Chapter Four #3
Yes, they’d promised to protect me.
But I had to pull my head out of my ass and get over the
fact that what happened was not about them not doing that.
It was about the choices I made, the choices Beck made, and
the choices Bounty made.
The Chaos brothers did the best they could do.
The rest was not on them.
“It wasn’t you who beat the hell out of me, High. You didn’t
fuck up.”
“Snap woulda kept a closer eye on
you if I hadn’t warned him off.”
“He couldn’t be with me twenty-four, seven and have the job
get done,” I pointed out. “None of you could.”
“We fucked up,” he reiterated.
“You didn’t fuck up.”
“You were at work and Speck was on you and we covered you in
transit or when you were at your ma’s or shoppin’ or
shit like that. We also kept an eye on Bounty to be sure they weren’t making
you. We couldn’t be on you when you were with Throttle because eventually, he’d
see. But Speck was supposed to do drive-bys of the
restaurant and since the bust went down and you didn’t get outed, he thought
you were safe so he went and got himself some tail from a girl he’s seein’ and didn’t stay on you or alternately keep tabs on
Throttle. He thought you were at the restaurant, you’d be safe, and he knew
when your shift ended and he’d see you home. We also had no warning Bounty
clued in on what you’d been doin’.”
“High, seriously, this isn’t on you. It’s not on
Speck. It’s not on Roscoe. It’s not on Snap. Being with Throttle, you couldn’t
keep an eye on me every second of every day and I knew that. I also knew the
risks I was taking and I got caught. I informed on an MC to what is now a rival
MC. The cops were involved. This is not okay in the world I was living in and I
knew that. I still did it, I understood what I was doing, and I knew if I was
found out I’d have to deal with some unhappy bikers.”
“We were supposed to have you covered.”
“That was an impossible task.”
I barely got that out before the door opened and we both
looked that way, me with my heart shooting straight up in my throat and lodging
there because I thought it would be Snapper.
But it was Tack’s head that was through the door.
“All good here?” he asked.
“Yes,” I answered quickly and firmly before High could say
anything.
Tack looked from me to High to me
and back to High.
“Tyra and Lanie are here and they’re not feelin’
wine, they’re feelin’ cosmos. Joke and Carissa didn’t
get the shit for that, or any tequila, and Hop doesn’t drink the kind of beer
they got so I’m doin’ a run. You two want anything?”
Tyra, Hop, and Lanie were there too.
And Tack was doing a liquor run.
“What kinda beer did Joke get?”
High asked before I could process the idea that apparently, Chaos was throwing
me a spontaneous housewarming party.
“Fat Tire,” Tack answered.
“Coors,” High grunted.
“Right,” Tack said then looked at me. “Rosie?”
“I, uh…”
“Memory serves, you’re a Corona Light girl,” Tack noted.
His memory served correctly.
But a profound hugeness started weighing on me that he
remembered at all.
“That or Blue Moon,” I whispered.
“Get both,” he muttered. “Later.”
With that his head disappeared.
I stared at the pretty French doors that led to the pretty
mini-den in a pretty house where I was now living that was currently filled
with a lot of really good people.
“Rosalie.”
I did not look at High.
I turned until I was looking in the kitchen window.
Carissa was there, at the sink, with Tyra.
They were both laughing at something.
Beyond them, Joker had his head back, taking a pull from his
beer while Hop was throwing Travis in the air with Mom standing, looking on,
clearly giggling up at a giggling Travis.
Millie moved through the space, opening a bag of chips, but
stopped when she was met by Lanie, who had another child attached to her hip,
and Millie did this so she could tickle and smile into the face of the baby on
Lanie’s hip.
“Honey,” High murmured.
Slowly, I looked to High.
“Did you know my dad?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Before my time.”
“He was a good guy.”
“Didn’t know him, babe, but heard about him, and everything
I heard says you tell it true.”
“I miss him right now.”
“Darlin’,” High whispered.
“He’d be doing the liquor run.”
I knew High had read my mood when he murmured, “C’m’ere.”
I didn’t want to go there. I didn’t want to accept what they
were offering. I didn’t want to have it and know for certain how extraordinary
it really was only to fear having it torn away.
But I went there.
