Highest Sins: Mountain Misfits MC Book 2 Page 11

  He smiles, staring at my naked body sprawled on the couch. He pulls a blanket off the back, draping it over me.

  “Now you’re just being weird,” I laugh. “Is the sight of my naked body disturbing you or something?”

  “Kind of,” he shrugs. “But in a good way, if you know what I’m saying.”

  “You’re relentless,” I sigh. And I’m lucky. There’s nothing I want to do more than make up for lost time. Well, eventually. Right now I want food. I want food, I want to curl up with him. I want to watch TV with him and cuddle and do things that normal couples do. Because that’s what we’re going to do now. We’re going to be a perfectly normal Mountain Misfit couple.

  “Are you going to feed me or what?” I ask.

  “Oh shit,” he says. “Is that the only reason why you haven’t run away yet?”

  “Yes,” I tease. “Some girls fuck for Louis Vuitton bags. I take it up the butt for tater tots.”

  “Esther, that’s not even kind of funny,” he says, but I can tell he’s holding back a smirk.

  “Well you’re just going to have to get used to it. You should see what I’ll do for a chocolate chip pancake.”

  “Don’t try me, girl,” he chuckles.

  28

  Fifteen Years Ago

  Brooks:

  I ball my fist up tight and begin punching holes in the wall next to the stairway. I can’t feel what I’m doing. I can’t feel anything at all. My dad’s death has left me numb.

  None of it makes sense. That man knew his bike inside and out. He knew these roads up and down. He could drive them with his eyes closed. He would never be so stupid to just head-on crash into that tree. The coroner said it wasn’t a heart attack or stroke, that everything was normal. Hell, even if a deer jumped out in front of him, there would’ve been some sort of sign, carnage, tire marks, but we were left with nothing.

  Just like I’m feeling. Nothing. Just like what I have right now, nothing.

  I’m a teenager with a mom who left before I even had the chance to know what she looked like, and a dad who just died without even saying goodbye. So I’m punching holes in the wall, because at least if I let myself bleed, I let myself feel.

  My house is full of people dressed in leather cuts, old ladies in spandex, guys with beards, from every chapter of the Misfits in the state, the usual dog and pony show. Mountain Misfits don’t have funerals. We have wakes. His casket is open for all to see the bloody mess he is, but I don’t look. This is all a dream.

  “Brooks, stop it,” Esther says to me, her face streaked with tears. “You’re scaring me.”

  “Good,” I tell her. “Go away.”

  I can tell she’s drunk as a skunk the way she’s swaying back and forth.

  “Doesn’t that hurt?” she asks.

  “I dunno,” I tease her. “Try it for yourself.”

  She looks at me and stumbles over to the wall. I nod and she winds her fist back. As soon as she makes contact, she screams in pain, shaking her hand, and starts bawling.

  It’s the first time I feel something since my dad died. I grab her and hug her in my arms and she just hangs there all limp, like a rag doll, crying her eyes out.

  “Esther, I’m so sorry,” I whisper. “I’m sorry; that was so dumb.” I hurt her. I didn’t protect her like I’m supposed to.

  “I did it to myself,” she cries. “You didn’t make me. I’m sorry, Brooks.”

  Her father, Moses, comes walking down the stairs, clutching something in his hand. A piece of paper. I have no idea what he was doing in my dad’s room, probably looking through his stuff for anything that was club property so he could bury it with him. The two were always close. He’s always been like a second father to me.

  He stares at the two of us and I start to feel a little uncomfortable.

  “You want a beer, son?” he asks me. “I have to show you something, and I think you’re gonna want a beer.”

  29

  I snap my eyes open, trying to shake the nightmare of one of the worst days of my life. The day that everything in the club started changing for the worse. Esther’s body is spooned up against mine, the warmth of her soft skin pressed up tight to me. The way her red hair is splayed across her face is one of the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. But I’m shaking, trying to catch my breath. I’m rattled.

  “What, babe?” she asks, groggily. “Are you having the dreams again?”

