Chapter 31
CHAPTER
THIRTY-ONE
CHASSIS
The music cranks up around the time the clubwhores make an appearance. As much as I want to go back and hide in the bedroom, I can’t do that tonight. My brothers and dad are leaving first thing in the morning.
I know they won’t be far away in Prescott, but I haven’t seen them in months, and I have a feeling it will be months before I see them again, maybe not until I have the baby. I’m not ready to go to bed yet.
“Wanna play cards, the way we used to?” a voice calls out from behind me.
Turning my head, I look over my shoulder to see Clutch standing a few feet away. He sways, and I know he’s completely trashed. I watch him for a moment, wondering if he can tell just how grossed out I am that he fucked that woman all damn day.
It doesn’t matter, though, not really. He’s my brother, and she’s not the first gross clubwhore he’s spent time with.
“You know I’ll kick your ass. I do every time,” I state.
He chuckles, then walks over to the table, dragging a chair behind him then placing it down, straddling it as he tosses a deck of cards at me. Reaching for them, I pause before I pick them up. This isn’t just a random deck of cards. This is my deck of cards. From home.
“Gauge?” I ask.
He shakes his head once. “Shuffle that shit,” he grunts.
And I do.
The others have stood, walked away here and there, moving around the room. The music is loud, the chatter louder. But none of it matters because I have my brother and my cards.
Right now, it’s just me and Gauge. Nothing else is in the room. Nothing else matters.
Gauge isn’t the brother who’s like another father—that’s Piston’s position. He’s not the brother who I do goofy shit with—that’s Clutch. Gauge is the brother who challenges me. He always has. Each one of my brothers and I have our own bond, just like they do with one another.
I don’t know if other siblings are this close or if it’s a special thing that is just for us. Maybe it’s a trauma bond because we don’t have a mother. Maybe it’s because our father wasn’t around much. We had each other and not much else.
“Hope you’ve been practicing,” Gauge states, taking me out of my thoughts.
I haven’t been practicing, but I’m not that rusty. “Let’s do this,” I say. “I’m going to beat you into the damn ground.”
He throws back his head in laughter, shaking it a few times, and we begin. I turn over one card, then put six face down in a row, turn over a second card, placing it on the second pile, and place five more face down… double solitaire.
Once all my cards are set up, I flick my gaze up to my brother and wait for him to finish his. He takes forever, and it’s rare that he beats me, but I know this isn’t really about winning. This is about us spending time together, about us talking.
Our relationship isn’t one where we sit down and have heart-to-hearts. We talk this way, and it’s worked for us since I was eight years old. I can imagine this will always be our best form of communication.
“Ready?” I ask.
He hums before he speaks. “Begin.”
My eyes dance across my cards, then to the middle, then back down to my cards. Darn. No moves. Shifting three cards from the ones in my right hand to my left, I flip them over. Still nothing.
“I’m going to be coming here for a little while,” Gauge announces.
I don’t stop playing the game, knowing if I do, he’ll take advantage. “Why?” I simply ask.
He doesn’t continue immediately. Instead, he focuses on the game, turning his card over, and what luck, he gets an ace of hearts. Better luck for me because I have a two and a three ready to go.
Gauge places the ace down, and I quickly place down my two and my three. He chooses then to answer me. “Protection,” he states.
“Against him?” I ask.
I don’t want to say his name. I feel like if I do, it might be the cause of something ugly to happen. The last thing I want to do is speak him into existence. I continue playing, and so does Gauge, neither of us looking at one another, both of us half focused on the game and half in a conversation.
“Yeah,” he murmurs. “Dad wants someone on you and doesn’t want to tax the club here. Seems like since I don’t do much of fucking anything, I’m the perfect candidate.”
I pause, but only for a second before I ask him the question that pops into my head. “Why aren’t you doing much of anything?”
Clutch is running around still drunk on all the things that being a patched member of the club offers. He’s not doing much of anything because he’s busy doing everyone he can stick his dick into, Minty being one of them.
Piston is busy doing the whole first-in-line-for-the-throne thing, which leaves Gauge being the middle child who is just shuffled around.
I get it.
I’m the youngest, but being the only girl, it’s different.
I don’t know if it’s because I look like my mother or what, but my father was always very hands-off.
Which left my brothers to pick up the slack, and Gauge was the one who spent a lot of one-on-one time with me, but in his own special way. Games.
“Dunno. Not much going on.”
“So you get to babysit?”
He snorts. “Yeah, not a fuckin’ hardship, though,” he murmurs. “Protecting my sister seems like an easy gig. Not like you’re getting yourself into more trouble.”
Lifting my gaze, I watch as he flicks his gaze down to my belly, then shifts it back up to meet my own, a smirk playing on his lips. I watch him for a moment, neither of us moving a single card.
“You’re an asshole,” I point out with a chuckle.
He smirks. “Yeah, I know. Glad I get to spend my days with you, though.”
I’m glad, too. I don’t say anything else. There’s nothing else to say. I spend the evening playing cards with my brother. I can feel Amos’s eyes on me as I play, but he doesn’t bother me. He watches, though.
Flicking my gaze over to him every so often, I flash him a smile.
I’m falling in love with this man. I don’t know if I should be.
I don’t even know if what I feel is real, or rather, what he feels.
All I know is that I seriously love the way he watches me.
In fact, I can’t help but wonder when he’ll be watching me in bed… sooner rather than later, I hope.