5.

Z OEY

“What are you doing?” Lark asked when she walked into the conference room. “You’re hunched over like Gollum staring at the Ring.”

“My precious,” Janis said in a spot-on and slightly disturbing imitation of the movie character.

“I have a splinter in my finger,” I explained without looking up.

“Want me to look at it for you?” Janis asked. When I looked at her with a horrified expression, she scowled and said, “I can be gentle.”

“Irritating? Yes. Infuriating? Also yes. Gentle? Hell, no,” I said before I looked down again.

“A long time ago, someone came up with a miraculous invention called gloves. I’ve seen them before, and I bet that if we shop around, we may be able to find some for you,” Gracy said sarcastically as she pulled out her chair across the table from me.

“I’d be more than willing to sacrifice some of my precious waking hours to help you search,” Janis said, adding to the banter. “It could take ten minutes. Maybe even fifteen if there’s a line at the checkout.”

I was finally able to get the splinter out and held up my now splinter-free middle finger and said, “I did it!”

“How did you get a splinter in the first place?” Lark asked.

“I got a wild idea that I wanted to put window boxes on the front windows of the houses and got a splinter in the process.”

“There are professionals out there working, Zozo. You know that, right?” Vivi asked.

“I didn’t ask for their help. I did most of the cutting yesterday while they were off.”

Vivi’s sister Evi chuckled before she said, “I can’t wait to hear this. Why did you wait until they were off to start your new project?”

I rolled my eyes before I explained, “They get so uptight when I ask to use their tools that I decided to do it while they were gone.”

“And why do they get uptight, Zoey?” Gracy asked with a big grin.

“I can’t help it if I’m curious!” I glanced around and saw that all of the women who were scheduled for today's meeting were here except for one, so I asked, “Is Rain coming?”

“She took a last-minute trip with Lucky, so she won’t be here today. Something came up at the apartments, and Marla can’t make it either,” Lark explained while looking at her laptop. “I’m trying to connect with Bella and Cyd right now.”

Even though two of the other founding members of the Texas Queens MC had moved away recently, we still included them in our meetings because we valued their input. We had done the same thing with Rain when she lived in Dallas, so there was no reason not to include Bella in New York or Cydney in Las Vegas.

“Window boxes, huh?”

“I think it lends to a more cottage-like aesthetic and sort of . . .”

I waved my hand around as I tried to find the word I was looking for, but Janis beat me to it and said, “Gives you something else to do so you don’t have to, oh, I don’t know, relax and chill out?”

When I glared at her, she laughed as Janis took the opportunity to say, “If she sits too long, she’ll think about things she’d rather avoid like she’s been doing for years now.”

“I do not want to talk about Garvey Forrester.”

“No one mentioned Garvey.” I glared at Gracy, but she just shrugged and said, “I’m down for another road trip to go kick his ass whenever you’re ready.”

“Why do you think I want to kick his ass?” I asked.

“Because he keeps ignoring your calls, and that pisses you off more than almost anything,” Lark muttered without looking up from the screen in front of her. “We know this, Zozo. There’s no sense in trying to pretend I’m wrong.”

“I have questions!”

“When it comes to my cousin, we all have questions,” Lark said, finally looking up from what she was doing to smile at me. “However, our questions are much different than the ones you’ve got.”

“I’m sure they are since I want to ask him about the best way to set up the room for meetings and . . .”

“Things you could ask any number of people who would be more than willing to help you,” Lark interrupted.

I frowned at Gracy before I said, “I still can’t believe you blabbed to the whole universe that we saw him.”

“The whole universe includes more than just the women around this table, and you know they can keep a secret,” Gracy responded, clearly not the least bit sorry.

“Although, I will admit that it damn near killed me not to tell Marley when I saw her the other day,” Vivi conceded. “The fact that you saw him two months ago and we haven’t said anything just makes it worse somehow.”

“Yeah. I saw Corey at the grocery store and wanted to just give him a hug so badly. Even though the man makes me crazy, I can’t imagine not talking to Zane for a week, let alone for years.”

