Chapter 14
Fourteen
The lion, the witch, and the audacity of this bitch.
—Birdee’s secret thoughts
Birdee
I was exhausted after having not slept a single wink last night.
I stayed awake, wondering if every single sound I heard was my stepfather coming back into my place.
By the time the sun rose, I gave up on sleep and started unpacking.
After I did a load of laundry, I took a shower, got ready for the day, and prepared the ‘I quit this stupid job’ letter.
Stacy was going to be pissed, but it was something that I had to do.
Charleigh had already handed in her resignation yesterday via email, meaning Stacy was already short one person. Now he was about to be short two.
He would have to do it all himself until he found someone else to do the hard part—handling the actual snakes.
I wouldn’t bother giving two weeks’ notice.
I started with Great Dane’s tomorrow, and I was very open with my intent to come to work immediately and leave my other job.
At first, they weren’t too excited about how I was leaving it, but they understood once I’d explained about Stacy and how uncomfortable he made me.
Turns out, the owner’s wife had also been made to feel uncomfortable by Stacy, and concurred that she’d have left the job the same way had she been in my situation.
Charleigh was starting tomorrow with me, and I was super excited about my official ‘big girl’ job.
It took me over ten years to get to this very point in my life, and now that it was here, I wasn’t sure what to do with myself.
What do you mean I no longer have to study my every available second?
What do you mean I can come home after work and actually relax?
What do you mean that I will make a livable wage?
I was lost in thought as I waited for my letter of resignation to print out that I didn’t hear the screech of tires outside of my house, or the thunderous sound of boots pounding up the walkway to my house.
I did, in fact, hear the door get smashed in, though.
Then Creed was there, looking ferociously angry, and ready to beat the shit out of me.
I expected him to be angry.
I didn’t expect him to bust down my door and start yelling the moment he saw me.
I stared in stunned silence as his anger practically filled the room between us.
Anger swirled around him like a storm, and I’d never seen him as scary until right that minute.
He walked right up to me, pointed his finger in my face, and said, “You killed my sister.”
His words stunned me silent for a few short seconds. Long enough to make him angrier at my lack of response.
I blinked. “I did what?”
I hadn’t done that…had I?
Did I black out and forget a few hours?
“There was a reason I didn’t want her here, you fucking bitch,” he hissed, his eyes so cold that I could barely look at them. “She can’t live in Montana. She has anemia and the fuckin’ world’s worst asthma. I have nowhere else to go. It was better if she thought I was dead.”
I opened my mouth and closed it, unsure what to say or think about that.
My stomach sank. “I didn’t think…”
“No, we clearly can tell that you didn’t.
” He pushed his finger into my chest, not to the point of pain or anything, but not gently, either.
“Stay out of my fucking life. And if you tell anyone about me or the rest of the crew, I’ll tell everyone you killed your own mom.
” He swept his eyes up and down the length of me.
“And let’s just say, I don’t think you’d last too long in jail. ”
I blanched.
I had killed my own mother.
I may not have been the only one to do it, but I’d been a part of the reason she was no longer breathing.
“Creed…”
He tossed me one last scathing glare over his shoulder and then left without another word.
I scrubbed my face with my hands as he kicked the door closed behind him only for it to bounce back open again. The door lock was definitely busted.
I watched him walk down the walk to his truck, then pull out his phone and press it to his ear.
He said a few words into his phone, gestured angrily at the air in front of him, then stomped around his truck to his door.
He started it up, backed into my yard, barely missing my mailbox, then took off with a peel of rubber.
Shit.
Shit, shit, shit.
The door banged against the wall again, and I stared at it with my stomach rolling.
Would I have done the same thing had I known that she wouldn’t be able to last out here? Probably.
That didn’t make the heaviness in my heart feel any better, though.
The door banged a third time, and I walked to it and tried to close it.
It didn’t so much as catch in the slightest.
I fingered the splintered wood beside the door and realized that this would be too much for me to handle on my own.
And I was sure Stacy wouldn’t be willing to help me fix it after I quit on him today.
Plus, I didn’t really want to invite him into my place anyway.
Pulling out my phone, I dialed my dad’s number only for it to go straight to voicemail.
Grumbling, I hung up and went to Google so I could look up handymen.
I had the money. I would get paid from my new job in a week’s time, so that meant that all the money in my bank account was fair game. All two hundred and eleven dollars of it.
Except, every handyman I called was either busy or didn’t bother answering.
By the fourth ‘I’m sorry, ma’am, I’m not able to get to you’ I had a feeling that Creed was responsible for my not finding someone to fix it. He probably put in a call to all his new club brothers and told them not to work with me.
I kicked at the door with my foot, then decided…fuck it.
“I’ll figure this out on my own,” I snapped as I pushed the heavy armoire across the front door, blocking my one and only exit.
Technically, I had two. However, the back door had a six-foot drop off that used to house a set of stairs before one day they’d just gone missing.
I had a side window I could also use…
I’d call Shade to help me fix it, but he was awful with carpentry. He could break down an engine and rebuild it in a full day, but when it came to fitting wood and screws together, he was a lost cause.
That didn’t mean that he couldn’t give me a ride to the home improvement store, though…
I dialed his number and waited for him to pick up.
“Hey,” he said. “What are you doing?”
“Any way you could drive me to the home improvement store?” I asked.
“Sure.” He paused. “Why?”
“Long story short, I need new locks.”
We got new locks, and I got new pieces of wood that I thought might work around my door.
