Chapter 12
CHAPTER TWELVE
C hainsaw…
We finished up with our other business, and it was none too soon. My ass was going numb from sitting too long, and I still had to head out to the bayou house to pick up some of my shit for my extended stay coming up in the Garden District.
We found the girls in a knot of seats out in the garage, laughing and cuttin’ up, and I breathed a little sigh of relief.
It seemed that Genesis was well entertained and was fitting right in with the rest of them.
But then again, the three in residence at the moment were the accepting sort.
She’d probably have a bit of an uphill where Jessie-Lou and Velina were concerned, but the fact that she was accepted by Alina and Cor got her halfway in with Jessie-Lou.
Sandy was accepting of everyone, even when she shouldn’t have been. It was something we didn’t bring to her attention, because she was who she was, but it was something we kept an eye on.
For her origins to the club and club life, we still couldn’t fathom how she remained so trusting, let alone so happy-go-lucky, but we wouldn’t trade her spunky personality for shit.
She was sort of the de facto club cheerleader at this point – shining a light in the dark times we were living.
She sometimes single-handedly kept the hope for better days ahead alive.
It was important work, and she didn’t even realize how much we needed it.
Gen looked a little less pent up at our appearance, and I threw her some chin as I walked up. She stood, taking my meaning that we weren’t staying. That we had places to go and shit to do.
“We gotta go,” I said.
“I got you,” she answered. Hex sidled over to her and held out his hand to shake. She took it.
“You’re officially considered a friend to the club, ” he said. “I don’t think I need to explain what that means, do I?” he asked.
She shook her head. “No, I take your meaning perfectly, and thank you,” she replied.
“Don’t mention it,” he said with a look, and she smiled.
Her smile made one appear on my face. She was smart and shrewd – I liked that about her. In fact, the more I learned about her, the more I found there wasn’t anything in her not to like.
Let’s hope the trend continues, I thought.
“Hate to cut things short,” I said. “But we really do gotta go. I wanna be in before dark.”
“Understood,” Hex said. “Holler if there’s trouble.”
“Will do,” I said.
Genesis followed me over to the bike and picked up her helmet.
“Any questions?” I asked.
“Not right this minute,” she answered.
“You good with freeway speeds?” I asked.
“Left lane is for crime, and we better be doing some crime,” she said with a wink.
“Fuck yeah, you’re a girl after my own heart.
” I straddled the front of my bike and put on my helmet while she got on behind me.
Axeman hit the switch to raise the garage door, and Cypress got on his bike a few up from mine.
We always tried to ride in twos if we could help it, and he was ready to head on home.
We hit the streets, and when we reached the on-ramp to head where we were going, I gave Cy a signal that I had every intention of giving the woman on the back of my bike the thrill she asked for.
He gave me a wide, toothy grin and gave a nod and a chin thrust to both acknowledge and to say he would follow my lead.
I punched it, twisting down on the throttle, the bike lurching forward like a rocket between my knees, and relished the thrill of Genesis’s knees tightening around my hips and her arms tightening around my waist. She pressed tight to my back and whooped a sound of pure unadulterated joy, even as the wind ripped the sound from her lips and carried it back off behind us.
I cut through traffic with precision, hit the left lane, and did what she’d asked, hitting it and moving with the quickness ten, fifteen, and twenty above the posted speed limit. I caught a flash in my rearview mirror, sunlight bouncing off the chrome on Cypress’s bike as he caught up with us.
Goddamn it was freeing.
When it was just you, the bike, the road, and a sweet thing holding on to you? Life didn’t get any better than this.
The coffee and bennies didn’t hang on for very long, and sometime before the bayou house, I felt my stomach rumble. I figured if I were ready for lunch, it might be past time for Genesis to have something to eat. I wasn’t worried about Cypress – that motherfucker was always hungry.
We stopped at this swampy dive bar that was a popular stop for the lot of us when we went to and from the swamp.
Gator Bait was a place that we’d all been at one time or another.
I knew LaCroix brought Alina from time to time, and Saint and Col had stopped the day Vel had landed on our doorstep looking for her brother, Louie.
