Smoke and Steel (Wild West MC #2)(31)

We created our bond, and even when things got better when Mom left Dad, and then when Andy came, we kept it strong.

In other words, she knew all about Bryan.

“How much worse did they have to get?” I asked. “And that’s the first question you had. But he didn’t apologize or start to take me seriously until he realized how serious I was about ending us. I have my own home, my own business, things to do with my life, but he got to a place he didn’t even thank me for drying and folding his laundry and having it ready for him to take home. It’s the conventional way people look at relationships. He said my concerns were petty. He said this because I’m not only expected, as a woman, to adapt, I’m simply expected to take on this stuff. He’s a great guy if he rushes to my place after work to clean up after his buds, even if they were his buds who made the mess, I asked him to do it the day before and I have to live with it, not him. Why is he great for cleaning up after his own damned self?”

“Good question, and he isn’t,” Liane agreed.

“No. But if he did it when I asked, he’d expect me to thank him. Like he’s doing me a favor. I get that men are programmed like that, they see it at home. Growing up, the mom takes on the lion’s share of the day to day, the dad mows the lawn, kicks back and watches football. It blew his mind that the stuff he thought was petty would end us. He still doesn’t believe we’re over. I don’t want any part of legally binding myself to that kind of life contract.”

Li was grinning again. “Preach it, sister.”

Oh yes.

I was preaching.

And I wasn’t finished.

“I read this article written by this woman who had a job and kids, and her husband wanted to do something special for her birthday. He thought he was being awesome. But after making her breakfast in bed and him baking a cake with the kids and wrapping her present, she got up to a kitchen that was a disaster, and she had to clean it up. She went to the closet to get dressed, saw he’d wrapped her present in there and left all the shit on the floor for her to put away. When she complained about this to him, he was upset she wasn’t appreciative of all he’d done. When ‘all he’d done’ meant she ate a breakfast she didn’t have to cook for once and spent five seconds opening a present she didn’t have to wrap, but she had to do all the shit work on the back end. And he threw her a guilt trip because she wasn’t grateful.”

“We shouldn’t use wrapping paper,” Li remarked. “It’s an unnecessary depletion of natural resources.”

I couldn’t argue that.

But it wasn’t the point.

“I know there are women who love doing that kind of thing. And good for them. But I don’t want to get stuck in that.”

“H, if you’re trying to talk yourself into understanding your right to let Bryan go, you could have stopped five minutes ago,” Liane affirmed. “What you feel is right. It’s right, no matter the reasons. Though all of what you’re saying are exceptional reasons. I will say, I’m unsurprised, because it’s all kinds of ballsy that you don’t want to bind yourself to something that might morph into that bullshit, and that’s who you are. All kinds of ballsy. If it was easier for us to walk away when men walk all over us, things would be a lot different in this world.”

“Damn straight.”

“Though, I do think there are guys who aren’t like that.” Another grin. “Or I hope so, since I intend to find one.”

“I hope so too,” I muttered.

For her and for me.

“We should have brought the wine. I’ll go get it,” she offered.

“We should go back in and hang with Mom and Andy.”

Upon me saying this, Mom shouted from the house, “Your phone is ringing, Hellen!”

I pushed up, Liane came with me, and we slid out of the door in a way Mom couldn’t see inside the shed if she was watching.

She wasn’t.

We went inside, I nabbed my phone, and it said I had a missed call from Marcy.

As I was reading that, I got a text.

I saw some of what it said on the notification and swiftly opened it.

Mayday! Mayday! Bree’s gone from wrecked to pissed and she’s decided payback. There’s no talking her out of it. I’ve tried.

YOU ARE NEEDED ASAP!

Well, it seemed I wasn’t going to enjoy one last glass of wine with my family, drive home and crawl into bed early to catch up on some sleep.

Shit.





8





GONE





Core





The call came when he was seasoning his steak to slap it on the grill.

It was Eight, who was supposed to be in Littleton staking out the house or picking one of the grifters to follow to get a further sense of what they were dealing with.

Core had spent the day following one himself.

They could go in hard on these guys, teach them a lesson, run them out of town, but if they were part of a larger operation, that could buy the club heat that was always annoying to have to expend the effort to cool down.

First, they needed to track the players, note MOs, discover the extent of the operation, and instead of tearing the leaves off the weed, yank it out by its root.

At this juncture and that hour, there was no good reason for Eight to phone, so Core abandoned his steak and took the call.