Page 6 of Crewe (Nelson’s Honkytonk Saloon & Bar #3)

Chapter Six

C rewe smacked his dry lips together. Oh Lord, his stomach was roiling, and his head was pounding. What the heck had he done last night?

Pounding from outside the room had woken him. He cracked an eye open and found the base of his toilet in his face. Why was he lying on his bathroom floor?

“Crewe, Crewe, where are you?” Freya’s sweet voice called.

He tried to remember what he’d done, and flashes came back to him. His tongue was fuzzy, and he smelled. He remembered trying to forget Ryanne with copious amounts of Jack and cola.

He slowly eased upright, testing how his stomach handled it.

“Crewe,” Wyatt’s voice called through the door.

“I’m in the bathroom. Give me a sec,” he called, though raising his voice made the pounding in his head increase.

“Are you pooping? Cuz we want you to come with us, but if you’re pooping, we’ll wait,” Freya called.

He wasn’t pooping, but he was hoping not to throw up.

“Why don’t you go out to the kitchen? I made cookies yesterday. I’ll be out in a minute,” he said, standing up and seeing himself in the mirror, hair sticking up, and was that puke on his cheek?

Feet running away gave him the privacy he needed as nausea overwhelmed him. He turned toward the toilet and puked until it felt as if he was puking up his guts. He cringed at the smell of the liquor coming back up.

He finished and flushed the toilet. He checked for his phone and found it sitting by a bottle of water on the edge of the sink. He texted his cousins in the group text to please hang with the kids while he showered.

He started to roll his eyes at the replies, then stopped because it hurt his head too much. He flipped on the shower to hot and stripped off his sweaty, puke-smelling clothes. He sniffed his armpits and recoiled at the sour smell of liquor and sweat.

He stepped under the hot water, washing away the stench and hoping that a couple of ibuprofen and water would make him feel halfway human. He didn’t want to disappoint the twins.

The door to his bathroom opened. He quickly turned away just in case it was the kids.

“Relax, it’s me. Here’s a cup of coffee, a cold bottle of water, and some pain pills for your headache. Dad said he can give you twenty minutes before he and the kids leave without you,” Gaines said.

“Did you guys put me in the bathroom?” Crewe asked.

“McClure and I took turns making sure you didn’t choke on your own vomit. And we wiped your tears when you cried about Ryanne,” Gaines muttered.

Crewe stared at his brother, wondering if he was lying. Surely, he hadn’t cried about her, had he?

“Yeah, relax. You didn’t cry, but you whined enough you might as well have. Dad’s taking them to get doughnuts. Ryanne’s parents brought them over while they went to pick up Ryanne on the side of the road. She had two tires go flat.”

Crewe turned toward Gaines, “Is she okay?”

“Yeah, she said she expected it. She accidentally ran over some nails when she was getting some pictures on the side of the road. Yo, get a move on. Those kids want you with them, and you stink,” Gaines said, leaving the bathroom.

Crewe hurried and soaped up, getting the sweat and stench of alcohol off him, then hurried to dress. He walked out of his room to find Wyatt and Freya patiently waiting on the couch.

“If it took you that long to poop, Mom would say you need more fruit. Were you constipated?” Freya asked.

“I didn’t poop. I had to shower. Let’s go find Papa Burt and go get doughnuts,” Crewe said, shepherding the kids down the stairs and out to the parking lot.

He helped the kids into his dad’s truck and into the booster seats. Ezra, Whiskey and Vivi’s son, was already in one.

“What took so long?” Ezra asked.

“Crewe had to poop,” Freya said.

“No, he said he showered,” Wyatt said.

“Can we get doughnuts now?” Freya asked.

Burt chuckled. “Yep, let’s get doughnuts, and then how about we go fishing.”

Crewe scowled at his dad. The gleeful look on his dad’s face told Crewe his dad knew good and well that Crewe felt like crap and didn’t want to sit in the hot sun fishing.

Crewe might be in his forties, but he felt like he was being punished like when he was younger.

He, his brothers, and cousins were a little wild growing up.

Add in their friends from the Bluff Creek Brotherhood MC, and they’d all sown some wild oats.

When they’d all gotten drunk out at the lake in high school, instead of getting to sleep it off on Sunday, his dad and uncles had made them all clean the bar top to bottom, including the bathrooms, mopping floors and dusting every chair and booth.

After that, they made sure not to get caught if they did any drinking.

They decided to go in the doughnut shop, and he helped Freya and Wyatt out of the truck with both of them grabbing a hand.

As he walked into the shop holding their hands, he wished they were his.

He’d fallen in love with the kids just as much as with their mother.

He’d spent hours with all of them, taking them different places and helping Ryanne when they all had the flu.

Although getting drunk last night hadn’t helped the situation, it had let him forget his troubles for a while.

Each day he didn’t get to claim them all tore a little piece off his heart. He really did need to talk with Whiskey and Hennessy, especially Hennessy, on what he should do next. His current plan of winning Ry wasn’t working because she didn’t seem to even know he wanted more.

Yep, he was going to ask them for help.