“Figure savvy,” Kenny piped up from the other side of the room. My attention turned to him slowly and a grin played on my lips.
“Definitely figure savvy,” I said quietly, winking at the little fucker who I knew was trying to hide his jealous streak from me for taking Ayda from him, even though we all knew he’d never really stood a chance. She had too much about her to be the kind of girl that would just drop her panties for a gin, and Kenny didn’t have the patience to hang around and wait to see the fruits of his labor grow in his own hands.
He rolled his eyes. Despite making it look like the only thing I wanted to do was wind him up, I actually had as much respect for him as I did for Harry, Jedd, and Slater. It always came down to loyalty. Even Deeks was climbing up the ladder. Ayda was always talking about him and what she saw beyond what he revealed. She spoke like that about them all in the quiet of my room.
Dropping my chin down to my chest, I nodded slowly. I’d always known I missed my brothers while doing time, but it was only then that I was truly starting to realize just how much I’d missed of their lives.
“Okay, I think we’re done here,” I muttered, shutting up the file in front of me before peering around the room. Each one of them seemed to lean forward and release a small sigh of relief. I knew they weren’t expecting me to notice, but I saw it. Something was going on and I wasn’t privy to it. The only comfort I was taking away from that was the fact that I knew if it was some serious shit, I’d have been the first man they told. This was them making a decision that went against what I’d asked to happen. Of that, I was pretty certain.
“Anyone else feel like they’ve just sat in on a meeting with Donald fucking Trump?” Slater joked, standing up tall as he stretched out his back and rolled his shoulders around.
“You’re fired,” I snorted back at him before glancing up at Kenny to point my pen in his direction. “And you… You have somewhere to be.
“Guard dog duties,” Kenny grumbled.
“More like babysitting,” Harry hit back with a rough laugh before he broke out into that god-awful cough again.
“Label it what you like. The Hanagan kid needs watching as much as Ayda does. Get over there.”
“He loves it really,” Jedd said in his deep, rough voice. “Spending all day outside a high school, checking out all the young blood.”
Kenny pushed himself up off the wall, narrowing his eyes as he walked to the door and spat back. “You’re sick. You’re all fucking sick.”
“Eyes up, Kenster,” Slater joked. “We’ll see you at thegame.”
Before I had any time to gift Kenny with a parting insult, my attention snapped back to Slater and my eyes had widened about as much as my mouth had dropped open. “Sorry, what?”
He took a glance at Jedd, winking while his smirk broke free. “The game.”
“What game?”
“Tate’s football match. We’re all tagging along tonight.”
“Like fuck you are.” I laughed, even though I didn’t find anything funny.
“C’mon, Tucker,” Harry grumbled beside him, small fits of his cough still lingering in his throat as he tried to clear it and speak. “We’ll be good little biker boys for you. It’s been a lifetime since any of us got to see a proper game.Go, Bulldogs!” His hand flew in the air for only a second before his choking fit kicked in again and he had to push his fist back against his chest.
“You’re all dicks. You hear me? Short, stubby, useless, limp dicks.”
“Is that a yes?” Jedd barked laughing, shoving his hands in the pockets of his cut to dig out a smoke.
I didn’t stand around to argue, mainly because a small part of me was imagining the look on Ayda’s face when we all showed up there like some kind of modern day T-birds.
I suddenly had the urge to see that face up close and personal for myself.
All day I’d spent with the boys, working around the yard, checking in on the repo unit, the pawn shop and even going back into the training room to oversee all the shit had been cleaned out properly last weekend. The last thing we needed in here was the police and a forensics team, should Hernandez’strail ever lead back to us for reasons we hadn’t factored in.
Once I knew everything was as it should be, I did the one thing I promised myself I wouldn’t do since the whole shit with the Emperors went down. I rode solo. Despite both Harry and Jedd telling me they thought it was risky, I hit out onto the open road with no one and nothing around me but the cut on my back. I was going to the game and the boys would follow.
I was going to spend some time with Ayda and not think about the man I killed a week before. I was going to believe that, since we hadn’t heard anything back from Chester, we weren’t suspects number one in Hernandez’s disappearance.
It was only when I flew through the center of town again and was halted by another red light, that something else beside my own thoughts caught my attention. On the corner of the street, outside the barbers, stood Maisey Sutton.
As soon as she heard my bike slow to a crawl, her body swung around to mine, her hand on her hip as whatever she was about to say to whoever was next to her got caught in her throat. That slow, teasing smile began to crawl up that mouth of hers, and all I could think about was how once upon a time, that look alone would have had me pulling my bike over to pick her up.
Now, there wasn’t anything. Only amusement. It had been years since I’d seen her and, even though it was obvious she thought differently, those years hadn’t been at all kind. Her skin had a grayness to it that wasn’t there before, and her clothes seemed at least three sizes too small.
I couldn’t help the small smirk I returned back to her. It was there in an instant, once the realization of how times had changed hit me square in the jaw. But that humor on my face soon dropped like a lead weight to the ground when I saw whowas standing in front of her, looking shifty as she tried to bring her hair farther forward around her face to hide.
