Skin

“Is it safe to come by the clubhouse now?”

Juice nodded, stifling a yawn as he poured himself a mug of coffee the next morning. “Yeah, it should be fine. You going to put a shift in tonight?”

I glanced toward the guest bedroom. Madison still hadn’t emerged this morning, and it was already nine. “I’m not sure yet. But I don’t plan on hanging out with porn stars all day. So I’ll likely come by after I drop her off.”

He sipped his coffee, flinching openly as he burned his lip. “I could come hang out with the porn stars too so you didn’t have to be alone,” he offered, flexing his eyebrows a few times as if that would make the offer more enticing.

“Or,” I pretended to get excited by the idea. “I could kick you in the balls right now and save us all some time.”

“There’s no beating around the bush here, is there?”

“Come on,” I gave him a level stare. “Have you seen the size of those guys’ dicks? Porn star pussy is probably so stretched out and loose that you wouldn’t even enjoy it if I wasn’t in the picture and you got to take one of them for a test drive.”

“I sense that you’re just being catty, but you also have a valid point,” he admitted, looking impressed.

“Is that really what you guys think of them?” Madison stepped out of the spare room, looking upset. Her eyes were downcast, and she was frowning.

I sighed, grabbing my now-empty coffee cup and stepping past Juice to refill it. I wasn’t used to having to be careful and tiptoe around anyone’s feelings. I had been raised by bikers; if you couldn’t handle the way they talked to you, you sure as hell weren’t tough enough to stick around.

“Some of them are alright people,” I replied. “But when it comes to the idea of my boyfriend hanging out at the studio, yeah, that’s my general opinion. It’s not about you, Madison. It’s about what’s mine.”

She looked alarmed at my choice of words. “Possessive much?”

Juice laughed appreciatively. “I’m the same way about her, so it’s okay. You heard her talking about porn star dicks. You catch her looking, you let me know.”

I couldn’t stop myself from snorting as her look of alarm morphed into one of horror. She was going to have to harden up if she wanted to make it in this town. Especially if she was working for Luann. That woman was not one to sugar coat anything.

“I won’t be looking at anything,” I assured her. “I’m just dropping you off. You’ve got my number; just let me know when you’re done for the day and I’ll swing by and pick you up.”

“You’re not going to stay with me?” she asked timidly.

“No offense, but watching you go down on some other chick doesn’t exactly sound like my kind of fun. Besides, I’ve got some work to catch up on. You’ll be fine, Madison. Luann will take care of you. She gets nicer, I promise. Get cleaned up, we should head out soon.”

“I should go, too,” Juice excused himself, dumping the last dregs of his coffee into the sink and leaving his mug overturned in the metal basin. “I should be at the clubhouse when you get there. I’ve got some stuff to do that has nothing to do with rotating tires. See you soon,” he told me. He grabbed his cut from the back of a dining room chair and threw it over his broad shoulders as he headed for the door.

“Meet you there in an hour,” I called after him. I waved a dismissive hand toward the girl who was still lingering in the room. “Go on, have your shower. I’ll wait.”

“Lexi,” Madison chewed her lower lip. “I think I made a mistake coming here.”

I calmly took a drink of my coffee. “I could take the I told you so route here, but that won’t help either one of us. My ass is on the line here. You don’t have a choice anymore. At the very least, you have to go through with this one movie. If you still feel this way after that, you deal with Luann and you explain to her why you came to that decision. I was serious when I said that I would make you regret it if you backed out now.”

Nervously, she folded her arms in front of her narrow chest. “I never thought I would actually be afraid of you, but you’re kind of intimidating.”

“And out of the people that I associate with, I’m the nice one.” There was a threat in my words, as well as in the sharpness of my tone.

“That guy that disappeared… you really did kill him, didn’t you?”

I arched an eyebrow. “Would it make a difference if I did?”

“What did I get myself into?” she murmured. It was clear that she was talking to herself, but I felt the need to answer.

“I tried to talk you out of it. Now go get ready. I won’t ask you again.”

As she disappeared into the bathroom, I felt a surge of adrenaline. It was like I had channelled my mother or Jax. I suddenly felt very ready to face the life I’d made here in Charming. The weight of my self doubt was lifting. I remembered who I was and what I was capable of. For some odd reason, I even felt like I could embrace my scars and see them for what Juice had already told me they were. They were reminders of the amazing, life-altering things that I had not only faced, but beaten.

