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I peered at Addie, and she was laughing while cracking open another beer. My eyes landed on Saint, and I nearly peed my pants when I found him watching me intently. But it wasn’t how Vic watched me. This was more like curiosity.
He simply raised his glass of pink lemonade and nodded at me.
Past
Vic
“Shush, dickhead. You’ll wake up Addie,” Jaeg said, punching Saint in the arm as the five of us crept through the house toward the basement stairs. The lingering smell of peanut butter wafted toward me, and I was betting there were peanut butter cookies in the kitchen. Hettie baked. Not a lot, but some, and when she did, the smell always filled the house.
“I’ll get them,” Callum whispered, then turned left down the hall toward the kitchen to grab the cookies that were no doubt sitting on the blue-and-yellow flowered plate on top of the fridge.
Jaeg opened the basement door, and we crept down the steep wooden steps, being careful to duck under the support beam that hung low over the stairs. The basement was a massive open space with dark mahogany hardwood floors and a barnwood focal wall that held a big screen TV. Shelves filled with books and games stood on either side of it.
There was a rack for fishing rods on the opposite wall beside a cupboard for the tackle box and fishing gear. Large spots on the wall were whiter where pictures of boats had once hung. Hettie had taken them down after her husband, son, and daughter-in-law drowned.
Off to the right was a guest room containing two bunk beds that Callum, North, and Saint used if they crashed here.
Callum closed the basement door, then jogged down the stairs with the plate of cookies. He placed them on the coffee table in front of the black leather sectional where Jaeg, North, and Saint were sprawled out. Everyone reached for one.
Adrenaline still pumped through my veins from the fight tonight, and I didn’t feel like eating or sitting. Instead, I strode over to the dartboard and grabbed the darts.
I’d fought a wild-eyed redheaded kid from the city who looked twenty, but was likely sixteen, my age, and beefed up on steroids. He’d been like a bulldozer with his punches, but he also moved like one, which meant I easily avoided the punches.
My knuckles were bruised and scraped, but were no longer bleeding since I’d soaked my hands after the fight. They’d feel worse tomorrow, but I liked the pain. North took it a lot worse tonight, but he might like fighting more than I did. He’d also been doing it for years, only with padding, and not in a cage beneath a crime lord’s stables.
I heard the TV come on, then a late-night comedian’s voice that was cut off as the channels flicked past until they settled on something with gunshots.
“Fuck, Crank. Good movie,” Saint said.
“What was with your psycho brother tonight? You realize he has a hate on for us, and he’s seriously fucked up, right?” Jaeg asked as Callum dropped onto the couch after snagging another cookie and putting it in his mouth. “It had to be him who put those dead rats in Hettie’s shed last month. And tonight, with him dancing around the ring whistling. I thought Darius was going to take out his gun and pop him one between the eyes.”
“Too bad he didn’t,” Ethan muttered.
We all knew Aiden James was fucked up, and it had nothing to do with the drugs he was on. Callum’s older brother had been kicked out of numerous schools. In grade three he’d killed the rats in the science classroom by beheading one and setting fire to the other. He had a thing for watching things burn. We all suspected Aiden had tortured more than just animals, and that included Callum. We’d seen the scars on his back, but he never said anything about it.
“Aren’t we all fucked up?” Callum said.
I’d like to get Aiden James in the ring, and do some torturing of my own, but the crazy asshole never fought. No, he enjoyed watching from the sidelines with this disturbed gleam in his eyes. Psycho was an understatement.
I aimed, then tossed a dart. Bullseye.
“Not like your psycho brother,” Saint chimed in, kicking his feet up on the coffee table and crossing his ankles.
I glanced over at Callum and saw his jaw was rigid. I had no idea what his relationship was like with his brother, but he never spoke bad about him. He also didn’t defend him.
“You see Sarah tonight at fuck-face’s place?” Jaeg asked as he cracked the lid on the bottle of scotch he’d grabbed from our stash under the floorboards of the garden shed before we came inside. “She looked hot in that red dress.”
I tossed another dart.
North walked over to the dartboard, grabbed the yellow darts, then pulled mine from the board and walked back to me. “Best two out of three?” I offered.
He nodded, and from the way his lips pursed and his eyes were squinting, the movement was obviously painful. He’d taken a few hits to the head, and one blow to the jaw that put him on his ass. The pain poured gasoline on the rage that lived inside him. Didn’t know where that came from and didn’t ask.
We played darts while Jaeg, Saint, and Callum chugged back scotch and talked about the party at Brandan Harrison’s place. We’d gone there before the fights, but it wasn’t to party. Callum had to have a chat with a kid. None of us asked what it was about, but you could guess it had something to do with Callum’s father. Likely the kid’s father owed him money.
I stiffened when I heard the door creak open. None of the others heard it, or the soft footfalls on the stairs, probably because they were too focused on arguing about which chick had the best ass.
I peered up the stairs to see Addie in her pink pig slippers and kitty cat extravaganza PJs. She was clutching something to her chest, likely one of her stuffed animals or dolls.
