Stay Vertical (The Bare Bones MC #2)(30)

“Yeah,” agreed Iso. “A meeting.”

Out front of the Kevlar-reinforced mobile home, Zelov encouraged Lytton to “stay vertical” by way of goodbye. Lytton guessed that was a common way of saying don’t lay down your ride. Zelov wandered over to a stand of trees to talk in Spanish on his cell. Iso was still hobbling on his crutches and Lytton didn’t feel bad about it at all. He didn’t trust that guy and would refuse to do any jobs where Iso played a part.

For the first time in a long time, Lytton thought about Tina. Maybe because he was trying not to think about June, Tina busted her way into his thoughts. She was his girlfriend at MIT. It was assumed she’d become his fiancée after graduation. She was fun, exotic, and so bright he sometimes felt threatened by her intelligence, but it didn’t stop him from loving her. She was a mechanical engineer, and it was a given that wherever Lytton wound up taking a job, Tina would go, too.

Then the disaster with the scholarship board. It wasn’t so much that Tina thought Lytton had scammed them with his fake full-blood Native American status. It was more…she really had depended on it. She prided herself on being in love with a full-blood Apache Indian. She put corny dream catchers on their walls, she bought the expensive black pottery, she listened to that phony “native” chanting that was really done by white guys.

Lytton had been so blinded by love that he hadn’t noticed all of Tina’s adulation was based upon the idea that he was a dyed-in-the-wool bow bender, a genuine dirt worshiper. But the second the committee found out his father was white, Tina went into a state of shock from which she never recovered. She kept saying, “I can’t believe this.”

“Well, believe it,” he’d tried to tell her. “It’s a f*cking inescapable fact.”

But she kept walking around in a daze, withdrawing from him, acting as though she didn’t know him—like he was a stranger. Had their entire relationship been based on the idea he was a John Redcorn? Now it didn’t seem that he was hip or trendy enough, and Tina wanted nothing to do with him. She finally admitted that her feelings had changed, she no longer wanted marriage, and she was taking that job with NASA.

That was another thing that set Lytton off, made him drop out of society, take Kino’s land, and plant marijuana. Now, though, as he hugged the curve around Lake Mormon, he felt ready to venture out into the world again. He wasn’t going to let his f*cktard of a half-brother turn him into some twisted hermit. No, he was going to call his buddy Saul Goldblum at the Department of Health and schmooze him into fast-tracking his weed certification. There was supposed to be a “random” drawing of numbered balls bouncing around inside a machine to determine who was awarded the certification. It was a given that was all fixed, and Saul would be the guy to move his application along. Saul still thought Lytton was a full-blood Apache and Lytton had done nothing to dissuade him of this concept. He could get a special dispensation for that.

Lytton was feeling fine and independent as he roared up the final approach to his gate. His happy bubble was shattered all to hell by the appearance of a strange cage in the lot inside the gate, some sort of square, four-door Honda.

He assumed it was a new squeeze of Tobiah’s. The last one had bailed after catching him having cybersex on a riverbank with a busty woman carrying an enormous sword. Tobiah had tried to protest that it was only virtual sex, but she’d bailed anyway, even after finding out the busty woman was really Chad McFarlane of Bangor, Maine.

Lytton chuckled as he went in the front door. He hadn’t given Tobiah any shit about Chad McFarlane in a long time. He hung his keys up on the hall tree and sauntered down the hallway. Yes, a woman sat at the breakfast bar having a cheerful conversation with Tobiah. Lytton knew from the elated expression on Tobiah’s face that he’d found a new flame.

Lytton started saying, “Did you tell her about Chad—” He had to eat his next words, though, when the woman turned around, smiling broadly at him.

June Shellmound.

Lytton gulped, his throat suddenly dry as hell. “Tobiah,” he barely croaked.





CHAPTER NINE




JUNE


I never wanted to seem like I was chasing anyone.

Lytton’s reasons for not wanting to see me again were solid and legitimate. I knew it wasn’t me, it was him.

But Ingrid had seriously smoked all the weed I’d gotten for her. She had actually had a few words of praise for it, rare coming from her. And Lytton’s next closest distributor was in Phoenix.

I was really only halfway chagrined that Lytton wasn’t there, because I honestly did want that weed. Lytton must have told Tobiah that he’d “broken up” with me, or didn’t want to see me again or whatever, because Tobiah had said,

“Come on in. But if Lytton gets home, you might have to leave.”

That was fine, I guessed. I’d spent the past week reinventing myself. It started out being for Lytton’s eyes, but it wound up being a favor for myself. I was sick of the hippie dippy flowing outfits, the racer-backed shirts with the built-in bras, the Birkenstocks.

First off, I’d gone into P & E to a high-end hairdresser. I reasoned I’d need a good cut for job interviews. I got sort of a modified layer, a Joan Jett meets Angela Gossow. It seemed to scream out for a cowboy hat, so while I was in the western store getting that, Emma pointed out some leathers that spoke to me. The jacket was killer, a soft brown calfskin with fringed back yoke and sleeves. Vaguely Native American-looking medallions decorated the front zipper. I couldn’t believe how much badder ass I felt wearing the hat and jacket, and I even bought the chaps.