Finding Allie (3 page)

“Guns down,” Galt continues. His men and women take it as an order and put them away. I see Chase put away his gun. Jeff eyes the gesture with a narrow look. It makes him look like a lizard. Then he grunts and nods. His five friends drop their guns.

Jeff finally does, too. He lays his gun down on the table beside him. I am relieved.  

And that’s when chaos erupts. The clatter and rattle of shuffling boots, chairs crashing against flesh, and tables being overturned hits me so hard I feel like I’m in a tornado.

I don’t want a bar fight. I don’t understand why they are even fighting. They all just put their guns down. This really doesn’t add up. I’m so confused I just stand there, my mouth open, watching fists and glasses fly. All I can do is blink. 

Chase wraps one arm around my waist and slams me to the ground behind the bar. A glass shatters against the mirror just above us. He throws his body over mine, wrapping his arms over my head.

He is on me completely, his pelvis grinding into my backside, his chest warm like a blanket of muscle against my back. His sweat mingles with mine on the back of my neck, my ears, my arms.

“Stay down,” he says. 

“No problem,” I whisper back. I’m not going anywhere.

The grinding chaos of glass breaking recedes as I hear the sound of the ocean in my ears. Blood pumps through me so hard. I can’t hear anything but the sound of waves crashing against the shore, just the way I imagine in my dreams. I’m thinking of sand pouring between my bare feet, of kisses stolen in the surf, of foamy waves and pink-streaked sunsets as I rest in the arms of my true love.  

I’m not going to think about grunts and cries, blood and sweat, and the never ending sound of glass breaking.

Chase says something to me but I’m gone. Gone. I can’t handle the fear and the chaos and the very real feeling of one strong man’s body over mine. His bones push into my soft curves. Thickly muscled legs part mine, hips pinning me to the rough wood floor. A wet warmth from his sweaty t-shirt, peeled to his chest, slides against my back. The bristle of five-o’clock shadow against the nape of my neck is like fire. 

He’s protecting me.

I am his to watch over.

Chase’s lips touch the sweaty skin of my cheek and I feel his words vibrate against my jaw. “I’ll get you out of here. Don’t worry, Allie.”

He is no longer holding the gun. The crazy fight disappears and suddenly it’s just me and Chase. That’s all that matters. I think I’m losing it, because who feels
this
during a bar fight with thirty guns in the room?

Part of me feels guilty. But I can’t deny it. It feels like being home. And I haven’t felt that in a long time.  

Cold. I feel a chill behind me and realize Chase just stood up and is now crouching behind the bar. He puts one finger to his lips in a
shhhh
gesture. His eyes soften when he looks at me, then harden as he looks up. My eyes follow his. I sit up and peek out from behind the bar.  

Arms, legs, boots, fists... The room looks like someone took a bunch of people and put them in a blender. I see bloody noses everywhere. Frenchie is trying to get to the pile of guns but Jeff takes him out with a punch, hitting upward, right under his chin.

I still can’t tell what they are fighting about.

“C’mon!” Chase growls. He pulls me to him and looks down, concern in his eyes. “No girl should be caught up in this mess.” I can’t hear anything more, but I swear he mumbles something like “And especially you” just as he pushes me to the door, using his body as a shield.

The sunlight blinds me, making me reel backward. I stagger, my knees buckling. Just because I’m outside doesn’t mean I’m safe. The day is as dull and quiet outside as it was when I entered the bar. The landscape is beige and brown, dry dirt and trash littering the cracked asphalt road. A car whizzes by, its driver completely unaware of the drama right inside the bar’s doors. 

As my eyes adjust I see Chase is watching me. Carefully, like I’m worth watching.

“You okay?” he asks, his eyes floating between me and the bar’s main door.

“I’ll be okay,” I rasp. I reach up and feel something in my hair. I pull it out.

It’s a sliver of glass. A drop of blood forms on my fingertip as I flick it away.

Our eyes lock. His face has a hard edge to it, with a tight jaw and cheekbones to die for. He looks determined, angry, and tender all at once. I can’t stop looking at him. He can’t stop looking at me.

