A Twist of Fate Read online

  I laughed at that. “Don’t tell me you’re superstitious?” I hadn’t pegged him for one to believe in evil spirits.

  He shrugged his shoulders and grinned down at me. “Let’s call it traditional instead. I’m not sure the color keeps evil spirits away, but it is a piece of the south that I want to incorporate into my home one day. I’m proud of where I come from. We may have a messy history here, but it isn’t all bad. This town is my home. It will be the only one I ever live in because my family is here, my life is here in these streets, on the rivers, in that ocean. When I go on a run for the club, like this last one, I get this itch that I can’t explain. I need to be back here. The salt air calls to me, my roots call to me. It isn’t until I get back and feel the humidity pressing down on me like an entity I’ve become friends with that I feel as though I’m home again.”

  I’m not sure I could agree with his love for the humidity we put up with here, but my heart grew an extra couple sizes for him as he described the love he had for home. Despite the fact that I’d always embraced a different look, a more edgy style, I still felt the same way about our simple southern town. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. If I didn’t watch my step, he’d have me dreaming about that house he wanted to build and filling it with our babies one day too. I could already see them giggling up on that porch he described, begging to go for a day at the beach, or begging their daddy to take them fishing down by the old shack.

  “Why did you stop taking my calls and answering my texts?” He finally asked.

  “It’s complicated,” I answered as the images our phantom children slipped away to be replaced by reality. “I was talking to Kane about his issues with the skanks he’s been bringing around work. He got a bit upset with me and my assessment of the situation,” I started to say.

  “Do I need to have a talk with him?” Toby asked, suddenly stiff with tension.

  “No,” I told him as I reached out to draw my fingers down his arm, easing the tension out of his muscles. “The thing is, he told me I couldn’t judge him when I was hiding this big secret that could potentially hurt our coworker.” I chanced glancing up at him and saw as it dawned on him who I was speaking about. “Ever has been nothing but a sweet girl since I’ve known her. She goes out of her way to make people smile, and that’s after she was so hurt by your family and club.” Once again, his muscles tensed, only this time, my touch didn’t ease him. “Keeping us a secret and sneaking around behind her back is going to hurt her eventually. Don’t you think?”

  He tipped his head down once and then blew out a breath. “I just don’t know what to do where my sister is concerned. There was a time when I could have just told her all about you and she would have been so happy for the both of us. Hell, she probably would have wanted to throw us a party because her brother and friend found each other, you know? Now, I have no clue how she’ll react.”

  “Have you spoken to her at all lately?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve only seen her a few times in passing. I want to, I just don’t know how to start a conversation with her anymore.”

  “That’s simple,” I told him. “You just go up to her and say, hi.”

  “Just say hi?”

  “Yep. The rest will fall into place after that. I bet you anything that she’s just waiting for you to be the one to take that step forward.”

  “What if she’s not?”

  I shrugged my shoulders and turned to watch the sun go down and the reflected colors playing across the river’s surface fade. “If she’s not, then at least you’ll know. I think that’s at least a step in the right direction. We can’t just tell her about us when you can’t even say hello to your sister.”

  “I can do that. What I can’t do is lose you though. I’ve already lost the relationship I used to have with Ever, and I’m not sure that is something we can ever get back. I hope for it all the time, but I’m willing to keep working on that with her. While I was gone, all I did was think about you, wish you were with me, or that I was back here with you. I know it’s hard keeping this from my family right now, but I need you, and I need something that is just mine to focus on. I don’t want family drama or club drama driving us apart. I watched how that changed the dynamic of my parents’ lives. Hell, I lived it since I didn’t get to know my dad right away. Then, I had a surprise sister, and you know about the drama with Ever, J-Bird, and the club. There’s just always been so much revolving around my family that I wanted to keep you separate for a while. We need to work on what we want with each other, for our future, if we’ll have a future together, before I drag them into our lives. I know it won’t seem fair to her for her own reasons, but I think if anyone has a chance of understanding where I’m coming from it would be my sister.”

  “If you’re sure, then that’s what we’ll do.”

  “I’m sure, honey. There’s only one thing I want more than getting to tell the world that you’re mine and show them all what you mean to me.”

  “Yeah?” I questioned breathlessly as he pulled me close to him, the fronts of our bodies lining up.

  “That’s to have this time to for ourselves, to just be us before any drama makes it impossible. I don’t want to miss this chance with you, Gretchen.”

  “I don’t want to miss out on the chance with you either,” I admit.

  “Then, it’s settled. We’re doing this, and we’ll let everyone else in on it when we’ve had some time to just enjoy being together, getting past the getting to know you stage, and into a forever kind of place.”

  “You really see us there?”

  “I told you I saw a vision of our babies around that house I’m going to build for us, didn’t I?” I grinned as he pointed to the non-existent house, but also because it seemed as though he stole that image from my own daydreams since he hadn’t mentioned children there before. “That’s our heaven. That’s where we’ll be together. We just have to make it past all the stuff that’s supposed to come first and then we’ll build that dream together.” My heart was so full I didn’t think it could hold any more love for this man. I wasn’t ready to say the words to him yet, because I had my own fears to conquer first, but damn he was making it difficult to keep my emotions under wraps. I knew in my soul that this would be one of those moments that I would carry in my heart for the rest of my life.

