The bass pulsed like a musical heart beat beneath my bare feet as I stomped them to the rhythm of the Kygo song that blasted through the massive speakers set up throughout the main level of the house. There was a red Solo cup in my hand filled with warm beer Reece had tapped from a massive keg of Blue Buck in the corner and the contents sloshed over my fingers as I tossed my sweaty hair back and forth over my exposed shoulders. I’d already had a few cups of beer as well as two shots of vodka that Lila, Hudson and Reece had poured for me to start the evening off.
Reece was right, I liked Lila and she liked me.
She was three years older than us and back from UBC for summer break. I’d never met such a graceful, willowy woman but her classic beauty and the good humor in her huge hazel eyes enthralled me. She had me laughing before I could remember to be awkward and when she had offered me clothes, she’d only laughed a little bit at the absurd fit of the jean skirt and crop top I’d tried on. Lila was maybe five foot four and one hundred and ten pounds soaking wet. I was five foot nine and curvy.
After we’d both had a good laugh, we’d improvised. Now, I wore the fragile camisole that I’d been wearing under my shift and a stretchy black skirt that on Lila went to just below her knees but on me came up to mid-thigh. I wasn’t wearing shoes because my sensible, low heels were not party shoes. Lila had done my makeup, taking the time to teach me how so that I could do it in the future.
I didn’t know when I’d have the opportunity to wear red lipstick ever again but it looked pretty cool with all the blond hair I had, mussed with a bit of styling goop that smelled like coconuts. When I’d come downstairs to join Reece and his friend Hudson in the kitchen both of their mouths had fallen open like the hinges broke.
When the rest of Entrance Bay Acad—and it really seemed like the entire school minus my squad of preppy kids was there—showed up, they had similar reactions to my presence. Shock, awe and finally, laughter. Apparently, it was amusing to see Little Miss Goody Two-Shoes dressed like a teenage tramp, drinking warm beer and grinding up against the masses. I wasn’t insulted because sometimes I was so saccharine that it made even my teeth ache and because it was pretty funny and became funnier as the night grew long and I grew drunk.
The sun had set a long time ago but the air was still warm so a bunch of us were hanging in Hudson and Lila’s backyard. Reece, true to his word, hadn’t left my side all night and he made sure we always had booze. He was super handsome and actually pretty fun, always telling jokes and sharing stories so as the night wore on and he grew closer, a hand on my shoulder then an arm around my waist with his fingers settling intimately over my hip, I didn’t protest.
For the first time ever, I was having fun.
He brushed my hair over one shoulder and leaned into my neck, his breath hot on my exposed skin as he whispered, “Want to go inside, find a little quiet?”
I wasn’t really surprised by his question. I wasn’t totally naive.
Part of me didn’t want to go with him. I liked Reece but in the easy way of friends and partners-in-crime. I didn’t think I wanted his tongue in my mouth, let alone his hand down my pants. But I told myself I was being snobby and a little unreasonable. I’d never had a tongue in my mouth or a hand down my pants, so how could I know that I wouldn’t like his?
The answer was, I couldn’t.
I’d loved one person in my life thus far and I’d only ever seen him twice. What was I going to do? Cling to the idea of my childhood prison pen pal for the rest of my life? Pine after someone who didn’t want me and, I was fairly sure, wouldn’t be good for me even if he did?
No. Absolutely not.
So, reaching my drunken conclusion, I answered him by grabbing his hand and tugging him inside.
I saw Lila watching with a concerned frown and even Hudson looked a little wary, but I smiled sloppily at them in reassurance as Reece took the lead, ushering me inside and up the stairs to an empty bedroom.
As soon as the door was closed, he was on me.
The tongue that I’d been curious about was in my mouth and it tasted like yeast and hops. It was warm and slick, ickier than I’d expected as it thrust between my lips and ran over my teeth.
His hands though, I liked. One pressed between my shoulders so that I was tight against him and the other trailed down my back so that he cupped my butt. It felt good to have his large, hot hands on me. Even better to feel his response to my body in the groan that worked its way into my mouth from his. I could definitely get used to a man’s hands on me.
Slut, the conservative Louise cried.
The new me, an entirely new person without a name or family, without a care in the entire world but for what pleased her in that very moment, grinned at the name calling and kissed Reece back.
He had me pressed to the bed, his long body on mine and his hands under my shirt, palming and squeezing both of my breasts with unabashed fervor when the nausea hit me smack in the middle of my gut.
“Oh, no,” I mumbled against Reece’s lips.
He hesitated, pulling away slightly to ask, “You okay, sweetheart?”
I was scrambling away from him before he had even finished speaking but I only made it to the edge of the bed before I was throwing up.
“Shit,” I heard him curse over the sounds of my ceaseless vomiting.
I was mortified but so sick that my entire body ached with it. Belatedly, I realized that drinking was a terrible idea. Even though I’d just been diagnosed and hadn’t started any treatment yet, my body was worn down and I’d never been intoxicated before.
