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"And you're the person to do that?" she asked, lips quirked up slightly.
"Might be the only person capable. Besides," I added with a grin, "I mean... just look at me..."
She laughed at that, her face lighting up. "Alright," she said, nodding. "I'm not really the 'don't hurt my girl or I'll chop off your balls' kind of friend, but you know how they supposedly pickled Rasputin's cock..."
It was my turn to laugh. "Got it, Lo," I said, saluting her with a plate as I made my way toward the hallway and down the stairs.
Fact of the matter was, the clubhouse was pretty empty these days. Even with the women and kids around, it was quieter. It was eerie. I wasn't sure I would ever get used to it. Most of the doors in the hallway, the doors that used to house our fallen brothers, were closed, were a constant reminder of what we had lost. And thanks to the constant threat, we hadn't even been able to have a proper mother fucking memorial for any of them. For the men who didn't have family, we had the remains buried or cremated according to their wishes. And we had talked Shooter and Breaker into going to the services when we couldn't so they wouldn't be fucking empty.
It wasn't right.
They were our brothers.
We should have been there to say words, spill liquor, toss dirt, show them the respect they deserved for their loyalty and ultimate sacrifice.
There was a part of me, albeit an absolutely minuscule part of me, that almost felt bad for what was going to happen to those sorry sons of bitches who came in and killed our men.
An image flashed into my head, the clubhouse completely fucking saturated in blood- on the walls, the floor, the table, TV, couch, on the fucking liquor bottles, some of the beds, the bathrooms.
I closed my eyes tight, taking a slow, deep breath, pushing it away. That was all I had been doing too- pushing it away. I hadn't faced it yet. I hadn't worked through the feelings I had been denying myself. I knew it wasn't healthy, it wasn't good. It would make me even more unpredictable than usual. It was eating away at my sleep. It was keeping me on edge.
But I couldn't bring myself to relive it yet.
So it went back into the box inside to be dealt with at a better time.
I moved down the stairs to the basement that Duke had done the bulk of the remodel on, turning it into a damn fine fallout shelter. Coming from his background, it made sense. Those doomsday racist fucks.
"Feels like home down here, huh?" I asked her as I walked down, finding her on a bottom bunk, flat on her back, staring numbly at the bunk above her.
Her head turned to me, her face blank. "I came down here to be alone."
I shrugged, putting her plate down next to her hip, pulling out the beers and tossing them on the mattress then sitting down next to her feet, leaning back against the footboard so I could face her.
"In what way was that an invitation?" she asked, scooting up, careful to not touch me. She always was. It was like she knew that if we touched, shit was going to escalate.
"Your mouth might be saying 'go fuck yourself', but your eyes are saying 'please fuck me until I can't see straight anymore'. I'm fluent in eye-language," I added with a smirk as she rolled those gorgeous hazel eyes of hers and reached for her plate.
"Did you guys make a plan?"
"Not much of a plan to make until we have a number or, at the very least, a location."
"Oh my God," she groaned suddenly, pulling the fork out of her mouth and closing her eyes for a second.
I suddenly wished I could cook like fucking Repo.
"Yeah, sweetheart. Do that again, but maybe arch your back and..." I started and cut off on a chuckle when she kicked me with her sock-clad foot.
"Shut up," she said, shaking her head as she stabbed a piece of broccoli. "The cooks up at Hailstorm are, ah, adequate. But it's glorified military food. This, this," she said, pointing her fork toward the apple-stuffing stuffed pork loin, "is practically gourmet."
I nodded at that, acknowledging it. Repo could fine-tune an engine and do some real damage with a gun, but his cooking skills were legendary in our circle.
"So are we really not going to discuss the Pokémon socks? Like, are we going to sit here and pretend they're not right here, staring me in the face? Fucking Pokémon," I added with a smile as I looked over at her feet, realizing how fucking small they actually were without her clunky combat boots on them. And the socks were Pokémon- electric blue background with red and white Poké Ball on them.
