He dragged a hand over his sweaty head again and his smile slid back into place. “Yeah, yeah, we were.” He held out a hand for me to take—a proverbial olive branch, if you like—and I breathed a sigh of relief. Kicking his ass hadn’t been on the cards today. He was my brother and I was fucking tired. But as I reached to take it he dropped low and slammed his shoulder into me.
Stone was strong, and he used that weight to his advantage by pushing all of his weight into me, trying to get me to fall back on my ass, but there was no way I was going down. I reached over the back of him and grabbed him by the waist before lifting him up like I was a wrestler and dropping us both backwards onto the ground. I barked out a laugh as he groaned.
“I told you, you were doing it wrong.” I grinned up against the bright sky, watching as a cloud drifted past the sun. “Quit it now, Stone. I’m tired and you’re high.” My muscles were twitching for more, but I reeled it back in and rolled onto my front, dragging myself up to my knees.
“Yeah yeah,” he groaned.
I looked over to the clubhouse and saw Bull, Wolf, and some of the other bikers standing there watching me and Stone fight. I wasn’t a man to blush, but if I were, I would have been bright fucking red with embarrassment. Rolling around and play-fighting with Stone was not the impression I wanted to give out. Bull had his arms crossed over his chest, his expression serious, and Wolf raised an arm and called me over, his normal happy expression absent.
I punched Stone in the arm. “Get the fuck up.”
He reached up to swat at me, but I blocked his hand and pushed his other hand away without looking away from Bull. Stone groaned and started to stand up.
I slowly rose to my feet and Wolf and the others started toward me. I started walking, meeting them halfway across the grounds.
“’Sup?” I grunted as I came to a stop. I dragged a hand through my hair, sleep a distant memory as all my adrenaline fired through me.
Bull looked over at another man—one of the out-of-town bikers, a dark-eyed motherfucker with a serious-as-hell expression. “What I tell you about my boy here?” Bull looked back at me.
“Boy’s right,” the other man replied. “He’s too young to get in my fight. May look older but I can smell his youth on him.” But the way he stared at me made it obvious he saw the darkness inside of me.
Bull shook his head. “He’s young, but he’s a man all right. He can take it. You should have seen him take out—”
“A little schoolboy scuffle don’t mean he’s ready, Bull.”
Bull didn’t seem fazed. “I know that, but I see it in him. He’s got it.” Bull finally looked at me. “Kid, this is Hardy, President of the Highwaymen Atlanta mother chapter. Hardy,” he said, looking back at the other man, “this is Dillon.”
Hardy held out his hand to me. “Ain’t got a name yet.” He sniffed like I was below him and I instantly began to dislike the man. Regardless, I took his hand, shaking it and giving a nod as he looked me over. Because I knew right away what this was about. I’d seen that look before on men. I used to hate it, but not anymore. That look had made me who and what I was. And it had saved my ass more times than I could remember.
“Bull tells me you’re a fighter?” Hardy said, reaching down to a light a cigarette. He looked sober as a judge, and too calm for my liking.
I nodded but didn’t say anything. I had no idea how Bull knew I was a fighter. Barring the night we had met and he’d forced me to fight to the death, he hadn’t witnessed me really fight before. Still, some men could sniff it on others. The blood that still drenched their clean hands, and the money that was to be made.
“Hardy runs some fights,” Bull said. “Big money. Underground, of course,”
“Of course,” Wolf laughed, breaking the tension, and everyone joined in.
“But we’re talking thousands, not hundreds. I told him I thought you had what it took.” Bull looked at me, not with greed like I’d seen before, but with something akin to pride. There was a respect in his eyes, not greed, as he waited for me to say something to him.
I wasn’t even sure if this was a decision I had a choice in, or whether this was something that was just expected of me. Either way, that look from him was all it took to seal my decision. I was already in before I replied.
“What do I get out of it?” I asked.
Hardy barked out a laugh and Wolf and Bull joined in. Hardy took a step forward. “Respect.”
I held his hard gaze. “Who says I ain’t got that from my club already?”
A slow smile rose up on his face. “Respect from me, kid. And trust me, that’s something you want if you’re going to make it in this life.”
My jaw was twitching as I clenched my back teeth. There was something about Hardy that I didn’t like—a darkness that I’d seen and fought before—but I got the sense from Bull and Wolf that this was important to them and to our club. That Hardy’s respect for me affected us all, and that wasn’t something I could ignore or walk away from, no matter how much I didn’t like the man.
I nodded. “Just give me a time and place.”
Hardy smiled again and turned to Bull. “I’ll be in touch.”
They shook hands and Hardy headed back to the club, closely followed by Wolf. I looked back at Bull, whose expression was serious.
“You’ll do good,” he said. “Nothing to worry about.”
