I laughed and nodded, downing the rest of my drink before dropping the tumbler on the desk, next to his. I made it to the door and had it open before I looked back. “Thanks, King.”
He smiled at me. “That’s what I’m here for.”
I returned a grin and left to go find Charley.
4
Charley
“Livin’on a Prayer” began to thump from the speakers hidden in the corners of the room and I groaned. Whoever was messing around with the sound system, probably Jester, cranked the noise up even higher. One of the few things I hated about the clubhouse was the loud music, unless I was in the mood for it. I’d probably go deaf eventually from all the noise at the clubs and this place. Dallas glanced up from where he was sinking shots on the pool table in a solo game, shaking his head before he went back to lining up the balls.
“Where is everyone?” I asked Josh as he came toward me with a bottle of Bell’s Two Hearted Ale. He’d started getting fancy on us, but I actually liked this particular froufrou beer. I held out my hand to him.
“Busy,” he said, which could mean anything or nothing. King had gotten him trained up right.
He handed me the beer, and I sighed, leaning my elbows on the bar. Quain had helped Barber over to one of the couches and someone had found a bag and filled it with ice for him. Gingerly, Quain held the plastic bag over the bridge of Barber’s nose, and as much as the man talked a tough game, Quain coddled Barber with a champion’s finesse. It was cute and set my teeth on edge. I hated the jealousy that nipped and clawed through me. Why was it so hard for Scar to be a little bit sweet with me when it wasn’t about sex? He’d kiss me all day long, and if I gave him even half a hint I was into it, he’d probably toss me onto this bar and fuck me in front of everyone, but anything that ran deeper?
He pretended it didn’t exist.
It drove me fuckingnuts.
I sighed.
“Normally I’d ask what’s eating you, but according to what Barber said that Colton rambled about when he was shit-faced drunk earlier this week, I don’t want to hear it. You want some advice about him?” Josh hopped up on his side of the bar and kicked his heels, something he would never do if King was in the room. The warm smile he sent me made me really think about what I was to him—something close to family. The thought made me feel a little better. He ran his hand through his freshly dyed purple hair and grimaced as it came away with splotches of color on it. He got down and went to the sink behind the bar to wash his hands but stared at me while he did it.
I nodded. “Sure. Shoot.”
“You can’t give Colton time to decide he’s right about something and rant and rave and be a dick. If anything goes wrong, you have to kill it then and there. He’s always been able to hold a grudge. The jerk brings up things from my infancy and uses it to prove his points.”
Snorting, I shook my head but couldn’t hold in my laugh. Josh’s expression slipped to just this side of annoyed. “It’s not like that,” I said with a shrug. “We don’t ever fight about anything that matters.” Except maybe sex. We’d actually gotten into it about fucking before, but it was when he wanted to jam his dick into me and I wasn’t ready. I couldn’t even be mad about it because prison was such a boiler for every emotion and need a man had, but out here? Did he not trust me to do better by him than what he’d done then? “I have no idea what really makes your brother tick, but I wish I did.”
“It’s not just the big fights I’m talking about, it’s everything.” Josh wiped his hands dry on a bar towel and gave me woebegone eyes. “You’re going to be chasing around his sulky ass forever if you let him get going on a subject when something does go wrong.”
“I dare you to tell Scar he’s sulky.”
Josh snorted and rolled his eyes, although I wasn’t shocked to watch him scurry off to the other end of the bar as Colton came toward us. He probably knew it would look like he was up to no good, and Colton would grill him to find out why.
“The pres chew you out?” I asked as soon as he leaned against the bar, next to me.
He snorted. “Nah, King gave me some of his good stash of whiskey. Told me I should’ve punched Barber harder.” He raised his voice so that Barber stuck his middle finger high in our direction while Quain only shook his head at all of us and kept the ice where it belonged.
I narrowed my eyes on Colton. “Why? You were fighting. You should be fined and on whatever awful fucking chore King doesn’t want to do this week. And we all know his favorite ‘fuck you’ usually involves bathrooms, dog-shit duty, or polishing boots.”
At that Dallas groaned, and I realized how loud I’d gotten.
Colton shrugged and gave me a hug around the shoulders. “Can we talk?” He sent me the type of searching look that had my blood freezing in my veins. It was too serious. I couldn’t think of the last time he’d asked me totalk. Was he dumping me over this? My heart beat out a quick tattoo in my ears.
I sat up straight and almost spilled the beer I hadn’t yet managed to gulp down. “Is King kicking you out of the club or something? No, he’d have to get a vote on that. You never want to use words. Converse.”
His lips thinned and he glanced around the room. A long time went by before he settled his attention on me again. “You’re going to be a shithead now?”
I snorted and sipped my beer, then tipped it back. I swallowed the entire bottle of hoppy brew down without a break for air, and his eyebrows rose. “Nope, merely stating a couple of facts.” I turned away and burped, which was followed by a polite round of applause from Dallas and Josh. When I turned back toward Colton, I got a stiff smile, and he held out his palm. As irritated as I was over the way things hadn’t been quite normal, I settled my hand in his, and felt warmth slither through my stomach as he tugged me off my stool.
He took me outside, and I was surprised when he led me around the side of the building and into the stacks of junk at the rear of the clubhouse. It was late in the day and the sun was sinking low. I followed along behind him until we came out on the very far side of the junkyard where I almost never went. We took a narrow path to a washed-out gully that had steep natural rock walls with clear visible layers, some that glittered in the sunlight. At the bottom a small trickle of a stream tinkled and burbled. He sat down and dangled his feet over the edge, sending a cascade of pebbles to the bottom, and I did the same, listening to the rocks plop into the little bit of water down there. I picked a rock up and was going to fling it when I realized there was a small fossil in it, shaped like what I thought might be a tiny femur.
“Oh, look!” I showed Colton and leaned my shoulder against his, and he smiled and nodded. I stuck the rock in my jacket pocket. I wasn’t sure why, but I didn’t want to lose the neat thing. I crept my hand over to tickle my fingers along the back of Colton’s, and he gave me a smile and laced his fingers with mine.
“I come here to think.”
