Total pages in book: 80
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 76381 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 382(@200wpm)___ 306(@250wpm)___ 255(@300wpm)
Honestly, I wasn’t feeling it.
But what was the alternative? Hanging around the clubhouse all by myself? More or less. Brooks was around but he wasn’t usually the hanging out sort.
Besides, if I sat it out, Sully would get on my ass about getting old. Which wasn’t exactly untrue. I was older than all the other brothers standing around right then. But I didn’t want to start feeling like I couldn’t keep up with them either.
“Yeah, I’ve got nothing else to do,” Nave said, nodding.
“Same,” I agreed.
“Did you call for a ride?” Perish asked.
“We walk,” Sully declared dramatically, throwing a hand up in the air.
You wouldn’t know by seeing him now that when we met, Sully was a kind of dark guy.
As someone who was prone to dark moods myself, that was saying something.
Sure, a lot of guys who were in the service suffered with depression or PTSD, depending on their jobs and the shit they’d seen. But most of us still carried that shit with us after we got out.
Sully?
Sully seemed to do a full one-eighty. I didn’t think I’d caught the man moping or moody since I joined the club.
I was sure there was likely some shrink out there who would say something about how his never-ending partying, sex, and positivity was somehow a mask to protect himself from his darker side.
I honestly wasn’t convinced that side still existed, though.
I didn’t notice at his declaration that I’d reached down to rub my leg just above my prosthetic. But Sully caught the move.
“We can meet you there if you want to get a ride,” he said, likely recalling the aftermath a few months ago when I’d really overdone it physically, causing blisters and swelling that made it all but impossible to put my prosthetic back on until I healed up.
“I’m good,” I insisted, shaking off the tension that grew at the memory of that painful week.
Redemption wasn’t that far from the clubhouse. And if I was having any pain, I could just get a ride back home.
With that, everyone headed out the door.
It was the first crisp night as we teetered that fine line between late summer and fall.
“Look at this shit,” Perish grumbled, bending over to grab a dandelion head and ripping it off of the plant.
“This is where Billie would lecture you about how bees need dandelions,” Nave told him.
“Yeah? Got a whole field of ‘em down the street. They can stay out the yard here.”
Perish, the absolute tank of a man with ‘bad news’ written all over him had developed a borderline hilarious obsession with the grass at the clubhouse.
I once walked outside in the middle of the night for some air after a particularly realistic nightmare to find him walking the grounds with fucking cleats on his feet because he needed to ‘aerate’ the grass.
“Uh oh,” the woman who owned a walk-up convenience store said as we all walked past. “I hope you ate before you go and drown in whiskey,” she added as Sully stopped, resting his arms on the window sill to shoot her one of his charming smiles.
“You got any hot pretzels?” he asked.
“Always,” she said, nodding. “But I’m out of the cinnamon sugar dip,” she said, walking away to grab six pretzels and pass them to us as Sully paid her.
“We are partying at the clubhouse later if you want to join,” Sully invited.
“Oh, my tequila shot days are far behind me. I’m going to enjoy a nice antacid and boyfriend pillow and head to sleep once I’m done here.”
With that, we made our way down the road toward Redemption, the club owned by our president and his wife.
Apparently, sometime before me, the club had actually been the headquarters of the rival MC that Fallon’s wife was the president of. Until her people fucked her over and forced her out.
Keeping the building and turning it into a bar frequented by our club felt like a great way to say ‘fuck you’ to her old club.
“Toll, my man,” Sully greeted the bartender as we made our way inside.
I spotted a few of A’s guys sitting at a back table. Aside from that, though, the place was dominated by a bunch of early twenty-somethings.
This wasn’t exactly the kind of bar that catered to their age group, but I imagined they’d likely gotten kicked out of another local place, given how obnoxious they were being. And the night was young.
“So, what are we drinking?” Sully asked, taking a seat next to two women in surprisingly conservative business attire.
Sure, there was a group of women in tight dresses and heels who were already eye-fucking us. But Sully always loved a bit of a challenge. I would put good money on those buttoned-up women being back at the clubhouse in their underwear in the pool by the end of the night.