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Chapter Eleven
Hudson
Hudson and Juliusdecided to take her to Gino’s, one town away from Granite Valley, and home of Endless Meatballs.
“They’re also really good meatballs,” Hudson explained as he drove the SUV down the mountain. Julius had been slightly grumpy at letting him drive — Julius really, really preferred to drive — but finally relented.
Quinn sunk in her seat a little as they drove through Granite Valley on the way to Big River, but no one seemed to even glance their way.
“Probably having a war council,” Hudson explained. “Going over the plan a couple more times before tomorrow’s big roll out.”
“Shouldn’t we be doing that?” Quinn asked. “And what’s a war council?”
“We’re meeting at 6 a.m. tomorrow, and it’s... a term used for stuff like this,” he said.
You probably shouldn’t have called it that, he told himself. I’m pretty sure regular people call that a ‘meeting.’
“Just a term,” Quinn said, sounding unconvinced. “A term that totally normal people use.”
Hudson sighed and looked in the rear view mirror. Julius was smirking at him.
“You may as well tell her,” he said.
There was an unspoken end to that sentence that only Hudson heard: you may as well tell her, if she’s our mate.
For another moment, Hudson let himself hope that they could keep her.
“I was in a biker gang,” he said. “A war council is the meeting you have before you go take down another gang.”
He could practically feel Quinn’s eyes running up his arm, looking over his tattoos.
“Wow,” she breathed.
Now they were out of Granite Valley, driving through the dark woods on the highway.
“Was it a bad biker gang?” she said. “Like, criminal?”
“Very,” Hudson said.
“Are you still in it?”
Hudson laughed. “No. I got out a couple years ago.” He paused. “Actually, when I met Julius.”
She turned around and looked at Julius in the back seat.
“Were you in a biker gang?”
The question caught Hudson off guard and he nearly doubled over laughing, making the SUV swerve on the road, the thought of Julius in a biker gang the best thing he’d heard all day.
In the rear view mirror, Julius didn’t find it quite as funny, but he was laughing, too.
“No,” he finally answered, still grinning. “I was in college, then law school, then the public defender’s office.”
“Only one of us had the misspent youth,” Hudson said.
He was glad to see the lights of Big River coming up. He wasn’t sure he wanted Quinn to know just how misspent his youth had been.
“What stuff did you do?” she asked, her eyes wide.
