Misfit (Death Dwellers MC #6) (13 page)

“Did you have sex with older women?”

Older men, too, but Cash wouldn’t mention that. “My mother and I had a staff, thanks to my father. We had some very pretty housekeepers. I got my first hand job, courtesy of someone else’s hand, at fifteen. A week later, we were fucking like rabbits all over the house, until my mother caught us and fired her on the spot. The woman was…” He searched his memory. “Twenty-five. I think,” he added. “Married, with two small kids. No one cared but my mother.”

“And the chick’s husband!”

Cash shrugged. “If he ever found out. My mother tried to stop me. She got older maids. I fucked their daughters. She had her staff around when I was at school. I met them in secret. Then, there was my father’s house. Dad permitted us to have the best alcohol money could buy. I had my first drink at eight. Mom swore she’d call CPS. From then on, my drinking was between men. I could never tell my mother.” He’d started his life of subterfuge and deviousness at a young age. “My excessive lifestyle is responsible for every gray hair my mother has.”

“I wish I could’ve led your life. It sounds awesome.”

“We haven’t even gotten to my college and military years.”

“Oh, man! Wow. Really? Tell me.”

“Some other time,” he promised, steering the conversation back in the direction he wanted. “You plan on proposing to Fee anytime soon?” He stayed casual, feeling like a dickhead for being threatened by a high school kid.

“On my seventeenth birthday. Four months away. Uncle Chris pays me to do certain jobs and I’ve been saving almost every penny for a ring. Ever since I decided to marry her.”

“You might be a little too young for her.”

“She looks so sad sometimes. Alone. Like me. I thought we could be together and we wouldn’t be alone anymore. I’d make sure she’d be happy for the rest of her life.”

A nice sentiment, except…“We’re born alone and we’ll die alone. No one can fill that void in us. Especially a spouse. We have to find our own happiness.”

Diesel cocked his head to the side. “Do you have a void like me and Fee?”

Didn’t everyone? However, Cash didn’t want to remember Fee’s pain. Witnessing it had been enough for him. “Has she told you she has a fucking void?”

“No, but I see her sometimes. Looking at the pictures and crying. She misses her family, Cash. Especially her mom. She’s a little lost. Like me.”

Memories of Fee mourning sickened Cash. Hearing she still grieved, alone, made him long for the days they’d first started hanging out. Nothing had been complicated. It had just been him offering her his shoulder to lean on, and her needing his comfort. He wanted to find the key that opened the door to the laughter he’d witnessed this morning. If they’d allow their relationship to be on Cash’s terms, the three of them could be so good together.

His phone rang just as his doorbell buzzed. Josh’s name flashed across his screen. As the doorbell rang again, Cash answered, concerned that his brother found it necessary to call a second time that day. “Hold on. Let me pay for my food.”

“Get a cook,” Josh said without urgency.

“With what?” Once Cash turned eighteen, his father cut off support, although he did pay all his college expenses. After Cash’s mother remarried, Parnell also stopped alimony, so the huge house Cash had grown up in was no longer viable. “You’re the rich one, not me.”

“That’s why I’m calling,” Josh said as Cash made it to the door.

He paid for the food, not surprised that Diesel had once again followed him. Keeping his hold on his phone, he stepped aside and allowed Diesel to grab the bags with delicious aromas wafting up.

Cash put the phone back to his ear. “Is this an emergency?”

“No, but—”

“But nothing. I’m starving, so talk fast,” he ordered, relieved that nothing catastrophic had befallen any of their family members.

“I want you to look over a prospectus I’m sending you. If you’re interested in the company, I’d like to meet with you, Dad, and Sloane, to talking about forming a partnership.”

Business and investments bored the fuck out of Cash. He couldn’t imagine being constrained by suits, ties, and board rooms. Josh, on the other hand, knew his shit. If he thought something was worth looking into, then it was.

“I’ll read over it when it arrives.”

Josh snickered. “You want the audio version so you won’t fall asleep?”

“Fuck you, asshole.”

“Have you spoken to Georgiana lately?” Josh asked, traces of laughter still in his voice.

“I can’t keep up with her. She’s always jetting off somewhere with her rock star husband.”

“That’s what cell phones are for. You can talk to her if she’s on the other side of the world on a secluded island. You do know that?”

