Craving charlotte the ac.., p.1
Craving Charlotte: The Aces' Sons, page 1
Craving Charlotte
The Aces’ Sons
By Nicole Jacquelyn
Craving Charlotte
Copyright © 2022 by Nicole Jacquelyn
Kindle Edition
All Rights Reserved
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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.
Dedication
To my big kids
who took care of my little kids
so I could finish this story.
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue
Acknowledgements
Prologue
Charlie
Nothing had been moved. Draco’s running shoes were still in a pile next to Kara’s carefully placed ones by the door. A towel from someone, probably Draco, was still hung over the banister of the stairway. The entryway still smelled like cinnamon from the little scented plugs I’d bought from a store at the mall and a little like the sprinkling of rain we’d had the night before. Everything was the same, it was the exact tableau that I’d left that morning, but something was wrong. The minute I walked into the house, I could feel it.
My scalp tingled and the back of my neck itched. Closing the door quietly behind me, I reached for the baseball bat we stored just inside, the handle resting against the corner just left of the doorframe. I let my bag slip gently down my arm and set it on the doormat as I slowly moved forward, raising the bat to my shoulder.
My dad teased me about the bat. Hell, nearly everyone at the clubhouse teased me about it. A baseball bat wasn’t the best form of home defense because much like a knife, you had to be pretty damn close to someone in order to use it. So, yeah, they gave me shit.
They gave me shit, but they also didn’t give me grief. There was a difference. They thought it was funny, and they made it known, but the members of the Aces MC knew better than to try and convince me that a bat would do no good. None of them would make that mistake. They’d watched me swing it, practicing hour after hour, from the time I was five years old. I’d played softball for fifteen years. The force of my swing was enough to put someone in the hospital, no matter where I hit them. I liked to call it the great equalizer since pretty much everyone I met was bigger than I was.
Stepping forward, I moved around the creaky floorboard and looked into the living room. Nothing there, but the tingle hadn’t stopped.
I made my way through the kitchen and the downstairs bathroom, but everything was in its place. The back door in the laundry-slash-mudroom was still locked. Kara and Draco’s room was empty.
As I made my way up the stairs I loosened my shoulders and readjusted my grip on the bat, rubbing my thumb along the grip tape the way I’d done a thousand times before. There were three bedrooms upstairs, but we only used two. I glanced inside the first one, but there was nothing. The entire room was empty, there weren’t even curtains on the windows. The next room was neat and I couldn’t see anything out of place. The bathroom upstairs was tiny with Jack-and-Jill doors that were both currently closed.
I took a deep breath as I stepped into my bedroom. It had originally been two bedrooms when the house was built, but some time over the last fifty years had been converted into one large room. I had twice the windows and twice the space as the other two bedrooms upstairs and I made good use of it. My bed sat in the center, made just the way I’d left it that morning. The pile of folded clothes I’d set on the small couch off to the right side under the windows were still where I’d put them. My yoga mat was still lying on the floor to the left side of the bed, my free weights still lined up by size against the wall. I braced my feet and threw open my closet door. Empty.
Oh, for fuck’s sake.
I let out a little laugh as I walked over and dropped onto the foot of the bed, laying the bat across my knees. Kara was going to find it hilarious when I told her how bad I’d freaked myself out. Since we’d moved in, I’d had a hard time getting used to all the noises the old house made as it settled. After living in the same house my entire life and then in a tiny apartment with Kara, the new place was a little creepy. It had been updated, but it was still old. People had lived and died there long before my cousin Tommy bought it and I was pretty sure there were ghosts. Okay, maybe pretty sure was pushing it. Let’s just say I hadn’t ruled the possibility out yet.
I snickered and glanced toward the TV.
In an instant, my laughter cut off with a choking sound.
The bat fell from my hands and rolled onto the floor as I stared.
I could have missed it. I could have walked into my room and seen nothing wrong. It was plausible for anyone else. The way I’d hung the mural of framed photos above my TV hadn’t looked like there was any pattern. I liked it that way. I thought it looked cooler if they looked like they’d been hung haphazardly over time. But they hadn’t—I’d painstakingly found each photo by pouring through my mom’s old boxes and albums and phones and thumb drives. I knew where each photo came from, when it was taken, and precisely where it hung on my wall.
The photos weren’t in the right spots. I scanned the wall until I found it. The picture that didn’t belong.
Someone had been in my goddamn room and I had a pretty good idea who it was.
