Ruined (The MC Motorcycle Club Romance Series - Book #1)

  RUINED

  THE MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE SERIES

  By Alycia Taylor

  Copyright 2014. All rights reserved.

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  CHAPTER 1

  DAX

  “I’m gonna hope we don’t see you again,” the property officer said and handed me the last of my things.

  All my pitiful possessions collected over the past two years in a cardboard box.

  “I’m not in any hurry to see your ugly face again, that’s for sure.”

  This officer was one of the good guys. Some of the correctional officers had something to prove and some of them came in every day and did their job. Hernandez had worked in the prison system for twenty-four years. He didn’t have a damn thing to prove and even after all of those years in service, he remembered that although we may be the dregs of society, we’re still human; at least most of us are.

  “Somebody coming or are they driving you out to the Amtrak?”

  “Nah, my mom’s coming,” I told him.

  My poor mom. I had put her through some serious crap over the years and she was still the only one who made the trip up to Pelican Bay to see me every Sunday. Most of what was in the box I held came in packages she sent. I left a lot of it for my cellmate. He was still looking at another ten years. I was coming out after two. I didn’t know if I would survive if I had to go another eight.

  Hernandez turned serious and said, “Next time you think about doing something stupid, give a thought or two to how hard this had to be on her…and she stuck by you too.”

  “I know H—Thanks! I won’t be seeing you, so take it easy.”

  I stepped into the sally port with the transportation officer, Collins. Collins didn’t like his job and he really didn’t like inmates. As far as he was concerned, paroled or not, I was still an inmate. He treated me like one as he loaded me into the van. The only difference was he wasn’t allowed to put the waist chains on me. I think that pissed him off.

  I, Collins and another parolee named Simons drove in silence to the gates. It was overcast, but that was the normal weather there. I was actually looking forward to getting back to the heat in the valley. Crescent City might be a nice place to visit, but I didn’t want to live there any longer.

  My mother had to wait at the little “friends on the outside” trailer to pick me up. They couldn’t release me inside the prison gates to her. Simons was heading to the Amtrak. He was worse off than I was, not even his mother wanted to pick him up.

  I saw her blue Saturn parked as we approached. She had an SUV, but she refused to drive it up there. She said it ate too much gas. It wasn’t like my father couldn’t afford it, but Mom was never one to spend frivolously.

  She got out when she saw us and opened the trunk. Collins stepped out of the van, opened my door, handed me my box and gave a curt nod in my mother’s direction. Then he climbed back into the CDC van and headed out to drop lonely Simons at the train.

  “Hey, Dax,” my mother said.

  She was pushing fifty, but she was still a beautiful woman. She had light blond hair and it was natural, not from a box or a bottle. Everything about my mother was natural, she wasn’t into the big fake boobs or any of that like a lot of the “old ladies” at the club were.

  “Hi, mom, how are you?” I gave her a kiss on the cheek. She always smelled good too. She had worn the same perfume since I was a baby. I didn’t even know what it was called, but whenever I smelled it, it reminded me of her.

  “I’m good now. I haven’t slept in two years, but tonight I’ll sleep like a baby.” She smiled. I believed her when she said she hadn’t been sleeping. She was a great mom and she wasted a lot of time worrying about me.

  I gave her a hug and asked, “Want me to drive?”

  She laughed and said, “Get your ass in the passenger seat.” She was a sweet lady, but when she told you to put your ass somewhere, you did it.

  My mom made small talk on the way home. She was spouting a bunch of bullshit about all the people who were going to be so happy to see me. They all knew where I was the last two years. Yet it was only my mom there to visit on Sundays and holidays. If they had missed me even a little bit, they would have at least sent a letter or a card. I just let her talk though. It helped her to believe what she was saying. It helped her to believe there was some good left in my father and the rest of the “family.” It was delusional, but I wasn’t going to be the one to take that away from her.

  “Have you heard from Olivia?” my mom asked suddenly.

  “Nope. Last time I heard from Olivia was just before I went into court for my sentencing. What I heard from her was, ‘Dax, I don’t ever want to see you again.’ I have to give her credit; so far she’s stuck to her guns.”

  “She was scared, Dax. You were both so young.”

  “I haven’t heard from her. Not a word. She didn’t even come inside for the sentencing.”

  “Did you reach out to her? Did you try? You could have written to her or called her. She really loved you, Dax. I’m sure she’d love to hear from you. I’m sure that whatever changes she’s made in her life could be…readjusted.”

  “I’m not the same kid who went in. I was a thin, fresh-faced, respectable looking little kid back then, back when she told me she didn’t want to be with a guy who was doing time. She didn’t want to be with a felon. I look like an inmate now or at the very least, a hardcore member of the MC. Whether I was guilty or not, I’m a convicted felon and that will be with me forever. She’s not even going to see the same guy she used to see when she looked at me. She’s going to see a guy who did hard time every time she looks at one of my tattoos.”

  “It’s the man inside that counts, Dax.” My mother truly believed that and she must have seen something in my dad that I couldn’t see or she would have left him decades ago.

