Diesel

  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, events, and incidents are products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.

  Diesel: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Bonebag MC) copyright @ 2018 by Vivian Gray. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

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  Contents

  Diesel: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Bonebag MC)

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Epilogue

  Sneak Preview of SILAS

  Silas: A Bad Boy Motorcycle Club Romance (Death Knells MC)

  Chapter One

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  Diesel: A Motorcycle Club Romance (Bonebag MC)

  By Vivian Gray

  The biker is willing to cut a deal: my brother goes free if I bear Diesel’s baby.

  I never imagined Tyler, my piece of sh!t brother, would sink this far.

  Now he owes money to the Bonebag Motorcycle Club…

  And they’ve decided it’s time to collect.

  But it isn't just the circumstances making me weak in the knees.

  It's Diesel, the club's enforcer, and my brother's jailer.

  The bad boy makes my blood pulse, my stomach drop.

  My thighs clench in anticipation at the mere sound of his voice.

  I know I shouldn't trust a word he says.

  I shouldn't submit myself so eagerly to the deal he lays before me.

  Because it's not just my brother's life on the line…

  It's my body.

  My heart…

  And my womb.

  But I'm willing to do what is necessary.

  I'll give up my body to Diesel, again and again and again, if it means seeing justice… and taming the beastly biker in the process.

  But now there's a fourth life hanging in the balance: Diesel's baby.

  If I thought matters were personal before, just wait until I break the news to the outlaw bone-breaker himself…

  Everything he wanted is happening.

  Chapter One

  Blanche

  “Come on, Mom!” I shout as joyfully as I can. “Open mine. I promise it’s a good one.”

  “Blanche, dear, the only birthday gift I want from you in my old age is grandchildren.” Mom gives me that classic side-eye, the kind of expression that makes your head want to explode into a million pieces.

  I could do without her constant reminders that I am out of college, single, and childless. But for her birthday, I won’t pick a fight over it. She smiles coyly, knowing that she got away with something there, and takes the silver wrapped package from my dad’s waiting hands. He sits on the arm of the chair as she gently rips through the paper.

  Mom’s blue eyes, the same deep shade as mine, light up at the sight of my gift. “Oh, Blanche,” she coos. But moments later, she tears into the tape holding the box together like a savage. “Darling, you shouldn’t have. This is—This is too much. This is way too much! How on earth could you afford this?”

  The sterling silver picture frame, with a row of tiny diamonds patterned as a flower along the bottom, slides out of the box wrapped in protective foam paper. It’s the same one we saw just a few months ago in a shop window downtown. My mother, usually the more frugal shopper between the two of us, had almost insisted we buy it then and there, but I uncharacteristically reminded her how costly it was and how impractical it was for her to have something so breakable around her home, and she relented.

  “It was nothing, really. I just took a few extra shifts at the hospital, that’s all. But I remembered how much you loved it, and well, what better excuse than to buy it for your sixtieth birthday!”

  My cheeks go pink like they always do when I’m excited. The truth is that it wasn’t easy for me to save up for that picture frame. Being a new nurse at the overstaffed hospital of our small town meant sometimes begging for overtime or to cover someone’s shift. There was also my student loans and house bills to prioritize too. I’d only wrapped the gift this morning as I was getting ready to head over to my parents’ house.

  “Now that’s a damn fine frame,” my dad buzzes in. A man of few words, he stares down at the wrapping and carefully handles the package like it was made of some kind of precious material. The last of the foam wrapper falls to the floor, and I hold my breath for their reaction.

  The gift isn’t just a fancy picture frame from a boutique shop. I unwrapped it myself last night to add the photograph: a print of our entire family together. It was taken two years ago before everything happened – before the world, as our family knew it, broke itself open in a way that could never ever heal.

  I see my dad scan over the faces through his aviator-style glasses. I was twenty back then, still in college. My blonde hair was pulled back in a tight, neat bun at the top of my head, with my pink lips stretched brightly as I held one arm around my mom’s back and another around my brother’s neck. Tyler was almost a foot taller than me, but he weighed just as much. His long arms were outstretched as to welcome others into the picture. He smiled for the photo as well – one of those classic Tyler smiles that we wouldn’t see again.

  “The photo… I thought maybe that you would…” I stammer, unsure of what to say.

  By the tearful, far-off look on my mom’s face, I know it was a mistake to have included it. She can’t see the beautiful frame or the long hours I put into saving up for it. All she sees is the ghost of the person who should be her son. All the promises, the hopes, the dreams are frozen in that photographed moment, never to be realized.

