Unplugged: A Bad Boy Rockstar Romance (20 page)

Even her best dream
s couldn’t do justice to the reality of the man that Jase
was. Maggie felt her stomach drop somewhere near her ankles as she looked at
him for the first time in almost five-and-a-half years.

 Jase, the man she had loved.  The man
who had first loved her.

The man she had abandoned.

She couldn’t bring herself to do or say
anything in that moment, and no one else in the room seemed to realize she had
stopped breathing. She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. She had promised
herself she would play this co
ol, but her heart was
pounding in her chest like a bird trying to escape from a cage.

Jase didn’t notice her, not right away.
He was looking at the man who had challenged him, smiling. His whole face lit
up when he smiled. He took a few steps into the den
before he finally looked over to the bar and saw her sitting there with a beer
in her hand as if she had never left in the first place.

As soon as he saw her, he stopped dead
in his tracks. The smile fell from his face, and in its place a red-tinted dark
ness began to brew. He stared at her as if he was looking
at a ghost and she could see his chest heaving as his breaths came shorter and
shorter.

“
Jase, look who it is!
”
said Tommy.
“
Maggie
’
s back!
” 
He might have been oblivious, but even
the cheer in his
voice couldn’t mask the tension
building in the room.

Maggie stood up carefully from the
barstool and put her beer on the counter. She said nothing, made no motion
towards him. She only met his eyes and waited.

Everyone had stopped what they were
doing an
d watched Maggie and Jase with curious eyes.
Maggie wondered if the way she felt today was what it felt like to be famous:
everyone constantly staring, watching everywhere you went, waiting for you to
fuck up
…
. waiting for you to scream.  Maggie
withered b
eneath their collective gaze.

“Yeah,”
said Jase suddenly. His baritone voice
sent shivers down Maggie
’
s spine. She did her best not to let it show.
“
So she is.
” 
After a pause, he took three hard steps
towards the bar and came to stand right in front of Ma
ggie.
She only came up to his shoulders. She forgot what it felt like to feel so
small next to a man, and it wasn’t just his size that made her feel that way.
The smell of his musk sent overwhelming waves of memories through her mind.

Maggie blinked hard,
waiting, watching him. He let her stew in her worry for a
few moments, and then without warning, he backhanded the beer she had been
drinking from the bar. It went crashing into the wall, spilling suds all over
an ancient poster of Willie Nelson.

Jase ben
t down
low towards Maggie
’
s face. His whispered words pierced her heart in ways she
didn’t know were possible.
“
Go home.
”

With that, Jase turned abruptly and
stalked out of the den, down the hallway, and out of the clubhouse. Seconds
later, the sounds of a
roaring bike echoed down the
long driveway.

Shaking and pale, Maggie felt herself
rooted to the spot she was standing. She stared at the empty space where Jase
had been like she was caught in a bad dream.

“Jesus,”
said Drake from the doorway of the den.
He shoved his phone in his pocket and, completely oblivious, thumbed towards
the clubhouse front door.
“
Obviously I
’
m not the only one who didn’t know who she was.
”

~
THREE ~

Jase had driven almost five miles
outside of LeBeau before he realized he was actually on his bike. The sudden
rage that enveloped him when he saw Maggie sitting at that bar was unlike
anything he had ever felt in his relatively young life
—
and that was say
ing a lot for a guy who was professionally angry. One moment, he had been
close enough to kiss her; close enough to strangle her dead; close enough that
he could still smell her lingering perfume in his thick beard. Then he was
suddenly aware of the swirli
ng colors of the falling
twilight as he tore down a country road at twice the speed limit, wind whipping
his face without mercy. The moment spooked him when he realized he had no idea
what had happened between here and there.

He slowed his bike down as he
came around a curving hillside, and pulled her over at the
first shoulder that was wide enough to park safely. The bike rumbled between
his legs for a few moments before he killed the engine. Instantly the sounds of
the coming night came rushing in to fil
l the silence:
bullfrogs, crickets, the final songs of day birds. Jase tried to focus on the
visual of his anger melting away like the patient, slow drip of wax from a
burning candle; sometimes he could daydream his way into some level of calm.
Some of the
stars twinkled brightly, out early in the
night sky and he did his best to focus on them. But all he could see in his
head was Maggie, sitting there at the bar, like she had never left; joshing
around with Castillo; drinking the MC
’
s beer and acting like
she owned the place. Like she hadn’t just up and abandoned
it one sunny summer day much like this one.

The back of Jase
’
s neck pulsed, tense with stress and
heat. He moved to rub it away and was shocked to see his hand trembling when he
lifted it.

“Fuck,”
he sighed heavily and felt suddenly
weighted.

Why was she here? Why now? After all
this time
…
after Jase had worked so goddamn hard to
stitch up the bleeding wound she had left behind in him. A wound that was
infected and pulsing for over a year afterwar
d; a
wound that nearly drove him to self-destruction. Only the guiding hand of the
MC had saved him from himself. It was the second time Henry and the boys had
saved his life, and he wasn’t even thirty yet. He owed them everything. And
Maggie had almost ma
de him lose it.

He found himself wishing someone had
bothered to call or text him and warn him about her return, but Jase
immediately wondered if that really would have helped. He tried to imagine
calling himself about the news, trying to keep it from end
ing in rage, and he failed. He knew deep in his heart that
this was just a mini-apocalypse he would have no choice but to face and endure.
He used to rehearse this emergency on nights when he couldn’t sleep, nights
when he felt weak. He thought if he could
be prepared
for it, he could find some way to make it easy to endure. But now he felt that
maybe there was never a way for it to be easy.

