Andi and Niro

  Contents

  Title

  Rights

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Epilogue

  Also by Jessica Gadziala

  About the Author

  Stalk Her!

  NIRO

  Henchmen MC- Next Generation #1

  —

  Jessica Gadziala

  Copyright © 2021 Jessica Gadziala

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher is unlawful piracy and theft of the author's intellectual property. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the author except for brief quotations used in a book review.

  "This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental."

  Cover image credit: Shutterstock .com/Dmitrijs Bindemanis

  Prologue

  Andi's first year of college

  Niro

  My phone screamed through the quiet in my room. It was well past three in the morning. Whatever was on the other end of the call couldn't be good news.

  I reached for my cell on the nightstand, sliding to accept the call without glancing at the screen. Eyes still closed, a part of me still chasing sleep, hoping this wasn't some sort of club emergency when I'd only gotten an hour of sleep after being talked into staying up all night having a party at the clubhouse with the other next-generation guys not old enough to hit the bar yet.

  "Yeah?" I rumbled into the receiver.

  "Niro?"

  Andi.

  Andi was calling at three in the morning, her voice shattered splinters of sadness all around.

  My stomach knotted as I folded up in bed, reaching to turn on the light. "Andi? What's the matter? What happened?"

  Andi was pure softness. She kept her bleeding heart right there on her sleeve. I'd once caught her sobbing over a wild baby bird that had drowned in a bucket of water it had likely been trying to drink out of.

  Her crying didn't necessarily mean catastrophe.

  She could have been driving, and tried to avoid hitting an opossum, but accidentally killed it.

  She could have witnessed a couple having a break-up fight.

  You never knew with her.

  But she felt it all.

  And she felt it down to her soul.

  It was one of her most endearing traits, something I envied at times, something I felt deserved to be protected at all costs. Hell, I damn near applied to her college just to go with her, to be able to keep protecting her.

  Two things stopped me.

  One, my future didn't involve a college degree. Bikers tended to get by just fine without one in our neck of the woods. And I needed to prospect, make my bones, get myself patched in so I could start making a living for myself.

  Two, it wasn't my place to protect her. It wasn't my fucking place. I'd been trying to tell myself that since we were still kids, since I realized my feelings for her were more than just friendly. It wasn't my place. I had to start acting like it.

  I had to let her go. Go to college. Go away from me.

  Shit.

  I simply had to let her go.

  She wasn't mine.

  She would never be mine.

  I had to live with that.

  Even if accepting that seemed like jumping into a dark well with unknown depths of hopelessness, a prison of sorts that I could never hope to climb back out of.

  "Tell me something happy," she demanded, sniffling.

  That was her favorite phrase.

  Tell me something happy. Or Tell me something that made you smile today.

  Sometimes she wanted to hear it because she was trying to get you—or in most cases, my grumpy ass—to see something good in your life. But just as often, she wanted to hear it because something had upset her, and she needed the pick-me-up.

  This, clearly, was the latter.

  "Your mom took in seven baby bunnies. Someone's dog brought them to the owner one by one, and she couldn't find the nest to put them back. So now she's raising them. I saw them when I went to pick up Nugget from his play date. They still have their eyes closed."

  Andi's mom was our town's resident crazy animal person. She was known for rescuing and adopting out, rehabilitating and releasing, or giving sanctuary to every sort of animal in need. And because her husband was one of my biker brothers, the clubhouse was often full of some creature or another. A cockatoo that liked to chew on all the wood and scream at the top of his lungs. A three-legged dog who refused to accept that he wasn't capable of jumping up on the couch like the rest of the dogs. A snake that once got loose and burrowed into the heating system for two days before we finally found out where it was and got one of the bikers' kids to go in and grab it.

  "That's not happy," she told me, sounding sadder than ever. "The poor mama was probably looking for her babies. They do, you know. Animals aren't as heartless and dumb as people think. Mama bunnies will spend hours looking for them, thinking they just got away from the nest somewhere. It's devastating to think about."

  Yep. That was an angle I hadn't considered. And I was out of other ideas. Nothing in my life had been very bright. At least not since she went away, taking the fucking sun with her, it seemed.

  "Tell me what happened," I demanded instead, knowing she was someone who always needed to talk it out, to purge the pain so she could move past it.

  There was a long pause, long enough for me to check to make sure the call was still connected. Then, with a cracking voice, she told me.

  "He broke up with me."

  I was already off the bed, grabbing my jeans from the day before off the floor, pulling them up, sticking my feet into shoes, grabbing a t-shirt.

  "I'm on my way."

  "You can't come here," she told me, trying to hold in a sob. "It's hours and hours away."