I dropped Madison off at Cara Cara, waiting just long enough to ensure that she had actually gone inside instead of sneaking off. I drove to TM and parked beside Mom’s car. I headed straight for the clubhouse, hoping to avoid Mom and whatever questions she surely had about Madison. Inside, the air conditioning was humming pleasantly. Juice was sitting at the bar, his laptop open in front of him. He was staring intently at the screen, lost in thought.

“What are you working on?” I asked, pulling up a bar stool next to him and leaning over to kiss his cheek.

“DMV records,” he muttered. He typed something into a search bar, frowning. “I don’t think this fucker has a driver’s license.”

“Who?”

“Just some guy we’re trying to track down. He owes us money. We fixed a broken axle on his pickup truck and he hasn’t paid us yet.”

I smiled, amused. “Wait, you’re actually doing this for the garage?”

He shrugged, still focusing on the laptop. “Well, it is my job.”

“Sometimes I forget about your day job. It’s nice to see, though. Guess what?”

Finally, Juice pulled his eyes away from the computer and faced me. “Do you actually want me to guess?”

I grinned, resting my elbows on the bar and propping up my chin with the palm of my hand. “Madison tried to back out, and I pulled a Gemma and scared the shit out of her.”

“You look really happy about that fact,” he noted.

“I am, actually. It felt really good. I kind of knew who I was again.”

“So you only know who you are when you’re mean and scary?”

“Well, with most people, yes. You might be an exception. But the point is, I did something that I haven’t really been able to do since everything went down. I think I’m finally coming around. And since you were the person who had to deal with the worst of my bullshit, I thought that you should be the first to know,” I leaned in, still smiling, and kissed him quickly.

Juice, too, began to grin as I pulled back. “I’m proud of you. And to be honest, kind of relieved. You were a lot to deal with for awhile there.”

I smacked him on the arm playfully, knowing that he was kidding. “Get back to work, asshole. I need to clean this place up.”

I swept up the floor, noticing the stickiness of the surface. How was it that they weren’t bothered by that? It was one of the few things that I had zero tolerance for. I prepared a mop bucket and added an almost disturbing amount of detergent to the steaming water.

“Lexi!”

I was at the corner of the hallway, mopping the floor in front of the restored bike that had once belonged to my father. I glanced back toward the bar, hoping that Jax’s call wasn’t for anything serious. “Back here,” I hollered back.

He appeared in the corridor, giving me a half-smirk that made it seem like he knew some secret of mine. Maybe Mom had brought him up to speed on the Madison situation. Jax walked closer, plunging his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans.

“Tara just called me,” he said, his voice not so much accusing as it was knowledgeable.

“Shit,” I nearly dropped the mop as I realized what he meant. “I was supposed to go and get more tests done today, wasn’t I?”

“Oh, so you aren’t just blowing off the appointment. Looks like I owe Tara five bucks.”

I rolled my eyes. “I’ve followed her instructions to a tee until this point; why would you think that I just decided to quit trying now?”

“Why do you do a lot of things?” he answered with a shrug. “I figured maybe since you got a thumbs up from her last week, and you survived being arrested twice, you might have figured you were invincible again.”

I passed the mop to him as I stalked past. “Make sure this gets finished. I swear to God, if this floor is still this fucking sticky when I get back, heads will roll.”

“Take it up with Half-Sack,” Jax directed as I walked away. “You know this shit is the prospect’s job.”

“Then why the hell am I always the one who gets stuck doing it?” I called back over my shoulder. I paused as I headed past Juice. He was in the middle of hacking into something that looked a hell of a lot more complicated than the DMV records had. “See you in a bit, I’ve got to run and get my check up done,” I told him as I reached the clubhouse door.

“Good luck!” he said enthusiastically, even though he didn’t raise his face from his computer.

As I drove over to St. Thomas, I heard my cell phone ringing cheerfully. I cut the radio, silencing the sounds of Led Zeppelin, and I pressed the phone to my ear. “Yeah?”

“Hey, it’s Madison. Can you come and get me?”

I rolled my eyes. She hadn’t even been there for two hours yet. “Not right now. I’m on my way to the hospital. I’ve got some shit to do there.”

“Well, I’m all done here. It was a really small part,” she persisted. There was a whine in her tone.