“I’ve been busy,” he muttered. “When I call, I talk more to Sloane than I do to Georgie. She’s always doing something.”

“Cash, big brother, don’t you know anything about Sloane Mason?”

Josh’s words put Cash on alert and he went into big brother mode. “What is there to know? Has he done something to her?”

“Other than being obsessed? Nothing at all. That’s what I mean. You call her. She starts to talk. Sloane is right there—as usual. He asks to say hello. She hands him the phone. He then talks to you. Discovers if there’s anything that might upset Georgie in any way. If there isn’t, she gets the phone back.”

“You’re shitting me. He vets her calls?”

“Ask him,” Josh chortled. “Bryn and Chance keep her too busy for her to figure out his game. Me and the guys have a fucking bet that when it dawns on her, she’s going to rip his head off.”

“Oh, food!” Daphne’s happy voice interrupted Cash’s response.

She sashayed into the room, stark naked. Memories of Fee’s perfect body hit Cash. Daphne had been bred in poverty and wanted better for herself. She had that type of mystical sensuality that men made fools over themselves for. She loved giving and receiving pleasure. In the hours since he’d learned her name, he’d really listened to her—dreams for her future, aspirations for a better life, hopes for tomorrow.

If not for Fee, Cash would’ve considered bringing Daphne in with him and Stretch. But Fee was in his blood, as much as he hated to admit it. She was the sheltered version of Daphne, searching to find her place in the world.

Stretch stood in the doorway, hands in his pockets, watching her dig into the bag and pull out one of the containers.

“Delicious!” Daphne murmured.

“Is that
female
company I hear?”

“You’re a goddamn asshole,” Cash growled again. “For your information, our good friend, Stretch, is here.” That sounded innocent enough, hopefully raising neither Diesel nor Daphne’s suspicions about his bisexuality.

“Tell my future brother-in-law he owes me an arm wrestle.”

“Goodbye, Joshua.” Cash hung up with his brother’s voice ringing in his ears. His growling stomach hastened him to the food everyone else was annihilating.

Daphne smirked at him. His turn with her was upon them.

He’d managed to escape what he’d promised the entire afternoon. But it seemed as if he’d run out of time and he had to fuck her, unless he came up with an excuse that wouldn’t piss her off and send her running to Outlaw with the truth of how Cash had spent his Saturday night.

Nothing to report. Kendall is just fine.

Christopher sighed at Fee’s text. Her insistence that all was well bothered the fuck out of him. He hoped Fee wasn’t being taken in by Kendall. Looking up to Zoann should’ve given Fee pointers on deceitful cunts. Bitsy would just as soon fuck up Kendall as talk to her.

He’d save this shit for another day, until he had real fucking proof that Kendall was at it again.

Wondering how Megan enjoyed her meet-up with Johnnie’s bitch, Christopher guided CJ and Rule into the clubhouse for a quick check before they headed home.

“Dig! Ashfuck,” his boy squealed, spotting Digger at Christopher’s corner table, flipping through a magazine.

“Dig!” Rule repeated, grinning. After sleeping the entire way home, he was wide awake. “As-fuck.”

“
Ash
,” CJ corrected. “Say ashfuck.”

“Yo.” Pretending he didn’t hear CJ instruct Rule, Christopher snatched the magazine, a quarterly about guns and ammunition. Respectable, unlike the day of Christopher’s downfall when he’d read a magazine about babies. Still, this was what his club had been reduced to. Reading. Play dates at parks. Babysitting.

“Hey, Prez.” Digger grabbed his cigarette from the ashtray and jammed it in the corner of his mouth. He squinted around the smoke and nodded to CJ. “Hey, lil’ dude.” They fist-bumped, CJ’s smaller fist ramming the SAA’s larger one. “You a violent lil’ motherfucker.”

“And you a ashfuck,” CJ retorted, climbing onto one of the seats, while Rule mirrored CJ in his greeting to Digger.

Whether or not his kid said ashfuck because he
couldn’t
say assfuck yet, Christopher wasn’t sure and didn’t give a fuck. What
did
fucking matter wasn’t what he’d said as much as it was being grammatically correct. “Say
an
assfuck, boy.”

“An ashfuck?”

