Chapter 13: STEEL

Chapter Thirteen

STEEL

I have every intention of dragging Joslin into that Flying J bathroom and proving to her without hesitation that my desire for her far surpasses my desire for sex. If I just wanted sex, I would have had it. If I just wanted sex, I would have left her in the desert.

You don’t survive prison without expanding on your personal capacity for violence and cruelty. Each time I touch her, those powerful cruel impulses surge through me and it’s only when I look into her brown eyes that I’m able to pull myself away from the edge of hurting her..

But now, I have to hurt someone. If her ex-husband is alive, he’s the one I’ll hurt. If he’s dead, I’ll find his nearest relatives and hurt them instead. Once my brother gets here, hunting them down will be easy. Religious assholes from a rural place like this won’t expect outlaw bikers driving through. We pop a couple heads and disappear.

It will be easy. Satisfying. It will keep me from hurting Joslin. If it bothers her so much that she has a husband… I will thoroughly eliminate that problem.

Brinley keeps Joslin close the moment she enters the gas station. My news doesn’t help the situation. Brinley doesn’t seem shocked, but she doesn’t seem happy either.

“I thought it would be the bike, honestly,” she says in a heavy, West Texas accent. She dries her tears and changes the subject to Joslin. Wisely, Joslin leaves the explanations up to me.

“My brother and I will be gone for a day, maybe two. If you need to keep her here past 11 a.m., call Magnum, have him set her up in one of his AirBnBs.”

Brinley gives Joslin a once over.

“Who is she?”

“I didn’t tell you for a reason. It’s safer that way.”

“Does she know what happened to Coleton?”

Brinley gives Joslin a deep, penetrating look. We have the same eyes and I imagine Joslin becomes immediately weak because she nods.

“Yes.”

“Then I’ll look after her,” Brinley says, turning her suspicions onto me. “I have to protect her from you as much as I have to protect her from anyone else.”

“Thank you, Brinley.”

She rolls her eyes and takes Joslin close to her until my brother arrives. Hunter rides up quietly with his lights off like a creep, so I don’t notice him until he walks through the door. The last time I saw him, he didn’t have this much of a beard. He looks older with a beard, which makes me feel better about looking like such an old man after prison. I have more gray hair than him. The older we get, the more our different lives shape our bodies and I no longer feel like Hunter and I are the same… I never envied folks that have to go through life alone. We’re not just brothers. We share DNA down to the last cell. We have the same damn mind…

When he looks at me, it’s a true reflection of who I could be. He’s a father now and completely responsible for his family. I hate to see him looking at me like an ex-convict screw up who can’t even stay off the bottle. We communicate silently without saying anything as he glances around at the Flying J cameras, silently assessing the security as if I wouldn’t have known prior to bringing Joslin here.

He nods and I nod back. We don’t always need to exchange words to get our point across. It’s easier for us to communicate with nods and looks. I sense how he feels before he does sometimes.

Brinley pokes Joslin in the side to draw her attention away from the reality television show fight occuring on the gas station television and towards the entrance. When Joslin looks at him, an instant pulse of anger surges through me. It’s easier now than ever for Hunter to see himself as being me… but better. I don’t want Joslin falling for him. Or even thinking about him.

He doesn’t seem to notice Joslin yet. His eyes wander over my clothes and to the bulge in my breast pocket. He can be such a judgmental dick. I can tell he’s looking for my flask and so fucking what? It’s there and it’s filled with a mix of whiskey and some other random ass mix of hard liquor that I can’t even remember. I’m doing just fine.

Even if I don’t have any desire to stop drinking, I admire Hunter’s sobriety. The time he spent wrapping his mind around quitting, I was in prison witnessing shit that only makes me want to drink more every time I close my eyes. Hunter slowly stops looking me up and down.

“Brinley,” he says while barely opening his mouth. She nods at him and smiles, because almost everyone who doesn’t give a fuck about me absolutely loves Hunter. My twin brother turns his gaze back to me, coating me with pure judgment only Hunter feels entitled to have about my life. He spotted the bulge from my flask, so he has all this shit figured out.

“You’re drunk and you look like shit,” he says. “What the fuck happened?”

