Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
“Dutch’s dad was murdered when he was a little kid.”
My body froze and I stared.
“I met his dad when I was a lot younger,” Hugger continued. “Too young to be able to form an impression outside of knowing I dug him. He liked kids.”
“Ugh. I hate that for Dutch.”
“You experience something like that, watch your mom grieve your dad’s death for two decades, it informs you on tragedy. We do what we do with Resurrection in part because of Dutch. Men were gettin’ antsy, that was a thing, but Dutch knew the Club just as good as any brother who’d had their patch for decades. He was restless, others were too. Now we wade in, if we want.”
“Knew the Club?”
He rolled to his back, pulling me partly on him and up, so we were face-to-face.
“Our president, Rush’s old lady, Rebel, she’s a movie director. She made a documentary about Chaos.” He took a beat before he concluded, “I think you should watch it, Di.”
Oh, I was so totally doing that.
“How cool,” I said.
“We used to be outlaws.”
Hmm.
I wasn’t so sure about that.
“What does that mean?” I queried carefully.
“Ran guns. Ran security for shipments of illegal shit. Ran a stable of whores. My mom was one of Chaos’s girls.”
Holy crap!
“Harlan, I…that doesn’t…” Ulk! “Whoa.”
“Yup,” he agreed with my stunned stammering.
“That isn’t a problem for you?”
“Most the brothers didn’t want to be messed up with that shit. They got out. They took care of all of their girls when they did, at least they did that as best they could. Took ’em a while to extricate themselves, and it was dangerous, but they did it. By the time I was with the Club, they were clean.”
I was beginning to get it.
“But they used to be adrenaline junkies, and to get a fix of that, you all hooked up with Resurrection.”
“Not exactly,” he replied. “In making the statement they were no longer outlaw, Resurrection went outlaw the other way, becoming vigilantes.”
Ummmmmmmmm…
Holy crap!
Though, this shouldn’t surprise me too much, considering Hugger and Big Petey showing up to do what they were doing for me and Madison.
Nonetheless, providing security for a couple of chicks and looking into why some criminal madman had targeted your club was a lot different than being a vigilante.
“Not what you’re thinkin’,” Hugger told me. “We just kept our patch clean. That’s it. No drugs, prostitutes, any a’ that shit around Ride, our store and the garage we run. We ran out of enemies, we stopped doin’ that, and now we leave it to the cops. That said, anything like that gets close to the store, we shut it down. But we minimized our patch to a couple a’ blocks around the store, not miles around it.”
“Right.”
He was studying me closely while advising, “You need to watch the documentary.”
“I totally do. Wanna watch it now?”
He sounded surprised when he asked, “You wanna watch it with me?”
“Are you in it?”
“No.”
“Do you not want to watch it with me?”
“No, actually”—he tucked some hair behind my ear (and he was skilled at that too, I knew, considering the charge of electricity that sizzled down the side of my neck when he did it)—“that’d be cool.”
“Want me to make some popcorn?”
“Babe, you made four pizzas, a huge-ass Caesar, and we went through two gallons when we made the sundaes. You can put down some popcorn?”
“Is that a no?” I asked testily, never a fan of anyone commenting on what I ate (we could just say, Dad did that a lot), and definitely not a man I liked doing it.
“No, it’s not a no. I’m just impressed.”
I relaxed and grinned at him.
“I’ll get a brew and top up your wine, you deal with the popcorn,” he said.
“Do you want microwave or oil popped?”
“You choose.”
“Oil popped with melted butter and tons of salt.”
Hugger slid his hands up my spine, murmuring, “Perfect.”
Though, the way he was looking at me gave me the sense that word had two meanings.
And damn, that felt good.
Sadly, it didn’t last long because Hugger curled up, taking me with him, and then we were on our feet.
We both headed to the kitchen.
He helped by melting the butter (another pro for the Do I Want to Explore This with Hugger List).
We cued up the movie and sat snuggled together with the popcorn bowl between us, watching the documentary of his Club that I would have thought was kickass even if it wasn’t about Chaos.
This Rebel chick had some serious chops as a filmmaker.
I couldn’t say some of it wasn’t scary, it was.
I could say I loved that Hugger was so open about it, not hiding anything, but also that the Club had made it to the other side.
Oh, and Dutch’s dad was just as amazing as he was, and that wasn’t just his looks. The man had a beautiful smile and clearly loved his wife, kids and brothers, something that made me sad, but I was glad he’d created two sons to carry on that goodness before he was lost to the world.