She could say that again.
“I know,” I agreed.
“Keep your guard up, babe,” she warned. “It’s my experience a leopard doesn’t change its spots.”
I nodded to her, and when I thought she’d looked away, I gave eyes to Ryn and Lottie.
“What’s with the eyes?” Pepper asked.
Okay, maybe I should have made sure that she’d looked away.
But she saw them, and I’d learned of late that avoidance was something to avoid.
Not to mention, my girls were my girls. They could take and give the honesty, and I’d discovered it wasn’t ever ugly.
So I went for it.
“Just, you know, maybe Dad had reason to have a reality check when Axl had words with him.”
“Maybe he did, all I’m saying, Hatz, is be careful with your heart,” Pepper replied.
“No, what I mean is, Axl is an outsider to the unit, but one who cares about me. So it was objective, but wasn’t, if you know what I mean. And sometimes, an objective opinion can make people think. Though, I don’t know if that’s all there was to it. I think another part was me telling Dad that Axl’s father said such nasty things to him. I think that was his, ‘Hey, wait,’ moment. You know, something like, ‘I did that too and it was really uncool.’ You know?”
“Okay, but still … look after yourself,” Pepper reiterated.
“Right, I’m butting in here to say what Hatz isn’t outright saying, Pez,” Lottie did, indeed, butt in. “You need to stop dicking around and go out with Auggie.”
“Exactly,” I concurred.
“Totes,” Ryn added.
“How is what she said—?” Pepper began.
“Axl was hands on,” Lottie stated. “That might not be where it’s at for you. But bottom line, you need a buffer from those jackals you call parents, that maggot of an ex of yours, and what she didn’t say, but I will, is, girl, it’s been a dry spell from hell. You need to get laid,” Lottie expounded.
“Word,” Ryn agreed.
“Listen—” Pepper tried.
“Nope.” Lottie held up a hand and shook her blonde locks. “It was touch-and-go there for both Rinz and Hatz when Boone and Axl started seeing other bitches. You don’t need Aug to give up and start looking. Serious, with Axl, it was a close call, since Mo said the chick he was seeing was solid.”
“I know, phew,” I put in. “He really liked her. They still text a lot.”
Pepper did a slow blink at me.
She then asked, aghast, “You let him text another woman?”
“Well, sure. They’re friends,” I answered.
“She’s someone he dated,” Pepper pointed out.
“I know,” I told her.
Her face twisted in a weird way. “Hatz, babe, he’s probably been inside her.”
Um …
“I try not to think about that part.”
“I wouldn’t be able to stop thinking about it,” she said.
Hmm.
“He’s with Hattie,” Lottie noted firmly.
“He isn’t Corbin,” Ryn put in.
Oh yeah.
Right.
God.
How could I forget?
Corbin, Pepper’s ex, cheated on her to the full extent of the definition of cheating (and then some).
In other words, he’d moved in with her, committed to her, had a baby with her, and kept fucking his ex-girlfriend through all of that, and obviously, she didn’t know.
The ex-girlfriend didn’t know.
But getting away with it for years, he eventually got lazy, left a trail Pepper followed, there were a variety of nasty confrontations, and boom.
Suddenly she’s a very young single mom, her ex is pissed that she rained on his parade, he takes it out on her, uses their daughter as a weapon, and insult to injury, Pepper’s parents made members of the moral majority look like hippies. They’d washed their hands of her when she moved in with Corbin out of wedlock, without washing their hands of her, since they intermittently got in her space to share she was going to hell.
“I know he isn’t,” Pepper said to Ryn.
“And Auggie isn’t Corbin,” Lottie added.
“I know he isn’t,” Pepper repeated to Lottie, a wee bit more impatient this time.
“So, what gives?” Lottie asked. “I mean, she shoots, she scores, three times, babe,” Lottie reminded her of the wins she’d had with Evie and Mag, Boone and Ryn and me and Axl, doing it pointing to herself then Ryn and me.
“It’s more complicated when you have a kid,” Pepper said.
“It is not,” Ryn returned. “You’re being chicken.”
“I’m not being chicken,” Pepper snapped.
“I’d make chicken noises, but I’m above that,” Ryn said to Lottie.
Lottie laughed.
Although that was funny, I was seeing they weren’t getting this wasn’t a funny moment for Pepper.
I kept my gaze on Pepper and suggested quietly, “Maybe we should lay off.”
“Yeah, that’d be good,” Pepper said curtly.
“As far as I know, you’re not Benjamin Button,” Ryn told her. “You dig what I’m saying to you?”
Pepper stepped back from us.
Yup.
This wasn’t a funny moment.
I braced.
And it was a good thing I did.
“You know, I would never want to have a psychopath obsessed with me, like you,” Pepper said to Lottie. “Or have a friend murdered and some guy whacked at my back door, like you,” she said to Ryn. “Or have someone send me dirty pictures and emails like you,” she said to me. “Or gambling addict fathers.” Back to Lottie. “Alcoholic brothers.” To Ryn. “Or abusive fathers.” To me. “But I have never, never been loved by my parents. I have always, always been an outsider in that family. I meet a guy who I think loves me, loves … me. He wants to make a family with me and build a future with me and every year it’s going to be putting up the Christmas tree and taking out the ornaments with the years on or remembering when we got them on vacation or when we had another baby or that year we made decorations as a family. And he was fucking around on me from the start.”