  “Did you take care of that thing we discussed?” Kane asked me the next day. I knew what he wanted me to say. He wanted to know that I had let Toby go. How was that fair to me though? He was so concerned that I not hurt Ever’s precious feelings that he forgot about the Gretchen portion of the equation. I may not have said the words to Toby yet, but I was already head over heels in love with the man.

  I couldn’t help becoming snippy with Kane as a result of his question putting a dull to the shine of the night I’d just spent with Toby. “Have you taken care of your skank problem you seem to have?”

  “No, but my problem isn’t going to hurt Ever.”

  “Low blow, Kane. Especially since you don’t care that what you want me to do would hurt me. It’s just about her.” Kane seemed taken aback by what I had to say and started to argue, but I wasn’t going to let him this time. “I’ve never had someone stick it out with me beyond a couple dates before. For the longest time, I thought there wasn’t any hope, that I was unlovable, and would end up a sad, lonely cat lady. I hate cats because I’m allergic, so that’s even more miserable than it sounds. Toby is the first person to stick, to make me happy, to want to see me shine. Hell, he’s the first person to really see ME! And you don’t care about any of that. You just care that the girl you’re crushing on doesn’t get hurt by the fact that she wasn’t kept in the loop on someone else’s business. You know what? I don’t think she would really care when she realizes that we were trying to just get to know one another without being tainted by a ton of drama that seems to follow his family around. If anyone would get that it would be her, right?”

  “Jesus, G. Tell me how
you really feel,” Kane grunted.

  “I just did. Maybe, one day, you’ll actually hear what I have to say, or finally see me as a person too. I exist too, damn it!”

  Chapter 4

  The Future is Golden

  Gretchen

  Stomping out of work on the heels of an argument with one of my bosses was probably not the wisest move, but I couldn’t stand there and listen to Kane wax poetic about Ever again. I also couldn’t stand to see his smug face if he decided he had a counter argument. Instead, I grabbed my bag and took off like a petulant child. One thing was for sure though. It might not have been the most adult thing to do, but taking off was the only way to keep that shit from exploding into a giant drama bomb that I couldn’t deal with. Instead, I texted Toby to find out if he had any free time since I suddenly found myself with the afternoon off of work.

  As soon as I managed to get close to my car, my cell started ringing. Toby’s handsome face popped up immediately. “Hey, I didn’t expect for you to call back,” I told him as I answered the call.

  “Well, I did. What’s going on? Why aren’t you at work today?”

  I sighed in response to those questions. “I walked out.”

  “You quit?”

  “No, I just couldn’t deal with Kane being Kane. We had an argument, and I walked out instead of dealing with it. Not very mature of me, but my sanity will be safe for another day.”

  Toby chuckled on the other end before getting serious again. “Was it about me?”

  “Yes. No. Not really. It was about your sister more than anything.”

  Toby grunted into the phone. “Poor sap’s in love with her, isn’t he?”

  “He thinks he is,” I managed to get out. “He’s also smart enough to know she already belongs to someone else. That doesn’t stop him from making her feelings a priority over everyone else’s.”

  “And he still thinks that keeping our relationship a secret will hurt my sister?”

  “Yep,” I managed to get out as I slunk down into my too-hot car seat. Damn the leather seats in this sweltering, southern sun.

  “Well, then he’s definitely not in love with the Ever I’ve always known, because I think he’s completely wrong. She will understand why we did it this way, I promise.”

  “I think you’re right. That doesn’t stop him from attacking me with the way he thinks she’ll feel though.”

  “Do I need to come over there and kick his ass?”

  “Nah! He’d like that too much. It would mean that we’d have to admit why you were kicking his ass and it would get back to Ever.”

  Once again, I had my man chuckling, and the butterflies in my belly fluttered as a result. “Come pick me up from the clubhouse. We can spend the day together and go see a movie or something.”

  “That sounds amazing. I haven’t been to an actual theater in so long,” I admitted.

  The clubhouse wasn’t some place I was used to going. Normally, Toby would meet me somewhere since our relationship was semi-secretive. I’ll admit, I felt a little jolt of excitement at the prospect of being invited to pick him up at the clubhouse. Maybe he was ready to take that next step, and didn’t mind his club brothers knowing about us. That feeling turned out to be fleeting as I pulled into the clubhouse. The parking lot looked like a ghost town. There were two motorcycles parked in the lot. An older, beat up, green Volkswagen Jetta sat near the edge of the lot by the road, but other than that, all was quiet. “No wonder,” I huffed to myself just as Toby came sauntering out of the building. His wide grin that reached excited eyes had my emotions tipping back toward excited from disappointed again.

  He opened my car door, hopped in, and leaned over immediately. “Hey baby!” He leaned over and took my face in hand, turning me further toward him before his lips landed on mine and took their fill. When he pulled away, I was slightly breathless and just like that, the pressures of keeping what we had secret melted away into the background.

