Page 54 of Biker's Property
“I’m not.”
“Darlene fucked you up. I get it.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. And you don’t have to be fine. Just don’t torture her while she’s pregnant. You don’t want an even bigger burden on your hands than the one you already have,” Cash says. “When you find the baby’s father–
“I’m not giving the kid away.”
Cash raises a skeptical eyebrow,but I can tell he isn’t eager to stand around talking to me and I’m not eager to stand around talking to him, either. I might not poke at Darlene with knives or screwdrivers anymore, but he can’t stop me from talking to her. Or leaving her in the dark until she begs for food…
“She’s yours,” he says. “Just… think about what Doc would say if he could see you.”
I understandCash’s efforts to appeal to my better senses. It’s a logical instinct. Most men have the capacity to have their logic override their baser instincts. Not me. Not after the military. Not after the shit I did in the Middle East.
“I’ll be good,”I tell him, but from the way he looks at me, I know Cash doesn’t believe me.
I lightup an unfiltered black Camel as I watch him disappear across the horizon. Alone with Darlene…
How canthey expect me not to fuck that up? I doubt Southpaw would even trust Gideon in this position. Problem is, the club is up to their fucking eyeballs in shit going on. Southpaw doesn’t have time to keep his eye on me or Darlene. They’ll call me if they need any dirty work done – Nazis in the ground.
I keep smoking all the way back to the trailer, and still have about half the Camel left as I walk inside. Oske has weird Indian shit all over the place and if I didn’t know any better, I would say that she was trying to put a curse on me. I walk into the trailer, looking for where I set down that ashtray when Darlene lets out a loud ass moan from the back room.
“Let me out,” she whines after unleashing a dramatic groan that damn near shakes the entire trailer. I ignore her and keep smoking while looking for the ashtray. She calls me a few names. I put on the television. Nothing worth watching since Oske doesn’t have cable or anything worth viewing. There are reruns ofMurder She Wroteplaying on some fucking channel…
The television barely drowns Darlene’s noise. I find the ashtray in the kitchen next to a cold cup of instant coffee I forgot earlier. I don’t plan on sleeping tonight with Darlene back there moaning and crying away. Before I kill her, there’s a lot of shit I want to know.
I can’t killher right away. I understand that.
But once Ihave that baby in my arms, the right thing to do is to put this woman down like a dog that lost its use. She betrayed me. She cheated on me. She fucked a Neo-Nazi biker and got pregnant with his baby. She lied when she got out of prison, spent tens of thousands of dollars that I put my ass on the line for, and then she chose some sick bastard over me.
That’s notthe type of wound a Blackwood man tolerates. I appreciate Cash Hollingsworth’s instinct to appeal to my better nature, but nothing can stop me once I set my mind to something. I learned to ride when I was eight years old, stealing Doc’s bike in the process. Didn’t even care that he whooped me so hard I couldn’t sit for a week. Second I regained the ability to sit, I got my ass right back on that bike and did it all over again.
Nothing could keep me away from riding.Fucking nothing.
She criesout again and I put the kettle on. More coffee. That’s what I need. Not all that damn hollering.
Chapter Twenty-Five
STEEL
The woman in the picture Joslin just showed has rocked me to my core.
It’sa woman I know quite well. The Rebel Barbarians’ favorite grifter.Oske.
What the hellis Oske doing in those pictures? How much of her past has she hidden from us? Her attitude and brashness make a lot more sense now. She looks so young in that picture. Like she was a pretty sweet girl. Now, she looks angry all the time.
But it’s her.Southpaw’s mysterious Indian relative. My tongue feels double its size and my throat clenches with immediate discomfort. There is something very wrong here.
“Do you know this woman?”
Joslin shakes her head. “Do you?”
She sounds slightly jealous, which I like. She’s coming around to the idea of us being together, which is a very smart idea considering this situation only appears to be getting more complicated.
“She’s affiliated with the club.”
“What does that mean?” Joslin says.