Read Online Stay Vertical by Layla Wolfe - Free Book Online

Lytton.” I tried to sound casual, as though I hadn’t just tear-assed down the clanging metal hangar steps. I could feel fifteen pairs of eyes boring into my back. I didn’t owe those fucktards anything! I barely knew them. I recalled Turk of course from the old days, and Tuzigoot, and Faux Pas, the French Canadian with a love of zombie gore. I had briefly recognized Duji, the Al Pacino lookalike from New York, as I’d run by. Ziggy and Gollywow were there, too, although of course I didn’t recognize the Prospects. My brother Speed, the wrench, was probably still down in the hangar fixing equipment.
    “I hope you don’t get the wrong impression of the club. Not that I’m an expert—this is the first time I’ve been to the Citadel, too. But I hung out with these guys growing up.” I made it sound a lot more intense than it really was, of course. They’d held meetings at our suburban Cottonwood house several times, and that was it. I served them beer and potato chips. I was rarely ever home.
    It was eerie to see Ford’s twin just feet from me, straddling that bike. He wore a white wifebeater under the plaid shirt, and the vulnerable beauty of his collarbone just killed me. The neckline revealed a hint of smooth, well-developed pectoral with just a sprinkling of chest hair, and I went weak at the knees. It must have been way too long since I’d been laid. That was it.
    He gave me the once-over boldly. He didn’t seem to care who saw him eyeballing me. His nostrils flared, as though he liked what he saw. Suddenly, his opinion meant the world to me. “You know them pretty well, then.”
    “Oh, yeah. Ford and Cropper lived with us when I was a teenager. Cropper was my mother’s boyfriend. They say he was a great businessman. I mean, obviously. He created this entire empire.” To be honest, Cropper had always given me the creeps. He looked at Maddy in a way that definitely didn’t seem proper. I was a few years younger and had probably dodged that particular bullet. Maddy had never complained about him, although we hardly shared pillow talk as kids. Our mother had pitted us against each other, and instead of banding together, we’d been enemies.
    “So you’re Ford’s sister-in-law, yet you’re talking to me. You don’t think I’m some outcast, some Tomahonky you wish would disappear.”
    I felt myself blush. “Ford’s just in shock, that’s all. Last year when he tracked down his mother in Flagstaff, he also discovered she’d had another son after him who had died.”
    “With Cropper?”
    “With Cropper. Oh, God. Why did I tell you that? Sometimes I talk before I think. I basically just told you that you had a brother who died.”
    Lytton sighed deeply. “From what little I know of this family, that’s starting to sound like a typical day in hell.”
    And he grinned at me. That absolutely melted me. Looking back, I was already feeling feverish standing out there in the parking lot under the relentless mountain sun. At four thousand feet, P & E had that sort of thin air that allowed in all the healing as well as volatile spectrums of light. The impact of Lytton’s sheer beauty, the angst and tragedy of his character, was already working on my inflamed psyche.
    I was in a cold sweat. I stammered like a schoolgirl. “Don’t worry. I have no fear that your DNA test will come back positive and Ford will accept you, and welcome you into the family. It’s so obvious you’re an exact clone of him, even with different mothers.”
    “Do I really want to be welcomed into this family, though? You tell me.”
    I had to think for a minute. While The Bare Bones were obviously involved in some shady, illegal affairs—Ford used to build bombs in our Cottonwood garage—I had always known them to be full of camaraderie, men who would go to bat for each other. Seeing as how I’d had such a shattered, broken family, this aspect had always appealed to me. “Yes. I think you do. Once these guys have your back,