The hissing sound of the cracked beer beneath my fingertips made me sigh. But when I gazed down at the foam slowly rising to the top, I paused.
Brooks is gonna have your ass for this.
I drew in my first sober breath of the morning before bringing the can to my lips. I tilted my head back, chugging the carbonated alcohol down as it burned the back of my throat. I gulped half of it down before placing it on my bedside table, growling as the carbonation brought me out of my sleep-induced haze.
I needed to get back to the clubhouse.
I dragged my ass into the shower before throwing on the first pieces of clothing that my hands could find in the darkness. The lightbulbs in my ceiling fan needed to be changed. My dresser sat cockeyed against the wall on the other side of my apartment bedroom. But I didn’t give a shit.
I never gave a shit when I drank.
After throwing back the last of my morning beer, I slid my bike helmet over my head. One beer wouldn’t kill me on my bike. Hell, at one point in my life I could’ve thrown back half a case and still driven home just fine.
Yeah, and Gage almost beat your ass for it.
I ground my teeth together as I made my way out the door. I didn’t even bother locking my apartment, either. It wasn’t as if I owned anything of value other than my bike. All I had in that small one-bedroom apartment were my clothes, some bullshit furniture, and two towels.
One to dry my ass with, and one to use while I washed that one.
Just as I threw my leg over my bike, my phone rang in my back pocket. I groaned as I slid it out, listening to the Bluetooth connection in my helmet kick on.
“Text message from Chops. Read message?”
I sighed. “No.”
Chops: Church in thirty. Get your asses in gear. We got lots to discuss.
I rolled my eyes and slid my phone back into my pocket. I cranked my engine and revved it a few times, making sure to piss off the neighbors real good. I loved it when people got mad at me for my bike. Watching them get riled up over shit like that fueled my boredom whenever I felt myself slipping back down into the rabbit hole.
And no, one beer didn’t mean I was back down in my rabbit hole.
“Damn Brooks, always blowing things out of proportion,” I murmured.
With the push of my feet, I took off toward the clubhouse. I rolled through yellow lights and kicked it into gear so I wouldn’t get caught at any of Santa Cruz’s main intersections. I didn’t want Chops punishing me for being two minutes late like fucking last time.
Two minutes late, and I had to inventory and spit shine all of our fucking weapons every damn day for a week.
I wasn’t sure what I expected from this church meeting, either. I mean we all practically knew what Chops was up to. We weren’t sure how we felt about the recording Raven took since things were still pretty vague. It gave us a hell of a lot of information to work with, but it also didn’t do a lot of incriminating. Sid—before Brooks blew him up—apparently had a way with talking around things. And while we could assume most of what—and who—he was talking about, that didn’t give us any traction with any of our police contacts to do anything about this shit.
However, when I rolled up into the clubhouse, it seemed the party had started without me.
“You’re a fucking lunatic!” Brooks roared.
Tanner tried to hold him back, and I raced to his side as Chops fired back. “You don’t even know what the hell you’re talking about.”
“Move,” I murmured.
Tanner stepped off to the side and Brooks tried to charge Chops, but I wrapped my arms around him. I physically picked him up, turned him around, and pointed him toward the fridge when I set him down. And when he whipped around on me, his eyes as big and as bright as the fucking morning sun, I sighed.
“Dude, cut that shit out. I haven’t even had coffee yet,” I hissed.
Brooks wrinkled his nose. “I smell your party has started early, though.”
I glared at him. “It’s just one beer, get off my damn back.”
“Chops! No!” Cole exclaimed.
I turned around and saw our president charging toward me, heading for Brooks. He might as well have been charging me. Brooks reached over my shoulder with his fist, ready to deck the guy as he got closer, but I put my arms out and refused to let the two of them duke it out like this.
“Why don’t you show me the kind of man you really are, huh?” Chops growled.
Brooks snickered. “Don’t worry, your true colors will come shining through no matter what.”
How much does Chops know about what we know?
Chops turned around as I peeked at Brooks behind me. I shot him a look that told him to shut the fuck up, then I stepped off to the side. Chops’ eyes ran down my body before he turned his back on us, gazing out toward the rest of the crew.
Who looked like they were two seconds away from imploding on themselves.
“All right, this is gonna be quick so I want you to listen up. I don’t give a shit what the hell happened with those Black Flag fuckers this past weekend. Your job is to not make shit harder with them than we already have it. All right?”
Brooks scoffed behind me. “What a crock of shit.”
Chops whipped around. “What was that?”
I shook my head. “Nothing. He was just talking to me.”
Chops nodded slowly. “Well, why don’t you share with the rest of the class?”
Brooks and Chops stared one another down and I honestly thought I was going to have to kill one of them to keep them from fighting each other. But Brooks kept his composure and I was honestly proud of him.
“What do you suggest we do then, Chops?” Brooks asked.
