Leah sat down. “I hope so. I was a hag.”
Ashley set her pen in her book and closed it. Leah read upside down and saw that its title was Indiana. “Yeah, but it’s not about that.”
Leah had come to apologize, but she wasn’t up for a lecture already. Her guard went up. “I know, I know. I’m a slut. I heard you.”
“Jeez, Leah. That’s not what I said. I said I was worried about you.”
“You said it was exhausting to be my friend.” She sighed and pulled back. “I didn’t come to have that fight all over again. I want to make up. You were right. I’ve been doing stupid stuff, and I need to stop. I know you try to take care of me, and I know it’s not fair.”
“I’m sorry, too. I don’t do a very good job of taking care.” She threw a glance over her shoulder at the back door and lowered her voice. “I think that’s why I got so mad. I was more mad at me than you. All this feels like my fault. I took you out to party, I tried to get you to let go a little, and now you’ve got this whole double life thing going, and I’m afraid you’re gonna get hurt.”
When Ashley moved to Grant, Leah had been the girl everybody still thought she was. All her time and attention had been on school and church and taking care of her dad. Filling in the huge space in their lives that her mom had left and trying to make everything okay. Failing miserably, but trying.
Ashley was only two years older, but she was from Chicago, and she’d seemed so grown-up and sophisticated. She had all these stories about big-city things she’d done and seen, and boyfriends she’d had, and she’d thought Grant was pathetically quaint and boring. Like the town in the movie Footloose. Her nickname for Leah had been ‘Ariel’ for awhile, after the preacher’s daughter in the movie, but thank goodness she’d gotten quickly bored with that.
She’d convinced Leah to sneak out one night and taken her to a college frat party. On that night, Leah had gotten drunk for the first time, had Ecstasy for the first time, and had sex for the first time. And had her first orgasm. A lot of diary pages had been devoted to that night.
Leah had never ever before felt the way she’d felt that night: like she didn’t care about anything and cared about everything all at the same time. Like everything was important, was absolutely crucial to the fabric of existence, but it was okay that she couldn’t control anything at all. It was okay for things to just happen because they happened.
She loved that feeling. Sometimes, she really needed that feeling.
And sometimes it got her into a little bit of trouble.
“Can we talk about something else, please?” Leah nodded at the book. “Why are you reading a book about Indiana?”
Ashley laughed and ran her hands through her short, dark hair. “It’s not about Indiana. That’s the name of the main character. It’s a French novel.”
“In French?”
“Well, yeah. It’s on the reading list for a class I’m taking in the fall.”
Ashley’s major was something like Medieval History, and she was taking French and Italian as minors. Leah was both in awe of that and confused by it. It seemed like a weirdly specific thing to want to spend a whole life studying. Thousand-year-old dead stuff. But everything about college seemed out of her reach and a little bit exotic. Like Ashley herself.
“So,” her friend said after a couple of seconds, “how’re you doing? Everything okay? I heard there was some commotion at church the other day. Everybody at the IGA’s been talking about it.”
“It wasn’t a big deal. Just a guy having a bad day.”
“I heard he went ballistic and tore everything up.”
“That’s just people telling stories bigger than the truth. He got mad that his sister was giving away something important to him. It’s a long story, and it wasn’t a big deal.”
Ashley’s dad had moved away a long time ago, before she was born. Even though she lived here now, and worked as a checker at the market, she’d hardly ever been around before that. She was just a visitor and didn’t know the town history at all.
But her friend liked to chew on gossip, and she had her teeth in a juicy bone. “I heard he was a Brazen Bull, though. I’ve been to a couple of their parties. Those guys are hardcore.”
At that, Leah stopped being irritated at the gossip and sat up. “You know them?”
“No, I don’t know them. I know a girl who works as a…” She shook her head. “I know somebody who knows them. She’s in the history department, too. I went with her a couple of times. They have these parties that are…well, they’re not open, exactly, but if you’re a hot chick, they let you in. It’s kind of like tryouts, the way Kendra describes it.”
“Tryouts? For what?”
Ashley looked back at the house again, then dropped her voice and leaned in. “To get regularly fucked by bikers. They like literally keep a stable of girls. I see that look in your eye, Lee. No. What were we just saying?”
“I’m just curious.”
“Which is your whole problem. Trust me, it’s not necessarily as fun as it sounds.”
Not necessarily fun. Meaning that she’d had fun at some point. “Do you know when they have these parties? Could you ask your friend?”
“Shit, Leah. Seriously?”
“It’s not like that. I’m not looking for a party. It’s just—I’d like to see that guy again.”
“The guy who punched his own sister in the face. You’ve never had a boyfriend in your life, you don’t give any of the guys who like you two seconds of attention, you go looking for faceless fucks, and that’s the guy you want to see again.”
