Chapter 8

Trainer

 

I stare at my cell phone screen for a long time.

The text I sent Storm is a memorized phrase. One of many that I've saved on my phone so I can pretend better.

People don't know how lucky they are to see letters and understand what they mean.

Mama didn't know I couldn't learn. Course, Mama wasn't paying attention to much except whichever Arnie had her on her back.

I look away from my cell, gazing into the deep woods that surround the club like a battalion of green.

Something I do a hell of a lot—like thinking about shit alone.

I release a pent-up exhale, digging my hair out of the tie at my nape and re-doing it.

Mama loves me. She just don't see me.

Rubbing my chest, I can't get rid of the tightness there. Never been afraid before. Except when I was too young to be anything but hurt by the Arnies.

Now I'm afraid.

So afraid my teeth are numb in my mouth. That teacher—Krista Glass—she fucking sees shit to my toenails.

Gotta keep my distance. Gotta take the class in case I go to court for the turds whose asses I kicked.

Remembering that fancy prick who was a jerk to Krista when I was standing right there… makes the distance harder. Want to find out what kind of a prick he is. He might be an Arnie.

Fancy suits don't put me off none. Anyone can be that kind of man. Seen ʼem in all shapes and sizes.

In the end, they're the same.

“Hey, bud,” Noose says, plopping down on the wide back concrete step of the club where I’m perched with my uneasy thoughts.

“Hey,” I say, not turning.

He claps me on the back. Noose was a taskmaster when I was a prospect, but he was fair. Never talked down to me.

Never treated me like I was dumb, even though I probably acted the part.

He bangs out a cig and, stuffing it between his lips, asks a muffled question, “How'd it go?”

I let the silence drag out. Gives me time to work over a reply.

Noose waits, which is his way.

“Embarrassed. Angry,” I say truthfully, staring at my scuffed boots.

“Fuck it.” Noose springs the lid free from his beer with his tungsten wedding band and rolls the chilled glass bottle across his forehead.

After a couple of minutes, he says, “Gonna miss this cold snap. Always fucking hot as hell.”

I smile. True. Us guys run warm-blooded.

Which makes me think of Krista.

I take a pull of my own icy beer. Need to figure things out. Not used to having to. I like the club. It keeps things simple. My mind zones, and I can do what I'm told and get loyalty and respect in return. Road Kill MCcompletes me.

Krista, and my obsessing over her, screws up all that small amount of peace I lucked into carving out for myself.

“What else?” Noose asks causally.

Noose isn't casual. He's always rooting around for answers, wanting to know the why or what behind things. It's just him.

I'm not an actor. Never been good at keeping a straight face. So I don't bother. Besides, Noose has taught me a sort of fragile trust in the last couple of years.

Could've been the first time he knocked two guysʼ skulls together because they called me dumb.

Began there, I figure. Me loving him.

Guys don't love, they say. But when you haven't had any, the emotion sneaks up on a man, tackling him when he's not expecting it.

I'd go to the ground for my brothers. But I have a soft spot for Noose.

Even if he did have me clean up after the orgies. Fucker.

I give a rough exhale. “There's a girl.”

“Figured with that moon face ya got.” He sips his beer, issuing a quiet snort.

I frown.

“Go on,” he says, spinning the bottle of beer hard enough that some slops out the top. “Fuuuucker!” he barks, licking it off his hand.

I laugh.

His lips twist into a trademark grin, half-menace, half-humor.

“She's the teacher.” I yank the stubby tail of hair at my nape.

Noose whistles. “Nice.”

“It's not like that.” I glare.

Noose shakes his head, kicking a small pebble with his boot. “It's always like that.” He chuckles. “Got sweet butts coming outta our ears, and then complicated pussy walks by, and suddenly, a man can't think. The only thing thinking in that is”—he grabs his crotch, sets down his beer, and puts his other hand on his chest over his heart—“the little head and this beating mess inside our chests.”

So maybe he gets me, some.

Here goes nothinʼ. “She said I could learn.”

“Fuck, yes, you can, Trainer.”

I nod. “You looked into me.”