“Do you think it’s different for triplets than it is for twins?” Vivi asked.

Evi, Vivi’s identical twin, shook her head and said, “I don’t think so. The quads are thick as thieves.”

The quadruplets Evi was referring to were her cousins and also members of the Texas Queens, and she was right. It was rare to see them without one another. Hell, they’d even prospected with the club at the same time, just like they seemed to do with almost everything in their lives.

“It’s been hard to be so far from Dylan,” Bella Conner, our member who was in New York City now, said through the speaker of Lark’s laptop.

We all looked toward the large flat screen television on the wall and waited for Lark to connect the cable that would allow us to see our friends during the video conference. When Bella’s face appeared, we smiled and waved.

“Hey, ladies,” Bella greeted. “So, why are we talking about the twin thing? What’s going on?”

“She doesn’t know?” Lark asked.

I shrugged and said, “I thought Gracy and Marla told everyone. ”

“What don’t I know?” Bella asked menacingly. “What did I miss?”

Lark glanced over to make sure the door was shut before she said, “Zozo, Marla, and Gracy ran into Garvey Forrester when they were visiting that place in Tenillo.”

Bella’s eyes widened in shock before she asked, “Did you talk to him?”

I nodded and Gracy said, “He gave her a tour of his house.”

“He did?”

“He lives on the compound we went to see,” I explained.

“He does?” Bella asked in confusion. “I didn’t see him when I went down there with Matteo, but then again, we mostly stayed inside Pop’s house while we talked to Sis.”

“The next time you go with Matteo to visit his dad, you need to make it a point to look for him and ask why he’s been avoiding Zoey’s calls,” Lark ordered. “You know how she gets when she’s ignored.”

I leaned back and rested my head against my chair so I could stare at the ceiling while I did some breathing exercises to stop myself from boiling over and yelling at my friends. I knew that they were just razzing me because it was common knowledge that I hated being ignored, but there was something else there too.

For some reason, they thought I was calling Garvey to chat, not to ask important questions, and I didn’t want to admit that they were half-right. Each time I called him to ask a question, I got nervous like a girl calling her middle school crush. It was irritating as hell, and when they teased me about it, I got embarrassed because I shouldn’t still feel that flutter deep inside when I thought of Garvey. There was too much water under the bridge for emotions like that between us.

“Someone should tell Marley and Corey,” Bella insisted.

Before I could open my mouth to protest, Janis, Gracy, and Lark said at the same time, “Not it!”

“I agree with Bella, but all of you know that already,” Lark said, her eyes never leaving mine. “How would you feel if you hadn’t talked to Zane in forever and one of your friends didn’t tell you he was doing okay?”

“That’s unfair.”

“It’s a good question, though,” Vivi said.

Evi chimed in and said, “I don’t know how they feel about him, but we need to at least open that door if they have questions.”

“As if any of them couldn’t find him if they wanted to,” Janis scoffed. “The whole damn family has access to the law enforcement database . . . except for Robin, I guess. But if he’s still on parole, all they have to do is type in his name and his info will pop right up.”

“Even if he’s not, they'd be able to pull him up by his name,” I informed her. “It's a misuse of computer information and property, but everyone on the force has done that once or twice, I’m sure.”

“You did it,” Lark said with a shrug.

“I never looked him up,” I insisted. “Not even once.”

“But you looked up other people for us,” Lark reminded me.

“Exactly. All I needed was a first and last name, a few other details, and voilà!”

“I bet they know where he is.”

“He mentioned that he’s been talking to someone here, but he didn’t say who,” Gracy said.

“Man or woman?” Janis asked. “I bet it’s his mom.”

Lark shook her head. “The last time I asked my mom if anyone had heard from him, she said that even Robin hadn’t been able to get him to write to her.”

“It can’t be one of the guys because they wouldn’t keep it a secret,” Vivi said.

Evi disagreed, “They would if he asked them to.”

