I was acutely aware that he didn’t blink often and found myself staring at his eyes trying to catch him in the act.
“They should’ve been on plastic with a dental bar in their mouths. I would have taken my time and started from the back. The back is a good place to start when pulling teeth. Molars are the most painful and the hardest to extract. They are also the bloodiest and when the blood drips down their throats they choke on it and choking increases the fear. You can smell it in the air.” He shook his head and looked up at Bear. “It would have been beautiful.”
“I’m sure it would have been, man,” Bear said, leaning back against the table, obviously used to Gus’s oddities.
“You owe me,” Gus said, coming to stand in front of us “Two.” He added, holding up two fingers, his voice never rising or falling with his words.
“Two,” Bear agreed. “With the shit-storm I have coming my way I don’t think that will be a problem.”
Gus turned to me and I held out my hand. “We were never properly introduced. I’m Thia,” I said, clearing my throat to remove any remnant of nervousness from my voice. Gus looked down at my hand and jumped back like I was holding out a spider.
Bear put his hand on my forearm and gently pushed it down. “Gus doesn’t shake hands,” Bear said, as Gus shook his head frantically from side to side, his fists curled up into balls under his chin as he cowered away from me.
“You’re afraid of ME? I just saw you kill a guy then rub your finger in his blood,” I pointed out.
Gus unfolded his arms from himself when he saw I was no longer holding out my offending hand and stood up, smoothing down his already smooth shirt. “Blood is clean. Blood is beautiful. Blood is life and watching that life drain out and fade away is a gift I like to give myself as often as possible. Hands are dirty. So dirty. Like motel rooms.” He rambled, gagging when he mentioned ‘motel rooms,’ turning his mouth into the crook of his elbow. He took a deep breath, fixing within himself whatever it was that I had broken by trying to shake his hand. “Did you know that most motel rooms are covered in feces and semen?” Gus asked out of nowhere. “And I’m not talking about the bed. Depending on the age of the motel and the number of available rooms and the amount of parking spaces, at one time or another every single surface had been covered by either semen or feces or both.”
“Well hello to you too, Gus,” Bear said with a laugh.
“It’s true,” Gus said, turning to Bear. “And it’s not funny. Now you owe me three.” Gus took another drag of the joint and passed it back to Bear who held it between his lips and inhaled until the red ember on the tip dripped with ash.
He spoke as he exhaled. “I know it’s not funny man. What’s also not funny is that if it wasn’t for Ti grabbing my gun and you showing up that we’d be a couple of corpses stacked on your pile right now.”
“I keep my promises,” Gus said, “You saved my life.”
“Never doubted you, brother, but you didn’t have to take off your cut for me. I would never have asked you that,” Bear said, gesturing to Gus’s cut-free attire.
“I didn’t take it off for you. I took it off for me.”
“Why?” I chimed in.
“Because I found out who the mole is.”
“What mole?” I asked.
“The one who fed intel to Isaac and then to Eli. The one who tried to have me killed twice, but still can’t seem to get the fucking job done,” Bear informed me. “But it doesn’t matter now, because Chop wants to kill me himself.”
“Three times,” Gus corrected.
“What?” Bear asked, his brows creasing with confusion.
“Three times,” Gus said. “The first time was when he let Isaac into the club when he knew what Isaac’s plans were. The second time was when he told Eli where you were. The third time was today, right now.”
Bear sat there silently and took another drag of the joint, rubbing his temples with his thumb. “Fuuuuuuccck!” he roared, standing up on top of the table.
“I don’t understand,” I said. “What does you leaving the MC and the mole have anything to do with one another…” I stopped when the realization hit.
Bear looked down at me and nodded.
“The mole is…” I started, but stopped as it all sank in.
Bear growled and finished my sentence.
“My fucking old man.”
Gus nodded. “Chop. Chop is the mole.”
So much for normal…
Chapter Twenty-Six
Bear
“So, your old man was gunning for you long before you threw down your cut? Why?” King asked, lighting a joint and passing it to me. “That doesn’t make any fucking sense.”
“I know. There has got to be more to it. My old man’s a son-of-a-bitch, but he’s not fucking stupid. The problem is now that we can’t get any more intel. Gus laid down his cut. He’s out, which means I don’t have anyone left on the inside.” We were back in his tattoo studio and I’d just told him what had gone down at the park. Luckily, Gus was all too eager to handle the cleanup on his own, so we left him to it. “It’s not like it fucking matters. If he wants me dead, he wants me dead, the reason isn’t important anymore. The only real problem is that he’s willing to go through Ti to get to me.”
“But why Thia? You have other people he can get to. Me. Grace. Ray. Why choose her?”
“‘Cause Chop’s a cocksucker, but he’s not fucking stupid either, he took one look at her and knew…” I paused. “He’s following code, or at least he’s making it appear to the brothers like he is, meanwhile he’s been going behind their backs, planning to have me killed for fuck knows how long now.”
