Hammer's Pride by E.C. Land (brene brown rising strong TXT) 📕

Hammer rearranges us yet again on the bed, moving me until I’m lying with my head pressed against his chest and his hand that he has in my hair moves to trail up and down my spine.

“Sleep, Sunshine,” he commands ever so gently in a tone of voice I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone use with me, and I’ve got to say I really like it.

Closing my eyes, I do just as he orders and fall asleep feeling for the first time in a very long time, if not ever, that I can sleep without worrying about what’s going to happen when I wake up.

“Avery, baby, you need to wake up.” I feel my body gently being nudged as the person presses a kiss to my forehead.

“Hm, I don’t wanna,” I grumble sleepily and curl even more into the warmth as I sleep. This causes my pillow to move as I hear a chuckle. I also then realize I don’t have my head on a pillow but rather Hammer’s chest.

Holy crappity crap.

I slept the entire time in the same position without moving the slightest. Okay, well, maybe I curled my leg further around, but that’s it.

“Sunshine, you gotta wake up so you can eat and shit. Plus, need you to be able to sleep tonight when it’s time to go to bed,” Hammer mutters, his lips still against my forehead.

I slowly open my eyes and blink against the dual lighting of the room.

“What time is it?” I ask, snuggling into him more.

“Dinner time, baby. You’ve been asleep nearly eight hours, and if you have any hopes of getting more later, we gotta get up. Plus, I’m fuckin’ starving,” he says, and I immediately jolt to a sitting position to stare at him.

“You laid here with me this entire time?” My cheeks blush as I ask him this.

“Yeah, Avery, you were out, and I wasn’t about to move you. Stayed here, watched a game on the TV, and got some work done on my phone. You slept through it all. How about we go into the main room and get some food?” he suggests after telling me what he’d done all day.

My chest tightens, and I have the urge to jump him right then, but my stomach begins to rumble, which in turn causes Hammer to start chuckling.

“Come on, let’s get you fed, baby,” he says with a grin and climbs off the bed, reaches out, and snags me around the waist. He then proceeds to pull me out of bed, onto my feet.

Hammer keeps his hands on me the entire time as he leads me out of the bedroom and out to the main room. As he does this, all I can think about is when did my world get turned upside down.

Chapter Ten

Hammer

For the past three days, we’ve been working on finding out who messed with Avery’s house as well as keeping an eye out for whoever the hell it is that wanted to fuck around with our club.

So far, we’ve gotten jack shit. Whoever they are, this gang, they’ve been careful since I’d gotten back to town a week ago. We did, however, find all the bugs planted in the clubhouse the day I’d stayed in bed with Avery while she slept. I felt guilty for not helping my brothers in locating all of them, but with Avery sleeping, I didn’t want to take the chance of her waking up and trying to go do more work. The woman needs to learn to live a little, and not everything has to be about working at that fuckin’ coffee shop.

Each morning since I moved Avery into the clubhouse, yes, moved her in. I had the prospects go to her house, pack her shit up, and put it in storage. Until it’d been completely repainted, carpet replaced, and what not, she wasn’t going back there. Bonus I get to hold her to me every night. But come first thing in the morning when she’s gotta get up and get to the shop, I get up and take her. I hang around with her while she does her thing.

I’ve come to realize why Avery’s always busy and burned out. Besides not having enough help, she’s got customers coming in from sunup to sundown. All because she makes some damn good coffee. I wish I could save it all for myself, but this is what Avery does for a living, and I’m not about to take that from her. Not after spending time around her the past few days as she worked. I did, however, get one of the prospects to come in to help her and watch her when I needed to leave.

While she worked, I dealt with club business here at the clubhouse. I held church with my brothers as we discussed not only the shit with the gang, but also the Supreme Masters, and Simone. I knew Axe wanted to take care of her because of the shit she’s been through, but the club as a whole couldn’t deal with the shit she’s causing. Between the screaming in the middle of the night to her medicine wearing off and her begging anyone and everyone to fuck her. I might not have wanted to take her on, but I’ve seen my brother with her, and he’s not going to let it go. So we’d voted to get her into a facility to help her. It’s not her fault she’s going through the shit she is. She didn’t ask to be kidnapped, drugged, and knocked up. It’s no wonder she’s not right in the head anymore. That kind of torment would fuck with anyone’s mind.

Axe at least agreed with us she needed more help than we could give her, and we had Cy look into the different places here and the surrounding areas. Soon as church is finished, I head into my office to go over some shit I knew