Chapter 6 #2
She saw us and her shoulders straightened, and that tube top she was barely holding up slipped another inch downward.
Soon, the only thing holding it up would be the piercings in her nipples.
“Doesn’t she know that it’s twenty degrees outside?” Nettie murmured into my ear.
I snorted.
“Well, look who the cat dragged in,” Audrey cooed. “If it isn’t the Wheelie twins.”
“Wheeler,” I corrected her automatically. “How are you doing, Owala?”
Owala was like the red-headed stepchild of the water bottle world. Was it corny to compare her to a water bottle? Yes. But I was weird like that.
Audrey looked confused, but the man behind her lined up to once again take a shot did not miss the joke. His quiet chuckle preceded him sinking two balls into the pocket nearest us.
His lips were quirked as he aimed and shot, but when he was done and his eyes met mine in the mirror, I felt the instant jolt.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Audrey demanded.
Nettie whispered something under her breath that I didn’t quite catch over the din of the bar.
Neither one of us acknowledged her, which we knew would make her mad. There was nothing that pissed off Audrey more than getting ignored.
Especially by us.
“Weaver,” someone called. “Are you going to let someone else have that pool cue tonight, or what?”
Weaver handed off his pool stick to a tall man who looked like a Viking.
There were several newer members of their MC that I hadn’t ever met, but they were really pretty to look at.
Sure, the blonde giant was incredibly sexy, but he didn’t hold a candle to Weaver.
And I wasn’t really even sure what it was about Weaver that caught my eye and held it, only that it did.
He sidled up to the bar a few seats down from ours, and I had to physically force myself not to look toward him.
“You like him,” my sister whispered in my ear.
I shivered. “Maybe.”
“I think you should go for it,” she suggested.
I was already shaking my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
She elbowed me in the ribs. “Why not?”
“Because our parents are sick fucks and he knows,” I grumbled mostly to her.
“Are you seriously ignoring me right now?”
I didn’t know who it was Audrey was talking to, but I hoped it wasn’t us.
“Just because they are doesn’t mean that you should be punished for their crimes,” Nettie whispered fiercely. “We are not the sum of our parents.”
I shrugged. “I just can’t, okay?”
“Can’t isn’t the same as won’t,” she pointed out.
I grumbled at her for using our old soccer coach’s words against me.
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d heard that phrase—and used it—over the years.
It was a common occurrence for those words to leave my mouth among my soccer girls.
“Well,” I said, “when this blows over, and if he still acknowledges me, I’ll maybe think about talking to him more.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
Yeah, right, was correct.
I never talked to any boys.
I hadn’t since high school.
I just wasn’t willing to put myself through that again.
And Audrey would try to go for it.
She loved seeing me suffer and would go out of her way to make sure that I was never happy. Even if she had to go through my dad to do it.
Before Nettie had left, it was split between the two of us—Audrey’s hate for the two of us was a palpable thing—but when Nettie had left, she’d only had me to set her sights on.
It was exhausting sometimes.
“Go sit down, Audrey,” a forceful male voice said from somewhere beyond where we were sitting. “Don’t embarrass yourself further.”
I looked toward the sound of that voice to find my electrician drinking a beer and glaring hard at Audrey.
Whoa.
“Marry him. Right now,” Nettie whisper-hissed.
I looked away before he could turn his gaze on us—because Nettie hadn’t been quiet—and pulled out my phone to pretend like I wasn’t listening.
“What are you talking about, doll?”
Doll.
Gag.
“Denver,” Weaver growled, sounding even less patient than his earlier obvious impatience. “Do me a favor since you know her father so well…deal with her.”
I could hear the absoluteness in Weaver’s voice, even over the loud pounding of Lynyrd Skynyrd coming through the jukebox’s speakers and the yelling of the patrons of the bar.
Audrey, however, played the victim card well.
“Denver?” I could practically see Audrey’s lip quivering. She was about to pull out the waterworks. She was good at that. “What’s his problem?”
