Duke (The Black Hornets MC Book 3), page 3
“Sierra, go get in the car,” I said.
“No,” she said.
My eyes fell hard onto her and I felt my face flushed.
“I want to get to know my father, Mom. You can’t take that from me,” Sierra said.
My eyes flickered over to Duke and I saw anger flash in his eyes. The same kind of anger Sierra tossed at me now. I was completely outnumbered with these two.
“Nice to see you, Eden,” Duke said.
“You, too,” I said.
“Can I stay? Please? I just got him listening to music. I think he likes it,” Sierra said.
“Duke doesn't like music,” I said.
“He likes my cello music,” Sierra said.
I quirked an eyebrow. “You what now?”
Duke shrugged. “People change.”
“Cello music?” I asked.
“Yeah, Mom. Believe it or not, you were wrong about him. Duke isn’t dangerous,” Sierra said.
I gritted my teeth. “You’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Do you?” Duke asked.
My eyes whipped back over to him and I studied him carefully. He was doing a very good job of biting back his anger. Something I’d have to teach Sierra how to do in order to control that temper of hers. His brown hair had gotten longer. Not long enough to swoop back away from his head, but long enough for me to run my fingers through. And his face was chiseled. Gone were the boyish features that lessened the stern stare of the hazel eyes he had gifted my daughter.
Our daughter.
His shoulders were broad, but not bony like I remembered them. He had filled out with muscle nicely. And his denim pants looked good on him. His legs were long, like always. His chest was puffed out with pride, though it didn’t look like it took him much effort to do that nowadays. His hands were in fists balled up at his sides, but even with his fingers curled in I knew his hands were as large as ever. They had almost mesmerized me in high school. How big they were. How they could grab all of me at once, or so it felt like. I saw the faint outline of his abs beyond his black shirt and the veins that bulged from his neck called to me in ways no man had since I found out I was pregnant with Sierra.
Duke had grown into a man. And if I were a betting woman, I would’ve taken another chance on him simply because of how he had blossomed. But I wasn’t. Duke was reckless and I wasn’t. Duke was angry and I wasn’t. Duke was dangerous and I wasn't. Duke took risks and I didn’t. I never had, and I never would. I kept myself on the safe side of the line. Always. Especially after becoming a young mother.
“How long have you been here, Sierra?” I asked.
“Maybe twenty minutes,” Duke said.
“Did I ask you?” I asked.
“Don’t talk to him that way. You don’t have to like him, but I do,” Sierra said.
My eyes whipped over to my daughter. “You don’t know him enough to make that judgment call.”
“What? And you do?” Sierra asked.
“I grew up with him. So, yes. I do,” I said.
“And like Duke said, people change. He’s changed. Why can’t you accept that?” Sierra asked.
My eyes panned around the room. I took it all in, and it looked exactly like I figured it would. The white walls had scuffs on them. Dents where Duke had obviously put his foot or his fist into the wall in frustration. The furniture was old and dated. Probably picked up off the curb and cleaned down. He’d always been into restoration, but it was half-assed restoration. The television sat on a crooked television stand and there were no decorations on the wall. No pictures. No mindless entities. There were nails protruding from the walls in some places, but nothing sat on them.
And the carpet beneath my shoes left much to be desired.
However, that wasn’t what ultimately caught my eye. In the corner, by the front door, was a coat rack. And on that coat rack was a leather jacket. I recognized it. Well, I didn’t recognize it. But, the symbol on the back, I did. The black. The yellow. The splashes of red. The white stitching. The big “B” and the big “H”.
My eyes held tightly onto that leather jacket before they slowly panned back over to Duke.
“Still?” I asked.
He cocked his head, and for the first time, surprise entered his stare.
“I don’t accept it because people don’t change as much as you think they do, Sierra,” I said.
“But, Mom—”
“Enough but’s. You won’t pull another stunt like this again. Do you hear me?” I asked.
