Page 8 of Ugly Duckling (Content Advisory #6)

Four

People mistake my “wows” for compliments.

—Gunner to Webber

GUNNER

I couldn’t believe I’d invited her to my place.

I also couldn’t believe that she’d taken me up on the offer.

When we started walking away from my club, a surge of excitement poured through me at the thought of having her all to myself.

Her words from earlier, about her ex-husband, had downright infuriated me.

I’d never seen the point of shoving cake in your wife’s—or husband’s for that matter—face. Not on her birthday. Not on your anniversary, and definitely not at your wedding.

Now, I couldn’t claim to have the most knowledge on women and their makeup, but I had a feeling that Sutton wouldn’t have skimped on that. She’d have done the whole nine yards.

I’d heard her and Rocky talking once about what they wanted their wedding to be like.

Rocky had wanted something small. Something that was intimate, on a private island somewhere.

But the way Sutton had talked…she wanted something huge.

Something that was fit for a queen. She wanted all the people.

All the flowers. All the headaches that came with crazy mother-in-laws trying to take over. She wanted it all and then some.

So my guess, Sutton had gone all out, trying to fit her dream.

And that asshole had smashed her face into the cake?

Not only had he smashed her face into the cake, but he’d also not paid attention to what had given that cake support.

It also made me slightly sick to think about.

Sutton being hurt was downright terrifying—and I didn’t know why.

I barely knew her anymore.

I wasn’t lying earlier when I said that Rocky was terrible at communicating—either with me or with me about others.

You had to literally pry any information out of her, and mostly, it was comical. But I felt like I would’ve liked to know about this.

I might not know Sutton well any longer, but I had a fist, and I could’ve beat that bastard’s face up to match what he’d done to Sutton.

“Wow,” Sutton breathed as we turned the corner to my block. “Fancy.”

“Safe,” I returned as I punched in the code that would let us enter the walk-through gate into my subdivision.

The gates were a new addition.

A while ago, Doc’s wife, Searcy, and her sister, Calliope, had come to wreak havoc on my neighbor’s yard for some slight the neighbor’s teenage son had perpetuated.

They’d not only forked the guy’s yard, but they’d also poured boxes and boxes of instant mashed potatoes into it, causing thousands of dollars’ worth of damage.

My neighbor had gone to the HOA and forced them to put up a fence to keep the “riffraff” out.

What was even funnier, Searcy and her sister had the code because I’d given it to them.

They’d left my neighbor alone for the most part, but every once in a while, they’d shove a random fork in his yard for funsies.

“It’s that,” she agreed. “This is a big fence. It’s like the type that they use to keep prisoners in the prisons.”

I choked on a laugh. “It sure is.”

“Why so big?” she asked. “It’s decorative, sure. But I would think a normal height would’ve still kept people out.”

“Nothing in this neighborhood is done anything short of grand. If they were going to put a fence up, they were going to put a fence up that beat out everyone else’s fences.”

She hobbled along beside me and changed the subject. “Am I understanding right? You just decided to run that marathon last night?”

I snorted a laugh. “I didn’t decide to do anything.

My friend, Cutter, bet me that I couldn’t run one after I said that I could.

We went back and forth on it all night while we were drinking, and in the end, he bet me that I couldn’t.

I bet that I could. They signed me up for the marathon last night.

Milena signed herself up, too. That’s Cutter’s wife.

And she brought me my race bib this morning so I wouldn’t back out. ”

Sutton shook her head. “I’ve been training to run for years. Though, today was a personal record for me. I have you to thank for that.”

“Is that what you do for a living now? Marathons?” I asked.

I always expected her to go all the way in track. College. Then professional.

“Kind of.” She grimaced. “I trained for the Olympics in the 2400 meter. Made it to the last Olympics. Placed fifth overall. Barely missed the second qualifying because I was sick as a dog. Now I’m training for likely my last one.

” She took a swift breath. “I’m not sure my heart is in it anymore.

After this”—she gestured to her face—“I did a lot of self-reflection. I realized that I wasn’t really passionate about it anymore like I used to be. My priorities have changed.”

“Enter the marathons,” I guessed.

“Last year, I’d gotten a little bit over my fiancé. I thought…I needed a break. So I started to go on longer and longer runs. I was up to a hundred miles a week when we got married and this happened.”

