Page 21 of A Love So Hard

“What? Why?” She huffed.

“Because you know better than to run your mouth like that about what you’re doing around here. You want to open your mouth – it better be to blow a brother. Otherwise, you keep your shit zipped up tight.”

I tugged Lucy away from that scene before she could hear any more. Fuck! How did it always go so wrong when I took her places that were supposed to show her how my life was lived?

“That was a little intense,” Lucy commented as we moved to where the kitchen was set up.

“Yeah, well, that’s part of the life here.” Again, she stiffened. “Not that every brother partakes in them, Lucy. It’s just the way things work.”

“He’s your friend though, right? Your best friend?” Yeah, I knew that was why it was going to hit hard.

“He is, and he’s also his own person who will have to face the repercussions of his own decisions, but they aren’t for us to judge or comment on. I don’t know what he and his wife have agreed to or not, and it isn’t my place or yours to get involved there.”

Lucy shrugged her shoulders. “I don’t know his wife, obviously. I just feel bad that I made that assumption and caused all that,” she waved her hand at the scene that was still going on behind us. The whore had been new enough that I didn’t even know her name, but it seemed she wouldn’t be sticking around after that show since she was still running her mouth to Merc. Unlucky for him, they were no longer alone. I was pretty sure that was Lily who had just come in carrying their son, Declan, on her hip.

“Come on, babe.” I directed Lucy back behind the kitchen to the spare room I had taken up in order to get away from all the noise and bullshit. “This is me back here,” I explained.

“You have the room behind the kitchen?” She laughed then. “Who did you upset to get this room?”

“What do you mean? I moved to this room on purpose.”

“You did? Why?”

“To get away from that particular type of drama.” I looked down into her eyes as we stood outside my room. “Listen, I don’t use the whores, but they’re always around. They always will be, and since almost all of the other brothers have rooms upstairs or over on the other side of the building that means the whores gravitate that way. Not a damn one of them will use the kitchen if they can help it, so this is a quiet space away from all that.” Lucy grinned up at me then. Ah, thankfully, she was getting it.

“Well, what are you waiting for? Show me to your room.”

Suddenly, I was nervous. I very rarely had anyone in my room and never had a woman been allowed to cross over the threshold. I took the spot when one of the recent prospects patched in and no longer needed it. It had been the room given to those people who didn’t deserve what the club deemed as better. Then again, most of the men of the club preferred easy access to the club pussy. What made the room unworthy to them made it a prize to me. Oddly enough, now I was seeing that I hadn’t even realized what a prize it would be. First there was Lucy’s reaction to why I’d taken it. Then there was the fact that I was just now understanding that if Lucy and I had sex and she ended up being loud, everyone would hear her if I had one of the other rooms. I knew this because it was part of what drove me down here behind the kitchen to begin with. It’s hard to listen to the ongoing porn sound track of all the other rooms upstairs when you’re celibate for so long.

I turned the handle of my door after unlocking it and stepped aside. I wished I could be inside the room first so I could get a look at Lucy’s reaction, but I’d have to settle for staring at her ass while she took in my meager belongings, and judged the room that had been mine for the past two years. “Do you play or is that just a way to pick up women?” She tipped her head toward the bass guitar in the corner.

I laughed. “Lucy, there’s only one woman for me, so tell me if it will help get you on my good side and I might play you a little something. Though, in case you weren’t aware it’s a bass, so it’s not exactly the stringed instrument the women go wild for.”

She laughed right along with me. “Do you play guitar too, or something else?”

“Nah, I thought about it, but then I found myself running out of time to even practice with that so I never bothered.”

“I get that. I gave up reading as many books while I was in college.” She rolled her eyes at her own phrasing. “Not that I wasn’t reading,” she hastily added. “I just read what I had to for class and not what I really wanted to.”

“What did you like to read, Lucy? Those juicy books where the men on the covers can’t seem to find their shirts?”

“Nope,” she offered with a pop of the p. Then she turned to glance around my room once more. “I enjoy Dean Koontz, Stephen King, and once in a while I’ll dip my toes into an Anne Rice novel.”

“So you like it scary?”

“They’re intriguing stories. I always wonder how in the world the authors come up with the things they do. What kind of person dreams up family pets coming back from the dead to attack everyone?”

I shrugged my shoulders. “I’m guessing a rich person considering who you’re talking about,” I teased.

“That’s probably very true,” she agreed as she moved to the utilitarian wood dresser and ran her fingers over the books I had there. Most of them were about Harleys but there were a few that weren’t. She took note of the real estate brochures I had sitting there, but didn’t mention them.

“Why is it that you don’t have a bunch of posters up on your walls of naked women on motorcycles?”

I laughed so hard I couldn’t respond. She just kept watching me and honestly waited for an answer. “Seriously? Is that what you thought you’d find in here?”

“Don’t laugh. Whenever I pictured your room that’s what would come to mind. I guess I played into the stereotype, huh?”

“Yeah, it sounds like you did. Though, if you had come into my room back when you first met me you wouldn’t have been disappointed. I had all that then.”

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