“I want to know my father!” she exclaimed.
“You will go to the car and you will buckle yourself in. Then, you will wait for me to get there so I can take us home,” I said.
“No,” Sierra said.
“Now,” I bit.
“But Mom—”
“If you don’t go to that car, so help me god that iPod is mine,” I breathed.
“Why do you always do this? Why do you always make my life about you? Why can’t you let me be curious and explore and be me? Why do you always have to be the dominant party in all this? I’m my own person, Mom. Just because I’m smaller and younger than you doesn't mean my opinion isn’t valid. Why do you always make my life—”
“In the car. Now,” Duke commanded.
Sierra’s eyes whipped up to him, and for the first time in over three years, she obeyed the first time she was spoken to.
“Nice to meet you,” Sierra murmured as she moved for the door.
It shocked me to my core. Sierra shook her head and sucked at her teeth, but she moved. To the door. Out the door. Onto the porch. Toward the car. She hadn’t listened to me the first time I said something for anything since she was five or six years old. I gazed out the window, watching as her shoulders slumped over. She slowly made her way to the car and it was time for me to leave as well. Getting her into it was the bulk of this issue, and it seemed as if Duke had made that easier for me.
But when I moved to the door, Duke stepped in my way.
My eyes slowly panned up his body, trying not to take in too much of him as I stood there. I had no idea what to say to Duke. Honestly, I had nothing to say to him. Not since that leather jacket was hanging on his coat rack. That was the reason why I had left. Why things had ultimately not worked out between us. That dumbass club with its dumbass lifestyle and their dumbass ways. I tried to step to the side to get to the door, but Duke blocked me again. I tried to dodge him. To get him out of my way. To get to the car so I could help Sierra in.
Then, those five words hit my ears in a voice that still shivered me in the marrow of my bones.
“We need to talk, Eden.”
After all these years, my name still sounded perfect rolling off his tongue.
Chapter 5
Duke
I looked down into Eden’s yellow-speckled brown eyes and set my face into stone. We needed to talk about this. I couldn’t have her disappearing on me like she did all those years ago. Especially about Sierra. She wasn’t leaving until we talked. Until we settled this out. Until I got her to admit to me that she had willingly hid a kid from me all these fucking years.
“We need to talk, Eden.”
I watched her draw in a shaking breath. She was nervous. I could tell. Her pupils blew wide in her eyes and she clasped her hands together. Wrung them together, as if she were debating on what to do. Her eyes darted out the window before returning back to mine. I wanted to know what she was thinking about. But, more than that, I wanted to know what the hell she had been thinking when she made the decision to hide my fucking daughter from me. If Sierra was mine.
Eden tried to move past me again, but I jutted my arm out. And when I did, she reached up her hand and grabbed my wrist. She yanked my hand down and barreled forward, making her way for the front door. I reached out and grabbed her wrist. I spun her around as Sierra made her way for the driveway.
“I’ll be back in a second,” she said hotly.
I released her hand and watched her storm out the front door. My eyes were heavy on her, taking her in after all these years. Shit. She had filled out nicely. She wasn’t the scrawny little high school girl whose virginity I took. Who took my virginity in return. Her thick hips swayed and her long legs carried her quickly. Her broad shoulders held lush tits and her beautiful blonde hair swayed side to side as she moved. I couldn't take my damn eyes off her. I felt like that boy back in high school again. I watched her approach Sierra before opening the car door, then I heard the two of them go at it.
I didn’t catch everything, but I caught a little of it. And boy, did that eleven-year-old ever have spunk.
“Just because you don’t want to talk to him doesn’t mean I don’t, either!” Sierra exclaimed.
“I’ve had enough of your attitude. You’ll get in this car and stay there,” Eden said.
“I hate you sometimes, you know that?”
