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Do I tell him she screamed my name as I plowed into her from behind? That she left me three voicemails this morning? It was so easy to rile Slade up. In the last year since he took Woods’ spot in the Club, he’d become the guy we used as a lovable punching bag. It wasn’t like he was a brother to me. I would have loved to see his face when I told him she was a squirter.
“Just kidding, bro,” I said instead and emptied the whisky down my throat.
Slade took a moment to buy it. He went from frowning and huffing to smiling and laughing in a matter of seconds. Did I really have that good of a poker face?
Hell yeah I did.
I caught King’s eye as Slade sat down on a stool beside me and ordered another round for the bunch of us. King knew what had happened. He saw me go to the back of the Club with both the women. He was warning me with his narrowed eyes. I raised my empty glass to him and smirked. What was life if not made for fucking anyone available? And that blond was available last night. It wasn’t like I would have batted an eyelid if Slade slept with her tonight. As long as I got to her first.
“Y’know, you guys could give me a hand with these,” Big D brought us our glasses. He’d always worked alone at the Club. Word was that he was known as ‘Shrink’ on the inside, because apparently, he used to lie down on one of the bunks and listen to these big tatted up men pour their hearts out to him. Now that he was outside, he was the perfect bartender at the Club.
King whistled at Girth like he was calling a dog.
“Take him,” he said and we all burst out laughing. Big D rolled his eyes, giving the counter a swipe with the rag on his shoulder.
“You want to put the two biggest guys in here behind the bar?” he said and crossed his bulky biceps over each other on his chest. We still couldn’t stop laughing. Just the thought of Girth and Big D behind the bar, squeezing themselves in!
“We’ll hire an outsider, Big D, and don’t let these boys get to ya,” it was Dad’s voice that interrupted our laughter. He was sitting at the end of the counter, surrounded by Crawford and the other older members of the club. He’d overheard the conversation and had spoken in his deep voice, which had the power of silencing everyone in the room.
Those were qualities that were important to him.
Power
Respect
The Bike
Women
He’d tried his best to instill those qualities in me, to prepare me for when it was my turn to become President of the Rogue Rebels. It was just that sometimes I got the order of things mixed up.
“Yes, Sir,” Big D said and went back to working the bar. A lot of people liked to call Dad Sir or just Elwood. He never corrected them. We were one big family, a family of brothers as Crawford used to say, but Dad made sure that everyone knew who the head of the family was. It was him. And it was going to be me.
He caught my eye and raised a glass like a salute, I did the same and we drank to that.
“So how was she?” Slade had sidled up to me while I wasn’t looking. I turned to him, a little confused. Who was he talking about?
“The tits you scored last night. Man, I heard her screaming!” he said with a chuckle and drank some of his beer. I couldn’t help but wondering which one’s screams he heard.
“You want me to invite you to watch the next time I have a girl bent over my bike?” I asked. King and Girth laughed. Slade shrugged his shoulders and sat back in his chair, tipping it dangerously backwards but keeping it balanced perfectly.
“Maybe I’ll learn something,” he said with a laugh and I shook my head.
Slade was all right. He was new to the Club, just a pup, but he had my back. Which meant, that I would always have his.
xxx
We were fucked. How long had we been drinking? Time had overlapped and meshed together, to form one long stream of booze and bad jokes.
“Which one of you is gonna tuck my man into bed tonight?” a woman’s voice interrupted us. We all turned to the door of the bar in unison and saw Jewel Elwood standing there, with her hands on her hips. Her wispy brown curls were framing her face, and her eyes were stern.
Mom.
“Elwood, your old lady’s here to collect you,” I heard Crawford joking and Dad passed him a smile. Mom’s gaze searched me out in the dark crowd of the bar and she rolled her eyes at me. She’d married a biker. She’d raised a biker. This was the life she’d had to settle for, not the one she’d chosen and sometimes, I felt sorry for her.
I saw Dad lazily slip off his stool and reach for his leather jacket, while Mom remained standing at the door, watching Dad’s every movement.
It took a lot of trust and a lot of guts to forge the solid marriage that Mom and Dad shared. It wouldn’t have been easy for her. Dad’s code of life included women. They were at the bottom of his list of priorities, but they were there. I didn’t have to rack my brain hard to recall how many times she’d caught him with someone else, and how many times she’d threatened to leave.
