Thrash Read online

  That’s it.

  That’s fucking it.

  I nod, then bring my fist back and connect it to his cheek. He stumbles backward, his body bent forward, and he’s holding his jaw. “That was a warning shot. You’re just a little bitch boy whose mouth has outgrown his brains. I ever catch you talking to your sister like that and I’ll be getting word to your old man. I’m sure he’d have a few things to say about your attitude. You want that?”

  He rights himself, but doesn’t meet my eyes. His mouth moves a few times before he gets sound to come out and he whispers, “No.”

  “Look me in the eyes,” I snap. I’m still feeling pissed as fuck, and I’m in no mood to stand here and play daddy to this damn kid, but we have to get a few things straight. When Jeremy lifts his eyes and steels himself for the punishment he deserves, I think that there might be hope for him after all. He might be short bus slow, but he’s at least responding. I’d hate to have to really fuck him up, since we’re going to be living together.

  “Let’s get a few things straight—your ass is lucky that it was my bike you scratched, and you’re damn lucky that I was the one who caught that little scene just now. Don’t forget that your dad’s Forsaken, and that means both you and your sister are family. Any of my brothers catch you talking to your sister—and my Old Lady—like that and they won’t give a fuck who your daddy is.”

  “Yes, Sir,” he says and waits until I signal for him to leave. When he does, I look back at Nic. She has her head in her hands with her feet up on the couch and her elbows resting on her knees. Striding to the couch, I sit and look down at her. She’s so fucking small compared to him. The boy’s got to be about six feet tall by now, and every time I see him he’s got another couple pounds of muscle on his frame. She’s pretty much just skin, bones, and tits.

  “I’m sorry,” she says. “He really is sorry about scratching your bike. He just had a rough day.”

  “That kid isn’t sorry, but he’s about to be if he doesn’t learn to watch his fucking mouth,” I mutter. She lifts her head and pushes her straight blonde hair back from her face. Crawling up on her knees, she pushes herself up against my side.

  “Please,” she whispers. “I know he’s a brat, but he’s all I got.” The sincerity in her voice breaks my heart.

  “You have me. I told you—you’re my woman,” I say.

  “You didn’t have to call me your Old Lady to scare those kids,” she says. “They were plenty scared of you anyway.”

  “Come on, Nicole. You’re not stupid. You know that’s not why I did it.”

  “Do I?” she asks. Her bottom lip is at a pout, and she looks sad, like really fucking sad. “I don’t feel like that’s where we’re going. I feel like you’re just passing time.”

  “We’re moving past that shit that went down. Both of us,” I say. I can’t talk about how I fucked up anymore, so I change the subject. “This happen often?” I ask.

  She doesn’t respond. Instead, she leans over and places a kiss on my cheek so fucking softly that it makes me feel almost nervous. Nic isn’t soft and she isn’t gentle. My girl’s hell on wheels with a bottle of Jack and her middle finger up in the air—at least with me she is. But this moment makes me want to give her gentle. I want to show her that not everything has to be loud and abrasive. The quiet is nice, too.

  “More lately,” she says quietly. “Butch’s parole was denied. Letter came in the mail this afternoon.”

  "Shit," I say. I’ll have to touch base with Jim on that and see if there’s anything we can do. That's not good. We had been hoping that his parole would be granted. The shit we ask our guys to do both on the inside, as well as the outside, is pretty fucked up. Butch went in a few years back for a delivery gone wrong. The guy fucked up, and it wasn't pretty. None of us like to see a brother going down, even if it is his fault. Nic is having a hard enough time with her brother, much less herself, that it would make a world of difference if her father were here. For one, Jeremy wouldn’t be pulling the shit he does. Knowing Butch, he’d lay the kid in the dirt and make him explain in full sentences why what he did was wrong, and he’d do it with his boot to the kid’s throat.

  “Yeah, shit,” she says. Looking over at her and giving her an apologetic smile, I decide that I like this. The talking about everyday stuff with her, the bossing her punk brother around with her. Fuck. I just like being around her. Unfortunately, it’s rare that she seems to feel the same about me, and that’s a pretty big problem. I can only do so much to try to make this happen. Now I just need her to step up and do her part. Like making me some food.

