Ryker (The Ride #4) (5 page)

I wasn’t going to ask for any information about that bizarre statement, and instead, took Ry’s outstretched hand and followed as he pulled me bodily from the building.

“Put her on your bike, we’ll worry about her car later,” Cole ordered harshly, his blue eyes glacial in the dark light.

Ry nodded, towing me toward his bike. I followed wordlessly.

“What are the fucking odds,” I heard Mack mutter to himself as they all mounted up.

Ryker tugged a helmet over my head, his jaw clenched tightly as I swung my leg up behind him.

I hadn’t ridden with Ry since high school, but it felt as natural as breathing. I pulled my body close, wrapping my arms around his middle as we took off at an alarming speed.

We drove for a while, though I’d lost track of time, consumed with the feel of Ryker under my hands and the unexpected turn of events that evening.

He pulled off into a gas station parking lot behind Cole, followed by Mack and Wes.

“We lose ’em?” Mack asked as Ryker helped me dismount before doing the same.

“Yeah,” Cole answered definitively. I hadn’t seen Cole in years and he’d only gotten more handsome. As VP of the club, he seemed to have settled in to his leadership role. The men clearly respected him.

“What’s happening?” I exclaimed, feeling stressed and something beyond tired.

Ryker looked down at me, his expression tortured, which I didn’t fully understand. “You rode right into the fucking Black Riders’ territory like a little lamb.” He shook his head, chuckling darkly. “Christ.”

My brow crinkled. “Who? What?”

“We’ll explain later,” Cole cut in. “For now—you’re dead on your feet.” He looked at Ry. “You need to crash for the night. Make the rest of the ride tomorrow. We’re far enough out of Riders’ territory.”

Ry nodded while my gaze shot from one man to the other as though I were watching a tennis match.

What the hell was going on?

“Glad you’re okay, Pipe,” Wes spoke up sternly, his dark eyes assessing me carefully.

“Thanks,” I replied, still reeling from how the night had ended. I got chin lifts from the other men as they prepared to make the long journey home.

I watched them ride off as Ry spent a few seconds on his phone, before we followed, rocketing off into the night.

“You want to share a motel room?” I asked incredulously, after we’d gotten off the bike in the parking lot of a Best Western.

“Didn’t say I wanted to, I said this is what we’re doing,” he clarified, walking ahead of me as I rushed to keep up.

“I can make it home,” I argued.

“You most definitely can
not
,” he growled, clearly irritated with me.
Again
.

After checking us in, he stalked up the short flight of exterior stairs, his boots slamming on the concrete. He didn’t turn around, just expected me to follow.

Well, fuck that.

Instead of following, I went down to the front desk and paid for my own room. I’d be paying for two rooms for the night, one far more expensive and going unused in Vegas, but it was worth it if I didn’t have to spend the night feeling punished—again.

“What the fuck are you doing, Piper?” he demanded when I left the lobby, headed for my own room.

“Going to bed,” I answered, hefting my bag over my shoulder and walking up the stairs. My room, ironically, was two doors down from his.

“What the fuck?” he growled, when we were halfway up.

I spun to face him, the whiskey still coursing through my veins making me brave. “I don’t even know what I did wrong, Ryker! I went to visit some boutiques, hoping it would help me make the store a success when I reopen!” I exclaimed. “But you’re so angry with me. Again.” I swallowed and took a deep breath, as he regarded me without comment. “I can’t bear how angry you are. I just can’t,” I choked, shaking my head and looking down at my boots. “I know you don’t believe this, maybe you
can’t
believe it, but I left because I cared for you so much that I did the one thing I thought I never could. I gave you up. Maybe it wasn’t the right thing to do. But I never dreamed that would be the end. You made that choice. I didn’t,” I whispered vehemently. “And maybe I deserved that. Maybe I still do. But I need to make it through this, and I can’t if you keep looking at me like that.” I pointed a finger toward his angry eyes. “So please, next time don’t rescue me if you’re going to force me to choke on your anger,” I finished, turning to stomp up the stairs, headed for my room.

He let me go.

I lay on top of the itchy sheets, staring up at the ceiling, praying for sleep. It wasn’t long before a soft knock sounded.

