Page 35 of Diamonds in the Mud

“Rayne,” a few people I’d known since school called out to me as I passed them by. Smiling, I yelled over the loud saxophone music if they had seen Aria.

One of them pointed upstairs, so I made my way to the bar and ordered a beer before heading up. A few Reaper members were sitting at the bar talking, none of them Jameson. I spotted a few more near the pool tables along with a few of the women that always hung around them.

Isabella Sinclair had been a few grades lower than me. She’d been a troubled girl as far back as I could remember. My theory was that she’d come from an abusive home and had practically raised herself. She was an attention hog. In classes, she’d learned early that any attention was good attention. Often, she’d start fights or bully the weaker girls. She laughed when she made any of her victims cry, almost as if she got off on tears.

Isabella, or Izzy as everyone called her, could have easily been the all-American, small-town princess, if not for the rotten core inside. As with the rest of the Reapers, she was covered almost head to toe in tattoos, except for that face of hers, which could have easily been on any magazine cover. She’d dyed the ends of her long blonde hair with bright pink, purple, and, this week’s color, blue.

Then there was Nadia Monroe. The woman was a gym rat who could probably outlift most men in the Reapers. But since she had ovaries, she was kept from achieving full member status.

Nadia’s parents had moved out of town shortly after her graduation, around the same time she’d joined the Reapers. She was shorter than I was and had long jet-black hair with bleached tips. Her toned and tanned body had even more muscles than tattoos, which covered almost every inch of her arms, shoulders, and legs.

Out of the two of them, Nadia Monroe was the one I would pick to watch closely. The woman never showed emotions. Her intelligence was, according to her records, off the charts.

Someone that smart didn’t stick around the gang for scraps. She was after something.

Not spotting Jameson in the mix, I took my beer and headed upstairs.

Aria and Tobias sat in a low circular booth area with a round coffee table. Seeing the handful of empty beers and shot glasses on the table, I sat next to Aria.

“Hey, kids,” I said, leaning back. “What are we celebrating tonight?”

“Nothing.” Aria leaned over and hugged me. “Everything.”

“We finally picked a date,” Tobias said with a smile.

“Finally?” I laughed. “You mean, out of the half dozen dates you finally picked one of them?”

They both looked at one another. “We’ve decided on a new date,” Aria said cheerfully.

“Okay, shoot. What’s the date?” I asked.

“October tenth.” Tobias smiled. “It’s easy to remember. Ten, ten.”

“Plus, it’s on a Saturday this year and I called the hall and they’re open so we booked it.” Aria squealed and hugged Tobias. “We’re getting married.”

I laughed and picked up my beer. “And to think, it only took three years.”

“Three years, six months, thirteen days, and”—Tobias glanced at his watch and narrowed his eyes—“twenty-two hours.”

I’d been there less than half an hour before finally spotting Jameson downstairs playing pool.

I didn’t know if he’d spotted me yet so I watched him as I leaned on the railing overhead.

Izzy was trying her best to get the man to notice her. Her black leather corset top had her solid Ds hiked up to her chin, and half of her butt cheeks hung out under the matching leather skirt she wore with it. The thigh-high boots completed the woman’s outfit, which made me instantly wonder how anyone could be comfortable in an outfit like that.

I glanced down at the black jeans, blue button-up shirt, and heeled boots I’d dressed up in for dinner at my folks’ place. This was my standard attire.

Except for the handful of sundresses I owned for occasions such as attending church with the Cordovas or special party events, this was as dressy as I got.

I glanced up just in time to see Izzy press her chest against Jameson’s side and whisper something that had him laughing.

There wasn’t an ounce of jealousy in my bones. Not normally. But at that moment, I wanted to kick in the other woman’s teeth.

Turning away, I leaned on the half wall and watched Aria and Tobias together. What did it take to have something like they did?

The pair had pretty much fallen for one another at first sight. Tobias was a good man. One who had helped raise his younger sister after his father had been shot and killed in a drive-by shooting when he’d been thirteen. Randy had been the cop to put the two twenty-year-old shooters behind bars. Shortly after that, Randy took the chief of police gig.

Aria’s story wasn’t as sad as Tobias’s. Aria came from a middle-class family. They lived in a nice house just outside of town. Had good-paying jobs. Went to church every Sunday. Her mother volunteered at the school and the nursing home, while her father donated his time as a volunteer firefighter.