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And now he’d missed his chance. Fuck. Yep, this weekend sucked ass.
“Mindy looks like she’s gonna blow,” Darwin observed.
Pulling his attention from his own problems, Zaxx focused again on Mindy. Yep, storm clouds gathered over there. She sat poker-straight, staring homicide at the dance floor, drumming sparkly blue nails on the table.
When she grabbed Gia’s mostly full beer and drained it, Zaxx leaned to Darwin. “You gotta take that bullet, brother. You know I can’t.”
More often than not, crowd control meant seeing trouble before it started and redirecting the energy, whether that was the Cummings and the Drapers sitting a little too close together and getting a little too energetic in their talk, or some friendly banter taking on too sharp an edge, or an angry drama queen amping herself up. Tonight, Mindy was the energy that needed redirecting. In fact, maybe Nolan had seen more than Gia looking unhappy. Maybe he’d picked up some increased tension between Gia and Mindy and had moved in for that reason.
Darwin made a face. He knew exactly why Zaxx would only be a spark to the barrel of gasoline that was Mindy Jasper. He’d also had his experiences with her, but his were all clubhouse related. Mindy had been kicked from the roster before Zaxx’s time with the Horde, but he knew the stories. He’d been told a few during his misguided time with her, and inundated with stories after Mindy’s big scene over him in the Hall.
“She’s like cling wrap,” Darwin complained at Zaxx’s ear. Darwin was a nice guy who didn’t throw insults around lightly, especially about women. Him calling Mindy ‘cling wrap’ was equivalent to most other guys calling her something really vile.
“You don’t gotta fuck her, man,” Zaxx assured him. “You just gotta wind her down. Bring her one of those pink drinks.”
“I don’t even know what that thing is.”
“Ask Chet.”
Giving up with a slump of his shoulders, Darwin grabbed Chet’s attention. Turned out that the pink drink was a cosmopolitan.
Zaxx bought Darwin a shot of Patrón and did one with him as Chet whipped up the pink concoction. With an expression that suggested he thought his balls were going to shrivel up and drop off when he touched that fancy glass, Darwin grabbed a fresh beer in one hand and plucked the cosmo up with his fingertips at the stem of the glass. Then he gave Zaxx a final, plaintive look and pushed forward to take the bullet.
Zaxx chuckled. Okay, now Darwin’s night was officially sucking more than his.
Chapter Six
When Gia was in her teens, she’d had a pretty miserable crush on Nolan Mariano.
And who could blame her? He was seriously hot, all tall, dark, and brooding, with soulful dark blue eyes, and he balanced on that microscopically fine line between truly good guy and real badass, achieving both. And he was tortured, with all kinds of pain in his past! How was a straight teenage girl in the twenty-first century supposed to defend herself against all that?
Though she’d told no one but her journal, she’d been hopelessly besotted (she’d believed it was real love, of course), and for a while, she’d believed she might have a chance with him. He was only about ten years older; she knew lots of couples with wider gaps between them than that.
Then Nolan had started dating Iris Ryan, and Gia had been heartbroken.
Eventually, though, the crush had faded out. Nolan and Iris had gotten serious, then engaged, then married, and then started having babies. What had begun as soul-searing envy of Iris had grown into an understanding that Nolan was much farther on his life path than she was. The age gap hadn’t mattered, but the life gap did.
Now, coming up on her twenty-fifth birthday, she understood that the life gap was why the age gap mattered. And now Nolan was a good friend. More than that, he was family, like an older brother or a young uncle.
Even so, Nolan was still the only man Gia had ever felt that deep, incapacitating need for. It hadn’t been real love, but it was its rough draft. Being in his arms, moving together on the crowded dance floor, felt ... confusing. Especially after a couple beers.
It was thrilling and a little bit guilty, too. Like they were cheating on Iris. Obviously they weren’t; they were only dancing, and Nolan kept a few gentlemanly inches of space between them. That guilt was a remnant of adolescence; he was being a big brother, not a lover. Teenage Gia was still fluttering away in her chest, though.
Nolan had asked her to dance because he was a good guy, not to make a move on her. Probably he’d seen a look on her face or something, or knew Mindy well enough to know Gia would appreciate a rescue.
She’d leapt at the offer of rescue. Being stuck at that table with Mindy stewing, her vibe growing more poisonous the more fun Hilary seemed to be having, had pretty much tanked Gia’s already sinking night.
She should have left, gone home. But her ‘home’ was now a glorified shed in the backyard of the house the rest of her family lived in, and she wasn’t keen on going back to it and sitting alone in there. She’d been very lovingly kicked out of her family home.
The middle of the town honky-tonk on a Saturday night was not a convenient location for an epiphany about why her family’s huge gift to her felt so bad, but that was where she’d had it—stuck at a table with Mindy Jasper and Her Amazing Technicolor Dreamdress.
Then Nolan had appeared as if summoned and swept her off to the dance floor. Teenage Gia would have swooned. Grownup Gia felt a little giddy, in fact. That was probably where the guilt came from.
Nolan was a stiff, but not terrible dancer. He had a sense of rhythm and knew where to put his feet. Every now and then, he’d do a turn, or lift their arms, inviting her to spin. Both of Gia’s parents were good dancers, but it was Dad who’d actually taught her. He had excellent moves for such a big guy.
Nolan had led her through two songs, and Gia was preparing herself to either stop gracefully with the end of this second song or move gracefully into the third when the couple at their side—strangers to Gia—crashed into them. The guy stepped hard on Gia’s foot as he tried to keep his balance, and she reacted to the crunching pain by shoving him hard in the other direction.
That should have been the flashpoint to turn this scene into a brawl, except for Nolan. He grabbed the guy Gia had shoved and helped him get steady. Then Nolan checked in with the guy’s date. The scene hung suspended for a moment, ready to go either way, and then the guy nodded at Nolan and said, or only mouthed, Thanks, man, and Nolan accepted the thanks with a nod.
