Not Jack, though.
Or Folk Whitlock, who swings by to see me one afternoon when I’m repairing a patch of crumbled wall in the beer garden, repressing the urge to punch just about everyone.
“Keeping busy?”
I glance up to find he’s rolled to a stop on the other side of the wall and I’ve failed to notice the ear-splitting rumble of his menacing motorcycle.
I’m too shocked to answer him. And maybe Folk sees it, because he doesn’t push, he just waits.
“I’d say it passes the time,” I say eventually. “But it really fucking doesn’t.”
Folk leans forward on his handlebars, gloved hands flexing. “I used to think I was bored. Turns out I wasn’t used to the quiet.”
I can’t imagine riding with the Rebel Kings MC is any quieter than it is around here. But I get his point. Drunk old men and pickpocketing little shits are a world away from snipers and suicide bombers, and maybe I am perversely missing living my life alongside the constant threat of a violent death. “What do you know about the fishermen hierarchy out there?”
I gesture vaguely at the ocean.
Folk glances at the sea. “Not a lot. Why?”
“Sol’s having trouble.” I speak freely with Folk, knowing it goes without saying that I can trust him. He was a Marine long before he was ever a biker. “Lost a boat to it a while back, and he’ll lose the other if it gets rammed again.”
“I thought that vessel got caught up in the lifeguard base fire?”
“It did.”
I shoot Folk a dark look. One he interprets with a frown of understanding.
Then he sighs. “The politics down here are complicated.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning, if I tell Cam that Sol’s having trouble, he’ll have a lot to say about it. But if Sol wanted help from the club, he’d have asked for it in the first place. He has before.”
“Has he asked since you’ve gone legit?”
“Some of us were always legit, but no,” Folk concedes. “Not that I know of. And he’s right not to. The club doesn’t fight wars anymore. Our kids need their dads.”
Can’t argue with that. I needed my dad too, once upon a time. Not that he’d given a shite.
I glance over Folk’s shoulder to the harem of bikers waiting on him. Different men this time, save the leader—Cam—who seems way more interested in the windows behind me than he does anything else.
Like last time.
It grates on me that he might be looking for Skylar.
Maybe they’re exes.
But…no. Sol already told me they aren’t. And I’m glad of it for no other reason than the president of the Rebel Kings MC is fit as fuck and impossible to ignore.
One of his mates catches me staring.
Dead-eyes me.
I don’t give much of a fuck, but Folk does. He nudges my arm with his fist. “Take a breath.”
“For what?”
“For every reason you have to stay present.”