  “It’s fine, Blanche. It’s fine. We should have a picture of him no matter…” My mom’s voice quivers as she stands up from the chair and places the frame on the mantle above the empty fireplace. It’s surrounded by other framed photos – of me, my parents’ fishing trips, and their smiling nieces and nephews. The new photo marks the first time in a long time that Tyler’s face has made its way into the home.

  While my mom pretends to dust around the edges and adjust the location of the other pictures, my dad stews. He rocks back in his seat, tapping his foot loudly on the hardwood panel floor.

  He grumbles slightly before exploding at my mom: “No, Alice. Don’t put that picture up there. We’ll change it out – we’ll get one from our wedding or that one from Blanche’s graduation day. But I’ll be damned if I have to see his face every morning before I go to work.”

  “Michael, he’s our son. No matter what happened, he’s our son, and we should—”

  My father slams his fist down onto his thigh, making an awful slap. His voice thunders through the small sitting room: “No!” He then moderates his voice by clearing his throat slightly and continues, “No. No, I won’t have it. We made the decision last month to write him out of our family. Putting that damned photo up will make it harder to keep our promise to let him go. If he wants to be a damned fool, then let him. But we won’t have any part of it!”

  “It’s just a photo—”

  “Damn it. It’s not just a photo, Blanche!” My dad heaves a heavy,
meaning-filled sigh and gazes at me. “Look, honey, I know you meant well, and it is a hell of a gift. Your mom talked about that frame for weeks after she spotted it. But you’ve got to understand, that picture is a reminder of something we can’t change. It’s a reminder of our failures. And I won’t have it in my house. First, it’s that damned birthday card, and now it’s this.”

  “A birthday card?” I turn towards my mom who continues to stare at the photo in the frame. Her chin shakes slightly. “Did Tyler contact you? Did you get something from him and not tell me?”

  “It’s not any of your business, Blanche. It’s between your mother and me.” Dad rises from his chair and walks towards her, placing an arm around her shoulders. Mom pats his fingers tenderly.

  “Look, I didn’t want to cause any pain or drama – especially not on your birthday, Mom. I am sorry for that. I just thought…” I try my best to soften my voice. I’m not going to learn anything if I keep arguing with my dad. “I just thought that you would maybe want a picture of the whole family, even if it meant that he was in it. Tyler’s my brother too, and I miss him. You know how hard I’ve been looking for him? I even talked to a friend that can get him into a halfway home if he would take the help.”

  “He won’t take it, Blanche. You always stood up for him because he was your big brother. But he changed. After the first arrest, he was never the same. Prison out in California did something to him, made him harder. We tried to get him the help he needed. Your father even got him a job offer in the fields, but it’s no use. He’s in too deep with the gangs out on the coast, and he isn’t coming back.”

  I try not to think about the day of Tyler’s first arrest. I came home from school to find my parents frantically searching through the house for the can of money they kept for emergencies. His bail was more than my future college tuition, but they managed to get it all and then some for the lawyer and the plane tickets out to California. I stayed in the empty home alone, waiting for the news that he was on his way home or that he had at least found some rehab facility to go to while he awaited another trial.

  I never saw him again. He skipped bail – making his way to Mexico or something. A friend of him snuck him over the border. When my parents heard from him the second time, it was because he was caught again in California. The cycle was repeated. Hearts broken again. And I was left wondering what happened to the brother who told me about the planets and stars, and who let me ride in the tractor during harvest season.

  “We know how hard you’ve been looking for him, honey,” Mom says with an exhausted sigh. “But we’ve given up. We can’t have a son who turns his back on his family like that. I think it’s time for us all to move on.”

  She reaches into the pocket of her sweater, pulls out a stark white letter on plain paper, and places it on the coffee table. I don’t touch it; I’m not exactly sure what I am supposed to do with it. But I recognize the handwriting almost immediately. It’s his – Tyler’s – small, all-caps script. The corners are bent slightly, but it’s still sealed. I can just make out the outline of a grocery store birthday card through the thin paper envelope.

  “We need to burn that thing,” Dad says.

  “Absolutely not,” Mom replies tersely, rebuking my dad in a tone I haven’t heard before. “No, we should keep it. We don’t know if this is the last time before he… Before something ends up happening to him.”

  My eyes trail over the California address, committing it to memory as well as I can. “We should open it,” I suggest, doing my best to keep my voice neutral and helpful. “I mean, what if he has a message for us?”

  My dad sighs again. “It’s your mother’s letter,” he finally says, clearly still stinging from Mom’s sharp tone earlier. “Neither you nor I will be making the decision on what we do with it.”

  “Mom, please, just open it. It’s not going to kill us to see what he has to say.” I am desperate to read what’s inside, to see if there’s some shred of humanity left in my brother, to know that he’s okay. Obviously, he’s in the right headspace to remember my mom’s birthday and to send her a card, but there has to be more. I just know it.