On the heels of my embarrassment, self-loathing came snapping.
“Idiot,” I managed to breathe between heaves.
“Okay, wait right here. I’m going to get Lila,” Reece said.
I groaned and he must have taken it as confirmation because he ducked out the door.
A minute or two later, I was puked out.
I lay there panting for what felt like ages but must have been only a few minutes because Reece didn’t return. My stomach had settled but I was still drunk as a skunk and probably just as stinky so I decided to head back outside to get some fresh air. My legs were surprisingly steady as they carried me down the crowded stairwell, past my peers who smiled and called to me with caution, maybe worried that I was a tattle-tale or that I was just a good girl playing bad. I ignored them, pushing through the front door and gulping in deep lungfuls of clean air.
There was nothing like the air on the coast of British Columbia. I’d been on a lot of family vacations across the globe and there was nothing as sweet as the air I breathed in after getting off the plane when I was back home.
I closed my eyes, leaning against the wall beside the door so I could figure myself out. There was still a heavy tread to my thoughts like they waded through thigh high swamp water but the urge to be sick had retreated.
I was almost asleep against the side of the house when the low rumble of approaching motorcycles roused me.
In Entrance, that thunderous growl was not uncommon. The Fallen MC had been a staple of the town almost since the MC was founded in 1960. I’d grown up seeing the leather-clad bikers swarm the streets in rigid formation on the backs of great metal beasts, their hair long, their beards wild and their skin covered in permanent art. I’d always watched them with a strange kind of envy because I’d never seen anything as free as those men seemed to be, riding off as a brotherhood into the sunset.
After the shooting, I’d watched for them wherever I went, desperate to catch sight of Zeus, even when I knew he was in prison but especially after I knew he got out. I didn’t know if he was a part of the infamous gang because he had never answered my questions about his involvement that day at First Light Church and my memory was too hazy to recall if he’d been wearing the cut of The Fallen.
I deeply suspected he was a part of the rebel group and it thrilled me each time I heard the rumble of a bike, thinking that I might finally, after nearly ten years, see him again.
The thunder grew so close that I struggled to sit up from the wall and open my leaden eyes wider. Seconds later, three yellow-lighted bikes swung around the corner and slowly rolled down the street.
My eyes were riveted on the scene and I suddenly hated myself for getting drunk for the first time in my life because, though my traitorous eyes could have been deceiving me, I was certain that the powerful figure at the head of the trio was my guardian monster.
I watched, my heavy eyelids peeled back wide but I would have taped them wider if I could have. I didn’t want to miss a second.
I shot to my feet to say something or, maybe, to run to him but the effort was too much for my alcohol-muddled brain and I promptly passed out.
“What the fuck?” Zeus was growling somewhere very close to me.
I blinked as I came to, but my vision refused to clear so I lay still and focused on not throwing up again instead.
“She was letting loose, man. It’s not a big deal. Everyone gets like this before they understand their limits,” Reece responded.
Even from within the fog of my inebriation, I knew that was not a good thing to say to Zeus.
I was proven right when the wall I was lying against grew impossibly harder and I realized, as arms tightened brutally around me, that he was holding me against him.
“You brought her here, yeah? To party and get in her pants?” Zeus asked, deceptively casual.
There was a long pause.
Zeus took one step forward.
“Yes, yes, okay? So what?” Reece asked nervously.
“So, you got a girl with you, a girl you want a piece of and you let her get fuckin’ wasted like this? There are two types of men who do that shit. One, the pigs that need to get a woman drunk to stick their dicks in ’em willing or not. Two, the jackasses like you who don’t give a shit about ’em till your dick gets hard and you can use ’em to get off on or in. Which one are you?”
Wow. I blinked again and finally my vision cleared. I stared at the steep edge of Zeus’s bearded jaw and decided it was time for me to step in.
“Zeus, he didn’t mean any harm.”
He stiffened even more and cut his burning gaze down to me for one horrible moment. “I’ll deal with you later.”
Um, what?
“What?” I asked, confounded by his fury.
This was the first time I’d seen him since I was seven years old and this was how he was going to talk to me?
Then again, it was the first time I’d seen him in a decade and this was how I was going to see him, drunk, dumb and seriously disgusting.
The inebriated side of my mind chose to point out that at least I was in his arms which was nice.
More than nice.
So my drunk mind won out and I curled closer into his marble slab of a chest, my fingers pushing past the edge of his leather vest so I could rest my palm over his heart.
I could feel the breath stutter for a moment in his chest before he recovered and it made me smile.
“I’m not either of those guys. I did her a favour, man. You obviously don’t get this but Louise is fucking repressed and she needed to let go. I helped her do that. Though why the fuck you of all people care is beyond me,” Reece said.
He had bigger balls than I’d originally credited him with or he had a death wish.
“In fact,” Reece went on, proving that he must indeed have a death wish, “I should be defending her from you.”
