23. Eight Months Ago
TWENTY-THREE
“You ever goingto start hanging around your club again?” Luke asked, tipping his beer back. He had been here at the shop a lot lately, and frankly, it was starting to piss me off. He had her, and they had the club.
Everyone fawned over Penelope and Luke, over their love and how she’s the perfect old lady for him. How good she looks in her cut, how she’s so pretty and perfect. How cute their place is over on First Street. How they’re planning to get married.
Bull—fucking—shit.
I’d withstood them for nearly two years being an official couple, and I’d done a decent job of avoiding the club since then too. I’d bought my first house, devoted all my time to flipping it, then sold it for three times what I paid. Then I invested in more real-estate, now I owned my own garage and a few sets of apartments. No one knew I was doing all this shit on the up and up, or that it was the only reason I still had my sanity.
Lifting my head from the hood of the Corvette I was working on, I stared at my vice president. “Why the hell are you here, again?”
“Jesus, calm down.” Luke held up his hands. “You’re just never around anymore, you left me in charge of everything, and I have a right to ask if you plan on coming around again.”
I tossed a wrench onto the tool table. “Don’t you have a girlfriend to keep you busy?”
“I have your fucking club to keep me busy.” His eyes were red-rimmed, but I wasn’t going to tell him the reason I never came around anymore, or that I had been doing so much better with legal ventures and was exhausted with his battle to stay in the illegal shit. His head lowered with a low snicker. “Fuck, man. Actually yeah, the girlfriend might be why I’m here, drinking at eleven in the morning.”
Luke tipped his beer again and now he had my attention. I wiped my hands with a grease rag and leaned against the car.
“What do you mean?”
Luke tilted his hazel eyes and there was something dead in them, as if he wasn’t completely here…or he was on the brink of breaking.
“Pen’s knocked up. Guess she wasn’t joking about feeling sick these last few weeks.”
A strange, maddening roar was slowly filling my ears…as if all the blood in my body had suddenly rushed to my head, and the rest of my body just hadn’t gotten the message.
Luke smirked, as if this were funny, then he blew out a low whistle. “Didn’t see it coming, but we’ve been fucking like rabbits, so guess it was bound to happen. Couldn’t help myself, I mean, fuck, you’ve seen her. Those curves and that rack. It’s goddamn bliss but guess we should have been more careful.”
My chest felt tight, and I—fuck…
I ran toward the side door of the garage, pushed it open and threw up all over the weeds growing near the cement steps.
Luke was there, leaning against the doorframe. “Must have a nasty hangover. I know I fucking do. I should head back to the little pregnant misses. The only good thing about her being knocked up is I can fuck her now without a condom. You know she’s being a bit of a bitch though, like I’m not allowed to be pissed at her being pregnant…” He laughed like this was hilarious.
I wanted to kill him.
“It’s not like I wanted to be a dad. I like club life, it suits me…the idea of staying up late nights with a screaming kid doesn’t fit in with that…or seeing Pen get fat.”
I literally wanted to murder him.
With a shake of his head, he finished off his beer and tossed it into the metal garbage can. “Maybe come back around your club, Jameson…come say congratulations or some shit.”
I eyed the side of my bike; my saddlebag had a gun tucked inside. Luke wouldn’t even see it coming. One bullet, and he’d be done. My eyes closed, my hands gripped the edge of the table, hard enough to draw blood.
I couldn’t kill him. The club was already on edge, once again, with people divided over Luke’s methods and mine. Luke wanted to start getting back into drug running, and I wanted to stay clean, get out of the one percent bullshit, but the majority of the club agreed with him. It was a tinder box…and now this.
I needed space.