The Funeral of a Good Girl

By - TempestRaces

Chapter 64 – Of Secret Friends and Blue Streaks

Managing to lose herself with Jesse in the game for what felt like hours, vaguely aware of the normal ebb and flow of an evening in the Toretto household occurring around them, the doorbell was quite abrupt enough to knock Tempest out of the artificial world of cars and octane she and Jesse were living in. However, both figuring that there was no way anyone had come to see them, the pair kept on racing each other, Jesse trying to catch up to his cousin's slight lead.

When Tempest heard her name being said by whoever was at the door, opened by Dominic, her attention was swiftly taken off the TV screen. Everyone she truly knew was inside the house, with the exception of Vince. Who would be at the door asking for her? Before she could spend any more time attempting to puzzle it out on her own, Dominic moved back and looked at her. "Someone here for you," he rumbled out, obviously annoyed at the necessity of speaking to her.

She got up with a puzzled frown, making her way toward the door and adjusting her sweats around her hips as she stood.

"How do you go from that to fine?" Bryce asked from his position on the porch once she appeared in the doorway. His comment was clearly meant to include her very casual dress and messily restrained hair.

She cocked a hip sideways and leaned on the doorjamb. "I'm in playing vid games with Jess for the night. How fine do I need to be?"

"For that? Not very. For what you're actually going to be doing? You at least need to wear jeans."

"That is what I'm doing. I haven't got any other plans."

"No, you didn't have any other plans. You do now." Bryce invited himself into the foyer, pushing past her. "Go change your clothes."

"I don't know what you're up to. But I'm not going anywhere." Tempest was still very pissed off with Vince and fully intended to take that out on his friend in lieu of being able to take it out on the real thing.

"If I have to take you downstairs, find your shit and change you myself I will, but you are coming with me. So go do it yourself and pick the easy way."

"What'd you care what I do tonight?"

"I've just decided I do. So go put some jeans on, maybe a nicer shirt and meet me out front."

"I'm only gonna be down here for another two days. What makes you think I have to do what you say?"

"Cause I'm betting you know I'm serious when I say I'll drag you down there and change you myself if you don't do what I asked. And I'm betting you don't want to have that happen in front of these people, or have to explain who I am and how you came to know me."

"He'd kill you if he knew you were here, wouldn't he?" The bond between Vince and Bryce was tangible at times, and Tempest knew that if this was the first time the rest of the team was meeting Bryce—and it clearly was given by the confused and puzzled looks on their faces regarding who her large and leather clothed guest was—there was a good reason that Vince had never had him around for a happy little family bbq.

Bryce made an unconcerned face, brushing off her concern. She didn't give an inch. "He'd try," he finally answered on a shrug, admitting the answer to her unvoiced query about whether or not Bryce and Vince's family knew about each other was 'no'. "Go, get ready, come back here."

"Fine," she grumbled, giving in. "But I'm only going with you for an hour, tops. And I'm only doing it so that I don't have to see a huge brawl in the living room when you try to make me do something I don't want to do and Leon takes a big exception to it."

"Whatever you say, doll."

Tempest headed for the kitchen and Bryce leaned against the wall by the stairs, studying the people in the living room. He'd heard a lot about these people Vince lived with, but had never met them. Vince was very careful to keep his two lives separate, and Bryce even got why. But that didn't mean he'd never been curious. He made Dom, Mia and Letty right off, easily fitting them into the details Vince had let drop over the years. He knew he only got which of them was Jesse so easily because he was the one sitting on the floor with the game pad in his hand. Which left the other one to be Leon by the simple process of illumination. The infamous 'did she or didn't she' partner. He could tell his scrutiny was making them all uncomfortable, which made it even more worthwhile to be here risking the wrath of his friend. Their discomfort was amusing.

Finally, after a period of time he was sure she stretched out to stick it to him, Tempest reappeared upstairs, newly attired in a pair of indigo blue jeans and a black undershirt, her hair now curling down her back instead of knotted on the back of her head messily. There was a decidedly cranky look on her face. "I'm going out," she called into the living room. "I don't intend to be long."

"Where you going?" Jesse called back.

"I dunno. But where ever it is, I won't be there long," Tempest insisted, looking directly into Bryce's eyes as she did so. He only shrugged at her insistence.