  "I have hours and hours to spare," I told her, all ideas of sleep or work in a few hours forgotten. "I will text you when I'm close, okay? So you can unlock the door."

  "Okay," she agreed, hanging up.

  "Hey, Nugget," I called, rousing the small copper poodle mix from his chosen spot on one of Andi's sweatshirts covering his massive dog bed, liking to be close to her smell. She brought or sent him new ones every month or so for that very purpose. "Your Mom is sad. We have to go cheer her up," I told him, moving off into the main area of the compound I was calling home while I prospected. I grabbed his leash as he followed behind me, tail—and his entire butt—waggling like he knew where we were going.

  He has to stay with you, Andi had insisted when she'd been packing for college. You're the one who helped me save him.

  That was partly true. She had rushed into a half-frozen stream to save a cold, emaciated Nugget, fallen, and whacked her head off a rock. I had rushed in to save her. Then once I was sure she was at the hospital recovering, I went back for the dog, knowing she would never forgive herself for not being able to save him.

 
; I wasn't supposed to have a pet at the clubhouse. Least of all an anxious little ankle-biter who howled and shook when there was thunder or fireworks, who had a penchant for eating shoes, who sometimes pissed when he got too excited. But since Andi was the offspring of one of the patched members—as was I—they'd made a concession.

  It was sappy and pathetic to admit, but I wanted him because it was a part of her I got to keep. And also an insurance that I would see her again. No matter what happened in her life, what roads might lead her away from me, I knew she would always come back for Nugget.

  I grabbed the keys for the club's SUV, knowing I would get an ass-kicking for taking it without asking but figuring that was a problem for my future self, then hopping in, and getting on my way.

  Hours and hours away was actually only two. Stony Brook was in New York, just a stone's throw from our hometown in Navesink Bank, New Jersey.

  I drove it in a blur, giving the middle finger to speed limits, trying to make it there in one and a half.

  Andi's parents had splurged for an apartment just off campus, wanting her to have privacy, to have spare room for them to come visit, to be able to secretly take in her strays to help them recoup before finding them homes. She couldn't technically keep a pet, but she managed to hold onto some for a little while.

  She lived on the fourth floor in a corner unit. I'd texted when I'd pulled into the lot, and I found the door unlocked when I got there.

  The apartment had been stark and sterile when I'd helped her parents move her in, my heart in my throat the entire time. It had been just white walls and gray carpets bought at wholesale. The kitchen was a shoebox, the living space not much better.

  I'd sat with her that night to help her figure out where she could put the furniture when she got it, the plants, where she might be able to hide a cage if she was fostering some small animal for a while. I hadn't been around to see the finished product, though.

  I should have known Andi would make it warm. She made everything warm. She was a bright light in a dark world.

  She'd hung bright, colorful tapestries, scattered dozens of throw pillows around, and filled every available space with plants.

  Andi herself wasn't in the common area as I closed and locked the door, leaned down to free Nugget from his leash. Knowing where he was, who lived here, he barreled down the short hall, shooting into the bedroom door.

  "Nuggs!" Andi's small voice called, likely wrapping him up. A low sob escaped her, kicking me right in the chest as I made my way into the doorway, finding her settled in her bed, her blonde hair spread across her pillow, her pretty face snuggled into Nugget's fur.

  Moving in, I kicked out of my shoes, climbing over her on the bed to cram in near the wall, reaching out, dragging her on my chest, my hand going to her hair, sifting through the silky strands.

  In high school, Andi had been more concerned with saving animals and getting into veterinary school than dating. A selfish part of me was glad. I wasn't sure I could stand by and watch her fall for some other guy.

  I wasn't surprised when it got back to me that she'd found someone after only a couple weeks at college. Anyone who didn't meet her and immediately want to be in her life was a fucking psychopath.

  I won't lie.

  It sent me into a five-day-bender that only my hard-as-nails, ex-cage-fighting father could pull me out of, slamming me up against a wall, scarred hand grabbing my chin.

  I know you're hurting, he'd said, nodding. And I know I taught you to cover hurt with hard. But you can't throw your fucking life away over this. Get your shit together.

  I'd done the best I could.

  I'd moved on as well as you could expect while knowing Andi was spending her time with some other guy, time that used to be mine, time that I missed more than I would ever admit.

  By all accounts, this relationship had seemed serious.

  He was her first real boyfriend.

  Likely, her first... everything.

  I felt sick whenever I thought about it, gut churning, heart cracking.

  I should have been happy for her.

  That would be the selfless thing.

  Apparently, though, I was a selfish fucking bastard.

