Home > Conjugal Visits (Souls Chapel Revenants MC #2)

Conjugal Visits (Souls Chapel Revenants MC #2)
Author: Lani Lynn Vale

 

PART I

 

 

CHAPTER 1


People are so stupid.


-Things Beckham repeats 100 times a day.


BECKHAM

 

“Who are you?”

I blinked at the guy’s words.

“Um, Beckham Spurlock,” I narrowed my eyes. “Who are you?”

The boy—man—whatever he was, shook his head, and the hair that was covering his eyes swept out of his face.

My heart all but leaped in my freakin’ chest.

Oh. My. God.

My boy/man was heartbreakingly sexy.

As in, one look at him, and I was about to hyperventilate.

I’d just asked him who he was!

What the hell, Beckham?

“What kind of name is Beckham?” the man-boy asked.

I shrugged. “A name my parents gave me, so what the hell does it matter? I had no control of it.”

My sarcastic attitude was an automatic response.

I hadn’t actually meant for those words to come out of my mouth, yet they had.

The man-boy’s lips twitched, and a lock of hair once again fell into his eyes.

“My name is Troup. Trouper Aoki,” he held out his hand.

Reflexively, I put my hand in his and shook it as I was trained to do from birth.

His tattooed fingers wrapped around my small hand, and I was left stunned.

Wow, he had really big hands.

And his tattoos were beautiful.

Honestly, I’d always thought hand tattoos were gross. But his?

They were drawn so well. They were a work of art.

“Are you going to high school at Kilgore?” I asked.

Troup’s eyes went squinty. “Unfortunately.”

“Are you a senior?” I continued.

He nodded once.

“Me, too,” I replied. “At least you’ll know one person when you get there.”

He tilted his head slightly, causing that overly long hair to once again fall into his eyes.

He did the head tilt thing again and twisted it out of his way so his eyes could once again see mine.

“I highly doubt, you looking like you look, that you’ll even be anywhere in my vicinity,” he replied bluntly. “I’ll bet you’re a cheerleader, right?”

I narrowed my eyes. “And what’s that got to do anything?”

I wasn’t a cheerleader, but only because I was too busy with volleyball to have anything to do with cheer.

He stretched his arms up high over his head, grasping on to the monkey bars above him.

We were in the park, at ten in the morning, and for some reason, neither one of us was leaving, even though the park was starting to fill up with little kids.

“I just think that you’re too blonde. Too pretty. Too… you. I doubt you’d ever slum it with the bad boy,” he drawled.

Slum it with the bad boy.

No, not usually.

But as he slowly did a pull-up, causing his shirt to ride up and show off an impressive six-pack of abs, I realized that I might’ve been doing myself a disservice.

He came back down, so controlled that it was obvious he did this a lot—worked out—and narrowed his eyes at me.

“You have really weird brown eyes,” Troup rumbled.

I blinked. “You have really light-colored eyes. They’re weird, too. The color of pond water.”

He burst out laughing.

“I’ve never heard that before.” He sniggered. “That’s great. Pond water.”

I shrugged. “I guess.”

I was such a dumbass.

“I guess they look like honey. But you know, when you hold the honey up to the sun and look through it? That’s what your eyes look like,” he explained his earlier comment.

A brrrrup had us both turning to see a cop car pulling up to the chain-link fence.

When my dad got out, my breath hitched.

“Ummm,” I hesitated. “That’s my dad.”

“Of course, you would be a cop’s kid,” he grumbled. “Of fuckin’ course.”

“Beckham, get your ass over here. You, too, kid,” my father ordered harshly.

I frowned at his harsh tone.

Hurrying to him, I started to get worried that something was wrong. When I finally got to him, I was a little out of breath.

“What’s wrong?” I gasped, feeling the familiar panic start to rise up.

I had panic attacks. Lots of them.

My father waved me off. “Nothing is wrong unless you count three different calls from three different concerned parents about two teenagers, one of them that looked shady, being at the park making it impossible for their kids to play.”

My mouth fell open. “You’re joking.”

“Not joking,” my dad immediately replied. “Look.”

I did and saw that a bunch of concerned parents were now staring at us with relief.

My shoulders slumped. “We weren’t doing anything bad. I left the house for a walk and wound up here. I…”

“Who are you?” my father barked.

Troup had finally joined us.

“Trouper Aoki,” Troup introduced himself.

That was it.

Nothing more, nothing less. Not even an offer of a handshake.

“Don’t you think you’re a little old for a place like this?” he asked.

Troup shrugged. “I was only swinging on the swings. Then I saw your daughter and thought I’d say hi.”

“How about you stay far away from my daughter,” my dad suggested. “And don’t play at the park anymore. You’re apparently intimidating.”

Apparently intimidating.

As if he didn’t have any other positive attributes, according to my dad.

“Dad,” I said. “You don’t have to be so mean. We weren’t doing anything wrong.”

“No,” he agreed. “Not right now.”

As if we would have done something wrong had he not come along.

I narrowed my eyes.

“Come on, I’ll take you back home. Your mother’s been calling me for an hour, saying that you were missing.”

“She has not,” I grumbled as I tossed Troup a look over my shoulder.

Except, when I looked back, he was walking away, through the middle of the playground, as if he seriously didn’t give a single shit that he’d just been told to stay away from there.

He made sure to walk right by the group of mothers that looked concerned for their child’s welfare all over again.

“Dad, that was rude,” I told him. “He didn’t do anything wrong, and neither did I. There’s no age limit on who can swing on the swings.”

“Maybe not,” Dad answered as he walked to the passenger side door and opened it for me. “But you need to stay away from him. He looks… pissed.”

Pissed.

Now that my father had said that, I agreed with him. He did look kind of pissed.

“Well, maybe a little bit of compassion would go a long way,” I suggested as I plopped myself into the front seat.

I didn’t bother with the seatbelt. The ride was literally two minutes tops, and the majority of that was navigating the parking lot.

“How do you know that boy?” he muttered as he maneuvered us out onto the road.

“I don’t,” I admitted. “I saw him walking down the street at the same time that I was. We met at the swings, him having gone the long way, and me taking the shortcut.”

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