Not missing a beat, Razor swipes the ball and leads Stone away from the guys shooting the breeze. A few light cigarettes and laugh loudly. Everyone’s roughed up and bleeding. The game’s more tackle than two-hand touch and that’s the way we like it.
We’re in the large grassy area between Olivia’s house and the clubhouse. Thanks to the utility poles, we can play football all night and typically we do, but this summer, my ass has been on Emily patrol.
I lift my shirt and remove the blood from my lip and when I glance over to the porch to check on Emily, she quickly looks away and slides that long dark hair forward like a shield. She’s playing cards with Olivia on the porch and even though she’s dealing, I will her to peek at me one more time.
Eli’s gone again and so is most of the club as they’ve been traveling for the business. He was here for a few days and was stuck to Emily’s side and now he’s on the road and I’m back on duty.
Everyone was banned from here when Eli was away the first time. Now, with him gone again, anyone who is a brother is allowed to come and go, but there’s no partying, no old ladies, no friends of the club, no hang-arounds and above all, no strangers.
All of it is to protect Emily. The slow introduction, according to Eli, is to desensitize her to the way things really work around here.
Chevy kicks at the back of my knee and I sock him in the shoulder. “What was that for?”
“For staring at Emily like you’re three seconds away from showing her the back of the clubhouse and sharing dirty secrets. You do that with Eli around and you can forget making prospect. He’ll put a bullet in your brain.” He mimics his finger as the gun, pulls the mock trigger, then stumbles with the imagined impact.
I shrug even though I know he’s right. “She’s hot.”
“That’s sick. She’s my cousin.”
I don’t mention how Violet was like a sister to me and how Chevy buying condoms six months ago when he was solid with her made me want to vomit. If he didn’t love her, I would have torn out his jugular.
Chevy flicks his chin to where Razor’s showing Stone how to hold his hands together for a catch. “Ever wonder if we’ll get a text from him telling us that we need to help hide a body?”
“Yeah.” Not if. At this rate, with his temper, it’ll be a when. “I kissed her.”
Chevy drops his head. “When?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I look over at the porch again. Emily lays down her cards and smiles at Olivia. Fucking smiles. The type that brightens her face. The one that she doesn’t do often. The one that she’s given me more than a few times. The one I crave for her to give me again and again. The one I see in my dreams as she’s crawling up the bed half-naked to kiss me.
God, there’s something wrong with me.
“We kissed at the clubhouse in Lanesville.” I withhold the part where she blackmailed me. I’ve gotta own some pride. “I thought she was leaving.”
“Why are you telling me?” he asks.
I meet his eyes and he shakes his head in pissed-off understanding. I’m telling him because someone knowing I made a mistake will prevent me from doing it again.
“You’re messed up,” Chevy says. “You know that, right?”
“Yeah. I do.”
“You want me to snag some girls again? Maybe that will help.”
It helps him with Violet. He gets buzzed and loses himself in someone else. He did it two weeks ago with the girl we met up with after the peewee football game. But me? The girl I was with wanted sex. Pretty much asked me to fuck her in several languages, but I ended up taking her home. I couldn’t stop comparing her to Emily.
Pigpen strides up to us. “Are we going another round?”
Over on the porch, Olivia laughs and rolls her head against the Adirondack chair to appraise her granddaughter. Emily watches her for a second, then gathers the cards and picks up two glasses as she stands. Good girl for reading the signs of Olivia’s exhaustion.
The games are over for tonight.
“Tell everyone to pack it in. Olivia’s heading to bed.” Which means Emily will be following soon and my next phase of protecting her begins.
Emily
TRISHA: ELI STILL GONE?
Me: Yep. His job requires him to travel a lot. You should have seen Oz and his friends play football tonight. It was full-on tackle. No pads. Definition of insanity.
After I brought Olivia inside, almost everyone tore off on their bikes, and it’s left the house very quiet and very lonely. It’s moments like this that I appreciate that Trisha never sleeps. She’s one of those people who thrive off four hours of sleep and copious amounts of coffee in the morning.
Trisha: You talk about this Oz guy a lot. Are you sure nothing is going on with you two?
Me: Nothing. There is nothing going on between us.
Going against what Eli had asked, I told Trisha that I was visiting my biological father’s family. That was a bomb she didn’t expect me to drop. Because that was big enough, I was able to easily avoid telling her anything about motorcycle clubs or gangs or the Riot or the Terror or any of this nonsense that has hijacked my life. I also didn’t tell her that I kissed Oz.
But she does know about Olivia and Eli and Oz always being around and how I want to come home, but then again how I find myself...curious. She’s promised not to tell and if I believe anyone about anything, it would be Trisha.
Trisha: Daddy says fervent denial is a sign of hiding something. :)
But I don’t believe her on this, even though her dad does question people for a living. Me: And I’m going to bed now.
Trisha: lol Night
Me: Night
I toss my phone onto the bed beside me, ease onto the floor and open the door to my room. A glance down the hallway toward Olivia’s room and my heart jumps. Razor leans with his back against the wall and he peers into Olivia’s darkened room.
Violet’s warnings go off in my head. That I should stay away, that I should run, but there’s something very broken in his expression and it’s not the type of broken that causes fear, but the type I’ve spotted in my mother whenever she talks about her old home—about Kentucky.
“She fell asleep a while ago,” I say. I know because I checked on her twice. She seemed more exhausted than normal this evening.
“I know,” he replies.
Razor doesn’t say much to me, and from what I observed when he accompanied me and Eli to Nashville, he doesn’t say much to anyone so I don’t feel slighted by his lack of conversation.