He reaches up and brushes my hair with great tenderness. “No one’s going to hurt you,” he says with a possessiveness that makes my heart leap. He pulls another shard of glass from my hair and tosses it aside.  

“You said that already.” I slip my bleeding finger in my mouth and suck on it. He cocks one eyebrow and makes a little groaning sound in the back of his throat.

“I mean it. And I don’t say anything I don’t mean,” he insists in a hushed voice. 

I open my mouth to say something, even though I have no idea what to say. A light, hot breeze chills my wet finger, the pink stain of blood already fading as I slip my finger back in my mouth.

Chase’s face turns dark, eyes filled with desire as he watches my mouth work my finger. My face turns nine shades of heat and I pull the injured part out quickly, words spilling over themselves in my head. Does he think I am mimicking...that I am implying...that I...
what
?

What makes him look at me like he wants to throw me down and kiss me until I can’t think?

Law enforcement sirens begin in the distance.

The door practically falls off the hinges as all thirty bikers come pouring out of the bar, holding guns and nursing cuts and broken noses. Thirty or so to six means that the odds are good Jeff and his friends are seriously hurt, but I can’t think about that.

All I can see is Chase, in front of me, looking at me like I’m the only thing that matters.

The air fills with the rattle and clash of boots on steel, then the roar of engines. Chase is bent over, his hands on his knees, just staring at me. A drop of sweat rolls down the sculpted bones of his face, then lingers at his chin.

It lets go and falls to the ground.

“Chase! Get your ass goin’!” says Galt Halloway, who frowns at me, then rolls his eyes as he gives Chase a hard look. I get the sense that Galt doesn’t like me. Then again, I get the sense that he doesn’t like anyone.  

Chase looks up and gives me a wicked half smile. “I’ll see you around.” He winks.

Butterflies burst inside my belly and I say, “I hope not.” Then I clap my hands over my mouth. Why did I do that? I can’t believe I said that. I want the exact opposite.

His mouth opens with a laugh that isn’t mean. His throat rumbles and even in the chaos of thirty riders and bikes all peeling out of the parking lot, with the sheriff’s sirens getting louder, he stands in front of me and laughs. The sound is like hearing joy for the first time and feeling an endless river of it.

Knowing you can touch it any time you want.

“I don’t think you mean that.” He smiles and runs to his bike, a huge Yamaha that makes a thrill of electricity shoot through me. Chase is so big. His bike
is
power. His arms pull it up. He kicks the stand and then he swings one leg over his bike with such grace it’s like watching an athlete.

It fits him like he was born on it. The other bikes take off, spewing gravel, and a panic fills me as I realize he’s leaving. Forever. I’ve driven him away with my stupid comment.

I watch as he pulls a helmet over that thick, wavy hair the color of the beach I just imagined, his fingers practiced with a swift skill. He’s done this a million times before.

Riding a bike is second nature to him.

It’s such a part of who he is.

“I’ll be back!” he hollers as his engine revs, the vibration going straight to my heart. I splay one palm over it, as if I need to keep it from escaping and climbing on the back of that bike, riding off with him. He joins his group and a long line of motorcycles take off, like a flock of Canada geese, following the leader.

I stare until only my mind imagines Chase is really there.

Chapter Three

Later that night, after the sheriff comes and takes my report about the bar fight, I sit on my bed, sore and tired. All I want to do is talk to my sister, Marissa. If I tell her about the day, tell her all about Chase, it will make him seem more real. I need him to be real.

I think he made
me
a little more real today.

When I showered earlier I had to be careful. Glass shards were sprinkled in my hair here and there. All that I have to prove it all happened now are tiny cuts on my fingers, red lines where the blood is clotting. Chase watched me lick one of those cuts with a hunger in his eyes. The memory makes me shiver.

After a second shower to make sure I really get all the glass out, I change into my cotton yoga pants, the ones with Disney cartoon characters all over them, and a purple cami top. Mom gave me these pajamas when I was thirteen. That was five years ago. It feels like forever.

Combing out my long, black hair takes time. I keep it long because Mom always said it looked beautiful, the waves shimmering over my back. It’s wet when I crawl into bed, but that’s okay. On a hot day like today, it feels good.

