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CHAPTER NINE
Valen
I felt like a complete fucking coward, but I was looking for a reason not to be around the clubhouse the following morning.
The fact of the matter was, Louana’s mom, Evangeline,—or Evan, as everyone called her—was coming. And the woman was terrifying.
Sure, Luce, her father, was scary in his own right. But there was something about the fierceness of a mom that instilled the fear of God in me.
And she was planning on coming to see her daughter.
She sure as shit was looking for an excuse to run into me and give me a piece of her mine. And I was trying like hell not to put myself in that situation.
“Your eagerness is suspicious,” Brooks declared, giving me a hard look as we stood in the kitchen.
Everyone else was still out cold after the events of the night before.
There’d been a group effort that ended up with Cary’s girl getting saved, even if the situation wasn’t exactly over yet, since the guy who had fucked up her life was still on the loose.
It wouldn’t take long for that to be all cleaned up, though, if I knew anything about this club and their tenacity, it wouldn’t be long until she was free and clear to live her life.
So I was free to worry about my own problems.
A poisons expert who had a bone to pick with me.
“I’m just up early and bored,” I lied.
“Yeah, sure,” Brooks said, unconvinced. “Well, Louana is laid up. So why don’t you cook breakfast?” Brooks suggested, not giving me the out I wanted. And I was pretty sure he knew that.
“I’m not a great cook.”
“Even a bad cook can whip up some eggs,” he said, shrugging. “Don’t know how, watch a video,” he told me, giving me a slap on the back as he made his way out of the kitchen.
Well, it could be worse, I guess. He could have tasked me with washing the bikes or cars, or doing yard work, which would have meant that Evangeline would have had to pass by me on her way into the club.
At least if I was in the kitchen, she wouldn’t immediately see me if she was coming inside to see her daughter.
I could be a real pussy and make Voss bring them their share of breakfast once he got up.
Decision made, I set to making breakfast.
I wasn’t lying to Brooks. I wasn’t a great cook. But that didn’t mean I didn’t know how to feed myself. A fair chunk of my travels had involved a lot of camping. Camping meant you had to figure out some way to eat.
I’d gotten good at one-pot meals, and learning how to season shit to make even plain food more palatable.
So I decided on eggs and some breakfast potatoes. Keep it simple.
Louana was a fan of making omelets, mixing whatever meats, cheeses, and vegetables we had lying around into it. And every single time, they were fucking banging.
I had to stop myself from imagining how she might have made them for the two of us every day had I not ran out like I did. Or thinking about what other kinds of meals she might have cooked up for dinners that we’d eat across from each other at a table while we talked about our days… and helped feed our kids.
Louana, having grown up as an only child, had once told me that she’d like to have several herself. I’d never given it much thought before her, being so young, but I figured that if they were part me, and part her, that I would like a bunch of them too.
My mind was on exactly those things still as I beat the eggs and milk together.
It was right then, also, that I sensed I wasn’t alone.
Don’t tell me how I knew, but I knew.
