“But your mom was a fucking cunt,” Bear stated, “and now she’s a dead fucking cunt.”
“Her being a dead fucking cunt is the reason I don’t have my kid,” I reminded him, “and maybe she’s better off living with normal people who don’t have to worry about all this bullshit of killin’ or being killed.”
Bear rolled his eyes. “Bullshit. Killing motherfuckers is business. Ain’t got shit to do with family. What the fuck do they know, anyway? We’re lawless, my friend. Civilians can’t wrap their little fucking brains around what that means without getting their frilly panties in a fucking twist.”
“You do know that in the eyes of the MC I’m a civilian,” I countered.
Bear waved me off. “Just to my old man, and what the fuck does he know?”
I paused for a minute; before I shared with Bear something I’d never told anyone else. Even Preppy. “If I ever get the chance to be a real dad to Max…I’m going full civilian.”
Like you had to tell me. I fucking knew that shit. Let me know how your application to fucking DeVry pans out you fucking *, Ghost-Preppy taunted.
“You ain’t thinking clearly right now. We’ll get Eli all nice and dead and then you can think about what a dumb fuck you just sounded like when you informed me that The King of the Causeway is going fucking legit,” Bear scoffed.
I’d expected that answer from Bear. I knew he wouldn’t understand what lengths a person would go to for their kid, for their family. “You know how you would do anything for your brothers in the MC?”
Bear nodded. “For the MC. For you. Yeah, man. Anything. Steal, fight, maim, kill. Shit, I’d take a fucking bullet. I’d go back and take Preppy’s fucking bullet right now if I could.” I believed him, because Bear’s loyalties ran deep.
“Well,” I started, “those things are jack shit compared to what you would be willing to do for your own kid.”
It was Bear’s turn to shake his head. I knew he would never really understand what I’d meant unless he up and had a kid of his own someday, and that thought was laughable at best.
I rubbed my hand across the stubble on my jaw, which over the past week, had turned more beard than stubble. All I really wanted was to drag Pup into my bed and settle my face in between her legs for the foreseeable future.
But I couldn’t do that until we ended Eli.
The guy was smart. He liked his revenge slow, sweet, and torturous.
Torture is the word I would use to describe not being able to reach out to Pup. It was too dangerous. The last guy Eli set his sites on lost his entire family, right down to his second cousins before Eli finally put in an end to the guys misery of watching every he loved die off one by one.
“We’ll start back up in the morning,” I said, “put more feelers out there, see if we can get info from someone closer to him or his inner circle. Someone who will know where he is in present tense, not past.”
I rubbed my eyes. I was tired, but also restless. My skin was literally itching to move the fuck on past all the fucking problems and move onto the solutions.
Like putting a fucking bullet in Eli.
Ideally I’d like to do it without even stopping the fucking car, and then hightail it back to Pup. Then, we can figure the Max thing out.
Together.
“You got any space left?” I called over to Bear, who was lying face down on the couch. We were in the apartment he’d built for himself in my garage. With no windows and only a single door in and out it made us feel less like sitting ducks than the main house.
Bear spoke into the cushion, listing the parts of his body that weren’t already covered with ink. “Some on my neck, the inside of my right arm, couple of fingers I think…and my dick, but you ain’t my type, fucker, so hands off.”
He can’t tattoo you’re dick, Bear. He doesn’t do micro portraits.
I laughed at the sound of Preppy’s voice in my head and took another hit of the joint Bear and I’d been passing back and forth. “What’s so fucking funny?” He asked, lifting his head from the cushion. His eyes rimmed in red.
“Prep,” I said, holding the smoke in my lungs as long as I could, letting it burn in my chest until I had no choice but to blow it out. “This is fucked up, but…I still hear him sometimes.”
Bear sat up and took the joint, taking three hits before leaning back on the couch with his arms spread across the back of the cushions. “I know what you mean. Me too. He’s always been there to break up all the heavy shit we’re all stewing in. Now that he ain’t here, it’s just all heavy shit…and no Prep.”
The plan had been to take a night and get some rest before going back to it. I’d tossed and turned for hours, knowing that until Pup was back in my bed that I’d never have a good night sleep again.
I heard Bear grunting, doing his own tossing and turning.
So finally, we’d just quit trying.