by Bijou Hunter
“I never want you to hide anything from me.”
Staring into his dark eyes, I don’t know if I should tell him about Rod’s threats and how he hurt me. Colt wants to hear the truth. He believes honesty is always better, but I’ve seen otherwise. Rod is in his club, and his club is his family. If I stir up trouble for his club by stirring up trouble with Rod, I could put Colt in a situation where he needs to choose. I’d have to be completely stupid to believe he’d pick me over his family.
“Can I take home the leftover tacos for Rae and Kori?” I ask, hoping to change the subject.
Colt studies my face, searching for the answer to his questions. I don’t know what he sees or if he chooses to let the topic drop. Either way, he smiles. I instantly grin back at him. His happiness is infectious while his lips prove even more distracting. Within minutes, we forget about Rod and focus on the time we have left together today.
THE CHAPTER WHERE THE HEIR WOOS ALL THE LADIES
THE HEIR
Watching Stella sleep is my next big goal in life. I hate leaving her at the motel. She belongs in my bed, where I can keep her safe and properly fucked. Her body fits perfectly against mine. We’re made to share a bed, but I still have to leave her behind.
The heat barely lets up despite the lack of sunlight as I drive home. I assume Pop has something to talk about since he messaged me six times throughout the day. None of his texts said anything more than we needed to talk.
I messaged him while in Conroe to ask what he wanted, but he only said he was looking for me. His vague shit now makes sense. Earlier, I assumed he was feeling dickish about my taking Stella to Belmont House. Now I know his topic of choice was Asshole Sanders.
I park next to Pop’s bike in the garage and hurry into the house where the cold air welcomes me. Music plays from the kitchen, and I hear Mom singing along with Kenny Loggins. I turn the corner to find Pop waiting for me. He leans against the kitchen counter with his arms crossed and a menacing scowl on his face.
“Where the hell were you all day?” he barks.
“I drove to Conroe, drove back, picked up my girl, hung out until dark, dropped her off, and came home. Why?”
“I sent you messages.”
“And I replied to them.”
“But you’re only now coming home.”
“You didn’t tell me to come home.”
“For fuck’s sake.”
“Coop,” Mom whispers when my father looks ready to go rabid.
“Did your girl tell you that Rod paid back the money she said he took?”
“Is he still denying he stole it?”
“Answer my question.”
“She did tell me during dinner.”
“You ate already?” Mom asks while checking on a rack of ribs in the oven.
“Yeah, tacos and rice, but I could eat again.”
“Of course, you can,” she says, giving me a smile as if she hasn’t noticed Pop’s anger.
“What else did she tell you?” Pop asks.
“That he went over there alone.”
Pop reveals a hint of added irritation before muttering, “He wasn’t supposed to go alone. Is that what she said happened?”
“Who was supposed to go with him?”
“His pop.”
“I don’t know about anyone else being there.”
“What exactly did she say?”
“She said he showed up and returned the money. She said he looked like someone hurt him. She didn’t say anything else, but I think she wanted to.”
“Say what?”
“I don’t know. Rod’s an asshole. If he was alone with her, he might have said or done anything.”
“If she was your girl, why wouldn’t she tell you?” he asks, hoping to start trouble.
“Stella’s insecure. Bad childhood. You know the drill.”
Mom stops stirring the pot of rice and pats my arm. “You're sweet to her, aren’t you?”
“Just like my mama taught me.”
Mom is a sucker for my smile, but Pop isn’t as big a fan. He grunts and crosses his arms even tighter. I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s actually hurting himself with his angry display.
“We busted up Rod today to settle things.”
Mom’s shoulders go rigid, and she stirs her pot of beans with a little too much vigor. Pop notices her reaction but says nothing. I’d like to share my feelings on the matter—Rod needs to be set on fire and left to burn to ash—but I feel like speaking up will only agitate Mom.
“Can I have ribs and beans too?” I ask, leaning down to rest my head on her shoulder.