She didn’t go looking for faceless fucks. She didn’t know what she was looking for, but that was just a thing that happened while she was looking for whatever it was she couldn’t find. “He didn’t punch her. Sheesh, I hate the way people talk. He was upset, and he just…I don’t know. He flailed. And she was in the way.”
Ashley’s laugh oozed scorn. “Well, I guess your ‘I ran into a door’ will be convincing later on, after he rides you off into the sunset on his great big sexy Harley.”
Leah was getting mad again, and feeling protective of Max. The guy who’d held her like he had, who’d kissed her like he had, who’d sighed and rested his head on her shoulder, right in the middle of everybody, like the world had just stopped for him when he’d picked her up—that guy was not a guy she needed to be afraid of.
But all of that was only for her to know. She wasn’t going to share it with anyone.
She just wanted him to remember that night. She didn’t need anything else from him but that. If Ashley could make that happen—despite her friend’s contempt, she kept her cool and pushed the point some more.
“How about if I take care of you this time? If you can get us to a Brazen Bulls party, I’ll stay straight, and you can party, and I’ll get you home.”
“Right.”
“I mean it. I told you, I get that I’ve been stupid. So I’ll be smart.”
“Except for going looking for a crazy man.”
Leah smiled. “Well, yeah. Except for that.”
CHAPTER FIVE
Delaney walked in through the front door of the station. He’d been over at the clubhouse most of the morning, working on Russian business.
The station was lacking in customers at the moment. All three bays were loud with activity, but the pumps were free, and none of the usual neighborhood folks were around. Gunner and Griff were just sitting on their asses, waiting for something to do.
Gunner stood up. Standing for a superior was a habit he’d had since his Army days. He got shit from his brothers for it now, and he’d been trying to shake it for years, but if he wasn’t thinking, up he went. At least he wasn’t snapping to attention anymore.
He thought Delaney liked it a little, anyway.
“Hey, Prez.”
“Hey, fellas. Griffin, looks like you can handle shit over here. Gunner, come on over next door and talk to me.”
Gunner felt sick. Griff ga
ve him a smug smirk, like oh, you in trouble!
Oh, shit. What had he done? Fuck. Fuck! He’d been flying straight. Even with all that shit at home, he’d held it together, more or less. Yeah, he couldn’t ride for a while because of his hand, and he’d had to sit out a couple of runs, but that was a hit to his wallet, not his patch. Evvie wasn’t anything the club would know about. She sure as fuck wouldn’t say anything—and anyway, that was weird, maybe, but it wasn’t out of bounds.
With a nervous cough to loosen his throat, he said, “Yeah, D. Sure,” and he followed the Bulls president out of the station and over to the clubhouse next door.
The Bulls clubhouse was a refitted four-family flat and the vacant lot next to it. Inside, long before Gunner’s time, the walls that had separated those four apartments on two floors had been pulled down, and new walls erected, so that the first floor was now a big party room, the club chapel, a kitchen, Delaney’s office, a bathroom, and some storage. Where they’d taken down load-bearing walls and left the space open, they’d put in block columns to bear the load. Those things got tricky to navigate in the later hours of a party.
In the basement, they had more storage, their gun locker, a laundry room, a small gym, and another room that was just an empty concrete box with a drain in the middle of the floor. That one didn’t get much use, thankfully.
The second floor was their crash pad. The whole floor had been converted into small bedrooms and a couple communal full bathrooms. Nobody lived in the clubhouse, but the second floor was where they went to fuck, if they were feeling a need for privacy, or to crash if they’d tied one on too hard, or for guests to stay when friendly clubs dropped into Tulsa.
Up the middle of the whole thing was a substantial staircase.
A few months back, Delaney’s wife, Mo, had drafted the whole club—patches, prospects, hangarounds, sweetbutts, old ladies, kids, everybody—into a redo of the party room. From the floor all the way to the fucking ceiling, everything had been cleaned, primed, painted, replaced, rebuilt, and/or restored.
The place smelled so strange now—like sawdust and latex paint. And it looked like a fucking Applebee’s. All the furniture matched. All the stuff on the walls had a theme. And they’d taken out the stripper pole.
Thank God Mo hadn’t gotten her Celtic claws in the chapel. And never would.
That weird new-building smell struck Gunner as he followed Delaney in and through, to his office in the back. Delaney’s office had been the subject of Mo’s annual redecorating attentions the year before the party room, but you wouldn’t know it to look at it now. It was a mess—a desk piled with papers, floor stacked with boxes, the walls covered with papers just tacked straight into the sheetrock. And a Harley pinup calendar hanging over some papers.
Delaney nodded at the one seat besides his desk chair. “Have a seat, Gun.”
Gunner sat. Delaney hadn’t said a word all the way over, which meant whatever he had to say was bad enough not to let anyone else hear. “I’m sorry, Prez.”
The president cocked his head. “About what?”
“Whatever I did. I swear I’ve been trying to stay steady. I thought I was.”
