It Happens (Bear Bottom Guardians MC 6)

From there it’d just been a clusterfuck, which led to now, five months later, and me unable to be in the same room as Baron Joy without me wanting to filet the skin of his face off with my bowie knife.

So, of course, it was no damn surprise that he walked into the same damn bar that I went to every fucking year and drank on my birthday.

Because not only was it my birthday, but it was my dead twin’s birthday.

Needless to say, I’d already been in a shit mood when I’d arrived at my favorite bar in town.

It’d worsened when I saw Jubilee there, doing the same goddamn thing I’d been set on doing.

Sometimes I thought that she did it on purpose, let me see her. Just so she could torture me.

Though, when I thought about it, Jubilee wasn’t that type of person.

If I was an honest man, I’d realize that Jubilee was likely here for the same reason I was—to get drunk and forget about my brother and my past.

Yet, when it came to Jubilee Cope, nothing ever came easy, and I never was able to have a straight head.

I’d been doing my best to ignore Jubilee as she’d done me the same courtesy when they walked in.

If there was one person that knew where I went on this day, it was Zuri.

Zuri, who’d been a kind, decent woman while I was seeing her, had turned into a vindictive cow the moment that I’d kicked her out of my life. It hadn’t been my fault that my father and Silas, the owner of Life Flight in Bear Bottom, had kicked her to the curb, too.

What did she think, that she would keep the job that I got for her?

No.

I had patience, and I could work with people I didn’t like, but I couldn’t work with someone like Zuri. There were limits to everything, and Zuri had surpassed them.

Honestly, it’d been sort of a relief for me to go to Silas and tell him that I was quitting because of Zuri. What I hadn’t expected was for Silas to fire Zuri just so he could keep me on part-time.

I’d reluctantly accepted, and Zuri had been fired.

Yet now she went out of her way to make my life a living hell…such as coming into my bar, on my day, and making me see her and BJ.

Consequently, I ignored them, and I ignored Jubilee who was now watching on with amusement. I continued to get hammered.

Or tried to, anyway.

The bartender, a young woman all of twenty-five at most, kept handing me waters with a smile, and I kept drinking them.

The water came courtesy of the woman I was trying to ignore.

Regardless of our mutual dislike for each other, we still went out of our way to make sure that we took care of each other.

I mean, sure, we couldn’t stand to be in each other’s presence for longer than just a few minutes before we started fighting. But no matter what, I’d look after her just as she’d do the same for me. There was an obligation there that’d been set in place since she was six years old and I was nine years old and met for the first time.

Even though, at first, we hadn’t been as civil.

It was only after I’d followed the job to Bear Bottom, Texas from Arkansas that I realized that I hadn’t been the only one Silas and my father had sent packing. Jubilee had gotten the same invitation, and she’d accepted.

Though, luckily, we didn’t accept the same job.

Which was funny if you thought about it.

Where I was a protector of life, Jubilee was the preserver of death.

I was a sheriff’s deputy and also worked as a pilot of Life Flight, Jubilee was an undertaker. A mortician in layman’s terms.

I could see her out of the corner of my eye, and what I saw still made me roll my eyes.

Jubilee, despite her jovial name, was as goth as one could get without having the white facial makeup. Though, there were days that she didn’t need it since she was so fucking pale—which was why I assumed that she didn’t bother with wearing it. Why bother applying the pale base when your skin was the exact shade of ghostly white that you’d set out to attain with makeup?

She and Annmarie couldn’t have been more different.

Annmarie, my high school sweetheart, had been all brightness and sunshine. She’d had blonde hair that she styled in the cutest pixie haircut, blue eyes, and a precious smile that could knock you off your feet. She was sweet, caring, and welcoming to everyone.

Jubilee was…not.

Jubilee had black hair so black that it sometimes shined blue in the right light. It was curly as fuck and hung down to her ass when she wore it down. She wore black clothes, black nail polish, and black jewelry if she wore any at all.