  “Let’s change the subject,” I told her.

  It was hard for me to think about Olivia. When I first got locked up it was all I did. I drove myself crazy thinking about her, wondering what she was doing…if she was moving on with her life.

  I fell in love with her the first time I saw her. I literally bumped into her my first day in college. I knocked her down, but she dusted herself off and laughed. After I helped her up, I realized how pretty she was. She had long, thick dark hair that hung down her back and big, deep brown eyes that a guy could get lost in and I did. I got lost in them and stayed lost in them, right up to the day she told me she wasn’t going to wait for me. That she didn’t want to be with me any longer.

  “How’s dad?” I asked, desperately reaching for anything that would make me stop thinking about Olivia. The days of us being two carefree college students were long gone and we would never get them back. I learned the hard way that wishing things were different was never going to make it so.

  “Oh, well, you know your father,” she said. I had to smile. That was what she said every time I asked about him.

  Yes, unfortunately I did know my father. He was the president of his motorcycle club. I’m not talking about your Sunday afternoon guys who wear suits all week and need a little adventure type of club. I’m talking hardcore, we own and operate a bar up front but we deal in drugs and guns and anything else illegal but profitable in the back kind.

  The club members called themselves The Smokin’ Jokers and their “territory” stretched for miles along the northernmost part of Central California. I had grown up with it, around it, but once I was old enough to choose I had refused to take part in it. I had gone to coll
ege like my mom urged me to my entire life. She wanted me to move on, to get out. She didn’t want me to live my life the way my father did. I was searching for a better life for myself, but the fact that I was the son of the president got in the way of that…as it had countless times before.

  “Is he at the clubhouse right now?”

  “Probably. It’s a little after four; the bar will be getting busy for happy hour at five.”

  “Will you drop me there?” Don’t ask me why I wanted to go there, why I wanted to see him. I couldn’t have explained it if I tried. It must have been some weird DNA pull or something because there was really nothing about him that I liked or respected.

  “Dax, I don’t think that’s a good idea. I was hoping you would come to the house with me and we can talk about what your plans are now. I got a catalog from the college and fall classes just started. I’m sure you could still get into one or two. I can take you there tomorrow; we can make a day of it.”

  “Mom, I do want to go back to school and we’ll talk about it. But not tonight, okay? I turned twenty-one in prison, tonight I’d like to walk in that bar and have a beer and see my dad and the guys.”

  If anyone understood the pull of that man, my mom should have. She was just afraid that my intentions weren’t entirely pure I’m sure.

  “I don’t want you to get in a fight, Dax.”

  I laughed. “I’m not going there to confront anyone. I really just want to see them. I’ve been gone for two years. Don’t you think I missed my father…who by the way, never visited me, not one time? I’m a big enough man to get past that without punching him in the face.”

  “He couldn’t stand the thought of seeing you in there. It upset him,” she said, still making excuses for him.

  She had been making excuses for him for twenty-five years. She didn’t know what else to do. She was right about one thing; I bet it did upset him since it was his fault I was there. He was probably scared to death every day that I would give up and rat him and the other guys out. I had known my dad was dealing drugs since I was fourteen. I hadn’t ever been a part of it. Circumstance had put me in the wrong place at the wrong time though and I had taken the fall…for all of them.

  “I know,” I said.

  I didn’t want to upset her. My dad gave her plenty to be upset about. She didn’t need any more headaches from me.

  “I promise I just want to see them and have a beer. No confrontation, okay?”

  “Okay,” she said. “You’ll call me for a ride if you need one? I’ll be up late.”

  I laughed. “If I need one, I’ll call. You’re supposed to sleep tonight though, remember? You’re going to run yourself crazy worrying so much.”

  “I love you, Dax,” she said out of the blue.

  “I love you too.”

  It took us a couple of hours to get to the bar from the Pelican Bay. When we drove up in front, the first thing I noticed was that it hadn’t changed…at all. The sign that said “The Smoke Joint” was still hanging tilted to the right like it had been since I was a kid. The ugly light blue paint was almost completely peeled off in places and the rain gutters were hanging loose. You would think a bunch of guys without real jobs would have time to fix it up every now and then.

  The big windows still had a mirrored tint so you could see out from the inside, but not in from the outside. They took care of those. I couldn’t see a single scratch. The club needed their privacy. The lot out front was filled with Harley Davidsons and the sum total of their worth would far outweigh that of the property they were parked on. I took a deep breath and looked at my mom.

  “Be good,” she said with a nervous smile.

  “Always,” I said as any good ex-convict son would.

  I got out of the car and the gravel crunched underneath my prison-issued boots as I made my way through the sea of hogs to the front door. I hesitated for just a second. I didn’t let myself hesitate any longer than that. If I did, I might have turned around and got back in my mom’s car. She was still sitting, watching me. I could see her in the windows of the bar. I guess it was going to take a while for us to get back the relationship we had before I went to prison. The one where I was her grown up son and she trusted that I would get through the day without getting arrested.