  “Still, he needs to learn what it means to be a man, and you can’t teach him that,” I say.

  “Okay, so pick one up for me the next time you’re at Home Depot,” she says with a sarcastic smile.

  “Why? You got the pick of the litter right here,” I say with a grin. Her face falls, and she shakes her head. Pushing herself up off the couch and to her feet, she sticks her hands in her pockets.

  “You need to stop saying stuff like that.” Her voice is teetering somewhere between angry and frustrated. Knowing Nic, her mood could easily swing either way. I turn and give her my full attention.

  “Why?” I ask.

  “Because I’m going to get used to it, and you’re either going to hurt me or you’ll leave,” she says. I’m not going to leave, but it doesn’t seem to matter what I say. She just doesn’t believe me.

  She crosses the room, I follow, and spin her around. When she looks up at me, her eyes plead with me to stop talking, but I don’t want to.

  “I can’t promise you that this is going to work out, but I can say that I like this.”

  “And what’s going to be left of me when it doesn’t work out?” she says. I keep a stone face and cup her face in my hands, then lean down and kiss her on her forehead.

  “Go to sleep, baby,” I say. “You’re drunk. Leave the door unlocked, because I’m going to be back soon.” Instead of arguing, for once, she just gives me a small “okay” then pulls away and walks to her bedroom at the end of the hall. She closes the door behind her, and I’m left alone in the living room. It’s sparsely decorated, and the furniture is in disrepair—just like everything else. This house is so fucked—both the actual structure and the people in it, and for some reason I want to fix them both. I’ll start small, with Jeremy, beginning tomorrow.

  I leave the house and take the long way back to the house that Trigger and I share. When we left to pick up the girls, I didn’t even think about bringing my bag with me, but maybe this is a good thing. It gives both Nic and I a chance to take a deep breath and think about shit. Her eyes were so laced with concern and confusion, and even fear, that I don’t know what to say to her right now. All I can think about is all that shit with Trigger and Princess. They’re both so fucked up, but in their own ways, and they seem to like one another well enough. Well enough to take on the entire club on his part, and to risk her safety on hers. Seeing that shit firsthand makes me believe that maybe even the most difficult, hard to love soul can be loved by someone. Sappy as it is, it gives me hope.

  Pulling up to the house, I’m surprised to find Trigger’s bike in the driveway. Not sure why I don’t expect it, or where I thought they went, but the moment the shiny black finish comes into view, a sinking feeling consumes me. Parking my bike and dismounting, I stride into the house.

  “Dude,” a voice says from the living room. “Who do you think he has in there?” I walk through the front door and find myself face to face with half the club. Diesel, Bear, Fish, Wyatt, Dunce, Squat, and Rink sit around the room, some on furniture, and some on the floor, rolling joints and drinking beers. There’s a bong on the coffee table and rolling papers scattered about around it.

  “I don’t know, some bitch,” Wyatt says from the couch. I grab a chair and pull it up to the coffee table. Dunce, one of the prospects, reaches into a nearby ice chest and pulls out an ice cold beer and tosses it to me. I catch it in the a
ir and pop the cap off then take a long swig.

  “It’s not Chel,” Wyatt says. “Bitch is too smart to fuck anybody in this filthy shithole.”

  “Nic?” Diesel asks mischievously. My head swings around, and I see that his face is covered in a shit-eating grin.

  “Nah, don’t you remember when Duke pissed on her leg?” Wyatt says. Diesel purses his lips and makes a gesture with his tongue.

  “Is that what I tasted while I was eating her pussy?” Diesel says. I fight the desire to shoot up in my chair and bulldoze the bastard right here and now.

  “Those jokes? They end here. Nic’s with me, and that means she’s not ass to tap. Got it?” I ask, looking around the room.

  “Never fucked her. No skin off my nose,” Wyatt says with a shrug of his shoulders.

  “All right, calm down, bro. I was just kidding. Like I eat pussy,” Diesel says with a dramatic eye roll and wave of his hand. The room—all except for me—erupts in laughter. Shit ain’t funny, but I let my brothers have their fun at my expense.

