March 12th, 2005
Tacoma, Washington
He didn't come back that night, but Tig did, bursting through her front door with a wild look in his eyes and demanding that she pack a bag. The club was going into lockdown, apparently, and things were possibly about to get ugly. She froze in her kitchen as he started to talk, and apparently wasn't moving fast enough, because he started rummaging through her dresser and throwing articles of clothing on her bed. It took her a split second to recover her senses and scold him, before shooing him out of her room so she could pack. She had a small duffel bag in the bottom of her closet that she could fit a week's worth of clothing into if she packed well enough, and sample sizes of all of her bath and beauty products that she kept on hand for traveling.
"Do you know how long this will take?" she asked him, and he shook his head. She sighed, and threw two mini bottles of shampoo and conditioner in her bag just in case. As she grabbed a sweatshirt from her hall closet, the last thing she needed to pull on before leaving, she paused. "Why the hell are you picking me up?" she asked.
He shrugged. "Hap asked me to," he replied, and she frowned. "Look, I'm bringing you in as my daughter, that's all I can say. Hap will explain it all once we get there, I promise."
She raised an eyebrow. "Are you fucking serious?"
And it turned out that he was, in fact, pretty fucking serious, as he grabbed the duffel bag out of her hand and headed out the door, forcing her to trail him all the way down to where his bike was parked. Her duffel fit perfectly into his saddlebags (one of the reasons she had bought it, of course), and he handed her the spare helmet that he had hanging from the handlebars. It was a short ride to the clubhouse, but she was grumpy the whole time, just waiting to hear what brilliant explanation Happy would come up with for this batshit story.
As she dismounted from the bike, and watched as several charter members sealed up the gate behind them, she couldn't help feeling a sense of impending doom well up from her stomach. This feeling was, of course, increased twofold when she saw that there were a handful of men on the roof of the clubhouse, armed to the teeth, slowly circling around the building. She knew that the Sons got into some dangerous stuff, but how deep had they gotten this time?
"They're here to keep you safe, not hurt you," Tig whispered in his ear, as he placed a hand on her back and steered her towards the clubhouse door.
"I'm not allowed to be nervous when I see a man with an AR-15, even if it's a good guy?" she hissed back. "Semi-automatic, military-grade weapons make me nervous, Tig, no matter who's holding them."
Jessie seemed to find them the moment that they walked into the clubhouse, materializing out of thin air and scaring the shit out of Sarah. Tig didn't seem fazed by her sudden appearance, and greeted her with a kiss to the cheek.
"Tig, lovely to see you again," Jessie told him, a tight smile pasted on her face. "And you brought company. Sarah, right, Lauren's cousin?"
"And my oldest daughter," Tig replied smoothly, placing a hand on Sarah's shoulder. "I didn't realize that she was living in Tacoma until I saw her out with Lorca's Old Lady last night."
"Well, any family of yours is our family too," Jessie replied, her smile not faltering. "Unfortunately, we don't have any spare couches or blankets down here, so you'll have to sleep on the floor, unless your dad wants to stick you in the guest room with the rest of the Charming boys."
As Sarah looked around, she realized that Jessie was right, and feigned disappointment. The couches were crawling with women and kids, and air mattresses had taken up most of the available floor space, forming narrow aisles where people had stashed their suitcases. She almost unconsciously lifted the toes of her shoes off the floor, marveling in just how sticky the laminate wood could be. If she really had been Tig's random kid from off the street, she would have turned right around and left.
"I can't decide if it would be worse to sleep down here on the floor, or have forced daddy-daughter bonding time," Sarah mumbled, her nose wrinkling.
Tig shook his head. "No, you're not sleeping on the floor, and you're not crashing with me," he replied. "The prospect wouldn't be able to keep his eyes off of your tits, and then I'd have to kill him. It'd be too much to explain to Clay."
Sarah shrugged, and grinned. "I wouldn't blame him," she said smoothly. "They're great tits."
"Jesus Christ, you really are my kid, aren't you?" he muttered, pinching the bridge of his nose. He sighed deeply. "Look, I'll see if I can find space with someone upstairs, alright? Preferably with someone who knows better than to stare at my kid's tits all night."
"And if I wanted someone to do that?" she asked him, raising an eyebrow.
He just looked at her for a moment, with a look she could only describe as "fatherly disappointment" on his face. "You're gonna put me in an early grave, aren't you?" he asked, and she nearly laughed.
"Look, I don't mean to break up this wonderful family moment, but the only person who doesn't have someone else crashing with them right now is Happy, and he doesn't share space with anyone," Jessie told them, a mock apologetic tone to her voice. "You, of all people, know that, Tig." She patted Sarah's shoulder sympathetically. "I can see about getting you some blankets and a pillow for the floor, if you want?"