  The big heavy wooden door still groaned like it used to as I pulled it toward me, but the music coming from the jukebox was too loud for anyone inside to hear it. The old jukebox was older than my dad and I was surprised it still worked. The music was scratchy, but if you turned it up loud enough and drank enough beer, no one really noticed. No one even seemed to look at me when I walked in; everyone was busy bullshitting or making out. There was even an old, fat biker with a young, hot babe out on the tiny little dance floor looking like they might do it right there. That was enough to turn my stomach.

  One thing about “The Smoke Joint” that attracted people besides of course the outdated décor and the Smokin’ Jokers meeting room in the back was that when you walked in, you felt like you had walked into something hidden and personal. It was off the beaten path and not a place that couples or tourists usually frequented. It was rare to not see the same five guys sitting on the same five worn, blue vinyl stools at the old Formica bar. It was like when surfers find a “secret surf spot.” They keep coming back and they don’t go spreading the word around for fear it would be taken over by “undesirables.”

  In the case of The Smoke Joint, an “undesirable” would be a suit or a cop. Eighty percent of its clientele were bikers who still rode daily or old, tired bikers who were too arthritic to ride any longer but couldn’t give up the lifestyle. The other twenty percent were women with biker fetishes. Those women came in all shapes, sizes and ages and as I looked around I noticed that they seemed to be coming younger than they used to. Hopefully my dad was having the guys check IDs, but I doubted it. Even though I found much to complain about as my eyes scanned the place, it was still home and I still felt instantly comfortable there.

  “Son of a bitch!” I heard a voice shout. It was a deep, gravelly voice and it belonged to an old coot named Buster Balls. No, that wasn’t what his mom named him, but I had never heard him called anything else. One of the guys told me once that Buster was like the whipping boy. He was always the one who got an ass chewing in the club whenever anything went wrong, even when it wasn’t his fault and that was how he had earned his nickname.

  “It’s Dax, as I live and breathe. Boy, you put on some meat and some muscle since I saw you last.” He let out a low whistle. “And look at all them purdy CDC tattoos. They sure are making them nicer than they did in my day. All that hunger striking for the colored ink was well worth it.”

  I smiled. He was right. The inmates in the SHUs (Security Housing Unit) across CDC had spent three summers in a row on an organized hunger strike in an effort to gain privileges. Colored ink was one of the things they had been given as a bargaining chip.

  “How goes it, Buster?” I put out my hand and although he could barely curl his distorted one into a fist he tried and instead of shaking, he bumped mine.

  “I ain’t dead yet, so I ain’t complaining. Why you hidin’ over here by the door? Don’t you want to say hello to your daddy and the other boys?”

  “Yeah, where’s my dad?” I didn’t see him in his usual booth and he wasn’t behind the bar.

  “He’s over there with that new little kitten, Samantha. Hey J.J.! Look who I found.”

  Suddenly, all heads turned toward me and even in the dim overhead lights I felt like a spotlight had been shined on my face. My dad looked up from the barely legal girl he had been…talking to and at first it looked like he wasn’t sure who he was looking at. I had changed a lot in two years and the lighting in the bar wasn’t all that great. I was surprised Buster recognized me. But recognition finally crossed his face and something akin to…discomfort, maybe. He knew I had just done two years’ time for the club and not through any fault of my own. I often wondered if he felt even a littl
e bit guilty. I had to doubt it. His discomfort, fear or whatever it was always came from a place of self-preservation.

  “I’ll be damned,” my dad said. “Dax!”

  He came toward me and put his hand out. Grabbing mine, he pulled me against his massive chest and patted my back hard. Before I went in, that used to hurt…a lot. Thanks to my daily organized workouts, I barely felt it.

  “How are you, kid? I didn’t even know you were getting out.”

  “Mom didn’t tell you?”

  “No, hell no. We would of had a party for you. Wouldn’t we, boys?”

  I noticed that the rest of the club members had gathered around. Once they realized I didn’t have a weapon and I wasn’t there to exact my revenge, I spent the next ten minutes shaking hands, receiving high fives and pats on the back.

  My dad grabbed two beers from behind the counter and led me over to his booth. For a second I forgot where I was and who I was with. I thought he was going to sit down with me and ask how I was and how the last two years had been. Instead, he called over two of the barely legal in daisy dukes and introduced them as Lila and Crystal. They were known as club girls. In other circles they would simply be known as sluts. They sat down and my father whom I hadn’t seen in two years went back to his own club girl in the corner.

  “Did you just get out of prison?” the one named Lila asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, taking a long pull off the beer. Damn, that was good. I forgot how much better beer was than pruno that had been brewed in someone’s cotton sock.

  “What was it like?” she questioned.

  I furrowed my brows. Her affect was completely incongruent to the question. She was smiling, flushed with excitement, talking to a muscular and tatted up stranger in a biker bar about just getting out of prison. She was getting turned on by it and making sure that I knew it.

  The one named Crystal saw something she liked on the other side of the bar and excused herself by saying, “I’m gonna get me some of that.” You just can’t buy that kind of class. Lila was still looking at me adoringly and waiting for my answer. I went with the one that I thought might get rid of her the fastest.