Hardy had no time for me whatsoever. Never had and never would. I wasn’t sure what I’d done to deserve such hatred from him, but I’d given up asking long ago. Now I just accepted it and got on with my life. Between Butch, the other club members and the women that came around to cook, clean, and fuck, everyone had a hand in my raising somehow.
Everyone but Hardy.
“Not you, Jesse. There’s great things in your future, that’s for certain,” Pops replied.
He winked at me and walked away before I could say anything else. He walked over to the small bar area that we’d had made for him the year before. One of the club bitches, Rose—a stunning redhead on the right side of thirty and way too fucking young for him—was behind the counter, her long red hair tied tightly at the top of her head, and when she popped open a bottle of beer for him her breasts swayed like Jell-O shots in her top. She handed the beer to Pops as he slid into a seat across from her and patted his knee for her to come and sit on it. It was kinda gross to watch, but I couldn’t deny that the man still had it. I mean, Rose was barely thirty and Pops, well, he was as old as shit.
I left them to it, not wanting to watch the live sex show, and headed back to mine and Butch’s room, not sure what to do with my day now. I hadn’t known Butch was going out of town for the day on business and I’d thought that we’d probably just hang out. But he’d been doing that more and more—club business or hanging with Dom and not me. I got it, and I understood it; I was just a kid and he was practically a man. Didn’t mean I had to like it, though.
I shoved my hand down my jeans and scratched at my nutsack as I pushed open my bedroom door, my gaze skipping over to my bed to find a girl sitting on it, one leg curled up underneath her ass, her eyes glued to my small television screen.
Not just any girl, buther.
I stopped scratching, my hand frozen in place halfway down my jeans, and I blinked. She started to look up so I quickly took several steps backwards, letting the door shut, and then I stared at the closed door, wondering what the fuck she was doing in my room, sitting on my bed.
“There’s a girl…in my room,” I mumbled to myself, checking both sides of me to make sure Gauge or Hardy wasn’t around. I caught a whiff of my own armpits and grimaced at the smell. “Shit,” I muttered.
I took another step away from my bedroom and quickly headed to the bathroom, where I knew the deodorant was, and I lathered myself in that shit so that I didn’t stink like the prepubescent teenage boy I actually was. I rolled my shoulders and puffed out my chest and headed back to my room, taking a big breath before I pushed the door open.
But she wasn’t there anymore.
I blinked and let out my breath and walked inside, spinning around in a circle and wondering if I’d imagined her sitting there at all. I sat down on the edge of my bed and continued scratching my nuts, my gaze straying to the television, which was still turned on. The news was on about some miracle cure for the common cold that some doctor down in Canada had made. I turned the volume up to listen.
“A simple reprogramming of the DNA to reject the cold virus is all it takes,” he said, and I almost laughed. The guy looked like Doc fromBack to the Future. I flicked the TV off and looked over to my pillow, ready to grab Butch’s porno mag from where I’d hidden it that morning. But then I noticed that it wasn’t under my pillow anymore; it was open on my bed.
The woman in the picture had huge breasts, with dark round nipples that looked like saucers on them. And someone had drawn lines around them to make them look like glasses. Not just any someone, but her.
I smirked and looked up, wishing she’d come back so I could talk to her, but she didn’t.
At least not that day.
In fact, it was two years later before I saw Laney again.