Moving slowly, I crouched down and picked my bat up. As I rose to my feet, I heard the sound of someone stepping unknowingly onto the creaky floorboard downstairs.
Chapter 1
Charlie
“Remind me again why we’re moving,” I groaned, pulling another box of stuff out of the back of my best friend Kara’s Jeep. “We had a perfectly good apartment.”
Kara laughed. “Because the walls were thin,” she replied slyly.
“Oh God,” I muttered. “Couldn’t you have said something about how small the apartment was?”
“It was,” my nephew Draco said, coming up the driveway carrying a dresser. “Too small for all of us.” He paused and grinned. “Especially when Kara and I want to get down.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t be so goddamn loud,” I called after him as he walked away.
“You’re one to talk,” Kara said as we made our way into the house. “You’re louder than both of us.”
“But I’m not fucking a member of your family,” I pointed out. “I mean, I’m glad you’re together, obviously.”
“Obviously,” she agreed.
“But it’s cruel and unusual to hear just how together you two are.”
Kara snorted. “Point taken. But hey, we’re on completely different floors now. Problem solved.”
“God Bless America,” I said, dropping my box in the center of the living room.
“That goes in our room,” Kara said as she kept walking.
Sighing, I stared at the box I’d just put down. “Draco can move it later.”
The house was bustling with people that were helping us move and thank God for that, because we were also consolidating two apartments. Draco and his twin Curtis had shared an apartment in the same complex as Kara and me, but now we’d all be in the same house. Well, almost all of us. Curtis was off doing some shit for the club and no one was saying when he’d be back. Either they didn’t know, or they weren’t willing to tell us. We just had to go along with it and make sure there was a room for him at this new place, whenever he graced us again with his presence.
“You’re dawdling,” my mom said, coming through the front door with grocery bags in her hands and dangling from her arms. “The faster we get this shit unloaded the faster we can all sit down. Get moving.”
“Easy for you to say,” I replied. “You’re carrying groceries.”
“I just cleaned out the boys’ fridge,” she said with a laugh. “Be glad you’re moving boxes.”
“I’m ordering pizza in about fifteen minutes,” Kara’s stepmom Rose holle red as she carried a box inside. “If anyone has any requests, keep it to your damn self!”
“You’re such a sweetheart,” I joked as I passed her.
“They can eat what I order and smile while they’re doing it,” she called to me over her shoulder.
“Rose is getting pizza,” I told Kara as she moved around me, her arms wrapped around a random pile of shit that hadn’t fit into a box.
“Good, I’m starving,” she replied. “I want pepperoni and olive.”
“Make sure you tell her that,” I said with a snicker.
“Grab the keys out of my pocket, would you?” she asked, jutting out her hip. “Move my Jeep onto the street so they can move one of the trucks into the driveway.”
“Aye, aye, captain,” I said, pulling the keys out of her jeans.
“Move your ass, Charlotte,” my dad said as he carried a coffee table inside. “I’m tired of movin’ this shit from the street.”
“Not my fault that your logistical team is a nightmare!” I said, hurrying toward Kara’s Jeep.
“Don’t run anyone over,” my cousin Tommy ordered, pointing at me. “I don’t want the neighbors pissed at me.”
“Ha,” I shouted. “The neighbors are going to fucking love us!”
Tommy glanced over his shoulder at the family a couple houses down that paused in their basketball game to stare at me. “Yeah, looks like they’re impressed,” he drawled.
I reached up and scratched my nose with my middle finger.
After moving the Jeep down the street I walked back toward the house my cousin Tommy was renting to us. I liked it, especially after living in an apartment for the last few years. Two stories, a big back yard, a big garage and huge driveway for all of our cars. Most importantly it was within our price range. Tommy swore he wasn’t giving us any type of family discount, but I wasn’t so sure. He’d flipped so many houses, keeping some to rent and selling others at a profit, that renting to us on the cheap wouldn’t hurt his bottom line. Of course, he’d never admit to it.
“Charlie!” one of my favorite voices in the world called out behind me.
I spun around. “When did you get here, Rebel without a cause?”
Reb wrinkled her nose at the nickname and threw her arms around me in a tight hug. “Me and mom just got here. We had to park on the next street over.”
“Oh,” I said, looking up to meet her mom Molly’s eyes. “You’re here.”
“I’m always an afterthought with you guys,” she joked. “You know, I was popular once.”
“Were you, though?” I asked dubiously.
“Like a hundred years ago,” Rebel said at the same time, rolling her eyes. I laughed and grabbed her hand, wrapping my fingers firmly around hers.
