuccino with his summer suntan, Felix Lécuyer towered over his fellow Dogs, his shadow a long black monument against the asphalt. He wore a white undershirt beneath his cut, his arms bare, the dog tattoo on his left bicep leaping as he raised one heavy arm and scratched at the back of his neck. Ava remembered the way those muscles felt when they shifted and bunched like that. She remembered exactly how strong he was, how heavy he was when he was on top of her and bearing her down into the mattress.

  She remembered…everything. Every awful, excruciating detail of all of it. Her New Orleans Cajun former gator-hunting Felix, the club’s infamous info-extractor. Mercy; the boys all called him Mercy.

  “What?” Ronnie asked. “If you keep doing that, someone’s going to think I got attacked by a whole pack of cats.”

  She was digging her nails into him again. She let go like he’d slapped her hand away, folding her arms tight across her chest, sucking a deep breath and realizing she’d stopped breathing for about ten seconds. Her chest ached; her throat hurt; her eyes stung.

  “Sorry,” she murmured.

  Her voice had been so low, it was impossible that any of the Dogs had heard her. But Mercy’s head lifted, and his dark, unforgiving gaze slid across the lot until it touched her toes; it moved up her legs, along the ruffled hem of her skirt, across all the most secret parts of her that he knew intimately, up her throat, her shaking lips, and finally to her eyes, where they latched on and held tight.

  She stopped breathing, and he maintained eye contact for a fathomless moment, his expression unreadable. Then he smiled at something one of his brothers had said, and returned his attention to Aidan.

  No smile for her. No wave. Not even a nod of acknowledgement. Just that flat stare that she didn’t understand – had never understood. Mercy was jovial when he was around his fellow Dogs. But with her…God, she never knew what he was with her. Right now, he was indifferent
, and that hurt like hell, like a knife sinking through her ribs.

  She made a sound, some small whimpering sound, and Ronnie asked, “Ava, what’s going on with you all of a sudden?”

  “Nothing,” she snapped. “Come on.”

  With an effort like nothing she’d known before, she fixed her gaze downward and marched to her truck. She threw up a hand and nodded when Aidan asked if she was making a run to the house. “Sure,” she said when he asked her to bring his iPod back. She hit the remote unlock on her F-150’s key fob and yanked her door open. Slid in, started it, waited for Ronnie and then threw it into gear, all without having to glance at Mercy again.

  But when she checked her rearview mirror, she caught a glimpse of his imposing figure, stamped against the corrugated steel of the bike shop.

  Coming home for this party had been a mistake.

  Then again, when had she ever done anything that wasn’t?

  When Ava pulled into Leroy’s on Main, she parked in front of one of the three gas pumps. “I might as well fill up while we’re here,” she said with a sigh, turning off the engine and reaching for her shopping list in the cup holder.

  Ronnie gave her a blank, judging look. She could feel the curiosity and doubt coming off him in waves. “I can pump while you shop,” he offered.

  She nodded. “Thanks.” She passed him her credit card and climbed out of the truck with purse and list in hand. “I won’t be long.”

  Leroy’s had been around since Maggie was a little girl, a mom-and-pop grocery, dollar store, gas station combo, its shelves full of all sorts of odds and ends, overstuffed in a charming, small town sort of way that was completely lost on the college yuppies. The kids all went to the Seven-Eleven. The Dogs, and the Teague family in particular, were patrons of Leroy’s.

  Ava didn’t realize it had been five years since she’d last graced its door until she heard the little bell above jangle and was hit with the smell of the small deli counter in back. Her eyes soaked in the sight of yellowed linoleum, packed shelves, neon signs, candy-colored drinks behind frosted cooler doors, hand-sketched signs advertising the week’s specials. She heard the slow churning of the Slurpee machine, the whine of the neon bulbs, hum of the coolers, electronic whizzing of lotto tickets printing. She smelled the deli: fresh bread, salami, pepperoni, pasta salad, vinegar, olives. She halted just inside the door, as the air conditioning rushed over her skin and her adolescence stole over her and made her shiver and smile. Ronnie, she thought with an inward lamentation, would never understand her completely, because she would never be a girl who hated her roots and wanted to leave them in the dirt. Even something as simple as walking into Leroy’s brought her past rushing back in Technicolor portrait. It was never her family or her life that had caused her pain, but the world outside of it. The world…and the man she’d loved.

  No, she told herself. You’re past that.

  With a mental shake, she glanced at her list and struck out through the maze of aisles, finding the Bic lighter, the rubber bands, the cupcake paper cups, the five jars of salsa for the chips that had already been bought. She stopped at a cooler and pulled out a twenty ounce Coke that she uncapped right there and took a swig of. When her basket would hold no more, and she’d checked off all the items the old ladies had given her, she cruised past the deli counter. There would be food at the party, yes, but getting to it would prove a monumental task. The guys would savage the offerings like a pack of hyenas.

  A teenage girl with sleepy eyes took her order for two turkey subs on wheat and wrapped the vinegar-drenched sandwiches in wax paper, bagged them in plastic. Laden like a pack mule, she snagged another Coke for Ronnie, headed to the counter…and froze in her tracks.

