Thrash (13 page)

“
Do you think anybody has
let me forget that, asshole?” Ian says loudly, stands up, and
storms out of the house. Alex’s head pops up from the kitchen
table, and she watches him as he goes. Standing from my position on
the couch, I stretch my back out and look at Jim, who’s shaking his
head at Ian’s departure.

“
He’s going to have to
learn how to deal with this shit,” he says.

“
Maybe he needs to get his
dick sucked,” I surmise then smile wide at Alex. “Speaking of
which—hey Princess! Guess who I met the other night?” Alex’s eyes
widen, and she shakes her head. Ever since the party she just
hasn’t been the same. Her not talking to me has been ticking me off
almost as bad as Nic fucking avoiding me. She said she was done,
and damn if she ain’t acting like she is, too. I’m about to rectify
that shit, though. Last time I left her alone, I really fucked
things up. She can’t trust me right now, but she will.

“
Come on—ask. Go ahead,” I
prompt and sit down across from her at the table.

“
Who?” she asks with zero
enthusiasm.

“
My future wife,” I say.
Alex narrows her eyes then rolls them. I keep a grin on my face
despite the fact that I feel anything but. Maybe I can joke this
shit out of my system.

“
Whoever you marry is
probably going to be a skeezy whore,” she says lightly. I find
myself tempted to argue with her about it. I’m not real thrilled
about the thought of Nic being called a skeezy whore. I’m close to
reminding her that I’ve been in her pussy, so what the hell does
that make her—but I decide to go easy on her instead.

“
You should have seen her,
Princess. She was sucking my dick like her life depended on it.
Full on suction action. I’m telling you, if Hoover could patent
that shit, they’d knock that rolly ball vacuum shit off the
market.” Alex just stares at me as I go on telling her about the
fantasy I have—Nic sucking my dick so hard I think she’s gonna
inhale the damn thing—as if it were real. I’ve used this fantasy to
jack off until my dick is sore each night since I fucked up and Nic
left me.

“
You’re disgusting,” Alex
says in protest and scrubs her makeup-free face. Looking down at
her bowl of cereal, she takes in another spoonful, refusing to look
back up at me. This is a game we play, she and I. Well, she might
not be playing, but I like talking to Alex. I’m kind of short on
friends these days, and Alex is my kind of people. She says what
she thinks most of the time, even though she keeps catching herself
and waiting for punishment. I consider our conversations an
educational experience for her. There can’t be all that much that
she learned under the thumb of her bastard father. Still, she’s not
my girl, and that reminder is wearing on me. I need to get my ass
reassigned off babysitting duty so I have more time to figure out
how to fix shit with Nic.

“
You enjoy my company,” I
say, flashing her a devastating smile. She looks up, her cheeks
heating just slightly, but her face remains flat.

“
You’re pretty much my
only friend aside from my aunt. Should my social circle expand, you
can expect these little sessions will come to an end.”

“
Pssh. The only ending I
want to talk about is a happy one,” I say, reaching out and
grabbing her bowl of cereal and pulling it toward me. Alex fights
me on it, making a mess before letting the bowl go and practically
sloshing milk all over my cut.

“
I’m not even going to
ask,” she says, shaking her head. I wrap one arm around the bowl,
and take a heaping scoop of cereal from the bowl, and shove it into
my mouth. I don’t really like cereal, but it’s bugging the fuck out
of her to see me eating from her bowl.

“
Orgasms, Princess—the
ultimate happy ending.” The look on her face is priceless. She’s
really good at giving off this innocent vibe, but I know damn well
that there’s one wild bitch underneath all of that well-practiced
shock and disgust. She stands from her seat at the table, crosses
the room, and opens a kitchen cabinet, pulling out a granola bar.
She waves the bar at me as she forces herself to keep a smile off
her face. “You know all about orgasms, don’t you?”

“
I hope you get a VD,” she
says and walks down the hall and into her bedroom.

