“Better to stink than itch to death. Last time I went camping like this one of my foster brothers got into poison ivy once. Dumbass didn’t wash his hands after scratching and it got on his balls and his pecker when he took a leak.” I laugh recalling the memory. That poor little bastard was afraid to tell anyone. He thought he had an STD.
Harley makes me feel like sharing pieces of myself might not be so bad. She doesn’t push me to talk about being in foster care. She simply listens to what I choose to tell her.
“Let me rub it.”
“That’s what she said.” She snickers as I rub the spray in.
“Do you ever stop with the snark?” I move to massage the deterrent in on the backs of her shoulders.
“There’s two things that can shut my mouth.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?”
“You aren’t going to guess?” She spins around, wearing her lopsided grin, and I can’t help but think if I kissed her right now, that’d shut her up.
I don’t think my answers would be appropriate. I cup the back of my neck. “We need to get the tent setup.”
I move to take the tent from the bag and Harley is quiet and thoughtful as she opens a bottle of water. I’m more interested in watching her take a drink than I am in getting this tent out.
She catches me staring as she gulps. Wiping her mouth with the back of her hand she pauses as though she is having an ah-ha moment. “You were thinking a dick in my mouth would hush me, weren’t you?”
“Nope.”
Cocking a brow, with a hand on her hip, she says, “You’re a bad liar, Quinn.”
“How do you figure that?” I start fiddling with the tent, trying like hell to avoid those blue eyes that threaten to suck me under and drown me in her. My thoughts are being consumed with kissing her with every passing second we spend together. I should have went back to the clubhouse last night and got laid. That’s all this is—me being horny.
Nothing more to it than nature wanting to take its due course.
“When you are being less than truthful the left corner of your lip twitches, and you won’t meet my eyes.”
“That’s not true.” I fight against the impulse to smile and like she said my damn mouth twitches and I look away from her.
“If you say so.”
The campsite is setup, and I have my fishing gear ready, so I can catch dinner. Harley is kicked back in one of the chairs we bought flipping through one of those stupid ragtag tabloids.
“Going to catch dinner. You cool here or you coming with?” I’m not worried about her taking off. I’ve got the keys to the truck in my pocket and we are in a secluded part of the park. Not only that, she seems to be enjoying herself.
There’s just something calming about the wild. Hearing the bugs, the steady stream of water flowing through the creek. Makes a man feel at peace.
I can’t help but think Harley is feeling it too.
“I think I’m going to take a nap.” She yawns and stretches her arms over her head. “Wake me up when dinner’s ready.”
“Sure thing,” I tell her knowing damn good and well I’ll be waking her ass up to help me clean the fish.
———
Reeling my line in, I can’t remember the last time I’ve felt more relaxed. The past year has been filled with nothing but drama. Out here I don’t have a care in the world. Not that I don’t love being part of the club but fuck there is always some shit going down.
I’ve not been fishing since I was a teen. I used to take my foster brothers down to the creek behind the house we were staying at. We never caught a damn thing, but it was better than being in that house.
I don’t like to think about those days often. Too much bad shit. I went back after I aged out of the system. I had gotten a letter from Jesus. The kid who used to wet the bed. He was fifteen at the time he wrote to me. Told me all the sick shit our foster dad was doing to him.
I was too late, and Jesus had committed suicide. He couldn’t live with the pain.
My foster care father was the first person I had ever killed. Killing him earned me my road name, Reaper. I slit his throat from ear to ear. Bastard got what was coming to him.