Noose gives a single nod. “I know what I read on those papers. But I also know”—he taps his temple—“all the bullshit that's between the lines. Undocumented.” He takes another pull from his beer, grimaces, then threads fingers through his longish hair. “Think you did well only killing the last guy.” Noose adds with a bark of a laugh.

I slowly pivot to face him, elbow planted on my thigh, and my beer dangles from my hand. “What do you mean ‘last guy’?”

“I mean, that your mom didn't suddenly decide to invite that loser into the house when you were seventeen. At least that's not how it worked where I grew up.” He splays his fingers against his chest, dark-blond eyebrows hiked.

Letting the silence eat up the space between us is easy. Talking about this shit is painful. The thought closes my throat and makes my guts feel like they're gonna fall outta my ass. A few heartbeats of time stack between us before I answer, “No. He was the tenth guy—I don't know—twentieth. It all blended, Noose.”

I take another pull, and the brew sloshes in my gut, not settlinʼ shit. Stomach is still a churning mass.

“Yeah,” he agrees softly then drains the rest of his beer and digs the bottle into the dirt beside the step. “What kind of chick is your teacher?” Dipping his head, Noose cups his hand around a cigarette he lights with the old one. He parks the butt of the spent cig inside the bottle.

That's an easy one. “She's the kind I don't deserve.”

“Probably the perfect one for ya.” Noose nods, as though agreeing with himself.

We look at each other.

“I can't stop thinking about her.” My fingers wrap my beer hanging between my thighs. I study the bottle instead of the man before me—or his words.

“There's plenty of pussy here, Trainer.” Noose jerks a thumb behind him at the club.

I nod. Yup. I lift a shoulder. “You know how much I love the ladies.”

Noose smiles, sweeping his hand to my crotch. “If I had a foot-long cock, they'd love me too.”

I turn away, shamed by yet another difference.

“Hey, don't get your boxers in a twist, pal. That's not a little factoid the bitches keep quiet about. And let me tell you something, they say size doesn't matter, but I've never met a chick that wouldn't like some sizable meat when presented.” Noose gives a satisfied chuckle. “Hell, if I were you, I'd hang out my tile and have it read ‘Come and get it.’”

He starts roaring, giving a sharp slap to his thigh. “Come and get it. Love that.”

I shake my head, and he claps my shoulder. “Listen, Rose was out of my league. Didn't stop me from wanting her. And she's not complaining. Hell, Lariat's married to a lawyer. Maybe there's certain women that need something different than the simp fuckers running around being all sensitive and shit. Maybe they need a protector, a man who will die to please them.”

Noose straightens, putting his boot on the step he was just sitting on, and stares off into the darkness of the woods that look more black as night blankets the day. “Or just die, brother.”

Yup.

 

*

 

“Did some looking into this Krista chick.” Noose slaps down a stack of papers and photos in front of me.

The letters laugh at me, daring me.

I meet his eyes. “Not too good at reading, Noose,” I admit, like I'm a slow reader.

Not the real truth: that I can't read. At. All.

He shrugs. “I read through the shit. Not much to worry about. Krista Glass, age twenty-three, five feet six, one hundred thirty pounds. Mom and dad still hitched, normal childhood, no siblings.”

He spreads out glossy eight-by-tens on the table.

My teeth grind when I see a picture of her with that dick Allen.

His hands are on her body, leading her into a restaurant I could never take her to.

Not for lack of cash. But because I don't belong there.

“He's a problem.” Noose points to the dick.

No surprise to me.

“Lawyer.” Noose’s reason is not the same as mine.

But still… Shit.

“Gotta mind your shit in this situation. Word has it she's dating this mouthpiece, and we don't want him digging around, maybe paying attention to you, causing trouble because he somehow sees you as a threat to the teacher.”

“Krista,” I correct softly.

“Fuck, Trainer. I want you to be fixed and fucked and loved just as much as the next brother. But between offing Daddy of the Week and this new mess with those fucktards you put in the hospital, I won't lie—you're skating on thin fucking ice, dude. Ya gotta do this class and do Teacher later.” He cocks a brow.

And I'm somewhere between agreeing and wanting to punch him.

Just trying to save the ladies. My mama and the blonde I never got the name for—I was just trying to save them.

