Stay Vertical (The Bare Bones MC #2)(63)
They both stood up straight, but Lytton’s prick still throbbed inside of his fiancée. “All right,” said Lytton, “but let my fiancée get herself put back together.” He finally detached from the woman, puffed with manly pride at his still-stiff cock that bobbed in midair.
“Fiancée!” Ford cried. “Holy shit! Welcome to the family, little June. Well, that’s some f*cking good news in a day that really needs good news.”
“What do you mean?” asked June, stuffing her boobs back into their cage.
“Oh, nothing. Just that things have been so black, so dour lately. This is f*cking good news indeed. Where are you having the wedding?”
Lytton said, “We barely discussed it, as you can see.” Something occurred to him. “I hope you don’t mind if Tobiah is my best man.”
“Of course not. You’ve been brothers since the short pants days. Hell, as far as Toby’s fashion sense is concerned, he’s still in the short pants days.”
Everyone chuckled, thinking about Toby’s floodwater pants, and Lytton kissed June goodbye. Now it was appropriate to pack his cock back inside his jeans. It seemed Ford had something more to say to him. Ford seemed uncomfortable, so it might be something sappy he was trying to say.
He started out, “I was going to do this anyway, but…Here.”
Lytton accepted the item from Ford before he knew what it was. Oh. It was a patch for his cut, a “Filthy Few” patch. “As you probably know, Prospects don’t need this patch to become fully patched. I just know you earned it. We haven’t talked about Isosceles Weaver since that day I drove the eighteen-wheeler away, but I know you earned this. You did it to avenge June, you did it for yourself, but you also did it to show unity with us, with The Bare Bones. We all appreciate it.”
That tractor-trailer had turned up abandoned at the bottom of Tollhouse Draw on the way to Lake No. 1 and the Cutlass clubhouse. An anonymous call from a burner phone had alerted cops to its presence. They had found Iso’s body in the driver’s seat, and a shitfaced passed-out Truitt in the passenger seat holding the Sig Sauer outfitted with a silencer. Losing the piece was a small price to pay for setting up The Cutlasses. Iso’s prints were all over the place as being the driver of the heroin shipment, so a RICO investigation had been opened into The Cutlasses. They’d be under the microscope now, and wouldn’t have time to f*ck with The Bare Bones. Apparently Truitt had taken so many roofies, his claim that he’d been framed was completely disregarded. His story was as full of holes as the Albert Hall. The Mexican trucker had apparently run off somewhere between P & E and Tollhouse Draw. He was never heard from again.
“Thanks, brother.” Lytton slid the patch into his cut’s pocket and casually started finger-combing his hair in an imaginary wall mirror. He had thought life had been handing him lemons for so long. He’d been resentful of the res, then loathed his stepfather for having given him his name. He had learned through June that he had actually grown up in a privileged society—compared to almost every African tribesperson, at least. He had been so bitter for so long. Now he was slowly learning how to thank Mungu—he shared June’s idea that Mungu was a benevolent, kind God, so that was good enough for him—for all the little generosities in his life.
The brothers weren’t much for sap, but apparently Ford had more in mind. “And here.” Ford jingled something from his fingers. A glint of metal caught Lytton’s eye. “This was my tag when I was a SEAL. I want you to have it. So many times I was yanked back from the brink of death by some f*cking unseen hand, Driving Hawk. I knew I was destined for bigger things. Here, take it. I don’t mean to say I’ve accomplished all of these bigger things yet, so don’t write me off yet.” He patted something near his hip. “I wear the other tag on a chain here to remind me how close death always is. How to treasure your friends, your family, your brothers. And you’re my brother in more ways than one.”
That was about as much corn as anyone could take, and Lytton was relieved when Ford handed over the tag without any more fanfare. The chain was long enough for Lytton to slide it over his head, and he fingered the upraised lettering on it. “Thanks, brother,” he said again, now feeling lame. “I’ll honor this. I won’t let you down. I know we started off on the wrong foot, but I feel like we’re on the right track now.”
“Exactly. Now go get me another Bud, grunt.”
Lytton was more than happy to serve his brother.
JUNE
I needed to make Lytton’s new house my own. His offer to let me design the garden loomed large in my head with all sorts of possibilities. Of course I couldn’t build a savannah in a place where it snowed. But thinking of designing waterfalls, pools, positioning a few palms, a flame tree, maybe even a thorn tree, all this gave me hope. And I needed to cling to hope.
A suicidal high school friend once told me the only way to keep on in life was to have something to look forward to, a plan. A vacation, an event, a concert—anything that gave you hope would keep you going. Now I had that. Oh yes, and did I mention my wedding to Lytton Driving Hawk?
Lytton had given me so much. I never blamed him for leaving me alone with Iso. He couldn’t have possibly known of that psycho’s plot to steal my phone, make me return, bash the security code out of Helium Head. And I never asked for details or even for confirmation, but I knew that Lytton had dealt with Isosceles Weaver in the way that biker clubs do.