TRIGGER: A Motorcycle Club Romance Novel Read Online Free Page A

fog gave way to a
great and terrible sickness.

 
    “Dee-Dee,” I heard Jennie
say, her voice sounding far off and distant. I looked down and was repulsed to
see that I’d thrown up some of the peas onto the front of my shirt; when had
that happened? I couldn’t remember, couldn’t remember when we’d sat down, how
long we’d been on that couch, it felt like forever, it felt like hell, it felt
like hell….

 
    “Oh, Pop,” I managed to
murmur, and then it all went black. The very last thing I remember was seeing
that blonde little witch on the screen, hearing the canned laughter, and
feeling like all that laughter was directed at me and my sad, sorry little
life.

Trigger

 
    “You’re gonna see one hell of a show if this sorry fucker doesn’t come with the money,” Steel
said, taking a long drag on his cigarette before releasing the smoke in a
billowing cough. That cough sounded less good every damn day, but the old man
wouldn’t put the smokes down to save his life.

 
    Shit, it was 2003, everyone knew that smoking was no good, but he
was an old man, and set in his ways. I’d found myself smoking more and more
those days, too. It just felt so good when
you were rolling so hard you couldn’t even feel your face…but I knew it was
just gonna kill me, and shit, Steel smelled so bad
from a lifetime of smoking that it was almost enough to turn me off altogether.
He stabbed out his cigarette and lit up a new one.

 
    “What’s he owe ,” I asked, bored to tears but needing to make
conversation. It was a quiet, lazy, summer day at one of our fronts, a topless
joint. It was just past 11, no one had showed up yet to clean up last night’s
filth and get the bar ready to open. Just me and Steel, waiting on a meeting
that was supposed to happen fifteen minutes earlier. A real easy deal, no funny business. Guy owed some money for some drugs he was gonna sell, was supposed to show up with it today.

 
    “’Bout two grand,” Steel
said. I was slightly taken aback; for the Bleeding Deacons, two grand was damn
near pocket change. Steel could have wiped his ass with a grand and blown his
nose with the other. It seemed weird to me that he would make time to meet the
guy himself to collect the debt.

 
    As though seeing my
confusion, Steel grinned at me, smoke leaking out the corners of his mouth and
nose.

 
    “ Ain’t much, but he’s a dumb Irish bastard, and I fuckin’ hate dumb Irish bastards,”
he said. If I’d felt safe doing so, I would have sighed or made a noise of
disgust.

 
    Steel hated a lot of people. Irish, Italian,
Mexican, Black, Asian…I didn’t even know what his heritage was, but he sure as
hell didn’t have much patience for people who weren’t straight up WASPs. Then
again, he hated those New England WASP types, too. Talking to Steel was like
listening to some terrible never-ending spoken word poem of racial slurs. “I wanna watch the poor shit beg.”

 
    “Right,” I answered, a safe
enough response.

 
    “Stupid Micks, dumb as the
potatoes they eat, huh?” Steel cackled. “Stupid, nasty drunks, every one of ‘ em .”

 
    “Sure,” I said. There was a
pause as Steel seemed to consider some universal truth.

 
    “Still, not as bad as the
damn wetbacks,” he said. “Coming around and speakin ’
that damn mumbo jumbo. At least the dumb ass Paddies speak English. So drunk
half the time they can’t even do that, though!”

 
    “Yeah,” I said. I was used
to this by now. I could almost predict which group he was going to go after
next. True to my prediction…

 
    “And shit, I’d give the
fuckin’ spics a whole damn mansion to live in if it meant keeping the fuckin’
Haitians out of here! A colored is one thing, but them fuckers are just weird with their fuckin’ voo -doo shit, burning down houses, fuckin’ chicken feet
everywhere…gives me the goddam creeps!”

 
    “Yeah, it’s weird,” I said,
letting my mind drift off. I