Page 81 of Devil's Own: Roughneck

“All right, Rough,” I say, patting his chest. “Give the girl a break.”

“Only for you,” he replies, and he bends in to kiss me again. “Fucking love you, woman.”

After giving myself a second to revel in the fact that even after all these years together, my husband still loves me, I stand from the bed and pull him up with me.

“Come on, stud. We have to get cleaned up.”

He follows me into our master bath, where he dirties me up again, even as we’re trying to get clean.

I’m not allowed to dress any differently because I’m not supposed to know what’s up. Though, I take the time to fix my hair and makeup. I’m not getting pictures with my hair in a messy bun.

But considering the party is at the clubhouse, I don’t have to do too much anyway. Cam drives herself up for a couple of reasons. First, she rarely goes places with her dad and me anymore. Once she hit teenagedom with friends who could drive, we ceased to exist except to give her money when needed or, in my case, advice. As a fellow woman and thus part of the same club, she sometimes listens to me. Whereas her father being a big, protective,I-will-gut-you-in-your-sleep-if-you-lay-a-hand-on-my-daughtermember of a very different club, she rarely, if ever, goes to him for advice.

It doesn’t help that both her brothers are patched-in members, too. Talk about being outnumbered.

They have Rowe on the gate today. Rowe is Sarge and Greer’s youngest. Rowe has his mom’s eyes and natural blond hair, but just like their other two sons, Ace and Locke, he’s a chip off the old block. That is to say, they could be triplets cloned from their father rather than womb-created and several years apart in age. He graduates with Cambria this year.

I wave as we pass while Rough shoots him the biker chin tip, and then we find a place to park. Technically, lack of parking doesn’t give anything away. Parking has been tight for years with all the brothers, wives, and kids. Most of the boys ride like their dads, but only one girl, Lacy, Dark’s oldest daughter, does. I think she enjoys it, but I think she likes to piss off her father more. If Dark says zig, she zags every damn time. In her defense, she owns a pretty badass Harley, though. It’s black and hot pink and parked in the lot among the other all-black varieties.

Given her rebellious streak, one might think she’d skip out on something as lame to a young adult as a surprise anniversary party, but Lacy and I are tight. After Mable, her surrogate grandmother who lived with them, passed, Lacy was lost. Dark and Rae had other children, and Rae is an attorney. A damn good one. It was hard for Lacy to be at their house on the club grounds, so I brought her to our place quite a bit. We didn’t have Cam yet. Lacy calls me Aunt Gee and still shows up to my house for Sunday facials and girl talk.

Rough pulls open the door for us to enter and it’s dark and quiet for a moment before someone flicks on the light and I’m just about knocked off my feet by the wave of sound coming off their collective, “Happy Anniversary!”

Okay, so I may not be surprised, but my smile is genuine. My brother and Nic are standing close to the bar while my nephews, Tripp and Titus, smile at us from the pool table, where it looks like Titus had been getting ready to take his shot before we interrupted him. I love those boys. They’re good men and good brothers to the club.

Waite and Misty, Danni’s younger sister, walk over to hug me and give Rough a back pat. Well, only Waite back pats. Misty hugs us both. I adore her, too. She’s smart, sassy, sultry, and funny as hell, and the exact combination of woman it takes to keep a man like Waite in line.

Truthfully, it does my heart good to see my boy happily settled. All the carousing that a no-attachment life as a patched-in brother offered got a bit much for me to witness, and Lord knows he didn’t listen to my bitching about it. But his no-attachment lifestyle wasn’t exactly the truth because of Misty. That’s a story, oh boy—one I’d likenever to repeat. One of her half-brothers got bullied into working for some very bad people because of hishigh-levelcomputer skills. Wanting to be like her sister—Danni’s an FBI agent now—she went in undercover to help get him out, and that was when the shitreallyhit the fan. My son had been in love with Misty before he ever knew it himself, so when trouble caught up to Misty, Waite caught up to trouble. It was a bloodbath and I’m glad to put that time in our lives behind us for good.

“Where are my grandbabies?” I ask my son.

He smirks. “Running around out back being utter pains in my ass.”

“Theyare not,” Misty says, swatting him on the chest.

He shakes his head. “I don’t know how you did it alone for so many years, Mom. They’d have sent me to an early grave already if I didn’t have Misty to rein them in.”

I shrug. “We do what we have to do.”

Those two don’t know how lucky they are to have found each other and to still be in love while raising kids. It takes work. You have to want to love the person you’re with. Just like Rough and I wanted it, so do they. There’s a lot of genuine love in this clubhouse now. So much that it’s hard to imagine the club that my husband prospected into ever really existing. When he tells me those stories about his youth and past exploits, it’s like he’s talking about some fictional place that he made up to shock me. He doesn’t, of course. Not too much in this world shocks me. I figure most of us do our best to make it through another day, and sometimes, the decisions that we make to get to tomorrow aren’t the best. That’s life. That’s what it means to be human. Still, I often think about where we both came from and the fact that the worst trauma we’ve passed on to our kids is that we love each other and have a lot of sex.In private. So they might’ve heard, but they’ve never seen. I’d say they’re pretty damn lucky.

Nic and Greer walk over to my husband and me, each holding a drink for us. Beer for him. Margarita for me. Nic knows her way around a pitcher of margaritas. I take a sip and sigh. It’s a beautiful thing.

“Nic, when I die, I want to be buried with a pitcher of your margaritas so I can party in the afterlife.”

“Who are you kidding? Like Rough would let you die? You’ll both be cyborgs by that time, so he can keep fucking you.”

“Sexbot cyborgs,” Greer teases, and we all crack up.

“You’re one to talk,” I tease Greer back. “Sarge loves your vag so much I heard he set up a camper trailer in there so he never has to leave.”

Greer throws a hand to her heart, mocking her shock. “Who told you?! No one is supposed to know.” Then she places her hand down by her pubic bone and pretends to adjust like there’s something in there now.

As the three of us laugh our fool heads off, leaning against each other to avoid falling over, the door opens, flooding the room with bright outdoor light, and Cam walks in. I swear that girl will be late for her own funeral. She rolls her eyes at us and heads to the group of girls in the back of the room.

The music starts pumping AC/DC’s “You Shook Me All Night Long” through the overhead surround-sound speakers.

“Come on,” Greer says, pulling at my shirt sleeve. “Time to shake your ass.” The three of us move onto the makeshift dance floor, which basically means we shove the men out of the way so we can dance.

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