TRIGGER: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel (22 page)
Read TRIGGER: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel Online
Authors: Meg Jackson
“I know,” he said. “But I was only at Reign’s; had to
ask him. Just to be sure.”
“Sure of what?” I asked, pulling away to sit beside
him on the bed. He took my hand in his, turning to face me, eyes melting into
mine. His gaze was so intense that I shivered.
“That you could stay. If you want to…” His sentence
trailed off, and his hand tightened around mine, squeezing.
“Trigger…” I said, so sure he had to know that
all
I wanted to do was stay. It didn’t
matter if it was here, or back in New Hampshire, or even back in Brooklyn. I
only wanted
him.
And if that made me
a weak, one-dimensional, silly little girl…so be it. I’d only loved one man in
my entire life. Without him…
“Will you? He said it was fine of course, but…”
I interrupted him swiftly, leaning in to cover his
lips with mine, his tongue trapped between my teeth, my hands rushing to hold
his
stubbled
cheeks.
“Where else would I go,” I said, pulling away. “You’re
here. Where else could I ever possibly go?”
Some say your life flashes before your eyes when you
die. But in that moment, on the side of the bed, holding Trigger’s face in my
hands, safe and warm in his gaze, I thought of us, fast forwarding from moment
to moment.
The first time I’d seen him, in that library. The
minutes spent studying over an open textbook. His voice in the dim and dire
room where he’d made a promise he’d kept for ten long years. New Hampshire
nights and mornings, short and quick or long and lazy. On a bike, speeding away
while patrol cars chased after him and my heart went with them all. Then seeing
him again, in that trailer park, with Brock only feet away from us, and his
strong, lean, figure in the ring, keeping that promise still…
I closed my eyes and leaned against him once more, my
head resting in the crook of his neck, his arm falling around my shoulders.
This is home,
I thought.
It doesn’t matter where we are…this is home.
End
of Part 2.
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REIGN
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Epilogue.
“Nah, sis,” Cass said, swaying softly with the baby on
her hip. “I love it. Honestly, I mean, I never really cared about my job…being
a housewife is nice. Get to keep things tidy and cook dinner and all that.
Though, to be honest, with all these damn babies running around, it
feels
like I’m running a daycare
sometimes.”
She shifted Endo and Naomi’s daughter to make herself
more comfortable, the phone wedged between her chin and shoulder. She listened
and laughed a bit.
“No, not yet,” she said. “I mean, someday but…I don’t
know. I’m only 30, I got time. Besides, I’m not ready to give up my body quite
yet.”
In the background, the two-year old laughed to Sesame
Street, clapping her hands. Cass was waiting for the baby’s formula to warm up.
“Oh, he’s out on a ride in the Rockies today with
Puck. Be home tonight.”
Puck’s romance with the redhead who’d caused all the
trouble had fizzled out even before Trigger returned from Reno. The two men had
been hesitant at their first meeting after Trigger’s recovery, but had since
sparked up an intense friendship, with Trigger taking on the role of mentor for
the troubled kid.
“And Mike?
Mhm
, that’s
awesome. Two more stores?”
Now, she didn’t have to bite her tongue when speaking
to her sister. Improbably, Jennie’s relationship was still going strong; better
than strong, really. They were getting married the next month. Cass would be
the maid of honor. Cass herself had asked Jennie for the same favor when she’d
had her desert wedding to Trigger; a raucous affair with bikes, booze, and
bouquets. She’d told Trigger she didn’t need anything fancy, but he’d insisted,
saying that after all the shit Cass had been through in her life, no one
deserved a more lavish wedding than she.
In contrast, Jennie was keeping her wedding a small
affair: Cass, Jackie, and Gloria would attend for the bride, Mike’s parents and
sister would be there for him. A small, intimate dinner after the ceremony
before seeing the newlyweds off on a holiday to Majorca. It was funny, to Cass,
how different she and Jennie’s lives had turned out, yet similar in the sense
that they were, ultimately happy. Which, coming from where they did, said a
lot.
“Oh, yeah, no, you go on ahead,” Cass said, hearing
the timer go off behind her. “Baby’s
gotta
get fed,
anyway. I love you too, sis. See you soon.”
