I don't know where Cass is or what he's into, as usual. I try to push that thought into the back of my mind because Iknowthat he has club responsibilities that I'm not allowed to know about, but this is still new territory for me. I hate not knowing. I open my phone and check my messages. Nothing. I sigh and lock it, slipping it into my pocket.
"Hey, we could play cards!" Violet exclaims.
I nod. "I love cards!"
Lawsyn is already pulling out a case from beneath the coffee table filled with playing cards of all kinds. I see Phase 10, UNO, and Skip-Bo along with regular decks of cards.
"We like to play Phase 10. Is that good with you?" Nova asks, eyeing Mindy and me.
"Yep. We'll play anything," Mindy says, leaning forward reluctantly.
We spend a few hours drinking, laughing, and cutting up playing cards until they head home for the night. It's nearly four in the morning and I opt to go to sleep. Mindy's barely hanging on by a thread, poor thing.
"Come on, Min. Let's go to bed," I tell her.
She yawns and squints her sleepy eyes at me. "Okay, if you insist."
I laugh at her and we head downstairs. After taking a quick shower, I toss my hair in a bun on top of my head. I scrub my feet a little extra after traipsing around through the creek. Mindy is sound asleep when I emerge and I check my phone one more time before crawling in bed.
Lilly: Going to sleep. Please check in when you can. Love you.
I send Cass a text and put the phone on the pillow beside my head, hoping I'll hear it vibrate if he texts back. I lie there with my eyes closed for a few minutes and begin to doze off when it vibrates beside me. I snap my eyes open and see a text from Cass on the screen.
Cass: KSU see you soon.
KSU. My brain tries to figure out what the hell that abbreviation is for. I ponder what it could mean as I close my eyes and before I know it, I'm waking up when Cass is crawling into bed beside me.
I don't know what time it is, and I don't have the energy to ask. He's freshly showered and when he nestles beneath the blanket and wraps his arms around me, I'm out cold.
I wake up smushed between Cass and the wall and slowly finagle myself from between the two. I climb over him carefully, trying so hard not to wake him up. I tiptoe across the dark room and slip into the bathroom to brush my teeth and run a wet rag over my face. I'm well rested, mostly, and I couldn't lie in that bed any longer.
I head upstairs and listen for any movement. The lights are out and it's dark aside from a lamp near the couches. There's a single-cup coffee maker near the bar and I reach across the bar to grab one of the Styrofoam cups sticking up in a tall stack. Iknow better than to walk behind the bar, but there's not a rule against reaching over it.
I fix my cup of coffee and pour in the powder creamer that's out here along with a few heaping spoonful's of sugar. Bringing it up to my lips, I take a small sip and hum at how delicious it is on the first try. Nailed it. I toss the plastic spoon I used to stir it into the small trashcan next to the coffee station and take a seat on the couch where I was sitting last night and pull my legs up onto the couch with me.
Opening my phone, I begin scrolling mindlessly. After a few minutes of that, curiosity gets the best of me. Opening up Google, I type 'Lucifer's Hounds Oklahoma City' into the search bar and am stunned to see a multitude of articles that appear dating back to the nineteen-eighties. One of them, however, grabs my attention, making me pause.
Wyatt Black, member of the outlaw gang Lucifer's Hounds, killed in motorcycle crash.
I open it up and read about the crash that killed Wyatt and injured his sister, Adelaide, and another member of the gang, Clayton. My stomach sinks as I read the details and there's a small, fuzzy photo in the bottom right-hand corner of the article in black and white of the crash scene. Wyatt's motorcycle is mangled and the box truck that caused the accident has next to no damage at all. The image is hard to see clearly, but it looks like there's a puddle of blood on the ground by the motorcycle.
I exit the article and close the search, opting to look into Turner Falls. I scroll through image after image of the waterfalls and people walking through the same stream we walked through yesterday. The more I look through it, the more certain I am that I want to get married there.
Sipping the last gulp of my coffee, I toss my empty cup into the trash and look around the clubhouse at the pictures decorating the walls. There are photos of so many people. Members thatI've never seen before. Old photos of the original members of the charter. I recognize Brock and Clayton, barely. They were so damn young in some of these, and I only know it's Clayton because of how much he bears a resemblance to Cass.
There's a picture of Cass wearing his first cutoff when he was little. He couldn't have been any older than three years old in this picture. He's precious. And it makes my heart ache that I won't be able to give him a baby to share his cute genes with.
I fix a second cup of coffee and sit back down on the couch, enjoying a moment of quiet. Calm. I'm not sure who else is here aside from us, but wherever they are, they're likely asleep. I drink my second cup a little more slowly than I did the last and by the time I'm finished, I have to pee. There are bathrooms up here somewhere, I just don't know exactly where. I walk down the hallway opposite the bar and search for any sort of markings indicating a bathroom. All of the doors are closed, and I don't want to chance opening them up and waking someone up. I walk back to the bar area and spot one door on the other side, labeled restroom. It must be a shared restroom for both men and women because that's what's on the sign out front.
It's clean, mostly. A little bit dusty, maybe and there's a spider web in the corner, which kind of grosses me out, but other than that it's great. I'm in and out as quickly as I can be, having a staring contest with the eight-legged monster across the room the entire time. I exit the bathroom to find Junk emerging from the hallway wearing nothing but a pair of loose-fitting pajama pants. He's got a dad-bod, thick in the hips, with chest hair and a soft stomach.
His beard is disheveled and his long dark hair is tied into a bun on top of his head. He rubs his eyes as he walks behind the bar and grabs a bottle of water and a bag of chips.
"Morning," I say softly, trying not to startle him.
Junk's eyes look around the room until they land on me. "Good morning, Lilly," he says, his voice deep and raspy.
"It's quiet this morning," I note.