Oh man.
We totally should have laid off.
She was far from done.
“And since I found out and we were over, he’s just been fucking with me. And I have you guys, and that’s it. My sister is programmed to their bullshit. My brother took off to escape it before I even graduated from high school and no one has heard from him since. So day-to-day, hour-to-hour, minute-to-minute, except for Juno, who is my kid, and I have to protect her from all this, I’m very, very alone.”
She took a huge breath as we all stood there, silent and still, listening.
And I knew for me, but I figured the same for Lots and Rinz, hurting for Pepper.
Then she launched in again.
“And with what I endured growing up. And what Corbin did to us, and he did it to us, me and my baby girl, and keeps doing, I know one thing. I need to protect my daughter. So yeah. Auggie is hot. He seems nice. Lottie wouldn’t fix me up with a loser. But I come with baggage.” She focused on me. “The kind that no way in hell, when he’s with me, I’d let him text some woman he’s fucked.” She glanced around. “And these guys are who they are. They do what they do. And so he gets with me and finds my baggage too much to bear, my hang-ups tying him too tight, and he scrapes me off, it isn’t about just me losing him. Which is bad enough. My daughter loses him too. She’s already been through that and I’m not gonna put her through it again. So maybe you can put yourself in my shoes for a hot fucking second and then back off.”
“Maybe he won’t—” Ryn began.
“Back off!” Pepper screamed.
Dang.
“Pepper,” Lottie said softly.
“Are you backing off?” Pepper snapped.
“Sure, girl, if that’s what you need,” Lottie gently replied.
“I g
otta go,” Pepper suddenly announced.
“Hey,” I called as she started to take off, not liking her leaving in that state.
“I can’t, Hatz, okay?” she asked. She looked to Ryn. “I’m sorry I lost it.”
“I’m sorry I pushed,” Ryn replied.
“Right. Cool. Now I gotta go. Later,” she finished.
And then she went.
We all watched.
When she disappeared out the front door into the sun, Ryn murmured, “Okay, well, shit on a stick. That didn’t go too good.”
I said nothing.
Lottie said nothing.
Since it was weird Lottie said nothing, I looked to Lottie.
She was gazing across the room.
So I turned my attention there.
And Dorian was standing a couple steps into the club from the stairs to the office.
He had his hands on his hips and his eyes on the front door.
Seemed Ian witnessed that, and although he couldn’t hear our conversation, he couldn’t miss Pepper screaming at us.
His face was inscrutable as he continued to look at the door before he dropped his hands, turned and moved back up the stairs.
“Okay, well, one, she wants Auggie bad, she won’t let herself have him, and all her closest babes are loved up and it’s tearing her apart,” Lottie declared.
I started staring at her because I didn’t get that from Pepper at all.
What I got was, she was protecting her daughter, and her heart, and Auggie was not a possibility because I got her.
These guys were these guys and you had to be in the position to let them be who they were.
They did the same, of course.
But I could totally see Pepper needing more from Auggie than he might be comfortable giving, this so she could trust him, when it wasn’t Auggie that broke her trust, but he’d be the one who’d have to build it again (if that was even possible).
And just how much it would hurt to find out he wasn’t comfortable giving that, and as such, not going there at all.
For her.
And for Juno.
“Totes,” Ryn replied to Lottie.
Hunh?
Lottie again said nothing.
So I asked, “What’s two?”
She turned her attention to me. “There is no two. There’s just that one. You can lead a horse to water and all that. Now, we back off. I gotta talk to Ian real quick. See you tonight.”
And then she was off, walking with a purpose toward the stairs.
Ryn came to stand at my side so we could both watch her go.
When we couldn’t see her anymore, Ryn said, “She totally has a plan.”
She totally did and that concerned me.
Because not only was she Lottie, and one of her plans meant I was sleeping beside Axl every night, but also because she was headed to Dorian.
And as I’d previously noted, Dorian was an action man.
“Totally,” I agreed.
“I’m glad I’m not the last one standing, that would suck,” she went on.
It seriously would.
“Totally,” I repeated.
I mean, it was bad enough seeing how happy Lottie, Evie and Ryn were when my guy was within reach and I wasn’t reaching.
It’d be so much worse if it wasn’t just being scared to take the risk but feeling like I couldn’t reach.
“Maybe we should tone down the domestic bliss,” I suggested.
“Maybe, I don’t know.”
I looked to her. “Why don’t you know?”
She turned fully to me. “I was in the offices when Gwen brought all her and Hawk’s kids in. And all three of them, like a shot, the two boys and his little girl, went right to Aug.”
“Oh man,” I said.
“Yeah, he loves kids. Like, a lot. And they love him back.”
And thus, one reason Lottie picked him for Pepper.
“My mom said something to me, when shit got real with my brother,” Ryn continued. “About how happy she was that I finally had someone in my corner. Pepper’s got it going on, but she also takes a lot of shit from a lot of directions. It’d be good to see her have someone in her corner. And not just us.”