Jeez, she was good at that. Though, I’d known that since middle school when she’d cut my hair off while seated behind me and then had gotten me in trouble for punching her in the face.
Whomever Denver was, said something low, and then Audrey was covering her face and hurrying toward the bathroom.
“Sweet Mary Mother of God,” Weaver spoke. “Where the fuck do women like this come from? It’s because they were fed bad shit while in the womb, isn’t it?”
Nettie giggled.
And even though Weaver wasn’t talking to either one of us, we still heard his every word as he spoke with the man beside him.
A man named Beau.
I, at least, knew Beau.
Beaufort Abraham Vanderbilt had graduated the year that I’d been a freshman. He was rich, the hottest guy in school, and so far out of everyone’s league that he hadn’t dated a single soul in the four years that I’d known him.
His father was a rich oil tycoon who owned a twenty-nine-million-dollar, thousand-acre horse ranch just south of Sawtooth. It was so big and beautiful, in fact, that you could see it jutting out the side of the Crazy Mountains.
I hadn’t even realized he was back, but seeing him now, he looked like he wasn’t the same person.
The only reason I knew it was him was due to the V tattooed on his left bicep and the pale amber eyes.
Every Vanderbilt had them.
Oh, and the dimples.
But Beau had a thick beard covering the lower half of his face, saving the female population of Sawtooth from those panty-dropping dimples.
“I didn’t know Beau was back,” Nettie whispered.
“Me, neither,” I admitted. “He looks good. Rough.”
“Scary,” she corrected. “I didn’t know he was part of the Dixie Wardens, either.”
“Same,” I said. “Do you think he’s back for good?”
“No idea,” she admitted in a quiet whisper—or as quiet as you could get and still be heard over Lynyrd. “I feel like we’re in a bar with the hottest people in the world. All of these are members of the MC?”
I looked around, spotting all the leather and muscle.
“It’s been added to over the last year,” I explained. “Some of these guys are new. I’ve never seen them before. There are others that I’ve seen around town before, at the grocery store and at the diner. But I couldn’t tell you their names.”
“Jesus,” Nettie hissed in a desperate breath, alcohol frying her brain. “Who is that?”
I looked over to see who she was talking about and frowned when I saw the back of Boone’s head. I mean, he did have a new haircut, but otherwise he’d looked exactly the same as the last time that she’d come home and fucked his brains out. “That’s Boone, dillweed.”
Nettie gasped a little bit too loud because the word ‘Boone’ was out of her mouth right when Lynyrd finished up singing about Freebirds.
Which, of course, was loud enough to be heard by the entirety of the bar.
“Yes,” I groaned quietly under my breath. “Do not make a…” but she was already out of her chair and yelling. “…scene.”
“Boone?” Nettie sneered at Boone. “Get anyone pregnant accidentally lately?”
Boone froze when he saw Nettie.
They weren’t fooling anyone.
I knew that they saw each other regularly. They just liked to pretend that they didn’t. Boone’s mother was a psycho, and our mother wasn’t much better. So it was better for all parties involved if everyone thought they didn’t know each other. But this felt like a bad episode of Days of Our Lives.
“Antoinette Reilley Wheeler, as I live and breathe.” Boone walked closer.
Swaggered, actually.
“I just don’t see you as a Boone.” Nettie crossed her arms over her chest.
The crowd between us cleared out, obviously sensing the tension in the air.
Even the music had been cut off.
Fuck.
It was as if the universe knew that the world was about to go into a cataclysmic event, as it always did, when Nettie and Boone locked horns.
“I kind of like Bart better,” Nettie said. “Kind of creepy, and it reminds me to hate you.”
Shit.
Weaver moved down so that he was close to me, almost sensing that there was about to be danger, and he wanted the positioning to block the shit that was about to hit the fan.
“What’s going on?” he asked as he slid over, stool by stool, until he was directly beside me.
“You’ve never seen the Bartholomew and Antoinette show?” I asked, unable to take my eyes off the two.