"Nah, Hap owes me a favor or two," Tig cut in, shocking Jessie. He turned to Sarah, and jerked his head towards the stairs. "Come on, let's go visit that crazy bastard." As they headed towards the stairs and out of earshot, Tig grinned. "Are you sure you're not my kid?"
"Absolutely positive," she whispered, grinning as well.
She already knew where Happy's room was, but let Tig lead her to it, since there were quite a few brothers milling about upstairs. He answered the door and greeted his brother, before giving Sarah a strange look. "Who's this?" Happy asked, his eyes snapping back to Tig.
"My kid," Tig answered, and she could see Happy's jaw twitch. "Look, I just found out she lives up here, and I had to bring her in. There's no space for her with the rest of the Charming boys, and she'd wind up on the floor downstairs."
Happy blinked, and she could see the amusement in his eyes, even though he wore a hardened expression on his face. "Not my problem," he growled, going to close the door.
"Wait," Sarah exclaimed, pressing her palm against the door to keep it from closing. "Look, I didn't ask for any of this, but I don't want to have to sleep on the damn floor against my will. It's sticky. Like, floor-of-a-porn-studio sticky, and I don't really want to ask why. All I'm asking for is a not sticky floor. I'm clean and tidy, and I'll keep to myself. Just give me one night, and if you don't like me, you can boot me to the floor downstairs."
His other brothers were beginning to take notice, and the muscles in his jaw clenched. "Fine, only because I owe Tig a favor or two," he growled, and she smiled, and slipped inside. The moment the door behind them was closed, the hard look on his face was gone, and he had her pinned up against the wall, his arms caging her in on either side. "You played that perfectly," he whispered, his voice tickling her earlobe.
"Only because Tig promised that you would tell me why I was playing," she whispered back, placing her hands on his chest and gently shoving him off of her. He took a step back, and let her walk into the room, where she dropped her bag at the foot of the bed and leaned against his dresser. "You want to tell me exactly what's going on?"
He took a seat on the edge of the bed, and looked up at her. "Where do you want me to start?"
She shrugged. "Wherever the best starting point is, I guess," she told him truthfully. "If I don't even know a piece of the story, it's hard for me to say what the best starting point is."
Happy sighed, and leaned forward. "We have a lot of enemies, Sarah," he said. "I have even more so. I'm the hitman, and I've been part of more than one charter. The guys here, they're all solid, but there's some who I'm not sure I would trust if their feet were held to the fire. The fewer people that know who you are, and what you mean to me, the safer you are. That means playing it like I'm still single."
She tilted her head. "The woman yesterday, is she in on it?"
He shook his head. "No, Meg's got it bad for our VP, and our VP's got it bad for her," he said. "I'm helping to push her closer into the inner circle, and making him get off his ass and realize it. She knows something is up, but she doesn't know what."
"So me being Tig's daughter, that's your way of bringing me in and making sure that I'm safe, without telling everyone about me?"
Happy nodded. "He's one of the few people I trust with my life." He stood up, and grabbed her hands, his face hovering inches from hers. "I love you, Sarah, and it would kill me to see anything happen to you because of something I did."
"How long have you known?" she whispered. "How long have you known you've loved me?"
"I couldn't get you out of my head from the start," he told her, "but I knew that I loved you when I saw you with your dad in California. It hurt me to think that you were seeing someone else, someone wealthy that could give you the world that I can't."
"Wasn't that right before our conversation about having needs on a run?" she asked.
"I was trying to convince myself that I didn't love you," he admitted. "Grab what I could on a run to distract me. What I didn't count on was realizing that I didn't want any of them, because they weren't you."
A stupid grin spread across her face as his words began to sink in, and she giggled like a schoolgirl. "You love me," she said.
He returned her smile. "I love you."
Now all that was left to do was convince everyone else in the club that they weren't.
March 13th, 2005
Tacoma, Washington
She was comfortable, totally at ease, as she lay in bed with him that morning. He was on his back, and she was curled against his side, one of her legs hooked over his. His hand played with her hair, slowly running through the strands, as her head rested against his chest, rising and falling with each breath he took. Her fingers traced patterns on his chest, not necessarily patterns that were already defined by his tattoos, but lazy swirls and zig zags that trailed across the well-defined muscles.
"I can't believe you have all this ink," she mumbled, as her fingers ran across the edges of one of his tattoos. "How long did it take you to build up a collection like this?"
"Years," he replied, his voice heavy with sleep. "I can't believe you don't have any ink."
"I never found anything that I wanted," she said. "I didn't want to go with something trendy, like tribal, or a tramp stamp, that's just going to look cheap and trashy in a few years, you know? It's gotta be something good."
"Something meaningful," he supplied, and she nodded against him.
She imagined that he was thinking of something meaningful to tattoo on her, but didn't press him further. Instead, she propped herself up on her elbow, and smiled at him. "Is there any way we can just stay this way, all day, and forget about everything that's, you know, happening around us?" she asked.
