Confessions Of An Old Lady Read online

  “What’s wrong with me? What’s wrong with you? You walk up to Sonny when he’s obviously with me and try to stake your claim on him? What did you expect would happen?”

  “Get on out of here, girls,” Sonny instructed. When they didn’t move an inch, he shouted, “Now!”

  Nicole and Jenny turned on their heels and huffed as they walked away from the booth. I turned around and, for the first time, noticed that everyone around us had stopped what they were doing and were watching what was happening, including the “old ladies” at the booth. Sonny just stood there with a look on his face that at first I couldn’t discern.

  “What?” I said, standing in front of him, panting, trying to steady my breathing.

  He didn’t answer immediately. A few seconds went by before he broke out into fits of laughter. “That was fucking awesome! Who are you? Where did you learn to fight like that?”

  Oh, no, I thought. He’s questioning who I am. Did he mean that he didn’t believe my story? I had to think quickly.

  “My dad…” I began. “He always told me never to start a fight, but always be the one to finish it. He taught me how to defend myself. I was picked on in elementary school because I was so small.”

  “Well, it worked, whatever he taught you. You just kicked her ass!” I realized he was not questioning my story so much as being in shock at what just happened. “I’ve never seen a girl fight like that before. I’m pretty impressed. Come here.” He reached out with one arm, pulled me close, and kissed me on the top of my head. “Very impressive. So…you like me enough to fight for me, then?”

  “Of course I do. Nobody comes between me and my man!” I shouted. As soon as I said the words, I realized I had inadvertently stolen them from Rachel Reilly from Big Brother, who used them when referring to her reality showmance, Brendan Villegas. Hilarious.

  Everyone around us started laughing. Some were even clapping. I realized with satisfaction that I had just taken one step further in gaining Sonny’s trust and securing my story with him. Score a third point for Team Rockford.

  Chapter 12

  We continued walking around the festival, hand in hand, until it was closing time. By that point, I had consumed three full beers and was feeling extremely buzzed for the first time in many years.

  “Where to now?” I asked, looking up at him, barely able to see straight.

  “Well, that’s entirely up to you,” he said sweetly.

  “Let’s go to your place.” As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I wanted to suck them back in. I wasn’t really sure I was ready to be alone with him in his place. But then I realized, this could be just the thing I needed to do to secure my future, as well as my assignment. Not to mention the beer was making me feel rather amorous. So, I smiled at him and awaited his response.

  “Are you sure about that?” He looked delighted.

  “Yes. I’m sure. I’d like to see where big bad Sonny Jackson lives.” I hiccupped and giggled.

  “Okay, then. To my house we go.” He held out his hand and I took it in mine. We walked from the church back to The Hole, where his bike was parked.

  I climbed onto the back of the bike as I had many times before, only this time I was more nervous than any other time. What was he going to expect of me? What would I be willing to do to hold his trust and confidence? I wasn’t sure of the answer to either question, so I decided to just go with the moment and do whatever felt natural. Besides, I was more than a little buzzed, so in my defense, I wasn’t exactly in control of my faculties.

  His house was not too far from The Hole and we arrived in less than fifteen minutes. He lived, I learned, with his father and Melanie in a farm house on Sugar Creek out in the country. Now I was slightly more nervous, knowing that I was out in the middle of nowhere, at my mark’s house, all alone with no one to hear me scream should things go south. Again, I decided to set my fears aside and “go with the flow,” so to speak.

  The house was covered in all-white vinyl, like my little temporary home, but this one was bigger, with two stories and a green tin roof. There was a barn back behind the house and a field surrounded by a painted-black wooden fence. It reminded me of my grandparents’ house in Estill County. I used to love the way the rain sounded on their tin roof and I enjoyed many a sunny afternoon running through the fields and yes, I admit, tipping the occasional cow.

  I followed Sonny from the driveway, where he parked the bike near the back door, where he let us in with the turn of a key. He flipped the light on in the kitchen and threw his keys down on the kitchen table.

