Total pages in book: 70
Estimated words: 70516 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 70516 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 353(@200wpm)___ 282(@250wpm)___ 235(@300wpm)
“She moved away for like a year. She came back lookin’ like she was rode hard and put up wet. Rumors were she was pregnant with some guy’s baby from New York. Bigwig that didn’t want the kid or her. She never got super pregnant or anything, though, so I’m assuming that was all a rumor.”
“Isn’t that just hilarious?” Nettie asked. “The girl that couldn’t stand living here having to come back?”
“Agreed,” I mused.
More laughter, and this time I glanced at Weaver to see him stand up with a scowl.
He said something I couldn’t hear, but all of a sudden Audrey was hauled backward by her shorts by an older man with a permanent scowl etched on his face.
Once she was far enough away from the table, he let her go and went back to talking to one of his club brothers who was sitting at a high top.
I snorted out a laugh and took another healthy sip of my beer.
“Swear to Christ,” I uttered under my breath. “That woman is one day going to bark up the wrong tree.”
“She already did, it looks like,” Nettie pointed out. “Look at that scowl on her face.”
Our giggles must’ve reached her ears, because she turned with a scowl.
She saw us and her shoulders straightened, and that tube top she was barely holding up slipped another inch downward.
Soon, the only thing holding it up would be the piercings in her nipples.
“Doesn’t she know that it’s twenty degrees outside?” Nettie murmured into my ear.
I snorted.
“Well, look who the cat dragged in,” Audrey cooed. “If it isn’t the Wheelie twins.”
“Wheeler,” I corrected her automatically. “How are you doing, Owala?”
Owala was like the red-headed stepchild of the water bottle world. Was it corny to compare her to a water bottle? Yes. But I was weird like that.
Audrey looked confused, but the man behind her lined up to once again take a shot did not miss the joke. His quiet chuckle preceded him sinking two balls into the pocket nearest us.
His lips were quirked as he aimed and shot, but when he was done and his eyes met mine in the mirror, I felt the instant jolt.
“What is that supposed to mean?” Audrey demanded.
Nettie whispered something under her breath that I didn’t quite catch over the din of the bar.
Neither one of us acknowledged her, which we knew would make her mad. There was nothing that pissed off Audrey more than getting ignored.
Especially by us.
“Weaver,” someone called. “Are you going to let someone else have that pool cue tonight, or what?”
Weaver handed off his pool stick to a tall man who looked like a Viking.
There were several newer members of their MC that I hadn’t ever met, but they were really pretty to look at.
Sure, the blonde giant was incredibly sexy, but he didn’t hold a candle to Weaver.
And I wasn’t really even sure what it was about Weaver that caught my eye and held it, only that it did.
He sidled up to the bar a few seats down from ours, and I had to physically force myself not to look toward him.
“You like him,” my sister whispered in my ear.
I shivered. “Maybe.”
“I think you should go for it,” she suggested.
I was already shaking my head. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”
She elbowed me in the ribs. “Why not?”
“Because our parents are sick fucks and he knows,” I grumbled mostly to her.
“Are you seriously ignoring me right now?”
I didn’t know who it was Audrey was talking to, but I hoped it wasn’t us.
“Just because they are doesn’t mean that you should be punished for their crimes,” Nettie whispered fiercely. “We are not the sum of our parents.”
I shrugged. “I just can’t, okay?”
“Can’t isn’t the same as won’t,” she pointed out.
I grumbled at her for using our old soccer coach’s words against me.
I couldn’t tell you how many times I’d heard that phrase—and used it—over the years.
It was a common occurrence for those words to leave my mouth among my soccer girls.
“Well,” I said, “when this blows over, and if he still acknowledges me, I’ll maybe think about talking to him more.”
She rolled her eyes. “Yeah, right.”
Yeah, right, was correct.
I never talked to any boys.
I hadn’t since high school.
I just wasn’t willing to put myself through that again.
And Audrey would try to go for it.
She loved seeing me suffer and would go out of her way to make sure that I was never happy. Even if she had to go through my dad to do it.
Before Nettie had left, it was split between the two of us—Audrey’s hate for the two of us was a palpable thing—but when Nettie had left, she’d only had me to set her sights on.
It was exhausting sometimes.
“Go sit down, Audrey,” a forceful male voice said from somewhere beyond where we were sitting. “Don’t embarrass yourself further.”