“There’s some on your nose.”
I tilt my head from side to side, looking at both sides of my sharp, uncomfortably large nose. I notice the blood and wipe it off with a paper towel, face pressed to the mirror.
“Are you out here alone tonight?”
I’ll have to work to drag her out of her shell after scaring the crap out of her. Not sure that Janelle has anything to be afraid of with me. Before the army sent me home, I heard about all the problems going on with the club regarding the personal disagreements about race and culture and all of that mess.
There were plenty of men with all types of backgrounds in the army. Most of them were assholes regardless of their skin color. Women are women – I was never too picky about their skin color myself. The women who I knew with Janelle’s complexion in the military never bothered with men like me when they could have their own.
“No. I came with my friend and lost her in the chaos.”
The corners of my lips drag upward, but I do my best to suppress the smirk, since I’m well aware that it won’t paint me in a good light at all with Janelle. She stays tense around me.
“No boyfriend?”
I’ll worry about the friend later, but I’ll have to keep her in mind since she’s most likely to take Janelle away from me tonight.
“No,” Janelle says, her gaze dropping away from mine noticeably. “He cheated on me.”
“What a fucking tool.”
Janelle flinches as if the wound were still fresh. As far as I know, the wound might very well be. I position my body in theway of the door in hopes that this tense conversation doesn’t provoke her to escape.
“Do men really think that?” Janelle says with a surprising bite to her voice. “Because you all claim that cheaters are assholes, yet almost every guy I know has betrayed a woman he claimed to love.”
I never have – but maybe that’s because I’ve never loved a woman and certainly I would have never been stupid enough to claim that I did when I didn’t.
“You show me the guy who hurt you and I’ll show you what I think about cheaters.”
Her eyes meet mine and there’s a flicker of darkness behind them like Janelle thinks I’m crazy enough to do what she wants and not only that, she’s crazy enough to take me up on the offer. She stares a little hard at my glass eye, which most people do when they notice there’s somethingwrongwith me. Janelle is kind enough not to comment on it, but I sense the dead eye makes her uncomfortable.
Her voice sounds warbly, but she does her best to still sound strong. “Is there a reason you’re here and not in jail?”
She has me on edge, this one. I can’t tell what’s going to come out of her mouth next, and I like the constant surprises thus far.
“This country hasn’t fallen yet because of men like me.”
“What, men who get into dick-measuring bar fights?”
I laugh again. “No, Janelle. Soldiers. I served our country for three years.”
Anywhere I’ve been before, my service immediately impresses people, especially those who would have otherwise turned their nose up at me. Janelle’s expression is blank and if not completely blank, it’s at the very least impossible to read properly.
“Is that why you take pleasure out of hurting people?” she asks.
Heat prickles the tips of my ears as Janelle exposes something about me that I don’t like and that I’ve become very well trained to keep hidden. I look over at her and another one of my animalistic urges rises up in my chest. If I learned anything from growing up with Eliza Blackwood as a mother, it’s that women are best kept at a distance if you want to avoid trouble.
My father died in the Gulf War, so I don’t know what he was like and my mother never said anything good about him. It was only after I tagged along with Ruger to my first quarterly club meeting at fifteen years old that I learned from Doc that my father was part of a team of Army Rangers sent up into the mountains of Afghanistan for a mission and he pretty much died a hero.
“I don’t take pleasure from it,” I respond after silence that lasts so long and goes so deep that I swear I can hear Janelle’s heart racing from across the bathroom. I scare her because of what she’s seen. The things that looking at her does to me are equally unspeakable.
“Then what the hell was that?” Janelle says, looking at the door past my shoulder again.
“That guy deserved it.”
“Are the cops going to think that?” she asks.
“Won’t be any cops. Look, if you want an escort to meet your friend, I’ll take you outside,” I tell her. By now, the Murray boys would have broken up the fight. I might get in trouble with Ethan and Isaac later, but considering how close my punches got me to Janelle, I find the juice very much worth the squeeze.
