Bittersweet (Redemption Book 3) Read online

  “Jensen,” I whispered, reaching out to touch his arm even though the look in his eyes scared the crap out of me. “Let’s just go.”

  He didn’t move or pull his gaze from Rina. “Since you didn’t get the message, I’ll spell it out for you. There’s not a chance in hell I’d ever fuck you. Even if I wasn’t into Shane, I still wouldn’t fuck you. You’re desperate, and that’s a major turnoff. But none of that matters because I am into Shane, so even if she shoots me down, you’d never have a chance because you’d never compare to her.”

  “That’s enough,” I said, my voice stronger and louder. “I’m done with this. I want to go.”

  Jensen finally turned to me, and as soon as he did, the storm clouds in his eyes began to break apart. With an indiscernible nod, he grabbed my hand and started toward the cafeteria doors.

  I glanced back at Rina one last time to see her chin was wobbling and her eyes had gone glassy with unshed tears. There was a small part of me that wanted to feel bad for her, but the rest of me thought she’d brought it on herself. She’d let a boy who hadn’t shown a single ounce of interest in her come between us, proving she didn’t deserve my friendship. I’d had too many people walk away from me in my life, so I was used to turning those feelings off. It was the only way to prevent pain that came with crushing disappointment. In that moment, I did just that; I turned my feelings for Rina off, making her less than a memory.

  Jensen kept my hand firmly wrapped in his as he led me down the hall toward the exit.

  “Where are we going?” I asked, pulling on his grip.

  “I’m taking you to lunch,” he answered casually, like it was the most normal thing in the world.

  I tugged harder to no avail. “Jensen, we can’t leave campus for lunch.”

  He turned his head and hit me with that damn smirk that made my knees wobbly. “Seniors can.”

  “But I’m not a senior.”

  “Relax, sunshine,” he said, giving me a wink that made my lips tremble with the urge to smile. “Live a little. I’ll get you back before your next class.”

  Even though warning signals were going off in my head and I remembered all the times I’d told myself I needed to avoid the pull this boy had on me, I found myself doing something unexpected.

  I stopped struggling and let him lead me out of the school, finding myself desperately wanting to do what he’d suggested and live a little.

  Especially if I was doing it with him.

  Chapter Ten

  Jensen

  Laeth came waltzing into my office, all loose-limbed and casual as he moved to the couch I had pushed up against the wall across from my desk and plopped down. The seconds ticked by as I waited for him to announce why he’d invaded my space.

  “Comfortable?” I asked once it became clear he wasn’t going to speak first.

  “Extremely,” he said, stretching his long legs out and crossing his ankles, the picture of relaxation. “I don’t have room for a couch in my office. Why the hell did you get the bigger office anyway?”

  “Because I kicked your asses at Rock Paper Scissors. Now tell me why you’re here or get out. I’ve got shit to do.”

  He lifted his hand like he was examining his nails, taking his time like the asshole he was before saying, “Just thought you’d want to know I did a little digging on that thing you asked me to look into.”

  My attention left my computer as soon as the sentence left his mouth. “Way to bury the lead, dickhead. So what did you find?”

  “Nothing.”

  I blinked, trying to wrap my head around that one word. “You didn’t find anything? I thought you were supposed to be good at this shit, brother.”

  “Oh, I found something,” he replied ominously.

  “O-kay. How about you stop talking in riddles and get the fuck to your point?”

  He uncrossed his legs and pulled them back, leaning forward to brace his elbows on his knees. “What I found was exactly that. Nothing. Since I am good at this shit, I hacked the school’s system and was able to pull the transcripts. Your girl never got her degree. In fact, she dropped out mid-semester two years in and never went back.”

  That would have been around the time I left. I could see her delaying in order to have Brantley and be home with him for a while, but I would have thought she’d eventually go back. It didn’t make any sense.

  Reaching up, I rubbed at the spot between my brows where I felt a headache coming to life.

  “I take it from that constipated look on your face, that info doesn’t help you one damn bit.”

