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When I glanced down, it was to see a text from Kip Martin.
Kip:Could you possibly meet me at the clubhouse after class to pick up Knox? Ash had another work emergency and dropped him off here.
Nova:Of course, just send me the address.
Kip:Thanks, you’re a life saver.
I laughed at the ridiculousness of that text. There I was, walking alone on campus, starving, fighting back tears, praying for someone to come save me from my life and he thought I was the person saving him. At least, it felt like I had a purpose when I took care of that sweet baby boy of his.
It was a twenty-three-minute drive from campus to the clubhouse. My gas gage taunted me the whole way. I hadn’t budgeted for extra miles. My Corolla got okay gas mileage, but it was an older car, with older car problems, that made the efficiency lack a little of the luster it once had.
It had once belonged to Clark Anderson, the man who was supposedly my bio-dad. His father made him work for his first car when he turned sixteen, to teach him some sort of rich boy lesson. A week after he bought it, his father gave him a Mercedes or a BMW, or some other fancy vehicle, but he kept the Toyota running since his own work had gone into obtaining it. At least, that was the story he told Jeremy, who hadn’t wanted me to get a car yet. Clark claimed it wasn’t that big a deal since it had just been sitting around, mostly unused, since he was a teenager.
As it turned out, that car was a means to get me out of the house more often, so he could sneak over and be with my mom. I’d worked that out since everything went down. The number of times I’d shown up unexpectedly to find Clark at the house and Jeremy nowhere in sight should have been a clue back then. I was too lost in my simple teenage life, and the comings and goings of my parents and their friends was of little consequence to me.
I snapped out of my thoughts of the past when a gate at the front of the clubhouse property stopped me from gaining entry.
“Can I help you?” A man asked before leaning down beside my window. I promptly used the little handle to roll the thing down so my voice wouldn’t be muffled.
“Um, I’m here to pick up Knoxville.”
“Knoxville?” The man eyed me suspiciously.
“I’m Kip’s babysitter.” I pulled my phone out and showed him the quick text exchange between Kip and me.
“Yeah, okay.” The man muttered as he stood again and went to push a button that released the gate. I didn’t bother to give him a second glance as I drove through and pulled up as close as possible to what looked like the front door.
I sat there, nervously wondering if I needed to go inside, before I finally worked up the courage to turn my car off and do just that. Truthfully, I should have used my head and just texted Kip that I was outside, but then again, my phone didn’t have unlimited resources. I was lucky that the men who came to evict me from my apartment hadn’t taken the device.
I couldn’t afford my own phone plan with the original carrier and ended up putting a new sim card in it for one of those pay-as-you go deals. Walking through the clubhouse door was lost on me as I glared down at the offending piece of equipment. It took a minute or two for my eyes to adjust from the midday, sunny brightness outside, along with the screen brightness of my phone, to the dimmer interior lighting of the clubhouse.
I scanned the space, seeing the bar to the right that took up half the wall. It wrapped around to attach itself to the wall on either side with a length of bar and stools down the middle. To the left, there were random tables and chairs, a few couches, and pool tables in the back. Not many people hung around the space, but I did notice one familiar face right away.
The overly large man had a woman tucked up under each of his arms as they all walked in a laughing heap toward a darkened hallway. The women were barely dressed, and there was no doubt what they were about to get up to together.
Thankfully, he hadn’t noticed me. His presence made me uncomfortable in ways that I refused to explore, for obvious reasons. The man was a biker with tastes in women that ran far outside the realm of me and my non-existent experience level. Besides, if I wanted to avoid being like my mother, he was the last man I should have been salivating over.
“Nova!” I heard Kip’s voice and turned to see him coming from a hallway near the end of the bar, on the opposite side of the room from where his friend was about to disappear with the two women.
“Thanks for coming all the way here,” he called out. Kip had his son cradled in his arms and a blue and white diaper bag with toy trucks printed on it slung over his shoulder.
“It wasn’t a problem,” I told him as I moved quickly to meet him halfway down the length of the bar. Kip dropped the bag onto a stool there and then relinquished his son into my arms.
“I need to get you a car seat.” He huffed a string of curses as he ran around to the other side of the bar and turned his panicked eyes back toward me. “Dammit, Ash!” He ground out.
“What’s going on?” a rumbly voice asked from just over my shoulder. I startled and turned quickly to find the big man standing behind me. A quick glance around him showed that the two women he’d left behind were staring daggers in my direction.
“Ash dropped Knox off earlier, but I don’t think she left the car seat. How in the hell is Nova supposed to get him home now?”
“Don’t you have another one?”
“For what?” Kip asked. “I ride a motorcycle. Ash is the one with the family van.”
The man, Breakneck, according to his cut seemed to have an answer for everything. “Call your woman and tell her to bring it. She’s the one who forgot.”
“Yeah, and if I do that, and she loses a sale, I’ll never hear the end of it.”
A warm hand touched my back and the thin t-shirt I wore was no barrier against the feel of his palm there heating up my skin. “You good, sweetheart?” He asked and it was only then I realized my body was trembling slightly.
