“So, I didn’t take a bullet for you. I got hit by a stray because I turned around to yell at you.” That was a less endearing outcome.
James chuckled as I moped. “You still got shot by my crazy ex-wife.”
“My crazy ex-best friend,” I added.
“Aren’t we a pair,” he said as he leaned forward and lifted my hand to kiss it. The hair from his mustache and beard that had filled out quite a bit since he’d been by my side in the hospital tickled my hand.
“Have you been sleeping here in that chair?”
He pointed to a folded up, rolling cot across the room. “They gave me a bed to sleep on because I refused to leave. You were shot and we don’t know who did it, so I refused to leave and they decided not to enforce the no visitors at night thing.”
“Okay, so let’s circle back to Greg,” I said.
“Let’s not.” When I gave him a pointed stare, he huffed and rolled his eyes like a child. “He tried to come see you and they turned him away. The bastard threatened to call the cops until your buddy, Finch, talked sense to him. You were barelycoherent then. I refused to let him up at first because I didn’t know whether he was someone close to you or just an old Army friend you met while here on a job. It wasn’t until I called Finch to find out that he told me who the bastard was and that he would handle Daniels.”
“Why would you agree to date that guy? He’s old, Cass.”
“He’s mature and didn’t come with a bunch of hurtful baggage. He also didn’t have another woman on his lap the last time I saw him.”
“I thought you were working with Simone and nothing fucking happened with Tay-Tay. We kissed, but I was too drunk to do anything.”
“She was sitting on your lap and you looked like shit, but not drunk.”
“Putting her on my lap was a point being made to someone else because I was feeling sorry for myself. I swear to you, nothing happened with her.”
I shrugged one shoulder because it didn’t hurt to do so but it would have if I had used the other one in tandem. “It’s not like we were dating. I just didn’t feel like I could take anything you did or said seriously then. Plus, it was obvious what you thought about me based on what Bigfoot asked. I figured the baggage between would always be too much because in your mind, you still haven’t been able to rectify the lies Simone told you about me with the truth.”
“Cass, I promise that I have. You have to admit, it was a weird string of coincidences. You had just told me a couple days before that you inherited your family’s land. It never came up that Tiffany got some of it and I had no reason to go looking for that information before. I assumed you got all the land. It looked like you were the one selling it because we couldn’t see the buyer or seller’s names at first. I just knew that land belonged to your family.”
“I know.” I wiggled my butt to get comfortable because everything started to hurt again, and wished I hadn’t.
“We should put a pin in all this bullshit. You’ve got enough to deal with.”
“I am literally a captive audience right now, James. The only thing I could do to run for the conversation is pass out cold, so we should finish and get all the painful parts over with at once.
19.REKINDLING
KNUCKLES
I didn’t wantto tell Cassidy that we believed Simone shooting at us and Tiffany’s death might have been linked, especially since she gave me that useful insight that she had clocked a few of his tattoos that indicated he was a member of the Rivera Cartel. It couldn’t have been a coincidence that Simone was Tiffany’s realtor.
Knuckles: Tiffany Baker’s boyfriend was Rivera Cartel. Cass noticed tats that link him when he paid her and her friends a visit before she left town.
Knuckles: Pull her friends in for their safety. She’s mine, that means they are, too.
Bigfoot: I’ll get the others working on the new info. Darkhorse has been here at the club a lot anyway. Think we found a new prospect.
“Prez thinks your buddy Finch might want to join the club.”
Cassidy smiled and gave a knowing nod. “Makes sense. I was sure he’d try to go back in the Army. Of the four of us,he spent the longest time in and he hasn’t adjusted well to life as a civilian. Too much estrogen around for him, I think.” She chuckled lightly with the pillow tight against her chest as she did. “Finch needs a chain of command and a trusted team around him to function. He has the trusted team, but we’re more like sisters than buddies to him.”
“A lot of MCs are full of ex-military for the same reasons. That and the fact that so many of them see the corruption in the system for what it is after serving and they don’t want any part of normal society under those conditions.”
I held Cassidy’s hand in my own. It was one of the small luxuries I had at the hospital with her. She never pulled away and I treasured the moments when I was able to touch her, skin-to-skin. It anchored me in the present with her rather than being lost to the nightmares where I relived the moment she got shot. I didn’t want to dwell there, so I turned focus back to the things I could control.
“I have a question for you,” I said after we both sat on the Finch information for a while. She gave me a look that told me to ask it. “Do you have a Will that designates who gets your land if anything happens to you?”
“I do, why?”
