The Aces MC Complete Collection

  Everything was hidden.

  I arched into his hands as he started grinding against me, his arm under my head curving down to fondle a breast. The other hand slipped beneath my sleep shorts and I jolted as he went directly to my clit, plucking and rubbing it.

  “You’re mine, yeah?” he whispered into my ear as he played my body. “Not gonna let any of those pimple-faced high school boys in here, are you?”

  He didn’t seem to need an answer, because he just continued on—staking his claim and making my body sing as he whispered reassuring and dirty words in my ear.

  By the time we were finished, his alarm had already sounded and we didn’t have time to cuddle in bed like we usually did. He had to hit the road, and I had to get ready for my first day of school.

  God, I didn’t know how I’d ever be able to go back inside a high school again. I felt so much older than everyone there, the thought of gossiping and dances made me curl my lip in disgust. I knew, though, if I wanted to be able to support myself I had to at least get my diploma.

  I wished that I didn’t have to start school that day. I needed a day to get myself together when he left, but I think that leaving on the day I started school was his plan from the beginning. He was hoping it would give me something new to focus on, a specific reason to get out of the house instead of wallowing in our bed.

  He stayed with me as long as he could, but by the time I was ready for school, I could tell he was anxious to get going. We left the apartment quietly, both lost in our own thoughts, but I’d barely reached my car before he was in my face, kissing me hard.

  My back was against the cool driver’s window, his hips snug against mine, when he spoke.

  “You’re gonna have a good day, Sugar. Meet a bunch of new people, get outta the house for a while, learn some shit. I know you’re nervous, but there ain’t nothing for you to be worried about, okay?” he told me gently, rubbing his thumb across my cheek.

  I couldn’t understand why he was talking to me about school. Who cared about that? He was leaving me there all alone, and I’d already started to miss him as I looked into his warm brown eyes. School was an afterthought. An annoyance.

  “Be careful, okay? Call me when you stop. I’m sure I’ll be bored as shit all day,” I told him with a small smile, the best I could do under the circumstances. I didn’t want to make him think that I couldn’t do it without him. I had to pretend.

  “Yeah, I’ll text you. Doubt they’ll let ya answer your phone in class.” He leaned down to kiss me again. “I’m gonna follow you to school and then I’ll take off. Call me when you get home—doubt I’ll pick up, but I wanna know you got home safe.”

  “Got it,” I assured him, standing up straighter and pulling back my shoulders. “You better get going or I’ll be late. Not the impression I want to give on my first day.”

  He nodded once before taking my mouth again in a wet kiss and then pulled away. When he climbed on his bike, I had to dig the fingernails on my left hand into my palm to keep myself from calling out to him that I needed one more minute. Just one more.

  Instead, I called out playfully, “Why do they call you Grease?”

  “Depends on who you’re talkin’ to,” he answered with a mischievous smile, storing a few belongings in his saddle bags as I watched him. “Dad thought it was funny to call me that as a kid because I was so worried about staying clean. Minute I got done doing something I had to wash my hands. Didn’t matter what I was doing.”

  I smiled widely at him, imagining him as a persnickety little boy.

  “Poet calls me Grease for a different reason.” He finished buckling the bags and looked at me, taking in the jeans and sweater I was wearing. “Said he couldn’t figure out how I was picking up chicks so easy—had to be that I was greased.”

  “What does that mean?” I asked, puzzled.

  He chuckled a little as he climbed on his bike.

  “Didn’t have to do anything, just slid right in like I was greased.”

  I still didn’t get it. And then suddenly I did, and I wished that I had something I could throw at his arrogant ass. I scowled at him before flipping him off and getting into the car, hearing his roar of laughter even after I’d slammed my door.

  He followed me all the way into the parking lot of the new school but he didn’t stop. We both knew that if we had to say goodbye again, I’d never be able to make myself go inside the ugly brick building. I watched as he waved his hand at me before taking off, and I had to hurry out of my car before I started crying.