He shook his head slowly. "Not this time," he replied. "The Olympia charter, they set something off that could easily blow back on us. They're the smaller charter, so we have to do their damage control for them. It could get ugly."
Her heart skipped a beat. "How ugly?"
When he didn't respond, she knew the answer to his question. This shit was perilous, and potentially fatal. It felt like another layer of danger had been added to the equation, and Sarah was suddenly filled with fear. She sat up quickly, maybe too quickly, and let the sheets slip away from her body as she went to the dresser to pour herself a shot of whiskey.
She slammed the glass down, and turned back to Happy. "You don't get to die on me," she told him. He was sitting up now, his elbows resting on his knees. "You don't get to leave me that way."
"I'll wear a bulletproof vest," he told her.
"I'm not kidding, Hap," she stressed, unsure of whether or not he was joking. She sincerely hoped that he wasn't, given the fact he had even brought up bulletproof vests in the first place.
"I'm serious," he said, sliding out of bed and moving to stand in front of her. His hands rested lightly on her hips, and gently tugged her closer. "You're not getting rid of me that easily."
"Like a tattoo," she mumbled, leaning into him.
"Like a tattoo," he confirmed.
They stood there in silence for another moment, Sarah simply leaning against his chest as his hands stayed glued to her hips. She was officially worried about him, in a way that she had never been worried before. Was this what it was going to be like from now on, her worrying about him every time that he wasn't in her presence, or was it just the strain of the lockdown weighing more heavily on her mind?
"How much time do you have before you have to leave?" she whispered.
He glanced at the clock on the wall. "About half an hour?" he replied.
"Good," she said softly, before craning her neck to look up at him. "Take me back to bed?" He raised an eyebrow. "We don't have to have a morning quickie if you don't think there's enough time. I just want you to hold me, and it's too early in the morning for me to be standing around like this."
"Fair enough," he chuckled, his voice rumbling, as he pulled her back down to the mattress. She turned over on her side, and he pulled her back against his chest, his breath tickling her ear. "People are going to think that we fucked," he whispered.
"I'll take care of it," she replied, sighing. "I know you well enough to make up a convincing story that even Tig would buy."
After fifteen minutes, when she was drifting towards falling back to sleep, she felt him slide out from behind her, and quietly get dressed. She cracked one eye open, and watched him make his way around the room, picking up their discarded clothing from the night before and tossing it in the laundry bin as he pulled clean clothes out of his dresser. When he turned back to her, her eye closed again. She felt his shadow pass over her, followed by a hand running over her hair, and a kiss against her temple.
"I'll be back," he whispered.
And then, he was gone.
She eventually pulled herself out of bed, and got dressed herself. They had made up the couch the night before, a pillow and blanket neatly placed across it, looking like a freshly made bed, to keep up the illusion to anyone who might pass by when the door was open. She pulled up the sheets on his bed and made them just the way he liked it, with tight corners and a straight fold across the top, the pillows perfectly fluffed and in place. Tig had told her that breakfast in the morning would be buffet style, and they would start serving it to friends and family at nine. It was five past nine, according to her watch, and her stomach rumbled.
Sarah jumped as she opened the door, a hand grasping at her chest, as she saw that Jessie was standing just on the other side, her hand poised to knock. "You're alive," Jessie said, surprise crossing her face. "I thought for sure that he would have killed you in your sleep."
"No, I kept my distance the best I could, gave him space," she replied smoothly. "He's pretty similar to my dad, I think. Just do things his way, don't ask questions, and leave him alone. It's worth it to not sleep on the floor."
Jessie's eyes narrowed. "I'm still watching you," she said. "There's something suspicious about you. I can't put my finger on it. I think you're lying to me."
Sarah raised an eyebrow. "About what?" she pressed. "Because if I'm lying to you, then Tig is lying to you too, you know."
"Have you met Happy before?" Jessie asked.
"Yeah, I'm his wife," Sarah replied sarcastically, with a laugh. "Come on, Jessie. Tig didn't raise me in the club. In fact, he barely raised me at all. I grew up in Vegas with my stripper mom. I didn't even know that the chapters communicated with one another."
"Charters," Jessie corrected her.
"Yeah, charters, exactly," Sarah continued. "I don't even know the right lingo." Jessie continued to eye her suspiciously. "Look, if you don't like the fact that I just turned up out of nowhere, take it up with my sperm donor. He's the one who's gotta justify everything, not me. I just got pulled into this."
Jessie signed, and her shoulders sagged. "Fine, you're right, I'll take it up with Tig," she replied, a genuine smile spreading across her face for the first time since Sarah had seen her. "You want breakfast? Martha's making pancakes."
Her stomach rumbled, and she smiled as well. "Yeah, breakfast sounds really good right now."
She linked arms with Jessie, and the two walked downstairs to the bar, where the breakfast buffet lay waiting.