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“What about her friend?” Lennox groans. “I swear there’s something off about her. Before I took her home, she made me get her pie and fries, but then she just kept staring at me all strangely.”
“Maybe she had Stockholm Syndrome,” Atlas suggests. His beer is leaving a sweaty mark on the coffee table, which I don’t like. The most annoying part is that there’s a coaster right beside the condensing bottle, unused.
“Maybe you’re all a pack of blathering himbos,” Granny shoots back. “You kidnapped that poor girl, and you wonder why she was just a tad shell-shocked at the whole thing? You kidnapped her, bound and gagged her, tied her to a bloody chair, and stuffed her in a nasty old basement. None of you are unintimidating, and you all crowded around her, and she wasn’t even the right person. I had to make you apologize and take her home. You don’t think there’s anything strange about any of that?”
“Yeah, well, her best friend’s dad is a bike club president. She’s probably no stranger to strange.”
Granny finishes her coffee and sets the cup on the side table. She gives each of my brothers a hard look, her eyes tracing over them, one after the other. “Best. Behavior. Boys. Don’t make me repeat myself. You get one chance to make a first impression. Fuck that up, and I’ll have your balls. Ayana is part of our family now. You got that?”
“Part of the very family who was trying to take her dad down.”
Granny shrugs as if that’s of no consequence at all. “We worked things out over a batch of chocolate chip cookies. Everything is good now. It was all a misunderstanding. The Neanderthal who flipped me off apologized. There is no dirt to dig with the club, and that’s that.”
Orion finishes his beer and studies Granny. “Doesn’t it matter that you were wrong?”
Granny shrugs again. “Nope. Doesn’t matter at all if something good came of it.”
“What’s the good thing?” Lennox asks, looking totally confused. I swear that for a man so bright and talented with a computer, he can be so absolutely dense sometimes.
“Ransom found his soulmate, dumbass,” Orion answers him, rolling his eyes. “Obviously.”
“They’ve hardly known each other for a few days,” Lennox protests. “How can you know she’s his soulmate?”
“His match then,” Atlas clarifies. “You don’t need to know someone forever to know that they’re a good match for you. And they’re committed to doing this, raising their baby, so that alone makes them a good match. I believe if anyone can do it, they can do it.”
My brothers usually aren’t the ones to get sappy or sweet. Busting my balls or making willy pickle jokes or other crude things, maybe, but they don’t do soft. Hearing Atlas’ confidence in my ability to make it as a potential partner to one of the best women I’ve ever met, let alone as a father, fills me up with such a tender feeling that I’m momentarily gobsmacked by it. I’m not exactly a tender guy, either. My soul, though. Ouch. It’s kind of doing a throbbing thing…
The doorbell rings, and when Atlas and Orion leap off the couch, Granny points at them both and snaps her fingers. “Down, boys. We do not ambush company at the door.”
“I still think we should have done the axe-throwing thing.”
“Or plate breaking.”
“Or gone to the gun range.”
Granny gives my brothers a wicked grin. “Nope. I got to choose today’s activity, and I know you’re going to love it.”
“You just want to have all the fun shooting guns. You and Ayana,” Orion mutters.
“Granny with a surprise,” Lennox harrumphs before saying. “That might be the most frightening thing I’ve ever heard.”
“I can show you frightening,” Granny promises with far too much cheer.
Lennox shrinks back into the loveseat while Orion and Atlas shrivel on the couch. I’m glad that threat wasn’t aimed at me since I’ve wisely kept my mouth shut about Granny picking our family building, team building exercise—I mean activity today—and keeping it under warps.
After meeting at the bike club a few days ago, Granny said she wanted to do something to introduce Ayana properly to the family. Something fun and exciting. An outing where we aren’t all just sitting around trying to behave and also force polite conversation. Neither of those things is in our nature.
Even before I open the door, the air is electric, snapping with a strange static. And when I open the door, my eyes take in the splendid vision of beauty before me.
Ayana.
A current of something much sharper than just plain excitement rushes through my blood when I see her. She’s wearing a band T-shirt that is too big for her and is knotted at her waist, very distressed black jeans that are so torn and frayed that they’re more gone than there, and her usual shit-kicker combat boots. Her makeup is dark, her eyes lined, and her lips scarlet. Her raven hair is up in a high ponytail, the glistening strands gleaming blue-black in the early afternoon sun that hits the ponytail just right. And her eyes are smoky and playful. She doesn’t hesitate to step into the house, wrap her arms around my neck, and press herself against me. It’s lovely. Truly. Because I can’t believe that out of all the men in the world, I’m the one lucky enough to be hugged by this goddess of ultra-amazingness.