I
really
need to talk to someone before I go crazy. Am I imagining Chase’s interest in me? I don’t think so, but how would I know? No one has ever looked at me like Chase did. Touched me like that. 

Seemed to
know
me.

The only friend I have in town is David, the nerdiest guy in school, and even then we only see each other here and there. He’s going away to engineering college in a few weeks. David is the kind of guy who will end up working on bridges or jet planes. After getting beaten up constantly by the jocks at school, I think he’s relieved to just get out of town.

I’m so jealous of him.

Calling David to talk about Chase doesn’t seem like a good idea. Jeff still hasn’t come home from the bar yet. After the bikers zoomed off, I went into the bar and found him with a bruised eye and an angry look on his face. His friends were groaning with pain, though old Zeke had just hidden in the back office for most of the fight. I stayed and cleaned up and Jeff never said a word to me. Zeke gave me a ride home.

So the house is empty. It’s often empty, with Jeff working different hours at the bar, but this is a different kind of empty. I feel like something big is about to happen. My nerves are on edge.

I call Marissa.

“Allie!” she squeals. Music blasts in the background, and I hear people hooting and having fun. It sounds like a party.  “I can’t wait for you to meet my roommates!” She says something that sounds like “Morty”, but it’s hard to hear. And then she adds, “We’re having a little par-tay here. I wish you were with us!” 

Me, too.

“Is this a bad time?” Tears fill my eyes. I don’t know why. I look at the picture of me, Mom and Marissa that I keep on my bookcase. The one right across from the end of my bed in my room. When I talk to people on the phone it helps to look at their picture. The hard part right now is that Mom isn’t alive, and I feel so alone. Her death hits me hardest when I
am
alone. 

“Never a bad time for my little sister!” Marissa shouts. I pull the phone away from my ear a little. She’s
that
loud. A giggle bubbles up from my throat and the tears go away.

“Sounds like fun over there.”
Over there
is more than two hundred miles away. Might as well be the moon. Where I live, nobody leaves town. Nobody except Marissa and, soon, David. But that’s it. Every other person I know who was born here is still here. 

I’ve never even left our county. Whenever someone’s heading west I dream about hitching a ride and just disappearing. I could do it so easily. I could take the money I have saved and just pay some nice driver a little gas money to take me to Los Angeles. Marissa would help me find a job. I really could do it. I’m getting closer. So close. 

Touching the ocean is a lifelong dream. Right before Mom died, Marissa turned eighteen and with Mom’s blessing, moved to Los Angeles to study fashion design. She’s seen the ocean. Swam in it. Tasted it. I want to float and splash and laugh and be free. 

“It
is
fun! And I can’t wait until you come.” She goes quiet. I swallow, hard, because I know what she’s about to say. She always says it when we talk. “I wish I could help you, Allie.”

All the joy in her voice is gone. The partiers in the background keep going on. I want more than anything to be there, to smile and cheer and dance and live.

“I know you do, sis. And even if you could help me, you know...” I reply. She tried, once. Jeff found the money she sent and never said a word. It just disappeared.

“You saving your tips?” she whispers. A creepy-crawly feeling shoots up my back. Between her words and being alone in the house at night, I feel weird. On alert. Like someone is watching me. 

“Yes. And something exciting happened here today!” I say in an airy voice that doesn’t sound like me. Just the thought of Chase takes my breath away.

“Another bar fight?” She sounds cynical. That’s not the Marissa I know.

“How’d you guess?” 

“Because that’s the only exciting thing that ever happens there,” she says with a bitter laugh.

She’s right. “Yes,” I say with a sigh. “A motorcycle club.”

She groans.

“But there was this one guy,” I murmur, my mind taken over by the memory of Chase.

“A guy? A GUY? Someone other than David, right?” she screams, the phone filled with happy little noises from her.

“Of course not David. David is like a brother,” I say, laughing. I feel a flush creep across my cheeks when I think of Chase’s arms around me, his body pinning me under him as he protected me. How he watched me when I sucked my finger. 

“Whew!” Marissa says. We share a laugh. It feels good to laugh, to be accepted. To have someone to talk to. I miss her. I don’t wish she were here, though. I wish I were with her in LA.