Pepper did take a lot of shit.
So it so would.
And this got me to thinking, maybe I was wrong.
Mag stepped in, and the stuff with Evie’s family had been extreme. They put her in some serious shit. Mag got shot in the middle of it.
And now they were getting married.
Ryn’s sitch hadn’t been that dramatic, but she definitely had some baggage, including, I’d recently discovered, a past partner breaking trust with her in a fundamental and fundamentally terrifying way, and she and Boone were completely solid.
Shit had been real from the beginning with Axl and me, and except for us not very successfully navigating the situation with his sadly departed friend, that had been brief, and other than that, between him and me, it was all smooth sailing.
Lottie hadn’t just wanted to see her girls and her guys happy.
She’d been very deliberate about all this.
And she was not unaware of Pepper’s past, and the important aspect of Juno being in that mix.
I’d been so deep in all the things I was dealing with, it hadn’t occurred to me to look more closely at what Pepper’s day-to-day life would be like.
And my friend really needed someone in her corner.
And not just her girls.
So, to communicate I agreed, I repeated myself again.
This time with feeling.
“Totally.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
She Was Mine Before
HATTIE
Having left the club, on the way to my studio, I called Axl.
I was kinda bummed because, after that scene with Pepper, I wasn’t thinking about the piece I was working on.
I was thinking about my friend and that maybe I needed to spend more time in her corner.
Like, say, after we inadvertently upset her (a lot) and she’d gone off on her own, instead of going to my studio to work on my art, find her and share I was in her corner. Also admit I might not have been real good at doing that in the past. But now I was all in.
So, yeah.
I was bummed I wasn’t in a work-at-the-studio mood.
But more bummed that my friend was in a bad place.
And I decided, once I got to the studio, I’d text her. See if she wanted to meet for a coffee.
Or something.
On this thought, Axl picked up.
“Hey, babe.”
“Hey, uh, heading to the studio,” I told him.
“Cool,” he replied.
Okay, now …
Um …
Where to begin?
“You good?” he asked.
“Well …”
In truth, I knew where to begin.
I just didn’t know if I should begin there.
That being, feel him out about what to do about Pepper and Auggie.
And by feel him out, I meant enlist his services to get Auggie to get the lead out in going for Pepper.
“Hattie,” Axl prompted.
“Okay, well, the meeting was about Smithie’s closing for three weeks,” I told him. “They’re doing some renovations. VIP seating and putting in a kitchen because they’re going to start serving food. It’s all good, including for us. We’ll keep getting paid. And Smithie covers tips. Truth, I can have better nights than he covers, but I won’t be hurting.”
“Right, then yeah. All good,” he said. “And that gives you free time to be in the studio.”
I hadn’t said anything outright, but he sensed I was jonesing to get back to it.
My guy.
Such a good guy and so tuned to me.
“Yeah,” I agreed.
I said no more.
Axl waited.
Until he was done waiting.
“Babe,” he pushed, knowi
ng there was more to say.
“Okay, we had a blowup with Pepper when we pushed her about getting together with Auggie.”
“Shit,” he muttered.
And the way he did, I knew now he had more to say.
“What?” I asked.
“I take it she was resistant to going there with Aug?” he asked back.
“Very,” I answered.
“Right, well, not too long ago, I got up in Auggie’s shit about this same thing. And, babe, prepare. Because she’s not giving him anything and he gets why she isn’t. He digs her and wants to go there, but you don’t push a woman with a kid. So my guess, he’s going to be moving on if he isn’t in that zone already.”
That wasn’t good news.
But I was stuck on something else.
“You don’t push a woman with a kid?” I asked.
“There’s more going on there,” he said as answer.
“I know, but she’s still a woman, even if she has a kid,” I said.
Axl had no reply.
Thus, I kept talking.
“I mean, yes, if something happened with them, he’d be getting both of them in his life. And I see that’d be daunting, because he doesn’t just have to win Pepper, he has to win Juno. But those are two different things. Because they’re two different people. And a man should approach them as two different things. But he can’t get either if he doesn’t start with one.”
There was a long pause before Axl inquired, “What’s her gig?”
“Trust,” I told him. “Her ex cheated on her and I don’t mean he strayed. I mean he was sleeping with another woman their entire relationship.”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“Unh-hunh,” I agreed. “And that doesn’t get into her family, who are very, very Christian. Like, her mom and sister don’t wear pants, they wear skirts and dresses, because women should not only not wear men’s clothes, they shouldn’t highlight certain parts of their bodies. They go to revivals. And she told us that her father contends God spoke through him once. He was talking in tongues. She was there to see, said it was lunacy and scared the crap out of her. It happened when she was twelve or thirteen. That’s pretty crazy, but I still could go on.”
“So her family’s not in her life,” he deduced.
“She’d like that, them not being in her life. But every so often, they show up, intent to get her back into the fold. Once, she said she wouldn’t put it past them to kidnap her or Juno and try to brainwash them into compliance.”
Dream Spinner (Dream Team Book 3) Page 32