I dropped the gloves on the coffee table before firmly planting my ass on it with a sigh that rivaled his. Of course I knew this wasn’t living, but it was a sacrifice I was willing to make to give him a better life.
“Listen to me, Tate. I know things have been shit since Mom and Dad died. I know I haven’t been around much, but you can’t worry about me. Not now. I did the high school thing. I did the college thing. Now it’s your turn. When I know you’re set, then I can do what I need to. I’m not conceding to this. I’m not letting us get separated. I’m your sister and we stick together, always.”
Leaning forward, I patted his knee as though closing the debate on the topic. He really was a good kid, and I supposed I was lucky in that respect. If he’d been a little asshole, all of this would have been much harder to deal with.
I wasn’t his parent, but I was the closest thing he had and I felt responsible for him in every way a sister could.
Pushing to my feet, I gave him a smile and held my knuckle out for him to bump. It stopped him from being embarrassed by my emotional hugs after talks like these. I still squeezed him like I did when he was a kid, which was ridiculous considering he was much bigger than I was, buttimes like this called for diplomacy.
“We good?”
He nodded in response, spurring me on to pick up the gloves and go back to cleaning. He was right, it was almost compulsive for me to do it. It gave me some order in an otherwise disorderly world. Brushing my hair from my face as I reached the hall, I stopped when I heard my name.
“Ayda?”
“Yeah?”
“I always thought it was Mom and Dad that I looked up to and admired. I don’t know when it happened, but I realize now that it’s been you for a while. You’re my role model, and you’re damn good at it.”
My stomach flipped and my heart fluttered in my chest. I was about to cry, but managed to smile at him anyway. “Even if I cuss like a sailor?”
“Are you kidding? That’s a huge part of it. My vocabulary has broadened colorfully thanks to you.” He smiled and shrugged. “Love you, sis.”
“Love you, too, T.”
Chapter Four
Drew
The burn of the liquor was something I couldn't get enough of. The first glass had gone down without much fuss, the second the same. The third and fourth were no different, just from bigger tumblers. The fifth I was made to share with a fucking mixer. For a scary looking bastard, Harry could make me fall asleep with his rules at times. It was the regimented man in him. I made it to ten before I started staring down the chest of the bar woman, promising her a good time if she gave me my drink neat.
“Your blood ain't used to it. Trust me, you'll go into shock,” Harry warned me on the side.
Shame it was drowned out by the calls of my brothers as they pulled me to lay back on the pool table so they could pour that shit straight from the bottle into my mouth.
The wheels would have to wait until tomorrow. The whiskey had been served, the women, too, to an extent. I'd had three chicks grinding up against me, wearing nothing but g-strings and oil on their skin as I sat sipping from a beer bottle, just watching my dick grow hard beneath my jeans.
Gurgling on the last of the whiskey I could take, I raised my head off the table, coughing and spluttering as it went everywhere. It burned like a son of a bitch when it flowedback up my nostrils, and before I knew it, I was rolling off that three-foot high surface and my ass was crashing on the floor.
“Alright, alright, boys. I think he's done enough of the sensory knockout shit. Unless you want him dead or back in the joint, I'd say it's time to get him home.” I tried to glance up at the barman as he spoke, but whether it was from the booze, the fall, or both, I wasn’t sure which version of him, out of the three I could see, I was meant to direct my glare at.
Dropping my head back down, I pulled my knees up and rested my arms on top of them as I tried to stop my head from spinning.
I wasn’t sure how much time passed before there was a man on each bicep, dragging me up until my arms were draped around both their shoulders.
“He's right, Drew. We should get you home.” My head rolled lazily to the side as I squinted and gave our youngest patched member a toothy, drunken grin. Kenny was a few years younger than me and had shaved his eyebrows into zigzags. Moron.
He laughed as he looked over my head to whoever was on the other side of him. My attention followed his in a half circle, my chin rising and my head rolling up to the ceiling as though I was watching a bird flying over before it fell again and I locked eyes with my old buddy—the one guy I'd known even before I knew how to say the word fuck—the man known and respected as being the club’s sergeant at arms. My fucking best friend.
“You…” I paused, swallowing harshly as my stomach rolled. “I swear you've grown taller, Slater.”
“Not for ten years.” He smirked, looking down at me from the corner of his eye as though he wasn't sure if I wasreally there with him or not. His long black beard was tinged with red at the ends and he looked older than I remembered him. Probably 'cause he was. I had to stop forgetting time had passed by. They were making slipping back into the old routine too easy.
“Don't you ever get vertigo up there? I'd just want to jump the fuck off.”
Slater's laughter broke free, but only because he'd let it slip by accident. “No, Drew. I'm not the pussy who's scared of heights. That's all on you.”
“Hey! That was meant to stay between the two of us.”
