Page 5
CHAPTER FIVE
Rook
I was creating a false history of texting Tessa via a messenger app on my phone, one going back to a few months after I started working at Nyx’s place.
It was sporadic and awkward at first, like any next text chains might be. Then it got more comfortable and familiar—discussing music and movies and food. And, hey, typing it out also helped me commit some of Tessa’s favorites to memory, which was good if we were going to pass Nancy’s scrutiny.
“How are you typing that fast—oh,” Tessa said as her phone dinged over and over. She looked over to find I’d hooked up a keyboard to my phone to make this herculean task easier. “Um, where is my keyboard? I’m getting hand cramps over here,” she grumbled, flexing her fingers.
“Let’s take a break,” I suggested. “I mean, we are up to flirty. That’s good progress for one afternoon.”
“At least we killed two birds with one stone. We have a text history, and we learned things about each other. Now I feel like I probably need to watch Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang since it’s your favorite movie.”
“And also because it’s just a good one and criminally underrated.”
“So, what now? You want to show me around town so I can seem like I actually know my way around? I’ve only seen the gas station and the bar.”
“So you’ve seen sixty percent of Shady Valley,” I said, shooting her a smirk. “Yeah. We gotta get your car too.” And everything out of it. We couldn’t have nosy Nancy maybe coming across it, seeing her bed set up in the back, or whatever proof there was that she’d been living in it.
Looking into it, I learned that you had to get permission from your P.O. to let someone move in. So for the time being, I offered to either put Tessa up at the motel, or let her use my room at the clubhouse.
As I expected, she chose the latter. Though she claimed it was solely to have access to Detroit’s cooking.
It was going to be a slow transition to making it convincing to Nancy that I had a woman in my life. For example, we had to put some of Tessa’s shit at my place for the next random search.
An extra toothbrush or change of clothes, maybe some forgotten earrings or hair ties should sell it enough that I wasn’t living like a monk.
Then maybe the next time, Tessa would be there for a search. We could be lovey-dovey. Explain that we’d been dating for a few months. If Nancy asked why I didn’t mention it, I could say something about how I didn’t know I had to run my relationships past her.
Because I didn’t.
P.O.’s had a lot of control.
But so long as Tessa wasn’t a hacker or related to the guy I’d beaten up and could pass a drug test, Nancy would have no leg to stand on if she objected.
Then, after that, it was a ring, an announcement, and a quick courthouse wedding. The woman could be a fucking witness if she wanted.
“What do—” I started, only to hear Tessa hiss back at the cat who was hissing at her, leaving Cat to stare at Tessa in surprise.
“Yeah, I speak Chip-On-My-Shoulder too,” she told Cat.
“Do you like animals?” I asked as she dug around in her purse for a hair tie.
“Nice try, jerk,” she said to Cat as a paw tried to swipe at her when she was distracted. But Tessa had quick-as-fuck reflexes and moved just out of reach. “Yes. I’d say I’m more of a dog person. But that could be just because that was what I’ve always been around. This is the first clubhouse I’ve been to that has a cat. Though, honestly, some of them could have used a mouse-hunter.”
“There are some dogs that come around here too. They belong to the other club brothers and their women, but they hang out here sometimes. Same with kids. How are you with kids?”
“I’m… impressed with their ability to always be sticky, despite not having had anything sticky in recent memory. And their bluntness can be refreshing. I mean, I have gotten many a feeling hurt by a kid, but they keep you humble, I guess.”
“You have a lot of experience with them?”
“There were some club kids around. Unfortunately. And their parents… shouldn’t have had kids. So I tried to be a big sister to them. I can’t say I’m the most maternal person in the world, but I get along with kids.”
She brought up clubhouses a lot.
Even if her mom had been a club girl, the way she spoke of her time around bikers kind of suggested she was familiar with them more recently than her childhood.
That said, it didn’t matter to our relationship lore. In fact, it was imperative that Nancy never find out that Tessa had connections to bikers or clubs. Which was the only reason I didn’t press.
I wasn’t supposed to be genuinely interested in her past, just the fake story we made up about it.
