“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.”