by V. Theia
R: 10:15 - Even if it’s not a good idea.
P: 10:18 - Where are you?
R: 10:18 - On a bus. It smells like feet and peas. I saw Seb for a little while. They don't live far. I should confess it was a reason, not the only one, but the big reason for coming with you, I hope you don't hate me for that. I wanted to go with you, as well. She included a row of heart emoji’s. He liked that she did something to make herself happy, at least. And he wasn't mad for her reasons for coming along on this trip. As much as he'd dreaded seeing Red Light again having Ruby at his side felt nice, felt right.
P: 10:22 - I’m seeing you when I’m back in town.
Thank god for predictive text. The back of Preacher’s skull was hurting from concentration.
R: 10:22 - Sure :) I need to get the car bill from you anyway.
Goddamn, this woman. Could he strangle and fuck her at the same time? Nah, that was Hawk’s deal. But the urge was there. Clicking his tongue, he strode across the room to grab his cut, slipping it on, followed by his jacket. His phone pinged again.
R: 10: 24 - My legs still hurt. Just as well I took the bus lol.
P: 10:25 - Heading out, babe.
R: 10:25 - Oh? Got a hot date?
He smiled. Smiled again as he replied.
P: 10: 27 - Tell me something.
R: 10:27 - Sure. you know all my dirty laundry now. What do you want to know?
R: 10:28 - IS IT A DATE????????????
He ignored that. It would do her good to stew in her own juices and think he was going to fuck someone else after fucking her stupid for hours.
He was still pissed off. Not done with Ruby Steele. Not by a long shot. She would just have to deal with that. She could run but she could never hide from Preacher.
P: 10:29 - You wet for me, babe?
A minute went by. And then two. He was outside standing at the side of his bike when her reply finally came.
R: 10:33 - Against my better judgment, always.
P. 10:34 - Good. As I said I’ll see you when I’m back. Let me know you got home safe.
R: 10:34 - Sure. If you want me to.
P: 10:35 - I do.
P: 10:35 - Stay wet. You’ll need it when I get my hands on you. Later, tiny dancer.
It was the closest Preacher had come to sexting. He preferred the up close and less technology approach. But he hadn’t minded it. In fact, knowing she was probably turned on and thinking he was off for a hook-up. Yeah, he felt damn good.
Throwing his leg over his bike, he stuck the key in the engine and fired her up, she purred like a dream, but she should, he took better care of that bike than he did his own body, giving her a tune-up every week, fresh oil, she was a pampered little thing, and he loved her.
R: 10:36 - You didn’t answer. Is it a date?????
R: 10:36 - Preacher man!
R: 10:36 -There will be no hands on me if you’re sexing up someone else.
R: 10:37 - I mean it.
R: 10:37 - Ugh. Stupid man. She added on a row of angry red-faced emoji’s. He just laughed, feeling lighter in his chest cavity.
No more messages came after that, not for a long time until Ruby was home and she sent him a single text to let him know.
Preacher grinned and rode off to meet with the boys and Genty.
Just you wait until I’m home, tiny dancer.
Just you wait.
This girl who had him strung out in his own damn skin was benevolent, strong as hell, fierce. She was a fighter. She was everything.
She was fucking stubborn and he might just lock her up her when he got hands on her again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
“Only I can hit this big grizzly Adams, got it? Touch a brother, and I bury you six feet under with the fishies.” - Red Light.
Stalked by the dead.
That's how Preacher felt most days. Like he could sense the cold touch of ghosts on the back of his neck, death prowling through his life alongside him like a shadow. His brother and teammates trekking in his footprints leaving grenades of sorrow and regret.
And don’t let anyone tell you differently; ghosts made the most fucking monotonous companions.
He accepted it that this was life now, but hated it. The bitter taste in his mouth was the only invisible barrier between his life then and his life now.
Shit. Some days, for real, he was sure he was going insane when Shane seemed more genuine than actual people he could see and touch. That's when shit got crazy scary because if Preacher couldn't determine the reality then what hope did he have?