That said, I was interested. More than I should have been. But those were private thoughts. The last thing we needed were any more layers to our fake relationship. It was convoluted enough.
“Do you want kids?” At her wide-eyed look, I added, “In case Nancy asks.”
“Oh, right. Well, I’m not against having kids. I just think it goes along with that whole… believing in love and relationships thing. Do you want kids?”
“I don’t know. I’m a little worried about passing on severe mental illness to the next generation. I’ve been really lucky to be relatively even in the mental health department. But when it’s as bad as what my mom struggles with, the chances of it passing through the genes are high.”
“I get that,” she said, looking at me with those gorgeous hazel eyes of hers. “Well, that’s a good enough answer as any, right? We’re not sure since we have concerns about those things. I think anyone would understand that if they know how much your mom struggles. And has for most of her life.”
“Yeah,” I agreed. “That’s good. It will come off a lot more genuine if we were planning on two-point-five kids and a Golden Retriever.”
“Because, clearly, we would have a rescue mutt. One that’s big enough that I don’t have to worry about stepping on it, but small enough that it won’t overpower me. Are you allowed to have pets?”
“I actually have no idea. It doesn’t seem right that she could control every minute detail of my life like that. But if there is any footnote anywhere in any paperwork about how parole officers can conduct themselves that says she could prevent me, she will.”
“I can ask. That would be a normal thing for me to ask as your girlfriend, right? And if she’s on that kind of power trip, she would like being deferred to.”
“You want a dog?”
“Oh, well… eventually. I mean, obviously, I can’t bring a dog into the clubhouse or… or your place, but—“
“That’s a long way to say yes,” I cut her off, getting a guilty little smile from her.
“I’d love a dog. But we’d have to know that we can have one. We can’t save one from a shelter, then send it back. That’s beyond cruel.”
“Agreed. Alright. Let’s see if I can get someone to drop us in town, so we can get your car.”
With that, Detroit brought us in so he could hit the gym again before heading home for the day, since he’d made a big enough lunch to give us all leftovers for dinner.
Tessa was parked way down the main drag. It was a shitty little gold-colored beater that looked like it was older than she was, the paint faded on the hood and roof, the passenger side door crushed in and rusted.
In the backseat, there was a pillow stashed under a folded blanket to try to make it look like she wasn’t actively using it as a bedroom.
The front passenger seat featured a plastic box that seemed to sport a lot of Tessa’s essentials—toothbrush and paste, brush, shower products. And the floorboard was littered with coffee cups and food wrappers.
“Don’t judge. The past few public trash cans I’ve come across were overflowing already.”
“Not judging.” I wasn’t. If anything, I just felt bad for whatever circumstance led her to living out of her car. “But when you get back to the clubhouse, maybe get all this out, just in case Nancy happens across your car in town or something.”
“No worries. I plan to spread out. After being so cramped for so long, I’m looking forward to clothes in drawers and bath products in the shower, not carried along with me in them. Are there any club rules I should know about?” she asked, opening the trunk to pull out a different pair of shoes.
“Everything is pretty lax around there. Clean up after yourself kind of thing is really it. Even that… the prospects are supposed to do the cleaning.”
“I probably won’t be around that much anyway. I want to work.”
“Why?”
“What?”
“Why do you want to work if I’m already paying you?”
“What else am I going to do all day? I’ll go crazy just sitting in a room, twiddling my thumbs. I was only going to do grocery delivery and that sort of thing. Gig work. Nothing that would get in the way of you needing me at your place or parading around town.”
“Speaking of,” I said as she looked at her car, holding my hand out to her.
She looked at it, uncomprehending for a moment.
“Oh, right. Duh,” she said, shaking her head at herself as she slipped her hand into mine.
This part sounds crazy as hell, but I swear I felt a sizzle move up my arm at the contact.
“So, this is Shady Valley. Named for the mountains,” I told her, gesturing out toward where they sat way back behind the prison. “This used to be a manufacturing town. Then the warehouse closed, the town collapsed, and things got real bad around here for a while.
“Eventually, the prison came in, creating jobs. And things have slowly been building since then. Mostly just the families of the guards, nurses, all that. Most people don’t want to live this close to a prison.”
