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  For a fucking year!

  A. Fucking. Year.

  All my resolutions that I made to myself in the shower are now tossed out the window. My heart, having only felt dented the night before, is now suddenly shattered. He keeps so much from me. I don’t even know him anymore.

  Do I even want to know him now? Can I trust him?

  I’m not sure if I even wanted to try.

  Up in my room I toss a bunch of clothes into a gym bag and grab my keys. I never could take emotional pain well. It hurts like no physical pain ever could, and that just pisses me off. Now I’m not only broken inside, but I’m angry at everyone I know.

  My brothers have known about the kid—and sure I understand about them waiting to let Bash tell me—but they’ve also known about him living with another female. They fucking knew and they didn’t say a word! I’ve been stupid enough to let him worm his way back into my life, maybe even my bed.

  It’s obvious where their loyalties stand and it’s not with me. The club is their life, their first priority. Bash is their new president, their leader. Their boss man. Little sister’s feelings don’t matter, just follow the big man.

  I can’t honestly remember a time when my feelings have mattered to any of my brothers. It doesn’t matter if I beg, plead, or cry. As long as I’m safe, and no one touches me, they are content where I’m concerned. Not even when I begged Jet not to hurt Bash.

  I can’t stay here. I can’t be under the same roof as my brothers for a second longer. They may love me, but they don’t care about me. Possessive, protective, but not caring, those are my brothers.

  I only have three people I can choose from. Only three options to take refuge with. Uncle Jack won’t understand. He loves me just as much as my brothers do, maybe even more, but he’s all club. Felicity loves me, cares about me, but I can’t really handle her mom. She’s loyal to the club in every way and would definitely take sides if it comes down to it.

  That only leaves one place.

  I run down the stairs and out to my car before anyone can stop me. If my brothers know I’m leaving them, they’ll lock me in my room. I start my Challenger even as I toss my gym bag full of clothes in the back seat. Reversing quickly, I punch the gas as soon as I’m out of the driveway.

  It’s a twenty minute drive and my brothers blow up my phone before I have even gotten five minutes away. I turn it off, half-tempted to toss the cellphone out the window. By the time I pull into the parking lot of the old, rundown apartment building, my nerves are shot and a few defiant tears spill free.

  Grabbing my stuff, I lock my doors and take my time climbing the steps to the second floor. It had once been a hotel, and is now apartments, at least the second floor is. I’m not blind to the fact that the first floor is a pay by the hour whore house.

  My fingers shake as I step in front of the door at the end. A few more tears spill over, and I don’t even bother to brush them away as I knock twice.

  I hear an animalistic growl, a “son of a bitch” and a few other curses that he would have killed another man for saying in front of me. He must have drank more than usual the night before because he’s tripping over things, mostly his own clothes and maybe even a chair or two.

  He doesn’t take time to look through the peephole before opening the door. The sun makes him growl again before he focuses on me fully. “Raven?” Spider blinks then rubs a big hand over his face. I keep my eyes on his face because I know he’s completely naked. “Babe, what’s wrong?”

  Unlike my brothers, unlike everyone else in my life, Spider loves me. He cares more about me than any other person in my life. Even though he’s the enforcer now, I know that I come before the club with him. It doesn’t matter that his best friend is the president. It doesn’t matter that the club is the only family he had.

  He cares about me.

  Another tear spills free. “Can I stay with you for a few days?”

  Chapter 16

  Spider

  I pull on a pair of jeans as Raven flops down on the second queen bed. My room isn’t a pretty sight, but that’s never bothered her before, so I don’t pick up the stray beer bottles or the empty pizza boxes. It’s the typical hotel room turned apartment: two queen beds—one that I normally toss my crap on—a dresser, a desk, and a mini fridge. The only thing I added to the room was the big flat screen television on the wall. The bathroom is the only other room in the apartment. Small, but it’s all I need. Not to mention it’s a lot nicer than the rooms I’ve stayed in before. The ones at the warehouse are half this size and a black light will show exactly how much sex they’ve seen.

