Page 57 of Diary of a Biker Queen

Chaos cleared his throat loudly from the kitchen. Which was clearly a warning to me to not spill every detail about what the guys were doing up in the clubhouse at night when the two teenage girls had clearly been sheltered from all the deviant behavior up there.

“Jax has a crush too,” Issy announced with a laugh.

“Oh God, please don’t let it be on Herb,” Kara muttered from where she eavesdropped in the kitchen, though it was loud enough for all of us to hear.

Jax rolled her eyes. “It’s not Herb, Kara! Relax!”

Kara and Chaos gave up pretending they weren’t listening and joined us in the living room. I hid a laugh at Chaos’s expression. He was clearly none too thrilled about his teenage charge having a crush on a biker. Though really, when the kid was homeschooled within the gates of a biker compound, what exactly did he expect?

“Who?” he asked her.

Jax sighed dramatically, as only a teenager could. “Don’t start.”

He held his hands up in two stop motions. “Hey, just be glad I’m not Hawk.”

Jax rolled her eyes. “He’s already told me I can’t date until I’m thirty.”

“Sounds like sound advice to me,” I threw in.

Both girls gave me a dirty look.

“What? I’m serious. Men are trash!”

Issy made a face at me. “You’re a man.”

“My point still stands!”

Both girls laughed, and even Kara’s lips twitched.

She perched on the armrest of the couch and stared at the little sister she was raising after they’d rescued her from the cult she and Kara had grown up in. “Okay, so if it’s not Herb, then who?”

Jax went pink in the cheeks. “Kyle.”

I couldn’t even remember which one Kyle was, but Kara nodded. Then winced.

“Honey, I think he has something going on with Kiki though.”

Jax nodded. “I know. But I can’t help it. He’s so nice. And cute.”

“And too old for you,” Chaos mumbled.

I nudged Isabella. “What about you? You like this Kyle guy too?”

She shook her head fast. “Oh my God, no. He’s all Jax’s. I like Chirp.”

I scrubbed a hand over my face but tried to take a leaf out of Kara’s parenting book and nodded. “Okay.”

She raised an eyebrow. “Okay? You aren’t going to give me a lecture about how he’s too old for me? Or about how he’s a thug biker or something?”

I looked at her gently. “I trust you. If you think you’re ready for a relationship like that, and he likes you in the same way, then how I feel about it is irrelevant.”

It was not what I would have said to a regular sixteen-year-old girl. Deep in my gut, I wanted to tell her he was too old for her and she had her whole life ahead of her to date.

But Isabella was not a normal teenager. She’d had to grow up so damn fast when my father had married her off to one of his friends. There was no turning that back. All I could do now for her was give her the respect she’d already earned the hard way.

Is shrugged. “I’m not. I don’t want a boyfriend.” She glanced over at Chaos. “Don’t worry, Jax doesn’t either. We’re just looking for fun. From a distance.”

Me, Kara, and Chaos all seemed to relax in unison at that. Because the two girls, who’d both been through more than anyone should, were suddenly sounding age appropriate. It would have been so easy for them to go completely off the rails, to throw themselves into drugs or underage sex or worse. They could have railed against us as their parental figures and been sneaking out at night, getting drunk and slipping into the bedrooms of bikers who were too old for them.