“Is it maximum security?”
“Nah. It’s medium. Which is why there seems to be developers sniffing around lately.”
“I noticed a lot of blue-collar guys in the pub last night.”
We moved past the open storefronts, and I told her what I knew about them. I wasn’t a native of the area, and since she wasn’t either, I didn’t think it mattered that I didn’t know the history of every one of the abandoned places.
“We should probably get you linked in more around here,” I said. “Show our faces at the diner, get you a gym membership. Even if all you want to do is go there to use the massage chairs. The more people who could claim to have seen you before, the better. And I’m going to work on a fake mental history for the past two years just outside of the area, so if she asks around and not many people recognize you, it would make sense that you just recently moved here.”
“I have a question.”
“Shoot.”
“Where am I supposed to say I’m living? I mean… I can’t say I’m at the clubhouse…”
“I’m gonna look into that. See if we know someone who can say you’re renting a room from them. If that doesn’t work, I can just rent you a place for a while. Might be nice to have your own space.”
“I’d actually prefer to stay at the clubhouse. So long as I am welcome, anyway.”
Who the hell would turn down a free apartment and stay at a noisy clubhouse full of strangers instead?
“I’m kind of used to the pace of a clubhouse, y’know? And, well, living alone in a strange town…”
Yeah, something about that wasn’t sitting right. She wasn’t telling the whole truth.
But given the favor she was doing me, it felt invasive to pry. Maybe as she got to know me better, she would let me in more.
I mean, not that I needed her to let me in. That wasn’t part of the deal. Despite that, though, I found myself curious. About her past. About the shit she was clearly keeping to herself.
If she was so forthcoming about her mom being a club girl who slept around so much that she didn’t even know who Tessa’s dad was, that she struggled with addiction, that she’d been in filthy-ass clubhouses growing up, what could she be keeping to herself that she thought was ‘worse?’
“Okay,” she said after we’d covered the walk about the town and climbed into her car to check out the suburbs, the apartment buildings, the mobile home community, and the farms, wanting her to have as complete a tour of the area as possible. Which happened to work out for her since she wanted to do food and grocery delivery as a side gig. The better she knew her way around, the quicker she would be and the more money she could make. It was a win-win. “So, tell me more about your time in prison. In case Nancy asks about that kind of thing.”
“There’s not a whole lot to tell since every day is pretty much like the last. You get up when they say to, work when they say to, exercise when they say to, eat when they say to.”
“What was your prison job?”
“I made shirts for some fucking company that’s too cheap to pay people a living wage to do the work.”
“That’s crazy. Wait, so you know how to sew?”
“Yep. I sew a mean button. And, you know, work the machine to make a whole shirt.”
“That’s a nifty skill to learn, though.”
“It is,” I agreed. The work was the most tolerable part of prison life for me.
“Did you have any friends on the inside?”
“No. But I was always a loner, so that’s not really surprising.”
“A loner who joined a biker club as soon as he got out? How does that work out?”
“They approached me. And I had nothing. I mean, it wouldn’t have taken me long to build something back up for myself. Believe it or not, hacking can pay pretty damn well sometimes. But I had no money to get a car, a computer, nothing. And then… Nancy. It just seemed like the only way.”
“Do you regret it? Since you’re not a people person, I mean.”
“No. Actually, it’s been surprisingly nice to have people. I, mean, yeah, I had my mom in some ways. But most of my life I never had anyone else I could count on or turn to. That’s different now. It’s nicer than I could have anticipated. Do you miss the club life?”
To that, she sat at a stop sign, leaning against the rest and exhaling hard. “I miss things, I guess. But it seems like you have a lot more loyal and caring club. I never really knew one like that.”
“Isn’t loyalty one of the most important aspects of a club?”
To that, she shot me a defeated look. “For the men, sure.”
With that, she focused back on the road. And I felt like I was watching as her walls built back up around her.
“Wanna go check my place out before we head back up to talk to Slash and the other guys?” I asked after we toured all of Shady Valley a solid four times.
“Sure,” she said, still shut down behind her walls, and I had the strangest urge to do whatever the hell it might take to pull her back out.
What the hell was that about?