She would be.She was a mom.An awesome one.And when yourdaughter gets hospitalized due to her boyfriend and his motorcycle clubstomping the crap out of her, that was definitely something that made momsworry.
But she’d been worried before that.She was part of thereason I’d made the deal with Chaos in the first place.
My dad had been a biker.He was a nomad when it came to thatkind of thing (or, really, any kind of thing).He accepted being tied down byhis woman and his daughter only, not anything else.Not a job.Not a mortgage.Not a membership to a club.He hung with a lot of them, including Chaos (infact, Hammer, sadly now deceased, but one of the founding members of Chaos, hadbeen my father’s best friend).
But he’d never hung with Bounty.
“Don’t like the feel of them,” I’d heard him mutter yearsago.“If you’re an outlaw, own the outlaw.If you’re not, own that.You can’twannabe a Gypsy Joker.You either are or you aren’t.Theywannabe.But they aren’t.That shit justain’tright and it could get dangerous.”
He’d been right.
It got dangerous.
I should have known.
I should have followed my dad.
Mom and me had done it all our lives, job to job, house tohouse, city to city.
Why I stopped…
Damn.
I knew why I’d stopped.
I’d wanted Shy, Shy, who reminded me of Dad.
And when I couldn’t have him, I’d gone looking.
I’d wanted what my mom had.
I’d wanted that sweetness.That love.
That devotion.
I’d wanted the stability that just seeped down deep intoyour bones from all that no matter the job changing, the scenery changing, theamount of times you boxed up a house.
Stability had nothing to do with income and locale.
Stability was all in the heart.
“Rosalie, honeypot, you okay?”Mom called.
“Yeah,” I called back.“Out in a sec.”
“There are some…uh, people here for you,” she told me.
I focused on my battered face in the mirror.
People?
“Who?”I asked.
“Well, uh…”
I didn’t like that she didn’t answer immediately.
I went to the door and opened it.
