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Tripp shook his head before he ever answered, but I didn’t think he realized he was giving the non-verbal confirmation that he didn’t consider her as such. “No.”
“Why not?”
“Family are the people who would stick by your side no matter what. They’re the ones who don’t care if you have two pennies to scrape together. June would care if I was broke. She’d probably try to get me a job at her dad’s bank or some shit. I could never do that. It would literally kill my soul to sit in a fuckin’ office all day.”
I chuckled. “Totally understand all that.”
“I want her to be my old lady.” My heart was crushed as he admitted that to me. “That’s what I thought I wanted. But I’m starting to doubt it. She already learned about the club girls when she came to say goodbye. You were right. I saw the fear, the panic in her eyes, all she saw was Minx in a tiny skirt and bra. She couldn’t handle that. If she walked in and saw what goes down on a crazy Friday night, or hell a lazy Tuesday, she’d run and tell me to make a choice between her and my club, my family, my damn job.”
Part of me wanted to yell, “Well, duh!” He should have seen this coming back when he started prospecting, and probably before that since he grew up in the life.
“You know what?” I asked. Tripp looked up at me and waited to hear what I had to say. His shoulders were stiff, like he expected me to say something awful, like I agreed with what he just said. While I did, repeating the same shit he already knew wouldn’t be helpful.
“You have all summer to torture yourself. The club gave you a rare weekend night off and we’re wasting a perfectly okay party standing here talking about things that are tomorrow’s worries. Let’s go get you a beer – or something stronger – and figure out how to have a good damn time.”
His slow smile spread into a wide grin before Tripp wrapped an arm around me and started walking us over to where a keg was set up. “Just found another reason I like you,” he insisted while grabbing a Solo cup out of the package that had been left sitting there in the bed of someone’s pickup truck.
“I’m a likable person,” I teased in a flirty tone. There was no way to hide the blush of embarrassment that flooded my cheeks as a result. Practicing how to flirt in a mirror was so not the same as attempting it in person. Although, I may not have screwed it up too bad because when Tripp passed me my cup and started to fill his own, I could have sworn he said, “Too fuckin’ likable.”
Chapter 5
Tripp
I sipped my beer while unable to take my eyes off Mack’s little sister. She had to remain just that in my head, otherwise Kim would dig her way too deep under my skin. She was beautiful in such an understated way. Her barely-there makeup did just enough to highlight her best features without hiding them altogether the way some girls did. I wanted to run my fingers through her long, brown hair to see if it was as soft as it looked.
“I had been disappointed when June went from brunette to blonde in her sophomore year. Her cousin, Anna, helped her and they overbleached it or something. Afterward, it felt straw that would break off at any moment. Her mom insisted on professional upkeep after that, but it still didn’t feel as soft as it once had. I still thought the brown suited her far better, but Anna, June’s mom, and all her other friends convinced her that it looked great, and their opinion obviously meant more than mine.
Kim’s hair looked untouched by chemicals. It wasn’t even her hair, that banging body of hers, or the smile that made me stop and take notice. None of those things were what made it hard to look away from her, although any of them separately could have held that power. It was her heart, the kindness she showed when choosing her words, so they got their point across without obliterating someone’s feelings that made me unwilling to dismiss the rest. It was how she knew exactly when it was time to stop being serious and just enjoy life.
Fuck.
I couldn’t fall for Mack’s sister.
June was still my girlfriend. Even if I did think we needed to have a serious talk about things – things that would probably end us – once she got back. The fact that Kim was Mack’s sister was the biggest reason to look the other way. Hell, I should be running the other way. If I went there, and we didn’t work out, it would be a pain in the ass. Mack and I had only been friends since we started prospecting together, but we became close after working together all the time. I couldn’t lose that and risk making things awkward at the clubhouse.
I downed my beer and went back for a refill while Kim sipped on her first cup. “Do you not like beer?”
“Beer is just fine, but I’m driving later, so this will be my only one.” Kim’s shoulders bounced as she stared off in the distance. “I don’t drink much anyway.”
She really needed to stop giving me reasons to like her more. It fucked with my head that immediate comparisons to what June would do in the same situation popped in my head. June would have been the one to grab another cup right away and then fuss if I tried to refill mine.‘Someone needs to be able to drive us home,’she would say. I hadn’t been drunk in two years because of that shit, but I’d taken care of June when she got absolutely sloppy.
“Why don’t you drink much? Afraid to let loose since Mack’s always ditching you to go home with someone?”
She shook her head. “My mom didn’t cope well with the life. One of her vices was drinking and I have no desire to be like my mother.”
I took a sip of my beer as I thought about that. It had always struck me as odd that our fathers had been in the same MC when we were growing up, but we never met until Mack and I started prospecting together. Mack had spilled a little about his home life, but not a lot. His mother hadn’t approved of the lifestyle and kept the kids away from the clubhouse.
Sometimes, when I talked about June, I could see the looks he would give me. He was comparing her to his own mother and that was why he’d never liked my girlfriend. It was also one of the things that first started me doubting my future with June. My parents hadn’t been the greatest examples in life either, but they at least gave me an extended family, through the club, who was always there for me even when they couldn’t be. Mack and Kim were denied that.
“You ever wish you’d been allowed to come to family days and shit with the club?” I asked her.
“It would have been better than sitting at home watching my mom slowly kill herself.” I winced at her admission. “Not that she ever did achieve her goal. The minute she found out my dad was dead, she packed up and left us. It was like him being alive kept her chained there and after he was gone, we didn’t exist anymore.”
“Jesus!” Mack had never been so blunt about what went down with his mom.
“She never wanted us,” Kim stated plainly as if that shit didn’t hurt when I knew it did.
“My mom was good to me until my dad got pinched. After he and my brother were handed multiple life sentences with no chance of parole, she went off the deep end and sank into drugs until they took her away too.”
