Daredevil

D are walked into the back of the bar, trying to avoid bumping into Vixen again. He was an idiot, he could freely admit it, but asking one of her best friends to dance, just to make her jealous, was a shitty idea, and he’d been kicking himself for months about it.

Besides pissing off Vixen, he also pissed off Riggs, one of the club’s members and that was a mistake. Riggs could decide if he was patched into the Royal Bastards or not. So many of the guys were hooking up with women from the Royal Harlots, all he could think about was Vixen seeing him in a different light once he was a full member of the club. But that just might be a pipe dream.

The night of his bad decision, he was feeling down about himself. He was let go down at the local glass factory and he needed a job—fast, or he’d lose his apartment. And running back to his older brother, to tell him that he failed (again) wasn’t an option. His brother had been his guardian since their parents died when Dare was just ten. Saint had just graduated high school and took on the responsibility of raising him. At eighteen, his brother had no idea what he was getting himself into. Hell, at twenty-five now, Dare wouldn’t have a clue as to what to do with a kid. Saint had saved him from having to go into foster care, and his brother never missed one of his football games. He had even gotten Dare the job down at the factory, and it was only a matter of time before he would have to admit to his big brother that he was fired for showing up late—again.

He wasn’t always like that. When he was just twenty-two, he graduated from the local police academy and started working one town over, in Athens, Alabama. It was a small, quiet town where nothing ever happened, or so he thought. Everything went well for two years until all hell broke loose. His department got a tip that there was going to be a drug deal going down and the local cartel would be in Athens for a few days until it was finished. His captain wanted the drug cartel taken out while they were in his town. It would look good on his resume for a promotion, and that was all his boss seemed to care about.

He sent a team to stake out a warehouse where they suspected the cartel was laying low, and it felt like forever before they saw movement. Dare and his team were sent into the warehouse to cease the drugs and arrest the cartel members, but there was a snag. Not only was his team just as green as he was, but the cartel had a mole on the inside of the force. They knew that Dare and his men were moving in, and that’s when things went south. Dare sent most of his guys in while he and three other guys secured the perimeter of the building. His captain hadn’t sent enough men in for the operation, and his team was going to pay the price.

His guys ran into the building, and he waited to hear their gunfire, but it never came. Instead, the blast from the warehouse blew him practically across the road. He knew that his men would never walk out of that building, but he held out some hope until the guys from the Athens fire department told him that they were all lost. He and one other guy had survived, and it was questionable that the other man would survive until morning. He had third-degree burns over eighty-five percent of his body. The fire captain said that if the guy was lucky, he’d die on the way to the hospital because that was no way to live. Dare didn’t understand what he meant until he saw his friend in the hospital, struggling to breathe. He passed away within hours, and Dare went into the department to give his captain an update. That was also the night that he turned in his badge and gun. He couldn’t accept that his team was gone, and without them, he didn’t want to be a cop anymore. They gave their lives for nothing. The cartel was never apprehended, and Dare could never forgive himself for sending his guys into that building only to lose their lives.

That’s when he started trying different jobs, hoping to find something that fit. Saint tried to convince him to go back to the force, but his brother would never understand what he had been through. Saint was an accountant, and he was always dependable. He didn’t have to risk his or his co-worker’s lives and that was what Dare wanted—a nice quiet job where he could settle in, lay low, and try to forget the horrible night that he lost his teammates from the force.

Being fired after a month on the job wasn’t his best record, but it also wasn’t his worst. He told Saint that he was trying to find the right fit, but honestly, most of the jobs he landed just plain bored him. That was usually when he started goofing off and showing up late to work trying to get fired, and maybe he should have tried harder to keep a job, but he couldn’t justify it. But now that he had his own apartment, he could find some justification in keeping a job—at least to pay the rent.

He didn’t mind living on his own. He was more than old enough, and when Saint told him it was time for him to find his own way in life, he agreed to move out. He wanted to show his big brother that he could do it too, but around every corner was another failure, and he hated letting his brother be right. More than that, he hated that Saint saw him as a failure at all.

So, that night, after he lost his job, he decided to go into Savage Hell and get drunk since he couldn’t come up with a better plan. He knew that Saint wouldn’t be going into the bar that night, and that would give him time to figure out how to tell him about his latest job loss. But he ended up getting too drunk and he asked the wrong girl to dance. He meant to ask Vixen to dance with him, but instead, he walked up to Phoenix and asked her. She was nice enough to say yes, but he could tell that Riggs wanted to kill him for asking her. When Riggs asked to cut in, Dare quickly made his exit and was foolish enough to chance a look over at Vixen who was mean mugging him. Some asshole had his arm around her shoulder, and he knew that he had royally fucked up.

He had to work extra hard to get the guys to see that he wasn’t a total schmuck for moving in on Riggs’ woman—not that Phoenix was his that night. Dare had no idea what he was doing and the next time he saw Riggs, he apologized, explaining the whole drunken mix-up. He was good enough to say that he had no hard feelings toward Dare, but he still worried that he wouldn’t be allowed to patch into the Royal Bastards. When Savage told him that he had been accepted into the club, he was stunned, and two days later, when Riggs asked Dare to come to work for him, down at the club, he thought for sure that his luck had changed. He had his CDL, so driving a tow truck wasn’t a problem. And since the force, he didn’t sleep very well, so he didn’t mind having to go out at all hours to help people.

“You want a beer?” Savage asked as Dare sat up at the bar. He noticed that they were doing their co-ed thing tonight where the Harlots and Bastards hung out together at the clubhouse.

“Sure,” Dare said, “better make it too because the first one won’t last very long.” Savage chuckled and slid him one beer down the bar, and he caught it. He walked the other down and sat it in front of Dare and he nodded his thanks.

“You want anything to eat with that?” he asked.

“I guess that’s a good idea,” he agreed. “I’ll take a burger and fries—no onions. The last time I got drunk here I kind of blew things with—” he stopped before he said her name. His Club’s Prez didn’t need to know his personal business. The guy probably didn’t care much about it either.

“Vixen,” Savage said, finishing his sentence for him.

“You know?” Dare asked.

“Dude, it’s my job to know everything about everyone in my club—including the Harlots. I see how you look at her and I also see the way she looks at you too. Have you ever thought about just talking to her?” he asked.

Dare barked out his laugh and a few of the guys shot him a look. “I’ve tried, but every time I open my mouth, a bunch of gibberish comes out. I’m kind of a lost cause.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’m sure that you just need to get to know Vixen and you’ll be as smooth as silk in no time,” Savage assured. He was wrong, but Dare appreciated the encouragement. He was never like this around women. Usually, he had no problem talking to women, but since losing his team, he seemed to lack the courage to do a lot of things that he used to do.

He downed his first beer and felt someone grab his left arm. “There you are, babe,” a woman said. He turned around to tell her that she had mistaken him for someone else, only to find Vixen smiling at him. Some guy had followed her into the bar and from the fear he saw in her beautiful brown eyes, the guy was an unwanted parasite.

She leaned into him, and he thought for sure that she was going to kiss him. Dare felt as though he was bracing himself for the contact from Vixen. “Please play along,” she whispered into his ear. Was she asking him to pretend that they were together? He could definitely play along with her if she wanted—as long as he didn’t blow it by speaking gibberish again. Savage was right—maybe this was his in to get to know her, and he’d do just about anything to know Vixen.