“Be safe. We’re here if you ever need a soft place to land, sweetheart. No questions asked.” He smiled, gave me one more hug, and whispered in my ear. “Not that you’ll need it. I have no doubt you’re going to kick ass, take names, and make a whole new family of friends out of your fellow soldiers. Love you like one of my own, sweet girl. Never forget that you matter to someone - to us.”
“I couldn’t possibly,” I murmured back as Sgt. Mayfair came around and shook Mr. Davis’s hand.
“You have the best one there. See that she’s successful out there,” he told my recruiter.
“I have no doubt. She blew her ASVAB scores away. Could have picked any job.” The man actually rolled his eyes because I had chosen 92G - Culinary Specialist as my MOS - Military Occupation Specialty. He hadn’t agreed that it was the best use of someone with my scores, but I didn’t care. Mr. Davis grinned at him before he devolved into a lighthearted, knowing chuckle. I could be stubborn when it mattered and he knew it. “She’ll dazzle us all with her skills one day. Don’t doubt her because she chose a career you look down on now.”
Sgt. Mayfair tipped his chin up at Mr. Davis and then walked back to the driver’s side of the car. “You ready to head out to your new future?”
I wanted to thank Mr. Davis for believing in me, but the words were stuck in my throat. Before I knew it, I was tucked into Mayfair’s car without even knowing how I managed to get there. Not long after that I was stuffed onto a bus and then transferred to a plane - my first flight ever. After that it was onto another bus with a bunch of other recruits and as the day turned to dusk drill sergeants jumped on the bus and started screaming at us to get the hell off their bus. Some of the people I’d traveled part of the way with looked absolutely shell-shocked and outof their depth. I simply felt numb and like everything was happening to someone else while I watched from the sidelines.
My life was about to change. I hoped it was for the better and that I’d make friends along the way - real ones this time.
If not, I was doing this for me. It was a chance to grow, become more confident in myself, and work toward paying for my own education so I wouldn’t owe anyone a damn thing. Not a thank you, a fuck you, or a farewell. I would never give more of myself than I got back. Never again.
7.A NEW KING
KNUCKLES
It had beensix months since I’d seen Cassidy or my best friend, Jasper. I knew he was probably at the midway point in his prospecting period for the Kings of Anarchy MC. That was why I was there. It felt almost wrong to go to the Kings with my problems considering my former best friend was already working on becoming one of them. He wasn’t a member yet, so I knew his word wouldn’t carry much weight. Still, I wasn’t sure if he would welcome me in or ask them not to take me. If they refused, then my grandparents would lose their home along with the every fucking acre of ranch land they once owned.
My father, being the bastard he was, pulled up stakes and hauled ass out of town when his creditors started to crawl out of the woodwork and demand their loans be paid back.
Christmas was a week away. It was a shitty time to ask anyone for anything, especially when you were unsure of the reception you might receive. My grandfather’s hand stilled me before we walked through the door of the clubhouse. “Virginia and I will be just fine. She has her own private accounts, funds her parents left for her that she never touched. You don’t have to do this.”
“I do. It was my father who fucked it all up for you.”
“For you, too. The ranch would have gone to you next.”
I laughed. “If you think that asshole would have turned the ranch over to me and not one of the other boys, you’ve sadly overestimated your own son’s worth.”
“You’re right. He would have never signed it over to you willingly. That’s why he never owned the rights to any of the land. He managed it.”
“Did he?” I asked.
“Well,” Grandpa chuckled. “He managed it into the ground, but still he never had ownership in the land handed to him. There were reasons for that beyond my doubts about his ability to run things.”
I shook my head. “Don’t know why you ever trusted him to begin with.”
“I thought, we both thought we were doing the right thing for him and you. We were wrong.” He stood in front of me so I couldn’t walk through the door. “You do not have to make this deal.”
“I do and we both know it. Besides, what else do I have? If the ranch is gone completely, I’m out of a job, too. That won’t make my wife very happy and that’s already a hard enough job since she lost the baby.”
“Damn shame about that,” he acknowledged. He never wanted to me on the hook for Simone, but the man would have loved any grandchildren he got out of the mix, even if he pretended to tolerate their mother.
We had the talk about how I was off the hook now that there wasn’t a baby. I couldn’t allow myself to take that out. I had made my fucking bed and I would die trying to keep our marriage together. I blew up my friendship with my best friend and lost the woman I always wanted in order to protect Simone and my baby. Jasper and Cassidy were both out of my life now, so all of this had to be worth it. I had to make a real go of mymarriage with Simone or it was all for nothing and I couldn’t live with that.
“Are you going in or standing around having a family meeting in front of our clubhouse doors?”
I turned to see a biker there. He was a few years older and familiar. We had gone riding with him before along with the president’s son. “Patrick,” I said as I held my hand out.
“It’s Baffle when you’re here on club business, man.”
“Right. Sorry,” I apologized. Shit, not even a minute in and I had already insulted a member.
“Don’t look so grim, asshole. You need to convince people that you’ll be an asset to the club and you already have one thing going against you.”
“What’s that?”
