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“Oh, I’m sure Joker didn’t mean it like that, dude,” I say and clap Fossil on the back. “He’s just self-conscious about the whole thing.”
“He doesn’t even have a sister,” Fossil mutters. “Or any family to speak of.”
Joker’s dark eyes are shooting fire at Fossil now and I’m pretty sure I’m about to watch Fossil get beat unconscious.
“Why don’t you go see about getting us some drinks, Fossil,” Bane suddenly says.
I didn’t even see him start to pay attention to our conversation again, and now he’s casting worried glances at Joker. He and Archer both are.
Fossil looks at him and is about to argue, but something in the look they exchange makes him stand up and head for the counter.
“That’s right, keep a tighter leash on him,” Joker says. “Or I might decide I don’t like any of you. And that’s not a good place to be.”
“But you still like me, right?” I ask, grinning like a dumbass. I have a feeling it has something to do with the reason I was sent here, so I want to be a part of it.
Joker flashes me an angry look. “I don’t know you, but sure, I like you. For now.”
He looks at the rest of them. “And that goes for all of you. I don’t appreciate being fucked with.”
Fossil returns, cradling a bunch of beer bottles and carrying a half-full bottle of bourbon.
“What’s going on?” he asks.
“You’re all doing something together,” I say, deciding to leave Joker out of it for now and focus on getting my three brothers to slip up. “What is it? I want in.”
“How do you know you want in, if you don’t even know what it is,” Fossil says, chuckling like an idiot. He’s always been the weakest link in any sort of endeavor and the way the other two cringe, that clearly hasn’t changed.
“Because I’m broke and I’m bored,” I say, twist a cap off one of the beer bottles and take a long swing. “And now Cross and the rest don’t even want me riding with them anymore.”
I hope I’m not laying it on too thick.
“All right, fine,” Fossil says and leans closer to me as though he’s about to share the secret. But Bane grabs his arm and pulls him back. Joker is glaring at him like he’s seconds from stabbing him in the neck.
“We can’t trust him,” Bane says. “Not yet anyway.”
“Can’t trust me?” I ask, trying to sound as indignant as I can and hoping it’s not coming across as fake. “Why can’t you trust me all of a sudden? Aren’t we brothers?”
Maybe I pushed it. I can’t, for the life of me, read the look that passes between them all.
Bane’s eyes linger on Joker. “I think we can trust Ruin. Edge is another matter. He’s too close to Ice’s daughter. But Ruin here has no such ties.”
Joker laughs, of all things.
“I’ve been talking to him, and I don’t know if he’s got the stomach for it,” he says.
“There ain’t much I can’t stomach,” I say. “I once gouged a man’s eye out with my thumb.”
Not to mention watched my mother bleed to death in my arms.
“Oh, I don’t doubt the viciousness of any member of Devil’s Nightmare MC,” Joker says. “What I doubt is your willingness to betray them.”
He goes slightly cross-eyed as though he said too much without meaning to. He covers it up by clearing his throat.
“I got no real love for the Devils,” I say. “And the feeling’s been mutual for years.”
Joker gives me a very intense look like he’s trying to see right into my brain. I’m trying not to feel like a traitor for what I just said, but I do. The Devils took me in when I had no one and they put up with me when I wasn’t on my best behavior. But I’m saying this to pay them back for all that. I’m not saying it because I mean it.
He breaks eye contact first and I have no idea what he’s thinking.
