jake the panty ripper book 1 the phantoms mc series

"We're dancing on very thin ice, in the middle of the dark" –Jeremy Thurber, Playing in the Dark

********************************

"You wanna talk about what you were doing at the clubhouse?" asked Jake, handing me a cup of coffee.

My hands came around the cup, seeking its heat. "Not really."

"OK." He sat beside me on the couch, throwing a casual arm behind me. "You wanna talk about why you were crying like that?"

"Not really."

I could feel his eyes on me but chose to ignore him, drinking my coffee in silence. I expected him to say something else or – better yet – leave. He did neither.

"I have work tomorrow," I grumbled, leaning forward to put my empty cup on the coffee table. "I need to sleep."

"Same here," said Jake.

I looked at him, curious for the first time. "Just what is it that you do, anyway?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"I wouldn't be asking if I didn't, now would I?"

"Touché," he said with a warm smile. He flicked the haphazard ponytail I'd done as high as I could on my head. "I do a couple things here and there. Used to be a tattoo artist back in the day, so if someone sees and likes my work, I get called in at Ghost's parlor. I build bikes every once in a while. Built the one I ride." Pride was evident in his voice. He sounded like a little boy talking about his toys.

"Sounds like fun. Doesn't explain how you can possibly have enough to donate to the Maya Fenton Charity Case," I said under my breath.

"Not to brag, sweetheart, but people pay big money for custom bikes," Jake said with a wry smile. "It also pays to have a smartass brother who can make good investments on your behalf when you're doing jail time."

Being reminded of his time in jail brought me back down to earth. I peeled myself off the couch and stood. Jake followed suit.

"I say something wrong?"

"Yes. No." I gave him a half-hearted shrug.

His brow furrowed. "Did you go see Ghost?"

I looked him in the eye. "Yes. I...I have to apologize."

"For what?"

"I don't know. For hating you all this time? For blaming you?" I exhaled loudly, suddenly finding the carpet extremely interesting. "Ghost told me...everything."

Jake cursed loudly. "Maya, look at me."

For some reason, I couldn't deny him.

"Don't shift the blame to Ghost now," he said. "If I'd known those guys had followed Ella to my place... If I'd been vigilant, she –"

I put my hand over his mouth, silencing him. "Stop it. Don't do that with me."

He released a harsh breath that warmed my skin. I let my hand fall to my side, suddenly uncomfortable. He was only a hair's breadth away from me, so close I could almost pretend I heard his heart beat.

A key turning in the keyhole of my front door made me back away from him, just in time. Seb strode into my living room and guilt made my skin heat up.

"Sebastian? What are you doing here?" I said in a rushed breath. This was ridiculous. I'd done nothing wrong. I had nothing to feel guilty about.

"What's going on here?" Seb's voice was calm, nonchalant as he approached us.

"Computer Boy," Jake grunted by way of greeting as he faced my boyfriend off.

I swatted his arm. "Grow up." I gave Seb a smile. "This is Jacob. You know, the guy who dated Ella before Marlon Phillips?" It felt strange using Ghost's government name.

Seb raised a brow. "The ex-con?"

Jake let out a mirthless laugh. "The one and only." He turned to me, surprising me by placing a soft kiss on my forehead. I was too stunned to protest. "See you around, babe."

He side-stepped Seb, taking a second to scrutinize my boyfriend in his navy shirt and jeans before leaving.

"Well... I didn't know you two were friends," Sebastian remarked, shaking his head.

"We're... I don't know what we are, but I wouldn't call us friends," I said truthfully.

He glanced at my empty cup on the table. "I figured you wouldn't eat dinner unless I brought you some." He held up a plastic bag with the familiar logo of a Chinese restaurant a few blocks from my apartment.

"You didn't have to –"

"I wanted to."

I let out a sigh. "You're awesome, you know that?"

He grinned, kissing me on my nose. "Feel free to say it as many times as you deem necessary."

For the first time that evening, I felt like everything was going to be okay.

