PROLOGUE
Banshee
5.5 Years Ago…
I’m winning.
Three jacks and a pair of sevens, and Colt doesn’t have a goddamn clue.
He’s sitting across from me with that same shit-eating grin he always wears when he thinks he’s got me beat, tapping his cards against the edge of the table like that’s supposed to intimidate someone.
I take a pull of my beer, let the condensation drip onto my jeans, and wait for him to make his move.
The clubhouse is loud tonight.
A good loud.
The jukebox is playing Waylon, brothers are talking over each other, and someone’s racking the pool table with a crack that echoes off the concrete walls.
Phantom’s in the corner booth going over something with the treasurer, and Shadow’s across the room bullshitting with a couple of prospects about the run we’ve got planned for Saturday.
I can hear his laugh from here—deep, easy, the kind that comes from a man who’s settled in his own skin.
I’m settled in mine, too.
Right now, at this moment, I am exactly where I’m supposed to be.
Cold beer, good hand, my brothers around me, and my wife safe at home getting ready to go meet her best friend for dinner.
I don’t know yet that this is the last time I’ll feel like this.
Colt pushes his chips in. I let him. Then I lay down my cards and watch his face collapse. “Son of a bitch, Lee.”
“You telegraph everything, brother. Might as well play with your hand face-up.”
He flips me off. I grin—wide, genuine, the kind that comes easy because life is simple and good and I don’t know enough to be grateful for it yet.
That’s the cruelest part about the before. You never know you’re living in it.
My phone buzzes against my thigh.
I pull it out.
Rose’s name on the screen, her contact photo the one I took last summer on Earl’s porch—sun in her blonde hair, laughing at something I said that wasn’t even funny.
She always laughed at the unfunny ones.
Said that was the real test of love.
Anyone can laugh at a good joke.
I push back from the table. “Deal me out.”
“You just took fifty bucks off me, you’re not leaving?—”
“Wife’s calling.” I’m already walking. The brothers give me shit for it—they always do, the ones who don’t understand that answering on the first ring isn’t weakness, it’s a privilege.
I earned the right to be the person she calls.
