Page 4 of Wait For Me

“No, it’s not. Someone is going to have this girl’s back, and it’s obvious that none of you idiot men are willing to be the one to do it. So, I have her back.”

“WE ALL HAVE HER FUCKING BACK!” My uncle bellowed the words at my aunt, making her flinch and slink back away from him. I don’t think I ever heard him raise his voice in my life until today, so I understood her reaction. I doubted she had ever heard him roar in anger that way either.

“You’re right, I should have checked in on things sooner. My mind’s been on men we lost, friends we lost, more family gone because of some senseless bullshit - just like what happened to my sister, and damn near on the anniversary of her death too. I dropped the ball, and yeah, that’s on me. Don’t you stand there and make it out like I don’t love my fucking niece or something. I would never leave her hanging out to dry. Why do you think I’m here and not in Alabama right now? I just didn’t realize,” he cut his eyes toward Jared again, “that it hadn’t been handled already. She never said a word to anyone about shit, so I thought that was because she was secure in her place here.” He sighed and scraped his hand along his beard that was starting to go gray down the center. “It was bad timing, and shitty communication, not the lack of care, Viv. Give me a break here.”

“What would you have done if she slipped out those doors and was gone?” Viv asked.

A horrible noise came from not only my uncle, but across the room from me where Jared stood. “Do you even know why I’m here?” Viv asked.

It was then that my uncle’s shoulders stiffened, because it finally occurred to him that his wife shouldn’t have been at the clubhouse at all.

“Mitzi texted me, said that I better get over here and rescue Star because she thought our girl was about to hop a bus out of town, especially after how that idiot over there made a joke out of a half-assed proposal for Star.”

“Mitzi had no right to tell you club business. I don’t care whose woman you are.” Jared argued.

“Oh shut up,” Viv countered even though she knew better than to talk to a club brother with that level of disrespect, especially while in the clubhouse. “She had every right because I asked if she was around that she video your proposal to my niece so that I could watch it.” Viv took her phone out and queued that shitshow right on up and handed her phone over to Uncle Mack.

He watched, turned it off, and hung his head for a minute before dropping it into the cradle of his palms.

“Jesus fucking Christ,” he groaned. “You can’t be this fucking stupid!” He turned angry eyes on Jared. “When Tripp sees that shit, you are fucking done, man. That’s how you respected his daughter? His fucking princess?” Uncle Mack shook his head back and forth for a minute. Then he straightened and grabbed up the two heavy suitcases as if they weighed nothing.

“Let’s go, you’re coming to the house to stay. You can have the apartment over the garage until you decide what you want to do,” he told me. “And make no mistake, there’s not a damn time limit on you deciding. You figure your shit out, get a job, go to school, marry some rich, punk-ass, polo-shirt-wearing fucknut for all I care. So long as you’re happy and ready to move on, not a moment before.”

Viv couldn’t hide the grin that bloomed across her face in the wake of her man’s words. I would have laughed at his descriptiveness; except I was too busy noticing Jared’s angrily clenched fists.

My uncle must have noticed too. He chuckled as he passed by Jared. “Pisses you off to think about someone else sliding in there, don’t it?” He asked him. Jared must have said something I didn’t hear because my uncle grinned at him. “Good, maybe you’ll put some thought into how to fix that shit then.”

We made it all the way to the clubhouse’s front door before my brother caught up to us and stopped everyone from leaving. “Where are you taking my sister?”

“My house.”

“Tripp won’t like that,” Grady told him from where he was perched at the end of the bar.

“Well Tripp should have squared all this away long before the shit that went down in Alabama too, so I guess he’ll have to deal with the fallout from that like the rest of us,” Uncle Mack argued back.

Grady just grinned. Then he glared at someone standing behind us. “Prospect, get over here and get me a beer!”

I glanced around, because I hadn’t seen a prospect in the room as we walked through. The only person behind us was Jared. He also took a moment to glance around as Grady laughed. “Yeah, I’m talking to you, dipshit. Better get used to it, because ten-to-one odds you lose that cut when Tripp hears about this clusterfuck.”

I didn’t get to hear his response because my aunt and uncle ushered me out of the clubhouse too quickly.

“Could that really happen?” I asked.

“Your dad sees that proposal video, he’ll be lucky that’s all that happens,” my uncle grumbled as we loaded up in Aunt Viv’s car.

Well shit.

1

Bagger

Two months earlier

“Need to talk,” Tripp called to me as I passed by both him and Mack on my way out. I had a couple bitches waiting on me for a good fucking time and didn’t want to have to stop to have a chat with my Prez and VP, but couldn’t deny them either.

“What’s up?”

“Office,” he called back without stopping, forcing me to follow behind. Fuck. I pulled my phone out and texted Sarah.

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