I stared at the bottle in my hand, at the water running down the brown glass, at the faint tremor in my knuckles from too much road and not enough sleep. They didn’t know what to do with me like this. Hell, I didn’t know what to do with me like this. I’d spent enough years being easy to understand. Mason liked women. Mason liked fights. Mason liked bikes, whiskey, and leaving before anyone got comfortable.
Now even I was tired of my own legend.
Rylee had cured me of believing chemistry meant loyalty.
Three years. That was what she got from me. Three years of plans I didn’t admit out loud at first because plans made a man vulnerable. Then I started saying them. Started meaning them. A piece of land outside town. A garage big enough for bikes and old engines. A kitchen with yellow light in the mornings because she said she hated cold rooms. Maybe a kid someday, though I’d pretended not to care when she talked about it because the wanting scared the hell out of me.
I’d been building a dream with my hands and my back, one job, one run, one saved envelope of cash at a time.
Rylee traded it in for a three-row European SUV, a six-carat solitaire, and a country club membership.
That was the part that still had teeth.
Not that she left. People left. That was the nature of things. Roads split. Promises cracked. Love went stale if nobody fed it. But she didn’t just leave me. She looked at what I was building for us and decided it wasn’t shiny enough to impress the women she wanted to sit beside at charity luncheons. She wanted polished floors, polished friends, polished lies. She wanted a man with clean hands, a retirement account, and a last name that opened gates.
She married a dentist with a house in one of those neighborhoods where the grass looked fake and every mailbox matched. Last I heard, she drove that big German SUV to pilates three mornings a week and wore a diamond so heavy it probably had its own insurance policy.
Good for her.
I hoped the leather seats were comfortable.
River tipped his bottle toward me. “One day you’ll loosen up again.”
“Maybe I like being tight.”
“That sounded filthy.”
“Only to lonely men.”
Tank snorted. Bullet laughed, but the laugh got cut short by a bottle shattering near the back.
The whole bar tensed.
Voices rose fast. Hot. Stupid. The kind of drunk male noise that came right before somebody made a choice his teeth would regret. I turned on my stool and saw one of our prospects near the hallway, palms out, trying to settle a guy in a sleeveless flannel who had more beer in him than sense.
The drunk shoved him.
Bad move.
Not fatal. Not yet. But the line was there, drawn in broken glass and bad judgment.
River’s grin came slow. Bullet set down his cue. Tank rolled his neck until it popped. I finished my beer because wasting alcohol offended me more than most people did, then set the bottle carefully on the bar.
Business.
That was all. Quick and simple.
The drunk swung first. Wild right hand. Too wide. Too slow. I stepped inside it and put my fist where his jaw met bone. He dropped like gravity had a personal grudge. Another one came at me from the left, braver than smart, eyes wide and mouth open. I caught him in the ribs, then the temple, and he folded over a table with a noise that told me he’d be feeling me tomorrow.
River handled the third with the calm efficiency of a man taking out trash. Bullet cracked one across the bar hard enough to send two glasses jumping. Tank didn’t even fully stand before some cowboy with a belt buckle the size of a dinner plate thought better of whatever heroic thought had crossed his mind.
Thirty seconds.
Four bodies.
Broken glass, blood on the floor, and the sharp stink of panic rising under the whiskey.
The bartender pointed at the door with a towel in his hand and murder in his eyes. “Take your circus somewhere else.”
