Beckham (Heartlands Motorcycle Club Book 10) Read online

  Beckham

  Heartlands Motorcycle Club Book Ten

  Olivia T. Turner

  Contents

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

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  Copyright© 2020 by Olivia T. Turner.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including emailing, photocopying, printing, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the author. For permission requests, email [email protected]

  Please respect the author’s hard work and purchase a copy. Thanks!

  This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual events, businesses, companies, locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  www.OliviaTTurner.com

  Edited by Karen Collins Editing

  Cover Design by CormarCovers.com

  To my kid’s gorgeous soccer coach.

  You’re always talking about scoring…

  How can I get in on that?

  Chapter One

  Beckham

  “Two chocolates.”

  The girl behind the refrigerated counter grabs a little red spoon and smiles at me as she puffs her chest out.

  “Chocolate is good, but you have to try our new caramel fudge. It’s sensuously delicious.”

  She bends over, showing me her cleavage as she scoops a tiny spoonful of ice cream and hands it to me with a grin.

  “Want to try?” she asks with a hopeful look on her face.

  “No.”

  Nixie elbows my arm. I turn to her and she’s shaking her head in disbelief.

  “No, thank you,” I add to the girl.

  “Suit yourself,” the girl says with a shrug. She puts the spoon into her mouth and makes a show as she sucks the ice cream off with a sensuous moan. “It’s so good.”

  “You’re wasting your time,” Nixie says with an annoyed look on her face. “Can you just get our two ice creams please?”

  The girl’s smile vanishes and she quickly gets our two cones ready.

  “You’re hopeless,” Nixie says to me as she waits.

  When her ice cream is ready, she grabs it and disappears to a booth in the back of the parlor as I pay the girl. She doesn’t try to flirt anymore, which is a relief.

  “What was that about?” I ask my eleven-year-old niece as I sit down across from her.

  Her eyes flit to mine as she gnaws on her ice cream cone. “She was trying to flirt with you, Uncle B. How come you never even try to flirt back?”

  “I’m not trying to meet a girl. I’m trying to have a nice afternoon with my niece.”

  “We can do this anytime.”

  But we don’t. Nixie used to live with me and Jaxon after her mother died, but since Jaxon and Stella got together, she lives with them. Maybe it’s that or because she’s getting older, but I feel her starting to slip away.

  “Don’t you want a girlfriend?” she asks. “You don’t even notice when a pretty girl is flirting with you! You’re never even paying attention.”

  I sigh as I bite into my cold ice cream. I notice. I pay attention.

  I just don’t want to let anyone in. I wouldn’t do that to someone.

  “She was into you,” Nixie continues. “And that single mother from school—Jessie’s mom. She was into you too.”

  They wouldn’t be so interested if they knew what was standing in front of them.

  “Are you ever going to date?” she asks. “Don’t you want to fall in love?”

  “Love is a fairytale,” I say with a sigh. “It’s not meant for everyone.”

  “Love is not meant for everyone?” she repeats with an exasperated look on her face. “Uncle B, you can’t believe that.”

  I bite into my ice cream and focus on the ice-cold burning on my teeth, wishing we were talking about anything but this.

  She’s still staring at me, waiting for an answer.

  “It’s meant for guys like Jaxon,” I tell her honestly. “Not for guys like me.”

  “Love is meant for everybody,” she says. “If not, I wouldn’t love you like a father.”

  My heart melts whenever she refers to me as anything close to being her father. I feel the heat rising to my cheeks.

  “Do you love me?” she asks.

  My heart breaks that she even has to ask that. “Of course, Nixie. I love you more than anything. You know that.”

  “See?” she says with a triumphant smile on her face. “Then love is for everyone. Even you.”

  I watch her as she starts attacking her ice cream cone with a grin. This kid is an old soul, but she’s still just a kid. After her childhood, she knows more than anyone that there are horrors in this world. She watched her real father go to prison and he’ll be there until she’s twenty-four years old. If that wasn’t enough, her mother—my sister—died of breast cancer. So, yeah, she knows there are horrors in this world, but she doesn’t know everything. The horrors I saw before her age could make grown men cry…

  “It’s time to leave the past in the past,” she says.

  My eyebrow raises as I look at her. She’s walking on thin ice and she knows it.

  “I know it hasn’t been easy for you,” she says with a hint of uneasiness in her voice. “What happened with grandma and grandpa…”

  I look over my shoulder at the couple sitting behind us. Ice cream is dripping onto their fingers as they gaze out the window. They don’t have a care in the world. God, what I would give to trade places with them.

  “Uncle J told me,” she says.

  “Jaxon shouldn’t be talking about that,” I snap. “Especially to a kid.”

  “It’s my family history too,” she says, looking indignant. “I wanted to know the truth.”