***

"You know, sometimes I wish I'd lost my mind, then I wouldn't have to suffer the indignity of knowing that I've just taken a ѕhit in my adult diaper."

I wheeled eighty-seven-year-old Mrs. Graff into the handicapped toilet stall, helping her onto the toilet seat and out of her soiled diaper.

"There's no indignity here," I told her, my standard response whenever she said things like this.

She eyed me from behind big, round owl-glasses. "Don't give me that, Maya. Until you've sat in your excrement all through breakfast time as an adult, you don't know what this feels like."

"Well, like I always tell you, you shouldn't ever hesitate to call me over to your table to tell me that you need to use the toilet." With great difficulty, I wiped her off as thoroughly as I could, with toilet paper first, then a wet washcloth. Mrs. Graff always refused to be sluiced off. Something about the indignity of it all.

"If I leave my food unfinished, that Chen woman picks at it like a vulture. I should switch tables. Why can't I switch tables?"

Mrs. Chen just happened to be Sara's grandmother. She was charming and sweet, but she did have a habit of stealing her eating companion's food when she wasn't looking.

"I'll talk to her, okay? You've sat at that table for as long as I can remember," I said.

"Well, maybe it's time for a change," muttered Mrs. Graff, allowing me to help her pull her slacks up.

The old woman didn't know that her words applied to me. Maybe it was time for a change. For most people, spending their twenty-sixth birthday – or any birthday, for that matter – cleaning up poop and bedsores was akin to a trip to the four corners of hell, but it just gave me time for reflection.

Twenty-six didn't feel any different from twenty-five. Or twenty-four, really.

"We're going out tonight," Kira called to tell me during my lunch break.

"I have work tomorrow," I reminded her, picking at the leftover Chinese I'd brought to work.

"So? Come on, Maya, it's your birthday. We need to celebrate. It's what we do!"

"And if Luke joins us?" I'd been reluctant to bring either of them up to each other since the day I'd gone to see Luke.

I could imagine Kira chewing on her bottom lip. "Then he joins us. Look, M, we'll go out for one drink. That's one Coke for you."

"I have Coke at home. You can come over."

"You're such a wet blanket, I swear. Fine. I'll come over."

"But it's not a party," I threw in, "so don't invite anyone, okay? I don't have enough space as it is."

"Not a party. Got it."

*~*~*

Kira Blake was a dead woman.

It had just gone past eight p.m. and my already dollhouse-sized apartment had been turned into a sardine tin. As one of the sardines squished against another sardine, I was very unhappy. Kira clearly needed a dictionary definition of the word "no".

Someone had set up a laptop and speakers on my coffee table and had pushed it into one corner of my living room. The couches had been pushed against the walls and my living space was now a dance floor. I personally knew zero of these people who were currently doing various impressions of sexual acts while fully clothed.

"Happy birthday, Sarah," a guy yelled as he was dragged past me by a very enthusiastic blonde.

"Sarah? Seriously?" I muttered to myself, scanning the small mob for my soon-to-be ex-best-friend.

She was nowhere to be seen, which was understandable, since Luke was here. She'd visibly paled at the sight of him, and had scampered away like a field mouse. Luke had deposited his present – which I was going to open later – before becoming an unofficial bouncer, for lack of a better word. He was making sure no one broke – or stole – anything. I knew he probably didn't want to be here, especially since Claire still hadn't taken him back.

"Happy birthday, Maya," came a low voice in my ear.

"Jacob," I said without turning around, "who invited you?"

He let out a soft chuckle. "Invites are overrated." He stepped around me, giving me a wry smile. "Plus, this town's so small and your friend's mouth is so big. How many of these people are actually your friends?"

"None of them," I admitted with a sigh. "I didn't want a party."

"I can see that," he said, looking me over.

I folded my arms across my chest. Kira had completely blindsided me after my shower after work. Despite her protests, I stuck with one of Luke's old football jerseys and the black leggings I'd already thrown on. My friend had to know that I was 100% uninterested in socializing tonight.