Just as Alex’s bedroom
door shuts, the sliding glass door at the other end of the hall
slides open, and Ryan, who the club nicknamed Trigger for his
tendency to shoot first and ask questions later, steps into the
house. Despite his best attempts to play it off like he didn’t just
time that shit, his eyes keep traveling to the closed door as he
stalks my way and sits across from me in the seat Alex just left.
He says nothing, but sits there with his cold eyes fixated on mine.
Trigger’s been the closest and longest friend I’ve had, but after
the shit I pulled the other night, I have no doubt he’d put a cap
in my ass if I gave him half a chance. Not that I’m entirely
pleased with the shit he did at the clubhouse. End of the day, it
wasn’t his fault though. I fucked up, and that shit is on me—nobody
else.

“
What?” I ask. I know what
his problem is, but I want him to say it. It’s been increasingly
obvious the last few weeks how attached he is to Princess and after
that shit he pulled at the clubhouse, he and I have some shit to
sort.

Even before he started
calling her Cub, I noticed it. He stays away, but whenever he knows
where she is, his eyes will continue to travel there. His face
always contorts in some kind of emotional discomfort. It looks like
he has to take a shit, but he can’t—a feeling I get all too fucking
well. I’d call him a pussy and tell him to man up, but the longer
Nic goes on avoiding me, the more I feel his pain. I need her to
talk to me.

We were building
something, and I was about to have Jim call a vote to see if one
day the club might consider voting her in. Only Ruby and Mary have
been voted in. Barbara never wanted it, and Layla’s been too damn
sick to stay clean long enough to be a mother, let alone be an Old
Lady. But Nic—she’s the perfect Old Lady, even if she doesn’t know
it yet, and I’m damn determined to make her mine.

“
You need to back off,
brother,” he says in a voice that’s meant to be menacing. It would
be if he hadn’t deserved that little show in the field, but he did.
Every time I slid my finger into Princess’s pussy, I practically
laughed knowing he was watching. It was killing him, and it’s
killing him now.

“
You don’t wanna share,
brother?” I ask and raise an eyebrow at him, letting the comment
sink in. Despite the fact that he and Ian have no blood relation,
they were raised as brothers and that much time together has given
them, at the very least, similar mannerisms. His shoulders hunch
in, and the muscles in his arms grow tight with the desperate need
to fuck something up royally. He won’t hit me here in the house, if
only for the fact that Ruby has a no-violence indoors policy. She’s
lost too many lamps to that shit.

“
She’s a kid,” he says in
dismissal of my suggestion, but I won’t let him off that
easy.

“
Oh no she’s not. I’ve
been in her pussy, man. She’s tight and slick. No meat curtains or
nothing—just a perfect fucking cunt.” I’m pushing it and enjoying
myself way too fucking much, so much that I can’t stop the smile
that spreads across my face.

He doesn’t even flinch.
The only indication he gives that he heard a word I’ve said is the
constricting of his throat. The less he reacts, the more he’s
internalizing it. I waited a long time to pay him back, and I can
finally say we’re one hundred percent good.

Slowly, Trigger reaches
into his vest and pulls out his .38. He can’t shoot me without
getting himself shot in the process. It’s in the club bylaws, and
if there’s one thing he gives a shit about, it’s the club. He
unclicks the safety and places the gun on the table. I smirk and
say, “Do what you gotta do, brother, but we’re good
now.”

It takes him a moment
longer than I expect it to, but when he realizes what I mean, he
shakes his head. “This is about Nic?”

It’s like he forgot what he did all
those years ago, and maybe with the blow he’s been doing lately, he
has. But that shit from the other night? No fucking excuse. He
hasn’t forgotten what he did.

Still, some debts had to
be paid, and now that they have, I can move on. I just had to wait
until he gave enough of a shit about someone. He won’t say it, but
I don’t think this thing with Cub’s going to go away. He looks so
much like his dad, and Alex looks so much like her mom. I see Jim
and Ruby and can easily predict seeing that be Ryan and Alex in a
few years—with their own bastard son fucking up some young
girl.

“
How long has it been
since I fucked her?” he asks. I fight the looming tension in my
shoulders. “Doesn’t matter. It’s not like I made you watch while I
did it.”

“
You got a beef with me,
you take it out on me,” I say, standing up and getting right down
in his face, leaning into his personal space. “But you fucked with
my girl, and that was a bad move. Just because you can fuck her up
like that doesn’t mean you should have. Be a fucking man and take
your shot at me, because get this, brother—cut or no cut, history
or not, I won’t turn a blind eye again. The next time is the last
time. Do not test me,” I growl.