As the last light died from the sky,
Jase revved up his bike once more and headed back into town at a significantly
s
lower speed. Regardless of how calm he had felt on
the country road, every mile that led him back to LeBeau only recharged his
anger a little at a time. He didn’t have the luxury of taking time for it to
completely die. He had to talk to Henry and find out
just what the hell was going on. No more surprises.

He pulled up to the MC and saw the
strange SUV he had noticed before was gone. It had to have belonged to Maggie;
only he hadn’t realized it at the time. He took a deep breath, grateful he
wouldn’t have
to see her again.

When he passed through the den, Beck
shouted at him over the Roy Orbison on the jukebox and the sound of laughter at
the pool table that he needed to make a liquor store run. Jase tossed a hand at
the old man and didn’t reply. He headed
straight
through the den and up the stairs to the conference room. Without thinking, he
simply opened the doors and barged in.

Henry sat at his place at the head of
the table, lost in thought. He jolted to attention when Jase entered, looking
too surprised
to be mad at the show of insolence.

Jase took time to close the doors behind
him before he spoke.
“
How the fuck could you not tell me she
was here?
”
The question came out bitter before Jase
could do anything to stop it. But he didn’t take it back and he
didn’t apologize. He stood over Henry and waited for an
answer.

Henry shook his head and waved a hand.
“It
’
s not like that, son.
”

“
What is it like? Is your phone broken?
”

“
I know you
’
re angry, Jase, and you have every right
—“

“
I
don’t
fucking need your permission to be angry!
”

That was the line. Henry jumped to his
feet and met Jase with hard eyes. Jase put down the finger he realized he
’
d been pointing at his club president.

“
Why don’t you sit the hell down and we
talk about this li
ke civilized men, eh?
”
said Henry. It was half-serious,
half-sardonic.
“
Or I guess we could just tear each other
apart over her, like she
’
s always wanted us to do.
”

A few deep breaths later and Jase was
feeling more himself. He apologized to Henry and slum
ped
his way into Beck
’s chair.
“
I never expected to walk into that room and see her sitting
at that bar again. I feel like my last sanctuary has been
…
breached.
”

“I
’
m sorry for that,
”
said Henry.
“
She came with no warning. And I was
still in too shocked to
think about calling you.
”

Jase nodded.
“
What is she doing here?
”

“
She says she needs help. Some small-time
dealers tried to bully her into a racketeering scheme at her job,
”
said Henry.

Jase frowned.
“
Do you believe her?
”

“
I believe it would take
something equally as dangerous or difficult to get her to
come back here after all this time. Whether this is the actual truth, I don’t
know. But something big is going on. I really
…”
Henry trailed off, then cleared his
throat and continued.
“
I really beli
eved
I would never see her in LeBeau again.
”

Silence fell as both men, for very
different reasons, contemplated the return of Maggie Oliver. Already the
clubhouse felt different to Jase. It felt like it was on the horizon of some
growing storm.

“
What did y
ou
say to her?
”
said Jase.

He had interrupted another daze. Henry
blinked a few times and then said,
“She
’
s my child, Jase. Of course I told her we would help.
”

Jase nodded, but then stopped.
“Wait
,
we?
”

“
We, as in the MC, yes. Maggie seems
pretty convince
d that these assholes are threatening
enough that she had to leave Eagleton just to feel safe. She will be a
liability to us and to the town if we don’t
intervene…
to say nothing of the fact that I
’
m not leaving my daughter out in the
woods to be devoured
by wolves.
”

“I
’
m not saying you should...
”

“
Really?
”
said Henry. He looked Jase in the eyes.
“
You sure about that, son? Didn’t you
just bust through my beautiful cherry-wood doors without knocking to tell me I
should do just that?
”

Jase felt uncomfortable
at the insinuation Henry was making. He was furious as all
hell at Maggie, yes. He would be happy never seeing her face again. But seeing
her hurt? Or dead? Thoughts like that turned his stomach to stone. He shook his
head.
“
I didn’t know she was in danger
. She was just
…
suddenly there at the bar. Like a bad dream. I wasn’t ready
for it.
”

“
Yeah, I guess she picked up a lot more
about tactical thinking than I assumed,
”
said Henry. He actually chuckled to himself a little at
that.

“I
’
m glad she came to us
—
to
you
—
if she
’
s in trouble,
”
said Jase.
“
But to be perfectly frank, I
’
d prefer it if she got the fuck out of
town after all of it has blown over.
”

Henry was silent a minute as he looked
at Jase.
“You
don’t
want her stay to be extended, then?
”

“
Not if I have
any
say about it, no,
”
said
Jase. He put his hands on his knees and leaned forward.
“
Maggie left LeBeau. She abandoned it for
a different life. She doesn’t get to come back and just hit the reset button on
all of that. This is our town and we deserve to be
here without her dragging up the ghosts of the past. We
’
re the ones who stayed and took care of
it.
”

Henry licked his lips. He took a breath
before he responded.
“
She may very well not want to stay,
anyway, Jase. Let
’
s worry about one thing at a time.
”

“
S
uch as?
”

“
The sooner we can take care of this
threat against her, the sooner she can stop being on the run, and start
…
well, whatever life she ends up
choosing,
”
said Henry.