“I hit him in the nuts,” I said louder, making a couple people laugh. “He accidentally dropped it when he tried to, you know, cover himself.”
“Jesus,” my sister’s boyfriend, Rocky, muttered, shaking his head.
“Why do they always go for the balls?” someone murmured.
“You see that bitch’s fingers? Circumcision by fingernail,” someone else said.
The crowd snickered and my cheeks burned in mortification.
“What did my son do to make you hit him in the balls?” Tommy’s mom, Callie, asked calmly over the laughter. It was the first time she’d spoken to me since I’d arrived at the clubhouse, and my throat got tight as she moved, slowly but confidently, through the crowd toward her son.
“Nothing,” I lied, looking over at Tommy. He was watching me with zero expression on his face. I dropped my gaze. “He just—it was nothing.”
“It obviously wasn’t nothing,” she replied, stopping next to her husband.
“He was being an ass.”
“Now, that I can believe,” Callie muttered, shooting a look at her son. She leaned up and said something quietly to her husband, then kissed him on the cheek. I had no idea what she’d said, but his shoulders relaxed as Callie walked away, not stopping or slowing down until she was back inside the building.
“Fire’s out, everyone back inside,” the man who’d told me earlier to get out of the way ordered. Without his signature ponytail, I hadn’t realized that it was their club’s president. Dragon. Stupid name, hot as fuck. Even if he was old enough to be my dad.
“Seriously?” my sister griped as people began to move back inside. She grabbed my arm in a tight hold. “You can’t keep yourself out of shit—even here?”
“Oh, fuck off,” I retorted, ripping my arm out of her grip. It wasn’t like I’d planned it. I’d never be the happy-go-lucky person my sister was. Did trouble seem to follow me? Yes. But I never asked for her fucking help.
“Come on, baby,” Rocky muttered, wrapping his dirty arm around Mel’s shoulders. He dragged her into the clubhouse along with everyone else and I stumbled back a couple of steps until I was leaning against the wall again. Mel’s relationship with Rocky was the perfect example of how differently we were made. He’d been married when they got together. Of course, he hadn’t told her that until she was in so deep with him she hadn’t wanted to walk away. She let him lead her around, and was perfectly happy with their dynamic. If it had been me? I would have ripped his Adam’s apple out with my teeth when I found out he was married. I sure as shit wouldn’t have stayed with him, especially considering the life she’d signed up for.
I looked around the almost empty club grounds. All the motorcycles and cars and even a couple RVs were parked out front; beyond some picnic tables, there really wasn’t anything indicating we were on the compound of an outlaw motorcycle club. Just grass and trees as far as the eye could see and the lights of a small house twinkling in the distance.
We’d been staying in the Aces and Eights MC’s clubhouse for almost two weeks, and I was still trying to navigate my way around. With my sister being a member’s “old lady” and our parents out of town on a cruise, I’d been pulled into their lockdown with her. I wasn’t stupid, so it wasn’t like I was mad about it. If they thought they were keeping me safe, who was I to argue?
But it was hard to understand the dynamics when you were an outsider—and I was definitely an outsider. Mel and her best friend Molly were my only connections to the club, I’d made sure of that after Mick died. I hadn’t had any interest in keeping in touch with his family after he was gone. Well, until in an odd twist of fate Molly hooked up with Mick’s older brother Will. I’d almost choked on my own tongue when I’d received that little nugget of information. Molly was a nurse, a mom, and completely… normal.
I could totally understand Mel hitching her star to a criminal. She wore rose-colored glasses like a prescription she couldn’t see without. Molly, though, she was pragmatic. She knew and understood the score, yet still chose to get back with Will. At least, I was pretty sure they were back together. It’s not like they’d made an announcement, though sharing a bed and being connected at the hip were pretty clear indications.
For so many people living in such a little space, the club members and their wives got along surprisingly well. The women bickered and snapped at each other after the first couple of days, but they usually got over things pretty quickly. There was no other way to survive if you were going to be in close quarters for such a long period of time.