Chapter Six

Cali

Well, I'd checked off several more things off of that very long bucket list of mine.

The rave, of course.

Karaoke with Sage, where we'd both sounded like a couple of dying cats. But, hey, what we lacked in singing skills, we made up for in enthusiasm.

I went to a bar and tried to find my signature drink. Which led to me being drunk off my ass and still only liking the fruity shit that didn't actually taste like alcohol at all.

I took classes with some very hot, though not exactly my type, guy named Atlas, teaching me that I didn't have the upper body strength for surfing or the guts for water skiing, but I did like paddle boarding, windsurfing, and kayaking.

I still planned to go back and try parasailing, but I was working my way up to that. Along with other things that kind of scared me shitless. Like bungee jumping, roller coasters, and skydiving.

Me and heights, we'd never really gotten along.

My brother and Brooks once let me tag along with them going to climb the old lighthouse at the beach. And I'd been shaking so hard by the time I was halfway up that Clay had needed to circle back down, pick me up, and carry me to the bottom, before he got to go to the top finally.

But I wasn't going to let fear stop me from doing these things.

I was determined to make the most out of every moment I had. Because I had no idea how long I had left.

"Your sister?" I asked when Sage hung up her phone and speared a bit of her pasta from her otherwise very green salad.

"How'd you know?"

"Because you never get a word in edgewise," I said, smiling as she nodded. "Which sister? Charlotte?" I asked, knowing that the birthday party had gone off relatively without a hitch, so the two had mended their tense relationship ever since the night Sage got a little too tipsy at Charlotte's engagement party and asked her sister how her future husband was at licking pussy. That was not something that had gone over well with that country club crowd.

"Meadow," she corrected, meaning her crazy younger sister. Considering the two were so alike, I was surprised we didn't hang out with her more. Especially now that Sage and I had been going out so much. "She invited us to a party tonight," she told me, reaching over to steal one of my fries. "Why did I get a salad again?"

"You said something about jiggling more than you wanted in your bridesmaid dress."

"Ugh. Silk. Does anyone look good in silk who is above a size zero? You should have seen the way the seamstress tsked at my tits. Like it's my fault they came out disproportionately enormous. I'm gonna have to invest in one of those sausage sleeves at this rate."

"You mean shapewear?" I asked, laughing at her word choice.

"Have you ever worn it? It feels like being encased like sausage meat. And it would seriously hinder my ability to hook up with one of the groomsmen."

"You hate uppity guys like that," I reminded her.

"I do. But it would bring me joy to annoy my perfect sister just a little bit. You know, I think they make those things with a whole open crotch. I'll have to get one of those," she decided, taking another of my fries.

"So… a party?" I asked. It had been bugging me that I hadn't been able to think of something to do that night. Tuesdays were just not a great night to find anything fun and interesting to do.

"Yeah. You know Meadow, she can always find a good time."

"What kind of party?"

"She didn't give a lot of details. She said to bring a swimsuit and prepare to swoon over a bunch of hot guys. So… that's a yes for me. I'm still bitter about that guy from the club," she added.

Apparently, she'd liked him enough to go home with him. Where they'd started making out just inside his front door. And when she'd dry humped against him, he came in his pants, and told her he had an early morning and she needed to get going.

He didn't even offer to give me the old two-finger-salute, she'd griped the next morning. What happened to being a gentleman?

"Hot guys are always a drag," I agreed, even if I hadn't actually hooked up with anyone in, god, was it five months? Six?

I'd been stuck in my ‘rotting-in-bed-and-scrolling-social-media' slump for the months leading up to Clay's passing. And since, well, I'd been focusing on things I wanted to do. Not people I wanted to do.

Though, I mean, that was one of the things people regretted on their deathbeds, right?

It was always the same three things.

Working too much.

Not spending enough time with family.

And not fucking as often as possible.

Who was I to argue with generations of people who made it to ripe old age, full of life and wisdom, and still thought that banging was one of the best human experiences?

Maybe tonight would be the night I got laid.

"Where?" I asked.

"I didn't even get a chance to ask," Sage admitted, shaking her head. "She said she's getting a ride and would swing by to pick us up. Her friends must be busy if she's stooping low enough to bring her big sister."

"Or she loves you and wants to spend time with you."

To that, Sage's brows raised.

"You're right. Her friends bailed."

"So, you're in, right?

"I'm in," I agreed.

"Meet me at my place after work. We will get something to eat and get pretty together."

It was so high school that I couldn't help but smile.