Fuck, what the fuck had that boring ass motherfucker taught Christopher when he’d been in fucking school? Something about which fucking articles needed to be used in front of words that began with vowel sounds and the ones that began with consonant sounds. Christopher didn’t remember enough to give CJ a reason why he should use ‘an’. One thing he’d never forget was that motherfucker yelling to the class that the use of articles wasn’t based on the spelling but the sound. Christopher had wanted to fuck him up so bad. He’d been a condescending fuckhead.

“Why an?” CJ asked, just as Christopher expected.

“Why an?” Rule echoed.

He shrugged. “Cuz, that’s the right fuckin’ way. Okay?”

“Uh-huh.” CJ grinned at Digger. “You an ashfuck, Dig. I’ma violent motherfucker.” Leaning back, he swung his legs. “Ma a mother. Rory say mother for ma.”

Closing his magazine, Digger tapped out his cigarette. “What the fuck I’m missing?”

“That a ma a mother,” CJ stressed with exasperation.

“He…
he’s
,” Christopher corrected, attempting to keep a straight face, “tryin’ to say he found out a mother different from a motherfucker.”

CJ nodded with pride.

Digger howled with laughter and Christopher lost it too, while CJ shrieked with happiness.

“He gotta clean his fuckin’ mouth up before he start school,” Christopher said finally.

“Mommie say not to use fuck, shit, damn, hell, ashfuck, and motherfucker no more. Cuz if I say them words at school, she’ll be mad at me.” CJ squirmed in his seat. “I don’t like mommie mad at me. She ain’t let me on my tablet and I can’t play with Harley.”

“So no fuckin’ cussin’ no more, son?” Christopher asked, wondering if he should try and correct CJ’s speech again.

CJ shook his head in his exaggerated manner, hard enough to move his entire body. It surprised him that his kid didn’t rattle the fuck out of his brain. “No fuckin’ cussin’ no more, ‘Law.”

Though wrong like a motherfucker, Christopher laughed at his boy’s statement. Recovering, he looked at Digger. “Anything to know before I go home?”

“Nope. Situation the same it’s been for almost five fucking months. Quiet like a motherfucker.”

“Everything settled down,” Christopher pointed out. “Operations runnin’ smooth. Ain’t no motherfucker fuckin’ with us.” Except for that one motherfucker Mort had to see to. “It’s just fuckin’ domestic shit.”

“Domestic problems easy. Almost no fun. Once me and Bunny talk shit out,
boom,
it’s settled. No fucking strategizing. Staking motherfuckers out. Most problems we having right now is my fucking wedding and those goddamn tuxedos Bunny want us to wear.”

“She already know I ain’t wearin’ a fuckin’ monkey suit, Digger. I did it one fuckin’ time for Megan. Ain’t no other bitch gettin’ me in one.”

“Mommie a bitch?”

Christopher smoothed the hair at the nape of his neck. “No, boy. Ain’t meant that.”

Well, fuck. CJ being in school wasn’t such a bad thing. He wouldn’t be around to listen to adult conversations.
See
adult situations. Also, he’d have fucking professionals teaching him the proper language. It was too goddamn much trouble for Christopher.

“Time to fuckin’ go,” he announced, waiting until CJ and Rule slid out of their seats to head to the door. “Hit me on my cell if you need me, Digger. Other-fuckin-wise, see you tomorrow.”

While Rule grabbed his hand on the walk home, Christopher allowed CJ to run ahead, weaving between the bikes and yelling at the top of his lungs. Unable to stop his smile, Christopher followed behind, waving at the Probate on gate duty today, since Stretch was fucking around with Cash and that Bob.

And Diesel.

He wouldn’t fucking think about that situation. It was what the fuck it was.

CJ switched out the bikes with trees to continue zigzagging toward home. His motorcycle boots didn’t stifle his speed at all. Christopher wondered if his son would even know how to walk in sneakers. Not to mention how he’d act out of his cut. By now, his kid owned more cuts than he, himself, did since Megan made sure they kept up with CJ’s size.

In the fall, he’d be in uniform. How the fuck that would work out, Christopher couldn’t imagine. He’d be in school with Ryan, so they’d suffer together. It would be a huge change for the boys, going from the freedom they had at the club to a regimented education.

