My Bad- Lani Lynn Vale

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  “That Fritos bean dip in the small can, a package of sour cream, cream cheese, and some taco seasoning,” she explained.

  “I have everything but the beans,” he said, sounding forlorn.

  “I have some bean dip at home,” Pru offered softly. “I can go get them.”

  Bayou’s eyes went to her and narrowed.

  For a few short seconds, I thought he would actually say something about not liking her, but like the man I knew that he was, he decided to hold his tongue.

  Bayou was a good man—mostly.

  He was brash, dreadfully honest, intimidating, and rude—and those were just on his best days.

  He wasn’t fond of newcomers, and we’d been blowing his comfort levels out of the water lately with adding all these new people to the mix in the form of girlfriends and wives.

  Bayou was not a man that did well with change without being prepared for it.

  And God forbid you hurt someone he considered his.

  Which was likely what happened with his sister.

  His sister, Brielle, might very well have been in the wrong if Pru was yelling at her. But Bayou wouldn’t care. He protected those who he thought of as his. No matter if they were wrong or not.

  “Get it,” Bayou ordered.

  Pru went to step away from me, but I patted her hand. “I’ll go get it. You hang out here with Conleigh. Where is it?”

  Pru licked her lips and finally tore her stare away from Bayou, who still hadn’t looked away from her.

  “Uhh, top shelf in my pantry. It was the door right off the kitchen,” she explained.

  After extricating my arm from her grip, I left her in Conleigh’s capable hands and fast-walked across the street to her place.

  Her dog was still laying on the doormat as I made my way up the front path, and when I pushed inside, the pig had moved, but only as far as to roll over in the opposite direction of the door—deeper into the shadows.

  The birds were the first things I’d heard when I got over there, causing me to grin.

  “You can’t handle the truth!” Bluebird exclaimed.

  “So I can kiss you anytime I want!” Redbird said sweetly.

  Lips twitching, I made my way to her pantry, easily found the beans, and started back out of the kitchen.

  I’d gotten parallel with the table when something black caught my eye.

  Pru’s phone.

  It was lit up, and on the phone there was a text from a ‘Terrel Horandy.’

  Terrel Horandy: You want to go out again tomorrow?

  I picked up her phone and tried to open it to reply, but her passcode stopped me before I could invade her privacy too badly.

  Placing the phone down on the table once again, I walked back out of her house with a new determination in my step.

  She’d be saying yes to a date tomorrow…only it’d be with me.

  ***

  “Admit it,” I told her, arm around her shoulder, as I walked her back over to her place hours later.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Fine,” she said stubbornly. “So you were right.”

  “I was,” I agreed. “Where do you want to go on our date tomorrow?”

  So you don’t go out with Terrel.

  Her lips twitched. “I get to pick?”

  I nodded once. “Yeah, sure, why not? I only ask that you don’t choose Mexican unless you want to get up close and personal to how bad of a reaction I have to it. Chips and queso are my weakness.”

  She frowned. “What kind of reaction?”

  The nurse in her never turned off.

  “The kind where I’ll be blowing up the nearest bathroom twenty minutes after finishing,” I felt it prudent to point out. “I don’t dislike Mexican at all. I just wanted to prepare you for what would happen.”

  “If it makes you sick to your stomach, then you probably shouldn’t be eating it,” she pointed out.

  I snorted. “And could you give up hot sauce and chips?”

  She shrugged. “If it made me do that, yes. I think so, anyway.”

  “Well, I can’t,” I informed her. “I have some control, but I don’t have that much control.”

  After deliberating with herself inwardly, she came to a decision. “Wednesdays I usually go out to eat with my family. I can’t go out on a date with you, and now I can’t invite you because we eat Mexican.”

  My brows rose. “I didn’t say that I couldn’t do Mexican, only that it tore me up after I ate it. As long as you aren’t in a rush, and don’t mind me being gone for twenty minutes after I eat, then I can do it.”

  Not to mention I really wanted to go out on a date with her.

  Maybe I could resist the hot sauce.

  As long as she didn’t say El Torros. I had zero control when it came to El Torros. It was the one place that I missed, despite what it did to me, every time I came back after being out of the country.

  “Where are you meeting, and what time? Can I give you a ride?” I pushed.

  Her eyes lit. “You can pick me up from work. About six-thirty is good, and El Torros”

  Well, shit.

  Chapter 5

  You don’t need candles on your birthday cake. All your dreams came true the moment I walked into your life.

  -Things you probably shouldn’t say on your first date

  Hoax

  Had I known that not only would I be meeting her family, but also her extended family, I might’ve rethought telling her I’d go.

  Not only had her parents come, but so had her uncles and aunts, as well as her grandfather and his wife.

  All in all, twelve people sat at the table, and all of them had their eyes on me.

  I’d known Silas, of course. It was hard not to when your grandfather was part of the same MC as the man, but it was only by association. My parents didn’t frequent the club parties as much, and when I’d gone to live with my uncle, he sure as fuck hadn’t spent time with them.

