Page 30 of In It for the Long Ride

“I don’t know, but I got a real bad feeling. Give me B-Man,” she asked, though she was already taking him from me when she said it.

I opened the backseat door, and she crawled in with him. Once Easy shifted into the passenger seat and tossed me the keys, I looked back to assure she had Blaze fastened to his booster seat, turned it on and slipped it into drive.

“W-why are you driving?” Daisy asked, as I turned onto the main road.

“Woman, I've been driving longer than anyone in this vehicle.” I quipped, looking back at her in the rearview.

“Yeah.” She grunted, “Bikes.”

I nodded, having no argument there. It felt weird driving a cage.

The headrest of my seat was abruptly smacked forward, clipping me in the back of the head.

“What the hell?” I startled, whipping my head around to investigate.

“I have a name, Carl Henshaw,” Daisy grumbled,. “You’d do well to remember it, and not lump me with the rest of your club creatures.”

Easy tried to smother his laughter, but I still heard him all but giggling over there, doing his damnedest to focus out the window lest he fall into her line of fire.

“How did you convince him to get into the passenger seat?” she pressed.

Everybody knew Easy hated riding in cages. Even more so if he couldn’t be behind the wheel. It set his war wounds into overdrive not being in control of his own life at fifty-five miles per hour. A hilarious notion to anyone who had seen him hit a century as he often did on long highway stretches when he was riding that Fat Boy of his.

“Guess he didn’t want to hear it out of you for driving if you saw how red his eyes are right now.” I laughed, knowing damn well that was exactly it.

Easy did what he would, we all knew it, but I’d never known him to place a child at risk, I’d claimed the driver’s seat without even checking, I’d been so sure of it.

She stared at me in the mirror, her brows slowly twitching with confusion. Her mouth flopped open and she reached past the passenger headrest to smack Easy directly in the back of his head.

“Are you high?” she hissed, elongating her neck like some kind of giraffe to cluck in his ear.

The man didn’t miss a beat, he turned and whispered right back, with just as much enthusiasm, “As giraffe pussy and goddamn is it lonely up here, Aunt Daisy.”

“Wha—? Uh…” Daisy jerked her head back, and bugged her eyes before shrieking, “Eric!”

I did a wild grab for the radio as she landed another slap to the back of his head. The radio not only turned on, my hasty fat fingers sent the damn volume knob spinning to full blast.

I fucking cackled, and scrambled to turn the shit down.

“Monty, that’s my jam!” Blaze squealed over the chaos in protest.

I held my hand up in surrender and turned the radio back up, drowning out the sound of Daisy chastising Easy. The woman was still going strong, but she calmed down when the church came into view.

I slowed the car and killed the engine.

“Come on, Carl.” She huffed, throwing the door open.

Easy and I both looked back at her.

“I– uh…” I wasn’t exactly the church-going type.

My stammering was met with a look that could have convinced a grizzly bear to move.

“Right,” I cleared my throat and let myself out of the car.

She waited for me to round it and we started the path toward the front door together.

“Why are we here again?”

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