Page 79 of Biker's Property
Motorcycle engines roar to a stop.I glance behind the tree – which isn’t really hiding us – and see four bikes forming a barricade in the road. The fifth is keeping watch, up ahead, or in the rear, which means we’ll have to get to him last. I try to get a head count when my eardrums nearly blast out of my fucking skull.
Joslin.
All hell breaksloose because apparently, Joslin takes to the fucking revolver like a goddamn natural. The first head I counted drops over his bike and nearly knocks over a second bike. A volley of gunfire comes in our direction. I don’t think. I grab Joslin and throw her back against the tree. She holds her hand up, hoisting the revolver above her head so she doesn’t accidentally shoot me.
We both look at each other like we’re not sure who is crazier.
“I got him,”she mouths to me.
Foolishly,I stop her lips with a kiss. We don’t have time for it, but I am so fucking turned on by this tiny killer that I don’t bother fighting the instinct. If it’s my last chance to kiss her, I want to take it. Joslin’s lips part readily, but after my first peck, she pulls away.
“Did we get ‘em?” a thick, Texan accent blares from about fifty feet away. I peer around the tree, holding my pistol steady with my less dominant hand and using the rest of my body to keep Joslin shielded against the tree. This will come down to reflexes. Who shoots first. Who shoots fastest.
I peer around the tree. Catch sight of a head.
Bang!Bang!
I miss the first shot,get his shoulder with the second. But I fire first and Shithole yells out and drops to his knees. Two men run towards him, but they quickly catch sight of me and change direction. Fast. My only concern is getting Joslin out of the way. But I don’t have time to do both – save her or save myself.
Looking at her,I know what choice I’ll make. The first night I met her. In every lifetime.
“I’m sorry,”I whisper, kissing Joslin firmly on the lips and stepping out from behind the tree to my certain death.
Chapter Thirty-Five
OSKE
The white men are very stupid. I have them ranked in order of stupidity. If I didn’t need Wyatt Shaw, I would have stolen his bike months ago and disappeared to Canada. I know they don’t treat us any better there, but nobody knows me in Canada.
Everyone knows me on the rez. Which makes it even more annoying that I have all these stupid white boys hanging around. The hush money they give me is barely enough to cover the problems they bring into my life.
Wyatt forces me to keep the dumbest in my trailer with a prisoner, and then he sends Ethan of all people to watch him. The only thing Ethan cares about is gambling. Wyatt’s older brother is clearly fucked up. Owen is a lot more gentle and kind in comparison. Ethan acts just like a damn bear, which explains his club nickname. The rare moments he isn’t discussing statistics related to gambling, his latest wins and losses, or gamblers that he admires, he tells me all these stories I don’t know if I believe. That story about stealing money from a Jewish man with kids sounds completely fabricated.
Ethan is screwed up, so I wouldn’t put it past him to lie too.
He would bet his own daughter on German pretzel cutting if he got the chance. What the fuck is German pretzel cutting? Something I actually saw that dumbass using his phone to bet on.
These people colonized us to sit around smoking all my weed, torturing white women in my trailer… and gambling. The land and the money kept me from blowing Wyatt’s head off when he showed himself in Indian country again with the same face as his lying ass father. But what keeps me here is much more complicated.
I never knewlife could be any different from the rez until the first time I tried to run away. I thought I had a ticket out of a lifetime of shitting in an outhouse and beating the maggots off of meat just to have some. Not like everyone on the rez lives like we did. We were just poor.Because of them. Because of the white men.
It waseasy to tell myself that my ancestors wanted me to hold them down and slit their throats. I never thought I could bring myself to care about Wyatt Shaw, his dumbass brother or any of the dumbass friends in his club. Then I met Anna Shaw.
She was the first friend I made in years. Girlfriends are different. The sex thing between whichever girl I’m seeing and myself never makes a relationship easy. But Anna showed up as a part of Wyatt’s family and she was just… warm. Gentle. She felt like the family I never had and she saw that potential for family in the man I wanted to push away.
He’s my family too,even if it’s in the strangest, most fucked up way. We don’t see family the way they do. I should be proud of that.
Juliette connectedwith me like no one else has yet. She has the type of personality that makes you want to spill your guts out and stand on the bar to shake your ass to rap music. I’m not even that type of person, but Juliette brings it out of me. Tamiya has that ride or die personality that makes me wonder if I’ve ever been loyal before…
Quin and I don’t know each other as well, but I heard through the grapevine – bikers gossip more than you think – that she has been caring for a mysterious red-haired child who appeared on Tanner’s doorstep. My mother taught me that in our culture, motherhood is the most important role, especially because of what happened. I don’t know if I’ll ever be a mother, but I know I’ll do everything to protect the ones in my strange patchwork family.
Wyatt might bea crazy white boy but right now… he’s all I have.
And the blackladies in the club? I love them.
So when Ruger Blackwoodcalls my phone with horrifying news, only one choice makes sense.
The Group Chat