Easy off. “From the look on your face, I would’ve thought that dinner was a bust but this is great shit.”
“It was a bust.” He throws himself onto the sofa and flips on the television. After about a minute of scrolling through a dozen channels, he hits the power button and throws the remote on the floor. Agitated, he starts pacing and I can’t stop staring because Easy rarely gets anxious. During deployment, the crazier it got outside the wire, the calmer he was. Dude just never gets riled. Now he’s wearing a path across the living room carpet.
“Her father’s a fucking asshole. I don’t know why she is even with him.”
“What’d he do? Spout Bible shit the whole time?”
“I expected that.” He throws up his hands. “He’s a preacher for fuck’s sake, so yeah, I was prepared for the hellfire and brimstone talk and even the questioning of whether I was good enough for her but I wasn’t prepared for him to cut her down the whole time.”
“What?” That gets me to drop the food on the table.
“Yup. He spent half the time criticizing her food, calling her stupid, and suggesting she’s too plain to snag a man and the other half telling me I’m a sinful demon going to hell.”
“Well, you already knew the last half was true,” I joke grimly.
He barks out a short, humorless laugh. “Don’t know why she doesn’t want to move in with us.”
Easy doesn’t get how fear and loneliness can drive you to make bad decisions. Despite belonging to a motorcycle club, everyone still thinks he’s the shit. He still goes to family dinners, still kisses his grandma and generally he’s liked and admired around town.
He doesn’t have a frame of reference for someone like Annie but I get it. Having knocked around foster homes and not really finding a place to belong to until I came here and patched into the Death Lords, Annie’s reasons for staying with an asshole of a father make perfect sense. He’s the one person that makes the world less frightening for her. As long as she believes her old man loves her, no matter how crappy he treats her, she’s not alone in this world.
I’ve felt the same way. It’s how I ended up with my back full of scars. I try to explain it to Easy.
“Remember when I told you that I got those whip marks on my back from a preacher who was mad I’d fucked his daughter?”
“Yeah?” His voice is wary, confused about my abrupt change in subject.
“I knew she was bad news when I started seeing her. When we were in school, she pretended she didn’t know me. Even on the street, if we’d run into each other she’d walk by without a word. But in secret? She couldn’t get my pants off fast enough. I couldn’t fuck her hard enough. There wasn’t a goddamn thing she couldn’t wait to do. It didn’t matter that I made her come screaming three times the night before because the next day I was dead to her. But I still kept going back, not because I was sticking it to the man or I liked the stupid secret shit but because she kept telling me she loved me and sick sap that I was, it was enough.”
The best thing about Easy is because of his relatively stress-free upbringing, he’s pretty damn open-minded and not quick to judge. He considers my story and then nods. “So she’s scared. Her dick of a father has spent years telling her she’s worthless on one hand and that she can only survive with him on the other. It’s a miracle that she even took a chance on us.”
“Pretty much but we’ve showed her something different—an alternative. But it’s not realistic she’s gonna trust us overnight that we’re going to stick.”
“I hate being patient.” Easy’s frustration draws a snort from me because, yeah, he doesn’t like to wait. “Maybe you should’ve gone over.”
“Nah, I wouldn’t have made it through the whole dinner. I’d have pushed his head in the potatoes and you’d have to be bailing me out of jail right now.”
The doorbell rings as we’re laughing. A quick look at the microwave says that it’s too late for anything but a booty call or club business. Given that neither of us is hooking up with anyone but Annie, it must be club business. Michigan is shrugging into his cut as I open the door.
“Annie.” Easy throws the door wide. My welcoming smile fades when she doesn’t immediately rush in.
“Is it okay that I came over? I wanted to apologize.” She shifts uncomfortably as Easy stares at her in surprise.
I muscle Easy out of the way and drag her over the doorstep. Easy slams the door shut as I lead Annie into the living room. Her face is flushed and her hair is in a tangle. I want to dig my fingers into her scalp and hold her tight while I ravage her mouth but I’m not a teenager who can’t control himself.
Oh, what the hell. Fuck I’m not. I swing her around and place my leg between her thighs and pull her tight against me. “No apologies necessary,” I growl and capture her mouth for a long, bruising kiss. There’s not even a moment of hesitation before she melts into me, wrapping her two arms around my shoulders and shimmying up my thigh as far as her long, ugly tan skirt permits.