  The school was pretty easy to navigate, and I had no problems finding my classes, but for the first time in my life, no one talked to me. I hadn’t been the most popular girl in my old school, but I’d had a solid group of friends and I’d always easily made new ones. It was different in the new school, though. People barely even looked at me, and when they did they walked right past me.

  It wasn’t until I’d finished two classes, and was sitting down in the last one before lunch, that I had any interaction at all.

  “Hey, new girl!” a pretty blonde girl called to me, setting her bag next to mine on the floor and taking a seat next to me. She was one of the most beautiful girls I’d ever seen, and I wanted to turn and look behind me to make sure she was talking to me, but I didn’t. Her hair was set in a huge bump at her forehead then smoothed back into a ponytail, she had a piercing above her lip on the right side like a beauty mark, and she was wearing the most flawless makeup—including bright red lipstick—that I’d ever seen on anyone. I think I may have drooled a little.

  I’m not sure if I said hello, or just kept staring at her, but she smiled genuinely at me and I found myself smiling back.

  “So here’s the deal,” she told me, as she put her elbow on the table and leaned her chin on it. “Everyone saw you and your escort this morning—he’s smokin’ hot by the way—and everyone around here tries to keep their distance from shit like that. It’s easier if they just pretend that the Aces don’t exist, know what I mean?”

  I was nodding stupidly as she spoke, trying to wrap my mind around the fact that people were actually scared of Asa, so I barely caught what she said next.

  “—so we can hang out, if you want to.”

  “What? Sorry, I didn’t hear you,” I told her, feeling like an idiot.

  “Dude. I’m sitting right in front of you and you’re watching me talk. Pay attention,” she told me seriously. “My mom’s screwing one of the Aces, so I know how you feel. People barely talk to me around here and I grew up with them. They’ve known me for years. I get it. So if you want to hang with me—the offer’s open.”

  I was trying to process the fact that Asa was scary and her mom was screwing one of the guys he worked with, so I didn’t say anything back. When she finally huffed out a breath like she was annoyed and went to stand up, I grabbed her forearm to stop her.

  “I could definitely use a friend around this place,” I answered her ruefully.

  “Great! We can have slumber parties, and paint each other’s nails, and do each other’s hair…” she told me dreamily, her eyes going unfocused as she thought about it.

  For a split second I looked at her in horror, wondering what the hell I’d done.

  “Ha! I’m dicking with you!” she giggled infectiously at the panic on my face. “We’ll just smoke pot and watch ‘Dazed and Confused’ and you can tell me all about the hot dude that followed you to school today.”

  And that’s how I met Farrah.

  Chapter 29

  Callie

  The first night without him was the hardest, and the fact that he was busy as hell didn’t help matters much. I lay in bed that night, listening to every creak and thump in the apartments around ours, and tried not to crawl inside the closet so I could get some relief from my racing heart.

  I’d like to say that the next night was easier, but it wasn’t.

  The third and fourth nights weren’t any better.

  But on the fifth night,
something finally clicked—or my body was just too tired to stay awake any longer, because when I got home from school, I fell asleep on the couch. I didn’t wake up until sunlight hit my face through the tiny window in the kitchen.

  I hopped up from the couch and ran to the bathroom. Sleeping for sixteen hours was no joke when it came to matters of bodily functions. I didn’t even think about the fact that I’d been radio silent for all that time until I picked up my phone and my heart sank in my chest.

  I had forty-seven missed calls and one hundred and four text messages. All of them from Asa and Gram.

  I called Asa first.

  “Are you okay, Sugar? Where are you?” he roared into the phone. I pulled it away from my face so he wouldn’t burst my eardrums, and when I heard him quiet down a little I brought it back.

  “I’m so sorry!” I told him anxiously, “I fell asleep after school and I just woke up!”

  “What do you mean you fell asleep after school? It’s Saturday,” he said, his voice an ominous rumble that made the hairs on the back of my neck tingle.