His brother was dead. Logic deemed it so no matter how much he wished it different. Dead was dead, son, his commanding officer would have told him.
Logically he understood. He recognized and accepted it was his long-seated grief not allowing him to move on, he wasn't Hawk-demented, not yet anyway, that day was breathing down his neck and if it came he'd happily take a seat next to his brother and sing some kum ba yah shit, but until then, he fought against the neurosis of his own sorrow and tried to accept what he knew, Shane was gone and staying gone.
He grasped it as tight as he could on a daily basis.
And allowed the dead to stalk alongside him.
He thought he deserved it so didn't make that big of a deal about it. When you know, you've done wrong, done bad, then it's just a case of accepting what the universe hands you and having enough pockets to carry it around with you.
Everyone seemed to have moved on and Preacher was stuck in one moment of time, walking through life, hating himself. Forgiveness was for those who warranted it. Preacher’s mind used to be a combustible engine, now its mechanism was rusted.
He'd love a good sleep. A good all night all day uninterrupted sleep. The kind of sleep you wake up exhausted from and needed a nap.
He rationed sleep like it was being sold on the open market for a song, the same as he had with the smoke's giving them up two years ago. A little at a time was enough to keep his body ticking over without something shutting down, but it was never enough, his brain was forever pulling through sludge. He was afraid to sleep too long and afraid to not sleep at all.
A fine balance that he didn't always succeed in, but he was passed a year now and no episodes. Touch wood and spit on the floor. Or whatever that mumbo jumbo good luck thing was. His mom carried a rabbit's foot. It wasn’t lucky for the fucking rabbit having his foot cut off.
Tiny's death had been one giant assfuck trigger and he was back to square one of second guessing his every bodily reaction. A hand tremor here, a headache there, all of it manifested into a self-diagnosis of fucked up proportions. Any more medical jargon he was gonna claim himself a doctor.
And that wiki-you’re dying bullshit was never good. Slightly terrifying.
He was his own walking talking obsessing medical Wikipedia.
He diagnosed Pretty-boy that one time when he was being a giant A-hole. Nailed it in one.
Standing outside, the sun shining down on the top of his hair, he thought about a packet of smokes, how the nicotine made him feel.
Those addictive sticks he kept buying even when he didn’t smoke them. A bad habit he wasn’t willing to break fully away yet. He’d given up … mostly. That was enough. A man needed some vices and he'd been a willing slave to those tobacco sticks for a long time.
If he racked up the scores of lives he’d taken over the years, Preacher could concede he probably merited his head fuck status.
Tit for tat and all that junk.
He’d killed. Recently in fact. That raid on the Raging Rebels MC last year. He’d taken his fair share of the blood that night. So why should he have a happy life when his brother was dead, his two teammates were dead. It should have been him. Three lives for his.
He just couldn’t justify it.
Failure to keep his family safe was a boil that needed lancing, he just didn’t know how. He kept on the fringes of the rest of his family now, knowing it hurt his mom more than anything, but what could he do
, face their sympathy like a pussy, lap it up with a spoon? It fucking drowned him. He missed them like they missed him, he needed to change that status, break his own prison.
Fate the fickle motherfucker had played some cards that day to wrangle it so Preacher could live and if he held stock in that kind of hokum, he’d bet his crappy life that it wasn’t for any world doing-good purpose.
He was an outlaw by choice.
Wasn’t he outside in the too hot heat being boiled alive under his jacket ready to meet with some two-bit criminal about dirty money? Nothing good in that so what the fuck had fate been doing that day sparing his ass and taking Shane?
Made no sense.
Stop obsessing, you pussy. Shane would say.
He wanted his balance back. Was accepting his brother's death going to do that? His gut cramped as he foraged around in his leather jacket pockets, the two sides were empty, fuck, where was it? The middle left empty. Fuck. Ah there. Addictive relief washed through him. He grabbed the cardboard box and fished out the pack of Marlboro smokes.