  “It’s quiet here,” I commented as I threw the car into reverse.

  “Yeah, just Crow’s always angry ass and one or two of the whores are here.”

  My nose scrunched up in distaste inadvertently at the mention of the whores who hung around the place. I couldn’t say it didn’t bother me to know he had available pussy at his beck and call here, especially since he lived at the clubhouse.

  “Hey now,” he called out while smoothing a finger down my nose to ease the tension he could see there. “You know that’s not my scene. Even if it ever was, I have you, and those women can’t hold a candle to what you have.”

  “If it ever was?” I ask, noticing a woman standing near a tree over by the picknick tables, watching us with interest. “Was it?”

  “Was what?”

  “Were they ever your thing? The whores,” I clarified.

  He sighed. “Is it going to ruin our day to tell you about my past?”

  “No,” I told him honestly. “I have a past too.”

  “I’ll tell you right now, hearing about your past will abso-fuckin-lutely ruin my day, so we aren’t going there.” He took in my stiff shoulders and sighed. “Used to be that was all J-Bird and I talked about. How we were going to nail all the whores all the time when we finally patched in.”

  I laughed. “Imagine that. Two horny teenage boys consumed with the harem of free pussy at their fingertips.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s what we thought too until we started getting older and were allowed to hang around the clubhouse more. The thing about that free pussy is that they are there for anyone to use at any time. J-Bird and I hadn’t thought about the fact that the men we knew as our uncles growing up would also be using those same women. Some of those men were married. We knew their women, they were our aunts. You know? Family. It’s a kick in the ass to see that shit go down and ruin the level of respect you might have once had for someone. It also tainted what we once thought of as something amazing to be had. The women who come here to service the men,” he paused and ran his hands through his hair for a minute. “They stick around of their own free will, they choose to be there. It’s fine. They serve a purpose and they get what they need out of it, I guess. I’ve seen and heard stories of the ugly side of shit though. My dad and mom were split up for a while because of those whores lying. He didn’t get to see her pregnant with me, to see me born, or even be there for the first couple years of my life. Not that all of them are bad, but…”

  “I’m beginning to see the picture here. The shine wore off before you were patched in.”

  “Yeah, exactly.”

  “So, you’ve never used any of them?”

  I saw a hint of a blush creep up his cheeks with my question. “Once,” he admitted. “Big mistake too because she hounded me afterward. Thought I would make her my old lady right then and there because everyone knew I didn’t mess around with them.”

  “Oh! That’s presumptuous of her.”

  “Yeah,” he managed to get out. She’s a pain in the ass,” he admitted.

  “Wait, still? How long ago was this?”

  “A few months before I met you. It was just the once, but whenever I’m there and she is, she locks on like a heat seeking missile.”

  “I’m not sure how I feel about that.”

  “Babe, you don’t have to feel any kind of way about it because she doesn’t matter to me. She gets in my face once in a while and I tell her to fuck off or get kicked out.” He shrugged his shoulders like it was that simple.

  “Maybe you need to stop threatening to do it and just get it done,” I suggested.

  “Yeah, well, if it were that easy, I would have done so a long while back. She’s a favorite in the clubhouse. I’d need more than her just constantly asking me to fuck her to get her kicked out.”

  We pulled into the movie theater parking lot, found a spot, and then once I had the car turned off, I spun to the side to face Toby. “You would tell me if it ever went any further, right?”

  “As long as you are my girl, n
othing will ever go further to begin with. I would break things off with you before I ever messed with another woman. Swear to fuck, baby! I’m not now and never will be that man who would cheat on a woman he’s with. My mom and dad had a rough road, but one thing he always was to her was faithful. It’s the reason we became a family again.”

  “But Ever,” I reminded him. I wasn’t aware of the full story behind how Ever came to be if their dad had been so faithful. I knew enough to know that Lucy was only Ever’s stepmother.

  “When they were separated, my sister’s mom took advantage of my dad in a drunken state in order to get knocked up. Her husband had gotten himself fixed without telling her. She found out, wanted a baby, and decided fucking my father over was the way to achieve her goals. My dad didn’t cheat. Even if he had knowingly slept with her, my mom had been gone, moved to Florida for quite some time by then.”

  “That sucks for them. For all of you.”

  He shrugged his shoulders once more. “I can’t say that. Sure, we missed out on him being there when I was younger, which sucks for my parents. I don’t remember that time in my life. I can’t regret what brought my sister into our lives though. She’s a special person. One day, we’re going to fix our shit, and get our relationship back.”

  We got out of the car then and started walking toward the theater when I spotted a green Jetta idling nearby. “Wasn’t that car just at the clubhouse? Did someone follow us?” I asked, suddenly feeling a bit paranoid. Toby turned in time to see the car taking off toward the other side of the parking lot.

  “Motherfucker,” he hissed.

  “Was that her?” I asked, thinking about the whore he said wouldn’t leave him alone. He nodded his head indicating that it was.