Mom laughs when I bat my lashes at her. “I already said you could.”
“Yeah, but then Pop yelled at me, so I thought maybe I was grounded or something.”
“Idiot,” Pop grumbles, and walks out.
Mom rolls her eyes. “Do me a favor, Colton.”
“Yeah, Mom.”
“Let your pop yell at you until he gets it out of his system. That way, we can have a quiet evening.”
“Yes, Mom.”
Patting my cheek, she smiles. “You’re a good boy, and I’m excited you found a girl you’re excited about.”
“She’s a keeper. She has my heart in the palm of her hand.”
Mom’s gaze softens, and I think she might cry. “My boy’s falling in love.”
“Didn’t think that’d ever happen, did you?”
“It’s true I’d begun to worry,” Mom says and hugs me despite my sweatiness. “I want to meet her.”
“Soon. She’s skittish like MJ’s cat. Like she wants love but is nervous about coming into the open to get it.”
“Meow Meow suffered a hard life before MJ took her in, but now she’s getting plenty of love. We can do the same for Stella.”
I squeeze Mom until I hear the grumpy grunts of my father from the living room. He’s no doubt waiting for me to grace him with my presence. I let go of Mom and strut to where her man simmers in his manly anger.
“Some of the guys weren’t happy about Rod getting beat down,” he says as soon as I join him on the back porch.
“And you need me to beat them down now?”
Pop ignores my question. “They think it only happened because you like this girl.”
“Her name is Stella, and who cares what a few fucking grunts think? You’re the general. It’s your call. They need to follow orders, or I really will beat them down.”
“You’re part of something bigger than yourself, Colton. You need to remember that.”
“The club exists whether those guys live or die. It’s not about them, and you fucking know it. Kirk Johansson created the club, and he made it strong. You took over and made it bigger. What the fuck did Eagle Eye ever do besides jump on the bandwagon?”
Pop’s anger hits a bump. Yeah, because I’m fucking right! Eagle Eye and Rod aren’t special. Now it’s true that I might not be particularly special either. After all, I didn’t create anything. I just do what I’m told—usually.
Sure, I took over the pot and moonshine business from the Mullens, but I didn’t start it from scratch. So, yeah, I’m not particularly special, but Pop is, and his pop was too. Their word should be law. I suspect it would have been with Pop-Pop. For whatever reason, my father treats the club as a business, and he chooses to brainstorm with the peons.
“Stop calling your club brothers ‘peons,’” Pop mutters after I share what I’m thinking. “You sound like Cap.”
“The Hayes family doesn’t suffer fools.”
“Oh, they suffer them plenty.”
“I don’t think they do.”
Pop is very competitive with Angus Hayes, so he can’t think straight whenever challenged with the other man’s superiority. “Then maybe you should go work for them.”
“I would, but you know Tennessee is full of butternuts, and I think I might be allergic.”
“Funny.”
“I stole that from MJ actually.”
Pop rev
eals a smile. “She really does believe she’s allergic to certain people.”
“She got that from Shelby who claims body odor gives her the mumps,” I say, thinking of Dylan and Winnie Campbell’s daughter up in Shasta.
“That girl is so weird.”
“You’d be weird too if you got the mumps from stinky pits.”
Pop rolls his eyes. “I need you to be cool with Rod. Can you do that?”
“No,” I say, shaking my head. “No, I can’t. He’s scum. If you’d taken one of his legs or possibly an eye, I might be okay with treating him with indifference. A beating, though, just isn’t going to cut it.”
“It’s what I decided.”
“By committee.”
“Don’t tell me how to do my job, kid.”
“Did you take a vote?” I ask, imagining a group of tattooed fatheads weighing the pros and cons of punishing a rapist.
“Shut up.”
“Rod will be a problem in the future.”
“You can’t kill everyone who wrongs you. It’s not that fucking simple. If you’d ever killed anyone, you’d know that.”