Maybe a bit too harshly, but at least he asked.
Chops chewed on the inside of his cheek. “I’m in the process of working with them to get new contracts for us to work on. You can’t deny that they’ve got a corner of the marketplace that we want.”
Cole shook his head. “I thought we decided no prostitution, though.”
Chops rolled his eyes. “Not that, you imbecile. Car parts.”
I blinked. “Since when do the Black Flags deal with cars?”
Chops looked at me with a dumbfounded look on his face. “Ever since they wanted to steal our territory. Didn’t you ever wonder why they wanted our zones in the first place?”
Archer clicked his tongue. “It makes sense, but I haven’t heard of any deals they’ve been doing lately.”
Chops turned his back to me to face him. “That’s because they aren’t stealing cars off the streets. They’ve tapped into the local mechanics shops. Chop yards. Shit like that. They’re undercutting our prices selling bullshit parts to our clients, and I don’t like it.”
I shrugged. “We could just kill them.”
Chops slowly turned back around and stared me dead in my eye. “Despite how Hyde ran things at one point, I don’t always want to resort to violence with shit like this. If we can do a deal with the Black Flags, we can negotiate keeping them out of our fucking territory and we can get them to stop undercutting us and stealing our damn clients.”
Finn finally piped up for the first time since I’d gotten there. “I mean you did bring up the idea of prostitution, so it’s not a far stretch to think that taking out an entire MC is okay.”
The room fell silent and I thought Chops’ head was going to blow through the fucking roof. That prospect had some serious balls, and I liked that. I respected balls.
It was the one thing Chops didn’t have.
“He’s got a point,” Brooks said.
Chops turned his anger toward him and away from Finn, which I assumed was Brooks’ point. He’d always been the cavalier one. The one to put himself in harm’s way to save someone else’s ass. That was the kind of man that needed to be President of a crew like this. A crew like ours needed a president with a heart.
Not a president without one.
“Anyway,” Chops said as he turned back toward the other guys, “I’m meeting with the head of the Black Flags this afternoon to work out the basis of the deal. Once I have it, I’ll call another meeting and we can discuss it before moving forward.”
Archer stepped into the circle. “Need some back-up?”
Chops shook his head. “Nah, I got it this time. Maybe next time, though, if this starts to get heated.”
Figures, fucking two-faced dickweed.
After the church meeting came to a close, I stormed out of the clubhouse. I didn’t know what pissed me off more—the fact that Chops was openly advertising the fact that he was meeting up with the gang he was conspiring against us with, or the fact that he thought he could lie to us. He wasn’t meeting up with them about fucking car parts and them undercutting our prices. Oh, no. I knew exactly what that slimy snake was up to.
And I didn’t want to stand in the same zip code with him, much less the same room.
I didn’t bother with my helmet as I threw my leg over my bike. I pulled my engraved flask out of the breast pocket of my leather jacket and took a swig from it. The whiskey burned going down and it made me shake my head, but damn it, the stuff woke me up.
Then, I took off riding.
The entire ride, though, I smelled that whiskey. Every time I exhaled, the scent slapped me in the face. I didn’t get five miles into my stress-free ride before I pulled off to the side of the road. I felt grounded, strong, and better than I had in a long time. Except that whiskey kept tempting me from my breast pocket and the smell on my own breath stirred needs within my gut that I knew I needed to steer clear of.
That’s why you lost her.
I closed my eyes as memories of Astrid bombarded my mind. Her strawberry blonde hair that curled up like wet beach hair. Her hazel eyes that sparkled with the colors of the forest in the moonlight. Her sloping curves rounded with muscles underneath that she painstakingly kept up in the gym.
“Damn it, I miss her,” I whispered.
As my eyes opened, I thought back to how we first met. Astrid and I encountered one another when Brooks and myself were only prospects. And the first thing Brooks ever made me promise him in our years-long friendship was that I wouldn’t touch his sister.
No matter what.
And while I took that promise seriously, that didn’t stop me from staring. It didn’t stop me from dreaming about her at night. It didn’t stop me from growling her name every time I stroked my cock whenever it woke me up at night. She was a beautiful woman inside and out. Intelligent, sassy, head-strong, stubborn as fuck, and gorgeous to boot. She was perfect in every way for me.
Except for being Brooks’ sister.
When he went off to prison, I took it upon myself to watch over her. To watch out for her and make sure she didn’t need anything. But when she moved away from Santa Cruz altogether, I learned to bury my crush. And it wasn’t until later on during a visit I had with Brooks that I figured out my drinking was a massive no-no for her.
Guess it reminded her of their mother or some shit.
Either way, I never could get her out of my head. I never could get her out of my dreams. And as I stared at the flask in my hand that I’d pulled out of my breast pocket, I uncapped the top and took another massive gulp.
Maybe if I drank enough, it would drown out her memory for good.
