Total pages in book: 118
Estimated words: 107118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 107118 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 536(@200wpm)___ 428(@250wpm)___ 357(@300wpm)
I clenched my jaw. Then, feeling my stomach drop, I turned to my best friend. “Aubin.” My mouth felt as dry as a damn desert.
“Val—” Cowboy leaned forward, jumping to help me like he always did. But I held up my hand to cut him off.
I took a deep breath. “I think you should try to make a go of it with her.”
Cowboy’s blond eyebrows pulled down in confusion. “That’s what I’ve been saying. She’d be good for us, Val. She—”
I shook my head. “Not me, Aub. You.”
Cowboy’s mouth worked open and shut, his forehead lined. “I don’t get it.”
“You.” I looked back out over the hills. “You should try to make a go of it with her.” I cracked my knuckles, just for something to do with my hands. “She likes you. Shit, anyone can see it.” I ducked my head. “I see the way you look at her too. She’s different for you.”
“For us,” Cowboy argued.
“Doesn’t matter.”
“For fuck’s sake, Val—”
“It doesn’t change how I feel. I won’t see someone else dragged down by me.” This time I did meet his eyes. His face was red. He was pissed, which for Cowboy was a rare occurrence. “I’ve dragged you down too. I know you don’t see it. Think it’s just because you’re my brother. But you ain’t lived right since that night years ago. Gave everyone and everything up. Your future. Your folks. Your horses. Rodeos. You fuck sluts with me because I never used to dare do it alone.” I huffed a self-deprecating laugh. “Hell, you moved from the state you fucking adored to go nomad, then moved to Texas because of me.” I turned on my seat, staring down at the Austin Chapter patch on his cut. “You even told the club—Styx and Ky—that we went nomad because of shit that went down with you, which we both know wasn’t fucking true.”
“Because I knew you didn’t wanna talk about it. After everything you’d been through, I couldn’t let you explain all that shit with the New Orleans chapter—even though we should have, still should. I mean, how much can a brother have piled on him in a fucking lifetime, never mind in the space of a few years?”
“That’s my point, Aub,” I said. Cowboy folded his arms over his chest. “It’s time you did something for you.” He opened his mouth to argue, but I cut him off before he could. “We both knew there’d be a time when you found someone.” The pain I felt in my gut at thinking of Sia with Cowboy alone made me feel sick. “You deserve it.”
“And you?” Cowboy asked. “What do you deserve? To be fucking alone?” He huffed in frustration. “I know you say there’re a lot of reasons not to get into anything with Sia. I get why you think it. But one of them, your condition, shouldn’t hold you back like this, Val. Plenty of people have it and live with it just fine.”
“Not in a biker gang. You know club rules. I’d be grounded. Styx wouldn’t let me close to a bike. His poppa made that an ironclad rule years ago.” I shook my head. “Not gonna happen, mon frère. What the fuck would I be without this club?”
“Could be living with me and Sia? I don’t know . . . maybe fucking happy for once in your life?”
“You think people wouldn’t have a problem with that?”
“Fuck people,” he muttered, shaking his head.
Coldness infused my blood. “That’s what my parents thought, Aub.” I felt him tense as I mentioned them. Because I never fucking talked about them. “Didn’t really work out for them, now did it?” Sympathy flooded his eyes. I fucking hated the pity from Cowboy most of all. “A white guy, a mixed-race sick guy, and a white rancher bitch shacking up ain’t fucking normal in anyone’s book, Aub. Someone somewhere will have a problem with it.” Just that thought set my anger on fire. “And I guarantee, it’ll be me they’ll have the biggest problem with. It always is.”
“We’re fucking Hangmen! No one will say shit to us.”
“Our vice-prez might.”
Cowboy dropped his head in defeat. “I thought . . . I thought after last night . . . after seeing you with her, you’d changed your mind.”
“I want the bitch, Aub. So fucking much that I can’t stand it. But after everything she’s been through, how the fuck could I put her through any more? I’ll protect her with my life, but she ain’t knowing about my condition. My past. My long list of reasons. I just ain’t going to get with her, period.” I started the engine of the bike. I was done with this conversation.
“I might just fucking tell her about you myself. Then you have no more excuses.”
His threat ran off my back, because when I said to him, “No, you wouldn’t. You ain’t built that way,” I knew it was true. “Get with her, Cowboy. And when all this Garcia shit is done with . . .” I took a breath and just let the fucking next words spill outta me. “I’ll leave. Time for you to have a fucking life, free from my baggage.”