“Yeah, I get what you’re saying, but you bent over backward to make nice with Jim Bean because you didn’t want him to know you killed his boy. That’s despite him knowing his boy tried to kill your girl. Then you ate shit to appease that fucker Topher, and he ended up dying anyway. Seems fucked up that Sissy Mullen needed to pull the trigger when you could have done it easier.”
“If you think I’m such a bad leader, why the fuck don’t you join another chapter?”
“Well, maybe I will. It’d be better than having to pal around with a rapist fuck like Rod during club cookouts.”
Pop snarls at me, revealing the kind of man who—if unleashed—would have killed Gary Lee, Topher, and Rod in one afternoon. This is the man I grew up admiring. Then I got older and realized he’d gone businessman and now worried about long-term strategies for inter-club synergy.
Before Pop whips out his claws to pair with his growling, Thisbe runs outside and screams, “Colt 45!” He picks her up as she tries to climb him. Thisbe’s enthusiasm over the fireflies quickly tames his bad mood, and I know we’re done bitching for the night.
But tomorrow is another story.
THE UNWANTED
After Rae drives to work in the fixed Soul, Kori and I spend our morning swimming. The pool needs cleaning beyond removing leaves, but we don’t let a little icky keep us from cooling down in the brutal heat wave.
“I don’t like chocolate,” Kori says as we sit on shallow end’s steps.
“I don’t like candy canes.”
“You’re weird.” When I frown at her, she only smiles. “Just kidding. They’re gross too. Kids at school loved candy, but a lot of it is nasty.”
“It’s better not to like cheap food.”
“Mom likes candy.”
“Because she couldn’t eat candy when she was little. People always want what they can’t have.”
“What do you want?”
Love is what I think but don’t say. “I could sure get used to eating barbecue all the time.”
“Is Colt rich?” she asks, tugging at her frayed Mickey Mouse one-piece.
“Yeah. Not super rich, but he doesn’t worry about money.”
“Is his job hard?”
“I don’t know.”
“I want a job where I don’t need to worry about money. I want to live in a house and eat good food,” she says and slides into the pool to dunk her head under the water. Once cooled off, she returns to my side. “And I don’t want to take a bus. I need a job to pay for a car.”
“You’re smart, and you do well at school. I bet there’s a whole bunch of jobs you could get that’d pay for a car and a house.”
Kori studies me with her fair blue eyes. “How come you don’t have that kind of job?”
“I wasn’t good at school.”
“Because you can’t read?”
“I can read,” I mutter, shocked that she thinks I can’t.
“Not good.”
Irritation deflating, I shrug. “No, not good.”
“Do you need to read to do good at school?”
“Yeah. I bet you could even go to college.”
“At the college here?”
“If you want, I guess. I don’t know anything about college.”
“Did Colt go to college?”
“I don’t think so, but his parents did.”
“Are they smart?”
“I haven’t met them.”
Kori pushes her quickly drying hair away from her face and sighs. “I want a dog.”
“What kind of dog?”
“I don’t know.”
“We can look at different dogs to see what you like,” I suggest and reach for my phone.
Kori smiles for only a moment before losing her excitement. I follow her gaze, wondering if the wannabe kiddie diddler has returned. Last time, we had to throw rocks at him to make him leave. Fortunately, he hasn’t come back since.
Instead of the pervert, I spot Rod’s girlfriend at the pool gate. Dressed in heels and a leather skirt, she looks ready for work. A ton of makeup mostly hides her black eye, but there’s no disguising the swelling around her lip.
“Feel good about yourself?” she asks, walking into the pool area.
“I don’t have anything to say to you.”
“Your friend is a whore, and she knows she came onto Rod. No one is fooled by her innocent act.”
“You’re a whore!” Kori yells, setting off her short temper.
I rest my hand on the girl’s arm and whisper, “It’s okay. She wants to fight us because he beat her up and she feels bad. Just ignore her.”