Reaching the residential area, Christopher saw Bailey’s Escalade parked in front of Mort’s house, along the street laid out for the sake of the girls. Megan parked her car in their garage most of the time. Zoann was probably out on a job, Bunny had no car, and Kendall lived too far in the woods for him to know if she was home or not.

Domestic problems easy.

According to Digger, anyway. He’d adjusted easily to family life. Out of all of them, he’d had Mort to protect the fuck out of him from the harsher realities of life, so he hadn’t had the fucking hang-ups the rest of them did.

Logan had hated Christopher and made his life miserable.

Logan had loved Johnnie and made his life miserable.

Val had been addicted to sex and drugs, after watching his father murder his mother. To this day, he didn’t know where her body was buried. That secret had died with his father.

Mort had despised his father, fucking psycho pervert the motherfucker had been.

Cash had a cheating, self-serving fuckhead for a father.

Stretch had self-righteous, judgmental assfucks in his entire fucking family.

So, yeah. Digger was the sanest out of all of them. The fucking trials he’d gone through had been his own fucking fault.

Christopher wasn’t against the fucking docility of the club nowadays, but he understood what the fuck the man meant. Today, at the park when Cash brought that bitch around, was the most excitement—club wise—Christopher had in months.

For that reason, he’d only put a fucking bug in Cash’s ear tomorrow. Tell him not to
ever
fucking bring a bitch around him like that again. If they were around Christopher at the club, that couldn’t be helped.
And
they fucking knew he was off-fucking-limits. Today, Cash had brought the chick for the express purpose of having all of them fuck over their wives.

Whether it had something to do with Fee or not wasn’t important. It had still happened. Because he’d enjoyed the offer just the tiniest fraction, he’d let Cash off the hook.

At the gate, CJ stood on tiptoe, struggling to enter the code due to height limitations. Releasing Rule’s hand, Christopher stopped behind CJ. Immediately, CJ hopped on his boots and punched in the numbers, then waited until Christopher closed the gate before he skipped forward again. Roaming guard dogs didn’t hamper them, since Christopher still hadn’t gotten more. He just didn’t have any fucking luck with those motherfuckers.

CJ paused at the moat, dipping his hand into the water. “A big gator gonna eat me, ‘Law,” he hollered.

Megan spun all kinds of fucked up stories for their kids about this moat. She didn’t like them around the water, so Christopher supposed she exaggerated the danger to keep them away, despite their swimming lessons.

As if that stopped his boy.

“CJ, no do that,” Rule called.

Instead of listening to his brother, CJ stuck his other hand in. He would’ve lost his balance and fallen over if Christopher hadn’t rushed and grabbed him.

“Bad CJ,” Rule said.

“Dumm ashfuck,” CJ responded.

“Stop both of you.” Christopher scowled at CJ. “Don’t fuck with this water, boy.”

“’Kay, ‘Law.” Off he went again, waiting at the mud room door until Christopher reached him. Then, he opened the door. “We home, Mommie.”

He’d eaten out with the guys and the kids, so Christopher wasn’t hungry. But the scent of garlic and onions hit him in the nose. Whatever the fuck she cooked smelled so fucking good.

“Bye!” Rule offered Megan a quick, “hey, ma,” before speeding off and yelling for Rebel at the top of his lungs.

Lowering the burner, Megan shook her head at Rule’s eagerness to get to his twin sister. She smiled at Christopher. “Hey, you.”

“Hey, baby.”

He leaned toward her for a kiss.

“Mommie, ‘Law got a pretty girl at the park with him,” CJ announced before Christopher touched his lips to Megan’s.

The words distracted her. Instead of giving Christopher a kiss, she frowned at CJ.

If Christopher said one fucking thing, it would worsen matters, so he shut the fuck up, pretending his heart wasn’t pounding a little too fucking fast.

“No, potato,” she said. “Daddy wouldn’t bring a girl to the park with him.”

Christopher winced, his stomach turning inside fucking out. He
hadn’t
brought a bitch with him. Cash had. Still, her belief in his faithfulness made him feel like shit right now. The Bob’s words
had
given him a hard cock. It didn’t matter if he’d been thinking about Megan. Another woman had caused the reaction.

“Are you hungry?” she asked, still looking at CJ. As far as she was concerned, the matter had dropped.

“The pretty girl that got white hair, Mommie,” CJ said, tugging on Megan’s shirt and looking gravely at her.