"I refuse to dress up for a bunch of random people dropping by for free beer and whatever the hell that ruckus that passes for music is," I informed him, noting that he was clean-shaven and was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt that covered the tattoos I was so used to seeing.

"No, you look nice, babe. Here, before I forget..." He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and brought out a small black box.

"Oh, my God! Are you proposing?" screeched an obviously drunk woman in a dress that she'd somehow tucked into her pink panties.

"Fụck off," Jake snapped at her, and she did, giving him a wide-eyed look over her shoulder. "This isn't a ring," he growled at me.

"Didn't think so," I growled back at him, "but it's no doubt something expensive, so I can't accept it." Things in little suede black boxes usually were. Expensive, I mean.

Jake rolled his eyes at me. "It's a gift. It's universally rude to refuse a gift. You don't wanna be rude to me, now do you, Maya?"

I took the box from him. "Thank you."

He gave me a wide smile. "There. Was that so hard?" He glanced over his shoulder. "So where's Computer Boy?"

"He's not here."

Jake's eyes caught mine. "Well, is he coming?"

"I don't know."

"It's your birthday and you don't know if he's coming?"

While I would've liked to say that this was a first-time occurrence, the truth was that Sebastian was just not good with birthdays and anniversaries – hell, even globally-celebrated holidays. His excuse was that he had so much going on his head that there wasn't any space for things like celebrations, which I could testify was the truth.

I sighed. "He forgets these things sometimes. He's always been like that."

Jake narrowed his eyes at me. "That's bullshιt. I remember Bree Mason's birth date and we only fucķed a few times."

I winced. "I really didn't need to know about your sexual antics. And I really don't need you judging my boyfriend. He's a mess but he's my mess, okay?"

"You cool, M?" Luke asked, his voice loud. He stepped beside Jake, wordlessly side-eyeing him and receiving a dismissive look in return.

"Yes. I'm fine, aside from all of these people invading my personal space." I groaned as the music changed to something loud and choppy. "What is that? Is that Skrillex? Dear God, turn that racket off."

"I'm on it." Luke gave Jake one last look before wading into the crowd and making his way to the makeshift turntables to talk to the purple-haired DJ.

"I'm not...judging," Jake said in the blessed silence that followed. "I'm just trying to understand how a man can leave a woman like you alone on the day she turns a year older."

I couldn't answer that. All I knew was that I was ten seconds away from calling Seb to remind him that it was my birthday, just for him to apologize profusely like he always did and stop by, so that Jake could stop looking at me with pity in his eyes.

"Dance with me," he said abruptly, already taking my hand in his.

I vaguely recognized the start of Jeremy Thurber's Playing in the Dark, a silly song when it really came down to it. "Yeah. Not going to happen," I said under my breath.

"Come on, babe. This time, you're sober."

My face heated. I allowed him to spin me into his arms, people instinctively moving out of our way.

"I'd rather you didn't bring that night up," I said into his ear, putting my arms around his neck and clasping the box in my hands.

"Fair enough." His hands went to my waist.

"Oh, and happy birthday to you, too," I told him with a big smile, enjoying the look of surprise on his face. "What are you now, forty?"

"Fifty," he quipped, recovering, "but I appreciate the compliment."

I laughed; genuinely laughed. Jake turned thirty-one today, I knew.

"Part of my surprise at seeing you here was because I thought you'd be at the clubhouse, or something," I said, trying and failing to keep an acceptable distance between my front and his.

He shook his head. "We don't exactly have birthday parties and sing to each other."

"Crap. I didn't get you a present."

"I didn't expect you to."

Mrs. Graff's words from earlier that day came to me in a flash: Maybe it's time for a change. Aside from bringing Jake some soap in prison years ago when his mother passed, I'd never bought him anything. His gift burned in my hands.

"Then what do you expect from me?" I had to ask. Surely he had better things to do than hang around me tonight. Whatever Sharon, his mother, had meant by "looking after" me, I was positive that didn't include dancing with me out of pity because my boyfriend wasn't there to do it. Seb hated dancing, anyway.

