“Yes.”
“Damn, nice, bro!” Garrett said, patting me on the back firmly. “So are we going to start singing about how you’re sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N—”
“Stop, stop, stop,” I said, groaning. “Look, I’ll admit that there’s more to her than the usual club bunny. She’s…she’s nice. She’s really into me. And she makes me, I don’t know, she makes me nicer. Somehow. But let’s not get fucking carried away. We’re not dating, we’re not even close, and I don’t know what I’m going to do in the future.”
I waited for the smart-ass retort from Garrett. It did not come. Instead, a surprisingly soft one came.
“You know, I fought like hell not to fall for Hannah at first, and she was pregnant,” he said. “You would think that would give me more reason to fall for her, but instead, it just created more pressure. Like, Ihadto love her because she was going to be my baby’s mother. And for the longest fucking time, I said no. And then I eventually realized, why the fuck was I doing that?”
He smiled. He looked to Mason for a moment, and something unspoken went between the two of them.
“We’re bikers, and we shouldn’t change that. I don’t change that. My little Chuckie probably knows the smell of oil better than he knows the smell of milk at this point. But that doesn’t mean that we can’t add some lighter things to life. Not everything has to be hard. Not everything has to have an edge to it.”
And then he lifted the bottle once more.
“And nothing takes the edge off quite like a third round of shots.”
“Oh, man, really—”
“Professor Smartass, you should know with all your genius that liquor loosens the spirit of every man,” Garrett said in a fake pompous voice. “And if anyone here needs to get laid, it’s you.”
“The fuck? I get laid plenty—”
“You’re trying to be a biker and a student? Are you fucking crazy?”
Garrett laughed.
“You’re going to make more money than all of us, but you’re also going to lose your hair faster than any of us. So stop being a bitch and take a shot.”
“I never said no!”
“Yeah, but compared to us, you’re a nerd.”
Zach sighed. Mason laughed. I heard the whole thing unfold, but I was still caught up in the long speech of sorts Garrett had just given about love.
Everything he had said was true. I didn’thaveto have this edge. It would take time to take it off, but had Katie given me any reason to distrust her yet? Had she done anything to betray my trust? Aside from being a little too blunt from time to time, what had she really done that would have hurt me so much?
The answer was nothing. Just because she was as hot as the girls at Long Beach, I had assumed she was the same way? What kind of a fucking thought was that? If anything, she was the opposite of them—she was honest to a fucking fault.
“All right, nerds, enforcers, and brothers-in-law,” Garrett said.
“Christ, you’re family; I never thought of it that way,” Mason said with a snort.
“It’s time for one last shot before we move to beers.”
Garrett kept talking. But something didn’t feel right. I could hear motorcycles outside the place, and they were abnormally close. There were too many to be Black Reapers.
“I say we do this in honor of Connor, because soon enough, the love bug will win him over and he will join the ‘dark side.’”
The bikes got closer. The other guys had no reaction. Maybe it was because we all heard bikes every day and were as used to it as birds chirping.
But it did not sit right with me.
“What do you say, Connor?”
The bikes reached the neighborhood.
“Get down.”