If it didn’t work, and worse came to worst, I’d just nail the damn thing closed and start using my back door.
At least until Stacy calmed down enough for me to tell him that my front door was broken, anyway.
“You want to grab lunch?” Shade asked.
Not really, but I wasn’t going to argue with him. He’d given me a ride to the store thirty minutes away. Then come in with me where I’d given his father my resignation. It was the least I could do.
“Sure,” I lied.
He pulled into the diner parking lot and parked right up front.
I narrowed my eyes at my family sitting front and center, laughing and carrying on.
I gritted my teeth and got out, telling myself I wasn’t going to cause a scene.
Shade, however…
“Maybe we should go to the coffee shop,” I offered.
“No, I want some actual food. I’ll take you by Mom’s afterward, though, and we can grab a nightcap.”
I didn’t argue with him, and instead walked inside, being very careful not to look at my dad or sisters.
“Two?” the woman at the front greeted us.
“Two.” Shade smiled at her.
They’d had a fling.
I remembered that now.
Maybe that was why he wanted to come here…
“Have a seat anywhere you’d like,” she suggested.
Shade, of course, went to the one that was in perfect view of my family.
“Can’t we sit over there?” I asked through my teeth.
“Nope,” he said. “We’re not hiding, Birdee.”
When he put it like that…
“Okay,” I said as I took the seat with my back to them.
The table that was previously filled with laughter went quiet.
“What are they even doing here so early, anyway?” Shade asked. “It’s the morning. Don’t they have jobs?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“It’s also ridiculous that you don’t know the answer to that,” he said. “He’s your father. You should know this.”
I should.
Only, they’d never given me that information.
“The least they could do was let you drive a snowplow,” he muttered. “They make a fuckin’ killing.”
They did.
By the end of the winter, Cody had enough money saved up to not have to work for the entire summer.
I’d never know what that was like.
“Whatever,” I said as I looked at the menu.
The waitress came over and took our order. The moment she was gone I heard a throat clear from behind me.
I looked up and over to see Mable with her arms crossed, forcing me to turn around to face her otherwise I’d have to stare at her through an awkward angle.
“What do you want?” Shade asked.
“Shade,” I chastised him.
He rolled his eyes, but got up to give me privacy anyway.
Then Cody joined Mable.
Each of them stared at me with disappointment. “Why would you do that?”
“Do what?”
Even though I had a fairly good idea what they meant.
“Don’t play dumb, Birdee. It’s unbecoming.”
“I’m assuming you’re talking about Creed’s sister?”
Mable narrowed her eyes. “You know that’s what I’m talking about.”
I swallowed hard.
Was it a bad thing to want Bernice to have her brother? I wished I had that kind of love.
“Why do you care?” I rolled my eyes.
“We care because Creed is important to us,” she said. “Why did you put your nose into something that wasn’t yours to begin with?”
I didn’t need to give them the reasoning behind why I’d done it.
I mean, what was the fucking point of telling them that I’d kill to have a family that loved me? That I’d love to have someone that always had my back. That would be there no matter what.
So sue me if I wanted to make sure that Bernice got that back.
I’d do it again, too.
“Now’s not the time and place for this, and you know it,” I said. “Please respect that we need to have this conversation privately.”
And they damn well knew it.
Mable looked around, cheeks flushing, as she realized that she was actually the one bringing up stuff better left unsaid in public.
Then again, it wasn’t my man that would be in trouble if they were to be found out.
I didn’t have a man.
That was made painfully obvious today, now wasn’t it?
Mable and Cody went back to their seats.
I looked back to see my father frowning at me disapprovingly.
My stomach soured, and the food that was placed in front of me by Shade made me want to puke.
“What was that about?” Shade asked as he retook his seat.
“Nothing,” I lied, then changed the subject. “What are you doing here?”
He jerked his chin at the door. “You remember her, right?”
I did.
“Yeah?”
“I want to go out on a date with her, but she thinks that I’m an asshole because of Mable. I’m trying to change her mind.” He sighed. “I’m not sure it’s going to work.”
We both looked over at Cody and Mable as they chatted with my dad and the woman that’d told us to sit anywhere we wanted.
Oh, yeah.
The way they were now all staring at us didn’t give me good feelings at all.
“Maybe it’d be better for you to find someone new,” I suggested. “Someone not in Sawtooth.”
He grunted and we ate.
Well, he did.
I picked at my food and made it look like I ate.
“What’s their issue?” Shade jerked his chin toward a table in the corner of the room.
I looked that way and found that there was a group of men taking up the entire back corner.
Dixie Wardens.
It wasn’t a surprise to see them in here. A club member owned the place. But what was a surprise was the look of anger on all of their faces when they aimed their gazes toward me.
Even Boone was glowering.
I looked away, suddenly not hungry for even Reyelle’s sweet treats. “I don’t know,” I lied to my best friend for the thousandth time that day. “Maybe we should leave.”
Shade threw a couple of twenties down to cover our meals and walked out with me.
I tried really hard not to look at the men as I did.
By the time we got back home with my stuff, I was exhausted. “Thanks for the ride, Shade.”
“No problem,” he said. “Charleigh’s giving you one to work tomorrow?”
“She is,” I confirmed.
He winked at me and waited until I was on the path back up to my door before he pulled out of my driveway.
But as I looked at the splintered wood where Creed had just gone all Kool-Aid Man on my door, I figured that the door handle wouldn’t cut it. Neither would the wood I’d bought.
That was tomorrow’s problem, though.
Tonight, I was going to go to bed and pretend I had a door that locked.