Page 126 of Girth (Marked Skulls MC 1)
I cut the call and flung the phone on the bed, far away from me. It was 2AM. I had to at least try and get some sleep. I couldn’t even remember the last time that I’d slept a full night.
The phone started to ring again.
Growling and cursing under my breath, I got up and picked the phone off the bed. It was Glock again, obviously, and I muttered a few more curses. We’d been best friends…we were still best friends, since we were in kindergarten. He probably didn’t understand why I was shutting him out.
“It’s 2AM, Glock!” I grunted into the phone when I answered.
“Gunner! Jeez man. You’re a hard guy to get a hold of,” Glock was in a club, I could hear the sounds of thumping music in the background and his voice was louder than it needed to be.
“What do you want, Glock?” I said.
“No hugs? No love for your main man? Where have you been?” I heard him say, and I got up to pace the floor of the room.
“I’ve been here. At home. Where else am I supposed to be?” I growled and ran a hand over my dark brown hair. I could feel that it had grown a little. I wasn’t expected to get military buzz cuts anymore, now that I had been honorably discharged.
“Anyway, Axel wants to see you,” Glock said and I scrunched up my face in confusion. Axel was the new President of the Club, he’d taken over the position ever since dad died.
“Why does Axel want to speak to me? How does he even know that I’m back?” I said and Glock was laughing.
“Everyone knows your back man. Did you think you were going to hide under a rock forever? Get your ass down here,” Glock replied and I took in a deep breath of resignation. I was in no mood to make conversation with a group of people. I needed to get rid of the voices in my head first.
“I don’t think I’m going to go,” I said and Glock had stopped laughing by then.
“What are you talking about? If Axel asks to see you, you go see him. That’s what your dad would have expected too,” he said and even though I knew he was right and he was making complete sense, I had to grip the bed posts with my hand…my knuckles turned white. I was good at taking orders. I was trained to take orders from a young age. However, right now I was at a breaking point.
“Fine. Whatever. Tell him I’ll stop by,” I told him and Glock seemed half satisfied with my answer.
“Like soon,” he urged me.
“Yeah, soon. Night Glock,” I said and cut the call before he could say anything else. Flinging the phone back on the bed, I sat down on the floor again. At least now maybe Glock would stop calling me constantly and my phone would stop ringing. One factor less to affect my lack of sleep.
I pressed my eyes closed but I saw Jenson’s face again. Laughing as he walked backwards closer and closer to the land mine. That sound of the metallic click and then the white noise.
It might as well have been me because I was as good as dead.
Chapter 2
Brooklyn
I sighed as I tied the black apron to my waist, a mandatory part of the uniform at the bar. I was in the back room where I usually changed after my waitressing shift at the diner a few blocks down. Today, I’d barely had time to grab a coffee before I ran to the bar. I’d tried to drink the coffee from a styrofoam cup as I got in, and loads of it had dribbled on my blouse. Thankfully, I never left my apartment without a fresh change of clothes stuffed in my bag.
I stared at myself in the small plastic framed mirror on the wall of the back room. I looked tired and I thought I detected dark circles under my eyes. Twenty-six with dark circles and exhausted green eyes. That was the best description anyone could give for me if I ever disappeared. My hair was long and just like most days, I’d styled the brown waves into curls. I tied it up into a loose bun on the side of my head now. Working shifts at the bar wasn’t exactly the time or the place to look my best, and besides, I’d stopped putting in much of an effort. Not since Luke…
I tucked in some stray strands of hair haphazardly behind my ears as I walked out to the bar and pasted a smile on my face. No matter how tired I might actually be, I still needed to pretend like I was enjoying myself. No matter how intense the pain in my back was from standing all day, I had to keep that fake smile pasted on my face. I couldn’t lose these jobs. I needed both of them. I wasn’t even thinking about the money anymore. I just needed to keep busy so that I wasn’t thinking of Luke all day.
I began by polishing the glasses, just as the doors of the bar were opened to the general public. These few minutes of standing behind the counter, polishing the glasses with freshly washed cotton towels were my moments of peace. In an hour, the place would fill up with regulars and strangers alike, and I’d be too busy to even notice how my shoulders ached and how the smile on my face was beginning to droop.