I should just be happy he showed up without asking too many questions, I know.

Before I can answer, Hunter’s gaze snaps away from mine and lands on Joslin, who stares at my brother like he’s a demon apparition. I hate that his eyes find her so quickly, although it shouldn’t surprise me. Hunter can’t help himself but put his eyes on what’s mine.

When we were younger, Hunter couldn’t help sticking his fingers in every honey pot I set my eyes on. How many women did he just have to have? Four? Five? I lost count. Stopped caring.

But you bet your ass I care about him putting his eyes on Joslin.

I quickly step between them so he doesn’t get any ideas but Joslin’s defiant ass pops out the other side of me.

“Who’s that?” Hunter asks.

“Brinley, take Joslin into the backroom,” I say firmly to them. “I need to talk to my brother.”

She doesn’t bother fighting my instructions, which I greatly appreciate. This isn’t something I view as up for discussion. Once Brinley disappears with Joslin into the stock room, Hunter stops acting like the strong silent type.

“Where the fuck did you get that woman and why does Wyatt sound like a mess about some desert execution. What the hell is going on?”

“I found her in the desert. She witnessed a gang of Neo-nazis beheading six of ours.”

There is so much communication I don’t have to do with Hunter. It makes everything much easier. He doesn’t have to ask if I’m telling the truth and I don’t have to sugar coat where I found Joslin or what happened.

“Which six?”

“It’s bad,” I tell him. “Jotham. Jairus. Coleton. Christian.”

“Shaw?”

“Yes.”

His frustration with my tight-lipped command to meet me at the Flying J turns into concern. Killing a Shaw out in the desert makes this personal to Wyatt. Neither the Shaws nor the Blackwoods have ever allowed a murder to end without a feud. Half the reason the Shaws spread out from Missouri was due to a family feud allegedly involving a lot of land and some Indians. I have enough problems than to worry about Shaw business…

The Midnight SS are obviously far more than Shaw business… No man from my father’s time would ever allow such an action against the club to pass without starting a war. I doubt any of us are any different.

“Who are the other two?” Hunter asks quietly, his face as serious as mine.

“Gage and Mason Hollingsworth.”

“Was she their prisoner or something?” he asks. Again, he doesn’t have to explain to me that he means the Midnight SS.

“No. She’s a fucked up woman looking for… a fresh start.”

He laughs. “And she ran into your sorry ass.”

“I don’t want you getting anywhere near her.”

“Can you relax, Ryder?”

“No.”

“You never let go of anything.”

“Tiffany and Melissa.”

“They wanted it,” he says. “They said I was the better looking twin.”

“They were lying.”

“Both of them?”

I want to punch the shit out of Hunter but I learned a while back that he can hand my ass to me when I’m drunk.

“Fuck off. Joslin is mine. ”

“I have a wife. She’s pregnant.”

“You’d better hope she stays that way.”

“Huh?”

“Nevermind.”

I’m not thinking on my feet. My stupid comment fortunately causes my brother to move on instead of provoking my ass into a fight. It’s a sign there’s some real shit going on that we haven’t let this devolve into a fist fight or one of our more violent games of rock-paper-scissors.

“Why do you need me? And why here?”

“She killed her husband.”

Hunter releases a big, deep sigh.

“What the fuck is wrong with black women?”

I glare at him, instinctively defensive of Joslin more than the entire race.

“I’m fucking serious,” Hunter says without a hint of remorse. “This is the second dead body in a month.”

“Right.”

He sighs again. “Why am I always the guy?”

“It’s the burden of being the better looking twin.”

“Asshole.”

“We might get lucky. She might have failed to kill him.”

“How would that make us lucky?” he asks.

But I don’t have to answer him with words. One look and Hunter gets it. He shakes his head.

“If I end up in prison, Juliette will kill you and then she’ll find a way to get into prison and kill me.”

“We won’t. He’s some religious nut. If she didn’t kill him, how hard could it be to get the job done?”

Hunter grimaces.

“The faster we get the job done, the faster we can get to Wyatt,” I remind him. “Let’s move.”

My brother nods. Even if he doesn’t always agree with me, I know I can rely on him.