Talkin' Trash
Page 18

“I know who you are,” the woman said with a soft voice, taking my hand for a quick second. “Linc talks about you all the time.”
I frowned. “Are you part of the MC?”
She shrugged. “Benson is my brother.”
“Benson?” I asked in confusion.
“Bayou,” came Hoax’s grunted explanation. “This is his little sister, Brielle.”
Oh. Well, they couldn’t be more complete opposites.
Where Bayou was big, Brielle was tiny. Where Bayou was dark, Brielle was light.
“Y’all don’t look like brother and sister,” I pointed out.
“Basket!”
“I was adopted.”
I looked up to find the basket lowering down.
Once we had it in place where we needed it, Brielle took charge.
“You grab one end, and I’ll grab the other. We’ll lift on three,” she ordered.
I shrugged. I’d done this a million and one times. I could do this in my sleep. Yet she was looking at me like I was the weak link in this scenario and couldn’t possibly do it.
Well, she was freakin’ wrong.
I may be small, but I was mighty.
“Let’s go.”
“One. Two. Three.”
On three we moved him and set him in the basket.
The snake came with him.
Brielle made a gagging sound as she had to buckle the straps up around the snake.
“Disgusting,” she gasped.
I giggled and patted Hoax on the shoulder. “Careful there. If you drop it, she might very well have a heart attack.”
“I hate snakes,” she muttered as she did the final buckle. “All right,” she called out. “Ready!”
It took all of ten seconds for the basket to move.
All the while, he kept hold of the snake. Which, as it turned out, ended up being a water moccasin. A poisonous snake that would’ve been the cherry on top of Hoax’s very shitty sunday.
Brielle deftly climbed up the incline, not sliding once.
Me, on the other hand? Yeah, with every step up I made, I slid down two more. Linc eventually took pity on me and came down to help me despite my assurances that I could probably, maybe, eventually get up on my own.
Having him at my back, pushing me up by the ass, was definitely the highlight of my night.
Chapter 10
I need to lose weight. I know how to lose weight, but losing weight means giving up cookies, and I’m not sure that I’m that committed yet.
-Text from Conleigh to Linc
Linc
The way she took charge turned me on.
The way she was fawning over Hoax? Not so much.
Every couple of seconds he’d toss me a knowing grin, and I’d narrow my eyes at him.
She rode to the hospital with him. She started an IV. She cleaned up his face.
Basically, she fawned all over him until he was taken to surgery to remove the fish hook-shaped piece of rebar from his side.
It was then that I ordered Conleigh to come home with me so we could shower and change.
“But I don’t have any clothes,” Conleigh explained.
“I have an extra pair at the clubhouse if you go there,” Brielle offered softly.
Brielle didn’t look happy to be offering up her clothes, either.
But since she’d already changed at the hospital—she kept a change of clothes in her locker on the PICU—pediatric intensive care unit—she had no immediate need for her spare change of clothes at the clubhouse right now.
“Perfect.” I nodded, tugging on Conleigh’s hand. “Let’s go.”
Conleigh came willingly, both of us squishing and squelching our way out of the hospital.
All of us had drawn curious looks as we’d rushed inside—or at least Bayou, Brielle, and I had. Conleigh, in her no-nonsense way, had climbed her ass into the ambulance and rode with Hoax to the hospital.
The volunteers who came in the rescue truck had followed. The rest of us had departed in our personal vehicles—Brielle in her car, and Bayou and me on our own bikes.
When we’d arrived, Conleigh had Hoax’s cut and was holding onto it like she was holding something sacred.
The moment that Bayou got to her, she’d thrust it into his arms and had said, “He told me if I lost it or damaged it in any way, he’d kill me. I don’t think he was joking.”
“Well,” she sighed as we finally made it outside. “Do we pick my car up first, or do we go change and then go get my car?”
I walked up the front entrance and paused as I waited for the doors to slide open. Once they did, I threw my arm around her shoulder and tucked her in close to my side as we walked. “We don’t need to get your car. A couple of the guys went and got it. It’s at my place. They met the wrecker out at the ravine to show them where the bike was.”
She sighed. “That’s good. I was thinking we should probably get it now since I had to practically park halfway on the road, but I really didn’t want to get mud all over my seats. I just got the thing detailed when I got my oil changed last week.”
It wasn’t really that far in the road, but with the way the road curved right where she was, it might as well have been. It worried me enough that I was glad that they had moved it. I didn’t want anyone else hurt by running into it.
“I don’t think any of us have thanked you yet…but thank you.”
We both turned to see Brielle standing there, looking like she’d tasted something sour.
Conleigh grimaced. “I’d do that for anyone, but I’m really glad that I was able to find him. I’m just sorry he was hurt.”
Brielle smiled as if it pained her and walked away, heading back into the hospital.
“Nice girl,” Conleigh teased.
I snorted and hooked my arm around her neck to drop a kiss onto her head. “She’s thought she knew Hoax, and you just shattered everything she thought she knew about him.”
“What?” she asked, looking up at me. “Why?”
She had a smattering of mud on her cheek, and there was flecks of it in her hair.
“Hoax is normally a really serious guy. The fact that he was allowing you to poke fun with him, especially at a time like that when he was in pain, means he’s obviously extended a certain amount of trust to you. That, in and of itself, is huge for him. Women literally make him run in the opposite direction.” He paused. “Touching is a definite no-no. Not to mention you didn’t just do a little of the touching thing, but a lot of the touching thing. Something that Brielle has never, not ever, been able to do.”
“Well, shit,” she sighed. “She probably hates me. I thought it was because I touched your penis in front of her, and she had a crush on you.”
I chuckled. “Nope. I don’t think that’s it. Other than her cousin was laying there hurting, I think she was probably more relieved that you were fondling my junk and not his.”
She gasped. “I was trying to save you, not fondle your junk!”
I snorted. “That’s true, but she didn’t know that at the time.”
We reached my bike and both of us paused, staring at it. “What is that?”
My whispered question made her laugh. “That’s the snake. Hoax asked me to save it so he could stuff it.”
“How did it get there?” I continued.
“The medic put it there. We had it placed in a biohazard bag while I was getting the IV started since that was the first time he actually opened his hand to release it,” she explained.
“It’s still twitching,” I remarked with a curl of my lip. “And it’s huge.”
It really was, too.
It was huge in the water, and it was huge when he dragged it into the ambulance, but all rolled up like that, it was still bigger than a goddamn large-sized pizza box. We had to send a runner to surgery for one of their large body part biohazard bags.
“Goddamn,” I muttered, picking up the bag. “He so owes me for this.”
“He wants us to drop it off at the stuffing place, too,” she explained. “Can we do that in the morning? He made me promise.”
I just shook my head as I dropped the snake into one of the saddlebags. “Yeah, that’s fine with me. The only problem I can see is that I have to keep that shit with me until then.”