“But that still doesn’t make sense. How could going through Thia to get to you…” King started but stopped when I flashed him a knowing look. He answered his own question. “Girls in the club, old ladies, even the BBB’s, they aren’t considered civilians. She’s fair game as far as he’s concerned because he thought you’d claim her.”
I leaned my head against the wall. “I have claimed her.”
“Oh shit.”
I stood up from the couch and pretended to be interested in the new sketch King had been working on to finish Ray’s sleeve. It was all three of their kids’ names woven into a mangrove tree on the bay.
“Never thought I’d see the fucking day, man.”
“It was stupid. Twice now and I didn’t wrap up either time.”
King laughed and motioned for me to bring the joint back to him.
I shoved it into his hand. “What’s so fucking funny?”
“Let me ask you something, man. Of all the girls you’ve ever fucked, how many times you forget to wrap it up with?”
“None. Not a single fucking one,” I admitted.
“It’s funny, cause that’s how you know. Never thought about it with Ray. Never crossed my mind and honestly, if it had, I didn’t give a fuck about the consequences. Anything to keep her linked with me was all right by me. I may not have known that at first, but I sure as shit know it now.”
“Now you got three kids, man. Two of which are tearing the house apart block by block.”
“Yeah, it’s pretty fucking great. Still don’t think to wrap up either,” he said with a laugh.
“I’m not thinking about having kids right now. I’m thinking about how to keep this girl alive.”
“Your girl.”
“Yes, MY girl! There I said it, does that make you happy now?”
“It’s a start,” King said. “So, you think about what Bethany said to you? ’Cause if you are going to go through with it then you need to tell her. She should know what she’s in for. There are things you need to go over with her. I’ve been there man. You don’t want her going in blind.”
I lit a cigarette. King was right, but I had no idea how to start the conversation with her. “I got something else in mind,” I said.
“If you’re thinking of doing something stupid, don’t,” King warned.
“Stupid was taking her into a public place and almost getting her killed. Stupid was making a promise to a ten-year-old I never intended to keep. Stupid is every fucking thing I’ve ever done in my life up until this point. I got to keep her safe.” I stubbed out my smoke in the ashtray on the coffee table. “Nothing stupid about that.”
Thia was up at the house to help Ray with the kids or dinner or something, to be honest I hadn’t been paying attention because I was too focused on the fact that if it wasn’t for Gus or Ti’s quick thinking, she wouldn’t be breathing right now. I was too busy thinking with my cock instead of worrying about keeping her safe.
You were thinking with your heart, dumbass. It’s that other useful organ in your body. Preppy informed me.
I made a promise to myself that although all this shit started out as a lie, I would keep my promise to her. I would protect her, but I made another promise to myself too. I would not just protect her, but I wouldn’t let her get sucked into my life. She was better than it.
Better than me.
I would keep her safe.
I just couldn’t keep her for myself.
Thirty minutes and one text message later, a practiced hand was wrapped around my cock.
I’d drank straight from the bottle of Jack until I didn’t care, which although I was hammered, still wasn’t working. Because Ti was going to walk through door at any second and see what kind of man I really was. I was hoping I would be drunk enough not to see the look of hurt in her eyes. Not to register the look of disappointment on her face.
Why did I even care?
She knew I’d planned to leave from the moment we met. I never told her that had changed. I never promised her that I was going to stay.
Or that she was going to stay.
King was locked up for years. I made him promise that he would call in all the favors he still had on the inside because I could protect her for now, but wouldn’t be able to when we weren’t together anymore.
Fuck, why does this hurt so bad?
“Mmmmmmmmm…” she murmured, like I wasn’t paying her to jerk me off. I wasn’t even hard.
Every time I started to wake from whatever self-induced coma I’d put myself in, my newly conscious state always brought a wave of disappointment with it.
It’s not that I wanted to die. I just wanted to live in a state of oblivion. Was that too much to ask? Oblivion didn’t have thoughts of being a biker without a home. Oblivion didn’t have confusing thoughts of Ray, although in recent days those had started to fade away.
Oblivion definitely didn’t have HER.
And come tomorrow, I wouldn’t either.
I wanted it to be her hand on my cock and I imagined it was, living in my imagination and in the lie for just a few more ignorant moments.
Jodi stroked me. Or was it Dee? Danni? Denise?
Regardless of the expertise being used to get me off I felt myself going softer and softer. I thought of pale pink lips and strawberry blonde hair, but every time she appeared behind my closed eyelids, she disappeared just as quickly.
I groaned in frustration. The girl getting me off took the noise as a sign of encouragement, picking up her pace. Jerking me harder. Long fake nails clicked together as she worked me.
There was no fucking way I was going to come, and I was glad for it. I wanted to punish myself for what I was about to do.
For what she was about to see.
