“I hope you get a VD,” she says and walks down the hall and into her bedroom.
Just as Alex’s bedroom door shuts, the sliding glass door at the other end of the hall slides open, and Ryan, who the club nicknamed Trigger for his tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, steps into the house. Despite his best attempts to play it off like he didn’t just time that shit, his eyes keep traveling to the closed door as he stalks my way and sits across from me in the seat Alex just left. He says nothing, but sits there with his cold eyes fixated on mine. Trigger’s been the closest and longest friend I’ve had, but after the shit I pulled the other night, I have no doubt he’d put a cap in my ass if I gave him half a chance. Not that I’m entirely pleased with the shit he did at the clubhouse. End of the day, it wasn’t his fault though. I fucked up, and that shit is on me—nobody else.
“What?” I ask. I know what his problem is, but I want him to say it. It’s been increasingly obvious the last few weeks how attached he is to Princess and after that shit he pulled at the clubhouse, he and I have some shit to sort.
Even before he started calling her Cub, I noticed it. He stays away, but whenever he knows where she is, his eyes will continue to travel there. His face always contorts in some kind of emotional discomfort. It looks like he has to take a shit, but he can’t—a feeling I get all too fucking well. I’d call him a pussy and tell him to man up, but the longer Nic goes on avoiding me, the more I feel his pain. I need her to talk to me.
We were building something, and I was about to have Jim call a vote to see if one day the club might consider voting her in. Only Ruby and Mary have been voted in. Barbara never wanted it, and Layla’s been too damn sick to stay clean long enough to be a mother, let alone be an Old Lady. But Nic—she’s the perfect Old Lady, even if she doesn’t know it yet, and I’m damn determined to make her mine.
“You need to back off, brother,” he says in a voice that’s meant to be menacing. It would be if he hadn’t deserved that little show in the field, but he did. Every time I slid my finger into Princess’s pussy, I practically laughed knowing he was watching. It was killing him, and it’s killing him now.
“You don’t wanna share, brother?” I ask and raise an eyebrow at him, letting the comment sink in. Despite the fact that he and Ian have no blood relation, they were raised as brothers and that much time together has given them, at the very least, similar mannerisms. His shoulders hunch in, and the muscles in his arms grow tight with the desperate need to fuck something up royally. He won’t hit me here in the house, if only for the fact that Ruby has a no-violence indoors policy. She’s lost too many lamps to that shit.
“She’s a kid,” he says in dismissal of my suggestion, but I won’t let him off that easy.
“Oh no she’s not. I’ve been in her pussy, man. She’s tight and slick. No meat curtains or nothing—just a perfect fucking cunt.” I’m pushing it and enjoying myself way too fucking much, so much that I can’t stop the smile that spreads across my face.
He doesn’t even flinch. The only indication he gives that he heard a word I’ve said is the constricting of his throat. The less he reacts, the more he’s internalizing it. I waited a long time to pay him back, and I can finally say we’re one hundred percent good.
Slowly, Trigger reaches into his vest and pulls out his .38. He can’t shoot me without getting himself shot in the process. It’s in the club bylaws, and if there’s one thing he gives a shit about, it’s the club. He unclicks the safety and places the gun on the table. I smirk and say, “Do what you gotta do, brother, but we’re good now.”
It takes him a moment longer than I expect it to, but when he realizes what I mean, he shakes his head. “This is about Nic?”
It’s like he forgot what he did all those years ago, and maybe with the blow he’s been doing lately, he has. But that shit from the other night? No fucking excuse. He hasn’t forgotten what he did.
Still, some debts had to be paid, and now that they have, I can move on. I just had to wait until he gave enough of a shit about someone. He won’t say it, but I don’t think this thing with Cub’s going to go away. He looks so much like his dad, and Alex looks so much like her mom. I see Jim and Ruby and can easily predict seeing that be Ryan and Alex in a few years—with their own bastard son fucking up some young girl.