Chapter Four
Drew
The burn of the liquor was something I couldn't get enough of.
The first glass had gone down without much fuss, the second the same.
The third and fourth were no different, just from bigger tumblers.
The fifth I was made to share with a fucking mixer.
For a scary looking bastard, Harry could make me fall asleep with his rules at times.
It was the regimented man in him. I made it to ten before I started staring down the chest of the bar woman, promising her a good time if she gave me my drink neat.
“Your blood ain't used to it. Trust me, you'll go into shock,” Harry warned me on the side.
Shame it was drowned out by the calls of my brothers as they pulled me to lay back on the pool table so they could pour that shit straight from the bottle into my mouth.
The wheels would have to wait until tomorrow. The whiskey had been served, the women, too, to an extent. I'd had three chicks grinding up against me, wearing nothing but g-strings and oil on their skin as I sat sipping from a beer bottle, just watching my dick grow hard beneath my jeans.
Gurgling on the last of the whiskey I could take, I raised my head off the table, coughing and spluttering as it went everywhere.
It burned like a son of a bitch when it flowed back up my nostrils, and before I knew it, I was rolling off that three-foot high surface and my ass was crashing on the floor.
“Alright, alright, boys. I think he's done enough of the sensory knockout shit.
Unless you want him dead or back in the joint, I'd say it's time to get him home.” I tried to glance up at the barman as he spoke, but whether it was from the booze, the fall, or both, I wasn’t sure which version of him, out of the three I could see, I was meant to direct my glare at.
Dropping my head back down, I pulled my knees up and rested my arms on top of them as I tried to stop my head from spinning.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed before there was a man on each bicep, dragging me up until my arms were draped around both their shoulders.
“He's right, Drew. We should get you home.” My head rolled lazily to the side as I squinted and gave our youngest patched member a toothy, drunken grin. Kenny was a few years younger than me and had shaved his eyebrows into zigzags. Moron.
He laughed as he looked over my head to whoever was on the other side of him.
My attention followed his in a half circle, my chin rising and my head rolling up to the ceiling as though I was watching a bird flying over before it fell again and I locked eyes with my old buddy—the one guy I'd known even before I knew how to say the word fuck—the man known and respected as being the club’s sergeant at arms. My fucking best friend.
“You…” I paused, swallowing harshly as my stomach rolled. “I swear you've grown taller, Slater.”
“Not for ten years.” He smirked, looking down at me from the corner of his eye as though he wasn't sure if I was really there with him or not.
His long black beard was tinged with red at the ends and he looked older than I remembered him.
Probably 'cause he was. I had to stop forgetting time had passed by.
They were making slipping back into the old routine too easy.
“Don't you ever get vertigo up there? I'd just want to jump the fuck off.”
Slater's laughter broke free, but only because he'd let it slip by accident. “No, Drew. I'm not the pussy who's scared of heights. That's all on you.”
“Hey! That was meant to stay between the two of us.”
“Oops,” Slater said sarcastically, half turning his body to the side as he tried to maneuver all three of us out of the door, back into the open air.
“Quit pretending you haven't missed me and just take me the fuck to Maisey already,” I grumbled, my chin falling to my chest again as I sucked in a big breath of the night air.
“J-Jedd has got someone else lined up for you,” Kenny stuttered beside me.
I shook my head slowly. “Maisey.”
“This new girl's meant to be real good, Drew. She's a huge hit with all the big shots on all sides of town.”
“K-Dog, I want… Maisey.” That silence was there again and it was only when the boy tried to shuffle and lift my body up that I felt his nervous energy. Parting my lips, I let my eyes peel open before I tilted my face up to him. “What?”
Slater sighed on the other side of me, blowing all the air out of his cheeks and forcing my head to roll up to him instead.
“She's out of the game, man. Married. Hooked up with Howard Sutton and got twin girls now.”
I must have been drunker than I thought because I could have sworn I just heard him say Magic Mouth Maisey Piper had gotten married to the chief of police, Howard fucking Sutton. And had... “Twins?”
“Twins.” Slater nodded, his mouth falling into a flat line as he shrugged the shoulder farthest away from me.