  “I know it’s Saturday, I’m not stupid. I fell asleep yesterday after school and didn’t wake up until today,” I answered, enunciating every word.

  “Are you seriously lying to me right now? What the fuck, Callie? That’s like twenty-four hours of sleep.”

  “No it’s not. It’s sixteen, and I’m not lying,” I snapped back. I was starting to get a little peeved at that point. I knew he was worried, so I would let him get away with a little pissy behavior, but I couldn’t believe he was accusing me of lying.

  “Why the hell would you need to sleep for sixteen hours?” he scoffed back, as if I was being completely ridiculous.

  “Because I haven’t slept since you left, you jackass!”

  My hand flew to my mouth at the confession, and I berated myself silently as I realized what I’d done. I’d played the happy-go-lucky, well-adjusted girlfriend on the phone that week, and all of the lies and assurances I’d given him were wiped out in an instant.

  “Aw, Sugar. I’m sorry you’re not sleeping,” he crooned quietly, his bad attitude completely vanished. “What’s keeping you up? You scared or are you having a hard time shutting your brain off?”

  “A little of both, I guess,” I confessed, “but it’s getting better.”

  “Shit, Callie, I wish I could be there,” he complained. “I’ve got some shit going down the next two weeks, but I may be able to come down for a couple days the week after.”

  “Okay, that sounds awesome!” I exclaimed, and the excitement in my voice had him laughing quietly. “Hey—I better get off of here and call Gram. She’s been blowing up my phone all night.”

  “Yeah, I bet. I called her last night,” he warned, and then I heard him sigh, “I was getting ready to get on my bike and come looking for you.”

  “Well, damn,” I huffed in mock annoyance. “I should’ve slept for another hour.”

  “Not funny, Calliope. I’ll call you later, yeah?”

  We said our goodbyes as the background noise on his phone got louder, and once we hung up I wondered what he was doing. It sounded like he was surrounded by people, but I wasn’t confident enough to ask about it. I didn’t want him to think I was checking up on him or something ridiculous like that.

  My phone call to Gram sounded eerily similar to the one with Asa, but thankfully, Gram said that she would be headed up to check out my place later in the week after she dropped Cody at the airport. It filled me with relief that she was coming to see me, but it also made my stomach drop to know that Cody was headed back across the country and what that meant.

  The coroner had finally released my parents’ bodies and my parents were getting their funeral.

  On one hand, I was glad that they were no longer being poked and prodded in some sterile lab, but on the other, it was gut-wrenching to know that their time was finally coming to a close. Soon they’d be buried in the ground, and I struggled with the fact that I wouldn’t be there to say my goodbyes.

  I’d never gotten to say goodbye.

  It also made me sick to my stomach when I thought of the way I’d been so focused on Asa and my new life. I’d pushed my parents’ gruesome death to the back of my mind so I could just get through each day, and I’d latched on to new problems in order to hide the old ones. Because of this, I’d been projecting all of my angst onto things that weren’t impossible to change. I could never get my parents back, they were completely lost to me—but I could change the situation with Asa even if I was refusing to do so.

  Knowing that the things I was upset about could change if I wanted them to gave me a sense of control—the control I’d lost when I took that drink at that party. If I just kept my mind on matters that were easily rectified, I could lock the door on things that I knew could never be fixed.

  Missing my boyfriend, and choosing that to be my solid focus, made me feel normal in a life that was far from it.

  So that’s what I did.

  I got up that day, did my laundry, and took a shower. I went along living a life that I’d never envisioned for myself, and pretended not to know that my parents were being buried just three days later.

  Instead, I thought about Asa, what he was doing, and why there were so many people with him when I’d talked to him on the phone.

  It wasn’t until I was in bed that night, lying in the quiet, that I thought about my parents and how much I missed them. Then, once I’d pulled the blankets up and over my head, I let the tears and gut-wrenching sobs envelop me.