"Nothing, Maya." He spun me around so that my back was against his front, so that I could feel his breath in my ear. "Nothing at all."

"Okay," I said, pulling back and taking his hand to spin him around this time. He even managed to look graceful caught off-guard. "So...friends?"

He gave me a crooked smile. "You got it, babe."

We ended up dancing to two more ridiculously catchy pop songs, and I felt myself relax, enjoying being surrounded by nameless people and the smell of liquor. It helped that Jake was a killer dancer and that he didn't mind me pretending to be on Dancing with the Stars, a TV show that Kira was obsessed with.

Luke had ordered a cake – a really lousy chocolate one – and Kira led everyone in singing me a drunken 'Happy Birthday'. I ended up having a pretty good time, despite the fact that the last of my "guests" left after midnight and I had to be up in four hours. Of course, like real friends, Kira and Luke had left me with clean-up duty.

"You don't have to do that, Jake," I said when he left my kitchen with a big black trash bag.

He paused mid-step, giving me a weird look.

"What?"

"You've never called me Jake before. Always Jacob."

Was that true? I found myself thinking about it, really thinking about it. Then I decided it didn't matter.

"If you say so," I told him, to which he grinned.

He went about collecting red paper cups that were littered on the floor while I picked up empty bottles and threw them into the bin. Tomorrow, I'd empty it into the recycling bin, but for now, I was too tired to even contemplate going downstairs. Yawning, I snatched up someone's empty box of cigarettes, noting that my apartment still looked like a frat house.

"That's it," said Jake, dropping his bag. "I'm calling in reinforcements."

"What?"

He took his phone out and called somebody up, turning away from me to speak in a low voice. Shrugging, I left him to it and went to deal with the mess in my kitchen. Jesus Christ, these people were animals. Kira was going to meet her Maker tomorrow, of that, I was sure.

A knock at my door sounded and Jake answered it, letting in a troupe of young men, all dressed in the black biker jackets I was so used to seeing.

"Happy birthday, Maya," one of them said cheerfully. Upon further inspection, that someone ended up being Sticks.

My lips parted but nothing came out. I watched as the seven men – Candidates – picked up where Jake and I had left off with no question whatsoever.

"Where's your broom?"

"You got a vacuum or something?"

"This your thong?"

The last one threw me, because it meant that some filthy little rat had removed her underwear in my freaking living room and discarded it on my freaking couch. I'd probably have to sanitize my living room. I couldn't think of that right now.

"Trash," I said through clenched teeth. "That goes in the trash."

"You can go to bed, babe," Jake said from where he was lounging on a couch. "I got this."

"Okay," I reluctantly conceded. "Thank you."

"Anytime, sweetheart. Sleep well."

"I will," I told him, which was a bald-faced lie. This was possibly child labor. I mean, one of them looked like a pubescent teen, no matter how many times he reassured me he was way over twenty-one.

Still, I went to the dining room and gathered my small bounty of presents off the dining table before stalking to my bedroom and locking the door behind me. Curiosity got the better of me and I opened Jake's box.

Well, at least he'd been honest. It wasn't a ring, but just looking at the tiny diamonds, it was an extravagant gift. They were studs, with small diamonds that made up the VW logo. My Volkswagen was in the shop, probably unable to be revived, so Jake probably thought he was being amusing by buying me a reminder of her.

"Funny," I admitted to myself, putting the earrings back into their box. And when I woke up three hours later, I didn't even mind that I had to drink several cups of coffee before I felt even close to human.

My apartment was spotless. 

●

A/N: Have any of you heard about the Hells Angels + Mongols MC (motorcycle club) beef? This whole story was inspired by a documentary I watched last year about it, and I guess fantasies of scary-looking biker guys with soft hearts...because bikers can't ALWAYS be tough and hard, right? So anyway, I found the documentary, so if you're interested in watching, here's the link to it https://youtu.be/8fR9iJSaBOM You won't be bored! Love, Kim

"We're dancing on very thin ice, in the middle of the dark" –Jeremy Thurber, Playing in the Dark

********************************

"You wanna talk about what you were doing at the clubhouse?" asked Jake, handing me a cup of coffee.

