Page 5 of Puck (The Lost Boys MC)
I stuck my tongue out at her. “Fine. But you’re helping me get dressed.”
She clapped with joy as she followed behind me to my bedroom. “I love going through your closet anyway, so here’s to hoping you have some new outfits.”
And as a smile crossed my face, I threw open the door to the one aspect of this place that sold me on the entire fucking apartment. So much so, that it was the first thing I unpacked and set up.
The walk-in closet.
“You know me too well, Maggie.”
Which was the one and only rule of my father’s that I had broken.
Because my best friend really did know me all too well.
Three
Puck
Leaving my cut at the clubhouse was the best thing I could have done because cops were everywhere when I cruised into the Gaslamp District. The major tourist spot had always been prone to idiot muscle heads that drank too much before starting brawls in the street and boasted of scantily-clad women that made men stupid enough to follow them around.
And as I cruised down the main drag, I felt freer than I had in years.
“There we go,” I murmured to myself.
The wind whipping around my body cooled off my hot temper. Smelling the fresh salted ocean air reminded me of the life we were clamoring to get back to, even if it felt so fucking far away. The O.G. members of the club didn’t have it nearly as rough as us new guys, though. They were all shacked up with their pregnant women and getting laid every other night so they could forget about the absolute hellhole Diego had plunged us into.
And being around him and my sister was simply nauseating.
It wasn’t like I wasn’t happy for Ruby, because I was. Out of all of the women in my life, she was the one that deserves to be the happiest. But it was hard to let her go before and it was still fucking hard to let her go now.
Especially since neither of us had proper parents.
My father wound up in jail when Ruby was very young and our mother had been in and out of rehab for years. We essentially raised ourselves, learning how to cook, clean, and dress ourselves from an impossibly young age. Each time our mother disappeared when we were children because of her drug addiction, we’d ended up living with Mimi Mary.
Then, life was cruel enough to take her when Ruby and I turned eighteen.
Still, we were able to keep ourselves afloat. Ruby took a job at the grocery store up the road and I took my anger out in the gym where I worked part-time washing sweaty-ass towels and cleaning toilets. Once our father went to prison, we never heard from him again, and after Mom’s fourth induction into rehab, my twin sister and I learned that we had to fend for ourselves. That we simply couldn’t rely on anyone to be there for us in the long-term.
Some guys would tell you that I was jealous of what Ruby had found with Diego.
And while I’d never admit it out loud, there were some nights that I laid down in that dumbass warehouse and cursed everyone that had someone to lay beside.
Including my sister.
Ever since we were kids, it had always been me and her against the rest of the world. We tag-teamed cleaning the house whenever Mom left in the middle of the night to go get high somewhere. Ruby learned how to cook up a fucking storm and I learned how to fix just about anything that broke around the house. Hell, I was pretty sure that if I ever went back to that horrid home, I’d still find most of the original appliances still working.
YouTube and ingenuity went far in the type of household I grew up in.
But now, Ruby had Diego. Now, she had another man—one she loved more than me—to lean on. To trust. To rely on and enjoy. She didn’t need me as much as she used to, and I was having a hard time coming to terms with that. My sister and I would frequently have late-night conversations whenever one of us couldn’t sleep. It was a trend we had developed after I had moved out and Ruby decided to stay in the house a little while longer by herself. Every time we grew sick for one another, we were on the phone talking and laughing until we both fell asleep. But every night for the past few nights, I had walked by the stairs leading up to Diego’s room.
Listening as the two of them giggled and talked.
Like we used to do before Diego took my place.
I let the lights, sounds, and the clamoring of voices overwhelm me as I cruised into the heart of the Gaslamp District. I scanned the bars and clubs, trying to figure out where the hell I wanted to spend my time. I’d never been a bar-hopper. I preferred to find a joint I was comfortable with and ride out the night there. And when my eyes fell upon a bar called “Home Run,” it practically screamed my name.
