Total pages in book: 69
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 69424 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 347(@200wpm)___ 278(@250wpm)___ 231(@300wpm)
Just the idea of the shits gave me the creeps.
I hated being sick.
I paused. “Please, don’t be upset about not coming. I don’t want that shit. Literally.”
“That was the only time we could come, though.” She groaned. “Are you sure you can’t come down?”
I loved my sister.
I really, really did.
But I fuckin’ hated being back home.
Being back home brought up memories that I’d rather keep buried so deep I never thought about them.
My father, Madden, died in a fire at the gym that he co-owned. Sophia had been in the same fire, but my dad had managed to get her out. My dad hadn’t been so lucky, and he’d died.
My dad’s life had never been a good one.
He’d struggled from a young age to raise two kids, and never really got to experience life without strife.
Being home reminded me of the injustices in life, and I just wasn’t willing to go home and be yet another tragedy in the Madden family saga.
At least when I was in Dallas, I was fairly anonymous—as anonymous as you could be when you were a member of the Truth Tellers MC, anyway.
I’d first started on with the Truth Tellers MC as a part of an undercover sting operation, a joint task force of both the FBI and the DEA.
But over time, I’d found myself becoming a part of the Truth Tellers MC.
I’d found a home where I’d never expected.
And now I truly did belong—a fully patched in member of the Truth Tellers MC—and my fellow club brothers knew all.
I wouldn’t say that it’d been an easy transition after they’d found out. The club president, Webber, had originally asked me to leave and not come back.
But then I’d saved his wife in the parking lot seconds later, and he’d changed his mind.
I’d been lucky.
I’d take a bullet for their women over and over again as long as they’d let me stay.
This was the first place that I’d felt like I was home since my father had passed away.
“I’m sure,” I said to my sister. “Plus, you have everyone and their brother coming over to your place, and you know that I don’t do crowds.”
I hadn’t done crowds since life had kicked me in the teeth years ago, leaving me a burned husk of the man that I used to be.
I’d been working a concert as the first point security guard of a country music star—Bayne Green. He’d had issues that he hadn’t shared with us, and they’d targeted him for an assassination attempt—something that it came out years later came from his jilted ex-wife.
She’d succeeded in killing Bayne, and had almost killed me. Though, in the beginning, they’d thought they’d killed me, and had only maimed Bayne.
It took me nearly half a year to finally tell them that I wasn’t Bayne, but that I was Jasper Madden.
My level of care had gone downhill after that—turns out no one cares about a police officer/security guard as much as they do a country music super star.
It’d taken me another three months to finally get to the point where I could move and function without constant help and supervision.
That’d been when I’d walked into my sister’s wedding the day that she was getting married to my father’s best friend.
“If you change your mind, you know where to find us.” Sophia sighed. “I hate that you hate crowds.”
I grinned. “Next time that you have a Christmas with just you, Haggard and the kids, I’ll be there.”
“You know that’ll never happen. Too many bikers have nowhere to go. Haggard literally runs a halfway house during the holidays,” she grumbled, but I knew that she loved it. “Shit. I gotta go. The shits are back.”
When she hung up, I shoved my phone back into my pocket just in time to see the neighbor’s truck pull into the parking spot next to her house.
I smirked—because that was all I could do with half my face being so fucked up—and headed outside.
Kent, my neighbor’s brother, had been bringing his bike over here periodically to work on it since he’d gotten the machine.
It wasn’t the greatest in the world, and broke down more than it worked, but I enjoyed tinkering on the motorcycle with him.
Kent was a smart cookie, and I got along with him much easier than I did with his sister.
I got to the truck just as she went to pull the second ramp out of the back.
“He only needs one, Callie. Bikes technically only have one wheel since they are in alignment.” I teased.
I could hear her grinding her teeth. “I know that.”
She did.
She was just as smart as the rest of the Hodges family. Way smarter than me.
“Sure,” I drawled. “Move. I’ll help.”
She moved, backing so far up that there’d be no way that I could accidentally touch her.
She acted like I had the plague, but I knew it wasn’t because she couldn’t stand the sight of me.