“And that’s fine, but that doesn’t mean I’ve going to let you get away with digging through my personal stuff, leaving the house without my permission, using money that isn’t yours to get a ride to a town on the other side of the county, and then yell at me about it. Now get in the car, Sierra. You’re in for a world of punishment when we get home.”
I crossed my arms over my chest and stood in the doorway of my home. Eden dipped her head into the car and when she stood up, she slipped something into her pocket. Sierra slammed the car door in Eden’s face and I sighed. The exhaustion was written all over her features. In the way her eyes dimmed. In the way her back didn’t stand quite as straight. In the way she shuffled her feet a little too much over the ground. I couldn’t imagine the effort it took to raise a girl like Sierra alone.
Then again, she wouldn’t have had to had she fucking reached out to me like I had to her.
“Thanks for letting her in,” Eden said, sighing.
“No problem. You ready to talk?” I asked.
“I really need to get her home. And there really isn’t anything to talk about.”
“Trust me, there’s plenty to talk about.”
“Then can we do it another time? I’m exhausted, and I really need to get her home. I’ve already taken away her iPod. It’s already going to be a rough day.”
“She’s in the car. Now the two of us need to talk like I wanted to years ago,” I said.
I watched Eden shake her head before she snickered at me. The hell was she snickering for? She turned away from me on the porch, ready to make her way back to the car without a second thought. But, if she thought she was turning her back on me again, she had another fucking thing coming. I lunged, working my way in front of her before she stepped off the porch. I stood on the cement, my eyes hooked with hers as she stood eye-level with me. Her feet were on my porch and I stood in the walkway from my driveway. Pinning her. Blocking her.
Begging her to fucking talk with me.
“You can’t just leave. You already did that once,” I said.
“There’s nothing to talk about, Duke,” Eden said.
“The hell there is.”
Eden sighed. “I need to get my daughter home. She’s in a great deal of trouble and I have a lot to take care of once I instill that punishment.”
“Is Sierra my daughter?” I asked.
I watched tears rise in Eden’s eyes.
“Just answer the question. It doesn’t even require you to speak. I’m owed at least that, Eden. Tell me. Is Sierra my fucking daughter?” I asked.
“Owed?” Her brow furrowed as her head fell off to the side. “You think you’re owed something like that?” she asked.
“Yes. I do. All those letters that went unanswered. All those times I tried to get in touch with you and you never reached back out when you knew you were pregnant. When you knew you needed help.”
“You think you’re owed anything by me because you sent me some letters, Duke?”
The sorrow in her eyes flickered over into anger, and I had no clue why.
“Is Sierra my daughter?” I asked again.
This time, she snickered at me again. She stepped off the porch and I wrapped my hand around her wrist, but she pulled a little too hard. She ripped away from my grip, stumbling me on my feet as she made her way for the pavement. I watched her walk down the driveway with her shoulders tense and her hair wafting behind her. I looked over at the car and saw Sierra watching. Witnessing us going back and forth like that. She didn’t need to see shit like that. Otherwise, I would’ve pinned Eden to the damn wall until she talked.
Not like she hadn’t enjoyed that once before anyway.
Eden stormed to her car and opened the door. She stuck her foot in and looked at me, and I could’ve sworn tears started rising in her eyes again. She dipped into the car and cranked it up, filling my driveway with the sound of her leaving. Again. Just like she had back in high school. The break-up between us had been fairly mutual. I guess.
The night we broke up, Eden told me we were heading in two different directions. That I wanted one thing from my life and she wanted another. We weren’t too far off from graduating. From being done with our high school days and ushering ourselves into the bleak world of adulthood. An adult at eighteen. The thought made me snicker myself. No fucking kid was an adult at eighteen. But, this world had us believe it.
I believed it when I made the decision to pledge the Black Hornets.