When I carefully pulled off the road and down into the gravel lot, Cypress followed suit without complaint. He dug the joint. It had down-home Cajun country cooking done right. If you didn’t come for the gumbo or the jambalaya, the dirty rice, shrimp and grits, or the po’boys were just as nice.
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d stopped here to grab a couple of po’ boys to take home for lunch the next day.
“Woo-ee! Good call, there, brother. I’m starvin’!”
“You’re always starving,” I said with a laugh. “Figured you wouldn’t mind stopping here.”
“Not going to lie, I would never stop here in a million years if I were by myself, which just tells me that it’s probably one of those places that’s outta this world,” Gen said, getting off the bike behind me.
“You ain’t wrong, cher. This here has about the best fried gator there is, second only to my mama’s.”
“He’s a gator hunter, so that’s sayin’ something,” I explained, getting up.
We went inside, slipping off sunglasses just inside the door so we could see in the gloom. Even then, it took a second for the eyes to adjust.
“Go on an’ find yourselves a seat, now!” Dory called as she swept past with a try for a table of hard-working boys.
They were the only table in residence, a group of four that looked like they’d just come in out of the swamp.
“How much longer ‘til the season starts, anyway?” I asked Cy.
“Oh, we comin’ up on it,” he assured. “Gon’ be a hot one.”
We chattered about the weather and what the farmer’s almanac was saying for the region as we took a seat in one of the booths near the dance floor. Dory came by and dropped a menu in front of Genesis. She didn’t bother with us. She knew we knew all that was on it.
Mostly, we kept talking of gator hunting, which Cypress could talk about all day long.
Of course, the talk of fishing led to the kinds of injuries that came from such a sport, which led to talk of some of the things Genesis dealt with in the emergency room.
She didn’t get many fishing injuries – just the most severe that couldn’t be handled in one of the rural hospitals out this way.
She’d seen enough, though.
“What I wouldn’t give for a hook stuck in the hand or an infection at the start.
Most of the time, I have to deliver the bad news that things are up to or past the point of permanent damage.
Best-case scenario, it’s just a little nerve damage.
Usually, it’s ‘I’m sorry, you’re going to lose that hand, or that foot.
’ I hate it when that happens, but you’d be surprised at how many guys are like ‘aw, that’s okay, Doc, I appreciate ya.
’ It’s just wild to me, and at the same time, it's almost worse than when they curse me out or break down.”
“We a tough people out here,” Cy said. “They tell y’ ‘sall right, you best believe ‘em, Doc. They stand by it. They’ll be alright.”
“He’s not wrong,” I said, taking a drink of my cold, crisp Coke.
She laughed and shook her head. Some of her shorter hair that framed her face had come loose from her ponytail in the wind, and I resisted the urge to put it behind her ear, out of those beautiful spring-green eyes of hers.
She was beautiful when she smiled, but stunning when she laughed. I couldn’t get over it.
We ordered, we ate, we bantered some, and it was comfortable.
I liked it. Still, I’d be a liar if I said I wasn’t impatient.
I wanted to grab my shit and take her back to her place.
I wanted to spend some time with her, one-on-one, and learn more than I’d already gleaned directly from those sexy-ass lips of hers.
Did I want her?
Shit, more than ever at this point, but I also didn’t want to blow it.
I was getting the vibe she was partially so comfortable with me because of her feelings of nostalgia around my cut and my bike. I didn’t want to be friend-zoned, but I was a big believer that the longer-lasting relationships and the best sex there was were all rooted in friendship.
With the way she smiled, lit up, laughed, and seemed to enjoy talking with first the girls and now Cy, I was under the impression it’d been a while since she’d gotten out of the house or had any friends.
She was determined in her career path, which was clear – and I had some thoughts on that.
I had a few thoughts on the tight quarters that was her place, too.
While I didn’t mind sleeping on her couch, the thought of crawling into bed with her and pulling her lithe body into the shelter of my own was a mighty big temptation that I couldn’t shake.
First things first, I thought to myself as we wrapped the meal and I took care of the tab.
I honestly made real damn good money and didn’t spend much doing what I did, being single, and I was racking it up now, living where I lived.
Utilities ain’t even a drop in the bucket, and it wasn’t like LaCroix was charging us rent.
It was mostly all about keepin’ the place up and fixing shit as it went wrong at the moment.