It was like when you passed a car crash. You couldn’t help but look.
“No, can’t say that I have,” he admitted. “What’s going on?”
“Short and dirty version,” I said in a whisper so that it wouldn’t interrupt the yelling between the two people in front of me.
“They’ve hated each other since high school.
One time, Boone caught Nettie kissing a boy under the bleachers.
He’d always had a crush on her, and he got mad.
Told our parents, maybe. I’m not sure how they found out.
Nettie was grounded for a month and missed junior prom.
Nettie holds a mean grudge, and that only fueled her ire when it came to Bartholamew Daniel Windsor.
The rest is kind of murky, and it’s things that I had to piece together on my own, but Nettie got pregnant by Boone right before he graduated.
It had to do with a dark room and control issues.
The problem was, Boone had just gotten accepted to a college half the country away.
He had to ship out like the day that Nettie found out.
Nettie was so pissed. She had an accident while playing soccer one day and fell really awkwardly.
A person fouled her really hard. When she came back up, she was bleeding.
Went to the hospital and everything was fine.
But this is where it gets nuts. Nettie swears that the nurse practitioner there gave her something to take to help with the pain or sleeping or something that was supposedly safe for the baby.
When she took it later that night, she started having cramps and bleeding heavily.
She lost the baby. Boone wasn’t able to come home.
It was a nightmare. They’ve been like this ever since. ”
“You know, I’ve always wondered who the girl was.”
I looked over at him then, unsure I heard what he was saying over the fighting. “What?”
“The girl. The one that Boone talks about getting away when he’s drunk off his ass. It must be her. He says that she doesn’t live here.”
I couldn’t help the small smile from overtaking my face. “She doesn’t. She lives in Miami now.” I hesitated. “Though, I think she only stays because she doesn’t want to be here. To see him.”
“I think he said the age gap was a year?” Weaver asked. “That’s a pretty big age gap still for high school.”
I confirmed with a nod.
“The Nettie and Boone show knows no age.” I laughed. “They’ve been hating each other for as long as I can remember. I think Boone ran over Nettie’s bike when he came home from college. She’s called him a reckless driver ever since.”
“Was it on purpose?” Weaver wondered.
“No.” I shook my head. “She’d laid her bike down on the side of the road. Most of it was in the ditch, but a part of the tires and some of the frame were partially on the road and curb. He didn’t see it and ran it right over.”
“Guess it’s good to know that it didn’t have a kid on it when it was run over like someone else I know.
” His gaze went to a man and a woman who were at a table a little in the middle of all the bikers.
They were watching the show, enraptured.
“Though it didn’t seem to work out too badly for those two. ”
I was about to reply when Boone leaned forward and said, “At least I came home. You’re too fuckin’ scared to make the move.
” Boone tilted his head. “Hey, Vandy. Didn’t your dad say that the Montana Cowgirls were trying to recruit this one?
They were all excited, talking about a hometown girl on their team.
Then that fell through. Wasn’t it because little ol’ Nettie here was too chicken shit to come back home? ”
“Shit,” I said as I got up and walked toward the two of them.
I caught Nettie before she could launch herself forward at Boone. A move that Boone had fully expected.
“Boone,” I said stiffly. “Don’t.”
Boone’s gaze flicked to mine, then back down to Nettie.
He opened his mouth to say something but Nettie said, “You open your lying ass mouth again, and I’ll make you wish you didn’t say a word.”
Boone smiled and opened his mouth to say something, but the man I’d been trying not to stare at all night was standing next to him and interrupted whatever he was about to say.
“Come on, Boone,” Weaver said as he threw his bulky arm over Boone’s shoulder. “Let’s go have a beer.”
Boone let himself be pulled away, and soon I was left with a panting Nettie.
“You want to go home?” I asked.
Nettie shook her head. “No. I want to get drunk.”
And because I was a glutton for punishment and in need of some serious forgetting moments, I drank right along with her.
I drank so much, in fact, that I blacked out and couldn’t remember another second past the fourth beer.