Sadly, the only coming I was doing was coming down from my high, which was the last fucking thing I wanted. It was a shitty-ass time to sober up.
I changed my mind.
I couldn’t do this.
I couldn’t hurt her. I would find another way. I grabbed what’s her name’s forearm to make her stop her pointless hand job, but it wasn’t her my eyes darted to.
It was Ti.
MY Ti.
Standing at the foot of the bed.
She appeared straight faced. Impassive. Almost expressionless. I knew better than to take her at face value. Thia ran deep, but covered up even deeper. What I saw behind her flat expression scared the shit out of me, because it was more than her usual spitfire self.
She was mad.
Pure unadulterated RAGE mad.
The naked bleach blonde kneeling next to me barely paid Thia any attention, and continued to stroke me as she looked back at her despite my hand on her arm trying to stop her. “You want in?” she asked Thia.
Maybe she wasn’t there. Maybe I was just dreaming. Because Thia Andrews had been occupying my dreams since that first night in the shower.
It wasn’t until she spoke that I knew for sure it wasn’t a dream after all.
I thought she’d run.
I’d done this so she would run.
Not from the house. From me.
But she didn’t. The girl was always surprising me.
She walked right up to the bed with a look of determination in her eyes that I’d never seen before. She reached over me and plucked one of my guns from one of my holders, which was the only thing I was wearing. She aimed at the naked blonde and cocked it. “Get. Out. Now.” The fake seductive look on the blonde’s face instantly disappeared and was replaced with fear. She jumped from the bed and ran out the door without a backwards glance.
I know it was the asshole thing to do but I couldn’t help it.
Maybe it was because I was drunk.
Maybe because I was tired of not knowing what to do or who to trust or how to protect the girl who had wiggled and smiled her way into my broken heart.
I laughed.
Not just a little laugh either. I laughed at the absurdity that my life had become as well as the situation I was currently in.
Thia turned the gun on me and that’s when I noticed the tears threatening to leak from the corners of her beautiful green eyes.
I froze.
“Shit.”
Ti sniffled, although she was obviously trying to hide the fact that she was on the verge of crying. An unfamiliar feeling took over. My heart lurched into my stomach and I felt sick.
Guilt.
I’d committed every crime there was to commit. I’d done shit that sane men would never dare to even think of, yet I’d never felt a shred of guilt for any of it.
Ever.
Until now.
Until Thia.
Love. It was the only kind of torture I wasn’t familiar with.
I was quickly learning it was the most painful kind of them all.
“You know,” she started. Her voice was as shaky as the gun in her hand. “You really need to stop trying to make me hate you.”
I muddled through my cloudy thoughts in search of a response, “And why is that?” was the best I could come up with.
Ti laid the gun down on my bare stomach and I resisted the urge to reach out and tug her down onto me. She was about to turn the handle on the door when she turned back. Tears stained her cheeks and my gut twisted in a way I was beginning to hate as much as I hated myself.
She looked me right in the eye and held my gaze.
“Because it’s working.”
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Bear
No amount of coffee or cold water could have dragged me back into sobriety after I’d seen the look on Ti’s face in that room.
Alcohol and anger go hand in hand like junior high sweethearts.
I’d drank enough Jack to set me into a coma, yet after she’d walked out of the room I was more sober than before I’d had a single drop.
I pulled on my jeans and ran after her.
Thia wasn’t in the living room. She wasn’t in the garage either. I was worried she’d left completely and started thinking of where the fuck she would go or who was out there waiting to hurt her when I spotted her on the dock. She was bent over, her hands moving furiously. I didn’t realize what she was doing until she untied the rope from the dock and hopped off the dock.
By the time I got down to the dock she had already pushed off and was too f
ar away from me to reach out and pull her back. “Ti, we gotta talk.”
“I think you’ve said plenty.”
“Ti, get your ass over here.” Ignoring me she continued to row furiously. She was obviously inexperienced and didn’t move too far too quickly. The muscles in her arms strained as she rowed harder and harder without much progress to show for it.
“There is a nasty rip current under the dock. It’s a struggle for me or King to get the boat through it, so you might as well give up and come back now,” I said, crouching down on the seawall.
She only fought harder, slowly she gained ground inching further away from the dock and from me. I hadn’t been lying. The current was a bitch to get through if you didn’t know exactly where it stopped and started. Took us months to figure out how to clear it in less than a few minutes.
As much as I hated the fact that she was doing her damnedest to get away from me I was impressed by my girl’s strength.
There was no way to make this right.
I craved her forgiveness just as much as I craved her body. Her soul. Her spirit.
Her heart.
Words spilled from my lips in quick succession. I had to get to her before she was too far away to hear me. I spoke so fast I didn’t have time to edit myself and choose the right words so I just went with my gut because going with my head only resulted in her beginning to hate me and as much as that was part of the plan I hadn’t counted on the crushing blow to my soul that came with it.
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