  When I did spend time with my grandfather at those particular parties, I sure as hell didn’t go about spending time with the man. He’d been scary as fuck then, and it was easier to avoid him than meet his gaze.

  Pru didn’t worry about my discomfort. She was too busy downing chips and hot sauce to spare me a glance.

  Apparently, El Torros had the same effect on her as it did on me.

  I’d managed to hold off on the chips for all of eighteen minutes. Then they brought the queso and tortillas out, and I was a dead man.

  “What do you do for a living?”

  I glanced up to find Pru’s mother, Cheyenne, staring at me with curiosity written all over her face.

  I picked my glass of water up—I’d much rather be having a large glass of sweet tea—and took a small sip before biting the bullet.

  “I’m active duty Army,” I told her. “I’m currently on medical leave for another two weeks until I can get this off.”

  I held up my cast-wrapped arm and showed it to her.

  The cast looked like crap today thanks to my workout and then firewood chopping. It had a smear of what looked to be pine sap on it, and I hadn’t been able to wipe it off. The white gauze that they use underneath the plaster was stained brown with sweat and dirt.

  Though, it’d looked pretty bad before my attempt at keeping in shape, as well as busy, today.

  “How’d you do that?” Sam, her father, took a sip of his beer.

  He looked suspicious as hell and very unsure about me.

  Then again, I’d gotten the same look from her grandfather and uncle as well.

  “Motorcycle wreck,” I said. “Some guy forced me off the road and I fell into a ravine and impaled myself. Broke my arm on something on the way down.”

  Sam’s eyes narrowed.

  “This the trouble the club was experiencing a while back?” Sam turned to his father.

  The ‘trouble’ he was speaking of was actually a man who had a hard-on fo
r the Dixie Wardens—Silas’s club, and didn’t like them to have back-up in the form of clubs that supported them. I was one of the unfortunate examples of what would happen if we continued to support them the way we had been.

  Unfortunately for them, the Bear Bottom Guardians MC didn’t like being threatened and intimidated into doing what they thought we should do. We did our own thing, and we asked no permission.

  “One and the same,” Silas Mackenzie muttered.

  It didn’t surprise me that they knew my business. The Dixie Wardens—which both Silas and Sebastian, Pru’s uncle, were members of—had once been the intended club for Bear Bottom, Texas.

  I’d missed all of that hub-lub. I’d agreed to go…when I could. Being career military as I was, I didn’t have as much time to put into the club as the others.

  As the new members had volunteered to come down here, it’d been decided that we no longer wanted to be the Dixie Wardens. We wanted to make our own life—form our own club. And we’d done that, much to the annoyance of our fathers and the Dixie Wardens. Silas Mackenzie had been one of the most vocal about not liking the change.

  “You’re the one that got ran off the road,” he stated. “What happened to the snake?”

  I grinned.

  During that rescue, I’d fallen down into the ravine. A ravine that had water running through it and goddamn snakes making it their home. During the time where medics were called and when they showed, a snake had happened upon Conleigh—who’d come down to help me—and me. I’d caught it by the throat and drowned the motherfucker.

  I’d saved the damn thing, too, and had it stuffed. “It’s stuffed and sitting on the counter at Bayou’s house.”

  Pru gagged. “That’s gross.”

  I shrugged. “It is what it is.”

  It was actually a kind of cool memento to memorialize the moment that I had almost died. Would have died had Conleigh not stumbled along and seen my bike laying on the side of the road.

  She’d saved my life, and I would forever be grateful to her for that.

  It was also nice that she was friends with the woman that I had a desire to get to know better—both the usual way and biblically speaking.

  “What happened?” Pru asked, trying to appear as if she was uninterested when we both knew that she was very interested.

  I’d seen her glancing at my cast and opening her mouth only to slam it closed moments later.

  I went on to explain the entire story, finishing it with what she already knew. “And they told me I had quite a few weeks with this thing on. Once it’s off and I’m released by the doctor, I have to report back to duty with the Army.”

  “I knew you were Army.” Pru scoffed.

  I shrugged. “I wasn’t trying to hide that fact. I was just trying to figure out why you hated that I was.”

  “I don’t hate that you’re Army. I hate the type of man that hot men like you act like when they’re in the military.” She shrugged.

  “What, exactly, does that mean?” I questioned.

  “It means that she won’t date you because she’s been fucked over by two men before you, both military, both Army, both pretty and both no longer in the picture.” Phoebe, Pru’s sister that I’d just met over our chips and hot sauce, announced.

  I frowned. “I’m not like other men.”

  “All men are the same. They all want one thing. It’s the women that decide they can put up with us that make the difference,” Silas grunted in reply.

  “What are you saying, Grandpa? That you are a horndog just like the rest of them?” Phoebe batted her eyes sweetly.

  “Your grandfather?” Sawyer, Silas’s wife, teased. “Of course not. He’s the perfect male specimen.”

  Laughter filled the table, and I lost my battle.

  I reached forward and picked up a chip, dipping it into the hot sauce.

  I nearly moaned at the exquisite taste.

  Another one soon followed, and another, and another.

  When I looked up next, Pru was watching me with amused, knowing eyes.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I told her. “I’m probably not even going to make it home.”

