Chapter 13

I don’t have a bucket list. However, my fuck-it list is novel length.

-Mig to Annie

Mig

“Do you think when a mattress is on top of a car, it’s a prostitute making house calls?” Annie asked her sister.

My head turned, and a laugh bubbled up my throat.

Amazingly, I was able to hold it in.

Annie was notorious for making random comments like that, and when alcohol loosened her tongue, she said even more ridiculous comments than she normally would.

“No,” Tasha said. “That’s just weird.”

“But why else would someone put it on top of their car?”

Peek was laughing uproariously at the way our conversation had turned.

I’d made a comment, not even a minute before, how Annie couldn’t keep her mind on the task she was given if you got her distracted, and he didn’t believe me.

So to prove my point, I started talking about how I wanted to go mattress shopping, and she’d gone off on a tangent about prostitutes and mattresses.

“Annie,” I said sharply.

She looked up at me with wide, brown eyes.

“Yeah?” She asked.

“Do you have the chicken ready yet?” I asked, knowing without a doubt that she didn’t.

She looked down at the chicken that was still just as fatty now as it had been when I handed it to her ten minutes before.

“No,” she said. “I’m working on it.”

“Mine’s done!” Tasha exclaimed.

I turned my eyes to Tasha, struck once again how different she was from Annie.

Where Annie was short, Tasha was tall.

I’m talking five or so inches over Annie’s five feet four inches.

Annie had lovely curves, and a beautiful abundance of breasts to work with, whereas Tasha could maybe fill up a B…if she was lucky.

They did have the same wavy, curly-when-it-wanted-to-be, brown hair.

But their eyes were different colors.

Annie’s were a warm shade of honey brown, while Tasha’s were a darker shade that looked almost black.

And their attitudes.

Swear to Christ.

Tasha was a little timid, looking at the gathering with wide, nervous eyes.

She looked like she’d never been out amongst the general population before…and maybe she hadn’t.

Annie, though, my sweet Annie, was easy going, got along well with Lenore and the rest of the club. Didn’t sneer at the women that showed for the party…nor the men.

Not that I cared if she got along with the men.

She stayed by my side, keeping her eyes, as well as her attention, on me.

Tasha had loosened up after Annie had poured some drinks down her throat.

Not that Tasha had realized there was any booze in her drinks.

She’d been told they were lemonade.

And Annie had laughed behind my back as Tasha had drank one after the other.

Now, though, Annie was just as sloshed as Tasha, and the boys were enjoying the shit out of it.

“That chicken is butchered,” Annie laughed. “There’s more chicken on the fat you cut off than on the chicken that we’re supposed to cook.”

I looked over at Tasha’s chicken, and thought that just maybe it hadn’t been a good idea to give a knife to two drunk girls.

“It’s alright,” I said, taking Tasha’s knife. “I’ll cut these up. How about you ladies go take a seat next to Lenore.”

Lenore was sitting on the couch with Griffin sitting beside her, rubbing her pregnant belly like one would a pet.

She looked cute…and it made me think of Jennifer.

Of my child.

This life I’d been given was not how I’d expected it to play out.

If I had ever thought about a woman carrying my child, I’d have seen myself doing much the same as Griffin was currently doing.

Never in my life would I have imagined myself watching my child grow in the belly of a woman that I despised.

“So I have some news for you, and I’m not sure you’re going to like it,” Casten said once the women left to take up seats across from Griffin and Lenore.

I looked over at him, then back down at the chicken.

“You looked deeper into Cornell? Autrey?” I asked.

He’d told me he was going to do it.

We’d gone the official route, and, of course, there was little to nothing new there to be found. So Casten started to dig deeper, unofficially, of course.

Casten was a bounty hunter.

He’d found Ross Autrey for me, not that it had done much good, though. Then he’d started looking into Liam Cornell.

I hadn’t expected any news at this point, and it somewhat surprised me that he already had some.

It’d taken him days to find anything on Autrey.

Whomever was covering their tracks was good.

“Yeah,” he said, leaning his hips against the kitchen counter next to me. “I had to double check…but what I found…it’s bad.”

I sighed and put down the knife, walking over to the sink to wash my hands.

Once they were clean of chicken guts, I started out the door.

Casten followed me silently.

Once outside, I saw Apple talking to someone on the phone.

“Yo,” I snapped. “Core!”

Apple turned around like his ass had been cattle prodded.

“Yes?” He asked, hanging up on whomever he was talking to.

I grinned.

“Go cut up those pieces of chicken. Try not to make them any smaller than they already are,” I ordered.

Core, who’d we’d just started calling that since the night he’d helped me with Annie at Hail House, practically ran inside.

“I kind of like that name. Wish I would’ve gotten something cool like that,” Casten said.

I snorted.

Casten had been dubbed ‘Big Ten’. Something he never went by because he said it made him sound like a surfer.

Ours wasn’t really the type of club that cared what you wanted to go by.

You went by what you wanted to go by, and that was that.

“Tell me what you got,” I said softly.

He opened the file that he magically pulled from his back pocket, and my stomach rolled.