Page 5

CHAPTER 5

AJ

I sat there looking down at my phone as I reread my message.

AJ

Hey, baby girl. Pretty sure you have something that belongs to me still tucked away in that garage. I’ll swing by tonight and pick it up.

It wasn’t something that should make her take so long to reply. But I’d been watching her little reply bubble pop up and go away for the last ten minutes now, and it was starting to get frustrating. I looked out over the LA River from where I sat on the retaining wall. There were people here or there, mostly just fucking around with some tags or smoking some weed.

Ding!

I glanced down to see her reply.

Rosalie

Hey, um, I do have your car still, but you can’t come to my place to get it! I’ll bring it to Dad’s shop tomorrow morning so you can come there, okay? Just please, please don’t come to my place tonight.

Damn, she must really be pissed about last night if she didn’t even want to see me today. But what had happened wasn’t just my fault. She couldn’t be mad when she was the one who kissed me first. I wasn’t the one lying to myself, telling myself that we didn’t have something anymore. Trying to stay apart, for what? Principle? Nah, fuck that. But if she wanted me to wait a day, I would. I knew Rosalie. Sometimes she just needed time to realize things. She needed time to process how she felt. I’d give her however long it took for her to remember just who she really loved.

Me.

AJ

All right, I’ll see you in the morning, baby girl.

She replied a lot faster to that one.

Rosalie

Please stop calling me that. I’m NOT your baby girl anymore.

I sent a smirk emoji and closed my phone, chuckling to myself.

You can try to stay in denial all you want, baby girl, but the way you kissed me told a different story.

My thoughts were clear, but I needed to get some info about the guy she was seeing. I didn’t know much, except he was a part of the BLVD Riders MC.

Maybe it was time to pay her brother a visit. Heard he had gotten into music and recorded at a studio in the Beverly Hills area, and that he’d been making a bit of a name for himself too.

I caught a ride on the bus to that area, and, damn, did I stick out like a sore thumb here. Everyone was wearing brightly colored designer clothing. Women and men alike were put together perfectly, not a hair outta place. And here I was, in plain view, strutting through the street with my tattoo-covered arms, wearing simple athletic clothes in all black with a ball cap keeping my finger-combed hair out of my face. I definitely caught people’s eyes. Women stared at me a little longer than they probably should, and men gave me a look of disgust that screamed that they thought I didn’t belong here.

I kept walking through the streets until I came up outside the front doors of the recording studio I was looking for. I pushed open the glass door and walked into the lobby. A man sat at the desk, and when he peered up, his eyes got wider. He glanced over at the security guard standing by a computer. He walked over next to the counter as I neared it, and the guy at the desk greeted me coldly.

“How can I help you today?”

I stopped at the counter, keeping the guard in my peripheral vision. “I’m looking to talk to a guy who records here. Goes by the rapper name Cadence.”

The man’s eyes darted over to the security guard.

The guard took a step before speaking in a deep voice. “Not today, pal. Time for you to leave.”

I turned to face him and cracked my neck. “Nah. I’m not leaving, and I’d recommend you not trying to make me if you value being called security. Now, I just need to know if he’s even here or not.”

Just as the security guard began to radio for backup and I figured I would be fighting my way out of here, the double doors that must lead into the recording booth spaces opened, and the man I was looking for walked through them. He seemed different. His shoulders sagged a bit, and his body was relaxed. From here, I could smell the weed on him. He wore shades inside, probably to hide his eyes, which I had zero doubts were showing signs that he was high. He barely glanced over as he made his way through and then stopped.

“Holy fuck. What are you doing here?”

The guard stopped radioing in and stood between Rosalie’s brother and me.

“Sorry, Mr. Wells. We were just about to escort this man out of the building. You don’t need to worry about it.”

He gripped his Taser on his side, and I stiffened. But Jayden Wells walked over to the guard and stepped in front of him, ignoring his protests.

“He’s fine. Walk with me.” Jayden jerked his head to the doors to exit the building.

As I followed him out, I flashed a smirk at the security guard. We walked down the sidewalk into a parking garage, where we strode over to a Lamborghini Urus.

Damn, he must be making some serious cash to be driving something like this now.

