Loving Nicole (Savage Brothers MC #3)(9)

“True dat,” Nikki chimes in. “Besides, it took me way too f*cking long to convince Freak to wear a suit.”

“How did you convince him?” Dani asks. She’s sitting alone, holding herself away from us. It’s a bad sign. One that means I have a very limited time frame in which to talk with her. All the girls except Nikki, who is on a round like pedestal at the moment, have been fitted. There’s a lady going around putting pins in Nikki’s dress, while we watch. I’m so ready for this fitting to be over. I would never admit it to Dragon, but I’m starting to regret demanding a big wedding. I don’t even know why I did. I just wanted something big to mark my marriage to him. It might be a f*cked up fairytale, but it was my fairytale and I wanted it to be celebrated. I was stupid. I should have dragged Dragon’s ass to Gatlinburg, Tennessee, found a chapel, married him and been done with it. Every day that we get closer to our wedding my panic increases. I have this fear that I never will get my happily ever after.

“I threatened to tell the world what his real name was,” Nikki says bringing my head back around to the conversation.

“I figured it was blow jobs, that’s how I did it with Dragon.”

The woman pinning Nikki’s dress looks up and blushes, then buries her face in the pink satin. I look over at Dani, she half-way smiles. It’s something.

“Oh, that probably didn’t hurt.” Nikki agrees. “Well that, and the private party we had with Crush.”

“Fuck me! You little hooker!” Lips responds.

Nikki flips her off. “Like you haven’t taken a ride on the Crush train.”

“Not in a long time. Six is not a sharer.”

“Sucks for you.” Nikki pipes up.

“Not so much. Six knows how to work it. Can’t deny it though, Crush did some magic shit.”

“Girl, you don’t lie.”

I’m looking over at Dani and notice the conversation has grabbed her attention. It surprises me to see the distaste on her face. I know for a fact that since Dani has broken away from Michael, she has no problem having threesomes, or what-the-heck-ever else. I don’t understand it exactly; it doesn’t jive with the young Dani I met. Still, it’s further proof that the Dani that survived Michael is not the Dani that I once knew. He took everything from her, most notably her innocence.

I notice the girl that is pinning Nikki’s dress is blushing like crazy. The boys of the Savage MC would eat her alive, it would probably be the best thing that could happen to her. Maybe I should introduce her to Frog? That boy needs a new name. I don’t understand most of the names the boys have. Dragon, of course, but the others leave me shaking my head. He told me once that Dancer got his name because he used to be a big street boxer. I shudder to think how Frog got his.

“I need a drink,” Dani speaks up, rising off of the chair, in the corner, she’s been brooding in.

“Sounds good girl, but if I don’t get back, Six will send out a search party.”

“Freak too,” Nikki adds, “we’re supposed to go to Tennessee today to pick up some shit that the boys ordered.”

“I’m out of here,” Dani says already heading to the door.

“I think I’ll join Dani. Lips, can you have Crusher come back and pick us up?”

“Yeah, where’d he go?” She asks.

“He said something about all the dresses and pink was making his cock fall off,” Nikki says.

“Can’t have that.”

“Girl, you ain’t lying,” I hear Nikki agree before I run to catch up with Dani, who just went out the door.

“Hold up, Dani!” I grumble.

She stops on the sidewalk and turns to look at me.

“Dragon will flip if you don’t show up with the other women.”

“We need to talk.”

“I’m getting a drink.”

“Then we’ll talk over drinks.”

Dani gives me the what-the-f*ck-are-you-talking-about look and motions at my stomach.

I roll my eyes.

“I’ll have chocolate milk.”

Dani looks up at the sky. “This is what my life has come to. We’ll go to Weavers, I doubt the Den or *’s even has chocolate milk.”

I grin, “Hey girls, tell Crush to pick us up at Weavers,” I yell back through the door of the shop, then reclose it and wrap my hand around Dani’s. We walk down the street and, if the shadow of Michael wasn’t over us, I would love every minute of it.

“You okay?”

“Not really,” Dani responds honestly.

I don’t say anything. What could I say? I totally relate. We walk the rest of the way in silence. When we make it to Weaver’s, we take a seat at one of the tables outside. A waitress comes and takes our orders. I order a foot long hot dog and a large chocolate milk. This is what baby Dragon has reduced me to. I smile. It’s awesome.

Dani orders a diet soda. It drives me crazy. The woman is like a size four, maybe smaller by this time, because she keeps losing weight. If I was as skinny as her ass, I’d live on nothing but doughnuts and chocolate.

We’re quiet. Dani is running her finger over the Styrofoam cup of her drink, deep in thought. I’m afraid to get into it. The waitress brings my hotdog and I smile at her. When she leaves, I decide to dig in—in all ways.