“I seriously can’t pick you up right now. I’m already late, and any kind of stress is really going to affect my results. I need to be done with this. I can’t have you tagging along. I’ll be there in an hour.” I hung up before she could say anything else. If she was going to stay here and work, she couldn’t be relying on me to taxi her around all the time. That was going to get old fast, and I wasn’t going to let it happen that way.

I stalked through the halls of the hospital, blowing past the receptionists without so much as a nod in their direction. They were used to me by now, anyways. I rapped my knuckles against Tara’s office door as I came to a stop in front of it.

“It’s open,” her voice rang out pleasantly.

I pushed my way inside, giving her an apologetic grin. “I’m sorry, Tara, things have been crazy. I forgot what day it was.”

“Good,” she smiled warmly. “Your brother owes me five bucks.” Today she was dressed in mint green scrubs, and she looked happier than I’d seen her in awhile. “Come on, let’s get this done so you can get back to your hectic life.”

I sat down in the uncomfortably hard chair across the desk from her. “Has, um… has Jax told you anything about me in the last few days?”

“You mean about you and Juice?” she asked coyly. “No, I don’t know anything about that.”

I fought to keep myself from grimacing. “I bet. I guess I don’t need to tell you, if that’s the case.”

“Oh, come on,” she grabbed a blood pressure cuff and approached me. “You look like you could use a little girl talk.”

I found that I told Tara more than I had intended to. It started with the news that Juice and I were together, but before I knew it, I’d blabbed about my multiple arrests, as well as Madison’s sudden intrusion in my life. Tara sat with me on the couch in her office long after she’d finished running the tests, listening with rapt attention. I figured that my stupid drama was probably enough to take her mind off of whatever was going on in her life these days.

“Oh, I think your results should be done. Hang on one second, and then I’ll let you go pick up your porn star,” she winked at me as she got up off of the sofa.

“Take your time,” I told her as she grabbed her clipboard and left the room.

I sat alone, reading the diplomas on the wall for what felt like the millionth time. I kicked my feet up on the sofa, lying across it as I waited. I had nearly dozed off by the time Tara came back in, waving the clipboard at me in glee.

“Lexi, these figures look great! You did it! Promise me that you’ll ease back into things, though, alright? And if you don’t take your meds, you’ll die. Those are my only warnings.”

I hopped up off of the couch. “Seriously? I’m good?”

“You’re back to normal.”

I reached out and hugged her. I knew by her slow reaction time that the gesture seemed out of place for me. I just couldn’t help it. After the past week, I could hardly believe that my heart had managed to heal at all. I had honestly thought that it would set my recovery back for a little while. I was overjoyed by the fact that this stage in my never-ending nightmare was finally over.

“Thank you, Tara. I really couldn’t have made it through all this without you.”

As I released her, she beamed at me and gave me a tiny shrug. “Happy to help. And I really enjoyed spending time with you, Lexi. Even though you’re healthy again, it doesn’t mean that you have to stop coming by. Or maybe sometime we could hang out outside of the hospital.”

I laughed. “I guess that could work. Just as long as it’s also not while we’re both stuck on lockdown. Maybe we should try for coffee or something.”

She nodded. “So I’ll stop by Juice’s sometime, then,” Tara said presumptuously.

“Right, exactly. And hey, until I decide that I’m ready to work full time again, I’ll be around there all the time. I’ve always got coffee on.” I offered up a wave as I ducked out of her office. I wondered what it said about me that this was one of the best days that I could remember. I got a clean bill of health, and I scared an innocent girl so badly that I felt like my old self again. Surely that wasn’t something that most people considered when they thought of their happiest days.

I swung by the porn studio, picking up Madison. I dropped her off at Juice’s house, lying and saying that I had to go back to work. She didn’t need to know that I was kind of running my own schedule just then. When I made it back into the clubhouse, most of the guys were hanging around the bar. Ignoring all of them, I walked over to where Juice was standing by the pool table. I grabbed him by the neck, pulling him down to me and crashing my lips against his.

“Whoa,” Tig applauded us, a whistle piercing through the cool air of the clubhouse. “Atta boy, Juicey!”

I pulled back, looking around as if they’d offended me. “Seriously, you’re congratulating him? I’m the one who just finished her recovery!”

A chorus of cheers and congratulations echoed through the room, making me feel blessed. I might have hated the club a lot of the time, but I would always love this family.