  “Dad? Melanie?” he yelled out. No one answered. He turned to face me. “So this is where I live.”

  “You still live with your dad? I mean, no judgment…I’m just asking, because…”

  “It’s okay. Yes. I live here with Dad. I haven’t always. I lived on my own from the time I graduated high school until when Mom got really sick. Like you did with your dad, I moved back here to help take care of her. Then when she died, well, I just have never been able to leave Dad behind.”

  “Even now that he has Melanie?” I didn’t really mean that the way that it came out. “Sorry. I just meant—”

  “I know what you meant and, yeah, I guess I could go ahead and move out, but I’m trying to save enough money for my own place like this. It’s kind of my dream, you know?”

  An outlaw biker with a dream? How ironic. “Yeah, I do know. I’d like to have a place of my own too. Back before Dad died, all I had was a tiny little apartment in the city. It didn’t really feel like home.” The part about the tiny apartment not feeling like home was true.

  “Anyway, let me show you the house.” He guided me by the hand as he showed me the living room, his dad and Melanie’s room, even the bathroom, but what I didn’t see was his bedroom.

  “Okay, so where do you sleep?” I asked.

  “I’ll show you. Follow me.” He led me back around to the kitchen to a door I hadn’t noticed when we first entered the house. He opened it and revealed a set of stairs leading down to a dark basement. “Hold my hand. The light switch is at the bottom for some stupid reason.”

  At the end of the stairs, he flipped the switch and the entire basement was illuminated. As soon as I turned the corner, I saw a large den that had been converted to Sonny’s own little apartment, complete with a mini-kitchen and his own bathroom.

  “Pretty nice!” It truly wasn’t bad for a basement apartment. I noticed a big king-size bed in one corner of the room. In the opposite corner was a set of weights, which he apparently used often, by the feel of his arms and chest.

  “Now that you’ve seen my humble abode, what do you want to do now?” I didn’t get the feeling he was trying to take me to bed, so I looked around the room, trying to think of something that would not be as awkward as standing in the middle of his bedroom, staring at each other.

  “Got any movies?” I had noticed a media tower next to the flat screen TV that had dozens of movies stacked waist high, so I knew he did.

  “Sure. Great idea. What kind of movie do you want to watch?”

  “Do you have The Notebook?” I asked with as straight a face as I could muster.

  “Very funny. You know damn well I don’t have The Notebook. Go look over there and see if you see anything you want to watch.”

  I did as he instructed and looked the tower over, top to bottom. Mostly, he had dude-flicks like the Terminator and the Fast and the Furious. Then I saw that he had The Godfather: Parts One, Two, and Three. I’d never watched the classic gangster trilogy myself, but my male counterparts at the DEA were constantly quoting lines from the movies.

  “I’ve never seen The Godfather. Is it good?”

  “Is it good? What kind of question is that? It’s only one of the best movies ever made. Well, one and three, that is…two was kind of a flop. Want to watch the first one? It’s a classic.”

  “Sure.” I looked down at my phone and noticed the time was already twelve thirty. Either Sonny woul
d be taking me back to my place really late, or I was going to end up crashing here in his basement apartment. That option made me a little uneasy, not only because of its obvious implications, but also because I didn’t really want to wake up and have an awkward breakfast with Dear Old Dad.

  He must have seen me look at my phone and noticed my trepidation, because he said, “You don’t have to stay here, if you don’t want. I’ll take you back after the movie. No pressure.”

  “That’s nice. Let’s just watch the movie and then we’ll go from there,” I said.

  Sonny put The Godfather: Part One into the Blu-ray player and we both sank down onto the couch that was only feet away from his bed. The movie was pretty good, actually. It was about a crime family, not totally unlike the one I was investigating, only these were Italian mobsters, not Kentucky motorcycle gang members. Not that I could tell much difference. They had the same “what-happens-in-the-family-stays-in-the-family” kind of motto. They were notoriously dangerous people who killed anyone who crossed them, especially snitches. There was even a scene where someone left a horse’s head in someone else’s bed—I can’t remember why—but it didn’t really matter. Sonny thought it was hilarious and said that it was “awesome.”