  “I just don’t get it,” I told him, dropping my arms onto the desk. “I checked the account I set up for her before I enlisted just the other day. It’s empty. If she didn’t use that money for school, then where the fuck did it go? I mean, you should see where they’re living. Place is only a couple steps up from a complete shithole, and only because she’s done the best she could to take care of it.”

  “You thinkin’ she’s got some problems? Drugs or booze? Maybe gambling?”

  I shook my head. “No,” I insisted fiercely. “Not Shane. She’s not like that, never was. And she’s all about our boy. She wouldn’t do anything that would take money away that she could use on him.”

  “So what is it you’re thinkin’? ’Cause that’s a lotta fucking cake to burn through with nothing to show for it.”

  I looked at the clock on the top of my computer screen. Shane’s shifts at the bar could be scattered because of Brantley, but for the most part she stayed consistent, so I knew she was working tonight. Unless there was an emergency, she wouldn’t miss the tips she could make with the Friday night crowd. “I’m thinkin’ I’ll be hitting up Bad Alibi later.”

  “Count me in,” Laeth announce with a grin. “Been needing to get my dick wet for a while now.”

  I looked up at him and arched a brow. “You just hooked up with that little blonde number last weekend.”

  He looked at me like I’d just grown horns as he rose to his feet and stressed, “That was days ago, man. I’ll go let Gage know we’re hitting up the bar for drinks.”

  He turned on his boots and bolted out the door before I could tell him I didn’t need backup, especially the kind that would be wasted and on the hunt for pussy within the first hour of arriving.

  Just like that, the throb in my forehead got worse.

  Shane

  The bar was packed. Nearly every table and barstool had an ass on it. The jukebox was cranking out one tune after another that kept the patrons pumped and Farah and me on our toes.

  It was barely after ten. I still had hours left on my shift, yet I was already dragging. I lived in a perpetual state of exhaustion, but this was different. I’d grown so accustomed to being tired all the time it had become second nature. I could handle it, no problem. But tonight my limbs felt heavy, my head was fuzzy, and no amount of caffeine or sucking it the hell up was working. I couldn’t shake it off. The kind of tired I was currently dealing with had seeped down into my bones. I had no energy whatsoever, and if I closed my eyes for even a second, I was sure I’d fall asleep standing up.

  A whoop carried over the din of the bar, so loud almost everyone was able to hear it. Letting out a beleaguered sigh I turned toward the noise, already knowing what to expect. I’d been on alert from the moment she’d walked in earlier, just waiting for something unpleasant to go down.

  Sure enough, when I looked over at my section, Rina was on her feet, arms in the air while giving her hips an enthusiastic shimmy. A second later, she climbed on top of the table and laid out flat on her back, sticking a lime wedge between her teeth and a shot glass between her cleavage so one of the guys at the table could do a body shot.

  “Fuck me. Swear to God, every time that girl walks in here my asshole puckers.”

  I looked away from the chaos taking place across the room to find Buck, Darla’s old man and the co-owner of Bad Alibi, with his palms pressed to the bar, leaning in to glower in the directio
n I was just looking.

  A snort worked its way up my throat as my eyes bulged out. “Wow, Buck. That was . . . colorful. And way too damn much. I didn’t need that visual.”

  He looked to me and winked. “You know what I mean.”

  I knew exactly what he meant. I hadn’t thought it possible for Rina to spiral any further out of control than she had back in the day, but apparently I’d been wrong. Every time I saw her, she was even worse off than the time before.

  Tonight she was wearing a pair of ripped up fishnets—and not purposely ripped up either, they were trashed from not being taken care of—underneath a pair of denim shorts so short a good few inches of ass cheek were hanging out from beneath the hem, and the strip of fabric she was wearing as a top was barely wide enough to stretch across her boobs, leaving everything else uncovered and absolutely nothing to the imagination.

  Her long dark hair was streaked with brassy orangish highlights that looked like a bleach job gone horribly wrong, and the thick black liner around her eyes was smudged. She looked emaciated, at least a good twenty pounds underweight. I could only assume the weight loss was due to the drugs she’d started doing shortly before our senior year and never stopped.