I couldn’t stop myself from asking my next question. “If you felt that way about your fiancé…why did you go and marry him?”

She looked away, her eyes studying my living room with all the toys and clothes strewn everywhere.

“I wanted kids. I wanted a husband. I guess maybe I just didn’t care that much about the type of person my husband was.

I just was so desperate to have them that I was willing to do just about anything—like marrying a man I kind of sort of loved.

” She looked at me then, stared me straight in the eyes, and said, “And let’s be honest, Gunner.

I wasn’t that attractive. I was lucky to have someone who liked me well enough to give me kids, anyway. ”

That made me angry.

“Sutton…”

The knock at the door had me glancing over, and my words stilling on my lips.

“Down!”

I let Lottie down and went to the door to answer it.

I wasn’t surprised to find Webber with Sutton’s bag in his hand.

He was a nosy little bitch, and as our club president, he had his finger on all the pulses.

He was literally the nosiest out of all of us.

“Brought this and the car.” He held out the bag and the keys.

I took them as he pushed past me and walked inside, immediately going to Lottie and picking her up.

The little squeal of delight as the biggest, darkest, and most dangerous of all the Truth Tellers MC club members picked her up and gave her kisses had me happy as fuck.

Webber was the best of the best, but also the scariest of the scariest.

When I’d first moved down here, determined to make this world a better place with the services I provided, I’d met Webber and just knew this was where I was meant to be.

When Jett died, my rose-colored glasses had been ripped off so damn fast that I had whiplash.

I no longer saw the world as a good place.

What I did see was a world that had the potential for the worst, most heinous crimes imaginable, and the justice system wasn’t cutting it.

I didn’t like people. Saw evil everywhere. And more importantly, I didn’t think that doing this the “right” way, the “legal” way, was ever going to cut it.

Meeting Webber, I knew right then that he was the type of person that I wanted in my life.

The first night we’d met, I’d been at a bar drinking my sorrows away on the tenth anniversary of Jett’s death.

I’d been in my own world when a woman had started getting physically assaulted next to me.

I’d broken them up, then had taken the guy outside to show him why you should never beat on a woman, when Webber had joined me and helped me teach that lesson.

He’d known who I was, too, and had said he was a fan of mine.

We’d struck up a conversation over a beaten and bloody abuser, and he’d invited me out to a club party later that week.

I’d taken him up on his offer, and the rest was history.

I’d found my home, where I was meant to be.

And Webber had become one of my best friends, though that actual title belonged to Jasper, the scarred man who talked so little that sometimes I wondered if I was forcing my friendship on him.

But Webber? He was my constant as well, and he was definitely getting the lay of the land.

“Chocate?”

Webber snorted. “I didn’t bring any chocolate with me this time, honey. It would’ve melted in my pocket while we watched your daddy race.”

Lottie sighed, supremely disappointed in one of her favorite people not bringing her the chocolate she so desperately wanted, and usually got.

“Thank you for bringing my bag,” Sutton said softly. “I appreciate it. Also, thanks for grabbing my car. I didn’t want to have to walk the five miles back to it.”

“Was it actually five miles?” Webber asked.

“No,” she snorted. “But it was at least a mile, and my legs are pretty noodly. I haven’t had to keep up with him in a run in a long time.”

“You used to run with him?” Webber asked.

Yep, nosy.

“All the time,” she said. “We were in cross country and track together. And our school was fairly small, so we combined practices with the boys and the girls. Since I was faster than all the girls, I usually tried to keep up with the boys. I could never quite keep up with him, though. He was just too fast. I could always see his back, though. So there’s that. ”

“What a good back it is,” I joked as I walked into the hallway bathroom and placed her things inside of it. “Shower’s ready when you are.”

She smiled thankfully at me and said, “I’ll be done as fast as I can.”

“No rush,” I murmured as I watched her back as she disappeared into the bathroom.

The door closed, and the shower turned on, and only then did Webber say, “Who is she?”

I knew what he was asking.

“We had nothing together,” I said. “We were just acquaintances in high school. We didn’t really share a best friend like Audric and Creole did.

Rocky, my nanny friend, her dad was my dad’s good friend.

We were forced to be around each other a lot because of our parents hanging out. Rocky is best friends with Sutton.”

“And y’all weren’t friends by association?” he asked.