  When the movie was over, I was yawning. Sonny seemed none the worse for wear, but he was used to these kinds of hours and I wasn’t. “Well, darlin’, you look tired. What do you want to do? Do you want me to take you home, or…”

  “Well…I…I don’t know…”

  He looked down at me and without saying a word, he kissed me deeply. I guessed that was his way of asking me to stay with him. After a minute or two of serious making out, I pulled back. “Sonny…I’m not sure I’m ready to…”

  “Shhhhh…” he said. “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do.” But then he kissed me again, passionately, as if to say “But I really want you to stay here.”

  I was torn. On one hand, I didn’t really love the idea of having sex with a hardened criminal and possible murderer. On the other hand, I’m only human. I couldn’t help that, in that moment, I was tempted like any other woman would be, by the handsome, well-built stranger who knew how to kiss like nobody’s business. Plus, if I “sealed the deal” with Sonny, I’d be one step closer to getting in where no agent had ever been able to get in before. The crew was too suspicious of people who tried to join their gang, so they only took in people they were related to or who were thoroughly vetted by Leroy or Sonny…people they had known since childhood, so getting a male agent in as a member was pretty much impossible. That’s where I came in. The feds had figured out that the only possible way to get someone in that close to the action was for it to be a woman who could, although it was never spoken out loud, sleep her way into the inner circle.

  Even if I slept with him, it didn’t guarantee him confiding anything in me, but it would certainly increase the odds and make him trust me almost implicitly. I wondered if Renley and Beauford or even Kingston had thought about this part of the assignment. Had they known I might have to sleep with Sonny Jackson to worm my way into his confidence? If they did, they never mentioned it to me. Maybe it was an unspoken assumption that I just had never thought could really happen until this very moment, when I was possibly only moments away from crossing a line that I could never uncross.

  I made up my mind and leaned back in toward Sonny and kissed him back, matching his passion and determination. This was what I was going to have to do for the Agency, for my country. But was I doing it only for God and Country…or was there some small part of me that was going to get some pleasure out of this too?

  Slowly, Sonny’s hands moved from my face down to the front of my sweatshirt. He unzipped the hoodie from the top to the bottom and pulled it off, one sleeve at a time, to reveal the pink tank top I had underneath. I matched his moves and pulled his sweatshirt up over his head too.

  We continued kissing as we fumbled with each other’s clothing. He grabbed the lace bottom of my pink tank top and pulled it off, leaving me with only my jeans and my black-lace racer-back bra. I felt vulnerable, but I didn’t care. He stroked the hair back from my face and tucked it behind my ear, as he had done the first time he kissed me. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t turned on as much as he obviously was.

  He had trouble with the racer-back bra, so I unlatched it myself. I was surprised at myself, but in that moment, I was a woman unlike any other in my position—pun intended. I threw my bra over the side of the couch and laid back on the cushions. Sonny laid his full weight on me and kissed me deeply. I kissed him back, running my fingers through his soft, wavy hair.

  I wrapped my legs around him and he stroked my shoulders tenderly. When I couldn’t take the anticipation anymore, I surprised myself again by unbuttoning his jeans and pushed them down and out of the way. He returned the favor and now the only thing standing between our joinder was his thin blue boxers and my black lace panties.

  He was more impatient than I was and within seconds the barriers were removed and we became one. We made love for what seemed like hours on the couch in his tiny little basement apartment. I don’t know what I expected, but he was anything but unkind. He was gentle and loving and tender and for the time that we were together, I forgot who I was and who he was, but when he fell asleep on top of me and I laid there staring at the static on the television, I thought to myself…victory for Team Rockford.

