“Trust me,” I muttered. “I don’t. Honest to goodness, Tay, I don’t even know how I got here. One second I’m married and miserable, the next I’m sleeping with a freaking teenage boy.”
“And loving it,” Tayline guessed accurately.
I nodded and slumped against the wall, only vaguely registering that I was still half naked. “Loving it. He’s even hotter than Satan, Tay.”
“You’re so weird.”
“And he’s sweet too, in a badass biker kind of way that’s even better than normal levels of sweet because it’s so manly.” I shivered delicately.
She laughed and stuffed another handful of popcorn in her mouth. “Cy is the same way. You’ve got to watch yourself, The Fallen men take you by surprise. They look broken in ways that can’t be fixed but once you get to the heart of them, you find the kind of men most women would pray for, beg, and bribe to be with.”
“Yeah,” I agreed softly. “And mine just happens to be eighteen.”
“In ten years, you’ll love the age difference.”
“You sound like King. I’m not even legally divorced yet, he’s still in school and he’s talking like we’ll be together for… a while.” I shivered, this time in discomfort.
Tay cocked her head and peered at me. “Do you really think you’d jeopardize your career and your reputation for something that isn’t going last ten years?”
Her question hit my soul like a hammer to a gong, reverberating through me. The blast set things that had fallen off kilter in my whirlwind affair with King back into place but at new angles.
I wanted the same things that I always did. Love, laughter and living large right beside fear, anger and tears. I wanted it all, every single thing life had to offer me. It was actually fitting that each one of those things was wrapped up pretty in King Kyle Garro. Like all good covetable things, he wasn’t wholly good for me, which made him all the more desirable.
“Glad I could talk some sense into you,” Tay joked when she’d had enough of my daze epiphany.
I laughed. “I love you, Tayline. Really. Thank you for trying to understand.”
She stood up, carefully placed her popcorn on the ground so it wouldn’t spill, and crossed the two steps it took for her to wrap me in her little arms for a big hug.
“Welcome to crazy town, population badass bikers and their bitches, us sane ones have to stick together.”
Later, after I’d tried on six more outfits and finally settled on one that I knew would blow King’s mind, the biker babes and I were at Eugene’s just outside of town drinking a Eugene classic cocktail he’d made up called a Maple Sour that was basically just a whiskey sour with maple syrup. It was delicious, and I told Eugene it was officially my drink of choice. I was on my third one.
“The man’s got one eye, how the fuck does he stay on target?” Maja asked Tayline who had just recounted a tale of her sexual escapades with Cy (apparently short for Cyclops) on a trampoline in some random backyard one night after they’d been drinking.
“He compensates in other, more important areas,” was Tay’s sly response.
We all burst into cackling laughter. Harleigh Rose was still there despite being severely underage but she wasn’t drinking and apparently, no one cared even if she did because Maja had offered to grab her a beer or cider when we ordered our first round. It was clear that Eugene’s was a biker-friendly bar, but I wondered how they got away with things like that with the police.
“Buck may be an old coot now but let me tell you, that man is hung like a horse. Used to be in the early days, I’d walk around bow-legged. That’s why the old timers call me Bow-bow.”
I giggled. “And they gave Buck his name because he was your bucking bronco?”
Maja slapped her hand against the table and hollered with laughter before she answered, “Nah, though I fucking love that. He’s called Buck because his idiot brother shot him with a rifle when they were teens and he’s still got buckshot lodged in his ass.”
I covered my mouth with both hands so I wouldn’t spit out the sip of cocktail I’d just imbued.
“They’re crazy cool, eh?” Harleigh Rose whispered as she pressed harder into my side.
She had been beside me the entire night, constantly involving me in conversation, touching my hair or grabbing my hand frequently. Despite her cheeriness, I noticed the way she hung on to each ounce of female affection these ladies showed each other and I loved that she’d taken an immediate liking to me. I didn’t know if it was weird for a twenty-six-year-old and a fourteen-year-old to be friends, but I had a feeling the deed was already done and I wanted to do nothing but blow the ink dry on the dotted line.