Page 43 of Hard Corps (Selected Sinners MC 7)

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Summer 2014, Austin, Texas, USA

We sat and shared a pizza at an all-night pizza joint. Not my favorite food by any means, and definitely not something I would have chosen to eat so late at night; but considering the circumstances, it was a pleasant change.

“I wish the world was full of people like you,” she said.

I held the folded slice of pizza in my hand and watched as the grease from the pepperoni ran down my arm to my elbow. “Believe me, you don’t.”

I reached for a napkin and wiped my forearm clean of the grease, shaking my head and laughing as I did so.

“Why?” she asked. “You’re one of the good guys.”

In the middle of taking a bite of pizza, I shook my head. “I’ve got good intentions, but it doesn’t make me one of the good guys.”

“You and Ripp are a lot alike. He acts all mean, but he’s a big softie. He likes to fight, but he doesn’t beat people up for no reason. Dad says he fights to keep his day-to-day anger at a manageable level. I think he’s right. But when people are mean to other people or do things that aren’t right, Ripp steps in and beats them up. He thinks he’s teaching them a lesson. He’s done it since he was little,” she said.

I had never considered fighting as a means of anger management, but it made perfect sense. Katie’s explanation of Ripp’s stepping in when he felt he needed to teach someone a lesson sounded exactly like me. I often felt the need to place myself in a situation most men would perceive as none of their business, only to attempt to teach someone my perception of what was right.

I was quite sure, however, that my general means of resolution, however, might differ from his considerably.

“Well, it does sound like we’re a lot alike, but I don’t think the world needs to be full of people like me,” I said as I took another bite of pizza.

I did my best to stay focused on the food, and not spend as much time staring at her as I did at the dinner we had earlier in the night. Not admiring her was more difficult than I would have imagined, and I attributed my fascination with Katie to my lack of exposure to females in general since my having divorced Suzanne.

“I do,” she said.

She gazed beyond me and appeared to be in deep thought. As she sat there obviously focused on something, I admired everything from her hands to her choice of clothes. Wearing a baseball tee with the word baseball across the front, a pair of jeans, and sneakers, she looked not only comfortable, but adorable.

After a moment, she shifted her eyes toward mine, and caught me in the middle of my admiration. As I shifted my embarrassed eyes to my lap, she began to speak.

“You know, how God puts everything on this earth for a reason. Not everyone sees the reason, but I don’t think most people take the time to really think about it. A centipede, for instance. Most people are repulsed by them. They think they’re gross and wonder why they’re even here. The same with spiders. But God has everything on earth for a reason. So, the spider is here for many reasons, one of which is to feed the centipede. And, the centipede? It’s a staple in the diet of many lizards. The centipede relies on the spider, and the lizard is dependent on the centipede. And, at some point, a hawk, incapable of finding another source of food, swoops down and eats the lizard. At some point, a bobcat catches and eats the hawk, only to be later killed and eaten by a wolf.”

She sounded like a biology professor explaining a theory, but it made perfect sense. I shifted my eyes upward. “The food chain.”

She nodded her head and smiled. “You’re here for a reason. You’re necessary in God’s eyes. Some people on this earth are like the spider or the centipede. And they need eaten. And you’re the wolf. You’re necessary,” she said with a smile.

She had an odd way of putting things into perspective, but so far, I liked what she was saying. She reminded me all too much of myself, and her way of thinking about things was almost identical to mine. I didn’t like being compared to the lizard, but for the time being, I decided it was okay. I did wonder, if her analogy was accurate, who ate the wolf?

“So, what eats me? Who eats Alec Jacob? Where does it end for me?” I asked.

Life, I guess.

She took a bite of crust, shrugged her shoulders, and chewed it for a moment as she thought. I took another bite of the pizza and waited for her to think about my question while I did the same.

Her personality was, at least for me, very inviting. She was beautiful, but seeing her without the distraction of her family present made her much more attractive than her looks alone. Watching her eat, drink, and even talk was fascinating to me, and as I sat and watched her think while she ate her crust, I tried desperately to determine why I was so interested in her.

“Life, I guess,” she said.

Perfect answer.

I nodded my head and swallowed the bite of pizza. “I was thinking the same thing.”

“I guess if the world was full of people like you, we’d have no bad guys. And I suppose we’ll always need to have a few bad guys,” she said.

I laughed out loud and dropped my pizza to my plate. “Why would we need bad guys?”

“To justify having guys like you around,” she said with a grin.