Kori doesn’t listen as usual. “You got hit by your boyfriend.”
“You’re a little cunt.”
That word riles me up immediately now that I think of it as describing my mother and her family. Kori is a temperamental six-year-old, but she’s no cunt, and only a horrible person would call her that.
Standing up, I raise my voice to ask, “What do you want? I have nothing for you. It’s not my fault you’re dating a thug.”
“And you don’t think the asshole you’re dating is a thug?”
“He’d never hit me, so he’s better than Rod.”
She narrows her blue eyes, winces in pain, and then snarls at me. “He’ll hit you eventually. You’re a trashy whore like your friend, and guys always lose their shit with your kind.”
“Why are you here? He’s the one who pounded on your face, so why are you mad at me and not him? He’s the one who pretends to care about you.”
The way she’s standing makes me think we’re going to fight. I’ve thrown down with a few girls over my lifetime. I hurt them, and they hurt me. No one ever won. This isn’t “Rocky” with a triumphant theme song playing, and I’m no fan of pain, but I’ll do my best to make her bleed if she gets anywhere near Kori.
“Don’t act tough,” she says, faking laughter. “I could tear off your top and show the world your tiny tits.”
“If they’re so tiny, what do I care? You’re the one wearing heels and leather. Why get all dressed up if you just planned to end up in the pool?”
“Fuck off,” she says, stepping away from the water. She’s figured out that even if she wins the fight that she’s getting wet. Bitch hadn’t thought things out before coming here to make me feel guilty for her shitty romantic choice.
“Sooner or later, what you did to Rod is coming back on you,” she says, walking out of the pool area and to her car. “He won’t forget.”
I don’t respond because I don’t care what she has to say. She’s more in danger than I am. Sleeping with a violent man never ends well.
Kori tugs at my hand. She doesn’t look scared, just angry. For a six-year-old, she’s very good at feeding her rage.
“You should tell on her to Colt.”
“He can’t do anything.”
�
��Did you tell him about the asshole?”
“You need to stop cussing so much, or you’ll accidentally say bad words at school.”
Kori considers my concern. She doesn’t like to get into trouble. Especially since the teacher last year ragged on her constantly. Kori’s stubborn, but she craves praise from grown-ups.
“You should tell him.”
“Sometimes, secrets are better.”
“You said I shouldn’t keep secrets.”
“From your mom and me. From other people is okay. We’re family, and you can only trust family.”
“You should make Colt your family, and then you could tell him.”
“Maybe.”
Kori gives me a dismissive frown that shouldn’t hurt my feelings but does. She sees me as weak. Of course, she isn’t wrong, but I hoped to have her respect for a few more years. Unfortunately, she’s picked up on how the world works. Kori knows the weak get shafted while the strong always triumph—even when they’re wrong.
It’s the real reason she likes Colt. Not the food, but how he does what he wants, and others get in line. She respects him in a way she can’t with me. I’d try to explain how he has luxuries I don’t, or how his family works compared to mine, but she can’t understand the smaller details. She only sees who wins in the end, and that’s rarely me.
Though as soon as she sees Rae, she brags about how I scared off the stripper. For one brief moment, I get to be a winner, and it feels great! No wonder Colt has so much swagger.
THE HEIR
I wake up around noon to find several texts from Stella. One explains how happy Rae was to drive a car to work that morning. Another reveals how Kori had never eaten tacos before and was now a huge fan. Stella sends a picture of the girl with her mouth full and eyes wide. I also receive a selfie that I suspect is meant to be sexy, but she seems more nervous than alluring. I can almost feel her fear through the phone. Yeah, it’ll take time to fix what so many assholes fucked up.
After breakfast, I drop by the office where I learn again how much summer sucks for pot purchases. The college kids are my best customers, and most of them are getting high in their hometowns right now. Not long from now, though, they’ll return to Ellsberg and business will pick up.