  It turns out we both have dreams, hers much more violent than mine. There are nights when she thrashes and screams and howls like a crazed woman, and all I can do is let her ride it out. The moment she wakes up and sees me next to her, it’s like she’s fine. She’s calm. She’s smiling. She won’t talk about it, no matter how much I pry.

  We’ll get there, but I’m not going to push it. The last month of my life has been damn near picture-perfect, and the fact that we both have our own demons to deal with just comes with the territory. We’re Mountain Misfits. We all have our own crosses to bear. I nuzzle my face into her shoulder and kiss her, and she intertwines her fingers with mine, squeezing them as she drifts back off to sleep.

  “Brooks!” a familiar voice booms from downstairs. “The fuck, dude? We’re all waiting on you.”

  “Shit,” I groan, squeezing Esther a little tighter in my arms, not wanting to break out of this moment and get my day started.

  “Can you stop defiling my sister and get down here? We’re burning daylight.” I must’ve forgot to set my alarm. That, or she shut it off without me knowing. She tends to do that. We’re still in that phase of our relationship where lying in bed all day together is all we want to do. Hopefully that phase never goes away. But it’s going to have to for at least a few days while the boys and I are out on the road.

  “Why do you have to go?” she asks as I slide out of bed.

  “Because, I gotta get us some money. It’s kind of expensive keeping you clean and fed. I didn’t realize there were so many different kinds of soaps one could need for various body parts.”

  “Sorry if I don’t want to rub the bar of soap you use on your balls all over my face,” she teases, sitting up from the bed.

  “Oh, you love it when I rub my balls all over your face, and don’t you deny it.” She tosses her pillow at me.

  “I’m coming in!” Gavin screams, pounding on the bedroom door.

  “Unless you want to see my dick, I don’t think you want to do that.”

  “Yeah, or my tits,” Esther shouts.

  “You guys are fucking disgusting.”

  “And you’re intrusive, Gavin. Go back downstairs and start the coffee,” she urges. I swat her adorable ass as she walks over to her dresser and pulls out some shorts and a t-shirt. “I’m gonna miss you so fucking much. It’s gonna be quiet up here. Just me and the old-timers and Mr. Gingerbread.”

  “Why don’t you have the girls come over and stay?” I suggest. I don’t like the thought of her here alone, even though I know she’ll be looked after, but it is prime-time moonshine season, and a few days of work will pay out all year long if we play our cards right. “Or you can come on the road with us. I know the guys won’t care.”

  “You need to spend time with them without me. If you’re ever going to take over the club, you can’t be dragging your old lady around with you everywhere you go.” She says these things a lot. About me taking over the club. I don’t know if she realizes that her father isn’t going anywhere right now. And that her brother is likely next in line, but I let her have her thoughts. I’m happy with whatever place I have. As long as I have my family, my bike, my life of freedom, and my woman, I don’t need that sort of title. I’ll happily be sergeant at arms ’til the day I die.

  “You’re not just my old lady,” I say, kissing her on the head, wrapping my arms around her waist. “You’re the queen bee, and you know it.”

  “I might see if Olive and Sloan want to have a sleepover,” she says. “Ollie’s gotta take care of the bar downtown while Gavin is gone, th
ough, and I think Sloan is filling in for somebody at the hospital. I’ll be fine, babe. I got some paperwork to do at the clubhouse anyway. And I want to get the rest of my stuff from my place moved in. You think my soap collection is out of hand, just wait until you see the amount of lotion I’ve been hoarding over the years.”

  “I promise, as soon as I get back, we can throw down a tarp and grease each other up until next Thursday,” I laugh.

  She turns to kiss me, lingering in my arms for a minute, and all I can feel is lucky. Lucky as fuck that suddenly our lives are kind of normal, and ultimately right.

  We walk down the stairs together. The whole crew has congregated in my kitchen, standing around drinking coffee.

  “Did you guys eat breakfast?” Esther asks, pulling out eggs from the fridge.

  “Honey, it’s ok; I’ll just grab something quick,” I assure her. She just looks sad. Like she’s trying to prolong this morning as much as she can. “We really need to get going.”

