OWNED PART II: BLAZING DEVILS MC (4 page)

The worst had been
lying to my mom. I felt bad having to come up with the story spur of the moment
but there was no way I could tell her the truth. I already knew what her
reaction would be to me having anything to do with a Ford brother, and it
wouldn’t be a good one.

As far as everyone
else went it was pretty simple, I wasn’t trying to have anyone all up in my
business. And I knew Trigger wasn’t trying to have anyone up in his either.
Besides it wasn’t like there was anything to tell anymore, whatever had been
going on between Trigger and me was definitely over with now. It probably
didn’t even count as anything to him. He had so many club whores he fucked with
that losing a girl he just met was no big deal to him.

So all I really
had to do was get through a few more white lies and I would be all set, I would
never have to talk or think about Trigger Ford again. Sounded perfect to me.

“How could you not
know it was Trigger?” Tasha huffed on the other line of the phone. “He’s hard
to miss. With those big lips and he’s so tall and handsome. Oh, girl, lord the
things I would do to that man should be illegal, let me tell you.”

She laughed loudly
and I tried to not get jealous as the thought of Trigger and Meghan rolling
around together on a bed flashed through my mind. I hated myself for feeling
sick at the thought but I couldn’t help it, stupid Trigger and his sexy
muscular body.

“Well, whatever, I
really don’t care what everyone is saying, all I know is what it is and that’s
nothing. I swear people around here will gossip about anything, none of it even
adds up. Why would Trigger Ford be down here trying to hang out with me? I’m
sure he has better things to do, I mean he’s Trigger Ford.”

Meghan thought
about it for a second before she agreed. “That’s true. I mean no offense, I
just know how the Ford brothers are and hanging out with girls isn’t really on
their radar.”

I hated that the
fact that she was right about the brothers bothered me at all, but it did. I
didn’t want to think about Trigger with any other girls. Even if there was
nothing going on between the two of us, I was still human and I had still
hooked up with him less than 24 hours ago. It was going to take me a little
while to get over the situation, even if there wasn’t much of a situation at
all to get over.

I tried my best to
juggle the bag of groceries and my phone in my hand as I opened the door to our
building. My mom had sent me up the street after I came back inside to grab a
few things she had forgotten at the store. It was typical of my mom. She was
always forgetting things.

As soon as the
door swung shut behind me I knew I was in for it. Our landlord, Jessica, was
standing right in front of the steps I needed to take to get up to the floor
our apartment was on. She was a heavyset woman with a nice smile and thinning
hair. For the most part, she was decent unless you owed her back rent, then she
was just a complete bitch. And at the moment my mom happened to owe her back
rent, two months back rent to be exact. Don’t get me wrong my mother worked her
ass off but it wasn’t that easy to support three children on a minimum wage
paycheck and sometimes she fell behind.

I tried to
backtrack and go outside until she had gone on her way but it was no use, she
had already seen me. She puffed her big lips out and put one hand on her hip,
waving her other arm back and forth as she waved me over. She was wearing what
she always wore; a long skirt and a white blouse that was buttoned all the way
to the top, black work sneakers clung to her feet. She always said she did too
much running around trying to chase people for their rent money to not be
comfortable.

“I have to go,
Jessica’s on the prowl,” I hissed into the receiver.

“Ugh, sorry girl.
Get at me later.”

The line went dead
and I tried to come up with an excuse I hadn’t used before as to why our rent
was so late. Check got lost in the mail? My mom got sick last week and couldn’t
make it to work that many days so her check was lacking? Are you sure you
didn’t get it? Because I could have sworn I sent that out and it posted in our
account.

All the excuses
blurred together after a certain period of time and I couldn’t remember what I
had or hadn’t used. But in the end a fake excuse was better than no excuse, it
was better than the truth. Because Jessica never wanted to hear the truth when
it came to money, especially when that truth was that you didn’t have any. Not
having any meant that you couldn’t pay and if you couldn’t pay, then you were
useless to her.

