Plum: A Steel Bones Motorcycle Club Romance, page 1
PLUM
A STEEL BONES MOTORCYCLE CLUB ROMANCE
CATE C. WELLS
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2020 by Cate C. Wells. All rights reserved.
Cover art and design by Clarise Tan of CT Cover Creations.
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PROLOGUE
ADAM
I was ten before I learned to take a punch. Long before then, I was well-versed in how to throw one. Chin down, hands up, knees bent. Aim beyond the guy’s face and punch through.
Where I grew up on Gilson Avenue—before we moved to the mansion on the bluffs—you learned early. Gilson was the worst street in the Cannery. Cannery was the worst neighborhood in Pyle, and unless you lived on the bluffs or downtown, Pyle used to be a rusted, gutted shithole. Now it’s all hipsters and tech companies. I had a lot to do with that. Back when I was coming up, though, Pyle was still decimated by the collapse of domestic steel.
On Gilson, if you wanted to walk to school or get yourself some chips from the corner store with no hassle, you did what the older boys did. The ones no one fucked with. You hit first. You hit harder. And you didn’t stop.
Despite the constant hunger gnawing at my belly, I was always a foot taller and thirty pounds heavier than the other kids my age, and I wasn’t stupid. I put a kid on the pavement every now and again, and mostly, I had no trouble.
Not until the mansion on the bluffs.
My mother came from money, but her folks cut her off when she turned up pregnant at seventeen by a biker with a drug habit. The biker didn’t hang around long after I was born, but the excommunication stuck until Mom found a way to make herself respectable again.
When I was ten, Mom managed to get herself knocked up by her boss, Thomas Gracy Wade. Thomas Wade owned a brokerage, a vintage gold cigar cutter he kept in his breast pocket, and half the men in Pyle.
He was a friendly guy.
Call me Thomas.
You’ve got a nice, fine grip there, son.
Hard to believe you’re the same age as my Eric. You’ve got a good seven, eight inches on him. Smart, too, aren’t you?
Mom got knocked up at a fortuitous time. The first Mrs. Thomas Gracy Wade had decided she’d had enough, and she did the rich-lady version of going to the corner store for cigarettes and never coming back. Thomas Wade needed a woman to take care of his son Eric, and my mother deftly presented herself as a solution, not a problem.
So, one late summer day, when Thomas Wade was at work, I packed our old Ford while Mom rested on the concrete stoop, hands on her huge belly with her legs crossed at her swollen ankles. Then, we drove up to the bluffs and moved ourselves into his life.
It was a different world. On Gilson Avenue, we had a one bedroom on the top floor of a four-story walk-up. My bed was a cot shoved under the eaves in the living room. There was a gap between the roof and the wall, so all kinds of shit flew in. Rain. Bees. Noise from the druggies and the working girls on the street below. I could never sleep. Still can’t, to this day.
We kept my clean clothes in a laundry basket and my dirty clothes in a plastic bag, and I tripped on those damn things every morning when I got out of bed.
We did have a second bedroom, and Mom always worked, but every extra penny went to her hair stylist, her gym membership, and the secondhand store. The other bedroom was for her used Gucci and Dior and Louboutin’s. We didn’t have food or cable or heat except on the bitterest days, but Mom had couture. She had a plan, and it wasn’t cheap. I can’t fault her. It worked.
At the mansion on the bluffs—the house, they called it—my bedroom was twice the size of our entire apartment. My shit looked like it’d been shrunk by that laser beam in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
When we pulled up at our new home, there was a smiling man in khaki pants to direct the unpacking of the car, and when the staff—as I was told to call them—were finished, he drove the car off, and I never saw it again. Mom waddled into the house, hugely pregnant since the pre-nup negotiations had stretched on forever, and my stepfather knows how to use time as a pressure tactic. She wandered from room to room, muttering under her breath whenever she found evidence of the former Mrs. Thomas Gracy Wade. The man in khaki pants hovered at her elbow, taking notes.
I followed her for a while until I caught sight of a boy my age out back, throwing horseshoes. He was maybe two pounds shy of fat, and even though the weather was mild, he’d already sweated through a good haircut and what looked to me like a grown man’s white collared shirt.
He looked overdressed and pissed off. I felt an instant sense of camaraderie.
I took off, joined the kid, and it went like it usually does between two boys, bored and unsupervised.
“You’re Adam?”
“Yeah. You Eric?”
“Yeah. Don’t touch my stuff.”
“I don’t want to touch your fucking stuff, asshole.”
Silence. Scuffing shoes in the grass.
“Want to play?”
“I never played horseshoes.”
“It’s easy. I’ll show you.”
He didn’t really, but I caught on anyway. It wasn’t hard. You throw a horseshoe at a stake. Eric had some kind of scorekeeping system that I couldn’t quite follow. It didn’t seem consistent, but the sun was shining, I was outside, and I didn’t have to watch my back. When Eric managed to keep his mouth shut, he wasn’t the worst company.
