I snickered, unable to help myself.
We had thought we’d been slick.
Logically, I knew we weren’t.
But still.
“So you accepted a date.”
I hadn’t meant to bring it up.
Honestly, I’d meant to keep my mouth shut about it, because I didn’t think that he would’ve accepted it.
But then it just fell out of my mouth and…
“Actually.” He paused. “Yeah. But only because…” He hesitated. “There’s something off about her. I want to know what.”
I tilted my head slightly sideways and wrinkled my brow at him.
He reached his big hand up and ran two rough fingers over my brow, smoothing out the wrinkles. “Don’t worry. I heard what you said the other day. I know she’s not nice. But… something is off. Since my wife and I made it final, she’s been trying to get an in with me. I see her every other fuckin’ week, ‘randomly’ and then she’s now working with you? Something’s fucking off, and I want to know what.”
“So you agreed to go on a date with her?” I asked, feeling hurt despite his wonderful explanation.
He shrugged. “I’m not going to fu—uh, I’m not going to do anything with her. Hell, I’ll share a damn meal with her, and I’ll make her pay if it’ll make you happy. But shit, I want to know what the fuck is up.”
I burst out laughing, my heart feeling a little bit lighter at his mention of making her pay.
“She’d shit herself.” I stopped. “Will you FaceTime me when you do it?”
He gave me a droll look. “FaceTime? No. I don’t FaceTime.”
That was true.
He hated FaceTiming.
But it was something that he suffered through because he loved his daughter, and Clem ONLY called on FaceTime. Sometimes, she got to look at my purse, or the inside of my jeans pocket, because I didn’t bother to take my phone out if I had my headphones in my ears.
“Yeah…” I paused when a shout caused me to look over the large bonfire now burning to Jeremiah, who’d called Haggard’s name.
“Yo.” Haggard jerked his chin.
“Company.” Jeremiah tilted his chin to the gate.
I looked that way and saw a cop car.
Damn.
Haggard got to his feet unhurriedly, sauntering toward the gate without the least bit of urgency to him.
I watched him go, watching the muscles in his forearms move as he walked.
I waited for a good twenty minutes for him to come back and realized that I was much more tired than I’d realized.
I hadn’t slept well last night thanks to nightmares about waking up and finding my dad dead because he’d inhaled vomit while he’d been drunk off his ass.
Then it’d morphed into my brother burning alive.
Finalizing to a man tearing my clothes off and holding me down after he’d broken into Haggard’s house.
Needless to say, tonight, I was drugging myself with Benadryl.
I hadn’t slept a full night in the longest of times.
Getting up, I walked away from the warmth of the fire, finding myself on the opposite side of where Haggard had walked, next to all of the bikes.
I called my dad as I waited for Haggard to get back from dealing with whatever club business had pulled him away again.
The call went straight to voice mail, and I had a feeling he was ignoring my calls.
The little shit.
Gritting my teeth, I hung up the phone without leaving him a message—one that I wanted to curse at him for—and shoved it into the back pocket of my jeans before leaning on the bike.
I was so lost in thought that at first, I didn’t notice that I wasn’t alone any longer. A man and a woman were standing there, looking amused.
I’d never met them before. In fact, they looked a little rougher than the usual crowd that hung around these MC parties.
I smiled at them when I saw them staring at me.
Or, more particularly, my ass on Haggard’s bike.
“Hello.” I smiled.
“You know the rules, right?” one asked.
I leaned forward and came to a stand next to the bike, my eyes going to where my ass print had left a condensation mark on the chrome.
I looked over at the woman who saw me looking at Haggard’s bike.
“Um, what do you mean?” I asked curiously.
“You don’t touch a biker’s motorcycle unless you want to fuck him or fight him.”
The wheels started to swirl, and then I realized what I had to do.
I had to touch his bike.
I had to make him mad.
And I had to goad him into doing something, because that was the only way any of this was going to happen.
I had to provoke him into acting.
CHAPTER 13
Dick juice: high fructose porn syrup.
-Text from Shine to Haggard
HAGGARD
“They wanted what?” Shine blurted.
I sighed and leaned back farther into my seat, my hands going up to rest behind my head as I said, “They wanted to know my whereabouts the night that that little pissant died.”