I looked over at the door in surprise before rising to walk toward it.

“It’s me,” his deep voice responded to my unspoken question.

I opened the door warily. He was still fully dressed in his black jeans and form fitting black t-shirt.

I, on the other hand, was in panties and a t-shirt.

“Can we talk?” he asked, his eyes sweeping over my scantily clad frame, heat blazing in those green depths as his eyes moved to mine.

“Can we?” he repeated, and I realized I’d just been standing there staring at him like an idiot.

I nodded, opening the door for him, and turned toward the bed, rushing for the cover of the bedsheets.

I burrowed deep, watching him as he bolted the door and paced briefly, his hands making a mess of his hair.

“I don’t remember you pacing so much when we used to share a bed,” I teased, hoping like hell my jab hit its mark. To my great relief he smiled. The expression lit his whole face, making him look years younger and all the more handsome.

“Yeah well, you never used to give me so much goddamned heartburn, woman,” he returned.

I scoffed. “Yes I did, you just don’t remember.” I reminded him, as he came and sat on the floor next to my side of the bed, his knees pulled up against his chest. “Remember when I bet Tony Marco that I could do more pull-ups than him?” I laughed, remembering our fifth-grade bully.

He chuckled. “Course I remember, because he let me take over the bet if I doubled the wager and threw in my lunch money—which I didn’t have. He found that out later.”

I threw my head back laughing, remembering that well.

“How about when I punched Sally Higgins because she tried to kiss you and the entire cheerleading squad tried to take me down?” I questioned with a laugh.

“I had no fucking idea what to do,” he admitted, sounding incredulous. “I knew I couldn’t hit a girl and live it down, but you were five to one.”

“And how’d I do?” I pressed with a smile.

“Pretty fucking good, once Ettie and Connie jumped in,” he added, with a chuckle.

“True,” I agreed.

“And the time you went out to my house and tried to convince my mom to quit drinking,” he added a moment later, his tone losing some of its levity. “You had all those pamphlets from AA.” He shook his head, staring at his hands as they danced across his kneecaps. “Thought you could change it. So damned determined.”

“It was stupid,” I admitted. I remembered the day well. A determined ninth grader convinced I could turn an addict around with some paper and a smile. She hadn’t even known who I was, she was so out of it.

I would have done anything to make things better for him.

“Not stupid. Naïve maybe,” he allowed, without anger.

“What happened in Vegas? Why was it so bad that I went there?” I asked quietly.

I watched the back of his head tilt slightly, as though he was searching for how to answer me.

“I can handle it, Ry,” I added quietly.

He made a grumbling noise before answering. “Some shit’s gone down with the Black Riders. They run Vegas—or anything near the strip anyway—and they want to run some shit through Hawthorne. Bad shit. Cal gave them an adamant no on that,” he explained, referring to the club president and Cole’s father. “Since then, things have… disintegrated. It’ll be a war.”

“Shit,” I breathed.

“Yeah,” he agreed. “We’re a smaller club, but we’re recruiting. We’ll be okay.”

He turned to face me, his eyes searching my face before settling on my eyes. “Promise me you won’t go there again.”

“Promise,” I murmured, meeting his gaze head on, feeling my heart pound. My gaze dropped to his mouth, remembering what it felt like to have his lips on mine.

His eyes heated in return before he turned away abruptly.

“When did you patch in?” I asked quietly, changing the subject to one I’d been intensely curious about.

“Not till recently actually,” he replied. “I took off for a while after high school.”

After I left,
I thought, with a familiar jab of pain that struck whenever I thought about that time.

After a tense moment where I prayed he wouldn’t stop talking, he continued. “Anyway, I came back after a few years of wandering. I missed my brother, missed home, but even then I wasn’t ready for the responsibility I knew I’d be taking on. It took me a few more years to be ready for it. Now, here I am.” He shrugged.

“Here you are,” I agreed with a small smile. “Is it what you’d always hoped?”

“It’s a hell of a lot more.” He blew out a breath.

I was so glad he had that.

“Axel and I grew up with next to nothing, but with the club I feel like we have this huge extended family.”

After the way they’d grown up, he and his older brother deserved that and a hell of a lot more.

