“I know what the club is and what it’s not. I’m not dumb, but everything else?” I ask. Because as much as I can’t believe I’m admitting it to myself, I know the rules, and I broke them. But Duke can still go to hell. I don’t care what rules I broke. I’m supposed to be his, and he’s in another room with somebody else. “It’s wrong.”
“Yeah,” Diesel says, “it is.” He pulls his phone out of his pocket and starts slapping his thumbs against the screen. I sit in silence, unsure if it’ll tick him off if I speak. “The shit we do requires us to be assholes. Can’t always turn it off just because we should.”
“I appreciate you coming in here to talk to me, but I feel like the biggest fool on the planet, and this feels like a lecture,” I say. He lowers his phone and stares at me, his expression still makes him look bored as all hell.
“You want to be Duke’s Old Lady or not?” he says. The question makes me freeze. I don’t know. It’s not something I want to think about right now. With every fucked thing that’s happened today, I ‘d rather stick a fork in my eye than to relive it all. Going for noncommittal, I shrug my shoulders.
“No really—turned down some freaky as fuck pussy—don’t shrug your fucking shoulders,” he says with a slight grumble.
“I don’t know that I can get over the shit he just pulled,” I say.
“But before that?” he asks. Before that everything was still fucked up. I told him he wasn’t going to touch me again, and then I left. And before I flipped out on him? It was only this morning, but it feels like it was days ago, at least—and things weren’t exactly rosy then, either. He came in with both barrels, caught me off guard, and was a real jerk. Still, he’s funny and when he tries, he can be sweet. And I know he’s always doing things for his mom even though he doesn’t want to. That’s got to mean something.
“Yeah,” I say, “I do—or I did.”
Diesel cracks an arrogant smile and says, “You sure? You hook up with him, you can’t ride my dick no more.”
“Please don’t take this the wrong way, but I’m okay with that,” I mumble, feeling my face heat.
Diesel just keeps on smirking and says, “He’s an asshole, no doubt. But you think you can be an Old Lady? That means you gotta remember that everything you do blows back on him, and everything he does represents you. Gotta respect each other in public. That’s all.”
“I know the code, D. That’s not the problem,” I say. I can feel myself getting more frustrated with him as time goes by. “He claimed me—twice—and then fucked another woman. In front of me.”
“Told you, not cool. But you do right and demand he does better. All you can do,” he says. I look down at the pillow in my lap, and a yawn escapes me. My body feels so heavy and rundown that once I stop really listening to anything Diesel’s saying, all I want to do is sleep.
“Lay down and take a nap,” he says. “I’ll stay and make sure nobody tries to come in.” I’m not sure where this side of him came from, but I could really get used to it. I won’t let myself think it’ll last, though. I close my eyes and lie down on my side, propping my head on the pillow as I let sleep consume me.
Chapter 8
THE CAR RADIO crackles under the pressure to blast the new punk band that Jeremy insists on listening to at an epically high volume. My head pounds with the drum beat until I can’t take it anymore, and I reach over and turn the volume down until I hear the click of it turning off.
After seeing Duke and Dawn last night, I may have wallowed in my sorrows a bit too long. Even though I kept telling myself that it wasn’t getting to me, I couldn’t help that it was.
“What the fuck?” he asks, irritation evident in his tone.
“It was too loud,” I say and use my free hand to rub my temple.
“No, it wasn’t,” he says. “You’re just being a bitch today.” I bite my tongue to keep from responding. If I had a retort for every single one of his snide remarks, our entire lives would be one big fucking argument, and quite frankly, I just don’t think it’s worth it.
He reaches over and turns the dial back up, this time even louder. One fucking trip to the grocery store that he insists on going on and we can’t even have a peaceful trip. This shit is ridiculous. Five months, I remind myself once again. Just five months until he’s legal. Then I can slap the shit out of him without child protective services crawling up my ass for it. Not that I have the size or power to hurt him, and not that I want to, but right now I’m thinking about it. I’m thinking about it a lot. A lot.