“Can you tell me why I’m getting calls from Deb asking me to make you call home?”
Deb had called Delaney? She’d sicced his president on him? That was some low bullshit.
That sick feeling he’d had since Delaney had come into the station turned into a serious need to puke. He swallowed back the flood of saliva in his mouth and punched his thigh with his not-broken hand until the urge to heave all over his president’s desk backed off.
Delaney stared at Gunner’s fist on his thigh for a second. “What’s goin’ on, Gun? There trouble with your family?”
He hadn’t spoken to Deb or his father since the day at the church. Deb had called about a hundred times, but fuck her. And fuck him. Gunner figured they’d probably gone ahead and thrown away all of Martin’s life while he was away, and he didn’t want to know it for a fact. He thought he might totally and completely lose his shit then.
He could not fucking believe they tried to do it without him noticing. She’d fucking asked him to come and help, without telling him what he was doing.
Gunner thought about that stupid weaving thing, whatever she’d called it, and about the totally empty room he’d gone into, and, knowing his sister, he understood what she’d been planning. She’d intended to give away all that stuff and then, when it was all gone and there was nothing he could do about it, she’d have broken it to him that ‘it was time to move on,’ or some bullshit. He bet she wanted that contraption in his old room.
His and Martin’s old room.
She’d been trying to manage him, but that had sure blown up in her face.
Delaney was the only person in the club who knew about Martin. Well, and Mo. They’d befriended his family, and, in the course of explaining some of the shit he’d done, he’d ended up talking about his brother a few times. But they’d kept his confidence. He didn’t know why it had to be a secret, but it did. He hated people to know about his brother. Too many people already did. Like everybody at Heartland fucking Baptist fucking Church. And the whole fucking town of fucking Grant, Oklahoma.
Fuck them. Fuck Deb. Fuck his father. Yeah, there was trouble with his family. “No, sir.”
Heaving the sigh of a man who knew he was being lied to, Delaney said, “Tell me again how you broke your hand.”
“Slammed it in a tailgate.” That was close to the truth, at least. Change the preposition to ‘on’ instead of ‘in,’ and it was the whole truth and nothing but.
“Here’s the thing, son. I’m worried. You’re right, you’ve been doing a good job staying steady lately. But I can see you starting to get jittery. And now your sister is calling, crying about how you won’t talk to her. I got no business getting in the middle of your people, but I want to know if your hand has anything to do with whatever’s wrong between you and Deb. As the president of this club, I need to know that.”
“I didn’t break it on her, if that’s what you’re asking.” Also true.
“That’s not what I’m asking. I didn’t think you would. But I guess you gave me an answer.” He sat back, letting the chair take his weight and lean. “I’m worried, Gun. This is how your shit starts, and I’m going to need you. We got some new business with the Russians, and I’m going to need you to get it moving. I need you steady.”
“I’m steady, D.” He needed him to get something moving? He would stay steady for that. Whatever he had to do. “I can’t ride, but I’m steady.”
“You don’t need to ride for this. We’ll talk about it in church. How much longer with the cast?”
Gunner glowered at the nasty thing. He could not wait for it to come off. It itched like a motherfucker, and it was starting to smell funny. And his fingers were starting to look a little weird, too. “A couple weeks, maybe? I go in Friday morning for an X-ray. They say they’ll tell me how much longer then.”
“Okay.” He shifted, sitting up and turning directly to his desk, which was a sign that he was done with the meeting. “You need your family, Gunner. More than most. Make it up with Deb.”
Gunner left the office without responding.
~oOo~
All that talk about his cast had gotten him thinking about it, which got him feeling the itch. He went into the kitchen to look for something he could shove down in there and get some relief. After rooting through drawers, considering and discarding all sorts of weird objects he didn’t understand the use for, he came upon a group of metal spikes. The things for kabobs.
Perfect. He pinched one and shoved it into the cast, his eyes rolling back as it reached a spot that had been feeling like something burrowing into him.
“What the fuck are you doing?”
He jumped and whirled around, stabbing himself with the kabob thing in the process. Willa stood in the kitchen doorway. Her hands were on her hips, and her face was all twisted up like she�
��d just caught a little kid doing something dirty. Fuck, she’d been a mom for like two months, and she already had that look down.
“I had an itch,” he said, sounding like a little kid caught doing something dirty.
She came in and snatched the kebab thing out of his cast. The tip was red and wet. “And you’re bleeding. Great. This is why they tell you not to shove things in your cast, Gun. This is why I told you not to do it. And a kebab skewer? Really?”
Skewer. Right. “I had an itch.”
She tossed the skewer into the sink and took his cast in her hands. “You need to go to the doctor—like today, now—and tell them you broke the skin under your cast. An infection under a cast is no joke.” While she lectured him, her soft, pretty hands moved over his arm, turning the cast gently, pushing on the skin above it.
Twist (The Brazen Bulls MC Book 2) Page 6