I turn back to the teens, who are all
huddled around in shock. The three girls make a move for the door.
“Stop!” I scream. They freeze in place in the middle of the
doorway. I pass Nic and place a hand on her shoulder. “Go to the
couch, baby,” I say quietly.
The other two boys stand around and
fidget. I decide to deal with them first. Standing in front of them
and holding my hand out, I say, “ID’s.” They stare up at me in
surprise, but don’t do as they’re told. “Maybe you didn’t hear me,
boys. I’m gonna need your ID’s. Now.” Very slowly, they pull out
their wallets and hand their ID’s over. Turning to the girls, I do
the same thing, but they’re quick to cooperate. “You little
assholes drank my beer and disrespected my Old Lady. Is this going
to happen again?”
All of their heads shake, and the
moment I let them go, they run right out of the house like their
asses are on fire. I can’t help to smile as I watch them flee.
There are a few perks of being Forsaken, and this is one of them.
Dumb little bastards.
I shut the front door and walk back
into the living room. Jeremy’s turned toward Nic, and he’s whisper
shouting, “Tell him to back off and I’ll clean up the mess. We
could get along a lot better if you would just chill out.” Her lips
are pursed, and she’s staring straight ahead into
nothingness.
“
Shut your fucking mouth,”
I scream. His eyes dart to mine, and he grumbles something under
his breath. “What the fuck did you just say?”
“
I said this isn’t your
house,” he says back with attitude. I nod and look down at Nic,
who’s curling into herself. “And it isn’t hers, either. This is my
dad’s house.”
The dig is subtle, but she catches it.
The way he emphasizes the point that Butch isn’t Nic’s biological
dad makes my jaw tick. Butch is her dad in every way that
counts.
“
Hey, you wanna be a man?
Start fucking acting like one. You do not push around women half
your size, for starters. And you ain’t got shit. You’re a fucking
kid,” I snap back. “Now shut the fuck up.”
“
Is this what you been
dealing with?” I ask Nic. She lifts her head and looks up at me
with sad eyes, but she won’t give him up.
“
Fine,” I tell her and
turn back to Jeremy. “I’ll deal with this on my own. You’re already
in debt to me, kid. Don’t make your situation worse.”
Jeremy folds his arms over his chest
and, despite his size, he looks so much like his sister. They have
the same damn pout, but it ain’t fucking cute on him. “Go to your
room, and if I hear so much as a peep out of you, I’m going to beat
the shit out of you until I get tired.”
Standing from his seat on the couch, he
walks up to me with determination in his eyes. “You’re not my dad,”
he hisses, “and you can’t tell me shit.”
That’s it.
That’s fucking it.
I nod, then bring my fist back and
connect it to his cheek. He stumbles backward, his body bent
forward, and he’s holding his jaw. “That was a warning shot. You’re
just a little bitch boy whose mouth has outgrown his brains. I ever
catch you talking to your sister like that and I’ll be getting word
to your old man. I’m sure he’d have a few things to say about your
attitude. You want that?”
He rights himself, but doesn’t meet my
eyes. His mouth moves a few times before he gets sound to come out
and he whispers, “No.”
“
Look me in the eyes,” I
snap. I’m still feeling pissed as fuck, and I’m in no mood to stand
here and play daddy to this damn kid, but we have to get a few
things straight. When Jeremy lifts his eyes and steels himself for
the punishment he deserves, I think that there might be hope for
him after all. He might be short bus slow, but he’s at least
responding. I’d hate to have to really fuck him up, since we’re
going to be living together.
“
Let’s get a few things
straight—your ass is lucky that it was my bike you scratched, and
you’re damn lucky that I was the one who caught that little scene
just now. Don’t forget that your dad’s Forsaken, and that means
both you and your sister are family. Any of my brothers catch you
talking to your sister—and my Old Lady—like that and they won’t
give a fuck who your daddy is.”
“
Yes, Sir,” he says and
waits until I signal for him to leave. When he does, I look back at
Nic. She has her head in her hands with her feet up on the couch
and her elbows resting on her knees. Striding to the couch, I sit
and look down at her. She’s so fucking small compared to him. The
boy’s got to be about six feet tall by now, and every time I see
him he’s got another couple pounds of muscle on his frame. She’s
pretty much just skin, bones, and tits.
