“What I can’t figure is why I’ve never heard about her in all this time. Not once, brother. What the hell? Thought I knew you.”
“You know me, bro.”
“Then how is it you have a stepsister I never knew about?”
“My dad’s second wife. She had two kids, Jessie and her brother, Tommy. They moved in with us when I was thirteen.”
Shades nodded, but remained quiet waiting for Ghost to continue.
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“By the time I was hanging around the MC, I’d already moved out of the house. Tommy joined the military. My father divorced Collette not long after that.” He took a sip of beer. “Tommy was killed by an IED, and they shipped his body home. I was in lockup awaiting trial on that bullshit assault charge, and I missed the funeral. When I got out, I visited his grave, and Jessie was there. She barely would look at me though.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “She was devastated. Pissed at the world. Next I heard she’d dropped out of school. Two months before graduation, can you believe that? Then she left town with some loser. Anyway, I lost touch with her after that.”
Shades studied him, his eyes narrowed. “And?”
“And what?”
“What aren’t you tellin’ me?”
Ghost blew out a breath and rolled his eyes. “Let it go, man.”
Shades grinned. “I see. So that’s how it is.”
“We had a moment. Once. A long fuckin’ time ago. It shouldn’t have happened, and it never happened again.”
“By ‘a long fuckin’ time ago’ you mean when?”
Ghost tossed his beer bottle in a nearby oil drum. It shattered with a loud crash. “She was sixteen, I was twenty-one. And before you say anything, it wasn’t much more than a kiss.”
Shades grinned. “I didn’t say a word.”
“Yeah, but you were thinkin’ it.”
“She ain’t sixteen anymore, bro.”
“No, she’s not.” Ghost sure didn’t need Shades to point that out. He was well aware.
“I see you’ve noticed.” Shades chuckled. “Half the club’s noticed, too, just so you know.”
“Fuck.”
“I take it you’re putting her off limits.”
“Abso-fuckin-lutely.”
Shades grinned. “Noted. I’ll pass the word.”
“I’m gonna take a hot fuckin’ shower and hit the sack.”
“Enjoy it, bro, cause I see a bunch of cold showers in your future.”
Ghost could hear Shades laughter as he walked away. Fuck if that wasn’t the truth.
Ghost stood beside the empty bunk next to the one where he’d put Jessie at the end of the row. She was sound asleep. He pulled off his cut and tossed it up on the top bunk. Then he collapsed on the bottom bunk, exhausted. There were a couple of old-timers crashed on the other side, snoring away, but for the most part the shed was empty. And he could see why, with the rain burned off, the shed was hot as hell.