Center of Gravity (Marauders Book 3) (28 page)

“I’m a slut, not an idiot,” he said, and the guy in the chair next to his didn’t have time to hide his surprised laugh.

When Mitch looked at him, the guy pointed at his mom. “Smart woman, I’d listen if I was you.”

“Thanks,” he answered with a sarcastic smile.

“I like you,” his mom said while pointing at the other guy with a pair of scissors and then turned back to Mitch. “Really, tell her! She’s horny and in love with you, and I know you’re crazy about her, so tell her that. And tell her how serious you are about her.”

“I will.”

“So, did you feel her yet, the baby?”

“No.”

“Any other news about her? She’s my first granddaughter, you know. I’m very eager. I saw this really cute princess dress the other day. My granddaughter would love it.”

Mitch sighed. He very clearly saw a future of princess dresses, pink tutus, and fairy wings. No matter what he thought about it, it was obvious that every other woman even remotely involved in his life was eagerly waiting for the baby girl about to be born into the club family, just so they could buy her all the pink shit they never got to buy to their own kids.

He’d just left the salon when his phone rang. It was Mech.

“The idiot did it. He DoS-ed us. Nothing serious, and the good news is that he used the Low Orbit Ion Cannon to do it.”

A DoS—denial-of-service—attack basically meant overloading a server to knock it out. It was annoying more than damaging in most cases. And when it was done with the Low Orbit Ion Cannon, which any idiot could use, it was very easily done. It was also not very hard to track.

“You’re shitting me?” Mitch laughed. “We got him?”

“We got him. Give Russ a call. I talked to him and he’s already on his way there.”

Mitch couldn’t believe it. The Low Orbit Ion Cannon was an open source application that anyone could download and use. It wasn’t actually illegal to have it, but it was illegal to use. Not many hackers would ever use it, other than as stress testing. Partly because it made the systems unusable, which wasn’t what hackers wanted, but also because it was way too easy to track. It had been used in hacktivism a few times to take down sites belonging to people they didn’t like, but that was about it. A firewall could often stop it if it was set up properly, but he and Mech had decided to leave their firewall open, and use it as their honeypot; they’d basically opened up for a DoS attack for the very reason that it would be worth catching him no matter what work it might mean later on. They were both tired of the pathetic hacking attempts interrupting their sleep.

Mitch immediately called Russ.

“Fill me in,” he said when Russ answered.

“We’re closing in. Anything you want us to ask him? Or do you want us to keep him until you get here?”

He thought about it, but he honestly didn’t haven anything to ask the guy. He knew what he needed to know, Hump was behind it, and he had a fairly good idea about how the hacker had gotten involved. All he wanted was for him to stop; to back the fuck off.

“I don’t need to be there, just get the basics. I doubt he’ll be able to help us. Hump wouldn’t have been stupid enough to keep him close or tell him where he is.”

“His daughter might’ve been stupid.”

“That’s true. Just get everything we need, and I know you know what that is.”

“And then?”

“I trust your judgment about that. You’ll know if he’s just a geek looking for pussy, or if he might become a problem later.”

“I’m good at judging that,”
Russ chuckled.
“I’ll let you know what we do with him and what he says.”

Again, Mitch had no hope that it would lead them to Hump, but he was happy enough about being rid of one stress element in his life, because he was about to blow up. He needed something to go his way, and this was that something.

-o0o-

It was Friday, and the post-church party was more intense that it had been in quite a while, partly because they’d caught the guy who’d been trying to hack them, but also because Wrench had been voted in as a prospect with Dawg as his sponsor. Mitch was sitting on a couch, looking at the guy with long black hair and slightly crazy blue eyes while he was getting drunk as a skunk and had two half-naked girls around him at all times. Wrench had the smarts to enjoy it—he knew the coming year wouldn’t be easy.

Mitch liked Wrench, and he was glad he was in the club, but since the talk with his dad a few days earlier, he’d caught himself looking at the members differently—wondering how they’d fit in if he was the president. He cursed both himself and his dad every fucking time it happened, because his dad sure as shit knew how to work people.

The hacker, a pimpled guy from a small town in northern Texas, had literally peed his pants when Russ and two of the other nomads had barged into his apartment. Russ had laughed so hard when he told Mitch that, and said he was pretty sure the little shrimp really had told him everything he knew. Hump’s daughter had not only lured him with pussy, there had also been some talk about doing the good, heroic thing by taking down the big bad MC club, so the kid had been pretty deflated when he’d realized who he had really been helping. Russ had decided to leave the dude breathing. The idea was that Hump or his daughter might come back, maybe even to kill the guy, and it might be a good way to get the real prize. Mitch wasn’t convinced, but thought it was at least a lead, which was about as good a lead as they’d had so far.

