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Chapter one
Linc
“Fuck,man,I’mbeatto shite,” my best friend and partner in crime says across the sticky diner booth in the middle of bumfuck nowhere.
“I can tell. Your fake British accent gets thicker.” I take a sip of the coffee in front of me, not bad for a diner, and give Jude a teasing wink.
“Fuck you very much, mate. My accent is one hundred percent approved by the queen herself. You’re just upset it lands more birds than that stupid east coast accent you have.”
I roll my eyes. Neither of us has any issues in that department. Being members of the Black Roses MC doesn’t exactly hurt, either.
“Care to make a wager?”
That piques my interest. “Sure. What did you have in mind?”
Jude’s answer is a devious smile as he raises his cup for a refill. The cute waitress who’s been waiting on us comes over with the pot.
“Refill?” the pretty blonde asks.
“Thank you, love,” Jude starts. “Say, my best mate and I are in town for the night and wondering if there’s anything worthwhile we should check out while we’re here.”
The poor girl looks confused as hell while he tries to lay on his British charm. It’s impossible to stop from chuckling at his stupid question. There ain’t shit in this town, which anyone can see.
“Don’t mind my friend, sweetheart. He doesn’t get out much,” I say, saving her from having to answer.
She smiles politely and rubs the small scar above her eyebrow. The movement causes the sleeve of her sweater to move past her wrist. That’s when I spot the bruises around the small bone. I instantly look at Jude, and he notices the same thing I do.
“Thanks for the coffee, Charlie,” I say, reading her name tag. “I’m Linc, and this is my idiot friend, Jude.”
She lets out a small giggle. This girl, who can’t be more than eighteen or nineteen max, doesn’t need to be the prize in a stupid bet with Jude. She needs someone to care about what the fuck happens to her. There’s nothing that pisses me off more than seeing a sweet young thing like her being beaten on.
“If you need anything else, let me know. Your food should be up in a minute.” Charlie smiles and leaves the table.
As I watch her go, I notice how baggy her uniform is under her too-large sweater. Some women feel more comfortable hiding their curves, while others do it to try to hide themselves entirely. I have a feeling Charlie falls under the second category.
Noticing my irritated scowl, Jude pipes up from across the table.
“Leave it alone, Linc. It’s not our business.”
He isn’t wrong, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it or even agree with what he’s saying.
“Well, it should be someone’s business,” I mumble, stretching my neck from side to side.
“I, for one, can’t wait to get home and cuddle up with Tiffany,” Jude says, changing the subject.
“For some reason, I don’t think cuddling is what you have in mind.”
Jude and I are making a quick run for the MC. It was nothing big, and we didn’t expect any issues, so I took the truck while Jude and a couple of other brothers rode their bikes. The other two we had with us opted to head back to our hometown, Shine, while Jude and I decided to crash for the night. Usually, we would all ride together, but no one saw any signs of trouble, and Jude just had to get his beauty rest. I would’ve loved to have driven straight through, but there was no way I was going to leave him by himself. Lord only knows what kind of trouble he would find himself in.
When Charlie returns with our food, Jude gives me another warning look. He knows what violence against women means to me. I grew up with a single mother who had a broken picker, as my club’s president’s mom used to say. After finally leaving Nebraska and my piece-of-shit father behind, we found a home in Shine, Massachusetts. My mom needed a fresh start and liked the snow better there than in Nebraska, whatever that meant. We moved to a small working-class town, where she found a job as a receptionist/office manager for the local bike shop. We were immediately taken into the fold of the Black Roses MC. Janine, the wife of the president at the time, knew from the start that my mom needed someone to give her a shot and a family. That’s precisely what we found and haven’t looked back.
The life we had before finding Shine and the club became a dim memory. Unfortunately, the scars left behind never seemed to fade. At least not for me.
That’s why the only things I involve myself in are bikes and my brothers. Sure, I fuck around with the club bunnies every now and again, a man has needs after all, but I don’t ever plan on getting tied down. There’s no doubt in my mind I would rather cut off my own hands than ever raise them in anger toward a woman, but there’s plenty of damage that can be done that isn’t physical. There has never been a time in my life when I thought one woman would be it for me, not even in high school. I’ll be damned if I’m ever responsible for breaking some poor girl’s heart or vice versa.
As Jude and I are shoveling greasy bacon and some of the best pancakes I’ve ever tasted in our mouths, the front door of the diner swings open.
A group of loud men walks in, obviously drunk and possibly high on something. From the time my brother and I were young, I developed an almost sixth sense to be able to detect when a situation could go from bad to worse. Considering how we lived for the first several years of our lives, it became second nature and saved our asses on more than one occasion.