Though, in high school, we didn't pregame on premixed strawberry margaritas and stuff a bunch of condoms into our little wristlets that were just big enough for a card, some cash, and our phones. So fitting the condoms in was a feat.

"Come on!" Meadow called as she laid on the buzzer for Sage's apartment. "We have bad decisions to make that we have to pretend to regret in the morning."

Sage and I shared a smile before rushing downstairs, where we found Meadow waiting for us on the sidewalk wearing a bright yellow swimsuit with a Stevie Nicks style black lace cover-up over it, the front completely open, showing off her shapely body.

Sage often joked that the universe messed up her and Charlotte's portions—Sage having giant boobs and Charlotte having a very flat chest—and had given Meadow the perfect figure.

She was busty, but with proportional hips, thighs, and an ass.

Where Charlotte dyed her red hair blonde, and Sage dyed hers a deep auburn, Meadow had light, pretty strawberry blonde.

They all had similar delicate face shapes, but where Sage's eyes were pure gray, Meadow's leaned a bit blue-gray.

"Finally," Meadow said, checking us out. "Your tits look amazing," she told her sister. "And I want to know how many squats I'd need to do to get an ass like that," she said to me.

We'd both opted to put dresses over our bathing suits, ones that hugged our curves because, quite frankly, we wanted to get ogled by some hot guys. If not more than that.

"This is Theo," she said, waving to the ride-share driver who was trying to pretend he wasn't looking all of us over. "He likes country music and he doesn't think I should get my pussy pierced."

At just the mention of that, Theo's ears went beet red.

"You asked a random stranger if you should get your hood pierced?" Sage asked, shaking her head.

"Well, I wanted an objective third-party opinion from someone of the male persuasion. And the guy at the coffee place blanched and ran away when I asked. Literally ran. Boys," she said, rolling her eyes. "Tonight, we party with men. I bet one of them will give me their opinion on pussy piercings, right, Theo?" she asked, climbing into the front with the poor guy who looked like he was moments away from becoming a tomato. "Take us to the party!" she declared, rolling her window down, and cranking the music up. Notably, not country.

"I forgot how crazy your sister is," I said, shaking my head as we pulled away from the curb.

"I know. I raised her well," Sage said, smiling.

Maybe I should have been more worried about not knowing our destination, but I was with a group, and it seemed like Meadow knew these people, so I relaxed in the backseat, humming along to the music, conjuring up the image of the perfect kind of guy to take back to my place for some sweaty, no-strings-attached fun.

It wasn't until the car pulled up out front of a fenced building that I felt myself tensing.

Because there were a shitton of bikes out front.

Which, really, could only mean one thing.

This was a biker club.

"What are you waiting for?" Meadow called. "We are probably three drinks behind already!"

"You coming?" Sage asked, head tipped to the side as she watched me.

"Yeah," I said, shaking off the weird feeling.

I mean, there was no reason to think this was an outlaw biker club. There were tons of biker organizations in the area. Only two of them were the one-percenter kind.

The Henchmen.

And the Vultures.

Clearly, given the badge on his vest, Brooks belonged to one of those clubs. But this was probably one of the weekend warrior type clubs.

"I hope your sister isn't setting us up. The last group of bikers I saw around here were all in their fifties and creepy as fuck," I said, passing a tip to the driver, a silent apology for Meadow's pussy comments, then followed Sage in through the open gate.

"I know, right? But I doubt Meadow would be spending time with them if they weren't at least twice as good looking as the TV bikers."

"True," I agreed, hearing the music already thumping from inside, and a chorus of male laughter that sent a little shiver through me.

Before I could decide if that was a good or bad shiver, though, we were moving inside.

Where I learned that I should never, ever, question Meadow's taste in male companions.

Because we practically walked into an open call for male models. That's how hot these men were. All in their own unique ways.

There were two tall, golden-skinned gods with epic bone structure who had to be brothers, if not twins.

Then there was a tall, wide guy with icy blue eyes, dark hair, and a clean dark beard who carried himself with the carriage that said he had to be ex-military.

Another guy had longer light brown hair, bright blue eyes, and an infectious smile dressed in an absurd Hawaiian shirt that featured cats riding tacos.

Toward the back was a guy with darker hair and wickedly handsome good looks. But I wasn't close enough to make out more than that.

And, finally, there was a brick wall of a man with ‘ex-con' written all over him.

Every single one of them was wholly fuckable.

"I'm starting to wonder if asking about getting my pussy pierced might be a good opener with this crew," Sage whispered to me, getting me to laugh as the guy with the Hawaiian shirt came over toward us, arms out like we were his long-lost friends.