Now there's Krista. And Noose is telling me to keep a distance that's closing like one of his famous ropes around my neck.

 

*

 

I'm sitting on the same concrete step again. Next day. Different beer.

Noose sinks to his haunches, his eyes piercing mine. He taps a knuckle on the stack of photos that lay atop papers I can't read. “Just finish the school. Go after Teacher when that's done and the possible trial is over. Don't let your big dick think for you.”

I take a deep breath then let it out.

Noose stands. “What? I know when you got to say something.” He rotates his neck, getting the kinks out in a series of small pops exploding between us.

“I don't like this guy.”

“Pfft. Figured. He's sniffing around Teacher.”

I glare up at Noose.

He raises his hands, palms out. “Hey man, get off my dick.” He chuckles. “Can't resist. Like when Snare married his sister.” Noose cocks his head, blowing out another smoke ring in an endless precession. “Come to think of it, I am being an asshole.”

I say nothing.

“All right… shit.” He stomps out the cig. “What I'm saying is: yeah, you don't like this guy. I wouldn't, either.”

“No, I mean, I got—” Frustrated, I yank my hair tie from the back of my neck, and my hair swings forward, hiding my face. “He feels like an Arnie.”

Noose frowns. “You mean like the douches that worked your mom over all the time?”

“Yeah.”

Our eyes meet.

“I don't know. This dude…” He flicks the photo with the lawyer in it. My eyes latch on to the big hand at the small of Krista's back. I know I'm gonna have a lot of “restraint issues,” as Snare calls it.

Noose continues, “He's got money, education, and no motive. He's not a pimp.” Noose has lit another cig, and he talks with it, nodding as he speaks. “He isn't after a hooker, doesn't look lit on meth and other shit, and has an alarmingly hard white-privilege angle.” Noose squints through the smoke.

I snort. Oh, the shit we smack.

Noose's ash on the tip of his cig is an inch long. He spreads his arms away from his body, and the movement causes that tail of incinerating gray to fall like dirty snow between us.

He takes the cig out, frowns, and uses it to light another.

I raise my brows. “What is going on with the chain smoking?”

Noose's eyes narrow as he waves away the veil of smoke. “Anxious as fuck.”

Now that's something I never thought would cross his lips. Noose is anxious for nothinʼ.

He clamps the cig with his lips and roughly assembles his hair at the nape, savagely twisting it through a buff-colored hair tie.

“Rose is knocked up again.”

I smile. “Congrats, man.”

Noose lifts his fist, and we touch knuckles. “Thanks.”

“Why do ya sound like someone just kicked your puppy?”

Noose gives me a look like a drowning man. “Twins, fucker.”

I stand in a stiff stagger. “What the fuck?” I breathe out.

Noose gives a sage nod. “So forgive me if I don't think you having the hots for Teacher—” His face swivels to mine. “For Krista is worth worrying about. Jesus. I just look at Rose, and she's full of babies again.”

Now it's my turn to comfort. Not something I get to do or know how to do that good.

Clapping his shoulder, I say, “Aria's like two, right?”

“Yeah,” Noose says mournfully. “Early trainer. Doing all her business in the potty now.” He shakes his head.

In the potty?

“This time next year, I'm going to be up to my earlobes in diapers and leaking tits.” Noose gets a half-smile. “That last isn't such a bad thing.”

He takes a long drag.

I blink.

Noose cocks his head, giving me a speculative look. “Maybe TMI for you, pal.”

Maybe.

“Anyways, pretty stoked it might be a couple of boys. Sure have a full house, though. Charlie will be eight, and Aria will be three. Yeah…” He tugs at his short ponytail. “I feel sleep deprived just thinking about it.”

Yeah. I repress a shudder.

“Love the fam. Love Rose. I'll get through it.”

He looks at me again, squeezes my shoulder. “We'll get through all of it.”

Noose walks off, leaving a trail of smoke, the photos, and papers behind.

I scoop up the stack and trudge to my bike.

I stuff the shit in the trunk and lock it up tight. Gonna ride home and look over everything, use my scanner that translates words to audio. Then I'll know what those letters say about Krista Glass before I see her again.

Better to know more.