“Me either, baby doll. Love you back.”
“Yeah!” I heard Molly shout through D’s phone. “Love you, Rebel.”
Then I heard jostling and Maddox’s deep, rough voice came at me. “Hey, babe. You good?”
I plopped back on the bed and looked to the ceiling.
I also smiled.
“Yeah, Mad. I’m good.”
“Work good?”
I started laughing.
Nope.
Not a beach and mai tais.
I was moving to Phoenix when this was done.
I needed love, the functional kind, and theirs was the only kind of that I had.
And there was a lot of it.
“Yes, Maddox. Work is good. You?”
His voice rumbled at me.
Diesel and Maddox and Molly, they’ll lose their shit.
Hank didn’t get in there.
Eddie didn’t either.
Neither had Jimmy.
But Rush Allen, his hair, eyes and the smell of leather and fresh air and tang . . .
Damn.
I stared at my bedroom ceiling and listened to my brother’s man share his love for me.
I needed it.
So I absorbed it.
But somehow, after I’d been hijacked by a biker, I realized I needed more.
And I’d probably have to be alive in order to get it.
So yeah.
Damn.
Chew
The cunt was dead.
Dead.
Chew watched Harrietta watching Millie walking out of LeLane’s with her cart full of groceries.
The bitch was playing him with Valenzuela, with that porn director snatch, and now she was watching Millie.
Her trashy eyes did not get to watch Millie.
Oh no.
Fuck no.
The cunt was dead.
He’d only kept her around because she cooked and cleaned and didn’t mind taking his cock however he gave it.
She didn’t think he knew she was pissed at him Cammy got her throat slit?
Was she stupid?
Yeah. She was stupid.
He knew she was making moves.
Passed out after sucking back her vodka, it was all in her fucking phone.
And he was good at a follow, rarely got made, but he didn’t think she even looked to see if she had a tail.
Dumb cunt.
She was gone.
But he’d find someone else.
Women liked doing that shit for a man who provided for them.
So, his resources were running low.
He’d bounce back.
He just had to get his shit together.
He would.
He’d find a way.
It’d all be golden again once he got those bones and got Tack out of the way.
Chaos would pay big for those bones.
Huge.
And he had plans.
Crank knew where it was at.
He’d just been stupid enough to get snatch involved.
Snatch fucked everything up.
Snatch got Crank dead.
Or Tack did it, and Crank’s own brothers.
Mutiny.
It made Chew sick.
It had been near-on two decades, and if he let himself think long on it, he still could barely stop himself from hurling.
Now Chew would use Crank’s way, do it smart, all him, no snatch, tear that Club apart, fuck them up, send them reeling.
He knew just the way.
So . . .
Yeah.
Soon, it’d all be golden.
But that bitch was gone.
Millie?
No one followed Millie.
No one, but him.
Cats Sensed Her as Their Queen
Rush
That same night . . .
Rush pulled his bike up across the street from the house that shared a number with the house where Rebel Stapleton lived.
Except Rebel’s number had an added “?.”
He’d never seen an address like that.
Now he was getting a feeling he understood it.
The house was about five blocks from the huge pad where his brother High and his woman Millie lived.
This house was like theirs, huge and on a massive lot.
It was also Pepto Bismol pink with white trim, and the entire lot looked overgrown with masses of greenery like it belonged in Florida, not the arid climate of the Mile High City.
He swung off his bike, moved across the street and jogged up the steps to a porch suffocatingly decked out in planted pots and a variety of furniture, some of that (the tables) covered in more pots or candlesticks, lanterns or other knickknacks, some of it (the chairs and lounges and swings) swathed in scarves or blankets or bright-colored pads.
He hit the bell and his body automatically jerked in surprise when he heard the loud, long, slow succession of different notes sounding like they were banged on gongs coming from inside.
He stared at the window in the door that was covered in something printed in paisley.
He waited.
He did not want to ring that bell again, but no one was answering the door.
He looked left, saw some steps down from the porch that led into the overgrown bush that was the side yard, and was about to head that way thinking it’d lead him to ?, when he sensed movement.