My head flew between the both of them and it did shit all for the balance thing I was trying to get under control. “Jesus Christ. When did that happen?”
“About six months after you got sent down,” Slater informed me before encouraging us all to keep moving over to the back to the van.
“She missed you, Drew,” Kenny said nervously.
“Tell me something I don't know.” I smirked as I stumbled forward. Walking was proving harder than I ever thought it could.
“She cried for weeks according to the others in her circle.”
“Fuck for? We weren't dating. She meant nothing to me. I'm just gonna miss that mouth. She was… Man, she was something else.” I huffed out laughing. “Guess I'm gonna have to find another regular Friday night bit of tight.”
“Don't try to act like you didn't know she was in love with the idea of you two being exclusive. You played her.” Slater laughed as his hand found the back door of the van and swung it open. He’d never been afraid to say it how it was. That’s what made him so damn good at what he did for our MC.
It took the two of them to get up in the thing and hoist me up before anyone spoke again.
When my body crumpled to the floor in a drunken heap and my arms curled around my chest, I let my laughter pour free, like fucking blood was seeping out of an open wound, for the first time since I left prison.
The air rang with the sound of my strangled fits before I threw my hands in the air and made like a damn starfish in the back of the van.
“What the hell anyone sees in you, I'll never know.” Slater groaned before leaning over to Harry who was already in the driving seat, waiting. Who knew how long he'd been there? Tapping his shoulder once, Slater gave him a nod. “The others gone?”
“All rode through the town on their bikes to make some noise and mark our boy’s return.” Even in my drunken haze, I could tell Harry was tired. I couldn't help but wonder why, even if it was only a fleeting thought, quickly drowned out by visions and memories of Maisey doing her thing.
“We'll be front page news tomorrow,” Slater muttered.
“When aren't we?” Harry answered in a quiet reply.
Slater slapped his shoulder again before returning back to stand over me, crouching down as he rested his hands on his knees and tilted his head. “It's gonna be bumpy down there, bro. You staying anchored or you want me to move you?”
“Leave him where he is,” Harry said, starting the engine up again to make my bones rattle. “Gotta rewire him the hard way. Club life starts again in the morning. No better way to mark your return to the table than by being a little sore.”
I was just about to answer him with some cocky assed response until I looked up into Slater's eyes and saw him laughing at the state of me.
Squinting and flashing him a paralyzed, lazy grin, I raised a hand and pressed my thumb and finger together, creating a circle to show him I was a-o-fucking-kay.
Then, when my head fell back against the floor, the darkness crept in, the feeling in my legs began to disappear and I knew I was about to pass out.
In five...
Four...
Three...
Two...
Snore.
I hadn’t meant to throw up all over Slater’s boots.
It just happened, but the fact that he was being so pissy about it was making the thudding in my head even more painful.
He only had himself to blame. What that lanky fucker expected to happen when he was bouncing his foot up and down on my stomach in the back of the van, God only knew.
“Here, take some water,” Kenny said quietly, pulling out a bottle of the pure stuff from fuck knows where before holding it to my lips.
I didn’t answer him, but my hands clung onto that bottle, and I drained it. I could hear Slater cursing and stomping around as the van came to a stop.
“Swill your mouth out then take a mint,” Kenny said casually, watching as I did exactly what he said like he was the older of the two of us. “Any better?” he asked, slapping an arm around my shoulder as I sat on the bench in the back and let my head fall into my hands again.
“Champion.” Champion. The very thing my father always used to say when asked how he was doing, making me sound just like him, despite the years of his absence.
“Yeah, you look like you could go ten rounds with Tyson,” Kenny joked, choking out some kind of laugh that made it obvious he didn’t find anything funny at all.
Slater threw the doors open, and the moment the fresh air hit me, I closed my eyes even tighter, locked my jaw and just soaked that shit in.
There was a certain smell to this place that was practically in-fucking-describable.
Once you were in the yard and you gave yourself up to club life, the whole atmosphere around you shifted.
It was a big welcome back embrace from my home, and I couldn’t wait to get inside and collapse on my bed. But I was also nervous. Not that I wanted to admit that to the guys around me now. Not that I could. I was Drew Tucker. That man wasn’t allowed to be weak.