My hands came around the cup, seeking its heat. "Not really."

"OK." He sat beside me on the couch, throwing a casual arm behind me. "You wanna talk about why you were crying like that?"

"Not really."

I could feel his eyes on me but chose to ignore him, drinking my coffee in silence. I expected him to say something else or – better yet – leave. He did neither.

"I have work tomorrow," I grumbled, leaning forward to put my empty cup on the coffee table. "I need to sleep."

"Same here," said Jake.

I looked at him, curious for the first time. "Just what is it that you do, anyway?"

"Do you really want to know?"

"I wouldn't be asking if I didn't, now would I?"

"Touché," he said with a warm smile. He flicked the haphazard ponytail I'd done as high as I could on my head. "I do a couple things here and there. Used to be a tattoo artist back in the day, so if someone sees and likes my work, I get called in at Ghost's parlor. I build bikes every once in a while. Built the one I ride." Pride was evident in his voice. He sounded like a little boy talking about his toys.

"Sounds like fun. Doesn't explain how you can possibly have enough to donate to the Maya Fenton Charity Case," I said under my breath.

"Not to brag, sweetheart, but people pay big money for custom bikes," Jake said with a wry smile. "It also pays to have a smartass brother who can make good investments on your behalf when you're doing jail time."

Being reminded of his time in jail brought me back down to earth. I peeled myself off the couch and stood. Jake followed suit.

"I say something wrong?"

"Yes. No." I gave him a half-hearted shrug.

His brow furrowed. "Did you go see Ghost?"

I looked him in the eye. "Yes. I...I have to apologize."

"For what?"

"I don't know. For hating you all this time? For blaming you?" I exhaled loudly, suddenly finding the carpet extremely interesting. "Ghost told me...everything."

Jake cursed loudly. "Maya, look at me."

For some reason, I couldn't deny him.

"Don't shift the blame to Ghost now," he said. "If I'd known those guys had followed Ella to my place... If I'd been vigilant, she –"

I put my hand over his mouth, silencing him. "Stop it. Don't do that with me."

He released a harsh breath that warmed my skin. I let my hand fall to my side, suddenly uncomfortable. He was only a hair's breadth away from me, so close I could almost pretend I heard his heart beat.

A key turning in the keyhole of my front door made me back away from him, just in time. Seb strode into my living room and guilt made my skin heat up.

"Sebastian? What are you doing here?" I said in a rushed breath. This was ridiculous. I'd done nothing wrong. I had nothing to feel guilty about.

"What's going on here?" Seb's voice was calm, nonchalant as he approached us.

"Computer Boy," Jake grunted by way of greeting as he faced my boyfriend off.

I swatted his arm. "Grow up." I gave Seb a smile. "This is Jacob. You know, the guy who dated Ella before Marlon Phillips?" It felt strange using Ghost's government name.

Seb raised a brow. "The ex-con?"

Jake let out a mirthless laugh. "The one and only." He turned to me, surprising me by placing a soft kiss on my forehead. I was too stunned to protest. "See you around, babe."

He side-stepped Seb, taking a second to scrutinize my boyfriend in his navy shirt and jeans before leaving.

"Well... I didn't know you two were friends," Sebastian remarked, shaking his head.

"We're... I don't know what we are, but I wouldn't call us friends," I said truthfully.

He glanced at my empty cup on the table. "I figured you wouldn't eat dinner unless I brought you some." He held up a plastic bag with the familiar logo of a Chinese restaurant a few blocks from my apartment.

"You didn't have to –"

"I wanted to."

I let out a sigh. "You're awesome, you know that?"

He grinned, kissing me on my nose. "Feel free to say it as many times as you deem necessary."

For the first time that evening, I felt like everything was going to be okay.