As she sat down with the baby in her arms, in front of
the TV where Elmo and Grover were discussing the deep subject of kindness, she
released a happy sigh. Really, she didn’t mind taking care of the young ones
while Naomi was off saving the world and Gabriella puzzled over life’s greater
mysteries. The three women had grown exceptionally close, especially Gabriella,
whose ex-husband bore certain remarkable similarities to
Cass’
father as well as Brock.
Who, by the way, had tried – successfully – to track
Cass down. He’d stood outside the bar, hollering his apologies, begging her to
come back to him, to leave that “biker scum” in the dust and come home, where
she belonged. He’d promised to be better, to do better, to love her right. But
he’d hit the road quick when Endo, Reign, Trigger, Puck, and a gang of other
men emerged with their arms crossed across their chest and murder in their
eyes. Cass knew that, given the chance, Trigger would still bite the guy’s ear
off, Tyson style. But in the end, Brock had always been a coward, and acted
accordingly. She hadn’t heard from him since.
Of course, sometimes the nights did get lonely for
Cass. Reign had stayed true to his word, giving Trigger late-night shifts
cleaning at the bar, three-day trips hustling immigrants across the border, and
at least one fight a month. Cass accompanied him when she could, but it wasn’t
always feasible. But, unlike the cold and sterile nights she spent next to
Brock,
Cass’
fingers and fantasies no longer
satisfied her desires. She preferred, instead, to wait for the real thing.
Because he was always going to come home to her.
Always.
THE
END
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Part
One
~ 1 ~
Oh great, a used condom.
Oh, wow, super, a bloodstain.
What is this even, yogurt?
Who does this to a pillow?
Was it very necessary, whoever you are, to completely cover the walls
with shit?
What is this…oh please…don’t even…no…yup, it’s piss.
Jesus Christ, is it that hard to put your used needles in the damn trash
can?
Oh…a dollar tip, how nice, considering they left an entire week’s worth
of rotting fast food and half-empty beers all over the floor.
How did they manage to get cum on the ceiling?! That’s actually
impressive, I can’t even be mad…
All in a day’s work for me.
I pushed my cart from room to room, arms sore from scrubbing at mysterious
stains, clothes splotched with bleach, mind numb to what wonders might await me
behind the next door.
People are animals, I tell
ya
. No one knows that as much as a cleaning lady at a
hotel. And, no, before you start dreaming up my identity for me, I’m not an
“illegal alien”. I am half-Latina, but I’m a full-blooded American citizen,
born and raised, and I speak perfect English, thank you very much.
What is it about staying at
a hotel that can turn even a mild-mannered person into an untamed beast with no
problem pissing all over the floor or dumping an ashtray onto their sheets
before checking out? Is it because it’s not their home, so they don’t care what
happens to it? Is it because they don’t realize someone like me has to come and
clean it up? Or – and perhaps this is the scariest possibility – is it possible
that they’re actually like that at home, too, and you just never see it?
Not everyone who came
through the doors of the Gateway were like that, of course, but way too many
were. We had our fair share of families, businesspeople, truckers. But for
every guest who left the room in a decent state, there were two prostitutes,
pimps, drug dealers, alcoholics, or other such devils who took it upon
themselves to make my job as hard as humanely possible.
And I never held anything
against those people for what they
did
.
If you’re a lady and you need money and you don’t mind letting someone give you
the old in-out to get some, go on with your bad self. Got a drinking problem
and can’t drive home? By all means, keep everyone safe and stay at the hotel.
Need to “figure stuff out” through a drug-fueled weekend? Not my place to
judge.
But, goddam, a little
decorum would be nice to see once in a while.
“Gabriella, Rosa is taking
her break now, can you make sure 215 is ready? Early check-in,” my
walkie-talkie crackled on my hip.
“Already checked it, boss,
all good,” I said, pushing down the ‘talk’ button and hoping that my manager
would actually hear me for once instead of badgering me about why I “didn’t
respond”. The woman was a sweetheart, but she was deaf as hell and the flask of
vodka she sipped on all day didn’t help her comprehension skills.