  We stayed that way in her bed for what felt like forever, the only sounds being Andi's cries, her sniffling when she tried to pull it together, followed by more cries.

  My shirt soaked through before she finally seemed to run out of tears.

  "Why didn't he love me?" she asked, cracking what was left of my heart right down the middle.

  I couldn't fucking fathom not loving her, not looking at her and seeing how perfect she was, not knowing your life would be immeasurably better just by being near her.

  I would know.

  I'd been in love with her since I was two years old.

  And it showed no signs of stopping.

  "I don't know," I admitted, my other arm wrapping her up, holding her tight.

  She pulled herself together a few hours later, insisting that she had to get to class, thanking me for coming to 'rescue her once again,' then headed out.

  She didn't know it.

  I didn't want to admit it.

  But I would never stop wanting to rescue her.

  I would never turn away any small chance at getting to be near her, to feast on those scraps of her attention to sustain me through the famine.

  With her gone, I leashed Nugget, set him in the car with the engine running, went across campus, found the mother fucker who broke my girl's heart, beat the ever-loving shit out of him for it, then headed back home, back to my life, waiting for the next opportunity to see her again.

  It was fucked.

  I was fucked.

  But when someone had your heart in her hand, what the fuck else were you supposed to do? Move on? I had no idea what that would even look like.

  So I did what I could.

  I kept living.

  I came when she called.

  And I pretended it didn't gut me when she stopped calling so much.

  I took care of Nugget, hopelessly clinging to the last piece of her that I got to keep with me.

  Until, one day, she came and took him from me too.

  And I had fucking nothing left.

  But the memories.

  But the love that refused to die no matter how many different ways I tried to kill it.

  So I did the only thing I could.

  I did what my father taught me.

  I covered it up.

  I got hard.

  I got so hard that the man I became would never deserve her softness.

  I figured knowing she would never want to be with such a miserable bastard would make it possible to finally let go.

  It wouldn't be the first time I would be wrong.

  Chapter One

  Andi

  "Maybe this isn't the right job for you," Nadine, the office manager of the vet hospital I had been working at for all of three months told me, towering over me in her canary yellow scrubs, a cat-printed lanyard hanging around her neck, her ID badge resting on her chest.

  Nadine always reminded me of my sixth-grade math teacher—somewhere in her forties with her brown hair pulled severely back from her face, her eyes a little over-lined, lipstick perpetually on her teeth no matter the time of day. She was pretty with somewhat cool green eyes, and a slender figure. Her voice—when she spoke to me, at least—was rough and stern, always disapproving.

  To be fair, I gave her a lot to disapprove of in such a short period of time.

  I hadn't exactly been a model co-worker.

  This was evidenced by the fact that I actually outranked her as the new vet on staff, but she had to come in and scold me at least once per shift for something I did or didn't do, some arcane policy that I hadn't abided by perfectly enough to suit her needs.

  It was proving harder than I could have realized to feel like an adult with my life together and people 'below' me in ranking when I felt like I was scrambling every mi
nute of the day just to do the bare minimum that being a grown woman required.

  I was pretty sure I had permanently ruined my dishwasher that very morning. Don't ask me how, it was just another thing I would need to handle but had no idea how to, so I would spend my lunch break Googling everything I could about dishwasher repair since I still wasn't in a place to just go out and buy one. My super wasn't an option, because he was a complete creep who stared at my boobs and tried to "reassure" me that I was safe because he was the only person in the world with a key to my door.

  I was constantly trying to steam my work jacket in the bathroom when I showered in the morning because I could never remember to pick up an iron and board, even though I passed that department at the store all the time on my way to the pet section to stock up on a needless number of toys for Nugget.

  My cell bill was overdue, evidenced by the twelve or so calls a day I got from the company. It wasn't that I didn't have the money to pay it, either. I just kept telling myself I would get to it. Then never actually doing it.

  On top of all of that, I was sitting in the break room under the window, wedged between the garbage can and the refrigerator sobbing my eyes out like a kindergartener on their first day of school when they realized their mom and dad really weren't going to come in with them.

  "I had to put the puppy down," I told her, heels scrubbing my eyes, hoping the pressure could stem the flow of the tears like a towel pressed to a bleeding wound. That was what my heart felt right about then. Like a bleeding wound.

  "Yes, well, in this line of work, you are going to need to put a lot of animals down," Nadine reminded me, just barely tolerating my misery.

  I understood that.

  Of course, I had known that going into this profession.

  A part of being a vet was compassionate care. Like taking a very sick animal out of their misery.

  Maybe I could have accepted it better if this was a thirteen-year-old, arthritic dog riddled with cancer and in pain every moment of its life.