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"Alright, alright," Ben said, holding up a hand before moving toward the bar.
Five o'clock on the dot.
"Been here two years," Meryl said as he unloaded the cartons of smokes onto the counter for me to stock.
"Yeah."
"Never seen you with a man. Unless the drunken grinding on that fucking gang member counts. Which it don't."
One of my finer moments, for sure.
The fact of the matter was, I understood quite well the neighborhood that I lived in, and the gang that ran it. Third Street. In fact, the leader lived in my apartment building. The whole crew congregated on the front stoop pretty much daily. I knew better than to get their attention. Luckily, that moron got completely blackout drunk, and when he confronted me the next day rambling on about how I got him hot and bothered, leaving him high and dry, I had acted like I had never seen his face before. Considering how wasted he had been, his 'boss' bought my story, and ribbed the guy endlessly about his wishful thinking.
I just barely got out of that one.
It was the last time I danced with a guy when I was drinking. In this town anyway.
"Why would I need anyone else when I have you, you sexy beast?" I asked, not unkindly, though he knew I wasn't being serious.
"Lenny..."
"What?" I asked, turning around to find a somewhat patient look on his face. I wasn't an open book. He knew this. If anything, my covers were fucking glued together, and everything in between was heavily redacted. You couldn't read me; you'd lose your mind if you even tried. "I know," I said to his raised brow. "I'm a frigid bitch. I should warm up so some dude will want to spend some time with me."
I wasn't an automaton; I had urges and desires and wants. I didn't hate men, though you could say I leaned more heavily to that side than the other. But I simply haven't had time for one the last six months. And to invite one into my life when I was about to commit a capital offense was simply not a good move.
"You're not a frigid bitch," Meryl surprised me by saying. He wasn't shy about using the b-word, though he generally did it teasingly. And, to be fair, when I totally deserved it. "And I never said you should change. Maybe though, you could find yourself a man who could... warm you up the old-fashioned way."
With that, he was gone, leaving me to wonder if that was a remote possibility. Because I knew Meryl. He didn't mean that at face-value, meaning I could let a man warm me up by fucking me. He meant something deeper, something that I, well, had never allowed in my life. Easier to have a fling when I needed it, or a fuck-buddy situation, than catch feelings.
Men, I had learned from a very, very young age, always left.
And in leaving, they left the women who loved them as broken pieces scattered all around.
Yeah, I decided as I shook off that train of thought, knowing it went nowhere I wanted to visit again, it was better to do my thing.
I worked.
I occasionally got wasted to get rid of some of the stress.
I trained.
I got stronger.
I got more and more ready each day.
Because the six-month mark was readily approaching.
And there was a pit in my stomach that was telling me that the deal I made with the universe that night wasn't going to go the way I had been hoping in vain for.
Things weren't going to get better.
I was going to have to make the hardest decision of my life.
Then after that, yeah, I was going to make the fucking easiest.
I was going to kill a man.TWOEdison"I'm just saying, it's too quiet." That was Sugar.
To be fair, he wasn't exactly wrong.
This was a gun-running MC.
Things were almost never supposed to be so still.
If there was one thing I knew about stillness, it was that a raging storm always followed. Always.
It had been the better part of a year since Richard Lyon was shot down, since someone did drive-bys, since Marco took over the cocaine trade.
And nothing.
No more shows of flexing. No more nothing.
It didn't feel right.
It felt like a storm was brewing.
Though there was nothing to suggest that.
It was just in the atmosphere.
It was like I could tell the rain was coming by an ache in a badly healed tibia.
I could feel trouble coming in my balls.
It was coming.
We just had no idea how, when, why, or by whom.
Sugar and Virgin felt it.
That was likely due to a lifetime in an MC, knowing the ebbs and flows like a sailor knew the seas.
Roan sensed it too.
You hardly ever caught him down from that fucking DARPA glass room on the roof. Though, to be fair, I suspected he wasn't watching out just for threats.
