Page 60 of Walking Red Flag

—Cutter to Chevy

CUTTER

My eyes peeled open and I stared at the stained roof, my head momentarily offline as I tried to figure out how I’d gotten in the position that I was in.

Then the woman next to me moved, and I was reminded.

Last night, I’d stopped drinking after my fourth beer.

Milena and Dima had not.

They’d both imbibed enough that I knew they’d needed to let off steam.

Some of the brothers got just as shit-faced as them.

Others had kept it mostly sober to protect the lone woman in our midst.

Long hours later, we’d driven back to my place in Dima’s car, and I’d hauled them both inside.

Dima was on my couch snoring—I could hear him sawing logs from the bedroom—and Milena was currently in my arms.

The woman was dead asleep, which was how I’d extricated myself from her embrace.

Last night, she’d dressed in a pair of my sweats and my NAVY sweatshirt that was so big on her that it might as well have been a blanket.

Today, the sweats had ridden up from her ankles to reside around her lower thighs, right above her knee. The sweatshirt was still in place, but half of her shoulder was visible.

And all that black hair was spread…everywhere.

On the pillow. The mattress. My pillow. Under both pillows.

How did she sleep with it unbound?

Okay, so the woman was adorably cute.

Until she went to sleep.

Then she had some terrifying things to say.

At first, I thought the sleep talking was adorable.

But then she started saying creepy things.

For instance, the last thing she’d said that had woken me from a dead sleep was, “Do you see it? It’s right behind you.”

At one point in the night she’d woken and said, “What’s that on your dresser?”

From that point on, I’d decided that earplugs might be the way to go the next time I slept with her.

Standing up and stretching my arms up high over my head, I yawned, though I tried to do it quietly as not to wake the woman that definitely needed some sleep.

When I got through brushing my teeth and using the bathroom, I headed out to the coffee pot that I’d set to brew not long ago—which likely had been part of why I’d woken.

The smell of coffee was one of my most favorite things in the morning.

The first was pussy, but that wasn’t in the cards for me right then, so I went with the coffee as a close runner up.

I was taking a sip of the brew when I saw a leg on my front porch.

---