High’s arms opened before I got there and they closed tight
around me the instant I made it there.
Yes.
Just as I feared.
It was extraordinary.
Except for the tears I’d shed into the lining of Snap’s cut,
I had not cried once since Bounty did their number on me.
And except for the tears I’d shared with Mom in the weeks
that passed after we lost Dad, I had not cried for him either.
So when they tore loose while High held me to his warmth and
strength in a courtyard of the pretty little house the man I’d inadvertently
fallen in love with had given to me, they tore loose.
I sobbed in his arms, holding on to his leather with fingers
clenched deep, and I did it for a long time.
Eventually, High shifted in a way I knew he was going to
pass me off and I allowed myself to be passed off, thinking I’d be moving into
my mother’s arms.
More of the scent of leather, but mingled now with the fresh
marine notes of soap assailed me as Snapper’s arms wrapped around me.
“What?” he asked under his breath.
“Her pa,” High answered. “She misses him.”
“Right,” Snap muttered.
I then heard a door close and knew Snapper and I were alone.
I just kept crying.
After a while, Snap asked, “You want me to take you upstairs
so we can lay down?”
He’d said “we.”
Man.
“Th-th-they bought me Sephora,” I
spluttered.
“They bought you what?” he asked.
“S-s-sephora.”
“Sephora?”
I nodded, my cheek moving on leather but feeling the threads
of the patches on his chest too.
“What’s Sephora?” he asked.
“Only the b-b-best s-s-store in the m-m-mall.”
There was a smile in his voice when he said, “See the old
ladies took care of you.”
“I n-n-need Corona,” I told him.
“Good Tack’s back with that for you,” he replied.
He was back?
Jeez.
How long had I been crying?
“And t-tequila,” I added.
“How about you stop crying before you get yourself hammered?
You can start bawling again after you’re hammered,” he suggested.
“M-maybe a good idea,” I mumbled into his chest, sniffling
and pulling myself together.
Though in doing that, I will note, I did not move from his
arms.
“I didn’t expect them to do the housewarming party thing,
honey. But I’m thinking it’s not a bad idea,” he remarked.
“Mom loves parties and with Dad gone, she doesn’t get to
socialize as much as she used to.”
“Okay.”
“She probably could use getting hammered as well,” I
continued.
“Probably.”
“Did you meet her?” I asked.
“Yeah, she’s as pretty as you,” he answered.
I hated that I’d missed that.
And I was scared about how much I hated missing it.
I sniffled some more, realizing I was curled into his arms
but not holding him. Both my arms were cocked in front of me, my knuckles under
my ducked chin, all of this tucked tight to his chest.
It felt nice.
“You painted,” I murmured.
“Yeah.”
“Bought me a new bed.”
He didn’t reply to that.
I lifted my head only slightly, keeping my cheek pressed to
his chest.
“Snap, you bought me a beautiful new bed.”
“I like room to move.”
That got my head lifted off his chest.
I looked into his eyes.
The snow was melty.
Very nice.
“We still haven’t had our conversation,” I pointed out.
“We’ll have it over dinner tomorrow. Tonight, we’re
partying.”
I could make this deal so I nodded.
“Are you done crying?” he asked.
“I think so,” I answered.
“Wanna tell me why High and you were out here alone?” he
asked.
“He wanted to claim responsibility for Bounty being
assholes. I refused to let him. Tack remembered what kind of beer I drank. Then
I lost it,” I answered.
His lips curled up. “Seems a plausible route to a crying
jag.”
My back straightened. “It’s thoughtful to remember the kind
of beer someone drinks.”
“Babe, I hate to shatter the image you got of Tack but a man
remembers the kind of alcohol a woman likes for reasons that are really not
thoughtful.”
“He’s got a woman. He’s got no need to liquor another one
up.”
“Now he does that shit outta pure instinct.”
All of a sudden, I started giggling and I did it watching
Snapper’s lips form a big smile.
God, he was handsome.
Being stupid, stupid Rosalie in the arms of
handsome Snapper, I uncurled my fingers so I could press them to his chest,
pressing myself there with them so I fit more perfectly in his arms.
And just to say, I fit pretty perfectly in his arms already.
Those arms closed snugger around me.
“The house is really amazing, Snap,” I told him.