They were going to Amsterdam the following week, and he was worried about leaving everyone—Anna—behind while Hump was still out there. He’d brought it up during church, and Brick had suggested that Anna could stay with Mel for the week while they were away. It sounded like a good idea, but there was no way in hell Anna would agree to leave Irina behind if he told her she might be in danger. The sheer panic of it all made it hard for him to breathe. He had no fucking clue how to handle anything that included Anna at the moment, and didn’t know how to keep her and Sprout safe.

In general, he had a hard time talking to Anna at all. They’d seen each other a few times since the argument, and it had been slightly weird. Just short meet-ups, and he missed her. He felt like a sucker for admitting it, but he did miss her and everything about her.

His inner monologue was interrupted when Mac fell onto the couch next to him.

“Are you drunk?”

“As fuck!” Mac yelled.

He eyed his brother. It was unusual for Mac to get piss drunk during a Friday night party. Most often he didn’t even stay that long. “Something up?”

“Nah. My wife told me to get drunk as fuck and stay the night at the clubhouse. Apparently I’ve earned it.”

“How many times did you make her come last night?”

“Many. And once again this morning.” Mac’s smile grew wide. “Jealous?”

“I hate you.”

Mac laughed. “Speaking of jealousy and things I’m not jealous of, is it true that you’re going to the ballet?”

“Dad told you?” Mitch sighed, and Mac nodded, still wearing that annoying and silly smile. “Tomorrow.”

“And?” Mac wiggled his eyebrows. “Tell me you got a plan. For once, I think planning might be a good idea.”

“I’m taking her to dinner afterwards,” he admitted. “At a nice place.”

“Oh, admit it, you’re gonna tell her you lurve her.”

“Jesus christ, you are drunk as fuck,” Mitch laughed. “I might have planned that, though… Sort of thought it could be a good opportunity.”

Mac eyed him. “You talked to Mom.”

“Shut up!” He tried to hold back, but finally admitted it with a laugh. “Yeah. I talked to Mom.”

“What are you going to wear?”

Mitch stared at Mac and wondered if aliens had abducted his brother and replaced him with this grinning, drunken idiot. “What the fuck? Are we gay now?”

“No. Just thinking that worn jeans, t-shirt, and a cut or a hoodie might not be the best fucking thing to wear when you’re taking a prima ballerina to the fucking ballet.”

Mitch honestly hadn’t thought about, not for a second, but Mac was right. It wasn’t like taking her to the movies.

“Fuck,” he muttered.

“I got something for you. Stop by tomorrow before you pick her up,” Mac said. “I’ll get you laid, brother. Cross my heart.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Ask Me

-o0o-

I’d spent the day with Lisa, and she’d tried to psyche me up for the ballet. In all honesty, the fact that I was spending the entire night with Mitch was, at the moment, making me way more nervous than the fact that I was going to see a ballet for the first time since my accident. We were going to watch ‘Giselle,’ a ballet I’d danced, but then I’d danced most of the classical ballets. It was still sort of neutral ground, not like ‘Swan Lake’ or ‘La Bayadère’—my favorites.

I’d mentioned the horniness to Lisa, and to my relief she hadn’t suggested I’d just let Mitch take care of it. Instead she’d agreed that Mitch’s idea had been good, and she’d taken me to the sex shop. Once again, she’d sent out the guy who was working and told me to grab what I wanted. This time I wasn’t embarrassed, and I had grabbed quite a few things. She’d also told me how the worst horniness was a passing thing, and that it would sort out itself. Which had made me very relieved.

Until I open the door and found myself looking at Mitch in a suit.

“Oh!” was the only thing that came out of my mouth.

He wasn’t wearing a tie, but he had a vest, and he looked… so god damn amazing it was quite possible I almost came a little. There were at least miniature ripples through my body. Even his hair was perfect, and it looked as if he’d trimmed his beard.

“You like it?” he asked with a laugh. “I’ve had three texts with penguin jokes from Dad so far. Think I’ll fit in?”

“Yeah,” I squeezed out when I managed to find my breath again. “You look amazing!”

“Thanks. You look pretty fucking hot yourself.”

I wore a black cocktail dress, a pretty simple one, with a red shawl over it, but he seemed to like it. I kept staring at him.

“I honestly didn’t think you owned a suit.”

“I don’t, actually. It’s Mac’s. Must admit I have no fucking idea when he’s used it, but he said I needed to look proper at the ballet.” He put an arm around my waist to get us out to the elevator. “Don’t get used to it.”

“I won’t,” I said with a nod. “But I’m really glad you did it for me. Thank you.”

“I’m taking you out to dinner afterwards, too.” He winked. “And I took Mel’s car. Didn’t think a truck was the right thing for the ballet.”