  Putting on an old T-shirt, I watch as Raven curls into a ball on the bed and swipes at a few tears. “What happened?” I demand, although I can take a guess. Something to do with Bash. He’s the only person that can bring Raven to tears. My strong girl isn’t as strong as she wants to be when it comes to my douche bag best friend. That fucker doesn’t deserve her, but I’m not in a position to dole out advice in the love department.

  “I guess you knew that Bash has a kid.” She sighs.

  I shrug. “Yeah. He told me when he found out …” I break off when she shoots a death glare at me. “Okay, maybe I should have told you. I suspected that’s why he left, but I wasn’t sure. I mean he didn’t exactly confide in me at the time, babe. He left without a word to anyone.” Not even to me, who would have gladly died for the fucker.

  The glare turns into more tears. “So you didn’t know he’s been shacked up, playing house, with Willa Blackstone for the past year?”

  All of the air is suddenly sucked from the room. My body turns hot just at the sound of Willa’s name, then ice cold as Raven’s words finally register. I stumble to the first bed and drop like a pile of bricks. “What … did … you … say?” I grit out.

  She sits up, looking concerned now. “Willa Blackstone. She’s been living with Bash.”

  I flinch and Raven’s eyes narrow. “You know Willa, don’t you?”

  I drop my head into my hands, my fingers clasping my bald head. Fuck it’s times like this that I want hair so I can pull it out by the fistful. “Willa … She’s my past. I can’t talk about Willa …” I suck in a sharp breath, trying to calm my racing heart at the thought of Willa. Sweet, beautiful, too good for a bastard like me.

  I’m not good enough for her. Bash fucking isn’t either!

  “How did you find out?” I demand.

  Raven grimaces. “Tanner was running his mouth. Said Bash went to get his daughter and Tasha’s sister. Colt had no choice but to tell me.” She brushes a few strands of her long blonde hair back from her face. “They’ve known about him living with her for weeks now, and no one bothered to tell me. It just brought home how much more important the club is than I am to them. My feelings don’t seem to matter to anyone, if they ever have. I needed to clear my head … Are you sure you don’t care if I stay a few days?”

  “Stay as long as you want, babe. I’ll take care of you.” She’s the only one to ever give a shit about me. Raven’s special. She may act all tough, but when she cares about someone, she loves you deep.

  I’m a lucky bastard to have her care about me.

  Raven

  I spend three days at Spider’s before my brothers start showing up.

  They try to get me to come home. I, of course, tell them to fuck off and leave me the hell alone. I’m not ready to go home yet. I can’t trust them any more than I could Bash. A girl needs to know that her family will put her feelings first, and I doubt they’ll ever do that with me.

  Bash has been blowing up my phone, but I blocked his number. There’s nothing he has to say that I want to hear. His chance to tell me the truth had come and gone and I’m over it. Over him. Over the shortly lived fantasy of starting a family with him and his daughter.

  Okay, so maybe I’m completely over it. Maybe I’ve spent a few hours crying while Spider was at work so he wouldn’t feel sorry for me.

  Felicity drops by to see me
before her classes the day before, and I find out that Hawk talked Gracie into staying at our house for the foreseeable future. I’m okay with that. It makes not going home easier because I know that Gracie will take care of my brothers. I also know Bash returned with his kid and female from wherever the hell it was that he’d been shacked up for the last year.

  My friend informs me that Willa is definitely as beautiful as everyone always said she was. Also, that the lovely Willa seems really sweet. Oh, and sweet, lovely Willa is sleeping in my bed!

  What. The. Hell!

  Willa doesn’t care for Tanner and Matt, so she and little Lexa are sharing my room. Looks like I don’t have a place to sleep even if I do decide to go home.

  “I brought pizza!” Spider announces as he walks through the door of his two-room apartment. He drops a box of pizza at the foot of my bed along with a six pack of cold beer.

  I ignore the food but quickly grab a beer. I need it after dealing with both Colt and Raider just a few hours before.

