Presumably sensing this could go sideways again real quick, Prez bangs the gavel. “Before we vote, I want to remind you we owe a debt to Trixie. She saved Ace, and I made a promise to her, that we’d find a way to repay it.” As he pauses, serious nodscome from all sides of the table. “We vote. All say aye who agree Trixie’s to be released from being club property, and to Freak taking her as his old lady.”
I hold my breath, but the ayes abound. When Bullseye asks for nays, there’s silence. Speechless, I can only watch as he picks up the gavel again, “So voted. Freak’s got a ball and chain.” He rubs tired hands across his face. “Someone fuckin’ untie him, will ya?”
No weapons are allowed in church, so it’s Words who offers to go get a knife. It seems ages, and then I’m free. My anger’s disappeared as though it had never been, usual for me when I freak out. My dick throbs though, as a reminder of what went down.
In a voice still higher than normal, I tell them, “Thank you, Brothers.”
Bullseye sighs loudly. “And another one bites the dust.”
“Think there’s some kind of disease going around,” Stalker drawls.
Rattler draws into himself, crossing his arms protectively. “Well, it’s never going to fuckin’ infect me.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
TRIXIE
“What the hell happened to you?”
Freak stumbles into my room with a half empty bottle of Jack swinging from his fingers, and he’s sporting a big lopsided grin. He pauses at my question, and slurs, “Brothers wanted to celebrate.”
I notice his free hand is cupping his dick, and not in a sexual way, more to give himself support. “By using you as a football?” I then wince as my eyes fall on the red raw lines around his wrists, and my hand covers my mouth. “You freaked out, didn’t you?”
He starts to sway, I grab the whiskey seconds before he slumps down on the bed, trying to smother my groan as he makes the mattress bounce, causing agony to my ribs.
“Hey, wake up. Don’t you dare go to sleep on me.” I’ve been here anxiously waiting for news, while he’s been getting drunk. He’s still wearing his cut which means he’s still in the club, and his enforcer patch is in the same place it always is. “What happened at the meeting?”
His lips turn up more, baring his teeth. If I didn’t love him, I’d find his inebriated expression verging on grotesque. Butunfortunately, I do. He’s owned my heart for a very long time and so I’ll forgive him. As long as he tells me what happened.
“If you don’t tell me, Freak, I swear you’ll get another kick to your balls.”
“Washn’t a kick, was a phist.”
“Freak,” I warn.
“Come give your ol’ man a kiss.”
If he is my old man… Christ, this is like pulling teeth. “Am I your old lady?”
“No one else is.”
Suddenly, he sits up, placing his palm on my cheek, his eyes surprisingly sober. And while his words are stilted, they’re clearer. “I’ll never hurt you, Trix. Yeah, I freaked out, but not with you. Never with you.”
Leaning into his touch, I place the arm on my uninjured side around him as far as I can reach. “I know you won’t, Freak.” If he was going to freak out and hurt a woman, Toni wouldn’t have walked away free. “I take it they were being assholes?”
His pronouncement over, drunk Freak appears again. “Yep.”
I nudge him gently. “You get any good licks in?”
“Don’t want to t-t-talk about it.”
Which means he didn’t. Good. At least there won’t be any work for Bronwyn tonight, and no apologies to make in the morning. But there’s one thing I want to know, because it seems there’s a dead man walking. “Who punched your balls, Freak? Who damaged my property?”
“My balls are yours,” he says, while slipping out of my hold and collapsing back on the bed. “It was Short.”
Hmm. Where can I get hold of bromide? Is that something Bronwyn would have? But then she’s unlikely to give it to me without explanation, and how can I explain I want to chemically castrate her husband? Or was bromide proved to be only an old war rumour? I forget.
Freak’s snores show working dick or not, he’s going to be of no use to me today. Not that I’m up to it, my ribs are throbbing with that soul-destroying ache like an exposed nerve in a tooth.