Even though these minutes were restful, they were also dangerous. The lack of having to make small talk with customers; gave my mind a chance to wander. And Lo and Behold! I was thinking of Luke again.
I had to remind myself that he wasn’t my older brother anymore. That he didn’t actually exist. When I got the call two months before, I didn’t know how to react. Even though the possibility of his death…of all our deaths…loomed at the back of my mind as an inevitability, I was just not prepared. He was my brother, my flesh and blood…and he was all I had.
Daddy was dead, but his death was easier to deal with because I had Luke then. We were going to look out for each other, be there for one another. Luke made sure that I was under his wing at all times, that I never felt alone. And now who was I supposed to turn to?
Mom…well, I didn’t know our mother at all. She left when I was a baby, when my memories hadn’t even begun to form. Luke claimed he remembered her, even though he was just two years older than me. He claimed that I had her green eyes, and the same long brown hair but daddy had removed all photographic evidence of her from the house. So, I had no way of confirming if that was true. Luke was capable of saying anything to make me feel better. He would have done anything for me, and I knew I would have done the same for him.
I gulped as I remembered him. My hands were mechanically wiping the glasses. Even though my mind was elsewhere, I was handling them with care. Wiping and polishing to remove water stains and placing them on the drying racks in front of me. Then picking up the next glass to carry on the same procedure.
Luke was twenty-eight, too young to die and he would have had a successful life ahead of him. He was passionate and stubborn and fiercely protective of me and if he was still alive, I would have been just a regular, happy and normal girl. I might have even wanted more from life than working late hours at the bar. But I wasn’t that same girl anymore. I was half of the person I used to be. The other half had died along with Luke and nothing was going to be the same again.
“Hello, sunshine,” the guy with the deep brown eyes said, taking a stool at the counter in front of me. He’d become somewhat of a regular at the bar, and I was aware of how all these guys liked to flirt. I didn’t mind because it gave me something else to think about, but I also made it abundantly clear to them that I was in no way interested.
This guy had longish dark hair that reached his shoulders and a ready smile on his lips every time he saw me. At least he was younger than most of the middle-aged men who frequented the place. Sometimes I wondered if I was leading him on, if he was coming to the bar so often because he thought he had a chance with me.
“The usual?” I asked him, and didn’t wait for a response before I started pouring a finger of Jack into a glass for him. He grinned widely when I slid the glass over to him and he leaned over the counter, to bring his face closer to me.
“Did you get a new haircut darling?” he asked and I looked at him from under my heavy lids, trying to grin, trying to forget Luke who was always at the back of my mind.
“No,” I said, as blankly as I could, so that he wouldn’t feel encouraged to continue this conversation.
“Okay, then it’s your makeup. There’s
something different about you,” he said and I noticed the way his eyes roamed over me, over my body…dropping to my breasts, before settling on the spot between my legs.
I felt my cheeks flush and I turned from him and walked some distance away. There was no way I was going to return his advances. I had no interest in him or any of the men who frequented this place. In fact, I couldn’t remember the last time I was interested in anyone. If it was…it had to have been before Luke died. Because since then, all I’d felt was emptiness.
“Where are you going, honey?” I heard the guy’s voice, while I had my back turned to him.
“Nowhere,” I replied and I continued to polish the glasses, just at some distance from him.
“Come back here. I want to talk to you,” I heard him say and I kept my back firmly turned to him.
“Get outta here before I kick your ass!” I heard a voice, and before I’d even turned around, I knew that it was Viper. I let out a small breath that I didn’t realized that I was holding in. When I turned around and looked at them, Viper was holding the other’s guys collar bunched up in his hands and pulling him off the stool. When the guy had scurried away, Viper took his chair and fixed a smile on me.
“You didn’t have to do that. I can take care of myself,” I said to him, rolling my eyes indulgently at him. As much as I hated to admit it, I was thankful that Viper scared the guy off so I wouldn’t have to dodge his advances for the rest of the night.