That night, the two of us agreed that it was better if we went our separate ways. But deep down, I had wanted to reach out for her and pull her into my lips. Pin her to a wall, drop to my fucking knees, and remind her of why she chose me in the first damn place. Why we stayed together throughout all four fucking years of high school. Sure, maybe she thought we were just a fling. I never went to her house, and she never came to mine. Mostly because my family was fucked up beyond all reason. And mostly because Eden said her family was way too overprotective of her. But still, we had our fun times. We faked the after-school activities to spend time with one another. We went to the pointless football games just to make out in the damn woods. We scheduled some of our classes together so we could sit in the back of class and write notes back and forth to each other.
You know, the shit high school kids did when they were in love.
I forced myself not to think about the last night we were together. Not to think about the deal we made before she left me for good. It was too much. It hurt a little too deep.
It still felt a little too real.
I watched Eden turn around in her car and talk with Sierra. The two of them were still going at it. Fucking hell, Sierra needed a stern hand. It was sure as hell what I needed growing up. The stern hand my mother was too high to give me. I grew up without my dad. Without a father figure. And that was what made me the angriest. Eden knew the anger I kept inside as a kid because I never had a father to talk to when my mother was too high to know her own damn name.
Why would she force our child to grow up the way I did?
It didn’t make any fucking sense.
Chapter 6
Eden
I forced the tears not to fall as I sat there watching Duke. Watching his looming body stand there in the walkway of his home. He kept his eyes connected with mine through the windshield and it was unnerving. I had no idea what he was thinking, but I knew it wasn’t good. In some respects, I did owe him the truth. I owed him the simple answer he was looking for. But I couldn't tell him. I couldn't tell Duke the truth. The reason why I left. What I had found out about him and how irate I had been about it. All of it. Especially when I leaned on my older brother for help regarding the situation. Fuck, that night at been awful. So much had blown up in my face. So much I didn’t even understand had been threaded and tied together.
It was better if Duke didn’t know Sierra. Or how they were related.
“Do you even feel bad?” Sierra asked.
I slowly turned around in my seat, wiping at the tears threatening to fall.
“What did you say?” I asked.
“Do you even feel bad? For hiding this from him? From me?” she asked.
“Yes, I feel bad. I feel terrible about everything. But I can’t let you really know him. Not in the way you want to.”
“Why? Why can’t you let that happen? Why won’t you allow this? You don’t want to talk about him. You don’t want to tell stories about him. You want to act like he doesn’t exist when he clearly does,” she said.
“Sierra, honey. I don’t expect you to understand.”
“Why do we have to leave?”
“What?”
“I mean, we’re here. You’re here to monitor things like you always want to do with me. Why are we having to leave?”
“Because he’s dangerous, Sierra. I keep telling you this.”
“How dangerous? Has he, like, killed people?” she asked.
I shook my head and sighed. “I don’t know. But I do know that the people he runs with are dangerous. The people he interacts with and associates with are very dangerous. I don’t know what he’s done over the years or what he’s gotten himself into, but I know it isn’t good.”
“Whatever,” she murmured.
“Yeah, whatever,” I said.
I sat back down into my seat and turned the car engine over. It took me a couple of tries to get it going, and then I did. I looked back up and took in Duke’s face one last time, and he didn’t look quite as focused as he had before. His arms weren’t crossed over his chest, but rather slowly falling to his sides. His eyes looked far-off. His beautiful hazel eyes he had passed onto his daughter. I wondered if she was his only child. I wondered how many women he had screwed around with since high school. I wondered how many other children who would never know him because of his antics would show up at his door, proclaiming that they wanted to know him.
Maybe dozens. Maybe none. But one thing was for certain.
We weren’t sticking around.
I backed out of his driveway and started down the road. For all intents and purposes, Duke lived in a quiet neighborhood. The houses were separated by decent-sized yards and they all looked clean and put-together on the outside. I drove us out of the neighborhood before I pulled my phone from my pocket. I typed in my home address in Chico before setting it on my dash. Sierra and I rode in silence for a few minutes, just getting ourselves outside of the Redding city limits before she spoke again.
