Chapter 6 Leo
LEO
“Lia… Lia, wait up.”
I follow Lia into the house, but she’s moving at warp speed. Goddamn, when she gets mad, she gets mad.
“Lia!”
I lock up the garage and the truck and let myself into the house. Lia’s already in the backyard, letting the dogs out.
I head out back and grab a lawn chair. I drop down into the seat and stare up at the stars. Lia is walking through the grass barefoot. She’s kicked off her shoes, and when she bends over to pet the dogs, the curve of her ass cheeks peek out of the bottom of her shorts.
I look away from her and stare at the backyard of the only home I’ve lived in since I was five years old. The memories keep coming back to me. Tim and me after we lost our parents. Moving in with my grandparents. Learning about engines and cars and boats—anything that moved—from my grandfather.
How and why Tim went astray…I don’t know.
Who the fuck knows how my prank-loving, life-of-the-party older brother got hooked on drugs?
Maybe he always had problems. I don’t know.
Seems like as soon as Gramps was gone, Tim started acting erratically, racking up debt against the business.
That’s probably when he got into drugs, but I don’t know the details. Probably never will unless we find him.
My brother and I were close growing up, but people change.
They go through their own shit. I don’t know if I ever really knew what he was struggling with, how things could get so bad.
He never cared enough to come to me. To share it.
Maybe he meant to keep it from me. Maybe he thought he could deal on his own.
All I know is I fucking hate secrets.
And I have to find him. I’ve got two weeks to do it.
As I watch Lia play with the dogs under the stars, I realize how much this house has come to mean to me. It’s more than just my gramps’s old place. A place where I could live and not have to worry about rent or where my next meal was coming from.
Since she moved in, this place has changed.
It’s not only the place Tim and I lived, not just the roof over our heads that we needed when we lost our parents.
It’s a place where I can see a real future for myself.
A future that includes the MC, work that I care about, and a home.
A home, I have to admit, that includes Lia.
Pretty soon, we won’t have a fenced-in yard for the girl crew. We won’t have each other. She’ll move on to a new place, maybe with Morris and Alice, maybe on her own, or hell, even with Tiny.
I won’t have anything.
Any stability I’ve created for myself over the last year is gone now. It’s over. Tim has taken the only things that were ever really mine. Now, instead of everything I could have wanted, I’m going to have nothing.
Homeless.
No business.
No future.
No Lia.
Suddenly, there doesn’t even seem to be a reason to fight.
Not with Lia, not for her. I walk into the house and head straight for the kitchen cabinet.
I fill a tumbler with whiskey and drop an ice cube into it.
It’s cheap stuff, so the ice will make it go down easier, but right now, all I want is to not feel.
The sting of shitty booze won’t hurt nearly as much as losing everything I have does.
I finish the glass, standing in the kitchen, leaning against the counter.
Everywhere are signs of the life I’ve made in this house.
In the fridge—the marinated chicken for a dinner I was supposed to make and all kinds of green shit that Lia makes into smoothies.
The kitchen floor has six dog bowls, one for food, one for water—one each for each dog in Lia’s girl crew.
Those dogs have different water dishes outside and in the living room.
I can’t go into a room without seeing a disemboweled dog toy, loose stuffing, or a hard plastic bone.
Lia’s hairbrush or those endless ribbon hair-tie things she wears on her wrist and slips over doorknobs.
The proof of a settled-in life is all around me.
I can’t believe shit’s about to get upended.
I fill my glass again, this time not bothering with the ice.
The first tumbler took the edge off, but this time, I want to go numb.
Feel the burn of the alcohol and the long, vacant nothing of the buzz.
Maybe that’s what Tim’s been chasing all this time.
Something to numb the pain. The way I feel right now, I can’t say I totally blame him.
I kick off my boots and drop onto the couch, finishing off the second whiskey in a few sips. I stumble to the kitchen for another refill, but this time, I grab the bottle.
“Leo…”
I can hear her voice, but I don’t want to open my eyes.
“Leo, come on. It’s midnight. You need to go to bed.”
I crack my eyes open and see I’m surrounded by girls.
The dogs are tucked in beside me on the couch and are sleeping.
A light blanket has been tossed over my legs.
I stretch and realize I’m still feeling the whiskey I chugged.