“So, I didn’t know you were back in town. What do you want, AJ?”

Right to the point then. Works for me.

“I need to know about this guy who’s got his hands all over Rosalie like she’s something he owns. You’re in an MC. What do you know about him?”

Jayden looked at me for a moment and then laughed. I crossed my arms in front of my chest. I didn’t see what was so fucking funny about that.

“One, it’s crazy how you just come back into town and start demanding answers to shit. That’s not your business. And two, I haven’t been in an MC for almost a year now. That doesn’t mean I don’t know things about her boyfriend, but that also doesn’t mean I’m going to tell you shit.”

I stood there for a minute, trying to not punch him in his fucking face for being a smart-ass.

“What’s wrong? Not the answer you wanted to hear? Well, too damn bad. Kinda like how I didn’t want to come home and find my sister sobbing in your car after you broke up with her like she meant NOTHING TO YOU. I had to help pick up the pieces of my sister who used to light up a room when she walked in it. And when it felt like I was going to lose that part of her forever…”

He took a deep breath and clenched his fist. But he knew better than to swing. He stood no chance against me.

“She doesn’t deserve to be used in whatever game you’re trying to play. So, you can fuck right off. I don’t have anything else to say to you. So, get the fuck away from my car.” Jayden glared at me, his voice full of malice.

Damn, her brother sure had a mouth on him for someone I could beat the shit out of without so much as breaking a sweat over it. But as much as I wanted to take him down a notch, I knew he had every right to be as mad at me as he was.

“Got nothing to say? Figures.”

He turned to yank open his car door, and I took a couple of steps and slammed it. He shoved his hand into his pocket to pull something out. I gripped his wrist before he could grab whatever he kept in there.

“Give me a fucking second to reply. This shit isn’t easy for me.”

Jayden relaxed slightly, so I let go of his arm and leaned against his car. I took a breath to calm down, then looked back at him.

“I know I screwed up with Rosalie by leaving like I did. You don’t think I regret it every second of the day? Do you think it was easy for me to leave her? She was all I fucking thought about when I was gone. I don’t regret things in my life, but walking away from her? That is something I regret because I should have never left her in the first place.”

Jayden glared at me. Then, he pulled out a blunt from his pocket and lit it, taking a long pull on it.

“So, you say that. But what did you expect? To come back and she’d be waiting for you still? Like Rosalie had no other options but you? You’re lucky she even gave you the time of day in the first place.”

I nodded. “I know that. Shit, it’s obvious you—and everyone else—think a girl like her deserves better than someone like me with my background. But I don’t give a fuck what you or anyone else thinks. Letting your dad pay me to get lost? Yeah, that is the last time I let anyone else tell me Rosalie and I don’t belong together. And I’ll do whatever I need to do to prove that. So, are you going to tell me about the dick she’s with now, or am I going to have to ask her directly about him?”

He smoked a few more puffs of his blunt before turning it and offering it to me. I took it as he exhaled a long hold.

“Yeah, as much as I don’t like you, I fucking hate her with him. His name is Kordell. He rides with the BLVD Riders MC out of Morro Bay. He’s gotten her mixed up in some pretty dangerous shit. She got abducted not too long ago. Mom told me it was pretty bad. Not physically as bad as what had happened to her when she was with you, but Mom said she was pretty messed up mentally over it. From what I’ve heard from people I know, he’s murdered people, and he lives with her, just so you know.”

His words hung heavy in the air. I let the blunt’s embers burn as I held it to my lips.

He’s killed people? And they let him be with her? What the actual fuck is wrong with her family?

I flicked the blunt onto the ground and stomped it out. My blood was boiling now.

“So, let me get this straight. Your dad paid me to fuck off because of what had happened and he didn’t like her being with someone like me, but you all let her live with a man you think killed someone? What the fuck?”

Jayden shrugged. “It’s not really my problem. I’ve got my own shit to deal with. Rosalie has to make her own mistakes sometimes, or she’s going to keep ending up with guys like you and him. I don’t care what you do with the information. But, AJ, if you fucking hurt my sister again?” He tipped his shades down and stared at me intensely. “I’ll kill you myself. Give me another reason to make a headline in this city.”

