Total pages in book: 88
Estimated words: 86126 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 86126 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 431(@200wpm)___ 345(@250wpm)___ 287(@300wpm)
I could rebuild an engine as well as anyone else in the club and I was pretty fucking great at bodywork, too, but with my degree, the officers decided they needed me in a different capacity. Updating the way the ancient garage functioned hadn’t been exactly smooth, but even the old-timers were starting to use their tablets for more than just coasters for their coffee mugs. I kept everything moving more seamlessly than it ever had before and the computers were up to date and running like they were supposed to. It was pretty fucking satisfying work and now that I just had the website to revamp and maintenance on the current systems, I had time for other freelance jobs. I had to listen to the boys giving me shit about my pretty hands because I didn’t have permanent grease under my fingernails, but anytime they did I just pointed to my uncle Casper who’d been working behind the scenes for longer than I’d been alive. His hands were pretty fuckin’ clean too. Literally, not figuratively.
Neither of us had clean hands if we were speaking metaphorically.
“What do the boys call you?” Frankie asked, butting into our conversation. “It’s something funny.”
“Oh, I know it.” Lou cackled. “Um—”
“Wanker,” my little sister called out from behind my best friend’s shoulder. “They call him Wanker.”
“Fuck’s sake, Myla,” Cian complained, glancing back at her.
“Hey, I didn’t give you the nickname.”
“Caught you with your pants down, did they?” Frankie asked, giggling.
“No.” Cian glared at me, even though he’d gotten the name years before I’d joined the club.
“What do they call you?” Frankie asked, leaning toward me.
“Titus,” I replied dryly.
“Oh, bullshit,” she argued. “Everyone has nicknames.”
“Road names,” Myla corrected quietly.
“Not everyone.” I shook my head. A lot of the boys had road names, but not all of them. They came organically from the old-timers. It wasn’t as if you could ask them to give you a name—you had to wait for it. Sometimes, it was better not to have one…case in point, Wanker.
“I’m beat,” Cian grumbled, stretching his arms above his head. “I’m gonna head out.”
“Already? It’s early,” Myla complained.
“It’s fuckin’ loud in here.”
“So, let’s just go back to your place,” she replied easily, getting to her feet.
“You mean my place?” I asked with a huff.
“Cian and Bas live there, too.” She waved me off. “Bas, you wanna go back to the house? Cian’s tired.”
My other best friend turned from where he’d been chatting up some redhead, his eyes soft as they landed on my sister. I cleared my throat as Cian stiffened next to me.
“I’m down,” Bas agreed. He turned back to the pouting redhead as the girls started putting on their coats and grabbing their shit.
“Where’d Jamo go?” I asked, looking around for my cousin. Jamison rarely came out with us and always ended up disappearing with some random woman halfway through the night. He sometimes made it back before we left, though.
“He said not to wait on him,” Frankie said with a huff, shaking her head. “He took off a while ago.”
“Of course he did,” I mumbled.
“Don’t worry, honey,” Frankie joked. “I’ll keep you company.”
“Lou’s ridin’ with me,” I said, grabbing her by the arm as we headed toward the front.
“We’re all going to the same place. You can’t avoid Frank for long,” Lou joked, bumping me with her hip.
“Watch me.”
“Aw, Titus,” Frankie called as she followed Bas to his bike. “I’m hurt.”
“We gotta stop drivin’ your asses around,” I grumbled, letting Lou climb onto my bike like she’d been doing it her whole life. “One of these nights, someone’s drunk ass is going to fall off the back.”
“You could add one of those little backrests,” she replied cheerfully as I handed her a helmet.
“Fuck you.”
“They’re cute!”
By the time we were following Bas out of the parking lot, Lou was all business behind me, holding me tight around my waist. She acted pretty nonchalant, but out of the three musketeers, she was by far the most cautious. While Myla and Frankie were going hell-bent for leather Lou was always the one hanging back a bit, taking everything in and thinking shit over. My parents always said if it wasn’t for Lou, they would’ve been bailing Myla and Frankie out of jail by the time they were sixteen.
My dad had been flipping houses since before I was born and it had become tradition for him to let each of us kids buy one of his fixer-upper houses from him for a steal when we were old enough and settled enough to pay him back. My oldest brothers Mick and Rumi both chose houses in neighborhoods, the next oldest, Otto, had picked an old farmhouse on something like ten acres, and my house was a bit in between. The house was big, way bigger than I needed, and it was on a little over two acres at the end of a paved road. I was close enough to town that it only took a few minutes to get anywhere I needed, the neighbors were far enough away that I couldn’t see them from the front porch, and there was a little creek that ran across the back of the property that was a nice swimming hole during the summer.