“You two are the absolute worst,” Molly complained with a smile.
“Show me your house,” Rebel said, squeezing my hand. “Do you have your own room?”
“Of course,” I replied. “I have one of the biggest rooms. Draco and Kara have the other one.”
“Because they’re in love,” Rebel said simply.
“Yep. Gross.”
Rebel giggled. “When I get married, I’m still going to have my own room.”
“Interesting choice,” I said, looking over my shoulder to meet Molly’s eyes for just a second. “Don’t you want to share with your husband?”
“I’ll sleep with my husband,” Rebel replied with a grin. “But all my stuff is going to be in my own room so nobody touches it.”
“You know, you may be onto something,” I said. “You thinking about getting married soon?”
Reb scoffed. “No way. I like to keep my options open.”
“Oh, Jesus,” Molly muttered behind me.
“That’s what my dad said to do. He said not to even think about getting married until I’m thirty because there are tons of fish in the sea and I need to keep fishing.”
“I’m going to kill Will,” Molly said with a grimace.
We paused in the front yard and looked at the house, letting Molly pass us as she headed inside.
“It looks like all the other houses,” Reb said evenly.
“I know, right,” I replied. “Hopefully I don’t forget which one is ours.” Now that I was thinking about it, I couldn’t deny that the possibility of coming home from a night out might be a problem if I couldn’t tell which house was mine.
“I’ll get you a flag.”
“A flag?” I asked curiously, turning to look at her.
“Yeah,” she said, pointing at the bracket to the right of the garage door. “You’re supposed to put a flag right there.”
“Huh. Good eye.”
“I’ll get you a rainbow flag,” she said, giving my hand a squeeze. “Since you find men and women sexually attractive.”
I stared at her for a moment. “You’re the best, Reb. You know that?”
“You told me that before,” she said with a smile.
“And I’m going to keep saying it.”
“I’m going to marry Wes,” she said conspiratorially, her smile growing wider. “But my dad starts to breathe really heavy whenever he comes over and he’s always coming into the living room when we’re watching TV or playing a game.”
“Oh yeah?” Wesley was Reb’s boyfriend, and I really liked the dude, but I had no idea that they’d been talking about marriage. I tried to hide the fact that it felt a little like I’d been hit with a sledgehammer.
“I don’t think dad wants me to get married.”
“No dad wants their little girl to get married,” I replied.
“I don’t think he’s ready.”
“They never are,” I said dryly.
“That’s okay,” she said with a shrug. “I’m not ready either.”
“Good,” I said grinning. “We can be single girls together.”
“Okay. But someday I’m going to marry him and then you’ll have to be single alone,” she replied simply as she started toward the house. Ouch.
“Does he know you want separate bedrooms?” I asked, following her.
I trailed Rebel around the inside of the house, pointing out where everyone was going to sleep and showing off the rooms like a game show host. No one bothered us or hassled me for not helping move the boxes. They knew how important those few minutes of showing Rebel around were.
There were five of us that were close in age and had grown up together. My nephews Draco and Curtis, my cousin’s stepdaughter Kara, me, and Rebel. We’d done almost everything together until we’d reached an age that things had started to change. Rebel had Down syndrome and while we’d moved out and started our adult lives, she wasn’t ready for that. She was still at home, and she was just getting to the part where she dated and started to venture out more on her own.
It was important to all of us that Reb felt comfortable in our new place. She was putting on a brave face about it all, but she’d liked our old apartments and she hated change. The fact that we were clear across town, not to mention that Curtis was gone God knows where, was throwing her for a loop. The longer I showed her around, the more tense she became.
“This is my room,” I said, throwing my arms out wide.
“It’s bigger than my parents’ room,” she said, walking around. She peeked into the closet and ran her hand across the windowsills.
“Right? It’s huge. I’m thinking the bed goes right in the middle and then we’ll put our old couch by the windows.”
“Your couch is going in your bedroom?”
“Well, yeah,” I said, grinning. “Then you’ll have a place to sleep when you stay the night.”
Rebel’s smile was slow to emerge, but it was there.
“Unless you want to share the bed with me?” I asked.
“You’re a bed hog,” she replied seriously. “It’s like sleeping with an octopus.”
“Slept with many octopi?”
“Haha. Funny,” she replied, completely straight faced.
“It’s a cool place, right?” I said, suddenly kind of nervous.
“I like the windows,” she replied.
“Me too.”
“And there are two ovens so you can make two pizzas at the same time.”
“Good point.”
“Your bedroom is really big.”
