I don’t fucking want you?” I asked. For a smart chick, she could be dumb as shit.
She nodded. “Why else would you—” I cut her off and although I knew she was upset, for some reason that only enraged me more.
“I don’t know, Ti. Maybe because I’m about to go to war with my old man and I had to meet with some of my old brothers who want to fight on my fucking side. Maybe because I think the key to winning the war might be my dead fucking mother who by the way showed up to visit me in County. Maybe because it wouldn’t look good if the first thing I did when I got released was go and see my girl whose parents I confessed to murdering so I thought a week or two to let that shit blow over was the best course of action. Maybe I felt like keeping you out from behind bars and in my sight where I could protect you was a little more fucking important then my raging undying and motherfucking overwhelming need to be with you!” I yelled. I seriously considered shaking some sense into my girl. Ti bit the side of her thumb.
“You don’t think it was fucking painful for me in there? Not to hear from you? Not to see you? I almost caved and called you a million times, but when I thought about what harm that could cause you…I couldn’t,” I finished, searching her face waiting for some sort of reaction.
She twisted her mouth the way she does when she’s thinking. The redness in her cheeks faded to pink. Her tensed muscles relaxed under my grip. “Well, when you put it that way,” she mumbled, looking off into the grove and then up at me. “Your mother really visited you in jail?”
I nodded. “Shot by my old man and tossed into the bushes on the side of the road, and she shows up twenty-five years later to say good-bye to me.” I laughed, because the entire thing was fucking absurd.
“Where’s she been all this time? And why find you now?” Ti asked. They were the very same questions I’d asked when she’d showed up.
I shrugged and told Ti how my mom thought that Chop somehow kept her captive, the idea that she’d been drugged all this time, and how Sadie said she wasn’t clear on any of the details.
“She’s why you have to leave again?” Ti asked, leaning into me instead of away from me like she had been. My cock jumped.
“Yeah, if she was important enough to my old man to keep locked up all that time, having her in my pocket wouldn’t be a bad thing. We might be able to use her to get to Chop and end all this.”
“We?” Ti asked.
“We,” I confirmed, and then I filled her in on the conversation I’d had with the brothers in the yard.
Ti smiled. “You have a club again,” she said, beaming up at me. Her reaction took me off guard. She seemed happy that I might find my way back into club life, when I thought it would be the last fucking thing she’d ever want.
I shook my head. “I wouldn’t go that far. I can’t. I don’t trust them anymore,” I admitted. “I’m not trying to run a mutiny. I’m still not a Bastard.” I paused, searching my brain for the right way to explain what I was trying to do. “This is more like banding together for the sake of revenge.” I told Ti the story of what happened to the BBBs and she gasped, covering her mouth with her hand.
“Holy shit,” she said, wrapping her arms around me.
The moment was interrupted when something with fur flew past us in a blur into the grove.
“What the fuck was that?” I asked.
“My dog?” Ti asked, squinting against the sun.
“You have a dog?”
“His name is Pancakes. Rage named him although I wanted to call him Muffin, or maybe Donut,” she said watching the spot where he’d just disappeared.
At the mention of donut my thoughts immediately went back to Deputy Dangley Arm. “We’ll talk about the dog later. Right now you just need to listen.” My anger started to boil again. “I told you to trust me, didn’t I?” I asked, squeezing her arms a little too tightly.
Her eyes snapped to mine. “Yes, and I did trust you. I’m here, aren’t I?” she asked. Her defensiveness only egged me on more.