  And I didn’t.

  An hour later, my stomach was clearly not happy with me.

  We made it all the way to the rest stop before I could make it no longer.

  “I gotta go to the bathroom,” I told the woman at my side reluctantly.

  The face Pru made would’ve been solid indifference had she not had mirth sparkling in those goddamn devil eyes. “I’ll be here when you get done.”

  I pulled into the first spot that I found and parked the truck, thankful that I’d brought it instead of my bike.

  I hadn’t wanted to scare her off too badly.

  But there was no way in hell I would’ve wanted to leave someone as beautiful as Pru was sitting on the back of my bike for as long as I knew it was about to take me in the bathroom.

  “I’ll be back,” I told her, grabbing my phone.

  She eyed it with a quirk to her lips. “You know, if you left that you’d probably get done ten minutes faster.”

  I shoved the phone into my pocket and raced away, unable to spare her little quip with a retort of my own because things were about to get nasty.

  I was about three and a half minutes into the worst feeling stomach ache of my life when the door to the men’s bathroom opened and closed, and a man slammed the stall shut at the opposite end of the restroom.

  From the brief glance that I’d taken of the restroom when I’d arrived, I knew that there were six stalls in total, meaning there wasn’t enough room between him and me for the godawful business coming out of my ass not to affect the man.

  But luck was on my side, because seconds after he must’ve sat down, the same thing started happening to him that was happening to me.

  We were trading crude noises back and forth, and soon the smell became something that I had to bring my shirt up over my mouth and nose to escape. My eyes were watering both due to the smell and the way my stomach was telling me that it wasn’t the best idea in the world to have eaten all that queso and chips.

  What felt like hours later, I finally felt that I was good enough to make it home—at least to Bayou’s home—and finished my business.

  It was when I was washing my hands that the man on the opposite stall finally finished his business, too.

  Not one to care about things that were just a part of life, I didn’t run out of the building like others would’ve done since they cared about propriety.

  Maybe I should have. If I had, my eyes wouldn’t have met Pru’s father’s eyes in the bathroom mirror as we both realized just who, exactly, had been making all that racket.

  Neither of us said a word as he washed his hands. I didn’t say goodbye as I exited the bathroom.

  Nor did we turn around and acknowledge each other when we both got to the parking lot and our vehicles were side by side.

  I wasn’t surprised at all to see Pru and her mother laughing manically about something they perceived as funny as I walked up.

  They both turned as one as they heard my approach, and I was struck with how beautiful Pru’s mother was. If Pru aged even half as well, she’d still be a knockout.

  “So…” Pru said, eyeing me. “Are you still thinking Mexican was a good idea?”

  I patted my stomach, which still felt raw. “I hate to say it, but anything that’s not white rice and white bread makes my stomach hate me. Sadly, Mexican food is one of my favorites, but also one of the first that hits me. The other food I can at least make it home before anything starts to go wrong.”

  “Did you have your gallbladder out, too?” she asked as Sam finally made his way up to the group and looped his arm around his wife.

  I shook my head. “No. I’m just a sensitive soul.”

  Sam snorted. “You’re telling me you don’t even have a reason for doing what we did back the
re?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. Sadly. It would be nice if I did, or had a way to pinpoint what it did to me and why so I could prevent it. Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers. I’ve been to quite a few specialists as well. Pretty much it just is what it is and I don’t have a choice in the matter.”

  “So y’all had a bonding moment?” Phoebe, who hadn’t bothered to get out of the back seat of her dad’s truck, asked.

  Pru’s lips twitched.

  Her father grunted and said, “There is a certain type of bonding that you do with your baby’s new boyfriend and smelling his shit in a bathroom isn’t one of them.”

  Pru and Cheyenne started to crack up at that. Phoebe had gone back to her phone and hadn’t even cracked a smile.

  I winced at the remembrance of the smell.

  My stomach rumbled then, and Pru, who was close enough to me to hear it, looked at me with worried eyes. “You need to go home.”

  I nodded. I needed to go home.

  Because sadly, shit happened. Literally.

  Worst. Date. Ever.

  Chapter 6

  Don’t let people treat you like pond water. You’re Fiji water, okay?

  -Text from Pru to Phoebe

  Pru

  “So you’re thinking about Mr. Pooper?” Phoebe teased.

  I flipped her off. “Fuck off.”

  “That was pretty funny, though,” she admitted. “I mean, how much better could it have gotten? Our dad got to listen to your new man poop while he pooped. And, from what mom told me the next day, it was really bad. Dad said that he’d never had to shit like that in his life.”

  I covered my face with my hands and started to laugh, unable to control myself. “Oh, God. That’s so bad.”

  Phoebe grunted and went back to her phone.

  “What’s on there that’s so fucking important?” I questioned.

  She turned it around and showed it to me. “A friend of mine made a new app that allows you to go through flashcards on your phone. You take a picture of what you want on there and it transcribes it onto a flashcard. From there, you type in the word that you want on the opposite side, and voila!”

  I grunted out a reply. “I hated school. I’m so glad that I’m done with it.”