I’m not a gentleman or anything close to a nice guy no matter how hard I try to be.
“What time is your flight?” Cannon asks me over the top of his steaming mug before he takes his first sip of coffee.
“Three hours and ten minutes from now.”
“So you’re leaving in ten?” he guesses correctly.
“Yeah. You sure you don’t want to come with me? There were plenty of seats available on the flight. We could do some sightseeing while we’re there…”
“Fuck no,” he cuts me off. “I don’t want any part of helping that fat fuck. Not sure why you do either.” He stares me down, searching my face until I turn my back to him, dumping my leftover coffee down the sink drain.
“It’ll be good for the club. The chief has had a hard-on for us for years now. The last thing we need is for him to grow a pair and start trying to interfere with the club.”
“That’s true,” Cannon agrees. “Still hate that you’re helping him.”
“Me too, but since no one else would…”
“Fuck off! Don’t give me a guilt trip,” he huffs. “You don’t have to go either.”
Yes, I do. But I can’t tell him that.
“I’ve always wanted to see the West Coast. No reason not to go now,” I hedge. “Keep me in the loop on how Mom’s doing?”
“You know I will,” Cannon agrees, his face falling since that’s the one topic he doesn’t ever make light of. “I’m gonna dump some cash into their bank account later, make sure they have enough for her meds and all the rest of the month.”
“I’ll pay you back half,” I offer.
“I’ve got it this time if you want to just take care of the deposit next month?” he suggests.
“Sure thing,” I agree. While we have a mortgage and bills to pay, the two of us still have plenty of cash leftover from the MC’s payouts from all the various business interests, including the additional salary that Cannon and I make from running the Harley dealership. Which reminds me…
“Don’t run the dealership into the ground while I’m gone,” I warn him. “And don’t order any fucking inventory! You can make do for two days with what’s on the floor.” Once, a few months ago when I had the flu, I was out of work for three or four days and when I got back Cannon had ordered ten pink custom bikes because he thought the ladies would love them. It took us over a year to get rid of those fucking things, and we lost money by having to slash the prices below retail to get them moving, as well as offer custom repainting. My brother is way too impulsive, and it drives me crazy, mostly because I’m the one who has always had to clean up his messes. Since we were kids I’ve been taking care of him, keeping him alive and out of trouble.
“You’re such a buzzkill, Con-man,” Cannon says. “If you’re what happens when a man goes too long without pussy, then I want no part of that.”
“You really want to talk about why you never see a woman more than once?” I ask him.
“I see plenty of women more than once,” he argues. “I see them when I go to sleep at night and then again when I wake up before I toss them out of here.”
“Keep making jokes. I can’t wait to laugh in your face and say, ‘I told you so,’ when one of those girls shows back up at our doorstep telling you she’s having your kid.”
“It’s not like I’m stupid enough to go bareback. I suit up each and every time,” Cannon declares.
“Only because I keep your room stocked with rubbers! And condoms are only 98 percent effective, which means that if you fuck a hundred women, two of them could potentially have your kid.”
Cannon spits his sip of coffee back into his mug before tossing it all down the sink, grumbling, “I hate when you throw facts and shit in my face!”
“I’ve gotta go,” I say, grabbing my backpack from the sofa on my way to the door. “Think before doing anything stupid while I’m gone!”
“Thinking is highly overrated. You should try not doing it once in a while!” he calls back as I shut the door behind me.
Apparently, I’m the only one who takes schedules seriously. My flight to Atlanta ends up being delayed three fucking hours because the returning plane didn’t make it back on time. Which means I had to run through the terminal to get to the gate for my connecting flight right before it closed with no time to spare for the meal I had planned to grab while waiting to board.
It’s almost ten o’clock Pacific time when my feet touch the ground in San Francisco. It’s getting late, but I refuse to get a hotel room and wait until morning to get this shit over with. I climb into my economy rental car, a dark gray Nissan Sentra, tossing my backpack in the back seat, and follow my phone’s directions to Saint Mary’s. Once I’m on campus…there’s not a single soul wandering around this time of night for me to ask for directions to the no-shit, Holy Cross dorm. It’s a damn ghost town, so I have to just wander around, using my phone as a flashlight to read the building names.
Finally, when I find the right old brick building, I try the door that’s obviously locked to keep strange men like me out. I bang my fist on it, hoping someone will eventually hear and come to let me in.
Five minutes later and the door swings open with not one but three girls on the other side in their pajamas.
“Oooh, nice. Who are you sneaking in to see?” a girl who looks too young to be in college, with actual pigtails, asks me in a whisper.
“Ah, I’m looking for Hannah. Hannah Bailey,” I explain. “Can you tell me which room she’s in or ask her to come down here?”
“You’re here for Hannah?” the brunette in Raiders PJs scoffs. “Of course you are. God, she’s such an enormous…”
“Jessica!” Pigtails exclaims.
“What? It’s not mean if it’s true,” Raiders girl declares.
“Could one of you go get her? Please?” I ask again nicely.
“She’s not here,” the third girl in shorts and an oversized tee speaks up and informs me.
“Do you know where she is?”
“She’s been staying with her boyfriend off-campus for a few weeks now,” Pigtails supplies.
“Great,” I say with a sigh. Of course all of this has to be more complicated than I anticipated. “Any chance you have his address or his name?”
“Oh, we know his name. He’s a professor here,” Raiders girl says.
“A professor?”
No wonder the chief wanted me to come and drag his daughter back home if she’s sleeping with one of her professors as well as getting arrested for drinking when he said she’s only twenty.
“His name is Bob Ridley,” shorts and tee tells me. “You can probably search his name on your phone and find an address.”
“Okay, thanks,” I say, turning around and jogging down the steps to do just that.
“You don’t have to leave so soon!” one of them calls out. “We’re fun too!”
“Ah, I’m sure you are,” I reply over my shoulder. “But I’ve got to go. I’m on a deadline.”