***

"You know, sometimes I wish I'd lost my mind, then I wouldn't have to suffer the indignity of knowing that I've just taken a ѕhit in my adult diaper."

I wheeled eighty-seven-year-old Mrs. Graff into the handicapped toilet stall, helping her onto the toilet seat and out of her soiled diaper.

"There's no indignity here," I told her, my standard response whenever she said things like this.

She eyed me from behind big, round owl-glasses. "Don't give me that, Maya. Until you've sat in your excrement all through breakfast time as an adult, you don't know what this feels like."

"Well, like I always tell you, you shouldn't ever hesitate to call me over to your table to tell me that you need to use the toilet." With great difficulty, I wiped her off as thoroughly as I could, with toilet paper first, then a wet washcloth. Mrs. Graff always refused to be sluiced off. Something about the indignity of it all.

"If I leave my food unfinished, that Chen woman picks at it like a vulture. I should switch tables. Why can't I switch tables?"

Mrs. Chen just happened to be Sara's grandmother. She was charming and sweet, but she did have a habit of stealing her eating companion's food when she wasn't looking.

"I'll talk to her, okay? You've sat at that table for as long as I can remember," I said.

"Well, maybe it's time for a change," muttered Mrs. Graff, allowing me to help her pull her slacks up.

The old woman didn't know that her words applied to me. Maybe it was time for a change. For most people, spending their twenty-sixth birthday – or any birthday, for that matter – cleaning up poop and bedsores was akin to a trip to the four corners of hell, but it just gave me time for reflection.

Twenty-six didn't feel any different from twenty-five. Or twenty-four, really.

"We're going out tonight," Kira called to tell me during my lunch break.

"I have work tomorrow," I reminded her, picking at the leftover Chinese I'd brought to work.

"So? Come on, Maya, it's your birthday. We need to celebrate. It's what we do!"

"And if Luke joins us?" I'd been reluctant to bring either of them up to each other since the day I'd gone to see Luke.

I could imagine Kira chewing on her bottom lip. "Then he joins us. Look, M, we'll go out for one drink. That's one Coke for you."

"I have Coke at home. You can come over."

"You're such a wet blanket, I swear. Fine. I'll come over."

"But it's not a party," I threw in, "so don't invite anyone, okay? I don't have enough space as it is."

"Not a party. Got it."

*~*~*

Kira Blake was a dead woman.

It had just gone past eight p.m. and my already dollhouse-sized apartment had been turned into a sardine tin. As one of the sardines squished against another sardine, I was very unhappy. Kira clearly needed a dictionary definition of the word "no".

Someone had set up a laptop and speakers on my coffee table and had pushed it into one corner of my living room. The couches had been pushed against the walls and my living space was now a dance floor. I personally knew zero of these people who were currently doing various impressions of sexual acts while fully clothed.

"Happy birthday, Sarah," a guy yelled as he was dragged past me by a very enthusiastic blonde.

"Sarah? Seriously?" I muttered to myself, scanning the small mob for my soon-to-be ex-best-friend.

She was nowhere to be seen, which was understandable, since Luke was here. She'd visibly paled at the sight of him, and had scampered away like a field mouse. Luke had deposited his present – which I was going to open later – before becoming an unofficial bouncer, for lack of a better word. He was making sure no one broke – or stole – anything. I knew he probably didn't want to be here, especially since Claire still hadn't taken him back.

"Happy birthday, Maya," came a low voice in my ear.

"Jacob," I said without turning around, "who invited you?"

He let out a soft chuckle. "Invites are overrated." He stepped around me, giving me a wry smile. "Plus, this town's so small and your friend's mouth is so big. How many of these people are actually your friends?"

"None of them," I admitted with a sigh. "I didn't want a party."

"I can see that," he said, looking me over.

I folded my arms across my chest. Kira had completely blindsided me after my shower after work. Despite her protests, I stuck with one of Luke's old football jerseys and the black leggings I'd already thrown on. My friend had to know that I was 100% uninterested in socializing tonight.

