Page 10 of Nave (Henchmen MC: Next Generation #14)

Lolly

A low woof, followed by a grumble, had me clawing my way toward consciousness. Sleep clung to me like molasses, making my thoughts deep and sticky.

It was Edith’s I’ve had just about enough of this snort that had me snapping awake, remembering that she could only wait so long, and she’d had an accident in the house once that meant Ben screamed at me (and her) for hours while he forced me to clean with bleach until my fingertips were tender from layers of skin burning off.

“Okay!” I said, reaching to scoop her up before my eyes were even fully open.

My heartbeat punched against my ribs as my belly sloshed around ominously.

It took a long second before I realized I wasn’t in my bed. I wasn’t in the glass house. Or the woods.

I was in a windowless room, wearing a borrowed hoodie that came down to mid-thigh (and nothing else), and smelling like the man who had been my beacon of hope for years.

“Right,” I said, sucking in a greedy breath. “Alright. Okay. Let’s go potty,” I said, finding my slides that were grubby for the first time in their lives, grabbing Edith’s leash, and making my way toward the door.

I listened for the barest of seconds, but there was no noise like from the night before. Maybe it was too early for everyone to be up. With no sunlight or electronics to go by, it was impossible to know what time it was.

It wasn’t until I was at the end of the hallway that I realized that while the party was over, the club was not empty.

Two men—twins, judging by the near-identical faces—were steadily cleaning up: one was pouring liquid from red cups into a five-gallon bucket, then piling up the cups themselves; the other was scrubbing the top of the bar.

“Oh, uhm, hi,” I said, shifting my feet when they both noticed me almost in unison.

“Hey,” one said, giving me a nod, then going back to scrubbing the bar.

Right.

This was a biker clubhouse.

They were probably used to a lot of women in their house in the mornings after parties.

“I just have to take my dog out,” I said, looking at the other one—the one who gave me a bit of a smile, one dimple pressing in.

“Yeah, go ahead.”

“Okay. Uh, sorry, but do you have little baggies?” I asked. “Just in case?”

“There’s a little lean-to shed on the side of the house. Inside, there’s a scooper that you can load bags into. The bags are in there too. Lotta dogs visit here,” he added, shrugging.

“Thank you.”

I quickly made my way outside because Edith was getting antsy.

As she sniffed around, I checked out the scooper thing that the guy had mentioned, decided it was ingenious, and figured I might need to spend some of my very precious money on getting one.

“Okay. Let’s go in and get you some breakfast. Oh, crap,” I said, realizing I didn’t have her food. It was still sitting in the backseat of my car. And I had no pants on. Or underwear, for that matter.

Oh, well. I had to get the food.

But as I made my way onto the street, my car was no longer parked where I’d left it.

“No, no, no, no, no!” I cried, my heart leaping up into my throat. “ No .”

I couldn’t stop the tears that flooded.

Everything I owned was in that car. Sure, it wasn’t much. But I had absolutely nothing now.

“You good, baby?” a voice—smooth and deep—called.

Turning, I saw a man walking toward me. A towering guy with black hair and dark eyes. Black jeans, black tee. Gorgeous. In a vampire kind of way.

“No.” I sniffed, reaching up to wipe the useless tears off my cheek.

“Alright. What’s going on?”

“My car is gone!” I waved down the street, and the guy came closer, tossing his cigarette. Or, rather, joint, before he got too close.

“Yeah? Fuckers. Where was it?”

“It was right down there, two cars down from the corner.”

“The one Nave drove off in this morning?”

“Wait, what?”

“Yeah, Nave drove off in it then came back in that.” He gestured toward the little white crossover SUV.

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah, he—”

“Lolly,” Nave called, making my heartbeat hammer for a reason that didn’t feel like anxiety.

I turned, seeing him walking toward me, offering me a soft smile.

“You alright?” he asked, glancing between me and the vampire guy.

“My car—”

“Shit, sorry, babe. I meant to catch you before you went looking for it. You came out when I was in the garage. I traded the car out this morning.”

“Oh. Okay. Wait… for the crossover?” I was no car expert, but I did know that my lemon was nowhere near worth what that newer-model little SUV was.

“Yep. Got it on a song.”

That didn’t come off as a lie to me. But it couldn’t have been the whole truth either.

“I brought Edith’s food inside too. And some clothes,” he added, his gaze slipping down to my mostly bare legs. “Figured you might need those things.”

“Oh, okay. Great. Thank you.”