A low, menacing growl thundered through Zeus’s chest. I peeled open my sticky eyelids to see Reece step back in fear at the look on my biker man’s face.
“Listen here, you motherfucker. You obviously know who I am, you obviously got no respect for anythin’, but if Lou thinks you’re worth her time then you better prove fuckin’ worthy of it or the entire weight of The Fallen will fall heavy on you, you hear me? I personally will cut off your dick and shove it up your ass if you treat her like anything less than fuckin’ gold. Under-fuckin’-stood?”
Reece blinked at Zeus then looked at me and back to him. I watched his Adam’s apple work as he swallowed painfully and said, “Yeah, Mr. Garro. Understood.”
Zeus nodded curtly then turned on his heel and stormed out of the house. I noticed vaguely that there were no more teenage partygoers. Instead, leather-clad bikers appeared through the open doorway to the kitchen laughing and drinking leftover booze.
“You kicked everyone out?” I asked weakly, safe but curious in his arms.
“Shut the fuck up,” he ordered without looking down at me as we stepped through the front door and made it to his huge motorcycle.
Maneuvering me in his arms so that I was wrapped around his front like a koala bear, he reached for the helmet strapped to the back seat of the bike and plunked it on my head, clipping it closed with one hand. He stared at me with dark, angry eyes for a second before he swung us both over the bike and let go of me to put his hands on the bars.
“Hold on tight and don’t fuckin’ throw up on my bike,” he demanded.
I swallowed and closed my eyes against the misery of my pounding head, twisting stomach and wounded pride. I closed my eyes, held on tight and hoped with every molecule that I would wake up and this would have all been a terrible nightmare. Miserably, I noticed that he smelled like leather, tobacco and some kind of tree, cedar or pine. It was better than any high drink or drugs could give me. His big, hard body was warm against mine as the cold night wind rippled over us as he pulled into the street and I snuggled close to the scent and the warmth.
“I missed you so much,” I murmured, half-asleep and fully drunk.
“Fuckin’ pissed at you for pullin’ this shit, Lou,” he told me over the loud rumble of his bike and the rushing wind.
“I know,” I agreed sleepily. “I’m pissed too. I don’t know if I’ll remember this in the morning and thinking about forgetting the way you smell makes me want to cry.”
“No tears,” he ordered.
“But I’m not alone this time,” I reminded him. “I’ve finally got my guardian monster back.”
Zeus was silent but the level of fury vibrating through his body stilled and I fell asleep listening to the steady thrum of his heart thinking that nothing and no where had ever felt so close to heaven as this.
When I woke up it was in my deeply shadowed room and Zeus was somehow there, dropping me gently into my bed.
“How did we get in here?”
He hesitated pulling the covers over me then shook his head like he couldn’t believe me. “Tell your dad you need better locks.”
Oh.
“How did you know you’d be able to get inside?”
“Lou, shut up. I’m still fuckin’ pissed at you and the less you talk the better. I got some things to say and then I’m leavin’.”
“Okay,” I agreed easily because now that he’d found me, gotten over whatever made him think we couldn’t be together, I knew I wouldn’t lose him again. “Sit down beside me.”
Zeus looked down at me, a muscle clenching in his jaw. “No. I’m tellin’ you what I got to say then I’m leavin’ and Louise, I am not coming back. I’m pissed because I found you tonight drunk outta your fuckin’ mind with a dumbass kid who woulda fucked you without thinkin’ a fuckin’ thing about anythin’ but gettin’ off. You can barely speak, walk or keep your eyes open. You think I wrote to you through the cancer and all that fucked up shit you had to go through as a kid just to see you piss your life away like this? I stayed away so you would stay good. I’m warnin’ you now, you don’t smarten the fuck up, not only will that buy you never seein’ me again but I’ll get in touch with your cunt father and tell him exactly what you’re doin’ and he’ll send you to a fuckin’ nunnery. You get me?”
Somewhere deep in the shroud of my drunkenness, my heart was breaking.
“I don’t want to be Louise Lafayette anymore,” I admitted.
For the first time that night, Zeus softened. I couldn’t see him in the darkness of my curtained room but I could feel his gentling in the air and it made the pain in my chest loosen.
“You can be whoever you want to, Lou. I’m not tellin’ you to be the girl Benjamin fuckin’ Lafayette wants you to be. I’m tellin’ you to be who you want to be, not anyone else and I’m tellin’ you to do it smart, yeah? Right now, you don’t know who you are, what you want or where you’re goin’, your head is stuck so far up your ass.”
“You don’t have a right to talk to me like this,” I whispered brokenly.
“I have every fuckin’ right. As the man who saved your life once, don’t make me save it again,” Zeus ordered then turned on his heel and left.
He left and even though I woke up the next morning with a headache that clanged worse than broken church bells between my temples and a memory filled with holes, I knew Zeus had reentered my life only to tell me he was leaving it for good.
