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Without saying goodbye or waiting for him to make a move to leave, she turned and headed back to the house. With a clap of her hands, she called Sugar to heel. The dog shut up at once and barreled to her mom.
Eight stood where he was and watched his best friend’s widow until she was safely back inside. Then he mounted up and headed back up the long lane that was their driveway.
He believed her. Sage and the kids were healing. They were strong together. They were okay.
But he was not.
~oOo~
Eight sat on his bike in the crowded parking lot and stared at the building before him. It was a nondescript block of grey concrete, with no point of visual interest but the large sign, illuminated letters in bright blue, declaring the place AZURE.
It wasn’t his kind of bar. For one thing, it was in the Brady Arts District, which was on Street Hounds’ turf. Strictly speaking, a Bull was supposed to stay on his side of the turf boundary, but the Bulls and the Hounds had been more or less friendly for years. Currently, they were more friendly. The Bulls supplied the Hounds with Volkov steel, as they had for years, and they’d also taken to working small jobs together occasionally. Becker had worked hard to keep peace in Tulsa, and he’d done it by building alliances—with the Street Hounds, and with the Osage, Pawnee, and Muscogee tribes.
Despite the kutte on his back, Eight wasn’t sitting on this parking lot in a Bulls capacity, either in alliance with the Hounds or otherwise. He’d been riding since he’d left Becker’s place, trying to clear his head of all the heavy shit this date had pushed to the front, and he’d ended up here without really meaning to.
Taking a fucking minute to be honest with himself, Eight admitted that was crap. He’d come here on purpose. He’d known to come here because he’d looked up her schedule and knew she’d be here. For the past couple of months, since he’d first had the thought, he’d been keeping track of her schedule. Twice before tonight, he’d gone to see her.
Both times, she’d spoken to him, but not enthusiastically—unless anger was a form of enthusiasm. He usually felt pretty fucking enthusiastic when he was righteously pissed off.
She was right to be pissed, of course, and he knew what he’d asked of her was insane. He wasn’t any more sure than she was why he suddenly gave a shit after all these years, but damn if he didn’t really give a shit now. It felt like something heneeded. Like finally doing this right would push his wheels out of the muck and get him back on the road.
If he went in there and tried again, no doubt she’d kick his teeth in again—verbally, anyway. It had been a rough enough day without adding a furious woman ranting at him about how much he sucked.
Yet here he was, needing to try again.
As he sat there, dithering, music began to thump against the walls inside. If he went in while the band was playing, he could set himself up somewhere and watch, get himself prepared, maybe come to his senses and head back out before she was free to confront him.
Eight dismounted and headed toward the building.
In the marquee frame beside the door was a poster:AZURE PRESENTS! THIS WEEKEND ONLY! MARCELLA LEWIS & THE LOWDOWNERS! $10 door, 2 drink minimum.The image behind the shouting letters was of Marcella, silhouetted against blue light, holding a big vintage mic like a lover, her head flung back and her hair flying. The blue glow of the lights highlighted the sheen of her leather pants.
It was those fucking leather pants, and the way she filled them out, that had snagged him all those years ago, before she’d been big enough to warrant a poster like that, and before he’d started trying to figure out how not to always be a goddamn asshole.
~oOo~
Eight paid his ten-dollar cover and went in. The big Black bouncer gave him and his kutte a hard look, but he didn’t say more than that look conveyed, and Eight walked on in.
Azure was definitely not his kind of bar. All moody lighting in a blue he figured was ‘azure.’ A circular bar covered in mirrored panels took up the center of the space. The walls and floor were black, it seemed, as were the tables. Booths were some kind of shimmery silver vinyl. A black stage filled the center of the back wall, and a glittering blue curtain served as its backdrop. Marcella Lewis and the Lowdowners, the four guys and a chick who backed her, were deep into ‘Love Me Like a Man.’ The dance floor was a roiling mass of people moving to their beat.
She had a great fucking voice. If the leather pants had hooked him eleven years ago, that smoky alto had set the hook. Which had led to a long string of stupid mistakes on his part.
He’d first seen her at the Wayside Inn, the bar Maverick’s old lady, Jenny, owned. While he’d been in prison, Jenny had put some money into renovations, turning an old corner dive bar into a pretty decent small club that showcased local bands.
For the first year or two after his release, Eight had been at loose ends, trying to remember how to be a human being again after almost six years of being an inmate. He hadn’t been that great at the human-being thing before prison. But after it, he was basically an animal.
Sleeping alone in his apartment had been impossible. He’d spent almost all his time in the clubhouse, but sometimes that was just as empty, and four times bigger, and ten times worse. Then he’d ridden all night, sometimes stopping at a bar to drink himself stupid and maybe kick up some shit. Fighting had been about the only thing that had made him feel squared up.
When that habit had led him to start a brawl so big and destructive he’d landed in lockup and had had a really horrific night of thinking he was going to be revoked and sent back to McAllister, he’d decided to cool it on the shit-kicking.
But he’d still been restless and wired, and he still rode through a lot of nights.
One night, he’d stopped at the Wayside.
Generally, he steered clear of it. Back in those days, Jenny Helm had not been an Eight Ball fan. Neither had her old man. Eight had had fractious relationships with almost all his brothers for most of his time in this kutte, but Maverick had out and out hated him. Kicking up shit in his old lady’s recently renovated bar would have been disastrous.
Maybe that was why he went in that night. He’d done a lot of stupid shit in the clubhouse and to his brothers over the years, but maybe he thought the downside to doing stupid shit at the Wayside would keep him in line.
He didn’t remember his thought process, but something had him going into the bar that night, when a much less well-known and much more humbly geared band called simply The Lowdowners was playing on Jenny’s new stage.