With that, he pulled open his car door, and I pushed off the car. He backed it out and drove out of the parking garage. I followed on foot and watched as he drove down the street, music pumping from his car’s speakers.

I shook my head and started walking. It was a bit of a ways to the bus stop, and by the time I got there, I had barely missed it, so now, I had thirty minutes to kill for the next one.

So, when I saw Jayden’s car pull up outside a clothing store called Club Monaco on the corner, I curiously watched—because what else did I have to do, standing here in the LA heat? And to my surprise, a familiar woman walked out of the store and over to his passenger door. I walked down the sidewalk toward her, my smirk growing.

“Well, there’s someone I didn’t expect to see around here,” I said as I approached Rachel, the leader of the Barons, about to get in his car.

She glanced in my direction, then back at the open car door. “Hold on one moment, darling. I’ll be right in.”

She shut the door and met me partway down the sidewalk. “AJ.” Her voice purred my name.

So, she did remember me from our little one-night stand.

“What’s up? You look like you’ve moved on to an easier-to-manage man. Good for you.” I chuckled as she raised an eyebrow at me.

“Well now, as much fun as our little night together was, I have big ambitions in the world. So, naturally, when I met Jayden and saw his drive was the same as mine, we just clicked, and the rest is history. Which is where I’d like to leave our encounter—in the past. Do I make myself clear, AJ?” She smiled, but her voice was cold.

I got her drift. Tell him that we’d fucked, and at the very least, I’d probably get jumped in some alleyway at night. Or shit, even easier, when I went to buy some weed from her plug, Billy Crystal.

“Don’t worry about it, baby. You enjoy your boy toy. I’ll catch you around.”

I walked back over to the bus stop and glanced over my shoulder to see her get into his car, and through the back windshield, I could see them make out for a moment before he took off when the light turned green.

Pretty interesting company people kept when they judged me for my actions. Her brother was fucking around with a woman who had literally slept her way to the top—not just in her gang, but in society, it seemed.

The bus finally showed, and I got on. When I got off downtown, I was deep in my own thoughts as I walked back to my apartment.

Not only did I have to fix things with Rosalie, but I also had to get her away from someone who’d dragged her through a worse hell than me. This wasn’t going to be as easy as I’d thought. But I knew how I felt, and I loved Rosalie. If I had to work hard every day to show her that again? I was no stranger to hard work. I’d lived a life that was the opposite of easy since I could remember.

I walked into my room at the motel and sat on the edge of the bed, pulling out my phone. I opened the text message thread from Rosalie. I slowly scrolled through the photos she had taken and sent to me, photos of just her doing random things and photos of us. I should have given her more of my attention for some of these. There were even a couple of just me, sleeping or working out. One from a fight night as I stood in the ring, victorious. But it was the ones of just her that had me pause. She was smiling, taking a selfie in front of a mirror, biting her lower lip slightly as she tried to give a sexy pose, and the next one, she was laughing after almost falling over from doing it.

My beautiful baby girl, I’ll make it right, I promise.

I went back to the text screen and started typing.

AJ

I’ll meet you before you open the shop up tomorrow, baby girl. Don’t be late. I want to talk to you before you have to get to work. Since we didn’t have much time to catch up last night and I didn’t get to say everything I wanted to say.

Within seconds, it was Read . But she took over an hour to reply.

Rosalie

Sorry, I was busy at work. I don’t think us “talking” is a great idea. Last night was pretty much my goodbye to us, AJ. It’s time for you to move on. I have.

I threw my phone across the room and heard it land somewhere behind the table and chairs with a thud.

Like fucking hell you have, I thought as annoyance seeped in.

How the hell was I going to get her to listen to me if she kept running away from even having a conversation? I started to think of ways to get her to stay. I could let the air out of my car tire outside the alleyway by the custom car shop at the end of her work shift so she’d have to help me. Accidentally give her a small fender bender at a light. Corner her at her favorite taco shack and hold all the damn green sauce she was obsessed with hostage.

What’s a man gotta do to get the girl he loves to hear him out so he can admit he was wrong about leaving her?

I guessed I’d have to do all the things I’d thought about if that was what it took. She was worth it.