they found over to us. Other than the car filled with evidence pointing to these crackheads, there’s nothing. If it wasn’t them, then whoever it was is in the wind, brother.”
My teeth ground together, my jaw ticking as my anger grew like a balloon in my chest. They had nothing. Echo was dead, I was as good as, and they’d gotten nothing but a couple of crackheads.
“Get the fuck out,” I snarled at him, looking toward the window. I was crossing a line speaking to him like that, but I didn’t give a fuck right then.
“Brother,” Shooter started, but I turned my glare on him, shutting him down.
“Get the fuck out, Prez, and don’t come back until you’ve got someone’s head I can take. If it’s the two crackheads then it’s them. If it’s not, I’ll find them when I’m back on my feet.” I was trying to stay calm, but the storm raging inside me was becoming dangerously hard to control. “Tell Doctor Collins we start physio tomorrow. I need to get my life back so I can kill the fuckers that did this to me. Echo needs his revenge.”
Shooter nodded, though I had no doubt he had a hundred things he wanted to say to me right then.
“You want me to bring a sweetbutt in to chill you out, brother? I heard Lola had a real good time the other night,” Casa asked. Guns and pussy, that was all he ever thought about. “Got a girl at the clubhouse who has a mouth like a fucking vacuum. Not that I’ve sampled it for a good while now, but a man don’t forget a thing like that, ya know.”
“Your old lady would cut your dick off if she caught you anywhere near another woman.” Shooter smiled, happy for the change in conversation. “You’re under her thumb, brother.”
“Because Laney is such an understanding old lady, huh?” Casa mocked. “She let you ride a fucking wave of free pussy whenever you want, huh? Nah, I didn’t think so. If I’m under my old lady’s thumb, then you’re under an entire fucking hand, Prez.” Casa laughed loudly and Shooter shook his head with a grin.
“Watch your mouth,” Shooter said with a smirk, and punched Casa in the arm.
It was all too much for me. Too much talk of pussy. Too much laughing. Too much normality when my life was hardly a life at all.
“Get the fuck out, both of you!” I said, not wanting to hear about their old ladies or their sex lives. Not while I was stuck in here with no chance of any woman sharing my bed ever again. Not with a face and body torn apart like mine.
Shooter gripped my shoulder and nodded, and he and Casa left. The room was quiet, barring the hospital noises out in the corridor. I hated the silence. I needed the noise and the mania of life to keep me going, because that was all I had. This life was all I’d ever had. And now all I had was silence, broken up by the beeping of machines.
I hated it.
I hated it so much.
It was worse than the pain and the memories.
Worse than knowing I’d gotten Echo killed or that those fuckers had turned me into a monster. Carving me up and melting away the man that I was until all that was left behind was hate, revenge, and the monster underneath.
I had to get out of here.
I had to kill them before the hate killed me.
The door creaked open and Belle came back in. She headed to the machine next to my bed and checked all the numbers and lines on it, making sense of the insanity that was on them. I had no idea what any of it meant, but she seemed to, and that was good enough for me.
I hadn’t realized that I was staring at her, my teeth grinding as she studied the numbers on the graph, until she looked away from it and turned to me. Her eyebrows puckered in and she sucked in her bottom lip thoughtfully before releasing it. She looked pretty today; the freshly fucked look was good on her.
“I’m guessing that wasn’t good news then,” she said, cocking her head to one side and ignoring what had happened between us the night before.
It was one of the things I liked so much about her; she didn’t dwell. I hated dwellers, replaying arguments and shit over and over in their heads. Thinking we needed