Total pages in book: 73
Estimated words: 73311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 73311 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 367(@200wpm)___ 293(@250wpm)___ 244(@300wpm)
I was now fresh off my second shift and barely able to contain the urge to strangle Stephanie.
Trying to calm down from my annoyance, I’d come to the clubhouse with Imogen, who’d assured me she wanted to get out of the house, only to have to hear Truth spout utter bullshit.
“You know you have a stupid confession,” Truth challenged.
“Today I had one,” Tommy Tom offered. “Though it’s not my own penis confession.”
“HIPAA!” Sean bellowed.
I rolled my eyes. When Tommy Tom referred to ‘HIPAA’, he was actually referring to a ‘HIPAA’ violation. Meaning that by law, you weren’t about to talk about a patient to anyone who wasn’t directly involved with that patient’s case or designated by the patient as a medical proxy. Sure, it was still spoken about, but it wasn’t something to fuck around with in the end game.
Everyone snorted, which was the running joke between the two men.
Both men still talked about their patients, though, HIPAA or not.
“We had a kid come in today that wanted to have sex without a condom, but his girl wasn’t on birth control,” Tommy Tom started.
“Oh, God,” I muttered. “Was this that kid that we caught screaming in the street?”
Tommy Tom’s grin was answer enough.
“So he goes on to tell me that he glued his dick hole closed so the semen wouldn’t come out. But now that it’d been a while, it hadn’t come open and he had to pee.”
“So what’d you do?” Ghost asked between sips of beer.
“There’s a compound that dissolves the glue. Only problem is, that it burns like a motherfucker.”
Every man in the room winced, me included.
“That’s epic,” Truth finally settled on. “Come on, you know you all have one.”
“When Sean was fourteen, he zipped his dick up in his pants and had to have the ER staff remove his foreskin from his zipper teeth,” Big Papa volunteered.
Sean’s eyes narrowed. “And I had to have a circumcision at the age of fourteen. It was the worst day of my life.”
Ghost grunted.
“My wife once dyed my dick hair purple.”
Silence proceeded that announcement.
Imogen looked at him curiously, not understanding the undercurrent that was currently racing through the entire table of men. “I see the ring you wear. I just thought she had left you.”
Blunt, as always.
“No,” Ghost grunted. “She didn’t leave me, I left her. It’s for the best.”
“Why?” Imogen pushed.
See, here’s the thing. If Ghost hadn’t already been three sheets to the wind, I knew for a fact that he wouldn’t be talking about his wife or his life.
But today, just like last year, was the one day that he let himself go.
He had two days he did this on.
His daughter’s birthday and his anniversary.
He didn’t know that he was a chatty Cathy when he was this drunk, or I was sure he’d choose to get drunk in solitude rather than in front of the club members like he’d done for the last six years, according to a few of the men.
I’d only been here for three of those instances—twice now, for the anniversary, and once for the birthday of his daughter—but it was enough to know that the man was seriously hurting.
“Because my parents are sick motherfuckers,” Ghost took another shot. “Both alive and kicking, ready to do one bad deed after another. Can’t do a goddamned thing about it, either. If I could, I’d get her back. Get my kid back. But if I didn’t, they’d just force me to leave them again like they did the last time.”
I looked at Big Papa, who shook his head.
He didn’t know any more than I did. Any more than anyone of the men did.
Ghost was seriously that secretive.
It was also why when he spoke about his past, people shut up and listened.
Nobody was crazy enough to out and out ask him about his life, though. Apparently, Imogen hadn’t gotten that memo, though.
“Seems you took that choice right out of her hands, though,” Imogen spoke as if she were talking from experience. “Isn’t that her choice if she wants to spend her life in danger?”
“We have a kid. She needs to stay alive for her,” Ghost countered.
“Yeah?” Imogen asked. “But, what if, after all this time, your parents hadn’t kept their word? What if she’s in just as much danger now as she was when you were there? Have you thought about that?”
Ghost looked thoughtful for a moment.
“I concede that you have a point, but I’ve already pulled that trigger.” He touched his scarred face. “Can’t unpull it.”
Imogen watched him thoughtfully as he let his fingers drift over the scar on his face.
He looked a lot like me—though his was worse.
My burns covered only half of my body. His took over every available space from his neck down. There was literally not a single part of his body that wasn’t riddled with scars.