  “This mean you’re wifed-up now?” Rink asks. Squinting my eyes, I look down at him in confusion.

  “Wife what? What the fuck are you babbling about, prospect?” I say. Bear and Dunce find this particularly funny and are slapping their knees and throwing their heads back.

  “Wifed-up. You know, when you take an Old Lady,” he clarifies, and his cheeks redden.

  “Yeah, you wifed-up, man?” Wyatt asks. As the club’s vice president, my relationship status is something he likes to know about. To put it in his own words, he “Doesn’t give a shit you you fuck, but if you’re fucking the same bitch every night and sleeping next to her, it’s club business, because your ass is club property.”

  “Working on it,” I say honestly. I ain’t got shit to hide when it comes to Nic. She’s good people, the club likes her, and she knows the score.

  The squeaking of a door silences the entire room. Looking around, I find Trigger in the hallway. He’s wearing blue plaid boxers and that’s it. His hair is all fucked up, and he’s wiping his nostrils. Fuck. I wonder how much coke he did.

  “Who ya got in there, man?” Fish asks. He leans back in his chair and eyes Trigger as he plops down in the Lay-Z Boy at the other end of the coffee table. Trigger doesn’t say anything. He just leans forward and places his elbows on his knees and sets his face in his hands. The rest of the guys haven’t picked up on it yet, but I have. My heart stops for a good long time, so long that I think it might not actually start again, and my veins all feel like they’re shriveling up the longer I stare at Trigger.

  “You fucking bastard,” I say, shaking my head. Diesel and Bear look at me curiously. Wyatt just shakes his head slowly with the realization of what Trigger’s done. One by one, my brothers and the prospects start to figure out why I’m so mad and Trigger looks so fucked up. Still, Trigger doesn’t say anything right away.

  He lifts his head and stares at me with reddened, pained eyes. Shaking his head back and forth he says, “I let her go.”

  Once more, a door creaks, and out steps Princess into the hallway. Her eyes are bright red and her hair looks like a hornet’s nest—like somebody was handling her roughly. She walks slowly into the room. Trigger takes a hit from the joint he had Rink roll and light, and he refuses to look at her. His entire body has tensed the fuck up since she walked in, but his eyes stay trained on the coffee table.

  “Duke’s going to take you home,” Trigger says in a bored tone. Still, he doesn’t look at her. My eyes fall closed for barely a second before I look from Princess to Trigger and back again. What a fucking asshole. Trigger’s always had some kind of dysfunction in his brain that makes him a bastard, but this takes the cake. Of all people to fuck with like this, he really messed up. Sure, I get it—he had to do something to get her to understand it wouldn’t work between the two of them—but this is above and beyond. Looking at him and narrowing my eyes, I bite my tongue from saying all the shit I want to say. But what’s done is done and there’s a code. He’s my brother, and I’m not going to call him out in front of everybody in the room.

  “Just fucking do it, or she’s going to have to take a cab,” Trigger says. He turns to me and blows out the smoke from the joint he’s got.

  Standing, I point a finger at him and say, “We’re going to fucking deal with this later.” Fuck. I hate this shit. I called it way back when she rode on the back of his bike for the first time. He just told her she’d be riding with him, and that was all there was to it. Technically, it should have been Grady taking her, since he’s our Sergeant at Arms and the one responsible for that kind of shit. But no, Trigger didn’t even give Grady a chance to get off his bike before that fucker was at the van, offering Princess his hand and acting like he’s some charming fuck that he ain’t. Well, she knows that now.

  I cross the room and place my hand on her back and lead her out of the house, saying, “Come on, Princess.”

  I give her my helmet and climb onto my bike then help her get on before I peel the fuck out of there. She’s hurt, so of course she calls me on my shit and doesn’t let me off the hook for nothing. I slip and tell her that she’s just like her mother—and she is—but it’s not my place to drop that bomb. She’s got enough going on right now. She holds on, but barely enough to be safe. I don’t say anything though. I can feel the slight jerking of her body as she withholds her sobs. Crying a-fucking-gain. With every slight movement, a part of me breaks into a fuck ton of pieces. Over the last few months that she’s been here, Princess has become one of us, even if Grady can’t accept that. She’s family in more ways than one, and Trigger just fucked with my family.

