I chuck her under the chin. “It’s early yet. Plenty of Death Lords to be had later tonight. Plus you got Robot here. Never heard of a girl complaining who had the attention of this dude.”
Robot rolls his eyes and pulls the giggly girl back into the room. At the end of the hall, I see Michigan waiting for me.
“There trouble inside?”
“Not yet. Just visitors talking trash. Judge having an old lady is a big surprise.”
Michigan rubs a hand across his chin and then heads downstairs. I follow him to the front of the granary where he pulls out a pack of cigarettes and offers me one. I shake my head. I’m pissed he’s smoking again, but I’m not his keeper. I’m his best friend.
“What do you think Pastor Bloom would do if I sat in a pew on Sunday?” I ask. He blows out a stream of smoke but doesn’t answer. I press on. “She’s a hot little thing. Just our type.”
With a grunt, he sucks the cancer stick down until it’s more ash than tobacco. Finally he throws the piece of shit on the ground and grinds it out with his boot heel. “You’re a fucking fool if you think that Annie Bloom has any interest in roughnecks like us individually or together. She’s not the type.”
“You ask her?”
He grits his teeth. “I don’t have to ask her. I know.”
“You have a thing against pastors’ daughters? They’re the dirtiest girls around,” I joke.
Michigan spins suddenly and pulls up his cut and T-shirt. His back is a mess of scars. Even when we were in, he never explained the source. “I got these because I slept with a preacher’s daughter. She was all over me, rubbing herself against me, telling me she wanted me and my friend to do her. Finally we did. My friend was an asshole and bragged about it. Word got back to her dad and she claimed we raped her. I got dragged down to Lake Superior, had my own special baptism at her daddy’s hands and then he and a few other dads took turns beating me. I was told I could join the Marines or go to prison. I joined up. The day I fuck another preacher’s daughter is the day I will have lost my fucking mind.”
Michigan
Fuck me. It’s been less than forty-eight hours and I’m already making a fool of myself over Annie Bloom. I’ve kept the story of my beating a secret for over ten years from a man who has become closer than a brother, but one argument over the preacher’s girl and I’m vomiting shit from my mouth.
“Never mind,” I sigh and drop my shirt. I light up another cigarette wishing it was something stronger.
“I had no idea.” Easy rubs a hand across his forehead.
“You like her. You fuck her.” I shrug carelessly as if the idea of Easy and Annie together without me doesn’t bother me.
His hand moves from his forehead, over the full head of hair to the back of his neck. Easy’s always liked to wear his hair long after we got out. “I’m not fucking her without you.”
“Can’t get it up without me staring at it?” I mock. “I’ll give you a picture to hang over your bed.” The muscles in his biceps tense and for a second, I wonder if he’s going to throw a punch. I brace myself because I deserve it. And because I’m a selfish masochist, I keep going. “Or are you worried you can’t satisfy a woman alone? Even a virgin like the Bloom chick might have expectations you can’t live up to.”
He eyes me while the crickets sing an entire song. When he does hit me, it’s not with his fist. “You’re not a seventeen-year-old boy alone anymore, brother.”
The verbal punch takes me by surprise so I don’t even see his hand as it comes up and slaps the cig from my mouth. He walks off and into the clubhouse. The music and lights spill out momentarily as he opens and then closes the side door of the granary.
Then I’m left with the mosquitoes, crickets and other creatures of the night. The red tip of the cig pulses a few times and then dies out.
I step on it with my heel and follow Easy into the club. My role as enforcer is one I take seriously because the club is my family and I’ve already failed to protect them once. The president’s son got sent to jail because I wasn’t fast enough to prevent a fight—a fight that led to a skinhead from up north dying and Wrecker getting sent to prison for three years.
That night I learned it was better to head off things early on. I stopped drinking and my only vice left was the tobacco. Protecting the Death Lords MC is my sole focus. Seducing a pretty daughter of the part of Fortune that hates us would mean painting a target on our backs.
Easy’s right. I’m not seventeen. I’m not alone. But that’s all the more reason to be careful. I’ve got a lot to lose now, a helluva lot more to lose than I did at the age of seventeen when I was a foster kid without a future who couldn’t see past the end of his dick.