  Seeing that I’m making alcohol my dinner for the fourth day in a row, Spider snatches the beer from my hand. “Eat, Raven. Don’t make me put you over my knee.”

  I grin up at him. “That might be fun.”

  “Oh, babe. I know it would be.” He winks and downs the rest of my beer in one gulp. “Now eat.”

  Laughing for what feels like the first time in a lifetime, I reach for the pizza box and snatch a slice that’s covered in meat of every variety, along with green olives. “Woot, woot!” I can stomach anything on a pizza as long as it has green olives on it. “Thanks, Spider.”

  He shrugs, already flopped down on his stomach with the remote to the flat screen in his hand. “Anything for you, babe.”

  I’m half way through my first slice when I noticed the bruise on his jaw. “Who had the balls to punch you?” I demand, picking an olive off the pizza and munching on it.

  “Only a handful of men got those kind of balls, babe. This one came from the boss man himself.” He touches two fingers to the bruise rapidly changing color. “He met me at the door as I was closing up the shop. Two punches and then he was back on his damn bike.”

  The pizza suddenly tastes like sawdust, and I toss the half-finished slice back into the box. “Sorry, Spider.”

  “This isn’t your fault, babe. If anything, this is about Willa. Not you.”

  Spider and Bash are now fighting over Willa. That must be the case because Bash hasn’t bothered to show up here. Sure, that doesn’t hurt. I’m old news after all. Bash has his new female and his kid with him now. He doesn’t have to bother to win me back with Willa around.

  Nope, doesn’t hurt one little bit.

  “Okay.” I pick the pizza back up and force myself to finish eating it. “Tomorrow is Thursday. It gets pretty busy at the bar. I guess I better head into work and help out my brothers.”

  I haven’t worked for the last three nights, and my brothers are starting to feel the strain of not having me around to help out. Raider’s and Colt’s visit today had been all about guilt-tripping me into coming home so I can do my share at the bar. I compromise. I’ll continue to stay at Spider’s apartment, but I’ll come back to work.

  They grudgingly concede and leave soon after. No doubt it’ll all get back to Jet—because, yeah everything gets back to him—and he’ll rip into me during his weekly phone call Thursday morning. That’s fine by me. I’m going to rip him a new one too.

  “Not Bad Ink!” I exclaim when Spider stopped channel surfing once he finds his favorite reality show. “We watched this until three this morning. Please?” I pout at him, but he ignores me. “Spider!”

  “Raven, I love you, but I won’t change the channel, even for you.” He winks. “Besides, I know you have a crush on this guy.”

  I shoot him two middle fingers because he’s right, dammit! So I settle back against my pillows and get comfortable. It’s going to be at least three hours before I can talk him into watching something else.

  The next evening I don’t have to worry about watching more Bad Ink with Spider. I arrive at the bar earlier than usual so I can help get everything straightened up before the place gets busy. Fridays are for club meetings with the Originals. Saturdays are for the Whores-R-Us feast for all. Thursdays? That’s anyone’s guess. It could be so slow that you beg for someone to get into a fight just to ease the boredom. Or it could be so busy with not only bikers coming and going but any number of different people chancing coming in that you end up walking fifty miles before the night’s over.

  Colt’s already stocking beer into the coolers behind the bar when I walk in. Raider’s washing glasses by hand. Hawk is carrying ice. Like always, none of them pay any attention to me as I get busy. I put an apron on and start filling bowls with nuts and pretzels. I wipe down all the tables because I know that no one has done that over the last few days.

  By the time I’m done, at least twenty bikers make their way in. I greet them all by name but don’t try to start conversations with any of them. There’s no use. They’re scared to say more than a “hi” to me anyway.

  Felicity texts me randomly throughout the evening. She’s studying with Gracie tonight. Hawk doesn’t want Gracie to come to the bar, so Felicity keeps her company on the nights he works. Not for the first time, I wonder what’s going on with Hawk and Gracie …

  Spider slaps me on the ass as he walks by toward his usual table in the back. I yelp, not expecting the sudden stinging contact, then grinned. Someone’s living on the wild side tonight, slapping my ass in front of my brothers? “Want a beer?” I ask.