  It’s cute the way she wants to care for us, the way she treats these men like they’re hers to look after. The way she feels like everyone is her responsibility.

  “How’d you get so lucky, asshole?” Austin teases. “I can’t even get Clutch to stop putting the empty milk carton back in the fridge.”

  “I’m not your old lady,” Clutch replies, flipping his roommate off.

  “Oh, Austin,” Esther frowns. “Do you need me to fix you something?”

  “It’s alright, girl,” he says, taking the last swig from his coffee mug. “We got everything we need packed up for the weekend. You just enjoy your time off from this asshole chasing you around with his micro-penis all day, every day. I’m sure it’s exhausting.”

  “I’ll show you exhausting,” I say, clenching my fist.

  “I thought you guys were making moonshine. Sounds more like a circle jerk, if you ask me,” she teases.

  “There’s a lot of down time,” Austin replies with a shrug. “It’s a bonding thing.”

  “Get the fuck outta here, Austin,” Gavin says. “All of you. We’re running behind as it is.”

  The guys filter out of the kitchen and the rumble of bikes and trucks and four-wheelers vibrates through the house.

  “Are you gonna be ok, Esther?” Gavin asks her.

  “Why would you ask that? Is there something I need to know?”

  “I just worry,” he says. “With how things are with Dad right now. I know you guys aren’t really getting along, and I don’t want you to feel unsafe.”

  “Gavin,” she scolds. “He’s my father. He might not always make the best choices, but he’d never hurt me.”

  “I don’t have to go,” I say. “Seriously. I’ve got plenty of stuff to do around here. There’s more than enough guys out in the woods to take care of the stills.”

  “Guys!” she yells. “Get out of here. I’ve been holding my own for how long now? There’s nothing to worry about. Plus, I think some time alone with Dad might be what I need. He usually listens to me. Maybe if you guys aren’t around, I can get back in his good graces.”

  She kisses me on the cheek before shoving me off. There’s a sadness in her eyes that I don’t like, but I trust the words coming out of her mouth. She knows what’s best for her.

  “I love you,” I tell her over my shoulder.

  “I love you too. Both of you. Now please be careful. Don’t drink too much. I don’t feel like having to clean up a bloodbath when ya get back.”

  30

  Esther:

  “Thanks for coming up to help me finish moving,” I say to Olive as I empty out what’s left in my dresser drawers, filling up cardboard boxes. It’s all stuff that I definitely could live without if I had to, but something about cleaning the entire trailer out feels so good. It feels like this is final. It’s one more step towards spending the rest of my life with Brooks. “If there’s anything you want, help yourself.”

  She’s going through the racks in my closet. She pulls out an armful of lingerie I’ve amassed over the years: lace, spandex, leather, you name it; I have quite the collection. It was all part of the show I’ve been putting on between my job and my ‘hobby,’ and I haven’t really thought twice about it since I’ve gotten with Brooks.

  He’s a no-frills kind of guy, and I like that. He’s not into playing dress up. He just wants me, and it’s hot and exciting and there isn’t a day that goes by where he doesn’t want to pin me to a wall or throw me over his shoulder and carry me up the steps.

  “What are you going to do with all this?” she asks.

  I browse through the pile, pulling out anything green, his favorite color. Just for a special occasion. I take the purple crushed velvet teddy I was wearing the night I caught him spying on me. That could be fun someday down the line.

  “Think there’s a school for strippers I could donate it to?” I laugh. She looks like she’s seriously considering the thought. Olive is definitely not stupid, but she’s got a wild imagination and is a little on the gullible side. “We’ll just put it in storage for now.”

  “What are you going to do with this place?” she asks. “Are you going to keep it as a hideout if you guys are fighting or something?”

  “People do that?” I ask her. I couldn’t imagine. If Brooks and I get into a fight, I wouldn’t run away. I’d want to work to make things right. Maybe I’m Pollyanna about the way relationships work.

