Page 27

“I’m so fucked,” Flint says as he bangs his head on the table.

I can’t hold in my bark of a laugh. “Maybe it won’t be so bad.”

He tilts his head, just enough to peek at me from his face-plant. “Have you met my girl? She’s going to be pissed to learn someone else got hitched before she even got a ring on it.”

I shrug. “What’s the holdup? You love her. You live together. Seems like a no-brainer to me.”

“What if it changes… us?”

I raise an eyebrow at his question. “You and me?”

He gives me a dull look and flips me off, making me smirk. “Me and Jules. She says she remembers everything, and what if I put a ring on her and she remembers I wasn’t what she’d planned for? That this wasn’t what she saw when she was a little girl dreaming up all this fairy-tale shit while watching Disney princess movies?”

I get that we’re all human, just never expected to see it. Especially from a man like Flint, who always seems to have his shit together.

“What if you not asking is what pushes her away?”

He straightens in his chair and looks at me with laser focus. “You think?”

I shrug as I grab my drink and finish it. “She’s here, ain’t she? She picked you even after getting her memory back. Seems to me like she wants you. But who the fuck knows for how long if you don’t keep giving her what makes her happy.”

He’s out of his chair so fast, it flips backward as he runs across the room to his girl, who’s huddled with a few of the other old ladies. Something tells me we’ll be having another wedding soon. Maybe we can get this place to give the club a discount.

I rise from my seat, walk around the table, and pick up Flint’s chair before heading to the bar. Brooklyn’s family not only rented out the place but also got the club hotel rooms for the night. No one is driving who doesn’t want to, and I plan to take up my fair share of the open bar.

I order my third drink of the night, leaning back on the bar as they make it to peruse the floor before me.

The large dance floor is half couples and the other half kids. Kids who then run from the dance floor to the kid corner that’s filled with stuff for all of them. I even see a few brothers over there trying to call next to play some of the video games.

A smile breaks out on my face as I take it all in. My family. I claim each Hound here as kin and, by association, those connected to them in one form or another.

I continue to scan the area, and then my smile drops. As does any good faith I might have had for Brooklyn’s family moments before.

Especially for her oldest brother, Vinny, the head of the family and the one running the Mafia syndicate on the East Coast. Someone whom many fear. Not only him but his three brothers as well. He’s a man I should stay away from, especially since Casper called for each of us to behave and not discuss business for the night.

A promise that will be broken in the next five minutes if he doesn’t get up and walk away from Natalie.

I watch them closely from afar. He’s smiling too much for my liking. Talking to her like he knows her. But he doesn’t. And from her pinched face, she isn’t a fan of what he’s saying.

When she leaves him sitting there, walking out of the banquet hall, I make it to the count of seven before I follow her.

She’s quick, but there aren’t a lot of places to go. The hall outside the banquet room is long and leads to only three places: the bathroom, the connected hotel, and outside.

I already know where she’ll go. Despite what she might want me to think, she’s a creature of habit, just like me. And each time something pisses her off, more than just the everyday normal shit going on, she looks for freedom. Since she can’t have that, she gets the next best thing—fresh air.

I catch up to her as she moves to the walking path and grab her arm to pull her to a stop. As expected, she yanks it out of my grasp as she keeps walking.

She and I have done this song and dance before. Many times, in fact. Each time, it was when I needed her to do something, and each time, she didn’t give a fuck about what I wanted. I didn’t have a problem showing her the error of her ways then, and I still don’t.

So when I reach for her arm again, I yank her toward me with more force than most brothers would handle a woman and use my other hand to hold on to her hip. The fabric of the dress she wore tonight bunches under my fingertips.

“Let go. I’m not running, just getting air.” She tries to push me away, but with her hands caught between our bodies, she doesn’t get much give from me.

“What did he want?”

“Who?”

“Vinny.”