Not a Role Model (Battle Crows MC 4)

I grinned. “Thank you.”

“Welcome, take care of yourself, kid. Remember you’re a surgeon now and need those hands,” Siler jeered.

Then he left, leaving the questions lingering in the air.

It wasn’t my little Elvis that asked what I expected to be asked, though.

It was Easton.

“What did he mean by recognition and your brain?” Easton asked.

I sighed, ready to answer.

But Elvis interrupted me.

“Roll Tide was in an accident in college that caused him to have prosopagnosia—face blindness. Anyone he met after the accident, he doesn’t, and won’t ever, recognize. He makes up for his face blindness, however, by noticing other things like the way a person walks, their hair, or possibly the clothes that they wear,” Coreline answered. “Do you think that I could get one of those turkey legs? I’m starving. I haven’t eaten since this morning.”

I stared at Elvis like she was an interesting new bug.

When had she learned that?

I’d thought that I hid it well.

“How did you know?” I asked, diverting our walk down the sidewalk to the brick road that led toward the food trucks.

When we came to a stop in front of one, she finally answered with, “I heard one of your brothers talking about it after it happened. I’m not sure why I felt the need to make sure you were okay after, but I did. When I was leaving, I think it was Price and Haggard, I heard them talking about it. How you didn’t recognize anyone after being introduced to them several times. I Googled it and diagnosed you with it myself.”

I chuckled. “That’s interesting.”

She shrugged. “That’s life.”

It was my life.

It fucking sucked, too.

“What can I get you?”

“Two turkey legs,” Coreline ordered.

I looked down at her. “I’m not hungry.”

She scoffed. “Nobody said that they were for you.”

I opened my mouth and then closed it, deciding to just leave it alone.

When she was handed the turkey legs, the man said, “Ten fifty.”

“You got this, right, honey?” Coreline batted her eyelashes at me.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re a pain in my ass.”

She was taking a bite of the turkey leg in her right fist as she replied with, “You like it.”

She was right.

I did.

More than I probably should.

• • •

It was an hour later when both turkey legs were completely consumed, all by Coreline herself, when we finally spotted the group of men that were wearing the cut with the yellow jacket on it.

“Sting MC,” I murmured. “Do you recognize any of them?”

But as soon as I asked that question, I had an answer.

How?

The big, burly motherfucker with the ripped-up knuckles and the smirk on his face was all but pointing at Coreline as he started to rile his group up.

“Looks like you were spotted,” I mused as they started to make their way toward us.

Haggard and I closed the gap between us, officially putting Coreline behind the two of us with the rest of our men in between.

Our ladies were still at the picnic tables with a few other friendly MCs that just so happened to be there at the same time.

Leaving us enough time to take Coreline for a small walk to see if we could find her attacker.

And lo and behold…

“You, bitch!” the behemoth bellowed, his voice so deep I could barely make out the ‘bitch’ that he hollered. “You locked up my bike!”

“Oh, fuck.” I heard Coreline whisper, panic lacing her tone.

Before he could so much as get even a car’s length between us, I took two swift steps forward and hit him with a three-punch combination.

One to the face, then to the chin, followed by the throat.

The guy fell down so hard that it felt like the concrete rippled beneath us, out cold.

I ducked back as a punch came at my face, hissing when the guy’s ring caught my jaw.

I knew that he’d broken the skin, but I didn’t let on as I took him down with a solid punch to the eye socket.

When he fell, too, everyone was left standing in stunned disbelief at how fast I’d taken them down.

“The bigger they are, the harder they fall,” Coreline sang.

I would’ve laughed had my hand not been throbbing so badly.

“You’re going to pay…” one of the other members said just as Easton moved around to the front.

“You have no problem when your fellow MC members hurt women?” Easton asked curiously, his arms crossed tightly over his chest.

Easton had never really looked all that intimidating to me before.

Not until just that second, when his dark look would’ve even had me taking a step back.

See, I’d done a lot of fighting in my day.

I’d seen a whole lot of people, and I knew when to back down, and when to pursue it.

And seeing Easton right then, with his anger on full display, I might not have passed his ass on a sidewalk, either.

“Children, children,” what had to be the leader of their band of dumbasses said. “There’s no reason to fight.”