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Garrett Calley wasn’t a very good man.
He grabbed me by my shirt and shoved me up against the wall. He bared his teeth and glared at me with a wild rage I’d never seen. “Your granddaddy was lucky I was already man enough and not some little cocksucker who preferred jerking off to porn instead of fucking real pussy.” He thrust me harder against the wall. “If I waited for you to become a man, I’d be dead in my grave before your fucking balls dropped. So you listen to me, you little punk, I’m going to harden you the fuck up so when I’m ready for you to fill my shoes, you’ll be enough of a man to do it.”
He released me and let me drop to the floor.
It was the first time he’d forced me to do anything like that.
But it definitely wasn’t the last.
A noise woke me. A helicopter overhead. I opened my eyes and realized the sun was just about to breach the horizon. I sat up and pain bolted through my brain. Shifting uncomfortably in the picnic chair, my boot kicked the near-empty bottle of Tennessee whiskey at my feet, making bells ring in my head.
I rubbed my heavy, fatigued eyes.
Remembering the sleeping beauty in my bed, I scrubbed my fingers down my face and let out a deep breath. I had deliberately left her alone because if I’d gone back into that room last night, temptation would’ve gotten the better of me. I wasn’t prepared to let that happen, so sleeping on the roof seemed like the better option. She was safe here. No one was getting into that room without going through a lot of armed bikers first.
Climbing down the ladder, I entered the clubhouse and found a poker game still taking place in the far corner near the bar. Hawke, Vader, Joker, Cool Hand, and the new guys Yale and Animal were lost in a cloud of cigar smoke as they concentrated on the cards in front of them. Animal’s face was bruised from an earlier bout in the ring with Hawke. A cigarette hung off his cut lip.
“You ladies know it’s almost daylight?” I asked as I walked past them.
“Good. Must mean it’s almost time to start drinking again.” Hawke slurred as he raised his almost empty bottle of Patron to his lips and drank it.
Shaking my head, I headed for my room. In the hallway, Randy’s door opened and he appeared in the doorway with two half-naked blonde women attached to his mouth. He grinned at me as I walked past. The handsome son of a bitch was a damn legend, and I couldn’t help but grin back.
As I rounded the corner, I saw Matlock leaning against the corner while a redhead kneeled on the ground in front of him, her head bobbing up and down as she blew him. He dropped his head back, and I quickened my pace so I didn’t have to deal with his sex noises so early in the morning.
It wasn’t always like this in the clubhouse, but Fight Night usually brought out the worst of our behavior. I put it down to all the hard liquor and testosterone.
When I walked into my room, Cassidy was already awake and in the bathroom, washing her face. She looked up when she heard me walk in and patted her face dry with a towel she took from beneath the sink.
She looked stunning. Her hair was pulled back off her lovely face, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup. She didn’t need it. She was beautiful. A thought I quickly kicked to the curb as soon as it entered my head.
She wasn’t beautiful. She was in danger.
“Did you sleep well?” I asked.
“Yes, thank you. Did you?”
“Yeah.” I got the feeling we were both lying. “You ready to hit the road?”
She nodded and flicked her hair over her shoulders. “Always.”
CASSIDY
He took me to his grandmother’s cabin in the pale light of morning.
It was on the outskirts of Destiny where the small-town charm and urban landscape of Civil War houses gave way to sprawling fields of green. It was a welcoming log home overlooking the river, with a wraparound porch and a small chimney on a shingled roof. To get to it, we drove down a long gravel driveway and pulled up under a towering oak tree.
Climbing out of the truck, the crisp morning air blew across my face and curled in my hair, sending goose bumps along my bare arms.
I drew in a deep breath and closed my eyes, letting the fresh air fill my lungs. Out here it smelled clean and fresh like…
Wait, was that weed?
I opened my eyes and looked around me, searching for the origin of the smell. After a minute of walking around in circles, I found it growing up the side of the cabin. A big fat cannabis plant.
