**
It was educational, her first full week of suspension. After that Saturday night in his apartment, Mercy dropped the guilty-adult act; it was too fresh and too on-fire to pretend they could go without. So they worked out a routine, making use of his lunch breaks, Ava taking time off from Green Hills and using the mornings and late afternoons to complete her school work.
When she could concentrate.
She practiced with her makeup and she over-glossed her lips. One morning, she spent an hour trying to curl her hair just-so with her mom’s hot rollers. It made her feel childish and stupid, all of it…right up until the moment Mercy knocked on the back door each day.
He was patient with her.
One day he pulled her astride him, and guided her with his hands on her hips, showed her how to ride him. Another, he rolled her onto her side and fitted against her back, entered her from behind and took her with aching slowness, until she asked for more. And another, he showered with her afterward, until the shower became pointless and she was convinced she was sweating under the onslaught of pounding water.
Friday afternoon, Ava propped up on her elbows, on her stomach, and tossed her hair over her back, glancing over at Mercy beside her. He was on his back, staring up at the ceiling, smoking, the cigarette bringing a new depth to the familiarity of her room. Dad and Aidan smoked in the house, when Maggie let them, but never in her room. Mercy smoking in her bed, tapping ash into an empty Coke can on the nightstand, felt intimate in ways that sex wasn’t, a new layer of closeness, people cohabitating.
He felt her watching him. Without glancing over, he said, “I thought I wore you out.”
Ava grinned. “Oh, definitely.” She was floating in the languid fields of pre-sleep, exhausted in a melted, happy way. “But I’m wondering something.”
His brows twitched as his eyes slid over. “Has anything good ever happened after someone said that?”
She rolled her eyes and ignored him. “How–” The question was harder to say than she wanted it to be. She felt that note of fear, the worry that giving voice to her thoughts would shatter this illusion they’d built over the past week. But that’s what it was: an illusion. And she and Mercy, that was real. That deserved better than stolen moments. She took a deep breath. “How are we going to keep doing this?”
His face stayed blank. “This?”
She reached down and laid her hand against his chest, the smooth bare swell of one pectoral, rubbing soft circles with her thumb. “Merc,” she said, a plea for some understanding.
His face changed, lines pressing between his eyes and around his mouth as he dropped the clueless routine. “I don’t know,” he said. “Thirteen years is a big gap when I’m me and you’re you.”
She sighed. “I know. Everyone’s going to think…”
“Yeah.”
“But they don’tget it.”
He twitched a smile, his eyes soft and warm, his face full of that sweetness he only gave to her. “No,fillette, they don’t.”
A lump formed in her throat. “Okay, so…we’ll just have to keep things quiet, until I’m old enough. When will that be? Eighteen? Twenty?”
But Mercy was shaking his head.
Ava felt her stomach sink; he was right: they couldn’t put a number on it. For the club, her father, it wasn’t about the age as much as it was the circumstances. There were too many memories of Ava perched on Mercy’s knee. The coloring book pages and barrettes and all that growing up she’d done under his guidance. Relationships didn’t take on new dimensions like this, not according to the rest of the world. Ava would never be able to convince everyone that this thing with her and Mercy – it was destiny. It was unavoidable. It wasright.
“But what do wedo?” she whispered, feeling a retreat into the childhood part of her, wanting to cry.
Mercy slid an arm beneath her belly and around her waist, pulled her over onto his chest like she was a little doll and tucked her head in under his chin. “We don’t worry about it, okay?” He stroked her hair. “I’ll do whatever you want me to, sweetheart, to make it better, but just don’t get ahead of yourself.”
Her hand was against his throat; she brushed her fingertips across the strong, stubbly underside of his jaw, found a little scar that she traced with a nail. “Will you just lay here with me for a minute?” she whispered.
“Always,petite amie. Always.”
Sunday came, and with it, one of Bonita’s big biker family dinners.
The old ladies had a tradition of hosting meals in turns, first one, then the next, and so on, everyone taking a hand at hostess duty. Everyone was invited, wives and girlfriends only, no Lean Bitches, thank you very much. Afamilydinner, as was always stressed, babies-in-diapers included.
It was being held at Bonita’s this time, at the James’ spacious ranch done up in bright Mexican colors, and the fare was authentic, as was always the case with Bonita. She’d made mole sauce for the chicken, and its rich scent filled the orange-painted room.
Ava stood at the island, chopping veggies for the salad, smack dab in the middle of the action, feeling like everyone could see the hand-shaped bruises on her hips through her clothes, half-terrified someone would ask her what she’d been up to. She wasn’t naïve enough to think anyone would be supportive of her afternoons with Mercy. She wasn’t just some mistake one of the boys had made; she was family, had grown up in this club, and still very much a child in all their eyes. They’d all hit the roof if they found out what she’d been doing. She felt no shame herself, but she wasn’t ready for the shame they’d rain down on her.
“I told Charity,” Nell was saying as Ava forced herself to sync up with the conversation, “that she could move back in with us. Just till she gets back on her feet. But would she have any of that? ‘Course not. God forbid the lawyers find out she’s living with her father again; Dustin would have the kids taken away like that.” Snap of her fingers.
