“Don’t call him that when you see him,” Cole said. “I’d rather not have you beaten up by two Black Reapers.”
“As if,” I scoffed, but let’s just say I had a healthy level of respect for what Butch could do compared to anything Mason could do.
* * *
“I stay here.”
I got off the bike as Butch remained on his, a rifle slung over his shoulder. The sight looked kind of ridiculous, like Butch was about to raid a military compound, but in Santa Maria these days, it unfortunately wasn’t unnecessary. In fact, with the way the Bandits seemed to be aching for more, it was probably necessary.
“Go.”
I nodded, biting my tongue from making a joke or calling him Mountain Man, and went up to Brock’s apartment. If Mason wasn’t at the shop, he was either here or at Hannah’s—and as much as I wasn’t going to back down from a fight, I sure as shit wasn’t going to start one by seeing him at his eight-month-pregnant sister’s house.
I went up to the door and knocked, standing to the side so he couldn’t see through the peephole. Mason came to the door, opened it, and tried to shut it. But I stuck my foot in, grimacing as the door slammed into it.
“We’re going to nip this in the bud right now, Mason,” I said. “The club needs it.”
The door remained pressed on my foot for a second before it relented. I shook it as I saw Mason head to Brock’s kitchen table and take a seat. Brock had certainly upgraded his digs since he’d started dating Tara, and it gave me a sliver of hope that this would remain more controlled than I might have feared. I had a lot less fear that Mason would destroy someone else’s apartment if things went bad than he would have his own place.
“I have no idea why the fuck you’re here,” he said. “If you think there’s anything to solve, you’re as fucking stupid as I thought you were.”
“Oh, go easy, Mace,” I said, but the attempted light humor with the nickname fell very flat. “Look, bottom line, I originally asked Brock to help mediate. But he made a good point. Why don’t we fucking solve it ourselves? We keep talking about this whole silly hazing initiation thing being what truly takes us from Bernard Boys to Black Reapers. Why don’t we fucking prove it?”
Mason snorted.
“And do you think a Black Reaper would do what you did?”
“Do you think a Black Reaper would just cling to the past like you have?”
Mason’s nostrils flared. We’d been inside maybe thirty, forty seconds at most, and we were already on the verge of having a sequel to our first fight.
“Garrett, you did something unforgivable.”
“What?” I said angrily, but at that moment, I realized something.
It wasn’t actually fucking Hannah that was unforgivable. I mean, I hadn’t raped her—it was very consensual—and I hadn’t lied to her. I’d probably been a little too honest with her.
It was the implications of fucking her that was unforgivable. It was time to turn those on their fucking head.
“You fucked my sister, goddamnit!” Mason roared.
“And why does that matter?”
“Oh my God, I’m sorry, did your fucking skull get rattled when I knocked you out? Do I need to rattle it back into place by knocking you out again?”
“You know what, Mason, fucking humor me, OK?” I said.
He started to speak, but I raised a hand to shut him the hell up.
“We can’t take back the fact that I fucked her. But even if we could, don’t be naive and pretend to have your head buried in your ass. You know your sister has been with other guys. And even if she hadn’t, you knew sooner or later she was going to start dating. You couldn’t keep a fucking vice grip on her forever. I’m not going to say it was a good thing that I slept with her.”
Even though it was.
“But it’s clearly not the fact that I fucked her that is so annoying to you. OK, it’s disturbing, what-fucking-ever. What’s the real fucking issue?”
Mason shook his head and scoffed at me like I was an idiot. But as dumb as I was, as many brain cells as I had killed with too much fighting and drinking, I knew that him not answering the question was exactly the sign that I was getting to something. I just didn’t know what.
“The real fucking issue is that you’re a piece of shit,” Mason spat. “You fuck women and you leave them. You like to be a jokester, but really, you’re just a manipulative ass. You like to act like the party animal, but too often, you just use it to shirk responsibility!”