  Mom sits down beside me and looks me over. My eyes plead with her to make the right decision, no matter how painful it may be. I glance over at the frame, reminding her of what it used to be like before the motorcycle, the drugs, the gangs, and the crimes. We could be like that family again. We could be smiling, holding on tight to one another. We could be back here in Illinois where it’s safe, and family means something.

  She must see it because, before I can say another word, she reaches towards the card and pulls it to her chest. She sighs again, almost as if she’s taking in the smell of the letter, before ripping it open with the back of her thumb. She pulls out a bright pink card with white lettering. It’s shaped like a bouquet of flowers with the scrolling words, Happy Birthday to a Wonderful Mother, raised on the front.

  Mom bites her lip before opening the card. A finger runs over the handwritten words, and in a second, she’s done. The card drops in the small space between us.

  “And… What the hell did he want? Did he say anything?” Dad practically falls back into the chair. His eagerness is restrained, but I can tell he cares as much – if not more – as I do.

  Mom looks towards me, motioning for me to read it for her. My hands shake as I pick up the card and look inside. There isn’t much there, but I still read it as cheerfully as I can: “Hi, Mom. It’s sunny in California. It is almost every day. I’m safe. I’m out of trouble. I’m going to be okay. But I wanted to wish you a happy birthday. I know it’s a big one. Thanks for everything, Mom. I hope your day is good. Love always, Tyler.”

  The room goes quiet and still. Not even the fidgety cat lying on her perch moves. The only sound is Dad’s antique grandfather clock ticking away in the corner of the room. I count the 142 seconds that pass before Mom leans back in her seat. Dad coughs, then walks towards the bedroom.

  Mom and I wait to hear a door close before we dare to look at one another.

  “He’s safe,” I say quietly. “That has to be a good thing, right? I mean, we didn’t know if he was alive or dead a few weeks ago. And now he sent us, I mean you, a letter for your birthday. Maybe he’s trying to tell us something?”

  “He’s trying to tell me happy birthday, Blanche. That’s it. It’s the bare minimum.”

  “It’s something, Mom. And he used an address.” I pick up the envelope, studying the return address.

  “It’s not a home or an apartment. The first thing I did when I got that damned thing in the mail was send it to our attorney to see if he could track him down. He came back and said it was for a bar and some offices. No one lives there.”

  “That doesn’t make sense. Why would he use a fake return address and not leave it blank? It’s not like he put anything valuable in there he’d want to come back to him…” My voice trails off as I look back at the card. There isn’t a trace of a clue or a sign. Nothing in his writing is alarming or stands out. The weather is sunny… He is doing alright… The card itself is pink flowers. What could that mean except that he remembered her birthday?

  “It doesn’t mean anything, and I wish you would drop it, Blanche. You see what it’s doing to your father. Tyler is not Tyler anymore, and it’s time we learned to live with it. We can’t keep tracking down a ghost that doesn’t want to be found. He’s made his bed away from us, and that’s it. We have no son.”

  “But, Mom, please—”

  “Blanche!” she shouts, her usually playful voice becoming stern. “I will not hear about this or him anymore. Your father and I have made our decision, and nothing in this world is going to change it. If you can’t accept it, then just go.”

  “It’s your birthday; I am not leaving. But I’m also not going to sit here and pretend that I never had a brother – that Tyler was not the same boy that picked me up from softball practice or taught me how to ride my bike.”

  At the mention of his nam
e, my mother rises to her feet. She strides towards the bedroom that Dad disappeared into, only to pause before opening the door, like she’s reconsidering her next steps.

  She sighs and then says calmly, “Thank you for the picture frame, Blanche. It’s exactly what I wanted. I wish I could offer you some cake, but I’m not in the mood at the moment to cut it. Let’s try again in a few days – maybe when you get your next day off from the hospital.”

  My mind goes back and forth from staying put and fighting this one out or taking the loss and leaving. I turn away from her slightly, just enough so she can’t see me take the card and the envelope and shove it deep inside my purse. She won’t miss it, I try to justify to myself. If he’s not her son anymore, well, he can still be my brother, and this card obviously matters more to me than it does to her.

  “Goodbye, Dad,” I call out, knowing that he’s probably standing next to the bedroom door listening in on our conversation. “I’ll see you around – hopefully.”

  “Call me when you get your schedule for next week, and we’ll plan a dinner or something. Maybe we’ll go to Porgy’s and try their ‘Wednesday Night Pot Roast Special’, okay?” Mom smiles, but her eyes glisten with tears she’s refusing to let go.