Without a doubt, that will be me in that bathtub if ever anything were to happen to Adella while she is under my watch. As beautiful of a woman as she is, as much light as she brings to my black life, the consequences of a relationship with her are terrifying. Brutal. Final.
“Tell Axel to clean up that fucking mess. Then get back to the clubhouse. You keep a good fucking eye on my daughter. Kill anyone who thinks they can even touch my daughter. I don’t give a fuck who they are, you make them suffer. You hear me, Snake?”
“Sir, yes sir,” I answer.
Adella and I are in the middle of a war zone, now. And one wrong move could kill us both.
Chapter Fifteen
Adella
How long can I go with my heart in my throat?
How long can I put up with the nagging doubt and fear that man instills in me? One minute, I’m with him, I feel like the most important woman in his world; I feel like I’m with the man that I’ve wanted for all these years; and the next, I feel like he’s not there — like he’s drawing away from me, obscured behind the darkness inside him and his loyalty to the club. It’s a dichotomy that makes me feel strong and valued one moment, and fearful the next.
As I sit at the bar at the clubhouse, idly stirring my drink while painful thoughts swirl in my head, I can keep none of this off my face. Especially not from my mother or Ruby. I’ve never been good about lying to either of them — or anyone, for that matter.
“What is it, dear Addie?” Ruby says. “You look like how I feel when the bartender tells me the only top shelf vodka they have is Grey Goose.”
Confused, I look over at her. “Isn’t that good vodka?”
“It’s fucking swill, dear. Not even fit to wash the top shelf that real vodkas sit upon.”
“She’s right,” Violet says, who’s sitting next to Ruby at the bar. Violet has a notebook open in front of her. Recipes, probably, or something else to do with the booze she makes in the distillery the club recently opened. “They distill and filter any flavor out of it. You’re getting just ethanol and water. It’s overpriced and overrated. The real good stuff has character and you can sip it, even room temperature, like a good whiskey or scotch.”
“You’re a smart woman, Violet. And I mean that as a compliment, because women are smarter to begin with,” Ruby says. Then she turns to me. “But, yes, as Violet said: it’s quite overrated.”
“I see.”
“Now, how about you answer my question, Addie: what is it that has you looking so down?”
I shrug, then tell her the truth. She’ll figure it out, anyway. “Snake.”
“Well, he is a troubled man. It only makes sense that he would trouble you.”
“I worry about him.”
“Well, isn’t that vague and existential.”
“Ruby, come on,” I say.
“Do you need another drink to get the truth out of you? Because I can tell you have more on your mind than some vague vexatious feeling.”
I look around the room, wanting to talk to someone, but most definitely not wanting any of the words I say to reach my mother. But my mom’s on the other side of the room, talking to Brewer about something. So I get a little closer to Ruby and lean in conspiratorially.
“Do you promise to keep this to yourself?”
“Do you have any doubt, dear?”
I sigh. “Snake and I have been… together… for a little while. And, even when we’re close, I feel like I’m losing him. Like, even when he’s in bed with me, he’s also not in bed with me. And I don’t know how to help him with that.”
“If you get in bed with a member of the club, you’re getting in bed with the whole club, dear,” Ruby says. “Not in the literal sense. Or the fun sense, either. Though I suppose there are some clubs out there where that happens. And, in my younger days, I probably could tell you which clubs they are and whether they’re worth investigating. But even if you think you have a hold on a member’s heart, you will always be sharing it. That’s just how they are.”
“You’re not alone, Addie,” Violet chimes in. “Sometimes Crash is so damn non-communicative and so wrapped up in doing the club’s work — which, do not misinterpret me, Addie, I love the MC for what they did for me, Kendra, and Josie — that it makes me want to empty a whole still into my mouth. Even some of the fruity stuff I’m making for those silly craft bars in Malibu. That’s how bad it is; I would willingly consume mango vodka to deal with his headstrong ways.”
“Thick as thieves, bound by brotherhood, united in their love for each other, for two-stroke engines, and driving sensible women mad,” Ruby says. “They’d be intolerable if they didn’t look so good in jeans and leather. Oh, but my oh my do they pull that look off. From the time they first put on their cut until they turn into silver foxes, they make it look good. In fact, here’s to a nice ass and a pair of good-fitting jeans, one of heaven’s greatest combinations.”
“Amen,” Violet says, raising her glass to tap it to Ruby’s.
“How do you deal with it, then?” I say.
Sophia comes up behind me, she has a bottle of beer in her hand and a bored look on her face. She sits down right next to me.
“I know that look,” she says. “It’s the same look I have every time some bro comes into my shop and wants some mistranslated Chinese tattoo about ‘peace’, ‘love’, or ‘living
