Talkin' Trash (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 2)

Nope, it’d all been me.

But, as I got my bachelor’s degree in nursing and then pursued my nurse practitioner’s license, I only had one goal in mind—to never be poor again.

I didn’t want to be poor. I couldn’t handle being poor.

And the one thing I could do to ensure that I wasn’t was to educate myself and find a very well-paying job.

Linc: Then quit.

I rolled my eyes.

He’d told me that before.

Conleigh: I can’t just quit. Not everyone gets multi-million-dollar contracts to play football, you know. I have to pay my bills and my school loans.

School loans were scary to me. For someone who feared being in debt, putting thousands of dollars on credit to be paid after I finished my degree would be downright debilitating if I let myself think about it too hard.

Like right now.

Linc: You have a degree from what I remember. You also have a job utilizing said degree where you make pretty good money. Or so my dad tells me. Why don’t you just keep doing that job? Your mom said that you liked it the last time I was over there.

I felt my stomach drop.

Linc still thought that my ultimate goal was to continue in school to become a doctor.

He hadn’t realized that I’d changed my degree path and he’d gotten the wrong profession and hadn’t taken the time to learn the right one because he was too busy trying to “save my soul” by staying away from me.

At least, that was what I got from my mom. Mom was never one to pull punches with me, and from what her husband had told her, Linc thought he would hurt me, and in order not to do that, he stayed away even though he supposedly didn’t want to.

I called bullshit, but it wasn’t like I could force someone to be with me who didn’t want to be.

Just thinking about it made me angry, which was why I did what I did next.

Conleigh: Sorry you lost.

Linc: Night.

I chuckled at that.

Linc really didn’t like to lose. Even more, he hated being reminded of that loss.

Well, I didn’t like being reminded that he didn’t want to have anything to do with me, so there was that.

Instead of dwelling on it like I usually did, I turned my focus to studying for my exam tomorrow and tried not to think about how much I hated this class, as well as the subject that I was studying in general.

The next day dawned bright and early, and wouldn’t you know it, Linc’s face was the first thing I saw as I turned on Sports Center.

I immediately turned it off, and skipped my normal morning routine, knowing that if I saw Linc’s face again, I’d likely lose my shit.

Linc had a way about him. A way that made me lose my train of thought and caused me to forget that I was a grown ass adult and not a teenager with a crush on an older man who didn’t want her.

It’d been eight years since I’d met the man, but with the way I still felt about him and how much his rejection still stung, you would think it was yesterday.

***

Eight years ago

I was not happy to be there.

My mother had dragged me there instead of letting me hang out with my friends, and I was about as enthusiastic about going to this particular party as a person heading to the dentist for a root canal appointment.

Opening the door, I took a long look at the large house that we were entering and felt a tiny thrill coursing through me.

This house would have a lot of fancy stuff inside…fancy stuff that would likely get me a lot of money if I went and pawned it.

But then I mentally smacked myself.

I wasn’t stealing anymore.

Why wasn’t I stealing anymore? Because for one thing, Steel Cross, my mother’s man, would kick my ass. And, in addition, because I didn’t want to spend any time in jail if I could help it.

I was too soft. I’d probably die the first day on the inside.

“Conleigh?” my mother called. “Are you coming?”

I kept up a running dialogue about how much I didn’t want to be here as I kept my eyes down on the ground to make sure that I didn’t trip and make a complete fool of myself in front of all of these bikers.

I managed to make it to the front door before it opened and walk inside unassisted—and without falling on my face like I was known to do.

My eyes were searching the area when I saw him blocking our way.

He was tall and younger than the other men, but he had a beard that made him look way older.

I felt my heart stall inside my chest and felt the start of panic rising up.

I hadn’t dressed nice.