The Secrets That Find Us (The Devils Dust MC Legacy)

I wait until he turns and registers what I say before quickly trying to walk away from him, but before I get far, he wraps his arm around my neck and starts to rub his knuckles into the top of my head. Fuck, this was what I was trying to avoid! My hair snaps and knots, making my scalp burn as he hazes me like a stepbrother in front of everyone. Grabbing his wrist, I dig my nails into his skin trying to get him off me, and he starts to gasp like a bitch. He doesn’t let go of me though.

“Say, uncle!” he chortles, making Lip laugh in return. I swear it’s like a big kid playground when you’re around Bobby.

Groaning, I shove him off me and attempt to smooth my hair back down. “You’re such a shit.” Irritated, I glare at him, making him grin. He reeks of alcohol. Mom will love this. We are auctioning a bike for charity and Bobby was supposed to ride the bike onto the stage. He’s trashed, there’s no way he can do it without laying it over.

Just as we leave the beer garden, I catch sight of Thane at a booth. He’s helping someone buy a helmet. I hear him telling a customer why they call the helmet he’s holding in his hand a brain bucket. As if he feels me staring at him, his head lifts and our eyes catch. He smiles and I can’t help the tug at the corner of my lips.

“Nope!”

Not realizing I’d stopped, Uncle Bobby steps in front of me and pushes a hand on my shoulder, making me walk.

“More like hell no!” Lip adds, wrapping an arm around my shoulders and dragging me with them and away from Thane.

“Think about math or some shit, not boys,” Lip slurs, half drunk already. “In fact, maybe you should just be gay and make life easier for all your uncles.”

My eyes widen from his great parenting advice. I don’t see him doing any pep talks to any youth groups soon.

“How many stories of mine do you need to hear before you swear off males altogether?” Bobby asks and about a dozen of his one-night stand tales string through my plagued my mind.

Like the one where he got crabs so bad, he had to wax his junk and thighs. He was at the club when he did it and couldn’t get a strip off his thigh and my dad had to pull it off. They said half his skin came off and he had to bow leg walk for a month.

Or the time he called a girl by the wrong name during sex and she threw him out of her car and he had to walk back to the club butt naked. A cop stopped him but didn’t want his bare ass on the seat, so he just followed behind him until Bobby finally reached the club.

“Jesus, if we went by your sex life, Bobby, we’d all be virgins,” Lip responds with a stern tone, but I can’t take him serious with him drunk.

These two are idiots, I don’t know how they ever got girlfriends like the ones they have.

I swear, no matter where I am… there’s always a Devil looking over my shoulder making sure I’m solo; alone.

Sinking my teeth into my bottom lip, my eyes squint and little wrinkles form across the bridge of my nose as I slowly and so very gently slide the bottom of my bedroom window up, hoping the old wood doesn’t rattle against the tracks. A caress of warm sea air blows across my face and slips along the seams of my black silk curtain and spills into my room. If I didn’t know any better, I’d think the breeze was whispering for me to stay, drifting me back into my queen-size bed.

But I ignore it.

Turning my attention back to the task at hand, I push the curtain to the side so I don’t get tangled up in it and the wind suddenly blusters like it’s angry, knocking over my lava lamp on the nightstand. Shit! I freeze, my eyes snapping to the crack just under my bedroom door. My heart pauses as I wait for a light to turn on from my parents’ room across the hall. Surely they heard the lamp fall and they’ll turn the light on, their door will open and I’ll have to jump back in bed and pretend that I’m asleep.

After a few seconds of nothing but dark deafening silence, I exhale a relieved breath, they didn’t wake from the loud crash. Thank Christ. God knows what he’d do if he caught me sneaking out again. Last time I was grounded to my bedroom, this time he’d probably send me to a Catholic school. Satisfied with the lack of movement on the other side of my bedroom door, I hike my foot up over the windowsill and pull myself up until both my legs straddle the window frame. Squinting to adjust my eyes to the dark, I scan across the yard looking for Thane’s truck, hoping he’s parked beside the driveway for me, but I can’t tell. Not even the moonlit sky can brighten this side of LA, we’re too close to the beach and away from the city. Flipping onto my stomach, I shimmy out of the window until my Converse barely tickle the ground and I let go, falling to my feet. I let out a deep breath and stand up straight, brushing the dust off the new shirt I got at the rally today. I tug my shorts down that managed to wedge up my ass a little too far on the way down from my window and notice a flash of lights lighten the area. My head snaps up. Was that Thane? Lights flash again; they’re headlights. It is him, he’s here.