Later, he kissed me on the forehead. "Hey, babe," he said. "I have to go."
"It's like ten o'clock," I said. "I wanted to talk to you about some of the wedding stuff." The words came out before I even thought about what I was saying. Shit, I was a nagging wife already, without even being married yet. I needed to talk to him about the wedding stuff, but it wasn't what he thought. I needed to come clean to him about some of my doubts.
"Yeah, babe," he said, pulling me close to him and kissing the top of my head. "Later, okay? I have to get to the club. But after that, we'll talk?"
After he went to the club? I had only been here, staying with Blaze, for a couple of days now since graduation, but I knew enough to know that going to club at ten o'clock meant a late night and God knows what else. There was that little voice in my head again, the one that said, You don't really want to know what he's doing there at night, do you? You think he's going to be faithful to you? He's a biker. They're not faithful.
No, I thought. Blaze is different. He knows what he has here at home.
"Yeah, sure," I said. "Later."
Blaze cupped my chin, brought my mouth to his, and kissed me softly on the lips. "Listen, Dani," he said. "You are the most important thing in the world to me. I mean that. I love you more than anything else in this life."
"I love you too, Blaze," I said. Now, he was scaring me, sounding all serious. "You're not about to go get shot or something, are you?" I laughed nervously.
Blaze chuckled. "No," he said. "I'm trying to reassure you. I could see it in your eyes. You think I'm going to party or something. You've got nothing to worry about." He reached down and squeezed my ass. "Nothing."
"No," I said. "I wasn't thinking that at all." I knew he could tell I was lying.
"I'll see you later, babe." He kissed me on the cheek.
I walked into the clubhouse, the smell of smoke and grease and booze hanging in the air. It was like some kind of fucking biker scented air freshener, I thought, the smell I'd always associate with this place. It was a party night, not a family night, and the party was in full swing, the room thick with groups of brothers hanging out, playing pool, drinking, getting laid, both in the main room and, I was sure, in the back rooms. Shit would get crazy on party nights, and Old Ladies weren't unwelcome, but this wasn't the kind of place for my Old Lady.
Not on a party night.
I was starting to wonder if it was the kind of place for her any night. Well, to be more accurate, I was starting to wonder if it was the place for us. Things hadn't been headed in exactly the direction I'd hoped the club would be headed last year when we began working for Benicio.
And it wasn't Benicio who was the problem. It was Mad Dog. I'd always thought he was too shrewd for his own good, too cold. But in the past, it worked for the club. It worked for us. I held him back when he was going over the edge, provided a voice of reason. And it used to be that he'd listen to me, consider what I had to say. Lately, though? There was a growing gulf between me and him, one that I feared would be the beginning of the end.
"Hey, man," Tiny said, throwing his arm around my shoulder, his whiskey-flavored breath hot on my ear. "How are ya?"
"I'm good, Tiny." I threw his meaty arm off me, and stepped to the side. Tiny was not exactly small. "Mad Dog in the back?"
Tiny shrugged and took a swig of whiskey. "Ain't seen him, man. Oh, hey there!" He turned to slip his arm around a girl wearing hot pants and...oh, hell...roller-skates.
And nothing else.
She arched her back toward him, pressing her fake tits in his face, and he motor-boated the two mounds. She squealed, her sound of delight obviously fake, and I rolled my eyes.
Jesus.
I turned away, headed toward Mad Dog's "office." Office, fuckpad, whatever you wanted to call it, where an endless string of young girls kept him entertained. I didn't know exactly why, but this shit had been getting on my nerves something fierce lately. Maybe I was getting soft in my old age. Mid-life crisis or something.
I rapped on the door. "Prez," I called. "You busy?"
I listened for the squeal of some barely-legal girl inside. You never knew what you were walking into with Mad Dog, but I'd seen his wrinkled ass and balls more times than I cared to fucking think about. I think he liked giving visitors a show. It let him prove he was still virile and shit, banging all these women. It was his way of proving he still had the balls of a young man or something. That was my fucking theory. But I was no shrink.
And I really wasn't in the mood to see his naked ass tonight, that was for sure.
"Yeah," he called out. "Come in."