“No, I don’t think it’s one of the guys. I think it’s one of the elders,” I said, referencing the oldest members of our group, three of which happened to be Forresters themselves.

I shrugged before I said, “If they’ve been keeping that secret for more than ten years, we’ll probably never know.”

“Okay,” Lark said when Cydney appeared on the screen. “Let’s get down to the important stuff. Show us the squidlet, Cydney. I’m dying over here!”

I smiled when I saw Cydney’s little boy, Turner, and laughed when I saw that he was wearing a Texas Kings MC onesie, which I was sure he got from his grandpa.

And just like that, the questions and sad looks were replaced with the excitement of a new baby and the happiness we saw on our friend’s face.

◆◆◆

“Put the corner in before you start to drill the pilot holes,” Zane reminded me as I picked up the drill. When I frowned at him, he said, “You know that if these are all wonky, it’s going to piss you off every time you look at them.”

“I know,” I said with a sigh as I looked over at the frame I’d finished before my brother arrived. “I’m going to have to redo that one.”

“I have a better idea,” Zane said as he walked over to the pile of scrap wood I’d picked through to find pieces I could use to make screen tables for my seedlings. He found a huge block of wood that was almost as long as he was tall and said, “Let’s cut some pieces off of this to put at the corners for more stability. You’ll screw the two-by-fours into the square piece and that will make the entire thing squared.”

“I hate to admit it, but you’re the smart twin today,” I teased as I set the drill aside and walked over to the table saw. I handed him the measuring tape I had hooked onto the pocket of my jeans and watched him mark the wood in silence for a while before I finally asked, “And to what do I owe this impromptu visit today?”

“I’m just over here taking your temperature,” Zane admitted.

“Like Mom did yesterday and Dad did the day before? I think Aunt Sandy was here the day before that and . . .”

I let my voice trail off when he laughed and said, “You seem to be handling it well.”

“I’m trying to find the positive in these check-ins,” I admitted. “When one of you comes over, especially if it’s you or Dad, I can rope you into working with me and get shit done twice as fast.”

“And things end up level and square,” Zane reminded me.

“Why is there a level app on my phone if the damn thing doesn’t make things level?” I asked, my outrage back in full force.

“If you didn’t have a bank vault for a phone cover, it probably would.”

“Do you know how many times that thing has saved my phone?” I asked.

“Yes because every single time mine gets fucked up, you give me the phone cover speech.”

“And every single time, you tell me that you’re a grown-ass man that knows what he’s doing.”

“Your phone is what? Fourteen years old? Mine is always the newest because I replace it so often. See what I’m saying?” Zane asked.

“That you’re an idiot who wastes money?”

Zane narrowed his eyes as he flipped on the saw instead of answering me, probably because he knew I was right. I took the trimmed pieces over and stacked them on the table where I’d been working, making several trips as I tried to keep up with him.

Once the cutting was finished, Zane and I got back to work on the frames I wanted, and it didn’t take long to get them finished.

“Thanks for helping me,” I told him as I handed him a bottle of water from the cooler. “You can report back to Mom and Dad that I’m fine.”

“Why don’t I take you out to dinner instead?” Zane asked.

“Because I’m dressed for that,” I scoffed.

“Since when do you care what you look like in public?” When I just blinked at him in shock, he laughed and hurried to say, “That didn’t come out right. I meant, since when do you care what people think?”

“I don’t, but you’re the one who’ll have to be seen with me looking like this, so I was really just thinking about your reputation.”

“I don’t have a reputation. And you don’t count anyway because you’re my sister.”

“Again with the sweet words. I may swoon from all the compliments you’re throwing out today.”

“Come on, Zozo. I’ve been working hard for free. The least you can do is go to dinner with me.”

I rolled my eyes and said, “Give me a minute to clean up and then I’ll go with you.”

“And you’ll buy.”

“Did you forget that I’m unemployed?” I asked.

“Woman, you’ve got more scratch than any of us because you’re a cheap-ass who refuses to spend her money on anything.”