He allowed himself three a year. He was doing good since it was June and this was gonna be his first. He lit up, flicking the silver lighter his father gave him on his eighteenth birthday, the wheel rough on his thumb. Come to think of it, it was a weird gift to give your kid. Here, make fire or smoke until cancer catches you.
Preacher wouldn’t ever give his own kid that type of gift. Only he didn’t plan to put his DNA in the gene pool, best not to, no telling what the kid would inherit from him. Poor little shit having the misfortune to have Preacher for a father. He always wrapped his cock up, so no worries on that score.
Talking of self-diagnosis, he puffed on the cigarette, the familiar sensation rushing down to his lungs, spirited the poison to his brain giving that flash of dizzy euphoria, within two drags he was back in that well-formed relationship between his breathing tract and the nicotine flooding his system. A well-versed stimulant. Could be worse, he reckoned, he could be toking meth, shooting up heroin, instead, he sucked in cancer air.
He could thank Shane for this addiction as well.
Only his brother had been wiser than Preacher and had given it up before he was twenty, never took it back up not once. Preacher though, liked to be dedicated to his flaws, only jacking in the smokes two years ago on a bet, he’d won but still missed the hit.
A nasty habit he loved.
He was going for relaxation as he smoked and leaned his big body up against the old print shop. It closed a while ago from the state of it. No one needed physical photos printing out, not with smartphones and iPads. Good little size building as well, pity to see it standing doing nothing, maybe H should capitalize and do something with it for the club. He looked around back for a quick minute while he waited for the others to arrive. Not bad at all. It had a lot of money making prospect, good location, quiet, not many nosey shits to see what was going on.
Maybe when he was back in Armado he would consider a business for himself, he’d been thinking about it for a while, he had money just sitting there, and there were always units in town going for a song in rent. It was an option, something to motivate him and get him out of his own head trip.
Lifting the smoke to his mouth, the stick trapped between his fingers he took in a deep drag, held it in his lungs, the tiny buzz in his frontal lobe was worth it.
One smoke now, he thought, and he’d allow another in the summer time.
His mom, sweet and batty mom would tell him to stop obsessing over shit (only she wouldn’t say shit) he had no control over, that it was a recipe for disaster and there was no way of knowing what would happen would have happened regardless.
He loved that woman who was no taller than his elbow, she was smart as a whip, ditzy with it, her mind always going in six different directions, she had around five hundred hobbies and obsessed about them all, until she didn't, the latest he heard, from his younger brother, was she was into painting ceramic plates, no doubt about it, he knew what was coming for his next birthday. Sweet and batty.
But and it was always a big but, the but to end all buts, the only but he had spoken for six years now. Why not him?
Drove him mad. Funny how he felt hollowed out most of the time until he’d started seeing the scowl of that bartender and then he knew her flavor and her sounds and that hollow in his chest had begun to feel not so big anymore.
Funny that.
It was inconceivable that sex was the fixer here ‘cause he’d chased that dragon for years. He loved sex, he’d had a lot of it so he would know, but it would be some hokum mumbo jumbo for that to be the easy cure.
Maybe it’s not the sex. Maybe it’s Ruby. Maybe.
Preacher was hollow. And then he wasn’t. And now he was hollow again because she'd upped and left him.
He’d done the math, he wasn’t Lawless smart but he could count his AB5s just fine and he reckoned all fingers pointed to it being Ruby.
He liked the woman. Really fucking liked her. And her sex. Especially her fucking sex. That little darling belonged to him if she’d stop running and hiding.
Taking all that into account, it was arguably a dumb as fuck move to pursue Ruby when he had bupkis to offer her. Sure, he had a house he hardly used, the neighborhood was good, had a nice Italian place nearby, and good eats were hard to come by, he loved the chicken spinach manicotti.
He couldn’t complain about his job in the shop, or his road captaincy, and he knew Ruby loved his cock, not boastful, it was just facts. A woman didn't scream and beg that loud for nothing.
Apart from that, he was a step down from being certifiable.
