A flare of sudden intensity lights up her eyes. Maybe it’s because we’re so close I can feel her breasts pressing into my chest. Or maybe it’s because she’s very aware that I’m hard enough to drill through steel.
No, there’s another reason. An echo of a memory replays in my mind. I didn’t consciously repeat the words I once said to her a long time ago but I can’t deny the strands connecting us began to weave together on that terrible day.
“Julian,” she whispers.
I can’t get over how natural this feels, holding her. My relationships have always been brief and unemotional. Everyone gets satisfied and what’s promised is delivered. Nothing more. Romance has always been treated as unnecessary, a distraction.
My forehead drops to hers. Her lips are inches away.
The moment ends abruptly when my brothers thunder through the back door. Getty is bleeding from the mouth. Fort is shaking his hand with a grimace. Tye’s shirt is torn and splattered with mystery blood.
“Aw, you two look cute,” Tye says and snaps his fingers. “But some fucker is now missing an eye in there so let’s go before a team of badge-carrying shitheads shows up.”
I don’t even have time to curse. With my arm around Cecilia, we take a shortcut to the truck parked on a neighboring street. By now a siren is wailing in the distance.
Cecilia is still a little dazed when I lift her into the passenger seat and buckle her seatbelt. Explanations will need to wait. The second I’m behind the wheel the truck is flung into drive and we coast down the dark street with the headlights off to avoid attracting attention.
After a detour around the block, I glance down the street where the bar is located. I see flashing lights and people milling around.
“Stay down,” I say to my brothers, not a second too soon as the roar of motorcycles drowns out other noise. Cecilia huddles in the passenger seat, clutching her pink handbag, her eyes wide.
“You stay down too,” I advise her, “just until we’ve made it out of town.”
Half a dozen bikes roar past us and disappear into the night like phantom wraiths. I’m not surprised to see the Lord Mountain Motorcycle Club patch on the back of their leather cuts. It’s a good thing they’re heading in the opposite direction because I’m not in the mood to deal with their shit tonight.
I flick the headlights back on once we’re a mile away from the scene. “Tell me you didn’t start a war with the Lords,” I say to my brothers.
The local biker club can be a thorn in our side at times but we’ve always avoided outright conflict with them. That pack of smugglers and petty thieves are nowhere near our level. The silent truce between us says that as long as they stay the fuck out of our way, we’ll stay out of theirs. Dealing with them is a headache I don’t need right now.
“Nah.” Getty’s head pops up in the backseat. “They were just walking in as all hell broke loose.”
After constant glances in the rearview mirror, I’m finally satisfied that nobody is following us. I take a few extra turns to make sure before heading for the road out of town.
“And how did all hell break loose?”
“I’ll explain,” Tye says, and unleashes a barrage of cheerful and vulgar language to tell the story.
The girl he was messing around with turned out to be the fiancée of one of the bartenders. For all I know, he was the guy I saw vaping in the back alley. At the sight of Tye’s hand up his girl’s shirt, he flew into a rage with a lot of friends to back him up. My brothers were quick to join forces and within seconds a full blown brawl was underway.
“All that drama and my dick didn’t even get a play date,” Tye complains with a belch. “Plus my shirt is ruined.”
“That’smyshirt,” Fort points out.
“Huh,” Tye grunts. “Well thenyourshirt is ruined.”
“At least I got some action,” Fort boasts.
Tye erupts with laughter. “Creaming your pants because you touched a tit isn’t getting action, junior.”
“Fuck you,” is Fort’s grumpy reply.
There’s still no sign we’re being followed and I start to relax. Tye isn’t a liar. By his account, the bartender and his pals started throwing punches first without realizing who they were dealing with.
We’ve got an understanding with the sheriff’s office. No one will be eager to slap cuffs on us just because a few ornery bartenders got their asses kicked. Obviously, we can’t go back to that place anytime soon but so be it.
When I check on Cecilia, she’s rummaging through her purse. Calmly, she extracts a small pack of tissues and offers them to Getty, whose lip is still bleeding.
On one hand, I wish she wasn’t in the middle of this chaotic episode. On the other hand, this is who we are. Let her see it.