"Ladies! My name is Sully. And this is my little soiree here. I don't think I've seen you two before."

"This is Sage, my sister," Meadow explained, coming up with two clear cups filled with soda and, I imagined, some sort of alcohol. "And this is—"

"Caliana?" a voice called, making me stiffen.

I knew that voice.

Especially when it said my name like that.

Because no one called me by my full name.

"Oh, hey! The guy I almost shivved at the club!" Sage declared, delighted.

"Shivved?" Meadow asked.

"At the club?" Sully asked at the same time. "Brooks? No."

"It's you alright. Made a joke about his ankles being terrified of me."

"A joke? Brooks?" Sully asked again, looking baffled. "Surely not. This, my dear, lovely girls, is the club's babysitter. He is allergic to all things fun. Including jokes. And pretty women."

"Of course this is your club," I grumbled. Granted, I was actually having to fake being disgruntled at seeing him. Because some part of me, as insane as it was, had been hoping to run into him again during one of my little excursions, expecting him to be there watching me with those dark eyes. The way the younger version of me had always wanted.

But the older version didn't want.

Nope.

Not at all.

Not even if he was looking all tall and handsome standing in the middle of an outlaw biker club.

I mean, I'd seen him in the cut.

I'd objectively known he was a biker, that he did illegal shit to get that patch.

But, somehow, I hadn't been able to actually imagine him in a club. It just didn't fit in with the guy I'd once known, I guess.

Here he was, though. And, apparently, not just a normal club member. He was someone with some sort of title or something if Sully was calling him their babysitter.

"What are you doing here?" Brooks asked, coming closer.

"Well, clearly, she is here to enjoy the pleasure of my company," Sully declared, shooting me a wink I couldn't help but smile at.

No wonder Meadow wanted to party here.

And I hadn't even met the other guys yet.

"Hands off," Brooks said to Sully, who didn't even react to the demand. His megawatt smile didn't even dim.

"Excuse me?" I asked, brows raised. "Anyone here can put their hands on me if I give them permission."

"No one here is going to put their hands on you," Brooks shot back.

"You don't own me, Brooks."

"I'm looking out for you."

"And I'm a grown woman. If I want to take every guy in this club to bed tonight, it's none of your business."

"Sage, darling, do you want to go see the pool?" Sully asked, clearly ready to extract himself from this awkward confrontation.

In fact, all the other guys had already made their way out of the back door.

"I'll be out there in a minute," I told Sage, who was looking between me and Brooks with interest.

"Okay," Sage said, letting Sully throw an arm across her shoulders and lead her outside.

"What the fuck, Brooks?" I asked when we were alone. "I'm not a little girl. You can't go around telling people to keep their hands off of me."

"I can when they're my club brothers," Brooks said, face annoyingly blank.

"But why?" I asked, exhaling hard, then taking a long swig of my drink, grimacing at Meadow's heavy-handed pour.

"Because I don't want them touching you."

"But why? Since when do you care who I sleep with?"

"Clay—"

"Oh, my god. I seriously doubt he meant that you should chase every man who might be interested in me away. Newsflash, Clay never cared who I dated."

"Dated."

"What?"

"Dated. Not casually slept with. Because that's all these guys want."

"Maybe that's all I want too."

"Did you ever fuck Clay's friends?" Brooks asked.

I was going to go ahead and pretend that hearing Brooks talk about fucking didn't send a little thrill of interest through my body.

"Clay's friends were too old for me when we used to hang out like that."

I mean, as I aged up myself, I hung out with people my own age, not with Clay's friend group. Besides, Brooks had been the only one of Clay's friends I'd ever been interested in.

"Clay wouldn't have let you fuck his friends," Brooks said. And he really, really needed to stop talking about fucking. "He would have warned them all away from you. Like I just did with those fuckers."

The thing was, he wasn't wrong about that.

As much as I hated to admit this, given their distance over the past few years, Brooks is the only person on the Earth who probably knew Clay better than I did.

It wasn't that we weren't as close as siblings could be. We were. But there were just things a big brother didn't tell his little sister. It worked both ways. I definitely had secrets I kept from Clay. Or just things that were too awkward to talk about. Like when I lost my virginity. Stuff like that.

But Brooks knew all those more personal details that Clay wouldn't have shared with me. And, admittedly, Clay likely would have also let Brooks in on his concerns and frustrations more than he would have with me, seeing as he'd been my caretaker, and it was his job to protect me from those grown-up things.

"You're a biker."

"What?"

"You're a biker too. So, if they're all bad guys, does that make you one too?"

