44
Urgent beeping in the dark slammed into my rush, cutting in on my driving rhythm.
An emergency text from Drac. Dammit.
I pulled out of the girl and, reaching over her, grabbed my blinking cell phone on her nightstand. My dick groaned as she groaned underneath me, smashing her face in the crumpled sheets, her ass remaining in the air.
The One-Eyed Jacks had taken Catch and beaten him, but now he was back at the Farm.
What the fuck?
It’d been almost five months since Jill and Catch had broken up. Tonight, he’d gone to Meager to visit his daughter and his mother. How did he end up tangling with the Jacks?
My hand went to my straining, unsatisfied cock. Nothing like a case of blue balls at two in the morning. I yanked off the condom. Samantha sat up at the sound of the snapping rubber, a hand in her messy hair. She was a new hanger-on who’d caught my eye at our local bar last night.
“Gotta go.” Getting out of the bed, I snatched up my clothes from the floor and got dressed again.
“You’re leaving?” she asked, her voice unsteady.
“Yeah.”
“Well, um, it’s not that late.” She pushed her long red hair away from her face, her full tits visible in the hazy candle light. “If you get done, you should come back tonight. You know, if you want.”
I only let out a grunt as I slid my boots on.
My aching, unhappy cock twitched at the invite, but I knew damn well that getting some sleep in my own bed if I got the chance would be more important after this new headache with Catch.
I got on my bike and headed to the Farm where grim faces greeted me in the clubroom. Drac inspected a bloodied and bruised Catch who was stretched out on the sofa.
“Is he alive?” I asked.
“Oh, he’s alive all right,” replied Drac, his tone weary.
Led, a Flame from Reich’s Ohio chapter, stood next to Catch, his arms crossed.
“What the hell are you doing here and why didn’t I know about it?” I asked him.
Led shifted his weight. “I’ve been over at the One Eyed Jacks in South Dakota. Came down with Nina, Reich’s sister-in-law. Nina’s Butler’s old lady now. Catch showed up at their clubhouse, there was trouble, and I brought him back here.”
Butler hooked up with Reich’s sister-in-law? What the hell?
Catch sat up, clutching his middle, his one good eye caught my hard gaze. “Prez—”
“What did you do?” I asked him, my tone sharp. “Why the hell were you at the Jacks’?”
“I was with Becca at my ma’s house. Then Jill came home.”
“And?”
“And I saw that she’s fucking pregnant. I flipped out.”
“You flipped out, huh?”
“Yeah.”
“Then what?”
“I’ve been keeping an eye on her, and —”
“What the fuck for?”
“She’s friends with Grace now, and Grace is a Jack.”
“What are the Jacks going do to your ex, Catch? Poison her? Poison her against you?” My voice boomed and everyone winced.
“She’s been hanging out with Boner, their SA,” Catch spit out. “I saw her belly sticking out, and I figured she got knocked up with his kid. What the fuck, right? First me, then him? So, I took her over there and found him, and he tells me she’s his old lady now. You believe that shit? She’s Boner’s old lady.”
“That’s bothering your ego, is it?”
His bruised and cut face reddened, his jaw jutting out. He was a ball of angry confusion. “Yeah, okay? It fucking is!”
I towered over him. “Not four, five months ago, Jill stood right here and told you, told all of us, loud and clear, that you two were over, then she walked the fuck out. What don’t you get about that?”
Silence.
“When a woman tells you she doesn’t want you no more, you believe her. When she walks out on you, you fucking believe her!” My harsh words seethed from the pit of my black soul and crackled through the room.
Catch averted his gaze to the floor, his jaw pulsing. The industrial light fixtures buzzed overhead.
“What you don’t do is go chasing after her at her new man’s clubhouse,” I said. “A man who happens to be a respected officer of a club we are friendly with.” The blood pounded in my head. “Back it up—define took her over there.”
“I, uh...”
I shot Led a look. “What did he do?”
“He dragged her over to the Jack’s clubhouse on his bike,” Led said. “Girl was barely dressed. Pulled her in by the hair like some cave man. Lock went up behind him, pulled a shotgun on him to get him down, and he let her go. Then Boner had his way with him.”
“Good for Boner,” I muttered.
Catch glared at me, wiping at his blood smeared nose. The hurt, misunderstood boy.
I slanted my head, returning his glare. “You expect me to applaud your fine example of manliness this evening?”
“I—”
“You put a pregnant woman in danger, the mother of your own child?”
Catch’s head swung to the side. “Kid’s not even his.”
“What?” said Drac.
“Jill’s new baby ain’t Boner’s. She’s a surrogate mother for Grace. Grace can’t have kids, and Jill offered to have her and Lock’s baby.”
Drac wiped a hand down his face. “Aw, shit.”
“So, you were wrong,” I said.
“I was wrong,” said Catch.
“I’ll bet Jill tried to explain, but you went off.”
“Yeah. Yeah, I did,” Catch said, his voice low. “In front of my mother, in front of Becca. In front of all the Jacks.”
“Feel good?”
“No.”
“You apologized?”
Catch let out a rough breath. “Every which way Boner and Lock wanted.”
I clenched my teeth against the anger churning in my chest, boiling up my throat.
I glanced at the large clock hanging over the center of the room. 3:32 am. “First thing in the morning, you call your mother and apologize and talk to your daughter. Then you call Jill and apologize. This is called being a man. Owning up to when you’re wrong. Making shit you fucked up right. Looking out for the people you love.”
I squatted down next to him. “You got some growing up to do. That would be controlling yourself. You’ve got good instincts, but you can’t go off the rails where women and children are concerned. You save up that fire for when your brothers need you, when you’re called.”
He nodded. “Yeah.”
I rose to my feet. “Go ahead, throw him his pity party.”
Slade clapped a hand on Catch’s shoulder. Den handed Led and Slade a beer. Drac gave me a glass of bourbon, and I drained it in one shot, but it did nothing to alleviate the pounding ache over my skull. I was tempted to go back to that girl’s bed and finish what we’d started. A good hard fuck, a good quick fix. But no matter how much my frustrated cock and high adrenaline level fed that urge, I didn’t have the energy to get back on my bike. I was exhausted.
“Refill,” I said, licking my lips. Drac poured me another. Leper crept into the room and sat at my feet.
I gestured at Led with my glass as I rubbed the dog’s head. “Did he really say that Butler has a new old lady and she’s related to Reich?”
“Yep, that’s what the man said,” Drac took a swig from the bourbon bottle.
I didn’t like that. I didn’t like that one bit. Butler “related” to Reich? “Related” to his club?
“I want to know about any business between the One-Eyed Jacks and Reich,” I said. “Anything.”
Drac glanced over at Led. “He’s spending the night. I’ll get something out of him.”
Catch stretched out on the sofa next to Den, a beer bottle in his hand, a scowl etched on his busted face.
Catch wasn’t going to let this drama die. Somehow I knew this wouldn’t be the end of it.
And I was right.