The smallest room in the building, and itechoed.
He had not been prepared for the job to be so fucking lonely.
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~oOo~
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He actually did havework to do, which was why he’d come in early. So he messed around with that for half an hour or so. Checked in with Eight Ball to see if they had a date for the next gun run—they did, thank the sweet brown baby Jesus. Followed up an email exchange with a vender for RockSteady—bastard was trying to wriggle out of his promised delivery date, citing ‘supply chain problems.’ Tried to sort through a big stack of intel Apollo had sent him on various bureaucrats and other parasites Cooper still needed to get friendly with or identify as someone they’d need to find another form of persuasion for.
There was so muchpaperwork. They were an outlaw MC, for fuck’s sake. Why was there so much paperwork? It all gave him a rash.
He’d been avoiding shit like this his whole life. He’d never voted, he’d never filed for citizenship with the tribe, never taken out a loan. Until he’d moved to Nevada, he’d never done anything where some fuck in a cheap suit could say the words ‘triplicate’ or ‘initial here’ to him except the bare minimum shit he couldn’t avoid, like a driver’s license.
Now he was buried in paper. Fuck, even paying for his house with cash, that paperwork had been a nightmare. He felt sure somewhere in that incomprehensible mess he’d signed away his firstborn or his left nut or something.
Joke would be on them if they were looking for a firstborn; there would be no Cooper Juniors. He’d made sure of that a long time ago. He didn’t mind other people’s kids, but hah! Fuck. No way he’d actually make one.
When he was done with all his various paperwork bullshit, he jotted some notes for church on a Post-It. That was as close to an ‘agenda’ as he was going to get. Then he went down to the kitchen for a beer. He’d been a good boy and deserved one.
He was halfway through the bottle, leaning against the counter and messing around on his phone, when he heard the distant rumble of a Harley engine. A little jolt of enthusiasm hit the back of his head, which was pathetic. If he was gettingexcitedat the thought of somebody showing up out here when they were expected, he was well on his way to Loserville.
A minute later, he recognized the sound as Ben’s Road King. As he figured. It was pretty typical for Ben, Cooper’s VP, to ride in a little early and check in before church. He wanted to be all the way up on any news, and he wanted a chance to talk it through with Cooper before they all sat down.
Cooper liked the crabby fucker. He wasn’t somebody to have a good time with, he wasn’t somebody to have alaughwith, but he was a great right-hand man, and honestly, he would probably have been a better president than Cooper would turn out to be. He had a long outlaw history, was born and bred in this desert so he had deep connections everywhere, and he was so levelheaded he was practically flat.
Cooper wasn’t a hothead, but he’d evolved a very strong tendency to irreverence, and sometimes it got the better of him. He also had a little trouble moving off his own sense of what was right. That got the better of him sometimes, too. He wasn’t sure if those two tendencies were different and conflicting or totally related to each other.
Ben was stubborn, too, but he was quiet and far less likely to pop off. In the few months they’d been a team, Cooper found that Ben’s quiet intransigence calmed him down and made him focus. And that made him make better decisions.
He tried to learn from Ben without being seen doing it. He also felt a little jealous and territorial, like the rest of the table was going to figure out Ben would be a better president and vote Cooper out. His feelings about Ben were complicated, in other words.
These days, his feelings about everything were complicated. And it fucking sucked.
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~oOo~
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Cooper was the lastone into the chapel. He would feel like an asshole sitting in there waiting for everybody else to move their asses, so he decided he’d make a habit of being the last one in.
The chapel was the nicest room in the clubhouse. They’d done carpet in here for the sound absorption, a solid black with a really thick pad. They’d reframed the walls to insulate them and put in a solid-wood door. You could record an album in here now.
They had a beautiful, one-of-a-kind table, carved with the club patch and edged with all kinds of symbols and images to reflect the club, the charter, and its founding members. A Mojave man, one of Geno’s cousins, had built it and stained it and the chapel door in a very cool, rustic-looking treatment.
Comfortable black leather chairs around it. They’d replaced the faux-wood paneling on the walls with real wood, and they’d reframed the windows to be much smaller and close to the ceiling. Light but privacy—and safety, should they need it.
So far, the only thing on the walls was the big Bulls patch painting the Tulsa charter had gifted them. It hung behind the chair at the head of the table. The president’s chair.
Cooper’s chair.
He took that chair now. At his right sat Ben. At his left sat Zach, his SAA. Kai, their Tech officer. Lonnie sat at the end of the table, facing Cooper. Geno sat beside him. And Reed Haddon, Ben’s son and their Secretary-Treasurer, sat between Geno and his father.
It was a good group. More not-white faces than white, and that had not been the case in Tulsa. From what he’d seen of southern Nevada, they represented the demographics of the area pretty well.
They even had the Brazen Bulls’ first gay patch: Reed.