"I refuse to dress up for a bunch of random people dropping by for free beer and whatever the hell that ruckus that passes for music is," I informed him, noting that he was clean-shaven and was wearing a long-sleeved T-shirt that covered the tattoos I was so used to seeing.

"No, you look nice, babe. Here, before I forget..." He reached into the back pocket of his jeans and brought out a small black box.

"Oh, my God! Are you proposing?" screeched an obviously drunk woman in a dress that she'd somehow tucked into her pink panties.

"Fụck off," Jake snapped at her, and she did, giving him a wide-eyed look over her shoulder. "This isn't a ring," he growled at me.

"Didn't think so," I growled back at him, "but it's no doubt something expensive, so I can't accept it." Things in little suede black boxes usually were. Expensive, I mean.

Jake rolled his eyes at me. "It's a gift. It's universally rude to refuse a gift. You don't wanna be rude to me, now do you, Maya?"

I took the box from him. "Thank you."

He gave me a wide smile. "There. Was that so hard?" He glanced over his shoulder. "So where's Computer Boy?"

"He's not here."

Jake's eyes caught mine. "Well, is he coming?"

"I don't know."

"It's your birthday and you don't know if he's coming?"

While I would've liked to say that this was a first-time occurrence, the truth was that Sebastian was just not good with birthdays and anniversaries – hell, even globally-celebrated holidays. His excuse was that he had so much going on his head that there wasn't any space for things like celebrations, which I could testify was the truth.

I sighed. "He forgets these things sometimes. He's always been like that."

Jake narrowed his eyes at me. "That's bullshιt. I remember Bree Mason's birth date and we only fucķed a few times."

I winced. "I really didn't need to know about your sexual antics. And I really don't need you judging my boyfriend. He's a mess but he's my mess, okay?"

"You cool, M?" Luke asked, his voice loud. He stepped beside Jake, wordlessly side-eyeing him and receiving a dismissive look in return.

"Yes. I'm fine, aside from all of these people invading my personal space." I groaned as the music changed to something loud and choppy. "What is that? Is that Skrillex? Dear God, turn that racket off."

"I'm on it." Luke gave Jake one last look before wading into the crowd and making his way to the makeshift turntables to talk to the purple-haired DJ.

"I'm not...judging," Jake said in the blessed silence that followed. "I'm just trying to understand how a man can leave a woman like you alone on the day she turns a year older."

I couldn't answer that. All I knew was that I was ten seconds away from calling Seb to remind him that it was my birthday, just for him to apologize profusely like he always did and stop by, so that Jake could stop looking at me with pity in his eyes.

"Dance with me," he said abruptly, already taking my hand in his.

I vaguely recognized the start of Jeremy Thurber's Playing in the Dark, a silly song when it really came down to it. "Yeah. Not going to happen," I said under my breath.

"Come on, babe. This time, you're sober."

My face heated. I allowed him to spin me into his arms, people instinctively moving out of our way.

"I'd rather you didn't bring that night up," I said into his ear, putting my arms around his neck and clasping the box in my hands.

"Fair enough." His hands went to my waist.

"Oh, and happy birthday to you, too," I told him with a big smile, enjoying the look of surprise on his face. "What are you now, forty?"

"Fifty," he quipped, recovering, "but I appreciate the compliment."

I laughed; genuinely laughed. Jake turned thirty-one today, I knew.

"Part of my surprise at seeing you here was because I thought you'd be at the clubhouse, or something," I said, trying and failing to keep an acceptable distance between my front and his.

He shook his head. "We don't exactly have birthday parties and sing to each other."

"Crap. I didn't get you a present."

"I didn't expect you to."

Mrs. Graff's words from earlier that day came to me in a flash: Maybe it's time for a change. Aside from bringing Jake some soap in prison years ago when his mother passed, I'd never bought him anything. His gift burned in my hands.

"Then what do you expect from me?" I had to ask. Surely he had better things to do than hang around me tonight. Whatever Sharon, his mother, had meant by "looking after" me, I was positive that didn't include dancing with me out of pity because my boyfriend wasn't there to do it. Seb hated dancing, anyway.