  “You don’t want the truth,” I say. “Believe me, you don’t. I’ve been trying to forget the truth for almost thirty years.”

  “It couldn’t have been easy for you,” she says as she reaches out and puts her hand on mine. “But it doesn’t have to define you. I think you should talk to someone about it.”

  “I think you should eat your ice cream and drop it.”

  “A girlfriend can help you get over it.”

  “I’m over it,” I snap.

  A few awkward minutes pass and then she’s back at it again. “Is it true about your uncle?”

  God, this girl doesn’t know when to quit.

  “Nixie,” I warn.

  “Uncle J told me.”

  “That’s enough,” I say as I explode out of the seat. “I’m waiting outside.”

  I toss the rest of my ice cream into the garbage as I head to the door. The girl behind the counter perks up as I approach the counter on the way out.

  “Don’t like the chocolate?” she asks with her chest puffed out. “How about you try that caramel—”

  I just can’t right now. I walk right past her and out the door. My heart is pounding as I head to my bike and sit on it, waiting for my nosy little niece to finish up.

  The thought of my uncle always gets me all amped up.

  That fucker… Twenty years later and he’s still haunting me…

  I’m still pisse
d at Nixie when I see her get up from the booth through the window. I was really looking forward to spending some one-on-one time with her, but then she had to drag up a bunch of bad memories and ruin it.

  I hate that our afternoon got ruined. I haven’t seen too much of her since we bought the duplex. She’s living in the downstairs unit with Jaxon and Stella, and I’m upstairs by myself. I miss her.

  But even I know that it’s better for her downstairs. Stella has become a mother figure to her, which she desperately needs. She’s better off down there. And when Stella has her baby in a few weeks, it’s going to feel like a real family. Something I can’t give to her…

  My anger washes away when she steps out of the ice cream parlor and looks at me with an apologetic look. She’s just a kid after all. The melted ice cream down her arm to her elbow is enough proof of that.

  “I’m sorry, Uncle B,” she says with a quiver in her chin.

  I just reach for her and pull her in for a hug, holding her as tight as I can without hurting her.

  “I was just trying to help,” she says into my armpit.

  “I know,” I say in a soft voice. “I’m sorry I overreacted. You want to get on with our fun day?”

  She looks up at me with a smile and nods.

  I hop on my bike and feel her climb on behind me. She’s the best thing in my life.

  And she’s slipping away…

  Four hours later, we’re sitting beside an empty pizza box and painting each other’s toenails.

  Nixie loves painting toenails and I’ve been volunteering since she was seven-years-old. She’s eleven now.

  “How is that?” I ask as I admire my artistic skills.

  She looks over and gasps when she sees what I’ve done. “Wow! You always do the best butterflies, Uncle B,” she says when she sees the monarch I painted onto her baby toe. “What do you think of yours?”

  I laugh when I look down at what she did on my foot. “Colorful,” I say. “The pink is a nice touch.”

  There’s a knock on the door and then Jaxon bursts in like he always does. He’s got a big excited grin on his face as he comes over.

  “Good news!” he says. “Oh, I like that butterfly.”

  “Right?!” Nixie says as she looks at her baby toe again.

  “What’s the good news?” I ask my little brother. “Are you going to finally get a haircut?”

  Nixie snorts out a laugh as Jaxon runs his hand through his long hair. “Never.”

  “Then what?”

  “Hell Fire is hosting us at their bar tonight for a fight night,” he says with a grin.

  Nixie shakes her head. “That’s good news? I thought Stella would have civilized you by now but you are still very much a primitive barbarian.”

  “Stella likes that I’m a barbarian,” Jaxon says with a grin. “She makes me wear a loincloth after you’ve gone to bed.”

  “Whoa!” Nixie shouts as she plugs her ears. “Eleven-year-old alert! I don’t need to hear this!”

  “Why is that good news?” I ask him.

  “Hell Fire has a new enforcer. Just got out of prison. Big guy. Unbeatable.”

  I just stare at him.

  “He hasn’t met you yet,” he says as he slaps my shoulder hard. “We bet. You kick his ass. We make a ton of money. What’s not good news about that?”

  That does sound pretty good. It’s been too long since I’ve gotten into a fight.

  We moved to this Heartlands’ chapter because the President, Troy Conley, has been trying to turn it clean. We thought it would be better for Nixie to be around a legit club, but that’s meant I’ve had to cage the beast in me. It would be nice to let him out for a night.

  “These guys bet big,” Jaxon says with money signs in his eyes. “Do you feel like slamming your fists into something?”

  “Always,” I grunt.

  “Yes!” Jaxon says as he rushes to the door. “I’ll set it up!”

  Nixie is shaking her head as she starts on my other foot. I know what she’s thinking—I should be heading to a bookstore or a singles’ party somewhere to try and meet a good girl, not to a rival biker gang’s clubhouse to do some bare-knuckle fighting.

