I scanned the room and saw Joker was gone altogether.
So was his brunette.
My heart squeezed.
“Yo!” I heard Snapper call and I looked to him to see he was looking beyond me. I turned around and saw Tabby was heading toward me and Snapper. “I’m takin’ Carissa out on my bike. You wanna look after her purse or put it in Shy’s room or somethin’?”
At his request, Tabby’s gaze immediately cut to the pool tables. When she took them in, for some reason, her face got hard before she softened it and looked back toward us.
“Not a problem,” she said, stopping at us. “Go. Ride.”
“Never been on a bike,” I told her and her face split in a big smile.
“Then go. Ride.” She leaned in to me. “Beware, wind in your hair, moon on your skin, you’ll fall in love.”
I wasn’t sure that was a good thing. I’d fallen in love with something I couldn’t have, and if I fell in love with the wind in my hair and the moon on my skin, without someone to give that to me, I couldn’t have that either.
But to heck with it.
Maybe this would be the only bike ride I’d have in my life.
And maybe the kiss Joker gave me was the only fabulous kiss I’d ever get.
And maybe my dream of having a family or the other dream of getting behind the steel guarding Joker’s eyes was lost to me.
But I was still breathing.
So I’d take what I could get.
Tabby put her hand on my purse, which was lying on the bar. “Got this. Have fun.”
“Thanks,” I whispered.
She winked at me.
I looked to Snapper. “Let’s go.”
“Meet you at the end of the bar, babe.”
“Right!” I chirped, jumped off my stool, threw Tabby a smile, nabbed my jacket that I was sitting on and bounced to the end of the bar.
When I got there, Snapper had pulled on his leather jacket. He grabbed my hand and guided me out the door and to his bike. Then he got on his bike before instructing me on how to do the same.
The bike roared, he backed out on an angle, and we glided over the tarmac of Ride.
He pulled out onto Broadway and I got it.
The wind in my hair.
The moon on my skin.
The leather of his jacket in my nostrils.
The solidness of him under my hands at his waist.
We got close to the onramp of I-25 and he shouted, “Hold on!”
“Sorry?” I shouted back.
“Hold on!” he yelled, taking one hand off the grip and using it to pull my hand from his waist and around to his stomach.
He put his hand back on the grip and we turned up the ramp, going faster, faster, faster the wind whipping my hair and biting into my skin. I curved my other arm around him, put my chin to his shoulder, drew in air and leather, and I got it.
Instantly.
That it being why this was the life for a biker.
No encumbrances. You wanted to smoke pot, you smoked it. You wanted to wear a tube top, you wore it. You wanted to drink shots, you drank them. You wanted to make out hot and heavy on a couch in a room filled with people, you did it.
You wanted to live, you lived.
You wanted to be free, you got on your bike and rode in the moonlight.
You did not drink martinis you didn’t like. You did not take a job your mother-in-law thought you should have. You did not take guff from your ex, not ever.
You did what you wanted.
You were free.
In all that was happening to me, all that I was feeling, all the disappointment of that night and the bizarre devastation I felt that the first time this happened, me on the back of a bike, I would have preferred it be with Joker… right then, for that moment, I let it all go.
I let it go, held on to Snapper and I let myself feel it.
Feel something rare and beautiful and overwhelming.
Feel something I knew for certain I hadn’t felt in my whole life.
Free.
Chapter Seven
He Gave Me You
Joker
JOKER SWUNG OFF his bike and headed to the Compound, his mind consumed—as it had been since that shit happened—with the vision of Snapper touching Carissa’s face, of Carissa smiling.
He’d ridden a long time. Long enough to get that crap out of his head.
But it hadn’t worked.
He put his hand to the door, pulled it open, and was not surprised to see that the party was over. The music was low, the common room had a few bitches and bikers passed out on couches, but mostly the room was cleared. It was early the next morning, the rest had either hooked up and already sent their bitches home, were still with their bitches in their beds, or they’d passed out.
“Dick move.”
Shy’s words sounding from his right made Joker turn his head to Shy.
His brother’s eyes were on him and one look, Joker knew the man was pissed.
Jesus, what now?
“Say again?” he asked.
“She came for you,” Shy bit out. “And right in her face, you hooked up with Stacy. Dick move, Joke. Fuck. Seriously.”
Joker stopped well down from where Shy, Tab, and High were congregated at the bar, High inside, bottle on the bar in front of him with glasses at the ready, apparently doing shots.
High engaged in this activity was not a surprise.
High had not been at the party. He had an old lady and kids. He liked to be around his kids, so it was rare, unless it was a family thing, that he partied.
Not the same with the old lady, the liking to be around her part.
Chaos history stated High and his woman had never been tight. He’d knocked her up and done the right thing for their kid, the wrong thing for High. Since then, it had never been copasetic. Joker knew her and she didn’t have old lady in her. It was rare she’d show at anything related to Chaos, sending her kids to the family shit but not showing herself, and she put up with her man so he’d put a roof over her and her kids’ heads.
So it was frequent when High’s kids were asleep that he’d leave the woman behind in a home that was far from happy, come to the Compound, and throw a few back.
He quit thinking about High and focused on Shy.
“She get home okay?” he asked.
“Do you give a shit?” Shy returned, and Joker felt his frame come alert.
He was not doing this again.
“Think I made this clear the other night, not your business who I fuck,” he returned. “But, just sayin’, Stacy was ridin’ the edge of smashed, the bitch has no problem drivin’ in that state, and so she wouldn’t fuck herself up, or someone else, I took her ass home. Then I took a ride. I didn’t hook up with shit.”