“Which would mean that I’m not going to buy you dinner,” I said sassily as I walked toward my truck. I opened the door and stepped up to get in before I called out, “Put all that shit up for me while I get ready.”

“Working me to death on my day off,” I heard my brother mutter right before I shut my door. I was still chuckling when I pulled up in front of my house a few minutes later. It didn’t take me long since I lived within walking distance of the worksite, but I continued to drive my truck back and forth to alleviate the stress on my leg.

Oddly enough, all the hard work I’d been doing for the last few months had helped me more than physical therapy ever had. Even my physical therapist had admitted that the pace of my recovery had exploded after I found my groove and started working on my list of projects.

Between carrying heavy stacks of wood, shoveling dirt, bending over to weed and plant, and the myriad of other things I’d been doing for the last two months, I was probably healthier and more limber than I’d ever been in my life.

It didn’t take long in the shower, and once I finished getting dressed, I opened the bathroom door to let the steam out so I could blow dry my hair. I’d given my brother shit about being seen with me in public, but in reality, I didn’t like going anywhere looking the way I had when I got home a few minutes ago. I’d seen the pictures on the internet and how mean keyboard warriors could be. I really didn’t want to end up in prison for tracking someone down and beating the shit out of them with their own laptop.

Not that anything like that would ever cross my mind.

I ran the brush through my hair, glad that it was finally growing out after the hatchet job the doctors had done after my attack and then the camouflage cut Willow had done to make me look halfway presentable. I turned around just in time to see my brother storm into my bedroom.

The look on his face scared the shit out of me, and I asked, “What’s wrong?”

“Why, and I cannot stress this enough, the fuck is Garvey Forrester calling you, Zoey?”

“He called me back?” I asked without thinking and then could have kicked myself at the hope in my voice. I cleared my throat before I asserted, “It’s a work thing.”

“A work thing? How did he even get your number?”

“I’ve had the same number since . . .”

“How long have you been talking to him, Zoey?” Zane interrupted.

I knew what he was asking and tried very hard to not take the bait and start yelling right back. Instead of answering him, I said, “I’ve seen him one time, Zane. Once.”

“And how long have you . . . Where did you . . . Did you tell Corey and Marley?”

“I didn’t know if I should because . . .”

“So they can find out later that he’s been talking to you and not his own fucking family? That’s not going to sting at all, is it?”

“I haven’t been talking to him, Zane, and I don’t appreciate your tone right now.”

“My tone? He almost fucking killed you with his stupid bullshit and you don’t like my tone?” Zane yelled.

“He didn’t tie me up and put me in that car, Zane,” I reminded my brother. “And if I recall, you were at the same party and just as drunk as we were, yet you still rode home!”

“We’re not talking about me, Zoey! The man damn near killed you!”

I scoffed before I said, “Like you haven’t tried to do that a million times.”

“It’s not the same. After I tried to kill you, I didn’t turn around and steal from our goddamn family, did I?”

“I’m not going to have this argument with you again, Zane,” I warned.

“Just wait until I tell Mom and Dad,” Zane said with a bitter laugh.

“What are you? Three? Get over yourself, Zane. If I want to talk to Garvey Forrester, I will. I’m the same age as you, and that means I’m a grown woman who makes her own decisions.”

“And when that asshole is involved, every fucking one of them is wrong.”

I ignored him and held my hand out before I said, “Give me my phone.”

“No.”

“What in the hell gives you the right to look at my phone anyway?” I asked.

“You left it on the bench, and I was nice enough to bring it to you. Imagine my surprise when the damn thing rang and I saw that the worst mistake of your life was calling.”

“I’m young yet. I’ve got plenty of time to outdo that one,” I joked as I snatched my phone out of his hand. Without looking down at it, I said, “You have two choices here, Zane. You can shut the fuck up and get off my ass so we can enjoy dinner, or you can get the fuck out of my house so I can return my missed call.”

Zane glared at me for quite some time before he pulled his keys out and said, “Let’s go.”