Mel’s car explained how his dad knew he was wearing a suit. Then there was the dinner, too, and it was… astonishing. I’d half imagined him to just show up in his usual outfit, drag me there, and then drag me home, but he’d really made an effort to make it special for me. I’d been more than happy just that he’d just offered, and later that he’d made good on the offer and was prepared to take me there. This wasn’t just making a ballet bearable; it made it pretty damn great. I was about to tell him how grateful I was when his phone beeped again.

“More penguin jokes?” I asked when he smiled.

“Yup,” Mitch answered after looking at the phone. “And he wonders what we’re going to see.”

“I don’t know how if it will help him, but it’s ‘Giselle.’”

“Do I wanna know what it’s about?” he asked as he started the car.

“Might help you follow the story. Giselle is a peasant girl with a weak heart who loves to dance. She’s in love with a man named Albrecht. But a man named Helarion is in love with her, and he’s suspicious of Albrecht’s noble manners. When a hunting party shows up in the village, it turns out Albrecht is actually a nobleman in disguise, who just pretended to be a peasant in an attempt to win Giselle’s heart. It’s also revealed that he’s engaged to Princess Bathilde. When Giselle finds out about his engagement to another woman, she goes mad and dies because of her weak heart. That’s Act One.”

“Sound exciting. What happens in Act Two?”

I laughed. “She’s dead, and Albrecht goes to her grave where she’s risen from the dead to become one of the Wilis or a Vili.”

“Wilis?” Mitch asked and looked at me. “That’s the fairy thingies?”

“I’m impressed. Yes, one of those. How did you know?”

“I read Harry Potter to Eliza when she was a kid. They have something similar with a similar name in them.”

“I didn’t know that. I haven’t read Harry Potter.”

“Have you read anything that hasn’t been turned into a ballet?” he chuckled.

“Yes I have,” I answered and glared at him. “Want to know the rest?”

“Yes, tell me the rest,” he laughed.

“When the leader of the Vilis finds out who Albrecht is, she wants to punish him for his betrayal against Giselle by making him dance to death, but Giselle saves him, because she still loves him. It ends with her joining the Vili and when morning breaks, Albrecht collapses in his fiancée’s arms.”

“The chicks in ballets are very forgiving.”

“They are,” I agreed. “They also all die, so I’m not sure it’s a good thing to be that forgiving.”

“No. I’m starting to see why Eliza chose to write her essay on a the portrayal of women in classical ballets.”

“You know,” I said, “I think I’d like to read it. It should be interesting.”

“I’ll ask her,” he said. “She loved the book you gave her, by the way.”

He talked more about Eliza on our way to the ballet. Like how she often called him when she couldn’t sleep and how they took rides or just hung out, and about a time when they’d been stopped by the police, and some other stories about his family. By the time we arrived, I was laughing, and I realized that he’d told me a lot of it to make me relax.

He took my hand as we walked inside, and every time I squeezed it, he either stroked his thumb over my hand or turned around and smiled.

“I’m not gonna keep asking you if you’re okay, so if you want to turn around, you’re going to have to tell me.”

“I don’t,” I answered. Hopefully I sounded more sure than I felt. “I want to do this. I
need
to do this.”

“Yes, you do,” he said with a smile as he opened the door for me. “You’re gonna have to take our girl to ballet classes soon.”

“She might not want to dance ballet,” I objected and then halted and looked around. Everything was just as I remembered it. It even smelled the same.

“She might not, but I’m going to guess that she’ll love it just as much as her mom does.”

I hardly even noticed that comment because I couldn’t stop staring at everything. Even if I wasn’t used to seeing it all from the audience, I still had the same feeling in my body as I’d had before a performance. Like every muscle was tense and ready, and I was trying to stop myself from starting to stretch. I was jumpy, and Mitch kept talking, but I wasn’t listening. He didn’t seem to mind my absent answers to his questions, though.

We went to our seats, good seats, and… how to describe it all once it finally started, the feeling, the music, all of it. I cried, but it wasn’t horrible. It was actually quite nice. I missed it, and my heart was aching, but not as bad as I had expected. Mitch helped by asking me questions in a low voice. Some of them were about me, but that didn’t bother me at all, and it kept me grounded.

When the first act was over, I stood up and realized I had been squeezing Mitch’s hand through the entire thing. I dried my cheeks and smiled at him.

“Think you’ll stand another act?”

“Sure,” he smiled and put his arm around my shoulders. “Think there’ll be any explosions?”

“No,” I laughed as we started walking to the bar next to the foyer. “If you’re lucky, there might be beer, though.”

I took him to the bar and managed to get him a beer.

“What do you think?” I asked.

“It’s just as I expected,” he answered.

“So that would mean ‘horrible,’ wouldn’t it?”

“No. Just boring,” he admitted. “But it’s okay. I’ll survive, and I like seeing you liking it.”

I’m pretty sure I blushed when he said that, and I was very happy when it was time to go back.

