Page 10

Eight

You’re an idiot.

— Things I didn’t think I’d be saying on a daily basis

POSY

The drive to Gunner’s house from the bar we’d just been given our last call at was short.

I hadn’t drank much, just a couple of beers, but the same couldn’t be said for Gunner and Jasper.

They’d been pounding whiskey all night and had the turns from the bar to the neighborhood in which Gunner lived not been a hop and a skip away down a back alley, I’d have forced them to give me their keys.

As it was, we were moving so damn slow that we might as well be walking the damn bikes.

I was having to ride with my feet down to keep the bike upright, we were going that slow.

The final turn that led from a construction site to Gunner’s street came into view, and Gunner rode from the back alley, to the would-be lawn of his across the street neighbor, into his driveway in the next moment.

At first, the movement from the side yard next to Gunner’s place didn’t register with me because of the way Gunner teetered from side to side for a second before getting the kickstand down.

Only when he was steady did he swing his leg off and stand up.

Once I knew he was steady, I got off my own bike, which had my head turning slightly to the side where I saw movement in the shadows.

I narrowed my eyes at that movement and that’s when a familiar pair of legs, that led to a fantastic ass, came into view.

The two ladies in the yard next to me didn’t stop what they were doing—which was sprinkling an industrial-size box of what looked like white powder into the yard of Gunner’s next-door neighbor.

“What the fuck?” Gunner asked, his attention zeroing in on the two ladies that’d been on the opposite side of the yard until now.

Clearly up to no good, the two women came to a stop and stared.

They had to have heard us, three motorcycles pulling up to a yard next door was in no way quiet, but neither one of them looked like they cared about our arrivals.

“What the fuck are you doing?” Gunner called out.

It was the perpetually mad sister that answered.

“Who are you?” her sister, Calliope I thought, asked acerbically.

“I think that maybe you should be rethinking your life choices instead of asking me who I am,” Gunner retorted as he took in the ladies’ handiwork. “What is that in the bag you’re pouring all over?”

“This your place?” Calliope asked him.

“No,” Gunner answered. “That one is.”

He pointed to the one beside the yard they were dusting with what finally registered as mashed potato flakes.

“Fancy,” I drawled. “How do you feel about forks?”

The man’s eyes came to me and stayed. “I don’t feel all that great about them, so make sure they stay out of my half of the yard.”

“The line is clearly defined, sir.” I snorted. “If we fuck that up, then we need to get our eyes checked.”

The difference between Gunner’s grass and the neighbor’s grass was staggering.

The neighbor’s grass was lush and green, despite being in the middle of a harsh Texas summer.

Gunner’s grass was patchy, had spots that looked bald, and had so many weeds that I’d bet my left nut he had stickers.

“Are you saying my yard looks like shit?” he asked.

Calliope shrugged her shoulder. “If the shoe fits. You obviously have the cash to spare,” Calliope mocked as she pulled a fork out of her back pocket, bent down, and shoved a fork it in deep, then broke it off at the base.

“You do know, correct, that that dude has video cameras everywhere?” Gunner asked.

“Yeah,” Calliope answered. “But I disabled them before I left by unplugging their Wi-Fi.”

Rookie move.

You always made sure that the cameras ran on their own cellular signal.

“They’ll just come ask for mine,” Gunner pointed out.

“You don’t have any,” Jasper muttered as he moved to the front door of Gunner’s house. “I have to take a piss.”

Jasper disappeared into Gunner’s house, leaving the four of us behind.

“So what now?” I asked. “What happens when you pour all the mashed potatoes into a yard?”

“That’s what I’m waiting to find out,” Calliope said. “Searcy just told me to watch and learn. The forks were my idea, though.”

“What did the kid do to earn this?” Gunner asked.

“Tried to force me to have sex with him. When I refused, he tried to roofie me. I switched the drinks then called my sister,” she said.

“You didn’t tell me that!” Searcy growled. “I could’ve definitely gotten off on assault charges.”

“I was trying to keep you from needing bail money,” she said.

“I’d have to leave you in there because of the fact that we have barely a pot to piss in.

Then you’d have to make prison friends, and you’re pretty bad at making friends.

And then I’d have to go work at the stupid diner in the meantime to make sure that we kept it afloat, and let’s just say that it wouldn’t have worked out well for me in the end.

I’m fine. Hale and hearty. Now, what’s next? I just used my last fork.”

“You care if I use your water hose?” Searcy asked Gunner, barely sparing me a glance.

My dick was instantly hard, but my mind reminded me that I had a lot of shit going on, and pursuing the sexy little angry kitten wouldn’t go well right now.

Literally, I was so fucking tired right now that I could sleep for a week, and I still wasn’t done for the night.

“Sure,” Gunner said. “It’s over there.”

I looked to where he was pointing and sure enough, it was rolled up against the house with weeds growing out of the middle of it.