  “I don’t know.” She shrugs. “It just seems like everything is so perfect with you guys. It’s awesome. It gives me hope for love, don’t get me wrong. I guess I just expected there to be some sort of dark secret or something that kept you two from getting together sooner. It’s like everything fell into place all of a sudden.”

  I hold up a green corset, looking at myself in the full-length mirror and smiling.

  “It’s hard to keep dark secrets up here on this mountain, Olive,” I remind her. “My business has been on blast my entire life. He doesn’t judge me for my past.”

  “And you don’t judge him? Not even a little bit?” she asks, cringing. “I mean, don’t get me wrong, I’ve chewed my arm off more times than I like to admit. Is it hard seeing girls he’s slept with on a regular basis?”

  “I think about it this way, Olive. We’re all looking for something in this life, but there’s this gap of time where we don’t know what that something is. We let ourselves get jaded, we think that whatever we’re looking for, whatever it is, we’re never going to find it or have it. So we just do stuff that makes us feel good. We do stuff to fill the void so that we can feel ok for a little bit, even if it means feeling terrible the next day. I’m not going to spend the rest of my life looking down at him because he was trying to hurt less. If he wanted to be with any of those girls right now, he would. He’s a good man. All these guys in the club are. They’re just really passionate. They know they want something, but they don’t know what it is. And all it really boils down to in the end is a good woman who’s going to love and respect and support them. It doesn’t matter who that is or what she’s done. As long as she’s a kind person with good intentions, the past is irrelevant.”

  “God, you’re so smart,” she sighs.

  “I am really kind of baffled that I’ve never seen you with anyone, Ollie. You are either really good at keeping your shit on the downlow, or you’re a secret nun. You know how much all these guys love you. What’s holding you back?”

  “I dunno.” She shrugs. “I guess this is the first time in my life where I’ve felt like I have a family, a good job, people who care about me, and I care about, too. I feel like every day I’m one accidental drunk hand job in the janitor’s closet away from going back to my old life.”

  “You know we’d never let that happen to you,” I assure her. “We love you too much. You deserve to be happy. There’s not much you can do around here that we’ll judge you for, take it from me,” I laugh. “I mean, let’s face it, we can sugarcoat it all we want, but I’ve been literally a whore for the
last fifteen years of my life.”

  “Nah,” she says, hugging me. “Don’t say that. Brooks has been bragging all month about how you handle business. The fact that you sold Morgan for guns is pretty much the highlight of all of our lives.”

  “I didn’t sell her!” I insist. “I lent her out. The fact that the dipshit decided that she wanted to move in permanently with those weirdos is all her. But yeah. I guess it’s one less person I have to see on a daily basis that my man hooked up with. And that IS nice.”

  “What do you think about renting this place out, Esther?” she asks. “I think I might be interested.”

  “You’re gonna move up here on the mountain with us? I kind of love that idea. It’d be so awesome to have another girlfriend nearby.”

  “I love this trailer. Other than the fact that there’s no blinds in your windows. Is that like a stylistic choice or is there something you’re not telling me?”

  “A little bit of both,” I laugh.

  The clubhouse bar is pretty much closed for business while the guys are out of town. It’s better that way. I don’t have to worry about not having protection from anyone strange who might wander in, and it’s nice to just be around the old-timers every once in a while. These were the men and women who raised me, and they’re more than happy to just hang out and help themselves to whatever they want to drink while they play poker and talk about their glory days.

  I have stacks of paperwork that need finished, anyway. It’s probably easier to sell your organs in the state of Pennsylvania than it is to sell liquor legally. We might be a club that thrives on illegal activities, but we have to keep all our fronts completely legit. That includes this place. And this week, I’m getting my desk cleared off and making sure all our taxes are completely up to date.

  “Anybody need anything?” I ask the men sitting around the bar. It’s just our chaplain, Heat, my father, and Patch, the mountain doctor. I fix myself a Bloody Mary because I figure it can count as lunch if I stuff enough celery in it. They wave me off, distracted by the game of cards going on in front of them. “I’m going to be in the office,” I say to no one in particular.