The second act was easier, and I started to truly enjoy it. The female lead was good, but the man, who was Victor, an old friend of mine since I had danced in Phoenix, was amazing. I knew that Irina was there simply because she knew I was coming, and she invited us backstage once the show was over, so we went.

Mitch was impressive, really nice, shook everyone’s hand, and it wasn’t half as uncomfortable as it could’ve been. I was sure it was strange for him, kind of like it had been for me when I had gone to my first party at the clubhouse, but he was handling it a lot better than I had.

When one of the dancers told me how honored she was to meet me, it got very difficult for me for a second, but then Mitch was there and managed to get me out of the situation with his usual charm. I talked to one of the trainers who had been there since I was in my early teens, and we talked for a while but were interrupted by Victor, who caught me in a long hug.

Victor had been one of the male dancers in my dance class when we were kids. He was just a boy back then, and my clearest memory of him was how jealous he had been when we received our pointe shoes. It was his biggest wish that he’d be allowed a pair, but they weren’t for boys. Every year when they came to fit shoes for us girls, he’d begged until they’d let him try a pair. I’d seen him a few times since I’d come back to Arizona, but he was so busy, so it was hard to find time even for a coffee. I understood, though, I’d been the same while I was working.

“You look amazing,” Victor laughed and pointed at my belly. “Very nice.” He turned to Mitch. “And this is the father?”

“Yes,” Mitch answered and wrapped a possessive arm around me. “We need to be on our way, or we’ll lose the table,” he said to me.

I looked at Victor. “I’ll be back soon, I’ll talk to you then.”

“You better, honey,” he answered and leaned forward to give my cheek a kiss. I knew Victor, and I knew he was doing it just to piss Mitch off. “Have a nice dinner.”

I knew what Mitch was doing, too, without a doubt, and it angered me. He was basically whipping his dick out. He might argue that I was having his kid and for some reason belonged to him, but I was pretty damn sure he was having sex with other women, so why shouldn’t I be able to do the same? Not that I wanted to have sex with Victor, and even if I did, he was gay and lived with another dancer, but I wasn’t about to tell Mitch that. I was perfectly fine with letting him think I intended to screw Victor’s brains out. So I moved away from Mitch, and gave Victor’s cheek a big kiss.

“I’ll call you.” And then I went to find Irina to say goodbye—leaving Mitch behind.

I talked to Irina for a while; it was mostly her making sure I was okay, which I was, apart from being angry with Mitch—again. About ten minutes later, he’d obviously had enough and came to get me.

The dinner was so awkward and strange. We hardly said a word before our meal came. Then I decided I’d had.

“What’s your problem?” I asked.

“Are you dating him or something?” he retorted.

“Dating who?”

“Don’t even try, you know who I mean.”

“No. We’re friends. We were in the same dance groups when we were kids.”

“Are you having sex?”

“I’m not asking you who you have sex with, so I honestly don’t think you have the right to ask me that.”

He glared at me, and I could see the muscles in his jaw working even through the beard, so that was probably not good.

“Ask me,” he finally snarled.

“Ask you what? Who you’re having sex with?”

“Yeah. Ask me.”

“No. I’m not going to ask you.”

“Why not?”

“Because I DON’T WANT TO KNOW!” I yelled, and the next second I realized that everyone in the fancy restaurant was looking at us.

“Is there a problem here?” the waiter asked when he reached our table at the speed of light. “Miss?”

“No. No problem at all,” Mitch said and stood up. He threw a few bills on the table. “We’re leaving.”

I’d just barely had time to taste the food, which was wonderful, but I didn’t want to stay either. I was much too embarrassed after my little outburst.

If I’d thought the beginning of the dinner was awkward, it was nothing compared to what the ride home was like. After about ten minutes of silence, my head drifted off to its own place, which was a relief. The train of thought wasn’t the most relaxing one, but it was better than the furious aura emanating from Mitch.

When I found out I was pregnant and decided it was better to be just friends with Mitch, I’d thought it would make things easier, but it had turned out to be the biggest problem. That was what we argued about, or at least what led to us arguing. It was confusing and it hurt, and I was scared. I felt a bit like a coward, but a part of me was pretty okay with me being coward if it meant not getting hurt by Mitch. Another part kept telling me that I was hurting now, so what the hell was my problem?

There were other things about him, too. He used to be a pretty carefree guy, but he hadn’t been lately, and I didn’t know how to ask him what the problem was, because I didn’t think it was just about me. I was sure there were other things, too; things that had to do with the club.

It felt like I had been getting to know him better the past month and a half, but at the same time things had continuously become more tense between us, and I didn’t know where the boundaries of our relationship—or whatever it was—were. We had a… weird thing that had started out with sex, and I’d been pregnant before we even really knew each other.