  Chapter 15

  Back at the house, I try to talk to her again, but she isn’t up for conversation. I fight the urge to walk her into the house and make sure Ruby and Jim don’t catch her. She looks fucked all right, and she’s going through the front door. There are three other entrances better suited for sneaking into that house, but she’s obviously not even thinking about that. Maybe she wants to get caught. Either way, I let it go and get back on my bike with my helmet—that’s now toast thanks to Princess dropping it—on my head, and ride slowly back to Nic’s house. Princess can’t have known she was going to be treated like a filthy whore when she got on Trigger’s bike. She can’t have known how entirely fucked her night would turn. My mind wanders back to Nic. She was barely nineteen when she started hanging with the club. Her dad had been inside for about three years at that point, and she’d spent two of those years trying to take care of her brother on her own after she stopped letting Ruby and Jim help her out. She’s always been a stubborn thing, and we let her do it. We blew it—every single one of us.

  God, she was so fucking young. She’s still young. Did she know that first party what it meant to be a Lost Girl? Did she have any goddamn idea that she’d become pussy with legs? The thought of Nic feeling as used as Princess does right now sends a shiver up my spine and makes my gut feel like lead. I don’t want either of those chicks to feel like that ever again, but there’s nothing I can really do about Princess until she gives up on this fantasy of being with Trigger. But Nic? I got that covered.

  I cut my bike down the street and walk her the rest of the way. I don’t want Jeremy to hear me coming if he’s out and about. I want to know if he took my warning seriously. If he didn’t, I’m going to be in for a much longer night. And I still haven’t eaten. Fuck. I need food. I pull her up into the driveway and toss my helmet to the side. I’ll have to see about getting a new one tomorrow.

  The house is silent, and all of the lights are off. It’s a welcome change from what I came home to earlier. The front door is unlocked when I walk in, and I say a quiet thank you to Nic, even though I know she can’t hear me, and lock the doors behind me. Walking down the hall to her bedroom, I slowly open the door and find myself met by near total darkness. A window on the side of the house streams a little yellow light in from the street lights outside. Still, I can�
�t really see where anything is, and I’m trying not to wake her up. But I’m not quiet enough.

  The room brightens just slightly by the click of a table lamp. Straight ahead, Nic’s sitting up in her king-sized bed, the covers pulled up to her waist and her hair a total mess. She lets out a big yawn and smacks her lips, blinking at the light. A smile overtakes my face at the sight. Suddenly, I’m not so hungry for food anymore.

  “You’re back,” she says, like she wasn’t expecting it. Maybe she wasn’t. From the look on her face, she wasn’t expecting me. I click the door shut behind me and step into the room. Kicking my boots off and then my socks. I take my cut off and set it on the chest at the foot of the bed. Nic watches as I pull my tee shirt off over my head and then start working on my belt buckle.

  “I said I’d be back, baby,” I say quietly. Her eyes dart down to my belt buckle then up to my face again. She’s not protesting or even complaining about me waking her up. She’s just quiet and watchful. As much as I like her feisty side, I’m starting to really like this side that I didn’t know existed. Sliding my jeans down to the floor, I kick them out of the way and walk to Nic’s side of the bed. Her neck cranes back to look up at me. I sit down on the side of the bed and twist my torso to face her. Placing my hands on either side of her legs, I search her eyes for something that tells me I’m not making a total fucking jackass out of myself right now. She’s so guarded that I can’t really make anything out for sure.

  “When I say I’m coming back, that means I’m coming back. When I tell you that you’re my girl that means you’re my fucking girl. When I call you my Old Lady, don’t question it. Got it?” She looks away for a moment then brings her face back up to mine.

  “I don’t believe you,” she says. Her honesty practically crushes me, and I have to fight to keep myself upright. I just want to sink into the mattress and call it a fucking day. I don’t know what I can do to show her that I’m serious. “One day, you won’t be back.”