  “Bottle of tequila, babe.”

  My eyes widen but I fetch his bottle with a salt shaker and some lime slices. By the time I return, he’s glaring down at his phone and I narrow my eyes. Spider doesn’t like his phone half the time. He only uses it when necessary and only then with great reluctance. “Do you even know what you’re looking at?”

  Spider raises cold eyes to me. They lose some of the frost when his eyes meet mine, but he doesn’t say anything. I know that look. It’s the one he gets right before he leaves a man broken and bloody on the floor. I pour his first shot for him and leave him to destroy the piece of expensive technology in his hands. “Let me know if you need anything.”

  He only nods, swallowing the shot without the use of the lime or salt. I squeeze his shoulder and go to pick up the empties littering empty tables.

  I keep an eye on him as the night wears on, watch as he empties the bottle. I don’t even blink when the phone is thrown against the wall and explodes in three different directions. Around midnight I push him into my Challenger and drive him home, not caring that I leave my brothers to close the bar on their own.

  It’s not easy to get a man the size of Spider up two flights of stairs when he’s that drunk. He nearly falls on me twice, and I stumble a few times. By the time I unlock his apartment door, I’m out of breath and exhausted.

  I push him onto his bed, take his boots off, and attempt to get his jeans off. Of course he’s not wearing anything underneath, so I cover his naked ass up before heading to the bathroom for a shower.

  The booming knock on the door stops me. I glance at Spider, knowing that he’s out for the night. Whoever is at the door sounds pissed from the knock alone, so I’m debating on whether to answer it or not.

  “Open the fucking door, Raven!” Bash commands in a voice full of rage. “Open it or I break it down!”

  Sighing, I unlock the door and open the door a few inches. Bash stands leaning against the door frame. The light of the street lamps in the parking lot glow behind him, making him look almost menacing. “What?” I ask, raising a brow as if bored. Hoping that he can’t see how affected I am by his presence.

  Stupid weak body! Turned on and nearly panting at just the sight of Bash Reid. I’m disgusted with myself.

  “You’ve had your few days of space, Raven. You don’t get any more.” He pushes the door open and grabs my wrist. “Let’s go.”

>   I try to pull my wrist from his grip. “I’m not going anywhere with you!” He doesn’t seem to notice that I’m struggling to get free. “Bash, let go. You’re hurting me.”

  He’s not but it’s the only thing I can think of to make him let me go. It works. He drops my wrist as soon as the words are out of my mouth. But any chance I think I may have of running from him is quickly lost. He turns, tosses me over his shoulder and heads for the stairs, leaving Spider’s door wide open.

  “Wait! Stop, Bash. Spider’s out cold. Please, just close his door!” I pound on Bash’s wide back. “Don’t leave him vulnerable like that.”

  Muttering a curse, he switches direction, locks and slams Spider’s apartment door, then heads toward the stairs once more. It takes less than two minutes to get down to the parking lot where his bike is parked beside of my car. He puts me on my feet then gets on his hog before making me get on behind him.

  I don’t even protest as he heads toward home. Arguing with him will get me nowhere. But do I really want to? Haven’t I hidden from him and my feelings for long enough? It’s time to pull up my big girl thong and face this thing head on.

  There’s nothing like riding on the back of a hog with Bash. Even as torn up inside as I am, the exhilaration of having two of the things I loved so much all at once is enough to have me relaxing and enjoying the ride. My hands tighten around Bash’s waist and he covers my hands with one of his own.

  The innocent contact of his hand on mine shouldn’t have affected me. Shouldn’t have awakened an ache that only Bash has been able to produce in me. My nipples instantly harden, my panties growing wetter with each mile that the powerful bike eats up. It doesn’t seem to matter to my body that this man has broken my heart repeatedly. I’m on fire for him and can’t even think clearly because my want is so great.

  I need Bash to fuck me. Now!