  Behind the register, glancing up at her with typical retail disinterest, was a very pretty, very familiar blonde boy with wide athlete’s shoulders and sunshine-colored hair.

  “Carter?” Ava asked, stunned.

  The boredom abandoned his features, replaced by shock. “Ava?”

  The neon signage in the window flickered once, twice, three times…

  Ava gathered her composure and set her basket up on the counter. “I thought you had a full ride to Texas A&M,” she blurted before she could stop herself. “I didn’t expect to see you in here.”

  Carter Michaels, star quarterback of Knoxville, graduate of her class, a once-enemy turned hasty-ally to her in high school, she’d figured she would never see him again, not when he had such a bright football future ahead of him.

  He glanced down at the counter, his cheeks coloring. “Yeah…about that…I kind of tore my ACL to shreds. No more scholarship, no more college. My dad flipped his shit.”

  “Oh, damn,” she breathed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean–”

  “It’s fine.” He shrugged and offered a lame smile. “Life’s not a fairytale, ya know?” He reached for her basket, scanner in hand. “Are you in town for the party tonight?”

  Without asking him how he knew about the Lean Dogs’ comings and goings, she said, “I’m back for grad school. The timing just worked out with the party.”

  “Oh.” The scanner beeped as he ran her purchases through. “So you got your undergrad degree, then.”

  “English at UGA.” She winced. Crap, why was she rubbing it in?

  He nodded. “That’s great.”

  “So…” What to say, what to say. “You work here at Leroy’s now.”

  “Yeah.” He punched buttons on the register. “That’ll be forty-oh-seven.”

  She fished for the cash in her purse, hardly able to tear her eyes from him. This wasn’t supposed to happen. Kids with shining stars and bright futures, kids totally unattached to the MC, weren’t supposed to end up selling deli sandwiches for a living. She’d expected to see Carter on ESPN one day, but never back here, back home.

  “Um…” she began, and Carter cut her off.

  “You don’t have to pretend you care.” He slipped the fifty dollars she’d handed him into the register and fished out her change, eyes still downcast.

  “But…”

  “Nine-ninety-three’s your change.” He slid it across the counter to her. “Have a nice day and come back to Leroy’s,” he said in a flat monotone.

  “Carter–”

  “It’s fine, Ava.” He gave her a tight, insincere smile across the counter. “Have fun at the party tonight.”

  “You can come, if you want to.” She gathered her bags. “I think Leah…”

  But he was shaking his head. “It was nice seeing you again.”

  He looked so defeated and weary, she hated to walk away. But Ronnie was waiting, done pumping gas and leaning against the tailgate of her truck, fiddling with his phone.

  “Nice to see you, too,” she echoed, pushing back through the door.

  Ronnie straightened as she approached the truck, phone going back in his pocket. “All set?”

  “Yeah. I got us dinner.” She shook the bag. “Let’s head back to Casa de Teague.”

  Ronnie kept his thoughts to himself until she was sliding her key into the back door of the brick ranch house where she’d grown up. They stood on a narrow concrete patio, surrounded by blooming magenta crape myrtles that danced in the afternoon breeze, the light lacy across her hands as she turned the lock and then then knob, leading the way into the Teague residence.

  “Ava,” he said, and his tone made her stop and turn to face him. He was frowning, his handsome face creased in odd places; she’d never seen him this perplexed before. “What’s wrong with you? You were fine, and then you just weren’t.” His head dipped, his eyes bright and knowing. “When your brother mentioned whoever that Mercy person is – that is a person, right? And not the dog? I honest to God can’t tell.”

  She felt her lips form a smile, but she was deep inside her own head, somewhere back behind her face and whatever mannequin expression it managed to propel toward him. “I’m just tired,” she said. “There’s nothing wrong.”

  “Okay, clearly, I
don’t know jack shit about all this biker nonsense” – a part of her recoiled against that phrasing – “but I know you well enough to know that something’s up. It was like someone flipped a switch back there at the…the…”

  “Clubhouse.”

  “Yeah.” He reached for a lock of her dark brown hair and gave it a little tug. “You’re not yourself.”

  Maybe, she thought bitterly, you don’t know when I’m being “myself.” You wouldn’t like me if you ever saw the real me.

  “It’s just nostalgia kicking in,” she lied. “Being back home again.” And she slipped out of his grasp before he could say anything else.

  The back door of the house led straight into the eat-in kitchen, the largest room in the house. Maggie had trimmed it in white cabinets and black granite; she’d finally, Ava saw, replaced the linoleum with wide Mexican tile. The table was a rectangular farm-style relic Ghost had brought home from an antique shop, an anniversary present for Maggie. The counters were cluttered with appliances, potted succulents; African violets in painted ceramic pots stood in the windowsill above the sink. Maggie’s wood recipe box was open and recipe cards remained scattered across the counter where she’d left them. Beside the door, a spare pair of Ghost’s boots and Maggie’s garden clogs occupied the wire shoe rack. A eucalyptus wreath graced the wall above the cordless phone, topped with a placard that read “God Bless This Kitchen.” The heady scent of bacon lingered in the air currents, remnant of breakfast.