  She wasn’t a mess; she was a freaking disaster. And she liked it just fine that way. To say our relationship had never recovered after high school would have been putting it mildly. She hated the ground I walked on, and I pitied the hell out of her for what she’d turned into.

  It was a shame, really, because her mom was the sweetest, most soft-spoken woman I’d ever known, and when Rina had spun out of control, it had broken the woman’s heart. Now, word around town was that Sissy Martin was really sick, and her daughter couldn’t be bothered to give up her wild, partying ways to help her out.

  I let my eyes drift over the group she was hanging with, spotting the patches on several leather jackets and vests.

  “When the hell did she start hanging with the Riders?”

  The Iron Riders was a motorcycle club in the neighboring town. They didn’t come to Bad Alibi on a weekly basis or anything, but seeing as this was a biker bar in a biker town, and they were most definitely bikers, it wasn’t unusual for them to pop in every once in a while. They had a reputation that made me more than a little leery, but they’d never caused any problems whenever they’d come in, so I tried not to listen to the gossip. Still, it didn’t fill me with warm fuzzies that Rina had hitched herself to them.

  “No clue,” Buck replied on a grumble. “But can’t say I’m surprised. That girl’s a fuckin’ wreck. Always goes lookin’ for trouble if it doesn’t find her first.”

  Farah sidled up to the bar a second later, pulling my attention from the rowdy table. “Just a heads-up, honey, you have a new table.” I looked in the direction she’d tipped her head and spotted Jensen and his friends at a high-top table near the bar. In my section. “You want me to cover them for you?” she asked, chewing nervously on her bottom lip.

  Thankful for her concern, I looked to Farah and offered up a wan grin. It was all I could muster in my current exhausted state. “No, it’s okay. I’m trying this new thing where I don’t bolt out of a room every time he enters it. We’re attempting to be civil to each other.”

  Her lips trembled as she fought back a laugh. “You’ll have to tell me how that goes,” she teased before glancing toward the pool tables. I knew exactly what she was looking at. That was where her man, Cannon, always hung whenever he came in, which was pretty much any time Farah was working. But he wasn’t there alone.

  Tonight he was with his dad, Banks, my uncle Scooter, and the rest of their crew, Danno and Fletch, plus a few other guys . . . including my brother. As if this night wasn’t bad enough with Rina throwing her shit around, now Jensen and his boys had just walked in. It was like the start of a bad joke: A man and his buddies walk into a bar . . . Only the ending wasn’t funny at all: and get the shit beat out of them by a bunch of bikers.

  “If you need backup, just say the word,” she said, letting me know she had my back. “Plus, Poppy and Wynn will be here any time now.” At the mention of our two other friends, I let out a sigh of relief. “Between the four of us, I think we can keep the menfolk under control.”

  “Thanks, honey.” The muscles in my arms quivered as I hefted my tray up, something they never did, but I managed to keep hold of it as I moved around to deliver drinks and pick up empties. Once I made sure the rest of my tables were good for the time being, I headed over to where Jensen sat, pasting a cordial expression on my face. “Hey fellas. How’s it going?”

  I knew Laeth Harker and Gage Langdon from seeing them around town and when they helped with Poppy’s drama a while back, but to say we were friendly would have been a stretch. They were firmly on Team Jensen, which was to be expected. However, the few times when words were required, they’d always been polite.

  “Hey, Shane,” Laeth replied distractedly while his eyes perused his surroundings. He came in often, nearly every weekend, and always left with a different woman, so I was sure he was scoping out tonight’s talent. Gage replied to my greeting by jerking his chin up, ever the man of few words.

  When my focus landed on Jensen I saw he was looking at my face, studying me closely. “You feelin’ okay, sunshine? You’re looking a little pale,” he said, his intuitiveness taking me aback.

  “I’m good. Just a little tired. It’s been crazy here tonight. So what can I get you guys?”

