Page 33 of Dark As Coal

I could feel the looks of the brothers on me.

But I didn’t give a good goddamn.

I didn’t speak.

Since I didn’t normally speak, nobody caught the change in me, no one.

Or so I thought.

Someone was watching me from his stool.

Someone that had never let me down.

And I would soon find myself forgetting that fact.

I would also soon realize just how much Adeline loved me, even though she never spoke the words.

But that there was only so much she could take.

***

“I don’t think I can do this anymore,” I muttered into my bottle as the brothers mingled with another club that we were thinking of allying with.

Shocked that those words had even come to fruition in my brain.

Shocked that those words found themselves on my tongue.

Shocked that I found myself not regretting putting them out in the world.

And I should have been shocked that I had flinched from Adeline’s touch earlier, and then I should have put a bullet in my head for causing a look of hurt, and pain to mar her beautiful features.

Alas, that was why I didn’t drink.

But this day, and what else it really signified, I couldn’t beat it all back.

“Holy. Fuck. Who the fuck is that? Momma slap my ass and call me yours,” I heard Stud ask but paid it no mind like I always did.

“Who is she?” Stud asked again.

And yeah, he earned his name Stud.

It was a wonder at all the trash he had slid his dick into that it hadn’t fallen off.

And that was when everything came online.

Because it clued me in as to who he was asking about.

Furthermore, I realized that my brothers were all looking at me.

It was that… it was the looks from all of them that clued me into who he was asking about.

I felt my fucking gut clench.

And then repeated the words I’d said to myself this very morning as I sat in that chair in my shed that was bolted to the cement floor by the drain.

She’s too fucking good for me.

I don’t deserve to touch her with how much blood is on my hands.

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