Page 28 of Property of Baffle
“After I get this hung, I have some ideas about your pants, too.”
It no longer mattered what happened when I first showed up at the clubhouse.This would be the day I remembered as my official welcome to the club and Rick’s family.
16Family Expands
Baffle
“What are you talking about?”Nell asked as she pulled my sweatshirt off her body.
In a way, I hated to see her take it off because she was wearing a Kings hoodie.It felt a bit like a claim and since I didn’t have a property cut for her yet, it was the next best thing.Then again, the way her tits bounced as she whipped it off had other parts of me standing at attention.
“Oh my God!”she huffed in relief before I could answer.“I have been roasting in that thing for a while, but didn’t have a bra under my tank top and…” My wife turned to see me staring at her tits and rolled her eyes.“That’s why I had to roast to death out there!”I wasn’t ashamed to be caught looking.My woman was fine and her tits were a perfect, mouthwatering c-cup.
“It was a wise decision.If I was dumb enough to fumble you, a few of my own club brothers would trample the fuck out of me to pick up where I left off.”
“That’s dumb!”
“It’s the truth,” I argued back.“That reminds me, though, Grease was very curious about how you got into your style of art.I think he wants to pick your brain about some designs and mods he wants to do with one of his rides.He asked if you had any background in mechanical shit and I didn’t know what the fuck to say.”
“Maybe we should write a list of all of our questions and then swap them.”Nell was teasing me but once she settled beside me on the bed, and leaned her head on my chest, she sighed.“I hate that I have to tell you another depressing origin story of mine.”
“I still want to hear it, Nell.Besides origin stories are for heroes and villains, because either way the shit they went through forged them into something badass.”
“Well, when you put it like that, how can I resist?”She took a deep breath and let it out before jumping into the story of how she learned her skills.“That friend of my aunt’s that I told you about before, the one she sent me to stay with in Flagstaff…”
“Yeah?”
“It was her ex-husband.”Nell glanced up to catch the look of complete shock on my face.“I think they were in the process of reconciling but she couldn’t move to be with him just yet.He couldn’t move to be with her either because of his business.”
“He was a welder?”I guessed.
She nodded.“After everything that went down, I had a long bout of depression I couldn’t shake.Nothing helped.Painting and drawing didn’t appeal anymore either.Russ took me out to his garage one day and said I needed to earn my keep.”
“That better not mean what I think it does,” I growled and wrapped my arm tighter around her middle.
“Relax.It doesn’t.He started to teach me how to weld and something clicked.I enjoyed the peace I found behind the welding helmet.”
“Explains why you had no issues putting on a full-face helmet to ride with me.”
“Do people normally have problems with that?”she asked.
“Some do.”
“That’s not my hangup.Anyway, I learned stick and spot welding first because that’s mostly what Russ used.He was certified in everything else, too, but taught me TIG since I was an artist and needed my welds to look clean while also being exceptionally strong.”She giggled at a memory for a moment.“I may have complained about how ugly some of his welds looked one too many times.Since I was too fancy for the basics he made me practice TIG a lot.Now, I sometimes go that route with my work if it requires a finer weld that blends the two pieces together seamlessly.Russ taught me everything he knew.He was even proud as hell of me when I started to show him some things he hadn’t learned before.”
I could tell by the fond, wistful tone every time she said the man’s name that he was probably no longer alive and it pissed me off that my wife had lost all the people who gave a shit and helped her.
“Eventually, he tossed all his scraps my way and I started to turn them into things.At first they were like little trinkets that could fit on a desk, then I tried my hand at some lawn ornaments.Some of Russ’s clients saw my pieces lying around the shop and asked about buying them.Before I knew it, I had a website and a great word-of-mouth clientele list.All of that was before I ever started on the bigger pieces.Those came later.After.”
“After?”I questioned.
“The reason Russ originally left Aunt Candice was not because he wasn’t still madly in love with her.He was.I hate it for them that they spent so much time apart that they could have had together.He was sick.Fucking cancer.Didn’t want my aunt to waste her life watching him fade away.Didn’t want her stuck with a huge debt if he tried to fight it.So, he made sure she left him.He went into remission and they started to talk again.He explained everything to me about how they were working on putting their lives back together.”
“Then she died in jail.”
“Yeah.I don’t think he ever imagined a world where she would go first.He sued the jail.We sued them.The sheriff, the county, all of them for her death.I had to add my name to the lawsuit so it would legitimize his claim since he wasn’t technically married to her anymore.We won.They had to pay out three million dollars because she never should have been in jail to begin with.Those bastards didn’t have any proof that I was ever with my aunt, or even in contact with her.When I stood up and testified that I’d never been with her, they had no way to refute that either.Two weeks after we won, I found Russ dead in his chair holding a picture of my aunt.He passed peacefully.The cancer had come back and he never told me.”
“You’re not sure if it was the cancer, though?”I didn’t know how I knew that, but something in the way Nell stiffened and looked even sadder and maybe a bit angry told me that I probably hit the nail on the head.She shrugged off my question and bypassed answering it completely.