And what if one day, when he dropped his guard when he thought everything was hunky dory and he was no longer pissing in the wind of anxiety, what happened when he hurt Ruby, had one of his episodes and he choked the life out of her?
Exhaling he braced his shoulder, letting his eyes travel across the street, along to that small diner with the teacups painted on the window, he saw eyes on him, he stared blankly until the waitress looked away. Not today, Shirley. Funny that. He didn’t want to fuck her, good looking woman, nice and trim, big tits, bet she fucked good as well, you could tell the good ones who were givers.
It was Ruby again. That little runaway.
He thought of her text messages. Seemed she had about as much on her plate as he did. And it gnawed at the back of his head. What was she going through? Could he help her? He wanted to. The type of woman she was she probably wouldn’t accept it.
Screw it. He took a last draw of his smoke, the cigarette only half was gone but he flicked it to the ground and stomped it out under his thick soled boot. Any more and he’d smoke the entire pack and what was the purpose of going cold turkey all those months, he’d make a shit non-smoker if he took it up on the regular.
Besides, he preferred sex as his vice of choice. If he wanted an addiction he would do it planted deep and wet.
And that wasn’t easily on tap, even now as diner Shirley gave him the come fuck me eye. He could lead her behind the diner, pull up her little light blue dress and fuck her right there. Five minutes he’d be relaxed as a goat in shit.
Only the sex he wanted had run off from him.
The sex he craved like a dying man had left his ass in a grubby motel room holding his own shaft.
If he wasn’t about to meet up with Genty he’d already be hunting Ruby down and screwing her seven ways until Sunday, her until she was sorry for that stunt.
Thank Christ for sex. It was his stretch of mental calm. Preacher could be in his triggers and still stable as a rock on the outside. Maybe it was a gift. Maybe it was bourbon. Either way, for the most part, any given day was solid even when he didn’t feel so steady in his own self-deprecating thoughts, he could be his own basket case neurotic and still function to do his job.
Do the job.
Deal with the problems here, win back the girl.
Seemed easy breezy on paper.
Only his tiny dancer wa
s a stubborn gorgeous pig-headed mule. And they called him the bad one. Go figure, it was always the outlaw with the rep and not the beautiful goddess.
He’d just have to peel back her layers. It was the only thing for it.
Now that was decided, Preacher, rested a shoulder to the side of the building, watched a big black SUV pull into the four-car port that was empty and for good reason, he didn’t want witnesses to this little meet-cute. Genty and his minder climbed on out. Genty in his usual jeans and a waistcoat, his boy packing heat under the thick coat, two 9mm’s if Preacher was correct. But that was okay, he had his own as well. Not that he expected things to go south, this was only a changeover of contacts, from Preacher to H and his boys.
Preacher knew Genty from way back, he tended to deal in goods that were … less than legal. He could get his hands on anything you needed for a cut down price, but he also had paranoia a mile long. He once was convinced he was being watched by the Feds and went into hiding for a month. Turns out he was being watched, but it had been a bit extreme for him to bunker down in his mom's basement like he was a fucking sixteen-year-old holding his own cock and slurping on orange soda, the man kept his business tight, no paper trail, no charges were brought. Now he moved around, Genty was never in the same town for more than a month.
He slapped hands with the guy and nodded to two-gun Pete. At that, two bikes roared up the street, all three men looked on as H in front pulled in at the side of the SUV, along with Red Light.
Preacher was sweating under his Henley, he’d kill for a bottle of water, stupidly he’d left it back at the motel while he brooded over the tiny dancer who had absconded from his bed. Feisty minx. He was going to fuck her brains out until she begged for forgiveness. Maybe when he had her sucking his cock he’d give it.
“H. Red.” He nodded. H slapped his palm, Red dropped back a step and eyeballed the minder in no easy friendly way. The thing with Red was, he had a hair-trigger temper, like really fucking triggery, he’d fight first, ask questions later, or in Red Light’s, case not ask any questions, the fighting was enough talk. He used to box in his younger days, the talk was he was good on the underground circuit.