  Chapter 13

  We woke up late the next morning in Sonny’s bed. At one point in our lovemaking, he carried me from the couch to the bed. We lay facing one another; me stroking his firm shoulder, him playing with my hair. I knew I had just broken through Sonny’s tough exterior and would probably now be referred to as his “old lady,” which was the most necessary part of my assignment. I also knew I had compromised my own personal values for that assignment. I had only been with three men in my entire adult life. I didn’t even lose my virginity until I was eighteen and that was with my first college boyfriend. But I could tell by looking at Sonny that to him, this was more than just a one-night stand. He liked me. He truly liked me for who I was and I had gained the confidence of a man who did not let anyone in out of self-preservation. In that way, we were not unalike.

  “What are your plans for today?” he asked, continuing to wind my hair around his fingers.

  “Nothing. You?”

  “We have a patch-in party planned for our prospect, Spider,” he said.

  “What’s a patch-in party?” I asked.

  “It’s a party for Spider being patched in. He’s earned his place in the club and we’ll give him his cuts with his patches on it. Then, we throw a party like you’ve never seen before. Not just anyone can come. It’s a club party. I want you to come with me.”

  It was the second Lords’ event that he had invited me to in two days. Things were going better than I could have hoped for.

  “Sure. I’d love to go. Am I allowed?”

  “You’re my old lady…you’re allowed if I say so.”

  “Awww…I’m your old lady? How sweeeet,” I sang.

  “All right, that’s enough mushy stuff. Just come with me, will you?”

  “Of course I will. But you’ve got to take me home so I can clean up and change clothes. Remember, I rode with you yesterday.”

  “Well, that means we have to leave this bed and I don’t want to leave this bed, do you?” He leaned over and kissed me, my lips still tender from kissing all night long.

  “No, not yet,” I said, rolling over on top of him.

  It was another hour before we stopped tumbling around in the bed and got up for the day. Sonny drove me back to my temporary home and dropped me off. I showered and changed clothes and then laid down on the bed to take a nap. I hadn’t really gotten much sleep the night before.

  As I lay there, without warning I broke down into sobs. At first, I didn’t know why I was crying. Then, I realized I was crying because I was torn over what I had just done. I didn’t know whether
I was sad for my choice to sleep with the man I was investigating, or whether I was happy that everything was working out perfectly for me. If I was being totally honest, I was even torn about my feelings for Sonny. I knew he was my mark, and by all accounts a terrible person, but he was kind to me and I knew he genuinely liked me and he treated me with respect and tenderness.

  I cried myself to sleep and woke up two hours later no less confused than I was before I had laid down on my bed. I had to get ready for the patch-in party, so I went through my normal routine of dressing myself up like Trish Sanders. I stood before the mirror and realized that the line between Trish and Olivia was getting blurred. Even though the image before me was clearly Trish, I still felt like Olivia deep down. But I worried that maybe Olivia was getting pushed further and further down with every choice I made for the sake of the assignment.

  I heard Sonny pull up into the driveway. I walked out of the house and jumped on the back of the bike shoving all my worries down deep.

  ***

  The patch-in party was being held back at Leroy and Sonny’s house on Sugar Creek. By the time Sonny and I returned to his house, it was already getting dark, but their house had flood lights in the back, which was where everyone had gathered for the party. As we got off of the bike and walked over to the crowd, Leroy and Melanie were the first to greet us.

  “Ah, Trish. Good to see you again.” Leroy chuckled.

  “Hi, Leroy. Melanie.” I nodded at both of them.

  “Where’s the little cheese dick?” Sonny asked, obviously referring to Spider.

  “He’s over there by the keg,” Leroy advised him. “Scared out of his wits.”

  “Why would he be scared?” I looked over at Sonny. “Isn’t this party for him?”

  Everyone around me broke out into hysterical laughter. Finally, Leroy was the one to answer me. “Darlin’, a patch-in party is for the prospect, but we don’t just hand them their cuts and kiss them on the cheek. No, it ain’t that easy.”