ROUGH RIDER Read Online Free PDF

plunge back into the dating scene…or at least the one-night stand scene.
    I almost felt like a virgin. Which sounds totally fuckin’ stupid to say, I know. I’m Italian, after all. But Maggie’s death hit me like a freight train and even though it’d been five long years, I still hadn’t so much as kissed another woman since then. I’d gotten a lot of shit about it from the guys, that was for sure. But once we’d gotten back to the States, I’d just had no interest in starting anything up with anyone else. It just never seemed right. I felt like I’d be betraying Maggie’s memory or something.
    “Fugettaboutit,” I’d reply to their occasional ribbing. “When I’m ready, you’ll know it.”
    “Yeah, we’ll know it because it’ll be like Mt. Everest erupting in your fuckin’ pants!” Romeo said. Romeo Romano is the ladies man of our club. He probably hadn’t spent one fucking night alone since we returned from overseas. I was surprised his dick hadn’t fallen off yet.
    “Shut the fuck up, Romeo. Not everyone lets their dick rule their life,” I replied, doing my best to defend myself at the time.
    That had been two years ago, and I had been nowhere near ready.
    But now? Tonight? Was I ready? Maybe now I was.
    Or, maybe I wasn’t.
    But there was only one way to find out. I hadn’t meant for this to all go down this way, but now that Gabby was here, squirming on the couch like she was just as torn as I was - why pass up an opportunity to jump start things?
    I mean, fuck, what else were we going to do all night anyway? Talk to each other?

    “ S o , why is your gang called the Deadly Sinners?” Gabby asked, in between bites of steak. She was eating like she was starved and I watched with satisfied amusement.
    “We’re not a gang, we’re a club. There’s seven of us, and at one time in our lives, we committed a lot of sins together. It’s just something we came up with when we were kids on the street and it stuck.”
    “So you’ve all known each other a long time?”
    “Yeah, since we were kids,” I replied. “We grew up in the Bronx on Author Avenue. You know the neighborhood?”
    “Yeah, a little,” she said, her eyes darting away. I couldn’t stop looking at her across the table and every time she tore those green eyes from mine, I wanted to reach over and pull her gaze back.
    “Where are you from?” I asked.
    “Howard Beach,” she murmured, dismissively. “So, tell me more about your club.”
    “The club? Right. Well, like I said, we grew up together. We were just little kids, you know? Riding bikes around the neighborhood. When I was sixteen, I saved up and got my own motorcycle. Of course, then the other guys had to get one too. I had all the parents so pissed at me after that. Hell, Italo and Alonzo’s Ma still hasn’t forgiven me.”
    “Italo and Alonzo?”
    “Yeah, they’re twins. They had an asshole dad, like most of us kids in the Bronx did, so they were raised by their Ma. She still refuses to let me in her house. Once, when we were about eighteen, before we all went into the Army, Alonzo laid down his bike. It was his fault. Stupid ass took the curve too fast and the bike slid out from under him. His Ma came over to my house, hitting me with her purse and yelling some kind of Catholic curse at me for almost killing her son.”
    Gabby’s laughter echoed in the small kitchen and I couldn’t help but smile.
    “You were in the Army?” she asked.
    “Yeah. I get blamed for that, too. But whatever. I was the oldest of all of us guys, and no matter what I did, they followed. I tried to tell them all not to join, but they didn’t listen. Sure as shit, one by one, they each signed up. We all ended up in the 101st Airborne Division together.”
    “Why did you sign up yourself?”
    “I didn’t have a lot of options as a poor kid in the Bronx. You know what it’s like. If you’re lucky, your family has some kind of business you can join. But if not, like me, you