“
I’m sorry,” she says. “He
really is sorry about scratching your bike. He just had a rough
day.”
“
That kid isn’t sorry, but
he’s about to be if he doesn’t learn to watch his fucking mouth,” I
mutter. She lifts her head and pushes her straight blonde hair back
from her face. Crawling up on her knees, she pushes herself up
against my side.
“
Please,” she whispers. “I
know he’s a brat, but he’s all I got.” The sincerity in her voice
breaks my heart.
“
You have me. I told
you—you’re my woman,” I say.
“
You didn’t have to call
me your Old Lady to scare those kids,” she says. “They were plenty
scared of you anyway.”
“
Come on, Nicole. You’re
not stupid. You know that’s not why I did it.”
“
Do I?” she asks. Her
bottom lip is at a pout, and she looks sad, like really fucking
sad. “I don’t feel like that’s where we’re going. I feel like
you’re just passing time.”
“
We’re moving past that
shit that went down. Both of us,” I say. I can’t talk about how I
fucked up anymore, so I change the subject. “This happen often?” I
ask.
She doesn’t respond. Instead, she leans
over and places a kiss on my cheek so fucking softly that it makes
me feel almost nervous. Nic isn’t soft and she isn’t gentle. My
girl’s hell on wheels with a bottle of Jack and her middle finger
up in the air—at least with me she is. But this moment makes me
want to give her gentle. I want to show her that not everything has
to be loud and abrasive. The quiet is nice, too.
“
More lately,” she says
quietly. “Butch’s parole was denied. Letter came in the mail this
afternoon.”
"Shit," I say. I’ll have to touch base
with Jim on that and see if there’s anything we can do. That's not
good. We had been hoping that his parole would be granted. The shit
we ask our guys to do both on the inside, as well as the outside,
is pretty fucked up. Butch went in a few years back for a delivery
gone wrong. The guy fucked up, and it wasn't pretty. None of us
like to see a brother going down, even if it is his fault. Nic is
having a hard enough time with her brother, much less herself, that
it would make a world of difference if her father were here. For
one, Jeremy wouldn’t be pulling the shit he does. Knowing Butch,
he’d lay the kid in the dirt and make him explain in full sentences
why what he did was wrong, and he’d do it with his boot to the
kid’s throat.
“
Yeah, shit,” she says.
Looking over at her and giving her an apologetic smile, I decide
that I like this. The talking about everyday stuff with her, the
bossing her punk brother around with her. Fuck. I just like being
around her. Unfortunately, it’s rare that she seems to feel the
same about me, and that’s a pretty big problem. I can only do so
much to try to make this happen. Now I just need her to step up and
do her part. Like making me some food.
“
Still, he needs to learn
what it means to be a man, and you can’t teach him that,” I
say.
“
Okay, so pick one up for
me the next time you’re at Home Depot,” she says with a sarcastic
smile.
“
Why? You got the pick of
the litter right here,” I say with a grin. Her face falls, and she
shakes her head. Pushing herself up off the couch and to her feet,
she sticks her hands in her pockets.
“
You need to stop saying
stuff like that.” Her voice is teetering somewhere between angry
and frustrated. Knowing Nic, her mood could easily swing either
way. I turn and give her my full attention.
“
Why?” I ask.
“
Because I’m going to get
used to it, and you’re either going to hurt me or you’ll leave,”
she says. I’m not going to leave, but it doesn’t seem to matter
what I say. She just doesn’t believe me.
She crosses the room, I follow, and
spin her around. When she looks up at me, her eyes plead with me to
stop talking, but I don’t want to.
“
I can’t promise you that
this is going to work out, but I can say that I like
this.”
“
And what’s going to be
left of me when it doesn’t work out?” she says. I keep a stone face
and cup her face in my hands, then lean down and kiss her on her
forehead.
