Page 10 of A Twist of Fate

“The red head who came in for a tattoo a few weeks back, left without a tattoo, but on the back of your bike. She’s been coming around, harassing the staff, and I’m pretty sure keeping tabs on your every move. You might want to check in on all of your one-night stands and make sure they’re all doing okay. I’m not so sure she isn’t quietly taking out the competition.”

“Are you fucking serious right now?”

“I’m not making it up!”

“Why the fuck wouldn’t anyone tell me this has been going on?”

“When were we supposed to do that? While you had a client in the chair, or when you were popping the next ink groupie on your bike to take them back to your place?” She laughed a sad a little sound then. “Maybe you need to take a clue from the club guys. They think of their bikes as a sacred space. The only women who get a ride are family or the woman they’re claiming.”

“Yeah, so you’re family or claimed now? Funny, I don’t remember hearing Ever welcoming you to her family – the one she was born to, or the MC.”

Gretchen stepped back as if I had actually physically attacked her. “There’s nothing,” she started to say. “We’re not talking about me,” is what she settled on instead of the denial I was about to call her out for.

“Yeah?” I questioned. My anger getting the better of me. “Have you considered how much it will devastate her to know you’ve been sneaking around behind her back with her brother?”

“I,” she hesitated, biting her lip. “It’s not like that. You don’t understand.”

“Hmm,” the noise settled deep in my throat, resonating there as I narrowed my angry eyes on her. “Maybe you don’t understand either. Maybe you should mind your own business if you don’t want someone all up in your bad decisions too, huh?”

She turned to leave then, but didn’t get to the hallway before she spun back around angrily. “I’m so disappointed in you, Kane! The thing is, my choices are kept in the dark. Yours are constantly showing up at the shop to torment the rest of us. Keep your ink groupies out of the shop, and we won’t have to say anything else to one another outside of scheduling questions.”

“Gretchen?” I called as she turned, swiping at the tears that were falling down her face. She ignored me, shoulders so stiff they were almost to her adorable little elven ears as she huffed and ignored me. I felt bad, because she was right. I was being an ass and dragging my dirty laundry through my place of work and letting the rest of the staff clean up messes for me. Granted, I didn’t know I had messes spilling over here when I wasn’t around, until now. It was something that wouldn’t be happening again, now that I was aware. I just hoped Gretchen knew what she was doing, because I hadn’t been kidding when I asked her how she thought Ever would feel about the fact that she was sneaking around with her brother, a man who was persona-non-grata to Ever at the moment.

Chapter 3

Softly Spoken Secrets

Gretchen

I didn’t see Toby for a few days after my confrontation with Kane because he had been on a club run to Cedar Falls, West Virginia. That was apparently where the mother chapter of their club was. The guilt over what Kane had said to me had been eating me alive ever since though, and I’d been ignoring Toby’s calls and texts while he was gone as a result.

One look out the shop window told me there would be no more avoiding him. Damn it. I glanced around, guilt swimming heavy in my stomach, thanking God that Ever wasn’t around today to see this. Then again, I guess he would know that since he was her brother. He seemed pretty in tune with her schedule even though they were still barely talking. I moved toward the door after shutting down my work for the day. “What are you doing here?” I asked as I stepped outside of the studio.

“I came to see why in the hell you have me on ignore.” The anger in the air surrounding him was palpable. My shoulders drooped with the weight of what had been eating at me.

“Can we go somewhere and talk?”

He tipped his chin up at me, turned his back and moved to his motorcycle. Watching him throw his leg over and settle in was just as sexy as it always was, if it weren’t for the damn lead ball of guilt weighing me down. He held out the extra helmet he carried around for me and I took it, secured the thing that made me feel as though I had a bowling ball on my head, and then I hopped up on the foot peg to try to toss my leg over just as gracefully as Toby had done. It never worked out for me though. Instead, I ended up fumbling and almost falling off – again. I felt, more than saw, Toby’s chest moving as he chuckled. I’d be mad if he hadn’t also caught me and scooted my ass where it needed to be on the seat, tucked up just behind him.

We didn’t head to the clubhouse or the place I had been staying in, which was no more than a glorified hotel room. I’d been having roommate issues since my sister left to go find herself. She had travelled with a rock band, taking photos for them for a while. She was due to come back soon, which was great, but while she was away I’d had three roommates – all of whom failed to pay their portion of rent on time. Eventually, I had to rent a storage locker and an efficiency style apartment for myself. None of that mattered in the moment though, because instead of going to one of those places, Toby took me to the little fishing shack he had purchased.

He showed it to me the last time we went out, just before he left town. It really was just a little one bedroom shack on the Ashley River toward the upper end of North Charleston. He got the two acre tract for a steal, or so he claimed, because he helped the owner of the plantation it resided on at some point. When we got there, he hopped off the bike and helped me off and out of my helmet.

“I’m going to build a house here someday,” he started as he turned to take in the setting sun that cast a reddish-orange glow on the brackish waters of the river.

“I can see you doing that,” I countered as I stood there taking it all in and imagining the house he would build here.

Toby pointed to the west of where the shack was built, but back a little further from the water too. Right over there is where it’s going to go. It’ll be two stories, but built up higher on stilts to account for the possibility of flooding or storm surges that might make it this far inland.” He was always thinking ahead. It’s one of the things I had begun to love about him. “The porch will wrap around the entire house, and the roof of the porch will be Haint Blue.”

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.

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