“Oh, hey, Mountain Man!” I said with a chuckle. “Come to have a Monday Night party? Most of us aren’t huge football fans, but I suppose we could turn the game on—”
“No,” he said. “Came here to check weapons.”
“And?” I said, raising an eyebrow.
But Butch was already walking off the porch and to his bike.
“I’ll keep a bottle of whiskey out for you!” I shouted.
But he never did turn around. His bike revved to life a few moments later, and he began the drive back to Albuquerque. Brock came around from the smoke, patted me on the shoulder, and said he’d take the whiskey for himself. He went in with a drink, emerged seconds later, and took a seat near me.
“Doesn’t that fucker have a home back in California?” I said. “Mountain Man wants to spend time in the desert?”
Brock chuckled.
“I think he comes and goes,” Brock said. “I haven’t heard exact details, but I think the charter MC in California is a bit annoyed at Cole for making us Black Reapers as quickly as he did. So Butch is coming down frequently to make sure that we stay on top of our shit.”
“Hence, the hazing.”
“You mean initiation?”
I shrugged.
“Hazing, initiation, partying, drinking, it’s all the same.”
Brock laughed with that groan at the end, a laugh that only a man in a relationship thinking about his single days would give.
“How’s Tara?” I said. “Her daddy threaten to kill you yet in that Stephen Hawking voice? ‘Brock, I will. Kill you if. You do not. Leave my daughter. Tara. Alone.’”
Brock laughed some more.
“No, but for how awkward that man is, he probably would think speaking in that voice would get the point across,” he said. “No, we’re fine. We’re just going slow right now. Nice for us to start being more comfortable with each other.”
I smiled and said nothing more.
“And you?”
Ah, shit.Maybe I had wanted to get caught, though. Maybe I had wanted to ask Brock so that he’d ask me something like this.
“Man, you know me,” I said. “There’s not one woman in this world that can make me put up with batshit crazy fathers. No one!”
Brock arched an eyebrow at me. I took the awkward silence as a chance to drink my whiskey. It didn’t do a whole lot of good.
“Really,” Brock said dryly. “No one?”
“Nah,” I said.
“We all remember Carrie, you—”
“Don’t.”
Brock pursed his lips, perhaps debating if it was worth going down that road again. He might have thought it was funny; after I beat his ass if he continued, he would know it certainly wasn’t.
“Just saying, you are capable of it,” Brock said.
I let that go. But that was about as much reminder of that teenage romance that I could take.
“Sure, but why would I want to choose just one woman to bang when I could choose hundreds, thousands even?” I said, throwing in a chuckle for good measure.