  They gave me their drink orders, and I quickly turned to head back to the bar, only to be stopped when Jensen’s hand wrapped around my arm. “You think we can talk when you have your next break?”

  There was something in his expression that left me feeling a little unsettled. “Everything okay?” I asked as my brows pulled down in concern.

  “Yeah, it’s good. I just need to talk to you about something. Won’t take long.”

  “Okay, yeah.” I gave him a nod, a knot of tension suddenly tangling up in my stomach. “My next break’s in about thirty. I’ll come get you then. We can talk back in the office.”

  His lips turned upward, and I felt a rush of heat in my core from just that one smile. “Thanks, honey. We’ll talk then.”

  I moved quickly, anxious to put some space between us and shake off the warmth that was blooming inside of me from that smile.

  Man, I was in serious trouble.

  Chapter Eleven

  Jensen

  “Sure you’ve noticed already, but it looks like big brother wants to rip your organs out through a hole he’s plannin’ to punch in your chest.”

  I turned to look over my shoulder toward the section I knew Shane’s family would be sitting in, along with their other friends. They never sat anywhere else but at the pool tables whenever they came in. And sure enough, Stone Hendrix was looking at me exactly how Gage had described.

  The dude had about two inches on me and a couple pounds worth of muscle. Every inch of his beefy arms was covered in colorful ink in intricate designs, only making him look even more menacing than he already did.

  I’d only met the man twice back when Shane and I were together, but it had been enough for the dude to scare the absolute piss out of me. Now, not so much. I hadn’t been in a fight in years, but that didn’t mean I’d gotten rusty. If anything, with the skills I’d picked up during my time in the service, I was even better at it than I had been back then. It was just that I had my anger issues in check now.

  I looked to his left and spotted Scooter sitting next to him—only slightly smaller but no less threatening—looking at me with the same scowl. Instead of turning away, I jerked my chin up, letting them know I wasn’t going to be intimidated into leaving. They knew why I was here. Hell, everyone in Redemption knew. I was here to get my family back, and I wasn’t going to let anyone get in the way of that.

  The silent stare-off was broken by a feminine purr. “Well, look who’s finally come home. Gotta say, darlin’, this is a pleasant surprise.”

&nb
sp; A woman shoved herself into the space between me and Gage, keeping her back to him as she leaned her elbows on the tabletop, using her arms to squeeze her tits together in a way that she thought would be appealing but really wasn’t.

  I narrowed my eyes and took her in for several seconds, trying to place her before realization dawned, and with it, annoyance.

  “Rina,” I grunted, making sure my tone and expression conveyed the displeasure I was feeling at her sudden appearance.

  She eyed me up and down, the glassiness in her gaze telling me she was riding a high that came from more than just booze. She ran her tongue across her top row of teeth. “Been a long time, Jensen. Wasn’t sure you’d come back.” She lifted her hand, placing it on my chest and slowly dragging it downward. “Really glad you did.”

  I grabbed her by the wrist before she could reach down any farther and jerked her hand away. “I see nothing’s changed with you. Still going out of your way to stir up trouble, huh?”

  She smiled like my rebuff at her touch didn’t have any effect on her. “Only way to have any fun in this shithole of a town. Speaking of fun . . .” She leaned in closer and I could see that time had been very fucking unkind to her. Beneath the layers and layers of glopped on makeup, the hard life she’d lived had been carved into her face, making her look at least a decade older than her twenty-five years. “How about you and me get outta here and go have some fun of our own?”

  “Rina. There’ll never be a day, now or in the very distant fuckin’ future, where I’d get my dick anywhere near you.”

  She leaned in closer, the stench of alcohol on her breath strong enough to make my eyes burn. “Gimme a few minutes and I bet I could change your mind.”

  Jesus, this chick. I was about to physically remove her from my space when I caught movement from the corner of my eye.

  “Back the hell up and get your hands off him.” I turned just in time to see Shane hit her ex-friend with a withering glare so intense my balls drew up a little. Jealousy poured off of her like water off a polished rock.