My Bad

Page 8

Unfortunately for them, the Bear Bottom Guardians MC didn’t like being threatened and intimidated into doing what they thought we should do. We did our own thing, and we asked no permission.
“One and the same,” Silas Mackenzie muttered.
It didn’t surprise me that they knew my business. The Dixie Wardens—which both Silas and Sebastian, Pru’s uncle, were members of—had once been the intended club for Bear Bottom, Texas.
I’d missed all of that hub-lub. I’d agreed to go…when I could. Being career military as I was, I didn’t have as much time to put into the club as the others.
As the new members had volunteered to come down here, it’d been decided that we no longer wanted to be the Dixie Wardens. We wanted to make our own life—form our own club. And we’d done that, much to the annoyance of our fathers and the Dixie Wardens. Silas Mackenzie had been one of the most vocal about not liking the change.
“You’re the one that got ran off the road,” he stated. “What happened to the snake?”
I grinned.
During that rescue, I’d fallen down into the ravine. A ravine that had water running through it and goddamn snakes making it their home. During the time where medics were called and when they showed, a snake had happened upon Conleigh—who’d come down to help me—and me. I’d caught it by the throat and drowned the motherfucker.
I’d saved the damn thing, too, and had it stuffed. “It’s stuffed and sitting on the counter at Bayou’s house.”
Pru gagged. “That’s gross.”
I shrugged. “It is what it is.”
It was actually a kind of cool memento to memorialize the moment that I had almost died. Would have died had Conleigh not stumbled along and seen my bike laying on the side of the road.
She’d saved my life, and I would forever be grateful to her for that.
It was also nice that she was friends with the woman that I had a desire to get to know better—both the usual way and biblically speaking.
“What happened?” Pru asked, trying to appear as if she was uninterested when we both knew that she was very interested.
I’d seen her glancing at my cast and opening her mouth only to slam it closed moments later.
I went on to explain the entire story, finishing it with what she already knew. “And they told me I had quite a few weeks with this thing on. Once it’s off and I’m released by the doctor, I have to report back to duty with the Army.”
“I knew you were Army.” Pru scoffed.
I shrugged. “I wasn’t trying to hide that fact. I was just trying to figure out why you hated that I was.”
“I don’t hate that you’re Army. I hate the type of man that hot men like you act like when they’re in the military.” She shrugged.
“What, exactly, does that mean?” I questioned.
“It means that she won’t date you because she’s been fucked over by two men before you, both military, both Army, both pretty and both no longer in the picture.” Phoebe, Pru’s sister that I’d just met over our chips and hot sauce, announced.
I frowned. “I’m not like other men.”
“All men are the same. They all want one thing. It’s the women that decide they can put up with us that make the difference,” Silas grunted in reply.
“What are you saying, Grandpa? That you are a horndog just like the rest of them?” Phoebe batted her eyes sweetly.
“Your grandfather?” Sawyer, Silas’s wife, teased. “Of course not. He’s the perfect male specimen.”
Laughter filled the table, and I lost my battle.
I reached forward and picked up a chip, dipping it into the hot sauce.
I nearly moaned at the exquisite taste.
Another one soon followed, and another, and another.
When I looked up next, Pru was watching me with amused, knowing eyes.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I told her. “I’m probably not even going to make it home.”
And I didn’t.
An hour later, my stomach was clearly not happy with me.
We made it all the way to the rest stop before I could make it no longer.
“I gotta go to the bathroom,” I told the woman at my side reluctantly.
The face Pru made would’ve been solid indifference had she not had mirth sparkling in those goddamn devil eyes. “I’ll be here when you get done.”
I pulled into the first spot that I found and parked the truck, thankful that I’d brought it instead of my bike.
I hadn’t wanted to scare her off too badly.
But there was no way in hell I would’ve wanted to leave someone as beautiful as Pru was sitting on the back of my bike for as long as I knew it was about to take me in the bathroom.
“I’ll be back,” I told her, grabbing my phone.
She eyed it with a quirk to her lips. “You know, if you left that you’d probably get done ten minutes faster.”
I shoved the phone into my pocket and raced away, unable to spare her little quip with a retort of my own because things were about to get nasty.
I was about three and a half minutes into the worst feeling stomach ache of my life when the door to the men’s bathroom opened and closed, and a man slammed the stall shut at the opposite end of the restroom.
From the brief glance that I’d taken of the restroom when I’d arrived, I knew that there were six stalls in total, meaning there wasn’t enough room between him and me for the godawful business coming out of my ass not to affect the man.
But luck was on my side, because seconds after he must’ve sat down, the same thing started happening to him that was happening to me.
We were trading crude noises back and forth, and soon the smell became something that I had to bring my shirt up over my mouth and nose to escape. My eyes were watering both due to the smell and the way my stomach was telling me that it wasn’t the best idea in the world to have eaten all that queso and chips.
What felt like hours later, I finally felt that I was good enough to make it home—at least to Bayou’s home—and finished my business.
It was when I was washing my hands that the man on the opposite stall finally finished his business, too.
Not one to care about things that were just a part of life, I didn’t run out of the building like others would’ve done since they cared about propriety.
Maybe I should have. If I had, my eyes wouldn’t have met Pru’s father’s eyes in the bathroom mirror as we both realized just who, exactly, had been making all that racket.
Neither of us said a word as he washed his hands. I didn’t say goodbye as I exited the bathroom.
Nor did we turn around and acknowledge each other when we both got to the parking lot and our vehicles were side by side.
I wasn’t surprised at all to see Pru and her mother laughing manically about something they perceived as funny as I walked up.
They both turned as one as they heard my approach, and I was struck with how beautiful Pru’s mother was. If Pru aged even half as well, she’d still be a knockout.
“So…” Pru said, eyeing me. “Are you still thinking Mexican was a good idea?”
I patted my stomach, which still felt raw. “I hate to say it, but anything that’s not white rice and white bread makes my stomach hate me. Sadly, Mexican food is one of my favorites, but also one of the first that hits me. The other food I can at least make it home before anything starts to go wrong.”
“Did you have your gallbladder out, too?” she asked as Sam finally made his way up to the group and looped his arm around his wife.
I shook my head. “No. I’m just a sensitive soul.”
Sam snorted. “You’re telling me you don’t even have a reason for doing what we did back there?”
I shook my head. “Nope. Sadly. It would be nice if I did, or had a way to pinpoint what it did to me and why so I could prevent it. Unfortunately, I don’t have any answers. I’ve been to quite a few specialists as well. Pretty much it just is what it is and I don’t have a choice in the matter.”
“So y’all had a bonding moment?” Phoebe, who hadn’t bothered to get out of the back seat of her dad’s truck, asked.