Total pages in book: 92
Estimated words: 94897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 474(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 94897 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 474(@200wpm)___ 380(@250wpm)___ 316(@300wpm)
“I love Lincoln’s jambalaya,” she replied, sharing in her way that she not only didn’t mind, she wanted to hang with his brothers.
And he wanted her to get to know his brothers.
“Then Lincoln’s it is,” he said.
They started toward his bike and Arch did what Jag had learned she liked to do. As they walked, she angled her body so she was tucked under his arm, close to him and brushing against him as they went.
If she could have it, she was maximum contact all the time and she somehow pulled that off without seeming clingy and needy.
He was one with this, because if she wasn’t maximum contact, he would be.
These were his thoughts when his phone went with a text.
Not losing touch with Archie, he pulled it out, read the text and quickly clicked the phone off, shoving it back in his rear jeans pocket.
Archie couldn’t miss this, but she didn’t say anything.
The text was from his ma.
Am I going to see you soon?
It was the Thursday after his first weekend with Archie.
He’d been blowing his mother off.
Just like he’d done to Tack, canceling the meeting he’d set with his brother and finding another space to be in when Tack looked like he was coming into Jag’s.
He was telling himself this was about being with Archie, something he was as much as he could be, when he wasn’t at the garage and she at the store.
They’d torn the lid off, not only with sex—and they fucked all the time—but with everything.
In the last three days, he’d spent a good bit of time out on her fire escape, and they’d played a lot of pool at his pad.
He’s also eaten her for lunch in her office the day before.
And she’d met him at his place for a mid-afternoon blowjob the day before that.
It was not lost on him this uber-togetherness was what Dutch and Georgie did (in the beginning…and now).
It was also not lost on him this was what Hound and his ma did (ditto with beginning and now).
Last, it wasn’t lost on him that this was what he’d heard his dad and mom did.
He didn’t think about this either.
He thought about Archie. Getting to know Archie. Doing things to Archie and letting her do things to him.
The rest, he’d think about when it was time to think about it.
Or not at all.
* * * *
“So cute. And bruh, so cool of you,” Archie said to Dog as she handed Dog’s phone back to him after looking at pictures of Dog’s kids, all three of whom were fostered, before Dog and Sheila adopted them.
Arch looked between his girl and his brothers.
This lunch had been a surprise, and not the part of it where Archie showed out of the blue and his brothers horned in, determined to get to know her.
If he’d had to guess, he would have expected it would be about his brothers giving him shit by telling Archie every embarrassing little kid or clueless teenage boy-man anecdote they had.
And they had a lot of those in their arsenal.
It was not about that.
In fact, it didn’t even come close to that.
And something in that made Jag feel weird.
He couldn’t figure out if it was a good weird, or a bad weird.
What he knew was, it was official.
He wasn’t that little kid growing up in Chaos anymore.
You did that shit with a prospect’s girl. You did that shit to harass a boy in a way you’re teaching him to take it like a man.
You didn’t do it when he’s already a man and the woman he’s with was the one you were bringing into the family fold.
“Would take away what they had to go through to get to us,” Dog muttered to Archie, talking about his kids as he pushed his cell back into his pocket. “Even if it meant they wouldn’t be with us. But that wasn’t the way it happened. And now we got ’em.”
“And they have you,” Archie said softly.
Dog and Arch looked across each other at the round, high bar table they were occupying and shared a moment.
She was again wedged up to him, her stool close, their hips and thighs pressed together, and she was leaning against his side.
“Family is family, no matter how it came about,” Archie went on, tossing a hand toward the table to indicate the men. “You boys know that better than anybody.”
“Yeah,” Dog grunted.
Shy grinned at his bottle of beer.
Joker stared hard at Jag.
This was not Joke’s silent way of saying something about Archie, something Jag might not like.
Joker was intense. Joker’s backstory was worse than most. Joker didn’t have a family until he met Chaos and then made one of his own.
And Joker liked, even if Archie did have all of that, that she understood what Chaos meant.
“How impossible are you all going to make the task of me buying lunch for you guys?” Archie asked.