I could worry about the car later.

I needed to feed Edith.

And put some panties on.

“Thanks for your help,” I told the other guy.

“This is Spike,” Nave explained. “Spike, Lolly. And Edith.”

“Nice to meet you,” the guy said, reaching in his pocket for his keys. “I’ll be seeing you, I think,” he said to Nave. “Thanks for the party.”

With that, he sauntered off toward a motorcycle, and Nave led me inside.

“How about I feed her?” he suggested, handing me one of my bags from the car.

I’d left the glass house with only the clothes on my back, plus a few of Edith’s things that I’d squirreled away and grabbed right before we ran, and a couple of items of Ben’s that I’d hocked as soon as I found a shop.

I’d needed to buy everything else on the way.

Dollar stores and secondhand stores had been my best friends to make sure I had a few things to wear and clean myself with.

“Okay. Thanks. She likes the kibble soaked in a little warm water,” I told him, handing him the leash and taking the bag.

Back in his room, I slipped into fresh panties, shorts, and a tee, but put his hoodie back on over it. I wasn’t quite ready to let go of that yet.

When I made my way to the kitchen, Edith was happily eating, and Nave was at the stove, pushing some fluffy scrambled eggs around the pan as a couple of golden pancakes finished cooking in another pan.

“Oh my god. Pancakes.”

“Thought you might like that. Woulda just done a whole tower of ‘em. But I thought you might need, you know, protein and nutrients. So… eggs.”

“Thank you.”

“There’s coffee. Pretty sure I hear you can have a cup a day. But we have decaf somewhere. Oh, and my cousin drops off all kinds of weird teas too.”

“Weird as in…”

“No, not like that,” he said, smiling. “Don’t get me wrong, Billie was definitely a dabbler before she had kids. But she now grows her own different kinds of flower teas or whatever.”

“I think I will stick with the coffee.”

By the time I had cream and sugar in my mug, Nave was plating my breakfast.

“A real plate,” I said when he set it in front of me. Reaching out, I touched the porcelain.

“Nice, right? Fresh outta the dishwasher.”

He joined me a minute later, shooting me a knowing smile as I tested the weight of the fork and dinner knife before I dug into my food.

“Oh, God.” Was that an orgasmic sound? Sure. But the food was that good.

“What is the one food you are most looking forward to eating now?”

“Pizza.” I didn’t even need to pretend to think about it.

“Followed by French fries, baked ziti, and a big vanilla milkshake.” But, honestly, the list could go on and on.

I’d been living on fruit, plain oatmeal, packaged salads, yogurt, brown rice, and the occasional piece of chicken for years.

I was excited for even a floret of broccoli, for goodness’ sakes.

“All solid choices. And we have some of the best pizza in the world around this area.”

“I can’t wait.” Even if I had no idea when I would have the money for something like that. “So, how long have you been back in Navesink Bank?”

“A few years now.”

“What brought you back?”

“It was just… time. I always knew I would find my way back here eventually. I just needed a bit of a life that was all mine first, I guess.”

“Can I ask why?”

“Because I grew up in this club. With my parents, my uncles and aunts, my cousins. And I think when you’re really close with people nearly every moment of every day, it’s hard to figure out who you really are and who you’re supposed to become.”

“Was it hard to come back as someone new?”

“Nah. I thought it might be. Which might be what took me so long to get here. But everyone else here had changed a bit too.”

We talked about some of his cousins and their adventures when they’d taken off, but the names mostly started to blur together for me after a while. Only Kit and Ariah stuck in my head since I was going to be living on their property.

“That’s a big switch. Travel vlogs to a homestead.”

“Yeah. I think, to an extent, they felt like they’d seen everything. And they claimed the happiest people they’d met on their journeys were the ones who led very simple lives. Just their land, their gardens and animals, and their loved ones.”

“That makes sense,” I decided. “I never really wanted a grand life, either. Just a little bit better than the life I’d grown up in.”

“These up for grabs?” one of the twins I’d seen earlier asked, gesturing toward the pancakes.

“Sure,” Nave said after checking to make sure I’d only made it halfway through mine. “This is Lolly. Lolly, this is Croft. And that’s Rune out there,” he said, nodding toward where the other twin was pushing a stick vacuum around the common room.

Which was probably why we didn’t hear anyone else coming in until another man appeared in the kitchen doorway.

