Fire Inside (Chaos, #2)(25)

The wind in my hair, a monkey on my back, I didn’t enjoy the ride.

I fretted the entire way from the bar to Ride Auto Supply Store, otherwise known to those in the know simply as “Chaos”. The store, the big-bayed garage behind it where they built custom cars and bikes, the massive forecourt of tarmac in front of it, the large building beside it, known as the Compound, was all Chaos. The boys owned Chaos collectively. The boys were Chaos.

And, according to Big Petey, five square miles around it was known as Chaos territory.

But we weren’t just in Chaos territory.

We were on Chaos, an island of land in the city of Denver that was biker-controlled.

This was not good.

You could get lost on Chaos. It was theirs. They owned it. They ruled it. They didn’t let in anyone they didn’t want there. They also didn’t let out anyone they didn’t want to go.

Tug, another one of the members, told me even cops knew that unless they had to turn into the forecourt and onto Chaos, they didn’t. It was sacrosanct. It was its own little mini-nation, ruled by Tack. The knights at his rectangular table wore leather cuts with Chaos patches sewn on the back.

Therefore, riding back there with a knight in his cut with the Chaos patch stitched on the back, who also happened to be very angry, I knew I could get lost.

Which meant I was in trouble.

Although slightly inebriated but mostly, literally, scared straight, I was able, through the drunkenness and fear, to form a plan. And my plan was to go with the only option I had. That was, try to talk my way through this. However, I would need to pick my moment.

This plan kept me silent as Hop parked next to two other bikes in front of the Compound. It kept me silent when he twisted his neck and scowled at me, which I accurately took as my cue to get off the bike. I stayed silent as I swung off. Hop swung off, grabbed my hand, and dragged me and my platform sandals to the Compound. I remained silent as he dragged me through the door, through the beer-sign-decorated, pool table-and beat-up couch-filled, rounded bar-bedecked common room to the back hall, down it and into his personal room at the Compound.

He tugged me in and I took the four steps the momentum of his pull forced me to take before I stopped and turned to him.

He slammed the door, walked three steps but stopped to the side of me, keeping a distance, at the same time shrugging off his leather cut. Tossing it to an easy chair in the corner, he turned to me and stopped.

Okay, now, I decided, it was time to talk.

I opened my mouth.

His hand sliced up, palm out toward me, and he shook his head. “Don’t, Lanie. Don’t say a f*ckin’ word.”

I closed my mouth.

It was at this juncture that I thought maybe I should have formed a different plan, one that involved running and not talking.

He dropped his hand and glowered at me.

I pressed my lips together and waited.

His eyes slid from hair to platforms to hair again, then down to my breasts then to my face.

I knew what he saw.

What he saw wasn’t me.

I pulled my lips between my teeth.

Finally, he shook his head before he dropped it, lifting a hand to wrap around the back of his neck, and he stared at his boots.

I had been around Chaos for a goodly amount of time. Nearly eight years. And I’d been paying attention to Hop for a lot of the time I’d been around.

Still, unlike Tack, I didn’t know what it meant when Hop stared at his boots.

When he did this for a very long time, so long I was inwardly squirming, I couldn’t stop myself.

I broke the silence.

“Do you, uh… go to that bar often?”

His head snapped up, his hand dropped, his eyes narrowed on me, and he asked, “Are you shitting me?”

It seemed like it was maybe time for more silence so I went with that.

Hop, unfortunately, didn’t feel it was time for more silence.

He declared, “Babe, you are so f*cked up you’re the f*ckin’ definition of f*cked up. You think, you bein’ f*cked up and me knowin’ just how much, I haven’t kept my eye on you?”

My breath froze in my lungs.

He’d kept an eye on me?

Hop wasn’t done.

“I see you take off after midnight, go to the f*ckin’ lousiest joint in all of goddamned Denver. A place, except for where bangers hang out, that’s also the f*ckin’ riskiest. Then you pick a lunatic to f*ckin’ line dance with. You’re talkin’ to his girl, I take a chance and go to the can, come out, you’ve disappeared. I look every-f*cking-where for you and I find you pressed against a monster truck tire with an *’s mouth on your neck and his hand nearly on your goddamned tit.”

This was a regrettably accurate recount of the evening.

“So no,” he continued. “To answer your question, Lanie, I do not go to that bar often. I go to that bar when a beautiful woman I care about decides to get a wild hair up her ass, take off in the middle of the night, and put her life in jeopardy.”

My breath unfroze only to start burning in my lungs.

A beautiful woman I care about…

“You know,” he stated conversationally before he socked it to me, “your mind mighta been shut down, babe, but your body wasn’t and it fought to keep breathin’, keep you alive. Story I heard, story that holds true with the marks you carry—gut shot, lung shot—it was a miracle you survived. The story I know is true is that your goddamned ass was in Critical Care for six goddamned days and you were in a coma most of that time. Your body goes all out to heal and pull you through and you repay it with that f*ckin’ garbage?” He swung a hand to the door.