Page 29 of Wait For Me

“If she wanted to know about my business, she would call and ask me, Ash. I haven’t talked to Star in two years, and that isn’t my fault. It’s on her.”

“Well, considering the way you spoke to her the last time…” Ash’s voice faded out as the two walked away.

It was rare to hear anyone in the clubhouse speak about the missing princess since two years ago when she slipped free of the tracker that had been in her car. According to Mack, she sent a quick message once a week or so from a burner phone, letting family know she was alive and well. Once a month, Mack’s Old Lady, Viv would get a letter from the infuriating woman detailing where she had been. The letters meant that she had already moved on. There was no pattern to her travels either. Trust me, Mack had us comb over that shit until we were all frustrated, in the beginning.

A little over a year after the Sturgis incident, those letters stopped coming too. She called Viv more frequently, but never let onto where she had settled. She told them when she got over being pissed about being tracked and trailed, she would let them know something. Apparently, she never got over it.

Then, one day, about seven months ago, Viv was at the clubhouse showing off a picture Star sent to her. It was the first time anyone had laid eyes on the woman since Sturgis. I caught a glimpse of the thing too. There she was, the woman I’d been a fucking monk for, aside from a few slips here and there, over the past two years. Star was all loved up in some punk’s arms. He was a clean-cut looking blond with blue eyes and a stupid fucking grin on his face. His arms were around her body, so I knew what that grin was for. Actually, no, the fuck I didn’t. I’d never once had my arms wrapped around Star, because I was too stupid to do it when she was there for the taking.

If a picture was worth a thousand words, it was clear that those words would be something like: Star is happy and never coming back home, except maybe to bring her boy toy on a visit. I finally got the message loud and clear and started reevaluating what the fuck I was doing with my own life.

Funny how the tables turned. I always thought she was a silly little girl for waiting around on me to grow up. The high school girl with the stupid crush had been waiting for that. Here I was, a grown man doing the same shit without a promise of that being what she wanted anymore.

That revelation was how I ended up dating the same woman for the past six months. There wasn’t a doubt in my mind that Missy was the wrong woman for me in the long run, but she filled a void I hadn’t known had been there before. She was a good girl with a bad streak a mile wide.

In her parents’ world, she was the prim, proper rich girl who could do no wrong. The woman slipped seamlessly into my world too, fitting right in with the bikers and their whores during parties on the weekends. My mother never missed an opportunity to tell me that the girl was selfish and just using me for a thrill. After the fourth month of us staying together, she stopped telling me so much, not that she started to like Missy. Mom hated her and barely tolerated the few times I stopped by the house with her.

I wanted to argue with my mom, but every time I thought about a future with kids in it, I couldn’t picture Missy wanting to bring them up without a nanny doing everything for her. Just like her mother had brought her up after having another woman carry her to term so that she wouldn’t ruin her body with a pregnancy.

When I found that out, I almost ran for the hills then. I hoped the woman was better than her mother, but here lately, I’d started to see the cracks in the foundation.

Grady sauntered over and pulled me from my thoughts. It wasn’t the question he asked me, but the grin on his face that told me it meant something far more than I knew.

“Are you bringing that girl of yours to the family day barbeque this weekend?”

“Not sure, why?”

“Just curious. Only see her here on party nights, where she ain’t supposed to attend.”

“Don’t worry, I already got my ass chewed for that by Tripp. She won’t be back on party nights.”

“That’s good. Sweet girl like that has no business dirtying herself up with the likes of us anyhow.”

“What the fuck, Grady?” I turned on my stool and pierced him with a deadly stare. “You trying to say she’s too good for me?”

Grady laughed in response. “Boy, if you ever pulled your head out of your ass long enough to get some fucking oxygen to your brain, you’d see that you’re too good for the likes of her. She’s using you as a way to rebel against that cage those rich bitches find themselves living in.”

“Tell me how you really feel,” I muttered and pulled on another swig of my beer.

“Boy, that ain’t how I feel, it’s just the truth of the matter.”

“Okay, why the fuck are you so Goddamn giddy about me bringing her to the cookout then?”

Grady just grinned at me. “Just waiting for you to fuck things up all over again. It’s what you do best. I’m beginning to think we gave you the wrong road name.” Grady laughed at himself. “Should have called you First Class.”

“What the fuck, Grady?”

“As in First Class Fuck Up!” The loony old bastard laughed himself right off the fucking stool he’d been perched on. I got up and left his ass there since he never bothered to stop laughing.

“First Class Fuck Up,” I grumbled while walking away from him.

“You think she’s really coming back?” Breakneck asked Trench.

“What’s up, Mike?” I called to Trench as I tipped my head in his direction.

“Why do you insist on calling by my given name, asshole?”

“Don’t like the way you earned the one you have since I had that job first,” I told him honestly. He’d been given the road name, Trench, because Prez and the VP told him he earned his patch in the trenches, keeping up with all the places that Star had run off to in that first year. He’d spent his entire prospecting period chasing her from Colorado to Arizona, California, on up Oregon and Washington, then over to Idaho, Montana, and Wyoming before she ended up at Sturgis the year that we truly lost her. He should probably be lucky they didn’t stick him with the road name, Map. It had been tossed around for a minute before they gave him Trench instead.

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