I made my way over
to her slowly, dreading the conversation with each step that I took closer and
closer to her. I learned from the past it was best to start talking before she
had a chance to, once she got going it was hard to shut her up.

“Jessica!” I said
with a huge fake smile plastered on my face. “I was just telling my mom how I
was going to be looking for you today! I needed to talk to you about the rent
I-“

“Mm-hmm,” she
said, cutting me off. “If I were you I would have a lot more to talk about then
your rent, young lady. I have a bone to pick with you.”

“I know,” I told
her, taking a deep breath. “The thing is that mom got paid late this month and
it threw all of our bills out of whack making it hard to know what was do
when.”

She smiled that
big smile I only saw on the rare occasion we paid on time and waved me off.
“Oh, child, please. I could care less about all that nonsense. I have all my
money now plus next month's rent! All is well that ends well!”

I tried to pull my
mouth up off the ground after I processed what she had just said. How was that
possible? My mom wouldn’t even get paid until next Thursday, and there was no
way that one of her checks would cover three months rent, it couldn’t even
cover one.

“No, that’s not
the bone I have to pick with you! Child, where on earth have you been hiding
that fine young man? I didn’t even know you had a boyfriend, let alone one that
handsome.”

“Excuse me?” I
asked her, even though somewhere deep down I knew exactly who she was talking
about.

“Oh, don’t act
modestly on my benefit, dear. I may be old but I’m not blind and that young man
is very handsome and so polite, too. Told me to contact him directly if your
rent check is even a day late again and he would personally make sure it was
taken care of. Such a gentleman that one.”

Oh, he sure was a
gentleman. That was one way of putting it.

I couldn’t believe
the nerve of him getting involved in my family business like that. What the hell
was the matter with him? What did he think I needed his charity or something?
We were perfectly capable of getting by on our own. We weren’t anyone’s charity
case.

“What was his name
again?” Jessica was asking now. “I have it written down somewhere… Thomas? Or
was it Todd?”

“Trigger,” I
offered up helplessly.

“That’s it!
Trigger! You hang on to that one girl!” She shook her head back and forth.
“What a looker! Well if I was a little younger…” She trailed off and winked at
me.

I forced a smile
between clenched teeth. “Yes, well, speaking of Trigger I think its time a pay
him a little visit. Drop these off in front of my mom’s door, will you? I’ll
text her and tell her to come on out and grab them.”

“Oh, of course,
Jennifer.” She grabbed the bag of groceries out of my hand and started to move
her big body faster up the steps then I had ever seen her move before. “You
tell that Trigger hello for me!”

Oh, I would tell
him all right.

Everyone knew
where Trigger’s townhouse was. It was literally a block outside of the city but
nicer than any of the places around our neighborhood within a ten-mile radius.
Everyone talked about it or made a point to walk by it. It was kind of sad
actually; the way people lived through him and his brothers. Most people in our
city could only dream of living in a place that nice, working their whole lives
to live in a place like that. And here he was, only 18 and he already had it.
No wonder so many people were jealous of him. If I was being honest being this
close to it made me kind of jealous, too.

I had been so
confident and sure on the long walk over there, but once that I was face to
face with Trigger’s perfect townhouse I hadn’t been feeling so sure as before.
What was I supposed to say? How dare you do something nice for my family and
me? It wasn’t so much the gesture but the meaning behind the gesture. What did
he want from me? Did he think I was going to be thankful and bow down to him or
something? Or maybe he had done it before our conversation that morning and now
he wanted that money back? How the hell would I ever pay that kind of money
back?

I took a deep
breath and tried to gather up my courage. There was really no need to be
nervous. It was just Trigger. I wasn’t nervous about him fingering me but I was
nervous about having a simple conversation with him? Didn’t make much sense
even in my warped mind.

I was still trying
to gather my courage up when I saw Trigger’s stepsister Kat come walking out of
his front door. Her long hair was flowing around her face fiercely and she
walked fast with her head held high like she was on a mission. That was what I
needed to be like, fearless and on a mission.

