Reckless Temptations (Tempted #4)(84)

I threw the shot back, letting the amber liquid worm its way down my throat and into my belly. I had hoped that the burning sensation in my chest would dull the ache that wouldn’t leave me.

“Tell me I did the right thing,” I demanded of Blackie, as I refilled my glass.

“I don’t even know what you did,” he muttered, eyeing the bottle I was clutching.

“It don’t matter, just tell me what I need to hear,” I said, downing another shot.

“You did the right thing,” he appeased. “You looking to forget? That shit won’t do it,” he informed me as he passed me the bottle he had half emptied.

Great, now I was swapping bottles with the club drunk. My life really had turned to shit.

At this rate, by the end of the night I’ll have a fucking needle sticking out of my arm.

That was fucked up.

But I was in a fucked up mood.

“I’m sorry,” I grunted, apologizing to him for my inner thoughts. Luckily, he paid me no mind, a combination of not giving a fuck and being sloshed.

“You have a fight with your ol’ lady?”

“I don’t have one of those,” I replied.

“Right, the baby mama then,” he corrected himself, as he pulled a bud of pot from his pocket and broke up the herb on top of the bar.

I ignored his question, not ready to admit out loud that I didn’t have a baby mama either. I had nothing.

Gave it all away.

Because of the fucking Red Dragons.

If I was a holy roller, I’d swear on a stack of bibles I would kill every Red Dragon from here to California.

I wasn’t a holy roller.

I wasn’t even a sign of the cross type of guy.

“What was that shit with the cops earlier?” I asked, changing the subject as I watched him dump the ground up weed into a rolling paper.

“Ah, me and officer Brantley go way back,” he slurred, as he rolled the joint perfectly, bringing the end of the paper to his lips to lick and seal it. “I don’t know who gave that piece of shit more of a hard-on me or Christine,” he added, passing me the tight joint as he lifted his eyes.

Christine, his wife, the wife he barely mentioned, much less ever used her name. I raised an eyebrow and flicked my lighter and blazed up the joint.

“Never heard you talk much about your wife,” I said, inhaling sharply. “So, this rat, the cop, he’s been itching to put you away for a while?” I thought about it for a second. “And Christine? He wanted to arrest her too?”

Blackie laughed, a low rumble that sounded more scary than jolly.

“Nah he didn’t want to arrest her,” he said before taking a toke. “Christine wasn’t some low-life junkie, Riggs,” he seethed.

“I didn’t say she was,” I replied, as I poured us both a shot.

“It’s what you think because it’s all anyone in this fucking place ever talks about. You’ve got this image of Christine, a woman you never met, lying face down in a bathtub with a fucking needle in her arm but that’s not the woman I married. Everyone in this club assumes I drink because I feel guilty she overdosed with the shit we were selling, but they’re wrong, so fucking wrong.”

“So why do you do it?” I asked, watching as he downed the shot I placed in front of him and he passed me back the joint.

“Sure, it’s got something to do with it. If I wasn’t dealing heroin she wouldn’t have been able to get her hands on it. But, Christine would’ve found some other way to end the nightmare she was living,” he revealed, staring down at his left hand, his fingers running along his ring finger.

“I was a shitty husband,” he admitted. “I put this club before her. I put the drugs, the money, the goddamn patch before the sweet girl I fell in love with when I was fifteen years old. See, she knew me before the club, before the corruption and the mayhem and she had to watch me morph into a Knight. It was all good when I was just a prospect, still had time for my girl and the crazy shit we used to do.”

He smiled faintly before glancing back at me.

“I don’t know Lauren all that well, ran into her a few times since you two started up, but she seems spunky. Christine used to be spunky. She used to love life, and more than life, she loved me. She loved me hard, felt that shit down in my bones.”

I swallowed hard, blaming the burning sensation in my throat on the weed but it was his words, his comparison of his woman to mine. It was hearing Blackie recall the love he remembered Christine had for him, knowing I’d never know that with Lauren.

“After I patched in, Cain pushed me to the front lines. I was eager to earn, eager to prove I would do anything for the club,” he cocked his head to the side. “Sort of like you,” he pointed out. “In our time of need you stepped up and became a front runner. That isn’t lost to the club, Riggs, and you don’t have to keep proving your worthy of your patch,” he added.

“I’m not,” I contested. “I’m just doing my job.”

“I thought the same thing and kept doing my job. I ran drugs, guns, women…whatever made the most profit and never looked back. I forgot about the love I had at home and what it felt like to go home to a warm body. I pushed the thoughts of how fucking good it felt to crawl into bed and have the sweetest woman wrap her legs around me. She didn’t know what I did, and if she did, she didn’t care. I could’ve killed a man, sometimes did, and she still welcomed me home, into our bed, night after night.”