"Can I ask you something about you?"
"Shoot."
"Why become a biker? McCoy said you were a street race organizer, right?"
"Right."
"Why the career change?"
"Street racing isn't what it used to be. I wanted something a little more steady."
"So you became an arms-dealing biker?" I asked, lips twitching.
"It's dependable. Sure, it might come with more actual physical risk than organizing street races, but it also gives me something to rely on. A steady paycheck. A guaranteed future. Besides, the brotherhood and family here, you don't expect to really depend on it, but you do. And you realize it is something you've been missing. It was always just my brother and me," he added.
"It's been my sister and I for a long time too," I said, nodding, understanding.
It was great to have someone you are that close with. But there was no denying at times that the both of us longed for a bigger support system, where we envied people who had big, loud, happy families to spend holidays with.
"It's nice to have a bigger family, even if it is a found one, huh?" he asked.
"It is," I agreed, shooting him a smile. "How come your brother hasn't joined the club?" I asked.
"He's just being a young shit," Donovan said, smirking. "At his age, I was the same way. He wants to wild out for a while without his big brother watching. I get it. But, yeah, I'd like him to join eventually. That way I can have his back."
"Is he a lot like you?"
"Oh, fuck no," Donovan said, smiling. "No, he's impulsive and reckless and never thinks shit through, a shit starter through-and-through. Uses his hands more than his brains. Which he has, but he doesn't like anyone to know it."
"He sounds like the perfect biker."
"Next time he comes over, you go ahead and tell him that. Maybe he will believe a pretty woman more than me," he said, shooting me a wink before getting up and moving into the kitchen, giving Eddie a hard time about the amount of cheese he was using. I couldn't help but laugh as Eddie got more and more frustrated, grumbling at Donovan in and out of Spanish.
"You believe this fucker?" Eddie asked, waving a hand at Donovan's back as he walked off, grinning the whole way. Maybe the shit-starting gene was a little stronger in Donovan than he thought it was. "Telling me I use too much cheese," he went on, shaking his head as he heaped some quesadillas on a plate, and bringing it over to me. "The ladies like cheese, am I right, mami?" he asked.
"Well, I am no ambassador for all women, but yes, yes we do," I confirmed, taking a big bite of the too-hot food as he smiled.
"Eddie, I thought we established that you aren't going to steal my woman with your food," McCoy said, coming up from the basement where he'd been wet vacuuming up the water from the last storm while grumbling about what idiot put a basement in a house in Florida, no matter how high the water table was supposed to be in the area.
"I don't know," I said, offering him a quesadilla. "He's really outdoing himself," I added, watching as McCoy smirked at me as he took a bite from the quesadilla I was offering him.
"Take it back a notch, Eddie," McCoy warned playfully. "There's only so much I can do to keep her with genuine affection and multiple orgasms," he added, getting a laugh out of both me and Eddie. "Was that Belle I saw riding around the front yard?" he asked, stealing a quesadilla off my plate.
"Yeah."
"She's doing really well."
"She is. I don't know if I should be proud or worried with how well she is taking up all this biker stuff."
"Biker stuff," McCoy repeated.
"Shooting, riding, fighting. Biker stuff."
"Hate to break it to you, babe, but that biker stuff is shit you are going to need to learn to do eventually too."
"I don't see why that would ever be necessary. I'm a nail tech."
"You're with me," he said, shrugging.
"Yes, exactly. I have you. For the shooting and fighting and driving things."
"Okay. But what if I'm down."
"Don't say that," I demanded, feeling a piercing sensation in my chest at the suggestion.
"No, let's be real here. Say you and me, we're out somewhere. And someone hits me. What are you going to do? Stand there and get taken, shot, or worse?" he asked, brow raising.
Damn him and his realism.
I liked my daydream world with its soft edges a little better than his cold, hard reality.
But he had a point.
"No, you reach down, you take my gun, and you shoot with it. Say that doesn't work. You need to know how to fight someone off. And once you get him off, you need to know how to drive my bike out of there. That's all shit you need to know how to do, and feel comfortable doing. So, it is shit you are going to learn eventually. It's good that Belle is getting the jump on it now. Frees everyone up to teach you when it's time."