Mess Me Up (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 1)

It was kind of cute, actually.

“He said that Linc had his head in his vagina,” Joe offered. “And that if he needed help pulling it out, he knew a girl in Alabama that would gladly get it out for him.”

Izzy looked down at me. “Who’s the girl?”

“Conleigh,” I supplied just as Linc said, “No one.”

Joe started to laugh. “Linc has a girl who isn’t really his girl because he won’t let her be his girl.”

“That’s very convoluted, and I don’t know what it says about me that I actually understood what you said,” Izzy teased.

I sat up, my balls aching at an eight on the pain scale instead of the ten they had been a few moments before and looked around at the other men.

I’d held my own, because the other eleven men that had played with us were just as tired, sweaty, and worn out looking as I was.

“I’m not sure why you quit,” Joe said. “You were making moves out there that you weren’t making before you retired.”

“He’s lost some weight,” Izzy said. “And he’s rehabbed hard. He’s a very studious pupil who makes sure he gets all his work done.”

Joe snickered. “Oh, I’ll bet you help him get his work done…after you work him over yourself.”

Izzy flipped him off.

“Now, I’m really hungry,” she said. “You forgot to get me that cookie.”

“Oh, shit.” Joe turned to look around the field. “Hey, Water g—WG!”

I winced, expecting Jolene to turn around and kill him.

She didn’t, but you could tell that she wanted to.

Jolene turned and raised a brow at the insolent man. “Yeah?”

“Did you ever bring those cookies out here?”

She pointed to a box at the end of the table. “You’re welcome, by the way.”

Joe jogged over, pecked her on the cheek, and took off with the box of cookies before Jolene could knee him in the balls like he deserved.

But watching Jolene as she watched Joe run away, I didn’t see the anger I’d expected. I saw…longing.

Probably much like the look on my own face when I thought of Izzy.

Which made me scowl.

I couldn’t let myself depend on another person again.

They left.

Always.

When you needed them most, they left.

My parents had done it. My grandmother had done it. My best friend had done it. Then my son had done it.

I wasn’t going down that road for a fifth time. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice… well apparently, I’m a dumbass.

I came to my feet with my head and balls pounding, wincing as I took a step toward the water jug that’d been set up on the sideline by Jolene. That first step produced a sharp pain that ran all the way down my leg courtesy of my balls.

“Are you okay?” Izzy touched my arm hesitantly.

I nodded once, swallowing through the lump that had formed in my throat as I realized how much Izzy was already beginning to mean to me. “Fine. Just need to walk it off.”

“Here!” Joe shoved the cookies at me, which I in turned handed to Izzy without looking at her.

Izzy, or at least I thought it was Izzy, took them but I didn’t turn around to make sure.

Instead, I walked over to the water jug and filled one of the paper cups that was stacked on the table next to it.

After downing three cups of water, I finally turned and heard the conversation going on behind me.

“…want to go to eat with you. Where are y’all going?” Joe asked. “I’ll bring Jolene along. It’ll be like a party!”

Izzy was staring at Joe like he was a bug. “But nobody invited you, Joe.”

Joe’s grin started to fade, and Izzy started to laugh. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry! I was just joking, I swear! You can come—we’d love for you to come. But you do know that his MC brothers are going, too, right? Apparently, this place that we’re going to has really good crawfish, and they’re doing one of those fundraisers where they donate money for each pound of crawfish someone consumes.”

I felt my lips twitch, loving the way Izzy teased one of my friends as if she did it every day. As if Joe was just a regular person to her—which he was. But he was also one of the most eligible bachelors in the world thanks to his pretty face. It wasn’t often that I saw ol’ Joe Blow teased.

“I’ve never had crawfish,” Joe said, sounding intrigued. “How do you eat them?”

I then listened through Izzy’s two-minute explanation as she explained how to eat a crawfish.

“And then, after you pull all of the meat out of the body, you suck their heads so you get all the spices out,” she finished.

Everyone blinked, including me.

But I didn’t blink because of her impromptu crawfish eating lesson. No, my reaction was because of the visual I got when she started talking about sucking heads.