She got to work spraying down the yard, and I watched in amazement as the white that I’d seen all over the yard started to grow.

And grow.

And grow.

“Wow.” I laughed. “That’s going to be fun.”

She shot me a narrow-eyed glare.

Goddamn, did she make me hot as hell.

“The birds will probably be all over it soon as the sun rises, but it makes a pretty picture for now,” she said as she put the hose back where she found it. “Thanks for the water.”

“No problem,” Gunner said as he swayed on his feet again.

The two ladies walked off, not bothering to look back.

“I like her,” Gunner said as he watched the women get into their car and drive off.

I winced at the decibel of the car’s exhaust.

“I thought you said that she didn’t get along with her sister?” Jasper asked, appearing as if out of thin air.

“She doesn’t,” I admitted. “You saw how they were fighting.”

“That’s normal, though,” Jasper, also known as Hush, pointed out. “I fight with my own sister like that.”

“I think it’s normal for everyone,” Gunner, a.k.a. Jinx, admitted. “You should see how my uncle’s kids fight. They’re fuckin’ crazy.”

Gunner got quiet after that, and I wondered if he was thinking about his own life, and whether his son would’ve been a little crazy right along with his cousins.

Gunner’s son, Jett, had died over a decade ago in a school shooting.

After that, Gunner had gone into the MLB—major league baseball—and played for quite a few high profile teams before he’d decided to quit.

He’d found a higher calling—helping schools around the area prepare in case of a school shooting—and had gotten really good at his job.

His company, Angel Security, went around to any schools that asked—and some that didn’t—and made it as safe as he could make it for the precious souls inside of those schools.

Jasper, a former police officer himself, had signed on to work with Gunner’s business about six months after he’d opened it.

Gunner had asked Jasper if he wanted to become a partial owner, but Jasper had declined.

Not that I blamed him.

Jasper was a little bit all over the place, but he was also a recluse, and barely spoke to anyone, let alone us.

Being a partial owner of Angel Security would require Jasper to step out of his comfort zone, and he didn’t do that for anyone but his sister.

The taillights of Searcy’s car disappeared before the god-awful sound of it did, and we waited another couple of beats for her to hit the stop sign that would lead out of the subdivision before we started to talk again.

“This is really gonna piss them off.” Gunner grinned, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “They…” The telltale sign of Searcy’s car backfiring caused him to halt halfway through his words before he picked back up again with, “Let’s go inside.”

I followed him in, taking one last look at the masterpiece of the yard that Calliope and Searcy had left behind before walking into Gunner’s sparsely furnished living room.

I took a seat on the well-worn sofa and stretched my feet out in front of me.

I allowed my head to fall back onto the couch, and I questioned my volunteering to go with Hush and Jinx tonight.

Official club business or not, I had to get up early as fuck tomorrow to deal with the farm, and the horses weren’t very accommodating when it came to waiting for their breakfast.

And by official club business, it was more make sure that the two dumbasses that I was with right now didn’t drink themselves to death.

Today was a bad day for Gunner.

Tomorrow would be worse.

Tomorrow was the anniversary of his child’s death.

Today through two days from now, Gunner would remain drunk off his ass so he could forget about anything and everything.

Jasper, on the other hand, didn’t tell us his reason for having the same issue with this day.

We’d only witnessed him go into a downward spiral right along with Gunner, and we’d learned to navigate around it so the two didn’t get into too much trouble.

The others would’ve volunteered, of course, but they were out on a planned run that would help another motorcycle club with a few of their issues.

Most of them wouldn’t get back before Monday the following week, meaning there were only a few of us that would be watching over Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dumb.

The familiar sound of a bike pulling up outside had me breathing out a sigh of relief.

Backup had arrived.

I got up and headed out, jerking my chin up at Cakes when he got off his bike.

“How’re they doing?” he asked.

“Drunk,” I admitted.

Cakes’s eyes went to the right and his lips tipped up. “What happened there?”

“The teenage kid that lives there tried to roofie a girl, and she caught him. She gave him the roofie, then the sister and the girl filled his yard with instant mashed potatoes out of what had to be an industrial-size box and forked the yard for good measure,” I answered.

Cakes’ eyes narrowed, and the streetlight above his head illuminated his face enough that I could see the news pissed him off.

It had me, too.

I was just too brain tired to think of a suitable option but going over there and cutting his dick off.

“Huh,” he said. “I’ll handle it.”

I grinned. “I can’t wait to hear about it.”

Cakes gave me a handshake before we switched shifts, and I started home, going well past the speed limit in order to get home faster.

I’d just turned into the city limits of Decatur when I caught up to the familiar brown Honda.

The brown Honda turned and disappeared down the sleepy street that would lead to her place, and I hooked a right and headed to the ranch.

All the while, I wondered what in the hell I was supposed to do about a woman that consumed way too much of my thoughts, and spelled out TROUBLE in big, fat, capital letters.