I’m fine, a little sleepy, but not at all numb like I was hoping for.
Opening my eyes and seeing Lia, I’m not numb at all.
“I’m all right,” I mumble. “Gonna sleep down here.” I roll over onto my side and tug the afghan to my chin.
Lia has showered and changed into a sleep tank and shorts.
She’s sitting across from me in a chair, and she’s watching me.
Her damp hair trails down her shoulders and leaves little wet marks on the sleep tank.
Her nipples are hard, and any other night, I’d be on her, tasting her clean, sweet skin.
Drinking in the softness of her sexy body instead of losing myself to bad whiskey. But not tonight.
“’Night, Lia.” I want her to go, to leave me. There’s nothing more for her to say. Nothing for anyone to say.
“I’m here for you,” she says. “You can talk to me.”
I huff a sigh. “Nothing to say, babe. I’m gonna sleep.”
I close my eyes and hope she goes upstairs and leaves me to my misery. But I feel her shoo the dogs from the couch. She climbs onto the couch and slides in beside me. She lifts up the blanket and snuggles in, spooning her back to my front.
This is new.
We’ve never done this before.
Snuggling?
I’m not talking about the after sex, before someone needs to get up and get going kind of snuggling. The kind that fills the space after we blow each other’s minds and come back to earth.
This is new.
“You okay?” I ask. The scent of her hair fills my nose, and I can almost taste her.
Her skin, her nipples, her pussy. Everything about her hits me as she presses against me and settles in.
My body lurches to attention, no longer trapped between sleeping and drunk.
My dick throbs to life, and I snake an arm over her.
“Hey, we’ll be all right,” I assure her.
“I know,” she says, but her voice doesn’t convince me. “I was thinking…”
Oh fuck. I blink my eyes open and take a breath. “Lia…”
“Hear me out,” she says. “My mom sold her place. She’s got that rich husband. Maybe they can help us. Josh won’t have to take the house if they can give us the money to cover Tim’s bail.”
“No. It’s not that simple. I mean, we’re talking a hundred and fifty large for the bail. And I’d have to pay that money back to your mom or her husband or whoever. I don’t think I’d be able to pay back that kind of money even if I had ten years to do it.”
“Could you take a loan against the house?” she asks. “Is there any way you can borrow the money?”
I nod, my nose digging deeper into her hair with every move.
“Possibly,” I tell her. “But it’s unlikely I’d be able to get the money in ten days, even if I did get approved for a loan of some kind.
There’s not enough time. I wouldn’t want to accept a loan from your family without knowing for sure I had a plan to get it paid back.
And that’s assuming they’d be willing to fork over that kind of cash to someone they’ve never even met. ”
Lia sighs and wriggles so her ass presses against the semi that’s practically being strangled by my jeans.
“Maybe my dad…” She sounds like she’s thinking out loud about this. “I mean, if he has the five thousand I need for my grooming certificate, maybe he’s got…”
“No.” That brings me up to sitting. That and the fact that my dick is not happy that it’s trapped, with Lia’s ass so close.
“Listen to me,” I tell her. “We are not, and I repeat, not involving your father or the MC in this in any way. You hear me? When I lose the house, I’m going to need the MC to give me a place to land for a while, but I will not go and bring my shit to the doorstep of the MC now.
Not like this. The shit with my brother… the legal stuff.”
I shake my head, even though the motion makes it throb. The club’s trying to get clean. Lia knows this. Anything that brings us close to drugs or dirty money, the cops—that’s a step in the wrong direction. And it’s the best way to ensure my prospect days end with me handing back my patch.
And I’m not about to see that happen.
I can’t even begin to think about that. Tim’s drug problems and arrest…
fuck that. The MC was already working to get themselves away from dirty money.
We were cash poor and working to change all that.
I can’t drag my six-figure time bomb into the compound.
This is the exact opposite of what the MC needs right now.
This is my business, my house. The MC will be there after I have this fucked-up chapter in the rearview.
“I’ll make sure you have a place with Alice and Morris, and if that doesn’t work out…”
Lia is quiet.
“Lia, come on. Say something—”
I stop talking when she leans forward and kisses me. It’s a sweet kiss, a kiss that says I’m sorry you’re in this. I’m sorry you have to deal with this. It’s a kiss that says she cares. For me.