"Nothing, Maya." He spun me around so that my back was against his front, so that I could feel his breath in my ear. "Nothing at all."

"Okay," I said, pulling back and taking his hand to spin him around this time. He even managed to look graceful caught off-guard. "So...friends?"

He gave me a crooked smile. "You got it, babe."

We ended up dancing to two more ridiculously catchy pop songs, and I felt myself relax, enjoying being surrounded by nameless people and the smell of liquor. It helped that Jake was a killer dancer and that he didn't mind me pretending to be on Dancing with the Stars, a TV show that Kira was obsessed with.

Luke had ordered a cake – a really lousy chocolate one – and Kira led everyone in singing me a drunken 'Happy Birthday'. I ended up having a pretty good time, despite the fact that the last of my "guests" left after midnight and I had to be up in four hours. Of course, like real friends, Kira and Luke had left me with clean-up duty.

"You don't have to do that, Jake," I said when he left my kitchen with a big black trash bag.

He paused mid-step, giving me a weird look.

"What?"

"You've never called me Jake before. Always Jacob."

Was that true? I found myself thinking about it, really thinking about it. Then I decided it didn't matter.

"If you say so," I told him, to which he grinned.

He went about collecting red paper cups that were littered on the floor while I picked up empty bottles and threw them into the bin. Tomorrow, I'd empty it into the recycling bin, but for now, I was too tired to even contemplate going downstairs. Yawning, I snatched up someone's empty box of cigarettes, noting that my apartment still looked like a frat house.

"That's it," said Jake, dropping his bag. "I'm calling in reinforcements."

"What?"

He took his phone out and called somebody up, turning away from me to speak in a low voice. Shrugging, I left him to it and went to deal with the mess in my kitchen. Jesus Christ, these people were animals. Kira was going to meet her Maker tomorrow, of that, I was sure.

A knock at my door sounded and Jake answered it, letting in a troupe of young men, all dressed in the black biker jackets I was so used to seeing.

"Happy birthday, Maya," one of them said cheerfully. Upon further inspection, that someone ended up being Sticks.

My lips parted but nothing came out. I watched as the seven men – Candidates – picked up where Jake and I had left off with no question whatsoever.

"Where's your broom?"

"You got a vacuum or something?"

"This your thong?"

The last one threw me, because it meant that some filthy little rat had removed her underwear in my freaking living room and discarded it on my freaking couch. I'd probably have to sanitize my living room. I couldn't think of that right now.

"Trash," I said through clenched teeth. "That goes in the trash."

"You can go to bed, babe," Jake said from where he was lounging on a couch. "I got this."

"Okay," I reluctantly conceded. "Thank you."

"Anytime, sweetheart. Sleep well."

"I will," I told him, which was a bald-faced lie. This was possibly child labor. I mean, one of them looked like a pubescent teen, no matter how many times he reassured me he was way over twenty-one.

Still, I went to the dining room and gathered my small bounty of presents off the dining table before stalking to my bedroom and locking the door behind me. Curiosity got the better of me and I opened Jake's box.

Well, at least he'd been honest. It wasn't a ring, but just looking at the tiny diamonds, it was an extravagant gift. They were studs, with small diamonds that made up the VW logo. My Volkswagen was in the shop, probably unable to be revived, so Jake probably thought he was being amusing by buying me a reminder of her.

"Funny," I admitted to myself, putting the earrings back into their box. And when I woke up three hours later, I didn't even mind that I had to drink several cups of coffee before I felt even close to human.

My apartment was spotless. 

●

A/N: Have any of you heard about the Hells Angels + Mongols MC (motorcycle club) beef? This whole story was inspired by a documentary I watched last year about it, and I guess fantasies of scary-looking biker guys with soft hearts...because bikers can't ALWAYS be tough and hard, right? So anyway, I found the documentary, so if you're interested in watching, here's the link to it https://youtu.be/8fR9iJSaBOM You won't be bored! Love, Kim