Page 9 of Diesel

I was her Daddy in bed, not when making her decisions. “Do what you gotta do,” I said. I sat on the picnic table and grabbed a beer from the ice bucket. I drank half before Gigi spoke.

“I wanna go with you tomorrow, Diesel.”

“Then go.”

“But what about my mom?”

“Then go see her.”

Gigi put her hands on her hips, eyes burning a hole through my head. She didn’t like my answers, but I wasn’t raising a child.

“You’re no help!” She looked at the message again. “We should discuss this.”

And so it began. We needed to talk about it. “Okay. I think your old man is pulling some shit on you. You go home, and he won’t let you leave.”

“You’re saying he’s using my mom?” She shook her head. “I can’t believe you’d think that.”

I finished the beer because beers were meant to be finished. “Yeah. That’s what I think.”

“Fuck you,” she said.

“What’s wrong?” Skittles asked, exiting the club with Beast.

I nodded at Gigi. “Her old man thinks he can keep her there if he gets her home.”

“My father sent a message that mom is sick and needs me to come home.” Gigi pointed at me. “This asshole thinks my father is lying.”

I got up from the table, grabbed another beer, and started toward the door. “I told you. Do what you gotta do.” I left Gigi with Skittles. They could figure that shit out.

“You okay?” Beast asked when I sat at the bar.

“Every fucking woman I meet wants to fix me, brother. I don’t get it.”

“You did invite her along.” Beast grabbed a beer from behind the bar, placed his elbows on the counter, and stared at me. “What’s going with you, brother?” He twisted the top off his beer. “You wanted to kill those guys behind the dick house.”

“I sure the fuck did.” I told him about the ringing in my ears and the voice that spoke to me more often than I wanted to admit. I told him about the Ushers, his face a fucked up look of confusion. There was a reason I never talked about my past.

“So we go and figure this shit out.”

“I don’t wanna take you away from club business.”

“This is club business, Diesel. We don’t leave anyone behind.”

Big Kentucky, frazzled, joined us. “We got a problem at the farm.” He glanced at me, worried. “Couple of the Prospects caught two Messengers trying to steal guns. Stimpy says the Messengers told them more of the club was on the way to fuck them up.”

We left the bar and went straight to our bikes. Cinder, Watcher, and Slash joined us. Gigi and Skittles were gone, as was G’s car. I guessed she’d made her decision. I believed what I believed. I had the years and the experience on G. We all had to learn the hard way, her included. We left the club as I tried to push her from my mind. Pussy had me in its crosshairs, and for whatever reason, I didn’t want to be anywhere but there. Goddamnit, I loved the woman, and I just fucking met her.

Twenty minutes later, we pulled onto the farm property too late. The house’s front door stood open, and two Prospects lay on the porch.

Beast checked the bodies. Neither was Stimpy, but both were new Prospects. “Check the fucking house.” He pointed at me. “You find a messenger, and I want him alive.”

In the house, I found two dead Messengers but no Stimpy. For once, it wasn’t me killing someone.

I told Beast what I found, and then a glint from the waist-high grass caught my attention. We pulled our weapons and approached the grass.

“Diesel,” Wendy said. She got up and threw her arms around me. She turned and showed us the injured Stimpy. “He snuck me away. They thought we ran off.”

Watcher and I helped Stimpy up. The bullet wound in his shoulder oozed blood. The asshole would win club member of the year the way things were going.

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