Mess Me Up (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 1)

Izzy had helped me figure out the rest.

Not that I’d been super kind to her or anything.

I’d tried my level best to get her to fight with me, mostly because she was the only one treating me like I was an adult and not some broken doll who would completely shatter if given half a chance.

Speaking of the devil.

I saw her walk in the church, and when she went to sit somewhere in the middle, I stood up and gestured her over with my head.

Izzy looked taken by surprise for a few moments. She swallowed and then nodded once before heading to me.

She went to sit down at the end of the pew, the farthest away from me, but I caught her before she could get past me, and deftly maneuvered her to where she was sitting on one side of me, with Tyler on the other.

Together we sat silently and stared ahead.

My gaze bounced back and forth between the picture of my beautiful baby boy to the coffin that was painted so beautifully to match Matias’ favorite movie. Hiccup and Toothless flew together in the black night sky, nothing around them but stars.

I was glad that I had Izzy there over the next hour.

An hour that I’d remember for the rest of my life.

The last hour with my son before he was laid to rest.

Where there would be no more pain.

Where he would no longer throw up.

No more needles jabbing into him to force poisons through his veins.

Where he was able to be the little boy he was always supposed to be.

Little did he know that by leaving, he’d taken the best part of me with him.Part 2Chapter 9Sir, are you lost?

-Things not to say when men flirt with you

Isadora

I read the letter with a smile on my face.

I wasn’t sure how the hell I found myself in the situation that I was in, but I blamed it on my obsession—at least at first.

Then I blamed it on the fact that Rome was a really, really nice guy.

And just when I was about to tell him who I was, I learned that Rome had moved to town—my town—and joined the Bear Bottom Guardians MC.

It’d been six months since Ty-Ty’s death, and I finally realized that Rome wasn’t built in a day…nor was he going to fix himself.

So, this was my last-ditch effort.

I was going to fix the man that I had fallen in love with.

Rome was mine. I was sure of it.

But, he wouldn’t let himself heal. He was still mourning his son—and he was allowed to do that. But he also didn’t have to die for that to happen.

I was going to make sure that wasn’t going to happen.

We’d all—Tyler, his MC brothers, hell, even his grandmother—tried to fix him. To help him.

But he’d refused everyone’s help.

He didn’t want anyone anywhere near him.

When we’d tried to gather around and pull him in close, he only pushed further away.

Needless to say, I was pulling off the gloves, so to speak.

It was time for Rome to stop wasting the time he was given and stop fighting against Matias’ ghost.

Which was why I’d loaded up on Abuela’s tamales, and I was going to see Rome at work.

At. Work.

I’d tried his house, and he just didn’t answer the door.

Now I was literally going to try the next best thing—the place where he went and stayed for too many hours, trying to work and ignore the pain he was in.

Taking the last few steps, I opened the door of the prison and smiled at the front desk guard.

I hadn’t realized until just last week what area of the prison Rome actually worked in, but it worked out for me.

Why?

Because my brother was imprisoned at Bear Bottom Correctional Facility and had been for the past five years.

Over the last five years, I’d been a frequent visitor here of one of the favorite prisoners in the place. It was hard, after all, not to love a prisoner when he was in there for killing a cop killer. He was also an ex-cop himself and had been a cop for five years before the day he’d lost his shit after his partner had been killed.

When Slate’s partner had died, Slate had run down her killer. But instead of doing the right thing—which was taking him into custody and letting the justice system figure it out, Slate had done his own thing. His own thing included torturing the motherfucker and then killing him because he could.

Which led my brother to getting fifteen years in prison, with the possibility of parole at seven.

The only reason my brother hadn’t gotten more time was because his attorney claimed that he was suffering from PTSD due to being present at the time of his partner’s murder.

Which was the truth. After his partner was murdered, Slate kind of went off the deep end. To make matters worse, Slate had also been seeing her for over two years at the time of her death without anyone being the wiser.