AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Now don’t feel sorry for me.”
She knew all about these bikers and their stupid pride and said, “I don’t feel sorry for you.”
“It’s written all over your face.”
She stepped closer to the couch. “You’re sleeping in your own bed tonight, Turtle. I won’t allow you sleeping on this god-awful couch. I thought you said you were sleeping with one of the sweetbutts last night?”
Turtle groaned while slowly sitting upright. “Plans changed. There was a damn orgy down the hall and I couldn’t sleep for hours. Damn Wolf and his pack of sluts.”
Like he’d just realized he’d said that last part out loud, Turtle instantly grabbed her hand.
“Sorry, Princess.”
Amara’s heart got stuck in her throat. “W-why do you feel sorry for me? I slept fine…” she lied.
“It wasn’t my intention to point out who’d kept the entire floor up all night.”
Amara swept a few raven strands over her shoulder. “Oh, I’m not surprised. We all know Wolf.”
Turtle’s eyes zeroed in on her for a moment before he said, “And he’ll never change, sweetheart.”
She didn’t know her crush had been that obvious.
“Look who’s pitying who now?” she joked.
Turtle’s weathered hand gave hers a tight squeeze before he said, “I’m just lookin’ out for ya. Damn. It’s like staring into Ophelia’s eyes.”
Amara’s throat tightened at the mere mention of her mother. She wondered what Ophelia Doukas would have said about her daughter pining after Wolf—a man clearly unable to love her the way she already loved him.
She’d been four when her mother died. On some days she wondered if her memories of her mother weren’t just bits and pieces of what her brothers and sister had told her about their mother. Amara pictured her mother stroking her hair, but even that memory could be redirected to one of the many pictures hanging in the hallway back at the house.
“Do you think if my mother was still alive, that—”
Turtle padded the rumpled, stained seat next to him. Although hesitant—since she’d always gave these foul couches a wide berth—she accepted his invitation.
“Thinking in ‘what-ifs’ only results in pain, Princess. There’s just no use in fantasizing about what your mother would have said to your dad when he first started to do lines for breakfast.”
“I know…”
Turtle parted his gray beard that fell to his chest before his fingers started braiding the coarse hairs. Amara held her breath for what was to come. Throughout the years, she’d noticed that whatever Turtle said while braiding his beard, would be of significance.
“People feared your father everywhere he went—not just in Texas. I’ve walked behind the bastard on the Vegas Strip three decades ago when people crossed the street in panic, one even ending up in the hospital after a car made mashed potatoes of his brain. People just knew with one look that your father was the top dog and the one to watch out for. It wasn’t until after your mother died, that he fully gave into that darkness.”
“One of my first memories is of him giving me a piggyback ride in our backyard.”
Turtle chuckled before a nasty cough made him red in the face. Amara got up from the couch and grabbed two bottles of water from the cooler behind the bar.
Turtle greeted the bottle she held out in front of him with a scrunched up nose.
“Water?!”
She resumed her spot and unscrewed her water bottle. “I’m not getting you a beer. It’s a quarter past six in the morning.”
“That’s right, Turtle. You should wait at least half an hour for brekkie,” Bondi said after entering the bar from the corridor leading to the downstairs bathroom.
The Australian IVMC member plunked down on the couch next to Amara, kicking two empty beer bottles to the floor as he plopped his heavy boots on the coffee table.
“Help an old man out, will ya?” Turtle grumbled while holding out his water bottle with a slight tremble in his hand.