Without another word, he stands and
leaves the way he came. I push the cereal bowl away and rub my eyes
until they hurt. Trigger didn’t make me watch, but he sure wasn’t
quiet about it.

xxx

“
She was tight, dude—like
virgin tight,” Ryan says in excitement. “Do you think she was a
virgin?”

“
I don’t know,” I say.
This is the last thing I want to talk about—Ryan sleeping with
Nicole. He knew how I feel about her before he did it. She’s hot
and funny, and every now and then she rides to school on the back
of her dad’s Harley. He’s a member of the Forsaken Motorcycle Club
with Ryan’s dad. She looks good on the back of a bike. I just wish
she were riding on mine.

One day it will be
mine.

Ryan’s nowhere near being
a virgin, and Nicole’s so much younger than us. He had no fucking
right going after her at that party—not after I told him I was
going to ask her out. Plus, she’s barely a freshman, and we should
be graduating next year. Well, we would be graduating next year if
we’d passed all of our classes. I’m behind by four, and he’s behind
by five. My mom’s pretty mad, so mad that she’s threatening to take
away my car. I think if I flash her a big enough smile she’ll give
me a few more weeks to bring my grades up. It won’t do any good,
but by then maybe Ryan and I can convince his dad to let us
prospect at the motorcycle club. That’s been the plan since we were
kids, and we’ve never deviated from it. Unfortunately, Mom doesn’t
get it, but one day she will. One day Mom will see that the club’s
the best option. College is a fucking joke, and it’s not like
there’s many great jobs in this town. One day she’ll see, and then
Ryan and I will officially be brothers. Patched in life and patched
in death.

Chapter 11

As I pull up to Butch’s
house, I realize I have no fucking clue what the hell I’m going to
say to Nic’s brother when I see him. It’s been too damn long, but
I’ve had shit to take care of in Nevada. Whatever I decide, it just
needs to get the point across that he fucked up and remind him what
it means to fuck with Forsaken. I don’t know what the fuck his
sister’s doing about his attitude, but it’s not up to her anymore.
His ass was mine the second he screwed up my paint, and, as my
woman, her problems are my problems.

The small ranch house’s
yellow paint is so faded and chipped it looks almost gray. The lawn
is overgrown and flows into the street, driveway, and walkway to
the front door. The house never looked like this before Butch went
down for that shit in Oakland. That was one thing about Butch
Whelan—even after his Old Lady left town—he made damn sure his kids
had a good home. How Nic and Jeremy were going to figure shit out
without him was one of his biggest worries when he went away. A man
like that—one who gives a fuck about this kids—is one I can
respect. Unlike my own father, whoever he may be.

I turn off my bike, kick
the stand down, and dismount, then walk to the door. I make a
mental note to make one of the prospects come by and mow the lawn.
When we have a clear enough forecast, I’ll set it up for them to
paint the exterior.

The house is quiet, but I
know damn well they’re home. Neither of them is a morning person,
and Nic’s car is in the driveway. I slam my knuckles against the
wooden door with enough force that the sound it creates could wake
the dead. And still, the house is dead silent.

“
Truancy Office,” I shout
and continue to knock loudly and obnoxiously. It’s a Friday morning
and I know Jeremy’s taking summer school. Fucking punk. With any
luck, Nic won’t recognize my voice.

“
Goddamn it, Jeremy!” she
shouts from inside the house. Her voice is raspy from sleep. Even
as irritable as she sounds, I still like to hear her talk. “If you
skipped again, I’m not going to save your ass!”

The front door flies open,
and I smile at the sight before me. Nic’s bleached blonde hair is
in a messy, falling bun atop her head, which tells me she slept on
it like that. Letting my eyes travel down her too-fucking-skinny
frame, I realize she’s wearing a faded black tee-shirt that’s about
ten times too big. The large collar droops over her shoulder,
exposing her bare shoulder blade and the corners of a tattoo of
vines and roses that trails down her arm to her elbow. She blinks
rapidly, squinting from the late morning sun that’s shining in her
green eyes. Recognition dawns on her face, and her bewildered
surprise morphs into an angry scowl.