CHAPTERTHREE
SAM
I crackmy lighter under my smoke as I watch Jackal drag Cy toward a couple ofrocket ridersat the bar, smirking to myself the entire time.
He may act like he wants nothing to do with them, but Cy usually scores right along with Jackal, so he can’t be too mad about it.
Up until a week ago, I didn’t get mad over it either.
Jackal takes full advantage of MACs, always has and always will, and the rest of us usually reap the rewards of his uncontrollable libido by picking up one or two of the chicks that hang with his current flavor. It helps that MACs is always crawling with loose pussy, but having Jackal around pretty much guarantees we’ll get our dicks wet, even more so when Spider graces us with his presence too.
Tonight is different for me, though.
Everything has been different to be honest, all thanks to a hot little brunette that let a perfect stranger kiss her in the fucking basement of a funeral home.
I’m not interested in the rocket riders or anyone else since her, and I have to think it’s because she’s had me entertaining ideas I’d never even tried to understand before Sofie Berk came along.
I didn’t really grasp—or care for—the concept of a monogamous relationship or the appeal of falling in love. Never had any kind of example of either until I joined the club, and even then it was pretty sketchy between some guys and their old ladies, but Tank and Gunner definitely had my curiosity piqued over all the fuss.
Eh, maybe more Gunner than Tank.
Angus is devoted as fuck to Trudy, practically worships the ground she walks on, and she definitely shows him the same kind of treatment, but they’re older and have been together going on three decades now, so it’s not necessarily the way things normally go.
Proven by Tavish and his relationship with Nadine.
Spider’s mom is fucking insane, always trying like hell to keep Mac on a choke chain that she pulls at will. They’re pushing fifty and Nadine is still constantly accusing him of cheating, and threatening to leave him for any number of stupid reasons. She even loses her shit on him over doing stuff with Spider and us, club shit at times too, and Nadine will start spouting all kinds of bullshit to make him mad or keep him home, and Tavish just takes it. He doesn’t do what she says, doesn’t let her dictate the way he runs things, but he doesn’t ever shut her up either, and I know that’s not right.
Tavish says—when he’s drunk and pissed off, sitting around with me and the guys—it’s because he doesn’t believe in divorce, that Nadine is the mother of his son, and he knows once upon a time she really did love him. Just like he really did love her. Their relationship is almost out of habit, purely one of convenience at this point, but I have to wonder if that’s even true because having Nadine call him names, make accusations, and generally freak the fuck out on him in front of us or the EC on a regular basis seems reallyinconvenientif you ask me.
But what do I know?
I’ve never even met my dad and I saw my mom bring home a different guy every night for the majority of the thirteen years I lived with her, so it’s not like she was some shining example of how relationships should work. The only couple I got to see behind the scenes before joining the club was Preston and Olivia Gentry, whomadeMarbles,so that isn’t saying a hell of a lot either.
I met Marbles—Mitch, back then—when I left our shitty house in Rolling Meadows, and that crazy son of a bitch was the first one to show me what a real home and normal parent-child relationship was like, despite the other fucked up shit that went on there.
Which was weird as fuck, to be honest.
Marbles has been completely unhinged since he was a kid, I mean, completely off the wall nuts, so when he found me hanging out behind the diner looking for my next meal, asked me if I had a gun, then took me home to his place with a gruntedyou can live with me nowafter I said no, I was shocked.
Immaculate ranch house with a big ass yard, white picket fence and two poodles playing out front. Clean, neat, and very normal house, everything was new and cared for, it was peaceful and warm. I had incorrectly assumed that since Marbles was actuallyinsidethe dumpster I was hanging out by—diving forneat shitaccording to him—he had to be a runaway like me.
Then that fucker took me to that ranch house in Sabine Woods and introduced me to his mom, his mom who was too hopped up on booze and pain killers to argue with Marbles about me moving in, and I was even more shocked.
Aside from his mom’s addiction issues and his dad’s hardcore infidelity, everything else about Marbles’ life was pretty normal.
The house, the dogs, the fact that he has a younger sister, Moira, and parents that were semi-involved. His dad was an accountant, his mom a stay-at-home parent who sat on the PTA and drove him and his sister to all their shit. Preston and Olivia even insisted on family meals and took us on vacations, made sure we never went without, and did decent enough in school to graduate by the skin of our teeth.
And all of that is why Marbles is such a fucking anomaly.
My best friend can’t read higher than a fifth grade reading level, skipped so much school he had to have a private tutor that basically did all of his work for him, and he spent more time in and out of interrogation rooms before he was a legal adult that it’s kind of a miracle he didn’t have his own goddamn chair at that station.
And yeah, I was right there with him every step of the way, Marbles and I raising hell all over Sabine Woods right up until Hamish hired us. But all of that went unnoticed by his parents, unnoticed or covered up because they’d rather not deal with it since dealing with it meant dealing with each other, and they did that as little as possible.
All in all, I have no fucking clue how a monogamous, committed, or healthy relationship works, but Sofie Berk has me at least curious about it.
Mainly because, since I kissed her, the idea of that sexy as fuck brunette who tastes like cookies and looks like a fucking dream being with anyone else in any way at all makes my goddamn blood boil. Which in turn has made it hard for me to wrap my head around fucking another chick when I can’t stop thinking about fucking Sofie or wanting to murder anyone else she might consider fucking.
I may not know the first fucking thing about relationships, but I knowthosekinds of thoughts mean I’m one step closer to figuring it out.