  Sorrow was such a small word for such a huge emotion.

  Chapter 30

  Callie

  I woke up Tuesday morning with a feeling of dread.

  Holy God, my parents were going to be buried that day and I wasn’t there. I wondered if they knew what was happening, if they’d understand why I wasn’t there for Cody and Gram. I had a feeling that they’d be relieved that I was out of danger even though they wouldn’t be too pleased about my living arrangements. I curled further into my blankets and let quiet tears run over the bridge of my nose and into the hair at my temples. I missed them—even their overprotectiveness that had plagued me for as long as I could remember.

  I didn’t move when the alarm went off beside my bed, letting the grating beep go on and on until it finally quieted. I wasn’t sure what time it was, but it didn’t really matter anyway—I wasn’t getting out of bed. If the day of my parents’ funeral wasn’t cause for a day off, I wasn’t sure what was. Instead, I reached under my pillow for my cell phone and sent off a quick text to Farrah.

  Not going to school today.

  Y?

  Sick

  Bullshit. Just saw you yesterday.

  Text you later

  WTF?

  I tried to fall back asleep, hoping that it would make the day pass quickly, but thirty minutes later there was a pounding on my front door. My heart raced and my entire body froze. I couldn’t think of any reason that someone would be at my door. Only Asa’s friends knew where I lived and I hadn’t seen them since he left.

  I opened up my phone quietly to call Asa when I heard a familiar voice yelling.

  “I know you’re in there!” Knock. Knock. Knock. “Open up, Callie! I better see vomit!”

  Farrah’s yelling and knocking escalated as I stumbled my way into the living room. I wasn’t sure how she found out where I lived, but I wanted to hug her for showing up.

  I opened up the door, almost getting punched in the face as I caught her mid-knock.

  “Damn, girl. You look like shit,” she told me as she pushed her way inside. “But you’re not sick.”

  I shut the door behind her, flipping the two deadbolts I’d begged Asa to install before he left. I’d never again be caught unaware by someone coming into my house.

  “So, what’s up? That Ace hottie drop you?” she asked me, dropping onto the couch.

  I laughed a little at her guess; little did she know she was sitting on hi
s furniture.

  “No, he’s fine. Still in Oregon, though,” I replied, walking into the kitchen to brew some coffee. If I was going to be staying awake, I needed a boost.

  “Well, what’s the deal? You look like someone kicked your dog,” she asked in an exasperated tone, following me in and taking a seat at one of our barstools.

  “My parents’ funeral is today,” I answered quietly, deciding to just rip of the metaphorical band-aid. If she was staying, she’d have to know eventually. I didn’t think I’d be able to keep it together for long.

  She was silent behind me, and I gave her a minute to let the news sink in before turning around to face her. By the time I was looking at her again, she’d wiped all surprise off her face but was looking at me with sympathetic eyes.

  “A gang in San Diego broke into our house and shot them while I hid in the closet,” I explained, not sure where the verbal diarrhea was coming from, but feeling an immense sense of relief from just saying the words out loud. I hadn’t been keeping it a secret, but it felt like one.

  “Dang. Tough break,” she told me seriously, and I couldn’t help the snort that made its way out of my nose. Tough break? God, she was so unflappable.

  I think that’s why I’d chosen to tell her. She’d seen pretty much everything while living with her mother.

  We spent the day watching movies and eating everything in the house. The movies didn’t keep my mind off what was happening, but the marijuana she’d brought with her did a pretty admirable job. By mutual agreement, we didn’t discuss my situation with Asa. She had to have been really curious, but she didn’t ask. I think she was used to not being able to ask questions about things—living occasionally with her Ace quasi stepdad made sure of that.

  However, by the afternoon, I was dying to discuss stuff with her. I wanted to know her opinion on everything—my relationship, the weird living arrangement, and Asa’s job.

  “So, he just… claimed you and then moved your ass up here?” she asked lazily, rolling her head against the back of the couch until she was looking at me.