He turned back to the door, looked down, and saw a short elderly lady had pulled back the paisley.
She, against what even he would advise, instantly opened the door to a tall, fit man in a Club cut that she did not know.
But once the door was opened, it was Rush who fought taking a step back.
She was wearing an I Dream of Jeannie outfit, but all in purples and greens, and instead of harem pants, the bottom was a skirt made of filmy scarves.
What the fuck?
“Howdy!” she cried.
“Uh, hey,” he replied. “I’m looking for Rebel St—”
He didn’t get that out.
Her blue eyes brightened, her mouth spread in a huge-ass smile, and she lifted both hands.
Cha-ching!
Christ, she had finger cymbals.
“My Rebel girl’s got a hot one!” she exclaimed. She then narrowed her eyes at him. “Please tell me you’re sleeping with her.”
Again.
What the fuck?
“Uh—”
She cut him off, not that he knew what to say. “Or want to sleep with her.”
Rush shut his mouth.
She brightened again and another cha-ching!
“Excellent!” she shouted.
“I take it she lives here,” he noted in order to move this along.
She nodded. “Out the back.” Cha ching. “I’ll show you.”
Before he could tell her he could find his own way (even if in that green tangle he wasn’t sure he could), she moved out onto the porch on bare feet, toes painted varying shades, all of them from a rainbow, shutting the door behind her and forcing Rush to get out of her way.
She then hustled to the side where Rush had seen the steps.
Without a choice, he followed her.
“Okay, I’m assuming with your Club cut that you aren’t into trad, you know, convention, or judgment, but it’s important to me, especially with my Rebel girl, not to be a cock blocker, so don’t judge her by me.”
While he processed a woman in an I Dream of Jeannie outfit who looked like a grandmother saying the words “cock blocker” and knowing what a cut was, she stopped one step down toward the wilds and looked up at him.
“I’m seventy-three, I bet you wouldn’t have guessed that.”
He stared into her cute, but very lined face framed by a big head of long, thick, curled, attractive but very gray hair on her tiny body, and he could see with the flesh exposed, sagging skin, and decided not to reply.
She swiveled her hips. “I stay young and supple belly dancing, among other things. I also participated in an orgy at Woodstock.” She leaned up to him. “The Woodstock. I was tripping. Primo LSD. I don’t remember all of it. I do remember elephants watching, though I’m pretty sure they weren’t real. The sex was still rad.”
This was way too much information.
“In other words,” cha-ching, “I’m a dyed-the-wool hippie,” she declared.
“Right,” he muttered, deciding not to tell her the finger cymbals and rainbow toes had already communicated that.
As well as a lot of other shit.
She turned and skipped gracefully down the steps, and that made her seem like she was sixteen years old.
She did this talking and with him following her.
“Now, Rebel girl’s got a far-out aura. She’s all pink and orange and blue.” She looked over her shoulder at him. “And tons of red.”
She winked like he knew what the fuck she was talking about and again turned forward as she moved him through a path made of wide, randomly set stones that led through a jungle, which grew direct from the earth and a shit-ton of pots, huge to small.
This was punctuated with a variety of seating areas from either furniture or blankets or pads or pillows or poofs on the ground.
There was also a variety of shit hanging from branches: wind chimes, candle holders, beads, stained glass, dream catchers, Chinese lanterns. And other shit peppering the earth: gnomes, goddess statues, laughing Buddhas, Kokopelli, sun dials. And more shit tacked to tree trunks: green men, a tie-dye sign that said Peace, Love and Fairy Dust, a portrait of Frida Kahlo.
Christ.
She stopped to hold a low hanging branch out of his way as he passed her, then he stopped so she could lead again, all the while she babbled.
“She lost the green she used to have, and there’s been a lot of gray for a long time, which I must admit, I find concerning, but nothing can diminish her multi-hued wonder.”
“Right,” he muttered again.
She again stopped, this time abruptly, and on the narrow path fenced in by vegetation, he had no choice but to stop with her.
“But even though she’s a lot of pink, she’s no flower child.”