  I sigh as I dip my brush into the nail polish and start another butterfly on the big toe of her other foot.

  I don’t know what to tell her. I want what she can see for me. I ache for it. A woman to protect and to hold… To love and to worship…

  I would kill to have that.

  I’ve seen the way that Stella looks at Jaxon. I wish this world was the type of place where a girl would look at me like that.

  But it’s not.

  Not for me.

  This world is full of disappointment and pain.

  And I’m not about to let anyone in to crush the little bit of my soul that I have left.

  Chapter Two

  Fawn

  “This place is amazing!” Nicole says as she skips to the bar in her high leather boots and short skirt.

  I feel myself shrinking with every step I take behind her. Amazing is not the word I would use to describe this place. Terrifying, unsafe, and dirty are more suitable words that come to mind.

  I close my cardigan and follow her as I memorize the location of the exits.

  “Do you always come to places like this?” I ask her when we’re hanging by the bar, waiting for the tattooed bartender to notice us.

  I don’t usually hang out with Nicole. We met at work and she invited me to go out with her after our shift at the coffee shop. I was honored at first, but now, I’m thinking it wasn’t the best idea. I didn’t know this place was what she had in mind.

  It’s a biker bar/fight club from the looks of it. There’s a cage set up in the back with dozens of men I’d be terrified to cross on the sidewalk all screaming and throwing money around as they watch two huge bloody men pummel each other with their fists.

  “It’s my first time!” Nicole says with a grin. “Pretty cool, huh?”

  I swallow hard. “Totally.”

  She orders two beers from the bartender with the teardrop tattooed under his eye as I look around with my heart pounding.

  There’s a biker making out with a trashy looking girl by the cigarette machine. His hand is all the way up her skirt. A bunch of bikers are laughing at a joke as one of them snorts a line of cocaine off the pool table. Drunks are sitting in front of the poker machines, looking half-dead inside as they push buttons and watch different fruits line up.

  “Maybe we should go,” I say as I wipe my sweaty palms on my jeans.

  “We just got here,” Nicole says as she turns around with two beers. She hands me one and I nearly gag when I take a sip. “Let’s see what the night has in store for us.”

  That’s what I’m afraid of. I don’t want to know what any of these rough-looking men would have in store for me if they got their hands on my body.

  Anyway, Nicole is driving and she doesn’t look like she’s going anywhere anytime soon.

  “Look at him,” Nicole says, biting her lip as she eye fucks the guy at the end of the bar.

  “Him?!” I nearly shout. The guy looks like an actor, but not the heartthrob. He looks like the guy playing Inmate #1. He’s covered in creepy tattoos. His shoulders and the back of his neck are covered in inked spiderwebs with the huge evil-looking spider tattooed onto his Adam’s apple.

  He’s got a long scar on his face, which he either got in a knife fight or when his mother threw him in a dumpster (can’t blame her for that).

  “He’s hot,” Nicole says as she pushes her breasts up.

  “When was the last time you had an appointment at your optometrist?”

  She ignores me and waves down the bartender again. “Send a beer to him and tell him it’s on me.”

  Oh my God. This is the worst idea imaginable.

  I’m in a cold sweat as I watch the bartender bring the beer over and place it in front of him.

  Nicole waves at him when he looks over at us.

&n
bsp; “Can we please go?” I ask as he gets up.

  “Just be cool,” she says as he comes over. “Hi!”

  “Hello,” he says in a deep raspy voice. I can’t help but stare at the gruesome spider moving on his skin as he talks. “Look at you two. We’d make a great threesome.”

  My mouth drops open in shock.

  But Nicole looks excited. She grins as she lets him wrap his tattooed arm around her shoulder. “Shotgun, I get to go first.”

  They both look at me and I take an involuntary step back.

  I have a feeling that Nicole has been around with a lot of men, but I haven’t. I’m a virgin and I’m not planning on spending my first time staring at a nasty spider while an acquaintance from work cheers me on.

  It takes about seven seconds before Nicole is making out hard with Mr. Creepy Neck Tattoo.

  I take another sip of my beer and nearly spit it back up, I’m coughing so hard when their lips connect. When Nicole’s new friend starts groping her breasts, I decide it’s a great time to check out the bathroom.

  With my eyes on the sticky scratched up wooden floors, I head straight to the ladies’ room. The less attention I grab, the better.

  But I’m not looking where I’m going and I walk right into a monster of a man. He’s got a black leather vest on that says Hell Fire on one side of his chest and Gouge on the other.

  “Hey, little thing,” he says as he grabs my arm with his huge hand.

  “No, thank you!” I awkwardly shout as I yank my arm away. He laughs as he lets me go and I run the rest of the way to the bathroom.

  I gasp when I push the door open and see a couple having sex on the counter.