The noise made me stop in shock, my head turned and in the open door, for anyone walking by to see, was the brunette I saw Tack kissing that morning I started my first day at Ride. She was naked astride a naked man who I saw beyond her, his shoulders and most of his back up on the headboard, his muscled, tattooed arms spread wide and holding on, was Hopper. And the noise I heard was Hop groaning through an orgasm.

For some reason, instead of riding Hop facing him, she was riding Hop facing his feet.

And the door.

And, when her eyes hit mine while she was still bouncing on top of Hop, me.

Three things hit me, they hit me hard and they hit me all at once.

First, I didn’t like seeing her again and the reasons why didn’t need to be explained.

Second, I didn’t like seeing what I was seeing at all and it wouldn’t matter who the participants were. But it was exponentially worse that she was one of them.

And last, I didn’t like seeing her riding Hop because Hop had an old lady who I knew had been in his bed for years. Her name was Mitzi. She wasn’t exactly the warmest, fuzziest woman on the planet but our paths had crossed more than once at the store or the Compound. We’d partied together the Friday before. And although she was a little hard and definitely tough, she was also kind of nice, could be funny and it was clear she loved Hop.

I was frozen to the spot even though I really, really wanted my feet to move or, preferably, my whole body to go up in a puff of smoke and rematerialize in the forecourt, back in time one minute before where I would have remembered I needed to go back to the office for something, anything. Instead I stood there, staring into her eyes.

And when I did, slowly, she smiled. It was catty. It was knowing. It communicated something I did not get but I did get that I didn’t like it one bit.

Luckily, it also made me come unstuck and I hurried down the hall to Tack’s room. The door was closed, I opened it, entered then I closed it. Once in his room, I stood still. But inside I was shaken.

I tried to remember if anyone had told me how long Mitzi and Hop had been together and I couldn’t. Though I did know it was a long time. I also knew they weren’t married but they lived together and had two kids together. This I knew because Mitzi told me herself. And although Mitzi was a tough broad, it wasn’t only clear she loved Hop, it was super clear she loved their kids. So however long they’d been together, it had been long enough to have two children.

And, door open for anyone walking by to see, he was screwing another woman.

“Okay, this isn’t good,” I whispered to the empty room and jumped when my phone rang in my hand.

I looked at the display and sucked in a calming breath, flipped it open and put it to my ear.

“Hey, honey,” I greeted with false brightness to cover my freak out.

“What’s the matter?” Tack asked immediately.

Damn. I could never pull one over on him, not even on the phone.

“Nothing,” I lied then quickly moved on. “What’s Tug’s ETA?”

“I’ll tell you when you tell me what’s up.”

“Nothing’s up. I’m in your room about to grab the envelope. Is Tug going to be here soon?”

Silence then, softly, “What’s the matter, Red?”

“Nothing, Tack,” I lied again. “I talked with you maybe ten minutes ago. How could something be the matter in ten minutes?”

“The how is that you’re you. Something could be the matter in ten seconds.”

He wasn’t wrong about that. Our run was going well, it was fun, it was stress-free, we had easy but that didn’t mean I wasn’t me and Tack wasn’t Tack so the banter had not died.

But this wasn’t about him being a bossy biker, me being sassy and us trading slightly heated words that were mostly lighthearted.

This was something else. I just didn’t know what and I wasn’t going to explain what until I knew why I was feeling the edgy I was feeling.

So I hid behind a veil of sass and snapped, “Well something isn’t the matter now but it will be if you don’t quit asking me what’s the matter.”

This brought more silence that Tack didn’t break.

“Kane,” I called then prompted, “Tug?”

To which he said quietly, “Hop.”

Oh hell.

I supposed, being the president of a motorcycle club, having your finger on the pulse of absolutely everything and being able to read people and figure them out was a good thing.

Being that man’s woman and him having all that sometimes was not. And one of those times was now.