As I heaved my cart down the
hall, legs already aching from all the bending over and crouching down my job
demanded, I tried not to think about what would happen at the end of my shift.
To be honest, as much as I hated playing nursemaid to the lost souls of the
world, tidying up after them, wondering whether that puddle was vomit or melted
ice cream, there wasn’t a whole lot to look forward to once I was done for the
day, either.
It was late June, when it’s
really only just beginning to warm up in the high Rockies.
Maybe it’s a good night for a barbeque,
I thought
idly, until I opened up the door to the next room and my list and remembered
that it was raining lightly. No use stopping at the store on my way home for hamburgers
and potato chips.
Maybe I’ll make lasagna,
I thought.
Lasagna is good for a rainy day. Jeremy loves my lasagna.
Lasagna was a safe bet.
Anything that I already knew Jeremy loved was a safe bet. Anything I wasn’t
sure about was a gamble. And if I made anything that he’d told me once, even if
he’d said it years ago in a conversation that I had no reason to remember, I
was treading on ice so thin it might as well be paper.
Yeah, lasagna,
I thought, thankful that this room, at least, wasn’t
as bad as some of the others I’d seen that day. As I pulled up the covers,
balling them up with the sheets, ready to throw them in the hamper, I made a
quick mental inventory of the room. I was looking for chargers, cell phones,
socks, shoes, a ski goggle, anything that a rushed guest might have left behind
on their way out the door.
You’d be surprised what
people leave behind in hotel rooms. Usually it’s just crap, but sometimes you
find interesting things: photographs, mysterious pills, strange powders in baggies,
gold jewelry. Some of the girls I worked with, I knew, were prone to taking
such finds home with them instead of bringing them to the front desk, like we
were supposed to. I didn’t hold it against them, but I always brought anything
I found straight to the clerks to hold onto or dispose of as they saw fit.
It wasn’t worth the risk of
getting caught, for me. And besides, I didn’t do drugs, and I didn’t need
jewelry. Jeremy, though he had many flaws, was an excellent provider. Or, I
should say, the police force he worked for was an excellent provider. We didn’t
want for money. The fact I had this job at all was due to one of his whims.
After we’d married, three
years before the shit hit the fan, he didn’t like the idea of me “sitting
around at home” all day. Unfortunately, he also didn’t like the idea of me
getting a job that would be “too mentally taxing” or take up “too much time”.
Really, he just wanted me to get a job where I’d come home too dog-tired to do
anything but put up with his shit, and working for housekeeping at the hotel
was the perfect mix of physical labor and mind-numbing repetition.
“But what did I get a degree
for, if I can’t do anything with it?” I’d said, still so naïve.
“Well, I don’t know what you
got a degree for, I sure as hell didn’t tell you to get it. I mean, what can
you even
do
with a degree in
philosophy? You’d have to go to grad school if you want to make anything of
yourself, and we can’t afford that right now. Besides, if you went back to
school, you’d have your nose in a book all the time again, no time for me. I
waited two years to have you all to myself, I don’t want to wait another four,”
he’d replied, appealing to that sappy part of me that loved him beyond reason.
“I guess you’re right,” I’d
resigned, not wanting to have the same argument again for the third time that
week. After our honeymoon, that had been our first major issue. The first of
many, I’d like to add.
So I’d started looking for a
job. With almost no work experience, it was tough. I could flip burgers, but
that seemed beneath me, and with a degree I was way overqualified, anyway. I
wanted to take a position as a secretary at a law firm, but Jeremy had thought
that would be too stressful for me, with crazy hours and demanding lawyers to
cater to. He was the only man I should be catering to, in his opinion.
So, I’d taken the gig as
housekeeper at the Gateway. I’m pretty sure I was only hired because I looked
like I could speak Spanish. Which I can’t, by the way. Well, I can, but only
curse words. Plus, my name, Gabriella, is only one “l” away from the traditional
Hispanic spelling of the same name, blurring the line even further. Being half
Puerto Rican and half Italian, I’m what they call “ethnically ambiguous”, which
is a nice way of saying “no one knows what the hell you are right from looking
at you.”
