Page 2 of Wait For Me

No, the MC clubhouse wasn’t a place for a teenage girl to grow up. It had come with a whole lot of life lessons. Had my mom still been alive, she probably would have shot my dad for putting me in those situations. There’s no need to even talk about the embarrassment - on my part and some of the members – for the things I’d seen. Sure, there was a whole lot of love to go around too. I didn’t just have one dad and a brother left. I had a whole group of overprotective men watching out for me as I grew into a woman. They did their best while I was growing up, but now it was time for me to go. Rules were rules and they wouldn’t be broken for me simply because my father was the Chapter President. Plenty of club kids faced the same choices before I came along, and more would after I was long gone too. There was nothing special about me except that the only plan I’d once had in place for this day wasn’t available any longer.

“STAR!” Jared shouted as I grabbed my duffel bag and slung it over my shoulder. My eyes skirted around the room I’d lived in since I was thirteen. It wasn’t much, but it had been the Vice President’s room before he got married and bought a house. He offered it to me so that I wouldn’t have to deal with communal bathrooms. Being female, and underage until now, it had been important to the VP that I not have to share. Uncle Mack was the best. His wife Viv tried several times over the years to get my dad to allow me to move in with them. My dad wouldn’t hear of it though. After losing his wife, he wanted his kids close to home - always. At least until they turned eighteen, and then he was okay with kicking me out with nowhere to go, no plan, no money, and not even a goodbye from him either.

My father was currently on a run to Nowheresville, Alabama to support a crew there who just lost their Prez and a few other members in an unfortunate blast. Their clubhouse had been blown up. Not by a rival club or anything you might expect. Nope. It was a jealous ex-husband who happened to be good with explosives and found out that his wife - ex-wife - was playing whore to bikers.

Obviously, their plight had been more important than D-Day for a daughter. Don’t get me wrong - my father was the best under every other circumstance. I honestly just think he forgot about my impending birthday with everything else going on. At least, that’s what my brother, Kip, tried to tell me.

There were three more bags in the room, and I was trying to figure out how I was going to get them all out of there today, considering I had nowhere to take them. My car was a little shitbox, and unfortunately it had died two fucking days ago. Just my luck, right?! I had planned to live out of my car until I could figure things out, but now I was stuck with literally no options. Thinking about my situation hadn’t been a priority for me, mostly because it was depressing, and I thought avoidance would keep me from breaking down and freaking out about what in the hell I was going to do.

“What in the absolute fuck?” Jared’s angry voice bellowed from just beyond my shoulder. “What the hell is going on here?” Again, his voice was loud enough to wake the dead and of course, it brought some of the other club brothers - including my own - running.

“What’s going on?” I heard Kip yell as he pushed his way through the doorway of the room that had been mine until today. “What the hell happened in here?” Kip yelped, as he took in the cleaned-up, cleared-out, packed-up state of my room.

I turned slowly and finally let myself see the men standing there, their slack-jawed expressions, and what looked a whole lot like disappointment in some of their eyes.

Uncle Mack stepped forward; brows furrowed as he took in the scene.

“Star, you wanna explain what’s going on?”

I just stood there, trying to hold back my tears as I looked at the men as if they were stupid.

“I know the bylaws,” I told him, not understanding why they couldn’t give me at least until 11:59pm to get the fuck out. Jeez. I guess they were expecting midnight last night or something. Just call me Cinderella because my stagecoach turned into a pumpkin on a fucking dime. I blew my too-long bangs out of my face and then leaned down to scoot my backpack closer to my feet. It was sort of light, so the duffel and the backpack were a go. I wondered if they would at least store my other two suitcases for me until I could find a place to land. I cringed at the thought. What if they said, ‘no’? I didn’t have a lot and honestly couldn’t remember what I had packed in which bag. Shit. There was no telling what I might be losing if I left something behind. I really wanted to fucking cry, but I couldn’t give any of them the satisfaction of seeing that.

“O-Kay?” Uncle Mac called out in a gentle tone as he extended a hand toward me like I was a pit viper and he needed to catch me before I could strike.

“Okay,” I glanced around as the word repeated from my mouth. “Look, I don’t think I can carry all of these since the shitbox died the other day. I can probably take the duffel and the backpack. Do you think you can store the other two, just for a few days?” I asked while eyeballing the problematic luggage and worrying over the fact that it would most definitely be more than a few days before I could figure things out and come back for my stuff.

I glanced back up at my uncle and, swear to God, his damn eyes were glassy. “Sweetheart, you want to explain to me exactly what you’re doing here?”

I huffed and couldn’t stop the tears that fell before I looked back down at the floor in an attempt to hide the fact that I was crying like a goddamn baby in front of all these road-roughened men who wouldn’t appreciate it.

“I’m sorry.” The apology rolled off my tongue in a whisper. “I didn’t think it had to be last night. I thought I had until tonight to clear out.” I worried my lower lip between my thumb and forefinger as I tried to think things through.

“I wasn’t prepared for this. I was supposed to live with Ashlynn and her mom, but then shit happened.” I glared at Jared for a second before dropping my eyes back to my luggage. “My car died a couple days ago, so I don’t even have that to live out of anymore. I thought it would get me by while I looked for a job and got enough money to get a place, but how was I supposed to know the damn thing was going to crap out on me like that? Now, I’m kinda stuck not having anywhere to put all this, and I didn’t realize you guys wanted me out last night.” I took a shaky breath before continuing my rambled explanation.

“I just didn’t realize I had so much stuff. Four is too much for me to be able to walk with. So, I can take the duffle and the backpack, but I can’t handle the other two. Not sure what’s in them, but if you have to throw them out, I understand.”

When no one said anything, I finally glanced back up to see a mix of shock and tortured looks on the faces of the men staring back at me.

“Unfuckingbelievable!” Grady, an older man who I thought of like a grandfather, hissed before smacking the shit out of Uncle Mac. “You better get this handled and quick. I’m going to call Tripp. That man is going to lose his shit when he finds out his daughter was trying to walk away with four packed bags and nowhere to go.”

Uncle Mack nodded at Grady and then turned cold, hard eyes on Jared. “You and I are going to have a fucking conversation in just a minute,” he growled.

“She wouldn’t give me an answer. I didn’t know she was doing this,” he shouted at my uncle.

“When did you ask her?”

My eyes traveled between the two men, pinging back and forth as if following a bad game of beer pong.

“Um,” Jared hemmed for a moment. “Just a few minutes ago.”

“Just a few…” My uncle was fuming! “JUST A FEW FUCKING MINUTES AGO? Are you fucking with me right now?”

“Shit.” Jared’s hand traveled to the back of his neck and rubbed there furiously. “It took me a while to decide,” he admitted. Suddenly, things were starting to clear up for me. Jared’s stupid proposal of marriage was real, not a joke, but it hadn’t been his idea. I slumped to the bare mattress I had stripped this morning. There were clean sheets sitting there, waiting to be added to the bed for whoever was next to occupy my old room. Despite being pushed out on my birthday, I still wanted to make sure whichever brother took over the room after me had a clean set of linens to start out with.

Yes, that was me, thinking about linens to keep from processing the truth.

I had nowhere to go.

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