Total pages in book: 135
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 137310 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 687(@200wpm)___ 549(@250wpm)___ 458(@300wpm)
“You gonna get on that?”
She nodded again.
Okay.
“Now, this is what’s gonna go down,” he began. “Mace knows Eight. He knows Resurrection. He knows what switch he just flipped. I don’t know his motivation. Maybe he did it on purpose. Maybe he did it to light some fires elsewhere. Scott is gonna look into things. He’s gonna hear things. It’s a good bet Mace is gonna tell him things. And Chaos is not about that. Neither is Aces. So we’re in a race right now, baby. I got no problem with what Eight and Muzz are intent to do. But me and Pete and Dutch can’t let it touch you, Suzette or Chaos. And the best chance we got to do that is get Babić in a cage and shut down his shit.”
“So you’re…at odds with Eightball and Muzzle now?”
“It ain’t cross purposes we’re at. It’s just the endgame doesn’t match.”
“Oh. All right,” she muttered, sounding confused.
“Don’t worry about it. Focus on you. The decision about dinner with your dad. And Suzette.”
She emitted a shocked little laugh before she asked, “Dinner with Dad?”
“This is what I know, Di. Life goes on. Suzette is important. And that’s important. You threw a man a lifeline yesterday. Don’t lose focus and let him drown.”
Her eyes started to get bright, she sniffed rough, then nodded.
“You good?”
She nodded again.
But she said, “No more than seventeen, Hug.”
“Yeah,” he whispered.
Her lip trembled, she clamped down on it with her teeth, let it go, sniffed again, rougher this time, and squared her shoulders.
And that right there was why he knew he could take the risk.
That right there was what he knew yesterday, but didn’t trust.
Now, he had no choice but to trust.
He let her go, took her hand and led her back to the huddle.
“You got everything we need?” he asked Eight.
“Sure fuckin’ do,” Eight answered.
Hugger was beginning to get a new appreciation for the men of Resurrection.
Maybe, even if it still wasn’t his to do, he could forgive.
But now, he had to work beside him at the same time thwarting his purpose.
That was going to be tricky.
Diana took his mind off it by squeezing his hand. “Can we go? I want to get back to Suzette.”
“We can go, babe,” he told her.
“Nice to meet you, kinda,” she said to Mace, and added, “No offense on the kinda part.”
“Nice to meet you too, Diana,” Mace replied.
“See you for dinner,” she said to Eight.
“You bet, sweetheart,” Eight replied.
Hugger guided her to his bike.
He got on.
She swung on behind him.
And this wasn’t a belt loops ride.
Tits flush to back and chin on his shoulder.
He’d been wrong, it wasn’t torture.
It was indication it might be time to climb that fucking mountain.
Because maybe, just maybe, against all the odds stacked against him since his conception…
There might be an oasis on the other side.
9
MOTIVATION
Hugger
Hugger woke feeling more than his usual morning rough.
Diana’s dark-blue couch looked good and was comfortable to sit on, but it wasn’t long enough for him. He couldn’t find a position that worked, which meant he woke up constantly in search of one.
He was also wearing his clothes, something he’d done every night, and that didn’t help with his comfort level.
But he didn’t want Suzette or Diana to run into him wearing his boxer briefs or sleep shorts.
Especially Suzette.
Hugger wanted her at all times to feel an extra layer of protection from him.
This meant he had three nights of shit sleep in a time he needed to keep his shit sharp.
So he’d just woken up, but he needed a nap.
It was still dark, just a little sun in the early dawn leaking through Diana’s many windows, but he knew he wasn’t going to get any more sleep.
He pushed up to sitting on the couch, put his elbows on his knees, drove his fingers through his hair, digging the pads into his scalp, and left them at his neck, his fingers holding his hair back and still digging into the tense muscle there.
Hugger had never been a morning person. He’d always woken tough. Until he was old enough to introduce himself to coffee, that tough lasted awhile.
It did his ma’s head in.
On that thought, he remembered when he was eight, nine years old, slouching and grouching through his morning prep before school, and his mom grousing, “Should fill a bucket with ice water and douse you with it every morning to snap you out of it.”
From that day on, Hugger had still woken rough, but he’d done everything he could to stop slouching and grouching and get on with it so it didn’t bug his ma.
Feeling uneasy about this memory, mostly that it would unearth itself at all, he shoved it aside, pushed up from the couch and headed down the hall, noting Suzette’s door was firmly closed, but the door at the end, Diana’s, was open a couple of inches.