“What does Cole have you doing?”

“Building shit most days. I guess it comes naturally to me.” He shrugged and I knew he was being modest. Ryker had always been hell on wheels with a hammer. “I’ve been refurbishing one of the bars the club owns. Before that I built an addition on the club. I like it.”

“I’m glad,” I replied sincerely, my heart bursting with being able to talk with him like this. “You’re also an unofficial babysitter,” I teased. “Mason adores you.”

He chuckled. “Yeah well, Jill’s ex is a dick. We all help out when we can. But Mace-man is my little bud.”

My heart melted at that.

The silence stretched. “You’ve been happy?” I ventured.

His spine straightened, as I stared at the back of his beautiful head. “Sometimes. You?”

“Not really.” I admitted.

He stood up, pacing the room. “Christ, that just makes it worse,” he growled, his mood souring. “At least if you’d been happy it might’ve been worth it.”

“Ry, you got to travel. You patched in. You’ve been happy sometimes.” I sighed. “That’s something. I was so worried—terrified—that you’d give up everything for me and resent me forever,” I admitted, relieved to finally get the words out. “The first time she got sick, you dropped everything to take care of her and me. We were so young, but being a man was as natural as breathing to you.”

“So?” he challenged.

“So you stopped talking about your own dreams! It was as though you’d resigned yourself to that fate. That at seventeen you’d have to carry my family’s burden.”

Even when she had gotten better for those few years, she was never the same, and my dad’s downward spiral had started to pick up speed.

“Ry, we both knew how you grew up. You deserved light. You deserved fun.”

“It wasn’t for you to say what I deserved,” he ground out, shifting as though to leave.

“You remember that party Ettie had right before graduation?” I said abruptly, sitting up in bed as he stood.

“Yeah,” he muttered, running a hand through his hair. He had to be exhausted. I was too, but I had to get this out.

“I heard you and the guys talking. Mack, Wes, and your brother. They were trying to get you to ride out with them for a few weeks. They wanted you to visit another club with them. It was what you’d always wanted to do. But you shut them down. You said you had to help me run the store. That my mom might get sick again. You seemed so sad, so run-down.” I swallowed painfully as I risked a glance at his startled expression. “God, Ry, I know I made a decision for both of us. That we should have talked it out, but you would have never let me go and I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t at least try to give you something more. So I said I needed space, hoping that with a little distance we could come back together someday. It was fucking stupid, I know,” I lamented. “Of course once I let you go that was it, but I still don’t regret it,” I stated firmly.

For a minute we just stared at each other, his eyes bright with knowledge while mine were filled with tears. I felt completely wrung out.

“You stayin’?” he asked, surprising me momentarily with the abrupt change in conversation. After the way it had been between us, I wasn’t sure he’d want me to stay in town.

“That’s the plan,” I replied quietly, hating how my voice shook as I forced out the question burning on my tongue. “You think you can forgive me, Ry?”

The silence hung between us, the tension so thick I could scarcely breathe through it.

“I’m gonna try,” he answered.

Aside from the other three little words he’d uttered to me long ago, I thought these were the most beautiful I’d ever heard.

I audibly sighed in relief.

“Night, Pipe.” He turned toward the door without looking back.

“Night, Ry,” I replied, as the door shut quietly behind him.

I’d finally said what I needed to and I thought he’d actually heard it. What he did with it was another matter. For the first time in forever, I slept soundly.

Chapter 6

W
hen he knocked on my door early the next morning, he was broody and quiet. I didn’t press him to talk, but instead, gathered up my things and quietly followed him to his bike.

That was one of the many great things about being on the bike. You could be left to your own thoughts.

We stopped once for coffee and bagels, sitting side by side on a bench outside the little roadside café in the middle of nowhere.

I didn’t think he’d slept much, if at all, but I didn’t pry.

“Well, aren’t you the most beautiful couple!” an old lady crowed, as she shuffled by on the arm of her husband.

I almost choked on my coffee. Talk about timing.

“Francis, just look at the two of them!” she continued, as her husband towed her along at a snail’s pace. “Remember those days?” She whacked him playfully with her handbag and I had to smile.