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While the OG Henchmen had ironed out all their differences ages ago, we young bloods hadn't quite gotten to that point yet. It wasn't uncommon for there to be a fight here or there. And there were never any hard feelings. Usually we would nurse our wounds together later over drinks.
That said, it got ugly when it was between two stubborn asses like Fallon and me.
"Hey, I'm just thinking about the club," Fallon insisted.
"How's that?" I asked, leveling a hard look at him.
"You know, morale and shit. If Niro here gets all lovesick again."
"Christ," Seth mumbled.
I wasn't in the biting mood, though.
If for no other reason than I didn't want to give Fallon a reason to feel like he got the better of me.
"That's all in the past," I said, shrugging, as I took a long sip of the coffee, not knowing if the bitter taste on my tongue was from the drink or the words I'd just said.
"Hm. I guess we will see," Fallon decided, still not believing me.
"You starting shit again?" Reign, our president, and Fallon and Finn's father, asked as he walked into the room, looking directly at his oldest son.
"Me? Always," Fallon admitted shamelessly.
"If you can't learn to play fucking nice, how the hell am I supposed to hand this club over to you?" Reign asked, coming up beside me, looking dubiously at the coffee pot. "That smells rancid. Malc?" he asked.
"Yep," I agreed, tipping my mug up at him, taking a sip, just barely managing not to wince.
"I guess I'll pass. Who'd you fuck up now?" he asked, brow arched up as he looked at my face.
"Oh me? Just went a couple practice rounds in the ring," I said, shrugging.
"Chip off the old block," he mumbled to himself.
"So, Pops, you hanging back for the party tonight?" Fallon asked, already knowing the answer.
"Fuck no," Reign said, shaking his head. "Rather be at home with my woman than here watching you jackasses tear it up. But I will be making sure someone with some sense is here to keep an eye on shit."
"We don't need a babysitter. Let the men have the night off," Fallon demanded.
To that, his father shot him a smirk that looked even more cocky with the added years, "Oh, I'm not sending one of the men. I'm sending your cousin. She ought to keep your asses in line," Reign said, dealing the deathblow, and clearly enjoying the look of dread on his son's face.
"Oh, for fuck's sake. Not Chris," Fallon demanded.
We all loved our cousin—whether we were related through blood like Fallon or not—but she was a stubborn-ass who would make sure that no one got away with anything they shouldn't.
"You know, I thought that after your teens were over, I wouldn't get so much joy in making your life hell. But, damn, it never stops being entertaining," Reign said, smacking a hand on his son's shoulder so hard that he jerked forward a step.
"She's not so bad when her man is around," Seth said, shrugging, as Reign walked out. "Maybe someone should suggest he take her on up to the glass room for some privacy," he added.
"Is your moody ass going to be here?" Fallon asked.
I wasn't in the mood to party. But when was I ever these days? That said, I had nothing else to do, nowhere else to be. And drinking sounded like a good way to keep my mind from drifting to thoughts of Andi, about why she was back in town, about what had happened to send her home after so long.
It wasn't my place to wonder about that shit anymore.
She wasn't mine.
She'd never been mine.
She'd never be mine.
That had been my mantra for longer than I cared to think about.
It didn't matter that she had left New York.
The reasons she did so didn't matter either.
And it sure didn't matter that she was back in Navesink Bank, that I would more than likely be crossing paths with her more than a few times.
It didn't matter.
Because I'd spent the last several years forcing any feelings I had toward her away, beating them down, forcing them so deep that they didn't have any chance of coming up to the surface again.
At least that was the theory.
Only time would put it to the test.
I never could have realized just how quickly I would be face-to-face with the woman I had spent more than half of my life in love with.
Or how having her close again would feel.
Chapter Four
Andi
I was getting preened by one of my mother's macaws when they showed up.
My cousins.
By connection to the club, not blood. I only had few actual blood cousins, but it made things easier to just refer to the kids of the bikers as my cousins because we'd been raised much like that. One big, crazy, loud, sometimes dysfunctional, but always love-filled, family
