Chapter 10
Aaron - Day 18
Later that evening,I informed Megan that I wanted to eat dinner at my dining table. When she sat my food in front of me and attempted to run away, my hand clamped around her wrist to keep her in place. I’d caught a hold of her rougher than I had intended to, but my action stopped her in her fast-moving tracks.
My glance stayed on my hand wrapped around her warm, soft wrist. Without looking up at her, I spoke. “I want you to join me. I want to hear the story from your mouth…the story of how you landed this so-called maid’s job with my MC. We’ve had fucking deep cover agents that couldn’t have done what you’re doing right now.”
Once I released her wrist, she rushed off to fix her plate, returned to the table, and took the seat across from me. I listened to her story intently as she updated me on her sister’s drug use and her constant struggle to save her from herself.
The military had taught me what to look for in body language to spot lies, and Megan appeared genuine in the telling of her story. The flow of her tense words and the strain of sadness she tried to cover when she spoke of her sister were indicators. However, if Megan was telling me the truth, it wasn’t the whole truth. She was leaving out more than a few sentences. She was leaving out complete chapters.
It did fascinate me to find out that she truly was an author. The fact that she made a living from writing was impressive. This was a new endeavor for me, to have a genuine interest in someone other than a target or potential business associate. I was interested in Megan. Previously, my interest in women had never gone past me wanting to fuck them.
When Megan handed me her smart phone, I paused. My gaze pivoted between her and the phone before I reached for it. She’d pulled up multiple online sites that sold her books, and to my surprise, there were many. The information made me that much more curious about this woman.
Her story caused me to question some of the negative shit that had been drilled in my head about blacks my entire life. Megan didn’t fit into any of the stereotypes that I’d been taught. The more I talked to her, the more I was convinced that lies had been shoved down my throat from the start. Thankfully, common sense made me acknowledge as much, and I was starting to realize it was possible that everything I’d been taught could have been a bunch of lies and stereotypical bullshit.
Interested in more aspects of her life, I swiped through her cell.
“What kind of music do you listen to, Megan?” I asked as I searched through more than just music. I wanted to know about the things she wanted to keep hidden. The damn chapters she’d skipped over when telling her story.
She reached for her phone. Once she had it, she swiped and tapped the screen a few times and handed it back to me. “This is my master playlist. I listen to everything.”
After raising an eyebrow, I tapped the screen and hit shuffle. The first song that popped up was a country tune that I enjoyed by Florida Georgia Line. While the song played, I glanced at her, eyeing her with suspicion. I listened to about a minute of the song before I shuffled to the next one. A classic rock tune by Journey played, followed by a heavy metal song. A rap song followed that song, and a few other different genres of music after that.
Her voice interrupted my thoughts. “You thought because I’m African-American that I only listen to rap and R&B, right?”
That was exactly what the hell I’d thought. I couldn’t lie.
“Yes. That’s what I thought. As a matter of fact, a lot of what I was taught doesn’t seem to be true, not for youanyway.”
The ice had been broken, and some of her tension eased enough for her to talk more openly with me now. She wasn’t as tense now that she saw that I wasn’t a monster.
A tiny crease lined her forehead. “Unfortunately, a small percentage usually represents the whole of us in society’s eyes, and it’s usually the worst of us that the spotlight gets shined on,” she said.
I understood exactly what she meant. The media always found the biggest, meanest, and most illiterate redneck around and presented him to the world as representation of all of us.
I let the music play when one of my favorite country tunes by Garth Brooks spilled from the speakers. My feet tapped under the table as my mood lightened even more. My eyes skimmed over the delicate features of Megan’s beautiful face before landing on that silky brown shoulder that peeked from the top edge of her shirt and gave a glimpse of what she tried to hide. Although she didn’t appear old enough to be a widow, I’d found out that Megan’s husband was a soldier that had been killed in Iraq three years ago.
As a former marine, I understood deployments and military life. I’d nearly had my head blown off in Iraq and was damn near blown to hell in Afghanistan. I still had a few tiny pieces of shrapnel in my back as a result of my time served.
After her husband’s death, Megan claimed she’d turned into a recluse and poured her heart into her fiction writing. The writing paid off and turned into a livable income. Other than her sister, she had no family. She’d told me when she was younger, the state had dumped her into and yanked her out of six foster homes by the time she was twelve.
The mournful look on her face when she spoke of foster care indicated that she’d likely had a hard time in the system. She’d shown more emotion talking about foster care than she had talking about her sister. That sad look on her face sparked a pang of sorrow within me, and I wanted to do something to take that look off her beautiful face.
Wait!Where in the hell was all this coming from and more importantly, how was she making me feel this way? I changed the subject before more unusual shit decided to creep into my brain.
“So, you spent all of your savings getting your sister into a top-notch rehab facility? Then, you turned around and did something as crazy as pawn yourself off to a bunch of dangerous bikers like us, all so that you can clear up the mess that she’d made? Have you considered that we could still end up raping or killing you?” I leaned forward a hair. “Just because you shot someone in front of my MC doesn’t mean you’re safe. We are not good people. We have lots of enemies gunning for us, and you could get caught in the crosshairs of our turmoil.”
Her facial expression never changed as she let my words sink in. There was an unexplainable look of alarming intrigue in her expression. My comments should have been frightening to her, but I didn’t think they were. There was something peculiar about this woman that intrigued me as much as it alarmed me. Was she naïve, stupid, or manipulative?
“You do realize that any number of things can happen to you just by hanging around with our kind? We have been attempting to refine our behavior and the way we conduct business, but we are still very dangerous people.”
I squinted my eyes as I stared at her, speaking my words with purpose so that she’d understand what she’d truly gotten herself into by dealing with the August Knights. Aside from the steady flow of her breaths, those big brown eyes with their long, flirting lashes were all that moved as she took in my words and observed me with a curious glint. I was so aware of her that I could literally see her dark pupils swell each time her gaze landed on my lips. She was checking me out as much as I was checking her out, studying me just as I was her.
No matter how fascinating Megan was turning out to be, something was strangely off about her. I’d talked of raping and killing her, and she hadn’t even flinched. Something wasn’t adding up, and I couldn’t put my finger on what was off about her.
“I think there is a lot more you’re not telling me, Megan. For you to do this, something this extreme, tells me you’re not as afraid of this environment or any of us as you’d like us to believe. I think you’re insane or you’re probably one of those women who gets off on being scared.”