So why was he back in Knoxville, then? He could fool himself all he wanted, blame it on the power shift in Tennessee, say that he was needed, act like his presence at the mother chapter would somehow strengthen the club as a whole. He could even blame it on his love of this college town, so different from the murky, French depths of his birthplace.
But none of that was the real driving force. He knew that as he stood in the parking lot and watched Ava Teague climb into her truck with her new boyfriend in tow. She hadn’t glanced his way once, but he’d looked his fill, from behind the dark lenses of his shades.
She’d always been long-limbed; rangy as a colt as a girl, with that little bit of gangly awkwardness that hadn’t gone away until sometime around her seventeenth birthday. That last, important birthday before things had changed irrevocably. She was still leggy, still had those slender, graceful arms, but she was all grown up now, filled out in all the right places, rooted solidly in her body; she owned it now, her bones and beautiful skin and the waving sheets of mahogany hair that flapped over her shoulders as she walked into the breeze. The sight of her sweetheart face, her long lashes, little nose and lush mouth still pulled at his gaze, a magnet, feminine and gentle, soft ivory curves of cheeks and chin and smooth forehead. Her body, when she walked, worked itself into sinuous, artful shapes. She might have taken up ballet, if she’d been born into a different family.
Mercy had sensed the change in her, though, even from across the parking lot. Gone were the ripped jeans and Converse sneakers of her teenage years, the old leather jacket that used to smell like his cologne the way she always wanted to be tucked up under his arm. She wore a sunny yellow skirt she wouldn’t have been caught dead in a few years ago, her sandals feminine and pretty – but so unlike her. She looked, now, like the sort of girl who needed those around to her tosee heras a girl.I never needed that, he thought. He could look at her plump tits and her tight calves and appreciate the swing of her skirt, and still wish she was in jeans and one of her brother’s old t-shirts. Still wish she was the same Ava who’d cried with unabashed fervor the night he’d walked away from her.
The girl he watched start her truck and leave the lot was a whole new girl from the one he’d known – a woman. A woman who’d had a story published in an online magazine, a crumpled, well-worn copy of which he carried inside his duffel bag. He’d read her story – the words she’d formed in her little head and typed out on her computer – hundreds of times, one reading right after the next, feeling that this glimpse inside her mind was a way of being close to her again. He didn’t pretend that the man in her story wasn’t him. She could change the hair color and the accent, the height and the bad fashion choices, but she couldn’t disguise that lingering hurt in her heart – that was all him. And she’d poured it into her writing.
That’s what he’d thought, at least, up until just a few moments ago, when he’d laid eyes on her again. After seeing her posh boyfriend, he wasn’t so sure. Maybe she’d found a bandage for her wound after all. Maybe she hadn’t squirmed inside, merely passing by him, the way he had for her.
If he was smart, he wouldn’t bother to pursue the idea further.
Good thing for him, he’d never been too bright.
“Merc.”
He snapped back to the present, heat moving beneath his skin to be caught drifting off into his thoughts, guilty to be standing in front of Ava’s brother while he was reminiscing about her.
He shoved his hands in his back pockets and focused on Aidan; Aidan, like everyone, was a glance down from his full height. Mercy forced a smile across his lips, something vague and benign, something that wouldn’t give away his memories. “What?”
Aidan had this habit of hiding his true expression behind a semi-permanent smirk, one corner of his mouth plucked up like he was always pleased with himself. He had dark, hard to read eyes. Now, his smile could have been genuine, or it could have been assessing. He stared up into Mercy’s face. “I asked if you wanna head with us over to the Bell Bar. Mags and the girls are gonna be a while decorating and shit, and if we stick around, we’ll just catch a buncha shit.”
“You think you won’t catch shit if you leave?” Maggie’s voice pierced their male bubble. The rubber soles of her Frye boots hadn’t made a sound across the pavement, and she stood behind them, hands on her hips, five-feet-four-inches of don’t-fuck-with-me, as beautiful and blonde as always. Ava may have had her father’s dark hair and eyes, but her looks were straight Maggie.
Aidan grinned and gestured toward the clubhouse she’d just come from. “You’ve got fifteen hangarounds in there wanting to kiss ass. They’d do your nails if you asked them to.”
Maggie pretended to inspect her red fingernails. “I could use a third coat.” Then she looked back at Aidan. “But I don’t want you guys being late. I want everyone in the room when James walks in.”
Aidan probably rolled his eyes behind his shades, but he nodded and said, “Yes, ma’am.”
Then Maggie’s hazel gaze swung over and up, and latched onto Mercy, and he wanted to squirm all over again. He didn’t – Jesus, how unmanly – but as he met her eyes unflinching, he felt the old dull flutter in the pit of his stomach, like back when Ava was seventeen and Maggie was keener than any mother had a right to be.
“Mercy,” she greeted, her tone unfathomable. “Good to see you.”
He ducked his head. “Mags.”
She studied him a moment; he felt the weight of her gaze, sensed the urge in her to say a whole tirade of things. Instead, she said, “Ghost is looking for you. He’s around here somewhere.” And she left them with a little wave and walked back to the clubhouse with a straight, strong back and sure steps. Maggie had never once struggled to find her place within the club. Her husband adored her, and she knew it; with that boosting her natural confidence, she’d become a central matriarchal figure, stronger even than Bonita. It seemed only fitting that as Ghost became the new president, Maggie would finally take her rightful place as queen of the MC.
Ava didn’t know it yet, but she had that same steel in her.
“Bell?” Aidan prompted.
“Dude,” Tango said, “you’ve gotta see the new bartenders they’ve got in there. I mean–” He formed an hourglass with his hands and whistled.
That would be a smart move: throw a few back, find something warm and curvy to warm his lap, see if she felt like coming to an outlaw MC party with him (most bartenders did). But he shook his head. “Nah. I better find your old man,” he told Aidan. “See what he wants before tonight.”
Aidan nodded. “Suit yourself.”
Mercy’s NOLA brothers, Grady and Matt, went with Aidan and Tango, Bell Bar-bound. Mercy struck off across the massive Dartmoor property, in search of the man he hoped would be his new president.
Dartmoor, owned by the club financially, and Ghost personally, had begun as a weedy patch of dirt along the river, and ended up a shining beacon of MC enterprise. London transplant Walsh, a scrupulous money man, had helped boost marketing efforts about ten years ago, and Dartmoor thrived, an industrial complex worthy of the road on which it sat.
In buildings of corrugated steel, all clean and sparkling, were a bike repair shop, an auto-body garage, a self-storage company, a truck rental company, and a nursery that sold live plants, seed, mulch, and outdoor hardscape materials. The clubhouse sat at the far end, with a gate they closed at night to separate it from the retail spaces. The whole property was cordoned off with chain link and barbed wire, a massive sign planted on the east end that could be seen from boats on the river and cars on the interstate. Walsh was trying to talk the officers into setting up a boat storage garage, and putting a launch out into the water, on club property. That was Walsh – always pushing for business expansion, pushing in no way when it came to anything personal.
It had been a long time since Mercy had enjoyed this walk in the daylight, breathing in the scents of river and warm pavement. The sun beat down gently, lovingly, heating his skin in a pleasant way. He’d always loved Tennessee, how forgiving and temperate it was. No quicksand, no snakes, no gators. No bizarre banshee screams in the night. No blood. No horror.
Just the havoc he’d wreaked.