“You,” I gasped, jerking back in my chair as I eyed the familiar man. The same face, the same tattoos, the same devil-may-care attitude. “You said you were alone,” I said, looking back at Nave.

“I worked with Dezi only on that one job with Ben,” Nave explained. “It was complete fucking happenstance that he ended up here. He made it back here before I did.”

“Oh, okay.” That was weird, but what did I know about their lives?

“How you doing, Loll?” Dezi asked.

“Free.”

“Always a good thing to be. I brought cinnamon rolls.”

The groan was out of me before I could stop it, making both men smirk.

My stomach felt full to bursting after I finished off the last of my breakfast. But it felt wrong to turn down a cinnamon roll.

“You look a little green,” Nave said, his eyes warm. “We could take it to go, so you can enjoy later when you aren’t full.”

Food had never been something I could just… freely reach for. Not with Ben. Not when I was growing up. There’d only been about a year or so when I’d been an adult and had my own money when I had that privilege. It was a big realization that I was able to do that now. And, hopefully, forever.

“Okay,” I agreed.

Nave gave Dezi a nod as he got up to grab the dishes.

“Oh, I can wash—”

“Nah. I got it. Why don’t you take Edith out again? We can head out after this, if you’re ready.”

As much as I liked the clubhouse, I was eager to see what the homestead—and my new life, at least for the time being—was going to look like.

By the time I finished with Edith, Nave was waiting for me with my new keychain jiggling. “Do you want to drive?”

“I’m not, uh, exactly, legally, you know, supposed to be driving.”

“Well, I can fix that eventually. But for now, I’ll drive.”

With that, I grabbed Edith’s travel bag and the clothes I’d taken off the day before—along with my toothbrush, since no one else could use that now—and followed Nave to the new crossover.

I knew it had been a newer model. But upon closer inspection, it almost looked brand new. It smelled new as I climbed into the passenger seat with Edith in my lap.

“I did hook up her seatbelt thing in the back. Don’t want you to think I left anything behind.”

I glanced back, seeing the dog seatbelt and the top of my bags over the backseat in the trunk.

“Even got your hair ties,” he said, gesturing toward the cupholder.

“You thought of everything.”

“Not really a lot of thinking involved.”

Except there was.

Not just for the car.

But figuring out somewhere safe for me to stay, setting it up, cooking for me, making sure I had extra food.

I’d always been drawn to a take-charge man.

Sure, Ben had been very… prepared.

But it had been in a controlling way.

Everything Nave did was coming from a place of caretaking.

It was a breath of fresh air.

“The homestead is only about a fifteen-minute drive from the clubhouse,” he explained.

“So, if you need me for any reason, I’m not far away.

I figured you wouldn’t want a phone, but Kit and Ariah have my number.

One text or call, and I’ll be here. And once we square your license thing away, you can drop in and visit if you want. ”

“You’ve already done enough.”

“You’re making it sound like your presence would be some kind of burden. It won’t. It’s not. Come visit if you need anything. Or if you just want to see a familiar face. I hear you need a village for this next phase in your life.”

I took a deep breath, trying not to get too overwhelmed with the future. I had several months to prepare for that. I needed to focus on the next steps first.

“Yeah.”

“I’m just saying. I’d like to be a villager.”

“Do you like kids?”

“Got a million of ‘em around these days, thanks to all my cousins. Not gonna lie, the babies scare me a little. I’m always afraid I’m gonna hurt them or something.

But when they get to that belly laugh stage?

That shit is priceless. Got a club full of grown men making faces and pretending to whack themselves with various objects. ”

I had no experience with babies.

I had a lot to learn in a short amount of time.

But if Nave really did want to be a villager, it seemed like he was a resource I could rely on.

“This is it,” Nave said, gesturing to what barely appeared to be a driveway. You’d have missed it if you didn’t know it was there.

The driveway was lined with overgrown shrubs and old shade trees, blocking anything having to do with the property from view.

It wasn’t until we lost sight of the road behind us that the area yawned open to a clearing.

The driveway curved into a circle with three small residences set around it.

One was a sweet little wooden tiny house with pretty pink and yellow flowers spilling out of window boxes. Another was an all-black tiny home with white flowers lining the front beds.

And finally, there was the place that I figured was going to be my home: a lovingly cared-for motorhome with solar panels on the roof and large water catchment barrels on either side of it.

There weren’t any flowers or beds. But someone had clearly spent their morning hammering in a small fenced-in area with a gate around the front door, so I could easily let Edith out on her own.

“Welcome home.”