"Put this on," he ordered, handing her a leather jacket after shrugging out of it himself.

"Why? It's not cold out."

"Because I said so," Bryce answered, clearly losing patience with her brat act. He pulled the door open and pushed Tempest out it, pulling it closed behind himself. Once they were on the porch he tossed the jacket around her shoulders. "Arms in. You have to have more than an undershirt on."

"Why?" Tempest asked again, nearing the end of her patience.

"Just in case due to someone else being stupid, we crash."

"What's a jacket got to do with—," She trailed off when she spotted the sapphire Harley at the curb. "You want me to get on that with you?"

"Yep. You're gonna get on that with me." As her arms were finally inside the sleeves of his coat, he leaned forward a touch and started to do up the zipper.

"I don't do motorcycles. Least, not on one with someone else."

"Maybe you didn't, but you do tonight."

"Why do you get to tell me what I do tonight?"

"Cause I know what's good for the pair of you better than you do yourselves," Bryce mumbled. "I just do." He dragged her down the walk to the curb where the bike was leaning on its kickstand.

"I'm not riding on the back of this thing!"

"Why the fuck not? I'm good at it. It's perfectly safe. I'll even go slow if it'll make you feel better."

"Yeah, slow'll make me feel better." She rolled her eyes to illustrate how ridiculous that sounded. "I just don't do motorcycles."

"You've never ridden on one?"

"I have. And I will again, when I'm the one driving it. I do not and will not ride on the back of one." Made her feel too out of control of her fate, though she didn't intend to share that with Bryce.

"Come on Doll. It's the only ride I own. And no, I won't ride in your car." Bryce insisted the second he saw her mouth go to open, before he tossed his leg over the seat of the bike and settled comfortably onto the leather. "I'll make it amusing for you, I promise." He looked up at her and she still didn't look convinced. "Nothing—well almost nothing—else you could do right now would piss Vince off worse than finding out you got on this bike with me." She was on the seat behind him so fast it actually moved them sideways a bit as he wasn't ready for it.

"Why didn't you say so in the first place?"

She said it so seriously he started to laugh and couldn't stop for a good two minutes. He just leaned over the handlebars and laughed til tears ran down his cheeks. The two of them were so hard headed. They deserved each other. He finally got himself in check and handed her a helmet. He watched over his shoulder as she put it on and then put his own on. Hers covered her whole head while his was just a minimal cap on his head. He'd rather not even wear one, but it seemed like the smart thing to do. And he wouldn't let her ride without being well protected. He might not ever be scared of Vince, but if anything happened to miss Trouble, he knew he was as good as dead. "Hold on. Let's go."

"Where we goin anyway?" If he answered her, his words were lost to the throbbing beat of a twin cam two stroke springing to life under the leather seat and shining blue gas tank. He shrugged to fill in the blanks, leaving her sure his verbal answer had been something along the lines of 'never you mind.' She rolled her eyes inside her helmet. Bryce was almost too like Vince for comfort. They were so alike, telling her she didn't need to know or she'd find out when it was good for her to know. She was good at doing on her own and was getting tired of some man telling her that he knew what she wanted or needed better than she did herself. Taking a deep breath she reminded herself she was leaving on Sunday or Monday at the latest, and that was only two more days to put up with it. The thought didn't fill her with as much relief as she thought it should. A sense of dark foreboding filled the area around her heart instead.

She shook it off with some effort and slid her arms around Bryce, holding on tight as he put the bike in gear and gave it throttle, letting off on the clutch, pulling away from the curb.

"Who the hell was that?" Leon asked the room in general.

"Dunno," Jesse answered with a shrug.

"Better question is how the hell did she meet the big bad biker dude in the less than two weeks she's been here?" Dom grumbled.

"Obviously through Vince," Letty answered with a roll of her eyes. "Who else could she have meant when she asked 'he'd kill you if he knew you were here'?"

"Guess so," Dom conceded grudgingly. "But if that's the case, who the fuck is that man that we've never met him, and Vince would kill him just for showing up here?"

The group shared a concerned look, each lost in puzzled thoughts for a moment or two before the lack of anything they could do about it settled in and they slowly each went back to doing their own things.