“Minute I saw it, thought you’d like it.”
I blinked.
Then I stared.
After that, I started freaking again.
“When did you buy it?” I asked.
“Little over a year ago.”
“Snap,” I whispered.
“Babe, tomorrow night we can get into the heavy. Now we’re
either gonna make out or go in and get drunk.”
I one hundred percent wanted to make out, and in that
instant I didn’t think that made me stupid, stupid Rosalie at all.
I looked to his lips.
He started chuckling.
I looked to his eyes. “What’s funny?”
He dipped his face closer. “Baby, I like that, what you’re sayin’, but I was joking. I get my mouth on you I’ll want
it all over you, and the housewarming party will last approximately two more
minutes before I throw all their asses out.”
“That won’t help Mom have a night where she can let her hair
down,” I noted.
“Yeah,” he agreed.
“But I wasn’t sure I was saying anything.”
“Man tells you he’s thinking of making out with you, you
look at his mouth, means you want his tongue in your mouth.”
“My eyes were wandering,” I lied.
“Rosie, even before shit started changing with us, you’d
stare at my mouth and it wasn’t about your eyes wandering.”
This I did not find surprising he’d noticed.
He had a crazy-fabulous mouth.
“I’m currently experiencing significant amounts of emotional
turmoil,” I explained.
“That isn’t lost on me.”
“And kinda have been for a while.”
“And that hasn’t been lost on me for a while.”
“In fact, I think I need about three months of mellow times
before I make any more big life decisions.”
“That I can give you.”
I found that disappointing.
I also found my mouth asking, “Really?” before I could stop
it.
“Trust me, you’re gonna find it
impossible to be anything but mellow after I’m through with that body,
and once I get it, I intend to spend as much time working it as I can.”
Oh man.
I shivered and in Snap’s arms it had nothing to do with
standing outside in fifty-degree weather in February.
His brows rode low over his eyes. “You gonna
stand here turning me on so I gotta hang out here to
get my shit sorted or go in with you and have to adjust my crotch so they don’t
see my cock is stiff?”
Against my volition, my belly swayed so I could test the
validity of this statement.
This statement was valid.
Very nice.
A growly noise slid up his throat.
Crazy nice.
I melted deeper into his arms, running my hands inside his
cut and over his pecs.
Also super nice.
“I see the answer to my question is yes,” he said.
What was I doing?
I halted the progress of my hands.
“I’m not intentionally turning you on,” I told him, and that
was actually (kind of) true.
“Baby, watched you do your skip-jog to your car yesterday
and stood on the steps to a cop shop fighting back a hard-on. Essentially you gotta breathe in my vicinity and I’m struggling with a
boner.”
I started giggling again.
“She thinks it’s funny,” he murmured.
“Maybe we should go inside,” I suggested.
“Definitely you should go inside and get me a beer. I’ll be
in when I can walk in the door and my dick isn’t entering the house before me.”
And more giggles.
“Get used to that,” he ordered.
“What?” I asked, still laughing.
“A time in your life where you’ll spend a lot of it
laughing.”
Oh man.
I stopped laughing.
“Baby,” he whispered, “go get your man a beer.”
“You want Fat Tire, Coors, or Corona Light?”
His expression shifted like he was hiding something.
And what he was hiding was looking hurt.
“Fat Tire,” I said swiftly, having seen him drink that not
only at the Compound when I was with Shy, but also order it at Colombo’s in the
times he was not there to have cannoli and coffee but there to have pizza at
the bar and I’d find times to break away and chat with him.
The veil drifted away and Snap was all good again.
It was in that moment I felt it imperative he knew.
So I told him.
“I was as into you as you were into me, Snapper. It was just
all messed up then and it’s all messed up now.”
“Heavy shit tomorrow, honey,” he replied.
I nodded.
“Beer,” he reminded me.
I nodded again, started to pull at his arms but then stopped
and rolled up on my toes to touch my lips to his before I pulled free and went
in to get Snap’s beer.
The lip touch was about Sephora.
It was about Joe-joe-kah.
It was about the bed.
It was about Corona Light.
And also about tequila.
It was about the laughter.
And the tears.
It was about the house.
But oddly, most of all…
It was about the paint.