Chapter 12
“Emmett!” Ollie squealed, sprinting toward him and Rooster the second they walked into the clubhouse.
Rooster chuckled and stepped back, leaving Emmett to be engulfed in the citrusy-scented arms of his friend. Which would have been fine, except Ollie was still holding a glass of what appeared to be a mimosa and almost spilled it all down his back.
“Whoops,” Ollie said, stepping back and grinning. “I promise this is only my second one. Do you want one?”
Emmett cast a questioning glance at his daddy, getting an indulgent smile and nod. Turning back to Ollie, he rocked up onto his toes in excitement. “Yes, please.”
“Come on.” Ollie grabbed his arm and led him over to where a table had been set up near the sitting area, club members with their own families—and Kenneth and CJ—already lingering around, most with flutes filled with orange juice and champagne in hand.
No one could say no to Ollie.
Rooster followed over at a slower pace, both of their white elephant gifts under one of his arms. He stopped to say hello to a few people as Ollie carefully poured Emmett’s drink and told him about the gifts he and Six had gotten for each other.
Emmett smiled a hello at CJ as he came over and was just taking a sip of his drink when Ollie said, “Of course, I think my favorite gift is going to be the sounding training kit he got me,” and he nearly spit all over the place.
“Ollie,” CJ said, hurrying to clap Emmett on the back, “you can’t just blurt stuff out like that.”
Ollie rolled his eyes. “Like Rooster and Tank didn’t get you guys sexy gifts too.”
The blush in CJ’s cheeks spoke volumes, but he kept his lips pressed together, miming zipping them shut. Emmett chanced another sip of his drink as he thought about all the gifts he’d opened the night before. Most were toys and things for when he was little…
“I don’t think so,” Emmett finally said, shrugging. “I did get a dragon though.”
Ollie looked at something just behind him as he crossed his arms over his chest. “You didn’t get him a single sexy gift, Rooster?”
Emmett turned and offered his daddy a smile. Rooster had left their wrapped gifts for the White Elephant game later somewhere, but he was holding a gift bag in one of his hands now. Emmett tried to peek inside, but there was so much tissue paper he couldn’t see anything.
“Depends on what you think is sexy,” Rooster said, smirking as he met Emmett’s gaze. “I think the pj’s I got him are very sexy.”
Ollie and CJ giggled and tried to guess what they looked like, while Emmett felt his cheeks getting warm as he remembered the onesie pajamas he’d opened that had ambulances on them. Rooster thought he’d look sexy in those?
“I do have one more gift for you, little boy,” Rooster finally said, shooing Ollie and CJ away as he gripped Emmett’s elbow and led him to a quiet corner. “I wanted to give it to you last night, but Six has been waiting weeks to get his sewing machine repaired, so he just finished it this morning.”
The scary-looking club Enforcer grabbing Ollie’s ass at the moment owned a sewing machine?
Not sure what to expect, Emmett took the bag and handed off his drink to Rooster.
As soon as he started pulling out the tissue paper and spotted the black leather, his heart started racing.
By the time he pulled the vest out of the bag, his hands were shaking, and his palms were damp with sweat.
The front just had his name on it, but when he turned it around…
Tears pricked at his eyes, and he blinked them away as he stared at the large patch that would go across his shoulders that read Property of and the one across the bottom that said Rooster.
“I know you’re nervous about riding on my motorcycle, and we’ve got months before we’ll be able to take her out of storage,” Rooster said, sounding almost nervous as he watched Emmett run his finger over the word Property.
“But it was important to me that you have this now. You don’t have to wear it if you don’t—”
“I’m wearing it!” Emmett exclaimed, nearly dropping it in his haste to shrug it on over his Christmas sweater. He smiled up at Rooster and twirled, pretending like he didn’t see everyone watching them. “How does it look, Daddy?”
“Fucking perfect.”
Emmett threw himself into Rooster’s arms and hugged him tightly, eyes burning and emotions thick in his throat.
He was scared about riding on a motorcycle, but he also trusted Rooster.
With every single part of him, including his physical well-being.
He knew all the way down in his soul that Rooster would keep him safe when the time came to go for a ride.
“I don’t know,” a sassy voice said behind him. “Looks a little plain.”
Someone else snickered, and CJ added, “Agreed. We’ve got a lot of work to do to get that vest up to snuff.”
Emmett turned and eyed his friends, running his hands down the leather sides of the front. His vest was perfect. He loved it just how it was. “What do you mean?”
