Page 20 of Greedy Grizzly
Why do I self-sabotage?
I poured more whiskey into my glass and lifted it to my lips.
Gulp. Gulp. Gulp.
I swallowed the booze and slid into the nearest chair, with Chase safely in my arms, hating my life for like the millionth time since my birth.
5
GRIZZLY
Libby’s words, her permission and encouragement, derailed my anger. I shouldn’t have read her text. It’d just been muscle memory. When my device vibrated in my pocket, I checked it to make sure it wasn’t Storm. I saw her name and opened the message. Yeah, I was an idiot.
Let loose. Nobody is watching. Be you.
Be me? Who else would I be?
But I knew what she meant, which had made me stop on the side of the road, and put my hazard lights on. I felt sick to my stomach and needed a minute to process.
All my life I’d been controlled. Hell, even now, Storm was my superior and president. There had always been someone with authority over me.
Barking orders.
Making demands.
Punishing me for being me.
Storm hadn’t sounded angry about me swinging both ways. Perhaps because I hadn’t displayed non-straight behavior in front of my MC brothers. Although kinky shit occurred in the club, like threesomes, I hadn’t heard of any members liking to suck dick. Nope, as far as I knew, it was only me.
Be me, repeated in my head. Was Libby implying that she didn’t know who I really was? Aside from hiding my sexual preferences and my feelings for Toby, I was me. Well, the me I’d grown up to be during my shitty life, anyway.
I needed a drink, and I didn’t want to go to a biker bar where I might run into someone I knew. With that thought, I removed my cut and put it into my saddlebag and gathered my long hair to put in a messy bun. I looked more like a hipster than a biker, especially when I wore my glasses.
From what I could tell, no one had ever seemed to care that I wasn’t macho and muscly because I was the club’s computer geek and hacker. I just never really exuded the same fierce badassery vibes as my MC brothers.
Turning my hazards off, I got back on the road and headed toward Minneapolis. I knew exactly where I wanted to go, to a place I’d never been—Nye’s Piano Bar. There I would have some cocktails I’d never drink at the club and let my guard down to beme. Of course, I still had no idea what Libby’s intentions were.
I wasn’t a cheater. I still loved her, even though I was furious with her.
Permission or not, I couldn’t let loose and be with someone else.
That was who I was, loyal and faithful.
I was an hour out from the city. Enough time to remember the past and figure out what I would do before I entered the bar and potentially got wasted and did something I might regret.
Back in middle school, I had crushed on a few boys. Girls still hadn’t appealed to me. They were fine to be around, and even to be friends with, but that had been the extent of my interest in the female population. They had nothing between their legs that appealed to me.
Not a long dick likePaulhad sported in the locker room. He’d been one of my crushes.
Even after all these years, my heart skipped a beat as I pictured Paul’s wet body in the shower and his pecker shriveled up. He’d been a grower, not a shower.
Damn, I wondered what Paul looked like now, at almost thirty years old.
Middle school had been rough for me, especially with Paul’s gym locker next to mine. Every day, I stole glances of him, hoping he never caught me watching him undress. Or drooling as he sparred—buck naked—with the other dudes.
Of course, I had to be cool about it so no one noticed me. If one of the guys had caught me, my life would have been over. They’d have called me out. Announced to the locker room that a fag was among us and it was me. It would have killed me to be outted and for my classmates to know the real me, especially Paul. I would have died.
In our small suburban town, gays were shit on. They were outcasts. And violently dealt with by the bullies.