Besides, when I was walking through the house with Mom, I’d seen the kitchen. There was a woman in a white jacket fussing around, and the smells. Jesus, the smells. In those days, I was always hungry for meat, my gut twisted for it, and unless I was dreaming, there was going to be a roast for dinner that night. A fucking roast.
We played a long time, Eric blabbing on and on while I fantasized about beef and potatoes, throwing horseshoe after horseshoe. And then Thomas Wade came home.
He strode across the perfectly manicured back lawn, my mom waddling at his heels, and for the first time that whole day, Eric shut up. Thomas Wade had a man’s bearing, one I imitated from that day on until I carried myself the same way, my movements as economical and effortless, my face as inscrutable and vaguely agreeable.
There was nothing weak about Thomas Gracy Wade, nothing that reeked of desperation and want.
I wanted to be that man, and until I could, I wanted his respect. And even though I was only ten, I’d grown up on Gilson. I knew that strength respected strength.
Thomas Wade stood, arms crossed, watching us play horseshoes, and I started to pay attention to the score.
“Ringer!” Eric crowed, skipping forward to grab his horseshoe.
It clearly wasn’t. My gaze skipped to Thomas Wade. His eyes narrowed. He knew it wasn’t too, but he stood silently, his lips thinned.
I dashed forward, placing myself between Eric and the stake. “It’s not a ringer.”
“Are you blind?” Eric’s affableness was gone, his body coiled tight.
“The heel calks don’t clear the stake.”
“You didn’t even know what a heel calk was two hours ago.”
“I do now. Get a straightedge. We’ll settle it.”
“Are you calling me a liar?”
In essence, yes, I was. I didn’t deny it. I stood between Eric and the stake, saying nothing, waiting for the obvious fury turning his face red to boil over. I wanted him to throw a punch. I was shit at horseshoes, but fighting? I never lost. And I wanted to show the man in the shiny shoes and sparkling watch, the man who hadn’t once turned to look at my mother while she trotted huge and panting behind him, that I wasn’t a loser.
“If the horseshoe fits.” I relaxed my stance, ready.
Eric drew back and swung, but I deflected the blow—a sad, flailing mess—and drove a fist into his face. Blood spurted from his nose. He screamed in pain and fury, and I fully expected him to fall on his ass and cry, but he lunged for me, swinging wildly, missing easy shots. It was immediately clear to me that he’d never fought anyone before and that he was out of his mind.
“Adam! Stop this now!” Mom begged.
“Let them work it out, Laurel.” Thomas Wade took a purposeful step back.
I had permission. It was like shooting fish in a barrel. I hung back, waiting for Eric to open his weak spots with his undisciplined swings, and then I nailed his ribs, his gut, his kidneys. He began to weave on his feet, tears streaming down his face, diluting the blood, and I glanced over at the man grimly observing us.
I still can
My mother worried at the hem of her maternity blouse, her gaze darting from Thomas Wade to Eric to me.
I saw an opening, and I was about to knock the kid out, when Mom shouted, “That’s enough.”
She flung herself forward, and I instantly froze, but Eric was too far gone. Thomas Wade had to jump in and shoulder his kid back so he didn’t accidentally punch my mother. Eric was crying and babbling, his father trying to talk him down, scorn clear in his voice, and Mom got real close to my face.
“What the fuck are you doing?” she hissed.
“All right, Mom. I’m done.” I was huffing and puffing, the blood pounding in my ears.
“The fuck you are. You beat his kid up, you think he’s going to let us stay here? You get back in there, and you take a dive.”
I was confused. My mom wasn’t talking like herself. She always put on airs, never swore, always pretended she didn’t know the words for the things we lived through and walked past every day.
“Go after him, and then go down.”
She stepped out of my way, letting out a fake little cry, and she jerked her chin toward Eric. Thomas Wade had backed off, but in one glance, I could tell Eric was still out of his mind.
I didn’t think. I wanted that big room. The roast. The peace and fresh air and quiet on the bluffs overlooking the river, Gilson Avenue so far away it might as well be a different world. What was a man’s respect to that?
I launched myself at Eric. He swung, and I slammed my face into fist, the connection rattling my jaw, and I fell to the ground, groaning.
Eric blinked in surprise.
On my back, in the lush, even grass, I stared up at the blue sky and drew in a deep breath of fresh, clean air.
“That’s enough now,” Thomas Wade declared. The look on his face was clear now. Pride. Relief.
And then, to my very great surprise, Eric leaned over and offered me a hand. I took it.
“It was a ringer,” he said.
“Bullshit,” I replied. “Let’s get a straightedge.”
So, we limped together back toward the house, Eric babbling a mile a minute about the game room in the basement, ping-pong and foosball and how goose season was soon, and did I have my hunting license?
I didn’t know shit about half of the things he said, but I wanted them—I wanted the kind of life where that’s the kind of shit you worry about—and I knew then that I was my mother’s son. I would do what I had to do to get that life. Pride is cheap. Once you’ve paid it, you realize it’s a small price.