“We’ll show you Ollie’s later,” Kenneth said, smiling. “And a few websites where you can pick out some patches to have Six sew on.”
“Oh!”
Rooster’s cut had some on it that he’d admired, and giggled over the one that said Thick Thighs Save Lives, but he hadn’t considered the fact that he could decorate his own vest. He wondered if he could find a purple dragon patch…
“You do have to get one specific one,” Ollie said, nodding seriously when Emmett raised his brows at him. “We all have it. It’s a Sub Club tradition.”
Rooster snorted. “Sub Club?”
Ollie waved a hand at him dismissively. “Obviously, you aren’t invited, but Emmett is. There’s a group chat and everything. My friends Vinnie and Mason are in it, who you haven’t met but you’ll love.”
Tears once again gathered at the back of his eyes, but he blinked them away. Ollie’s easy—and sometimes overwhelming—friendship was exactly what he needed after the fiasco of dinner the night before. CJ stepped forward and wrapped an arm around Emmett, leading him away from Rooster.
He gave him an extra squeeze and said softly, “You okay?”
Emmett nodded. “I’ve just… never had friends like you guys before.”
“Me either,” Kenneth said, sitting on a couch and patting the spot next to him. “I really only had my siblings before CJ and I reconnected.”
“I was pretty much just trying to survive before Tank,” CJ added, sitting on Emmett’s other side. “I was working so much I didn’t have time for friends, really.”
“Plus, you had shitty roommates,” Kenneth said, peeking around Emmett with a wide grin.
“That too.”
Emmett sank back against the cushions and smiled, looking around for Ollie and finally spotting him over by a cluster of club members. He appeared to be wagging his finger in their faces and then pointing over toward the sitting area.
“What’s he doing?” he asked the other two.
“Wrangling the bikers to play the white elephant game,” CJ said, taking a sip of his mimosa.
Emmett had lost his drink, but that was okay. He rarely indulged and probably wouldn’t be able to handle more than the few sips he’d already had. It didn’t take long before the rest of the group, led by the tiny and fierce Ollie, gathered around the sitting area with all the gifts.
Emmett and the other two moved off the couch, each migrating toward their significant other and getting pulled down into laps.
He’d never played the gift exchange game, but he was familiar with the rules.
Or he thought he was. The way Ollie explained it made him wonder whether he was mistaken or if Ollie was having them play by his own rules.
Probably the latter.
“Yes! Do you know how much scheming I had to do to make sure you ended up with that gift?” Ollie hollered from five feet away, nearly tipping off Six’s leg in his excitement.
Emmett looked from his friend to the box in his hands. They were penis-shaped cookie cutters. And he’d opened it in front of half of the club! His face was still burning, Rooster’s face buried in his back as he laughed.
“You should have just done Secret Santa,” Tank said, pulling the silk eye mask over his head and down to cover his eyes. He leaned back on the couch, smiling. “Why make us do white elephant and then change the rules so no one could actually steal?”
“Because I’d already announced white elephant before I found the cookie cutters, obviously,” Ollie told him, rolling his eyes. He turned around to look at Six. “Do you like your gift, Daddy?”
The big man was gently holding a white mug… shaped like an elephant. Someone had gotten very literal with their gift.
“Love it,” Six said, pressing a kiss to Ollie’s neck over a fresh-looking hickey.
Emmett ignored their cuteness to stare back at his own gift again. “But… why?”
“So we can make them!” Ollie exclaimed, like that was obvious. “Didn’t you have fun doing the Christmas cookies with us?”
“Well, yeah.” Though a big part of that had been because of Rooster, but he’d had fun with Ollie and CJ too. And Knuckles, even though he’d been kind of quiet compared to the others. “But… penises?”
Everyone laughed at his strangled whisper, but some of his embarrassment was lessened when Rooster wrapped his arms around him and tugged him back against his chest.
“They’re not laughing at you,” Rooster said softly in his ear. “And Ollie isn’t trying to embarrass you.”
“I know,” he whispered back and took a deep breath, letting it out slowly. Glancing back at Ollie, he was surprised to find some of his excitement had waned, and he looked almost nervous.
“Are you mad?”
Emmett shook his head. “No, I was just surprised. Thank you for thinking of me.”
Ollie beamed at him. “Of course! As soon as I saw them, I knew we’d have a blast decorating them.”