AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Even though I know better.
NINE
Dion
I’m back in Birmingham for the night on this cold winter day. I plan on going back to Atlanta tomorrow morning. Rebellion has been busy, so I’ve been texting her off and on. Whenever I get a message from her, I don’t respond too quickly. I don’t want her to think I’m overly attached, but the bottom line is that I actually like her. I can’t get too comfortable with her because, at some point, this undercover operation is going to blow up in my face, or I’m going to walk away and never look back.
I’ll stay undercover for however long I need to. Whatever the club needs, I’ll do, but I get the feeling that Rebellion isn’t her father’s biggest fan. If anything, I think she’s the black sheep of his family, and he’s not what he ever wanted her to be. From what I’ve seen, the name Rebellion is fitting for her personality, and I can almost guarantee that she’s rebellious when it comes to her father. The way he was looking at her at the Mardi Gras party really got me thinking. He wasn’t looking at her in the way a father would to a child. He looked at her like he despised her, like she was a bug at the bottom of his shoe that he couldn’t quite kill.
I pull my truck into the club’s parking lot and park a few spaces away from the clubhouse doors. All I brought with me was a small duffel bag with enough clothes for the night, and I actually had my cut on today. I haven’t been able to wear it for obvious reasons, and damn, it feels good to be home.
I get out of the truck with my duffel bag in hand and head for the front door. As I’m preparing to head inside, Ares comes out through the front. He’s storming through, actually. His nostrils are flaring, and he looks furious. “You good, man?” I’m trying to be as genuine as I can, but the way he glares makes me wish I never even bothered to ask.
“What’s it to you? Not like you actually give a fuck.” Ares walked off as quickly as he approached and headed for his bike, which was surprisingly a few spaces away from my truck. He usually has it in the garage, so maybe he just came in. Within a few moments, he’s starting up his bike and is peeling out of the club’s parking lot. Whatever, not my fucking circus.
I walk inside the club, and Hades is shaking his head. Something’s obviously aggravated Ares, but it’s not my job to pry. Whatever it is, I’m sure he’ll deal with it in his own time. Now that I’m back in Birmingham, I at least want to enjoy my time while I’m here.
“Aren’t you gonna ask what that was about?” Poseidon chuckles obviously amused by whatever in the hell just happened.
“No, not really. It’s not my business.” I don’t need to know everything going on in my brothers’ lives. We all deserve some aspect of privacy, and whatever just happened pissed Ares off like no other.
Amira turns around from one of the couches and leans her arm along the back of it. For a few seconds, she’s quiet, and then she’s rattling off exactly what happened. “It’s juicy, so I’ll fill you in. Ares knocked up some random woman, and she just texted him to let him know she was pregnant. He’s going out to meet her for coffee and talk about it. He kept going on and on about how he used condoms and how it wasn’t possible. I asked him if he was the one who provided the condom, and he said no. So, she obviously had one on her, but who knows if it was old or if she poked holes in it. You know?”
Damn, that sounds like quite the clusterfuck right there. Some women are deceptive like that and do things to get themselves pregnant. It might not be the case with this woman, though. Maybe the condom malfunctioned, and she just happened to get knocked up. Until Ares knows anything, he should probably give her the benefit of the doubt. “I’m sure Ares will get it figured out.”
I walk further into the clubhouse, and Amira continues talking. “Can you imagine if she is actually pregnant and if Ares has this baby with her?”
“I mean, he won’t be the one having the baby . . . so no.”
Amira rolls her eyes at me and grumbles under her breath. “I mean, if Ares actually gets with the girl. He might be Mr. Broody and all that, but what I’ve noticed is that he’s a pretty stand-up guy when it comes to important shit. If this baby is his, I know he’s going to end up doing the right thing, which might even include standing by her.”
As much as I want to agree with my sister on the latter, I can’t. “Amira, you’re new to club life, so I’ll run this down for you. Bikers knock up women all the time. Some do right by the woman, yeah, but others don’t even try. A good portion of them always do right by their children, but that’s about the extent of it. A lot of the time, the women we end up knocking up aren’t anything special. They’re whores, women who just want to go from club member to club member, just to say they fucked us.”
Amira pulls her head back. “What?” My sisters grew up in another state completely, outside of club life. They only recently became reunited with my father and the club. It’s a long ass story, but the bottom line is my dad fucked up and pushed them—and their mother—away because a rival MC leader had an active hit on them. The MC Prez was having people follow them to their daycare, and my father ended up finding out through a friend of his, who was the President for the Reapers Rejects MC, that there was a hit placed on them. The President’s sister, Roxy, was married to the MC Prez, going after my sisters. While I won’t say the intimidation worked, I’d say my father realized pushing them away for a while was the best thing to do for their safety. He didn’t push them away because he didn’t care. He did it because he cared so much that he couldn’t handle them getting hurt.
“Yeah, this life . . . sometimes it attracts different types of people.” I don’t know how else to say it, so I’m just being honest with her.
“Wow, I never thought about it like that.” Amira wouldn’t really have any reason to. She’s still learning what this life means and how it rolls. Her mother recently passed away, and while our sister Calli lives in Birmingham now and is shacked up with Eros, one of my other club brothers, I’m curious to see what happens over the years with Amira. I don’t know if she’ll be as dedicated to the club as Calli is or if she’ll try to keep some space between her personal life and everything the club entails.
“Yeah, I’m gonna head up to my room. I’ll come back down in a bit,” I say, and Amira nods as I walk off. I head up the stairs and round the corner to see Apollo leaning against the wall, texting on his phone.
He glances up for a split second. “Well, look what the cat dragged in. How long are you back for?”
“Just the night, then I’m heading back to Atlanta.”
“Cool, then we need to make tonight memorable, huh?” There’s a playful tone in his voice, one that tells me there’s going to be a rager tonight. Being away from the clubhouse has been different. At the apartment, things are so quiet, whereas I’m used to coming downstairs and shooting some pool with the guys or having a beer with them. This undercover assignment has been really different. A lot more different than I ever thought.
“We sure do,” I comment and walk to my room. I insert my key and unlock the door. As I walk into my bedroom, I realize how lucky I am. My bedroom is the last one over on the left-hand side, and I somehow have taller ceilings than the rest of my brothers do. My walls are painted a lighter version of a cement gray, and I have two windows. One is on the left side of my bed and isn’t overly large. It’s not even the size of a normal window, but it still gives me a little extra light. The other is a full-sized window on the back of the clubhouse wall.
My queen bed sits on the left, and I have two old black-stained tree stumps as my light stands. They don’t have any drawers or storage like other ones do, but they look pretty damn cool if you ask me.
Across from my bed is my tall dresser, and then I have my ensuite bathroom on the left and a decent-sized closet on the right. I have a fifty-inch flatscreen tv that hangs above my dresser for those nights when I don’t really feel like doing shit, and there’s an armchair next to the dresser. I put my duffel bag on the armchair and then head back over to the bed. I lay flat on the bed and as soon as I did my phone’s ringing. Fuck, I can’t even get one minute to settle back in here.
I grab my phone from my pocket and answer it, not even bothering to look and see who it is. It might be Rebellion. It might be my father. Hell, it might even be a robocall about getting solar panels.
“Hello,” I say into the phone.
For a moment, things are quiet, but it doesn’t stay that way for too long. “Leon,” a shaky voice says on the other end of the line.