“Give her some air.” Easy taps me on the head and I reluctantly let her go. A glance at her shiny lips has me swooping in for another taste.
When I release her again, she stumbles back with a dazed look of passion. Pride and arousal swirl in an explosive combination inside me. I’m making her look like this and she’s making me so hard, I can hardly move. Easy rolls his eyes and guides her to the couch, pulling the backpack off her shoulder. I hadn’t noticed it in my rush to devour her.
Once there, she catches her breath and turns to Easy. “I’m so, so sorry about what happened. I didn’t realize he’d act like this. I’m going to take the first job that’s available.”
“Stay here.” I try to make it an offer and not a command.
As she looks around, I can see her weakening and so can Easy. He jumps in.
“Even if it’s for a little while until you got your feet under you,” Easy suggests.
I nod in agreement. I want her to stay with us, not just for a little while but she’s skittish and from what Easy says about her home life, this is a big step for her.
“Gosh, I guess…I mean it would solve a lot of problems for us.” She runs a hand through her hair. Nervous or scared? I can’t tell.
“It’s an option if you want it.” I try to play it low key. Easy throws me the backpack which I immediately take down into Easy’s bedroom which is larger and has a king-sized bed. Behind me I hear Easy ask if she wants to watch a movie.
Good move. I toss her backpack into the corner and hurry back to settle in next to her.
“The Natural’s playing. You ever seen that?” Easy points the remote at the television and presses play.
“No.”
“Baseball story but it’s got a love story too.”
“Hey, I like baseball.”
“You do?”
“Sure. Father and I went to a Twins game once. We were in the Cities for a pastors’ conference and it was the family outing. I had a lot of fun. I think I was twelve, maybe thirteen. It was nice being there with all the other kids and their families.” She cocks her head and wistfulness is evident in every line. I know without her saying another word that she never saw those families again but held on to the dream that baseball was something she held in common with her cold dad.
Easy humphs and I don’t say a word.
“He’s not all bad,” she explains. “After Mom left it was just him and me and we learned how to create our own unit without her. It was tough at first. His congregation takes up a lot of his energy and he relies on me to be responsible. She doesn’t want anything to do with us anymore. It hurts but I have him.”
I share a look of understanding with Easy over her head. Her father made time for everyone in the church but not for her. That she believed that he didn't have an obligation to take care of her as her father even after her mother left shows why she’s nervous about leaving him.
“Your father did one better than mine,” I admit, drawing my fingers through her long pretty brown hair. ?
?He was a drug addict and so is my mom. The state took me away from them right after I was born because about two seconds after labor she was out in the streets looking for her next hit. It was a miracle I wasn't born with some kind of birth defect or health problem given how much she used while she was pregnant. They tried a number of times to send me back into the home, none of which I remember, but ultimately she was a fuck-up and the sperm donor who knocked her up couldn’t be found.”
“Did you get adopted then?” she asks, full of curiosity but not pity.
A harsh laugh escapes me. “Fuck no. I was a hard kid with a learning disability and a bad attitude. I was passed from foster home to foster home and eventually wound up entering the Marines.”
“Then I adopted him.” Easy taps his chest like a fucking proud papa. I ignore him and drop my hand to start massaging Annie’s neck. She likes that a lot and her head falls forward to allow me greater access.
“You served in the Marines together?” she mumbles into her chest.
“Yup. We were battle buddies. You get assigned to another Marine or a couple of Marines and if they fuck up, you fuck up so the idea is to make sure that no one fucks up.”
“Like your brother’s keeper.”
“Something like that.”
“Is that how you started sharing?” She tilts her head from one side to the other to take us both in.
Easy gives a small shrug. “Yeah, I suppose. We were over in the Philippines doing a tour, drinking snake venom and trying not to spend all of our money as new recruits tend to do. We were drunk and ended up together. After a few times of tag teaming I found I enjoyed it more than the vanilla shit I’d done in the past. I like watching. That’s probably my biggest kink but there’s something about sharing that revs my engine past ten.”
“So it’s like this for every girl you’re with?” The quietness is a warning signal—I hope Easy picks up on it. Insecurity lurks behind her question. I recognize that because when I entered the Marines I was sure everyone hated me as much as I hated them. My anger got me into a lot of trouble in the beginning, but Easy never gave up on me. I'm going to apply those lessons to Annie.