He doesn’t seem like a sharer.
I look Pixie over, and she sends me a sly look, mouth pursing on a smile.
“What can you tell me about them?”
“Which them?”
I meet her gaze, but she’s enjoying the game. I roll my eyes. “Sin. Doc. Saint.”
“Was wondering how long it was going to take you to ask. The benefit of being the lone girl in here thinking with her brain instead of her womb, I get to hear a lot.”
Pixie takes up a shaker and adds some juice and ice to it, mixing in a few extras before pouring it into a glass and topping it with soda water. “It’s a virgin.”
I blush at her word choice, but I take a sip and smile. It’s sweet but not too sweet, with a zing of sour at the end. “Nice.”
“Mmm hmm. So, your men…” Her fingers drum together. “God, where to start. Your husband.”
The word still makes me flinch and flush in equal measure.
Pixies knows, it’s why she does it. She likes to push buttons. Everyone’s buttons.
“I can’t tell you much personal shit about Saint. I’m sure you’ve guessed he’s a pretty closed book.”
I roll my eyes.
“But I can tell you he’s genuine. He doesn’t lie. Takes pride in being able to help people and has no ego about it. Unless he’s up against the law. Knox and him go way back to when he started the club, but I don’t know much about the animosity between the two of them.”
She takes a long pull of her beer and leans into the counter, tapping her fingers against it and thinking. “I’m pretty sure something big happened to him before he started the club. He’sformer military. Marines, I’m pretty sure. Something to do with intelligence, but I could be making that up.”
But it makes sense for his personality, for what he’s done with the men he’s collected. A pain starts in my chest, making me rub at it, because I have a pretty good idea of what happened to him, even if I don’t know the details.
“Then there’s Doc. Pretty obvious that he’s a doctor. Was one in his former life.”
I nod. He told me a little the other day. Before we kissed. The mere memory warms my insides. And Pixie, being her too observant self, picks up on it.
“I bet you know more than me on that front, but he was a trauma surgeon. Seen a lot of violence before he joined us here. Seen a lot since, too. He’s put a lot of the men back together. Gets quiet when he loses one.” Her eyes flash back to me.
What kind of violence has she seen since coming here?
“He’s probably the softest of all the men. He can’t go out on some of the missions because it eats up at him. You know? He’s meant to save people, not to put them down.”
I nod. When she puts it like that, it’s pretty obvious. He trained himself to be the one between a person and their death, not the one pulling the trigger.
“He’s super loyal, though. Not Saint’s right hand by any means, but certainly in the closest circle.”
“Judge is his right hand.”
“Yeah.” Pixie laughs. “The former high-powered defense attorney. He’s got a hell of a story, too, but unlike the men you’reentangled with, all you have to do is ask to hear it. And he tells it better than I do. I will say his journey here involved taking justice into his own hands.”
“Makes him a pretty good fit then.”
“Don’t we know it.”
I fiddle with my glass, waiting for her to move on to the biggest mystery of them all. The one who seems to stalk me silently when he’s here. I can’t move around the club without him as my shadow.
Pixie gives me a sly smile, the ring in her lip glinting as she nibbles on it. “And then…there’s Sin.”
My heart kicks up a bit.