“
Go to sleep, baby,” I
say. “You’re drunk. Leave the door unlocked, because I’m going to
be back soon.” Instead of arguing, for once, she just gives me a
small “okay” then pulls away and walks to her bedroom at the end of
the hall. She closes the door behind her, and I’m left alone in the
living room. It’s sparsely decorated, and the furniture is in
disrepair—just like everything else. This house is so fucked—both
the actual structure and the people in it, and for some reason I
want to fix them both. I’ll start small, with Jeremy, beginning
tomorrow.
I leave the house and take the long way
back to the house that Trigger and I share. When we left to pick up
the girls, I didn’t even think about bringing my bag with me, but
maybe this is a good thing. It gives both Nic and I a chance to
take a deep breath and think about shit. Her eyes were so laced
with concern and confusion, and even fear, that I don’t know what
to say to her right now. All I can think about is all that shit
with Trigger and Princess. They’re both so fucked up, but in their
own ways, and they seem to like one another well enough. Well
enough to take on the entire club on his part, and to risk her
safety on hers. Seeing that shit firsthand makes me believe that
maybe even the most difficult, hard to love soul can be loved by
someone. Sappy as it is, it gives me hope.
Pulling up to the house, I’m surprised
to find Trigger’s bike in the driveway. Not sure why I don’t expect
it, or where I thought they went, but the moment the shiny black
finish comes into view, a sinking feeling consumes me. Parking my
bike and dismounting, I stride into the house.
“
Dude,” a voice says from
the living room. “Who do you think he has in there?” I walk through
the front door and find myself face to face with half the club.
Diesel, Bear, Fish, Wyatt, Dunce, Squat, and Rink sit around the
room, some on furniture, and some on the floor, rolling joints and
drinking beers. There’s a bong on the coffee table and rolling
papers scattered about around it.
“
I don’t know, some
bitch,” Wyatt says from the couch. I grab a chair and pull it up to
the coffee table. Dunce, one of the prospects, reaches into a
nearby ice chest and pulls out an ice cold beer and tosses it to
me. I catch it in the air and pop the cap off then take a long
swig.
“
It’s not Chel,” Wyatt
says. “Bitch is too smart to fuck anybody in this filthy
shithole.”
“
Nic?” Diesel asks
mischievously. My head swings around, and I see that his face is
covered in a shit-eating grin.
“
Nah, don’t you remember
when Duke pissed on her leg?” Wyatt says. Diesel purses his lips
and makes a gesture with his tongue.
“
Is that what I tasted
while I was eating her pussy?” Diesel says. I fight the desire to
shoot up in my chair and bulldoze the bastard right here and
now.
“
Those jokes? They end
here. Nic’s with me, and that means she’s not ass to tap. Got it?”
I ask, looking around the room.
“
Never fucked her. No skin
off my nose,” Wyatt says with a shrug of his shoulders.
“
All right, calm down,
bro. I was just kidding. Like I eat pussy,” Diesel says with a
dramatic eye roll and wave of his hand. The room—all except for
me—erupts in laughter. Shit ain’t funny, but I let my brothers have
their fun at my expense.
“
This mean you’re wifed-up
now?” Rink asks. Squinting my eyes, I look down at him in
confusion.
“
Wife what? What the fuck
are you babbling about, prospect?” I say. Bear and Dunce find this
particularly funny and are slapping their knees and throwing their
heads back.
“
Wifed-up. You know, when
you take an Old Lady,” he clarifies, and his cheeks
redden.
“
Yeah, you wifed-up, man?”
Wyatt asks. As the club’s vice president, my relationship status is
something he likes to know about. To put it in his own words, he
“Doesn’t give a shit you you fuck, but if you’re fucking the same
bitch every night and sleeping next to her, it’s club business,
because your ass is club property.”
“
Working on it,” I say
honestly. I ain’t got shit to hide when it comes to Nic. She’s good
people, the club likes her, and she knows the score.
The squeaking of a door silences the
entire room. Looking around, I find Trigger in the hallway. He’s
wearing blue plaid boxers and that’s it. His hair is all fucked up,
and he’s wiping his nostrils. Fuck. I wonder how much coke he
did.