I waited until she
got into her car (some blue sports car, jeez where did this family get so many
fancy cars from?) and took off before I started to walk toward Trigger’s front
door. I tried my best to have the same fierce and bad bitch walk that Kat just
had on my way but I wasn’t sure I was pulling it off too well. When I reached
the door I started pounding on it as hard as I could before I lost my nerve.

Trigger opened the
door right away. He looked completely unsurprised to see me; like he knew it
was only a matter of time before I came crawling to his doorstep begging for
his attention. He was so full of himself.

Trigger shook his
head back and forth. “Word of advice, don’t ever come pounding on anyone’s door
like that. You know who comes at you pounding on your door like that? Your
enemies, you’re lucky I didn’t open the door with a gun pointed right at your
pretty face.”

I rolled my eyes
and pushed past him inside of the door. “Don’t try and flatter me.”

He grinned. “Sure,
Jennifer. Come on in.”

“Oh, I’m sorry,
Trigger. Is that annoying? Just coming into your personal space without asking
for your permission? Just inserting myself in your life when I wasn’t wanted?”

Trigger slammed
the door shut and swung back around to face me, completely unaffected by my
attitude. “I’m going to take a wild guess that you’re heated about the whole
paying your rent thing?”

“We don’t need
your charity, Trigger. We’re perfectly capable of paying our own bills.” I
could hear my tone rising with each word, just like my anger.

“You called it
charity, Jennifer, no one else did. I saw a situation that I could help with so
I did what I thought was the right thing. Sorry that you don’t appreciate it.”

“How did you even
know that we were behind on our rent?” I demanded.

Trigger half
laughed and started to walk across the floor toward the living room. “Don’t ask
stupid questions. I know every time someone does or doesn’t pay anything.”

It amazed me how
much he knew about our city. It was like he was a cop or something. It was
actually kind of scary, no one really knew how much of their lives were being
watched by Trigger and his brothers. Privacy was a privilege in our city. That
much was becoming clear.

“I’ll pay you
back,” I told him, unable to fully understand what I was feeling toward him
anymore. One minute I hated him the next I wanted to jump on him, the whole
thing was way too confusing and fucked up for me to deal with.

He shrugged it
off. “Don’t worry about it.”

I took the
opportunity to look around his house. It was just as nice on the inside as I
thought it would be; leather sofas and chairs, huge T.V., long wood table. It
was surprisingly clean for a guy’s house. I would love to own a place like this
someday, that was the goal once school was over and I had a real job.

“It’s so nice in
here,” I admitted.

Trigger nodded,
taking in the view with me. “I know. It blows my mind, sometimes, that I actually
live here.”

“Really?” I asked,
surprised. “I would have thought you would be used to it.”

Trigger shot me a
look. “That’s part of the problem.”

“Explain,” I said
softly.

“Na, you wouldn’t
understand.” He flopped down on the sofa and motioned for me to follow. I
hesitated a second and he rolled his eyes. “It’s just sitting down, Jennifer,
not an invitation into bed.”

I felt myself
start to blush and then followed him onto the couch. “I don’t know why you’re
coming off as salty, most people would kill to be a part of your family and
club. Look at everything you get, you have way more than most people around
here twice your age.”

Trigger sighed,
leaning back and rubbing his hands through his hair. “Did you ever wonder what
I was doing in that class the other day? Why I would even want to go to college
when my brothers have it all figured out for me?”

I nodded. “I did,
actually. Especially since you never seemed like you paid much attention in
high school.”

“Yeah,” he kept
rubbing his hands over his eyes, “that’s because I would hand my work in on the
low and pretend that every test I got back was an F.”

“Why would you do
that? It makes no sense.”

Trigger pulled his
hands away from his face and I could see for the first time all the pain and
confusion that lived there. “It makes perfect sense. The Ford brothers don’t do
well in school, they don’t go to college, they do what they’re taught. They run
the club and get this money. College isn’t part of the deal.”