What does pride really matter when you’re in a warm house on the bluffs, high above it all, nothing lurking around the corner? When you can put your fists down? When you have meat for dinner, and then you’re never, ever hungry again?
It’s a fair trade.
Anyone would make it.
CHAPTER 1
ADAM
Eric is still an asshole, but he’s my asshole.
Twenty years later, we’ve settled into our roles. He does what he wants. I use the chaos he creates as cover to disrupt an industry. Our dynamic has put us on the cover of tech magazines and made us Wall Street legends. We’re the wunderkinds who took Thomas Wade’s old-economy stock brokerage—headquartered in Godforsaken Pyle, Pennsylvania—and transformed the company into a tech juggernaut that revitalized the city.
I guess I could pay someone to babysit Eric. I could be back in my condo in the city with my tie off, watching Bloomberg with a glass of Glenfiddich.
Instead, I’m responding to emails on my phone in the corner of a dank, dimly lit champagne room in some backwater titty bar, ignoring one email in particular, trying to block out Eric as he talks dirty to a stripper. I’m on my fifth watered-down Jim Beam, my temples are throbbing, and my patience is frayed from four days straight of marathon negotiations in NYC.
With Eric, this sort of shit is a constant.
On the drive home, he got thirsty. Of course, he found the one place within a twenty-mile radius where he’s most likely to get himself into trouble. This time it’s a strip club on the outskirts of some shit town, an establishment called The White Van, notable only for being run by the Steel Bones Motorcycle Club. My cousin Des has dealings with the club. They’re not the kind of people you fuck with.
Eric’s life mission is to fuck with things he shouldn’t.
“You like that, don’t you, you little slut?” he asks the dancer who’s sucking his dick.
The dancer mumbles. Very noncommittal.
Tonight, Eric bumbled into the ripest little spinner, purple streaks in her blonde hair, dusting of freckles across her nose. The kind of heart-shaped ass you want to take a bite out of. After an offhanded “You’ll do,” Eric had his face buried in her tits so fast, I doubt he’d be able to pick her out of a line up.
I can see why he’s unimpressed—the girl’s nowhere near hot enough for the clubs in Pyle—but there’s something about her. In a room full of naked women, the first thing I noticed was her, the mean glare paired with the fake smile, the freckles that show through the caked-on makeup.
She’s quite the shark, too. She’s upsold Eric from a lap dance, to a jerk, and now a blow job. She’s adding up the charges, no partial refund for the unfinished dance or handy. This, by the way, is how Eric managed to overpay by ten-mil when we acquired Fortnum Kenney. He bought a subsidiary, and then he didn’t deduct the purchase price when he made our bid for the parent company. I still give him shit about how we paid twice for Fortnum Financial.
“Come on, baby. Take it all.” Eric groans, thrusting his hips while he sits in a chair. As always, he’s managed to sweat out his product, so his blond hair sticks up at all angles. “What, you don’t like work?”
Work. Yeah. I force my attention back to my phone. I hesitate for a second over the email I’ve been avoiding, tap delete, and then open our app. The market’s about to close in Hong Kong. We’re testing a new product that should increase average R.O.I. by half a percent. I’m testing it with my play portfolio, along with the guys in research and development.
Eric thinks half a percent isn’t worth the investment we’re making, but he’s never really understood scale on an intuitive level. Ten-year-old me scurried past men who’d kill for half of a percent of one million every day. You understand value when you know what people will do for it.
Which makes my misjudgment in regards to Renee even more inexplicable. I really thought she would be the perfect wife.
A bitter taste floods my mouth. I wash it out by downing my sixth bourbon.
Renee was value. Old money. Undergrad at Yale. MBA from Harvard Business. Passionate about climate change and dressage. We were golden. And then I forgot one anniversary, and she got Eric drunk and high and fucked him while I was closing a deal in Copenhagen.
When I broke off the engagement, she had the nerve to say I never loved her. Bullshit. I knew what she was worth.
Still, I knew I’d made the right call when I couldn’t bring myself to give much of a shit. I’ve never really been the emotional type. I want what I want, but it’s never been about feelings. I moved on. Eric bought me a 1951 Black Shadow, and we called it even.
Life is all good again, except the damn emails that keep popping up from a man I haven’t seen in twenty-five years.
I resist the urge to check for another one, scrolling through my portfolio instead, but the numbers blur together. It’s hard to focus with Eric thrusting his pelvis like he’s trying to knock his dick off. Besides, the Jim Beam is really kicking in now, and my vision’s going a little fuzzy. The chair’s creaking, and he won’t shut up.
“Swallow on me. Let me feel it.”
There’s a half-choking, half-gurgling sound, and my gaze flies up. I don’t necessarily want to see this, but Eric left to his own devices tends to not pay attention to others. It’s not that he’s a bad man, but when you’ve been brought up to believe you’re the center of everything, you don’t think much about what’s going on around you.
The situation across the room seems cool, though. From the grip the girl has on the base of Eric’s dick, I’m fairly sure she’s not suffocating to death.
