Page 59 of A Love So Hard

“Oh!” I really wanted him to do that. Conflicted I glanced back and forth between CJ and my closet. He laughed at me again.

“Shit! Go on, babe. Get your shit done. I’ll run by the club and check on the shit you asked me to, and then I’ll grab us some steaks for tonight. Anna’s staying at her friend’s house so it’ll be just the two of us. All night.”

“All night,” I parroted with a bright smile on my face. “God, I love the sound of that.”

“I’m sure you do. Just make sure you’re back early enough before your narcoleptic, geriatric ass taps out for the night, yeah?”

“Charles Jason Brothers! You have called me fat, sleepy, and old in the course of fifteen minutes this morning. You sir, are going to be lucky if I let you stick your dick in an electric socket!”

He burst out laughing. “I bet that will be electrifying!”

The asshole continued to cackle. “Buzz-worthy even,” he added.

I decided I didn’t need this shit, and I had clothes downstairs in the drier that I hadn’t bothered to take out, fold, and put away yesterday. I left the room and headed in that direction in nothing more than a tiny little spaghetti strapped tank top and a thong.

“Oh my God! Mom! Cover that shit up!”

“Forgot to tell you, Toby’s here!” My husband yelled this amidst more cackling laughter. The damned hyena.

“I hope you choke on your own tongue while your yucking it up,” I yelled back. Then I turned to my son and pointed an accusatory finger at him. “I’ll deal with you in a minute.” Then I covered my hind-parts with my hands as best I could and double-timed it to the laundry room. My son’s laughter joined with his fathers.

“Come on, let’s dip before she comes back to yell at you too!” CJ called out to him conspiratorially. Those jerks followed through too. By the time I had my clothes on and moved back out into the living room they were both long gone. Not that I hadn’t heard their Harleys start up with the loud rumble the two of them make whenever they’re riding together. I shook my head. As much as those two could get on my nerves, it was so good to have my fun-loving, playful boys back. I don’t think any of us had realized just how hard everything had been on all of us. Ever took the brunt of the pain, but it was clear the entire family needed that reckoning in order to heal and move on with life instead of being trapped in a prison of regret, pride, and whatever else was holding them all back.

We now knew what are family should have been like all along. Unfortunately, I was realizing that while it had come late, it also had come at a time when I only had one baby left at home with me. That’s why I made family dinner night a once a week thing. My kids were all required to be home that night and so was CJ. If there was club business that took the boys out of town for a bit, that was different, but it was basically the only exception to the rule and a rare one at that since the Charleston Chapter of the Aces High MC was now running completely clean in the eyes of the law.

The only flaw the club still had, as I saw it, was that they still had the whores running around over there. Supposedly, only for the single men, but I knew better. Granted, I knew my man wasn’t messing around with them, but that didn’t mean I had to approve of their presence. I didn’t see why the men of the MC couldn’t just go to one of their many strip clubs or bars, pick up women there, and take them home. You know, like normal men did. I knew the line though. “Babe, we aren’t normal men!” It’s what CJ told me all the time when I asked the question. I still think that answer was a cop-out though, because if my man could be loyal and faithful to me all these years, then those men certainly could abide by different standards too.

We rolled up to the clubhouse a little too early to catch most of the men I needed to talk to. Since I had Toby riding with me I pulled him straight to one of the couches set off to the side near the pool table where I knew we wouldn’t be interrupted. “Your mom tells me you’ve been having problems with one of the club whores?”

Toby groaned then grinned up at me. “Listen, mom hates the fact that we have club whores so I think she’s probably blown it a little out of proportion, but yeah one of them was following me around for a bit. She made it known she wanted to be my old lady. I made it evident that shit wasn’t happening.”

“You fuck her?”

Toby grinned. “Yeah, before I knew she was crazy. I mean, club pussy is club pussy. I thought they all knew their place.”

I laughed at my son’s analysis. “They all start out pretending to know their place. Some of them actually do, but most are looking to land them an old man to take care of their asses. Don’t know if it’s status, the thought of having club protection, or plenty of cash to blow, but the life attracts all types, and you’d be a fool to think that none of them come in here hoping to make that shit permanent.”

Toby shrugged. “I met someone. I’ve been seeing her on and off for a while. She, um,” my son hesitated, blushing, which was highly unlike him. “She has definitely made me work for it. She wasn’t thrilled I’m a member of the club,” he admitted.

“Ah, well, she’s probably the best kind of woman then.”

I watched as a dreamy expression flitted across my son’s face and I knew he had found his woman. She would be the one he put his kutte on. Hell, maybe she’d be the one giving me my first grandbaby. Lucy would be happier than hell with that. She had already been complaining about how empty the house felt all the time, and thinking that maybe we needed to start traveling more so she wouldn’t have to think about how empty the house really was.

“Yeah, so when I got with her, I told the crazy club bitch that I wasn’t interested and never would be. She didn’t want to take no for an answer and tried to push it.”

“That part of the reason you mentioned being off and on with this woman that sets your world on fire?”

“Yeah, dad,” he answered and in his own way he set my fuckin’ world on fire with that. It was rare he called me dad since we were also club brothers. Inside the clubhouse it was almost always Double-D, a name I’d sincerely come to loathe over the years. My own wife refused to say it. She called me CJ only, something no one else did. That was hers, and hers alone.

“Seneca tried to pull some shit early on, told my girl that we were still hot and heavy and I was just using her to make Seneca jealous so she’d commit.”

“How’d you get her to believe you that it wasn’t the case?”

My son laughed, though there wasn’t a whole lot of humor in it. “That was actually because the dumb bitch ran her mouth too far without thinking. Claimed I was fucking her all night long, but I’d been with my girl that night.” He winked at me. “Fucking her all night long,” he added.

“That was good. So she knew you weren’t lying and the whore was. Seneca, you said?” He nodded. “Who the fuck is that?” I hadn’t bothered to learn any of the whore’s names since I was 18-years-old and I hadn’t been about to start for any reason other than one seemed to have set her sights on my kid.

“Short, tiny thing with giant boobs and bleached out hair with extensions that make it look like it’s down to her ass, but in reality I pulled some of that shit out when I fucked her the one time and the real stuff is only about shoulder length.”

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