With large, almond-shaped,
dark chocolate eyes, a deep tan complexion, and crazy, kinky, black hair that
does whatever it wants at all times, I’ve been mistaken for a Jew, a Mexican, a
Filipino, and even, on one occasion, a Hawaiian. My body, though, is pure
Latina. I blessedly missed out on the dark body hair and stick-thin frame of my
Italian mother, and got my paternal grandmother’s luscious hips, large, C-cup
breasts, and wide, womanly thighs.
Not that I always
appreciated that, mind you. In fact, when I was with Jeremy all those years, I
hated it. He was as Irish as they get, pale as the moon and thin as a rail. He
always made me feel like I was fat.
He’d buy clothes for me,
intentionally buying sizes too large, because he knew that it made me think I
belonged in the “plus” size section. He’d make little backhanded compliments
about my roly-poly tummy, which never seemed to shrink no matter how much I
tried to diet or exercise.
Now, of course, when I look
at myself in the mirror and see the slight
pudge
in
my stomach, I know it’s just a necessary evil of being what they call
“voluptuous.” But back then? I did all I could to hide my body, thinking that,
since it didn’t look like a fashion model’s, it wasn’t any good.
But that was just par for
the course when it came to Jeremy. I was never good enough, never pretty
enough, never smart enough or funny enough. He never ceased to remind me, in
little ways, never outright, how he’d “settled” for me because he loved my
personality, not my mind or my body. And how much could he have loved my
personality, anyway, considering how much he thought I screwed up on a daily
basis?
As I went into the bathroom,
gathering towels and making note of what toiletries needed to be restocked, I
instinctively paused to check myself in the mirror.
I’ll need a touch-up soon,
I thought, brow furrowed, hand
gently touching the tender spot above my left eyebrow where my concealer was
just starting to look splotchy. You could just barely, if you looked hard
enough, make out the dark purple markings underneath my make-up. I flinched
under my own touch, the spot still tender although it’d been three days.
Here’s something you should
know about humans, if you are one.
None of us are of one mind.
Or, maybe I shouldn’t be so
broad. But I’ve met a lot of people, and there’s always two sides to the coin.
It’s not like some old, tired, trope, like good and evil or black and white.
It’s just…there’s the “you” that you’ve always believed yourself to be, the one
you want to be, and there’s the “you” that you’d like to ignore, that you don’t
want to take ownership of.
I don’t tell many people
about that time in my life, because in that time of my life the latter “you”
was in charge of me. I thought of myself as feisty and smart, with a spitfire
wit and a take-no-
prisoners
attitude. The way I’d been
raised, in a household that was half
no
mames
,
guey
!
and half
fangul
!
But, of course, that wasn’t
who I was. I was – and this pains me to write – a “battered women”. Ugh. What a
horrible phrase. It makes me think of cake, or cookies. When, in reality, there
was nothing sweet about my marriage. Jeremy, love him though I did, was a
gigantic asshole. A
disgraziat
.
A
so
pendejo
.
He didn’t always hit me.
Maybe once, maybe twice a month. But I never deserved it – does any wife
deserve it, really? I can
maybe
see
if you walk in on her banging three dudes at once, or
if she’s got a knife to your head. I wouldn’t put someone in jail
for smacking their woman if she was about to go full-on
Misery
on the guy. But a good, hard, close-fisted slug because you
spilled coffee on his shirt in the morning?
But, the thing is, he made
me feel so low, emotionally, that I
thought
I deserved it. Even though, deep down in the back of my mind, I knew that
it was all a lot of macho bullshit and that he was wrong about me, he was
really, really good at making me feel like I’d have nowhere to go, no one to
turn to. He made me feel like being his wife was really my only purpose on this
earth. And lord, even if it was the most fucked-up love in the world, I did
love him.
How’s that for honesty? I
can still admit – now, after everything – that I loved that man with all my
heart.
But some loves are just no
damn good. Heroin addicts love heroin, don’t they?
See, this is the thing I
need you know about me before I go any further. I’m not stupid. I’m not
pathetic. I’m not a mindless bimbo. I was, and am, smart as hell. I graduated
top of my class from Baruch University, with a degree in philosophy. I can
think my way out of a steel trap.
