Talkin' Trash (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 2)

“Wade,” he rumbled. “My name is Wade.”

But, with his leg up in a cast like it was, we were both stuck with each other, so I played nice even though his glare was disconcerting.

I nodded. “Is that your real name, or your nickname?”

He frowned and looked at me a little more closely. “Real. Not all of us go by nicknames. Some of the given names are pretty weird as it is. Though Bayou goes by his middle name, but that was before the MC came around. His real name is Benson.”

That was true.

There was Linc and Hoax, Bayou and Wade, Castiel and Liner—both of whom weren’t here yet but were supposed to be coming. And those were just guys I knew their names. There were more men in the MC, but since I’d seen Linc in person last at one of the parties that they hosted, they’d added quite a few new members.

“So, you were shot in the leg?”

That was the one and only time Linc had called me over the last two months, and I’d listened to that voicemail over and over again, willing myself to forgive him and move on.

Now I wished I had listened to my inner self and gone with what I’d known was right, and I wouldn’t have wasted another month being mad over something that hadn’t even happened.

“Yeah,” Wade grunted. “What’s it to you?”

“Don’t be a dick,” Hoax growled. “Just because your wife hates you doesn’t mean that you have to be mean to every woman that you encounter.”

I snorted.

“Just tell him how you really feel, Hoax,” I snickered.

Linc’s phone, that I was once again holding, rang for a third time, and I growled.

Wade lifted his eyebrow at me and said, “Aren’t you going to answer it?”

“It’s not my phone,” I admitted.

“Answer it,” Hoax grumbled, his eyes closed where he was laying back on the couch. “My head hurts like a motherfucker.”

I snorted and pressed ignore, but I did open up the phone and clear the missed call, frowning when I saw the local number.

“Huh,” I said. “Weird.”

“What’s weird?” Linc sat down beside me, making the couch dip awkwardly so I had no choice but to rearrange myself so that I was laying against him or risk face planting into the man on the other side of me.

Hoax opened his eyes from where he was planted in the seat beside me and glared at Linc. “What part of ‘I have a headache’ did you not understand?”

“The part where I wasn’t here for that conversation,” Linc muttered. “You look weird without your cast on.”

I looked at the arm that had once been cast and felt my lips twitch.

As long as you weren’t comparing one arm to the other, he looked perfectly normal. It was when both arms were crossed across his chest, like they were now, that you could see how pasty white one arm was compared to the tanned skin on the other.

“Not like I can help it, fucker,” Hoax growled. “Go fuck yourself.”

Hoax had healed fully, other than random headaches he occasionally got, like the one that he was currently fighting. Apparently, they were so debilitating that he wouldn’t be able to work or drive until it went away.

Which made me feel awful.

“You should go get your headache checked out,” I admitted. “It could be that you have something else wrong.”

Hoax grunted. “I’ll ask the pretty nurse next time I see her.”

I snorted. “The pretty nurse told me that you were too scared to go anywhere near her.”

He was talking about Pru, of course.

“That’s because her father is fully capable of killing me before I’d even realize he was there.” He paused. “And I’m fairly sure that he hates me.”

I scoffed. “Sam Mackenzie seems like a big ol’ teddy bear to me.”

“That’s because you’re a girl, honey,” Linc explained. “Sam Mackenzie is a badass. He’ll kill Hoax if he goes near his daughter.”

I smiled and turned my head to study the man across from me.

“At least mine’s easier to hide,” Wade held up his casted foot. “If I keep it, that is. Then it won’t matter whether it’s tanned or not.”

Wade, apparently, was in danger of losing his leg from the knee down due to a recurring infection that they couldn’t get to clear up. The nurses and doctors, according to Wade, feared that the infection was in danger of spreading to the bone.

And if it did that, he might be shit out of luck.

“What…”

Linc’s phone made a ding-dong sound, indicating that he had a voicemail from the same number that had called earlier.

“Why do you have the hospital calling you?” I questioned, showing him the phone.

Linc frowned. “That’s the hospital?”

I nodded. “All numbers at the hospital start with 315.” I pointed out. “And they’ve left you like seven voicemails over the last two months.”