"I didn't say they were bad guys. I said they are only interested in fucking. And they're not going to be fucking you. Period."

"This is ridiculous, Brooks. You see that, right?"

"Seems perfectly rational to me."

"Of course it does," I grumbled, taking another long swig of my drink, because all this talking about fucking had a warm tingle moving through me. "Am I allowed to go out and hang out with everyone, Dad, or do I have to go home and do my homework?" The words were sharper in my attempt to cover up any signs of my desire.

"I'm not trying to stop you from having a good time," Brooks said, suddenly sounding tired.

I believed him.

I mean, I'd been out every night since the rave, and he hadn't shown up once.

Maybe I'd gotten my point across.

And I was going to go ahead and pretend that I hadn't been scanning the crowds at each place I'd gone, hoping to catch sight of his stupidly good-looking face.

Because that was plain crazy.

"Okay," I said, exhaling hard. "How about you give me a tour?" I asked.

"Sure," he agreed, half turning away to wave an arm at the room. "Self-explanatory," he said. "In here is the kitchen," he told me, leading me into a small space featuring a round table big enough only for three.

"Down this hall are all of the rooms," he said, leading me there.

"Bedrooms?" I clarified.

"Yeah. The patched brothers who choose to live here get a room here. All the prospects stay in a common room," he said, leading me toward that very room.

"Prospects?" I asked, looking at the high walls with the windows near the ceiling, the bunk beds, lockers, and a large bathroom area.

"Guys who want to join the club, but aren't full-fledged members yet. They kind of… earn their keep while we decide if they are a good fit or not."

"You make them clean the clubhouse, don't you?" I asked, shooting a smirk at him.

"Sometimes with a toothbrush," he agreed with a smirk. "Though I usually reserve that for fucking Sully."

"He seems like he might be a… handful," I agreed. Guys who were that laid-back and charming were always good at getting out of doing things they needed to do.

"He is," Brooks agreed.

"Why is he still here if he's a pain in the ass?"

"He's… got some skills the club is interested in having. Was in the military for a while."

"Really? I clocked military on the other guy, but not him."

"Callow," Brooks said. "They knew each other from their time serving."

"What about the giant? Definitely not military."

"No. He was kind of raised by the streets. His name is Perish."

"No way. Like… his government name?"

"Believe it or not."

"Wow. His parents didn't have high hopes for his future, I guess."

"The twins, Rune and Croft, are legacies."

"Meaning?" I asked, following him as he led me back out of the prospect room.

"They are the sons of members of the club. Their old man is pretty much retired now, but legacies always get in the club if they want."

"Seems… fair," I said, grimacing.

"They do need to prove their worth," Brooks said, shrugging.

"You make them prove their worth, don't you?" I asked.

Clay had always hated people who had shit handed to them in life just because of who they were or who they knew. I imagined Brooks had similar feelings.

"Fuck yeah, I do," he agreed, shooting me a smile that was reminiscent of the Brooks I used to know.

"Is one of these your room?" I asked, waving toward the doors in the hall. "Do you live here?"

"Yeah," he said, pointing to a door.

I didn't wait for permission.

I grabbed the knob, and let myself inside, way too curious to stop myself from snooping.

It used to drive me nuts as a kid that I'd never seen the inside of Brooks's bedroom. I felt like I was missing out on a huge chunk of his personality, not knowing what his room was like.

I mean, my room had been full of all the things that had always interested me. Movie and music posters. Racks full of clothes. Fashion magazines. Vision boards for things I wanted to do when I grew up.

Clay's room always had lots of sports memorabilia and old school music posters.

Brooks remained a mystery.

I mean, not that I expected to find music or movie posters on the walls of a grown-ass man's bedroom. But adult decor choices told us a lot about someone as well.

It was a windowless space, and I figured that likely had something to do with security, because the prospect room windows were so oddly situated.

The walls were so dark that they were almost black, and the space was dominated by a bed that had to be a queen, and covered in really nice linen bedding.

On the nightstand was a small stack of books, and I found myself wandering over, flipping through them.

"I didn't know you were a reader," I said, checking out the nonfiction titles.

"Wasn't back then," he said as I finished with the books and moved over toward his stereo where he had a rack full of CDs.

"These I recognize," I said, seeing the names of R&B and hip-hop albums he and Clay always used to blast when our parents weren't around to complain about the racket. "This is it?" I asked, looking around at the neat space, finding no other personal details. "Your whole life is in this room?"

"Yep," he said, looking uncomfortable even though he was casually leaning back against the wall by the door.

"Okay. What else does this place have?" I asked. "What's that glass thing on the roof?"