Total pages in book: 59
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75754 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 379(@200wpm)___ 303(@250wpm)___ 253(@300wpm)
My eyes closed and I realized my monumental mistake.
So huge that I didn’t think I’d ever be able to make it up to her.
“God, I’m sorry, Thomasina. I wish I’d known. I would’ve done something,” I whispered.
Garrison was suddenly at my side, and I moved to let him speak his peace.
And it was then I realized that the two of them had had some sort of relationship.
Whatever that may consist of.
And maybe Cormac had known they had something, and he was mad at her for hurting Garrison. I made a mental note to ask him about it later.
“The real question is, is after all that we shared, why the hell you couldn’t tell me something like that,” he asked roughly.
I moved back, not worried about the letters any longer.
They needed some privacy, and I needed room to think.
“Where are you going?” Loki asked.
“To The Clubhouse. I need some time to think.”
***
Three hours and a fifth of whiskey later, I was fucking blitzed.
Then again, there were six men drinking with me, and they were all blitzed just as much as I was.
It’d turned into somewhat of a ‘glad you’re home and not dead’ party with the rest of the Dixie Wardens.
We’d also somehow migrated from the clubhouse to Halligans and Handcuffs.
I vaguely remembered moving in a truck, but I’d not stopped drinking my whiskey the entire time.
At some point Ruthie had shown up for work, taken one look at me, and had shook her head.
She’d been around, but not around.
And it was starting to get on my nerves.
“Where’s my woman?” I finally asked.
Loki was on the bench next to me.
“With mine. They’re talking about all that evil stuff that women talk about,” Loki answered.
“They’re talking about babies,” Sebastian said from my other side.
I looked over at him.
“He did say evil,” I told him.
He laughed.
“My kids are evil,” he agreed. “But I wouldn’t trade them for Trance’s kids.”
“Hey!” Trance said from the other side of the bar. “They only did that one thing once.”
The ‘one thing’ he was talking about was Trance’s son lighting the table on fire.
He’d been playing with a lighter that Trance had thought was empty.
Turns out it wasn’t, and he’d lit the tablecloth on fire, which then had taken the old wood table underneath it with it.
Trance and his brothers had carried the table outside and had then watched it burn.
“That’s nothin’,” Cleo said. “My wife told me about Torren’s kid getting into that butt paste shit and smearing it all over their new couch. They had to throw it away.”
“That was true,” Torren said. “It was a two-thousand-dollar couch, and since the ass cream is water resistant, there was nothing we could do to get it up. Of course my kid used the industrial sized tub, so it was all over the entire couch…and the wall…and the coffee table…the area rug,” he laughed. “But I didn’t like the area rug anyway, so it wasn’t that big of a bad thing for me.”
Torren was sitting behind the bar, directly in front of me, so I could see the evil smile on his face.
“If I didn’t know you better, I’d say that you gave that cream to him, hoping he’d do his worst.” I said.
He shrugged.
“Mebbe’,” Torren said. “Backfired like a bitch, though.”
I couldn’t help it…I laughed.
Hard.
“What are you laughing at?” A woman’s voice said from my back.
My woman.
My heart.
My love.
My fucking soul.
“That’s sweet,” she whispered. “But your friends are looking at you like you’re crazy.”
I hadn’t realized I’d said that out loud.
Oops.
“You done yet?” I asked.
She nodded. “Got done about two minutes ago. You ready to go?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Seems I have to go see my mother tomorrow.”
And go kill my foster father.
“You can’t go kill anyone,” she said. “Just like I told you with my ex’s father. Killing them means jail time and dishonorable discharge. Can’t have your pretty ass in the prison system. It’d get too worn out.”
I grabbed a hold of her hair.
“Nobody will get near my ass,” I told her.
She laughed.
“Honey, I’m pretty sure you’d let me do anything, even if it involved your pretty ass.”
I growled at her.
The men around me laughed.
Fuckers.
“Let’s go home,” I ordered.
She snorted. “It should prove fun.”
“Why?”
“You’ll see.”
***
“Help me out!” I yelled for the fourth time.
She’d somehow shoved me into her tin can of a piece of shit car, and I was stuck.
Really fucking stuck.
“You’re not stuck, so quit your bitchin’,” she growled, opening the door that I couldn’t manage to get open.
I fell out, catching myself before my face hit the ground outside our rented house.
“Help me!” I whined, lowering myself down to the ground and laying my hot face against the cool grass.
When no help was forthcoming, I rolled over and stared up at my soon to be wife.
She was so fuckin’ beautiful.
And sexy.
“What are you looking at?” I asked her.
She hissed at me. “Shh!”
I blinked, sitting up to see where she was staring, and gasped.
“No!” I bellowed. “Don’t do it!”
The two people across the street sprung apart like they’d been cattle prodded.
Thomasina and Garrison had been in each other’s arms…seconds away from making a huge mistake.
“You’re step sister and step brother!” I yelled.
Ruthie started laughing.
“They are not. They’re foster brother and sister. We are the nasty ones, step brother!” She laughed, kicking me lightly in the side.
I thought about that for a few long moments, then nodded my head.
“Okay, y’all may proceed!” I yelled.
Ruthie snorted a laugh, then helped haul me to my feet.
“Goodnight!” I yelled at the pair that were staring at me like I’d grown horns. “I’m going to make some babies with my soon to be wife!”
Ruthie’s peals of laughter followed us inside.
And we did make a baby.
Mostly because I had told her to stop taking the birth control and she had.
I didn’t realize it’d happen so soon, though.
Chapter 21
I hope you get a mosquito bite between your toes.
-Ruthie to Sterling
Ruthie
“You look a little green,” I said, trying hard not to smile.
“That’s because I’m fucking hung over,” he growled.
“You were the one to set up this time. Why didn’t you just reschedule?” I asked.