“Yes, Hop,” I confirmed because if I didn’t, he wouldn’t let it go which was something else I decided in that moment I wasn’t all fired up about. “Or, more precisely Hop, who has an old lady and two kids. Added to that is Hopper’s old lady, Mitzi, who isn’t my bestest bud but she is in the sisterhood, considering she has a vagina. So, clearly, seeing Hop doing what Hop was just doing, something I’m guessing you knew he was in the middle of doing and that’s why he’s not on his way to you, didn’t make me want to do cartwheels since we sisters need to band together no matter if we’re not best buds. And, incidentally, seeing what I saw at all wasn’t much fun. Hop has his own brand of hot but I don’t want to see a brunette riding it. And last and mostly what’s the matter is that brunette was your brunette.”

“She’s not mine, baby,” Tack replied quickly and gently.

“No, apparently she belongs to Chaos. What? Do you pass her around?” I clipped back.

“We don’t but she does.”

Ohmigod!

I might need to learn the ways of the biker world but that, that was something I didn’t need to know. At least not now, alone, in the Compound, two doors down from a skank and a cheater and nowhere near a bottle of wine or, better yet, one of tequila.

He might know all, see all and figure it all out but he also had to learn when to shut up and let it go.

“Okay, handsome, before I didn’t want to talk about this. Now I really don’t want to talk about this,” I warned.

“This is another way of our world, Red, and if you keep control on that attitude long enough, when I have time, I’ll explain it to you,” Tack replied.

I’d heard that before.

Way, way, way too often.

And just then, with that brunette’s catty, knowing smile burned on my brain, I’d had enough.

“Would that time be later?” I asked sarcastically.

“Uh… yeah.”

“Seems you’re going to explain a lot of things later and it seems you avoiding doing that, that means those things are like that brunette. Shit you aren’t explaining because you don’t actually want me to know.”

“Tyra –”

“Ignorance is not bliss, Tack.”

“Red –”

“Sometimes it’s lies in the form of keeping something from someone with bullshit promises of ‘later’,” I kept ranting.

“Darlin’ –”

“And in the end, any lie is a hurt that burns and sometimes that burn can kill.”

Tack was silent.

I was not.

“Call Tug. Tell him I’m getting a taxi. And as for you, you need to send someone else to get that envelope. I’m thinking I need a little time so I’d prefer to wake up alone tomorrow. When I’m ready to talk, I’ll call you. But you need to know, whenever I’m ready, it’ll be later.”

“Goddamn it, Tyra –” I heard him ground out but I flipped my phone closed.

This time we would talk my later.

I yanked open the door and stomped down the hall. I didn’t look into Hop’s room and I avoided it so studiously, I didn’t even know if the door was open.

I would discover Hop was done when I walked out of the Compound, my phone open in preparation to make a call to the taxi company, and I saw him on his bike.

When he saw me, he lifted his chin and called, “Cherry! Yo!”

I didn’t know if, when I saw him in his room, he was so in the throes of what was happening he didn’t see me. Or if he didn’t care. Or if he expected me to get the way of their world and not care because he didn’t look embarrassed or, indeed, anything except Hop.

I gave him a chin lift as his bike roared then he roared off with another flick of the wrist to me.

I glared after his bike, spared some time thinking about poor, cheated on Mitzi while I called a cab then I stood outside the Compound knowing exactly what that edgy meant.

Chaos, fuck, most MCs, women don’t factor.

What? Do you pass her around?

We don’t but she does.

Crap.

Truth be told, it hurt when I fell in love with Tack over tequila and he kicked me out of bed. But until that moment, I didn’t realize the hurt that burned deeper was seeing him with the brunette only a day later. He’d explained it. I hadn’t made an impression on him and clearly that had changed since.

But every girl, or at least the ones I knew, hoped like everything that when they met the one, they’d make an impression. And thus they wouldn’t ever be replaced and certainly not the very next night.

And as ridiculous as it was, as inflated an expectation, as admittedly unrealistic and even stupid, that didn’t mean it wasn’t downright true.

I didn’t know how Mitzi felt about Hopper. Maybe she understood this. Seeing the hard in her face, the tough in her manner, I suspected she did.

But I didn’t.

And I might not watch TV and I might have lived in black and white but I wasn’t literally unconscious all my life. I might not be savvy to the ways of the world like Tack but I wasn’t an idiot.

Bikers chose their lifestyles for a reason. And men became members of motorcycle clubs for deeper reasons. And it wasn’t a secret sect of society that lived quiet and kept clandestine.