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“So what’s the deal with that hot piece of ass you been seeing?” Reed asks me as he leans over the pool table and sights a shot.
“Her name is Kat, dipshit,” I say with irritation. That draws a howl from Mack, standing next to me.
“Shee-it, don’t get your feathers ruffled,” Reed hoots. “Jesus, you must have it bad for this girl. This is a first.”
“You don’t get it, Reed,” Mack chortles, pointing a cue at him. “Fury’s gothistorywith this chick. They were in hearts-and-flowers love back in the day.” He flutters his eyes. “True L-U-V love, man. Fury’s still got a torch going for her.”
My fist curls with the urge to punch Mack in his smart mouth for that hearts-and-flowers comment, but I don’t say anything. Fighting at the clubhouse is discouraged between brothers unless there’s a wager on it.
Plus, Mack ain’t wrong about the torch thing. Dammit.
Thing is, that torch has burst into flames again with Kat back in town. Just thinking about the things I’ve done in the past few days to her tight little body has me adjusting my cock in my jeans. And dreaming about a replay, as soon as humanly fucking possible.
Reed shoots and misses. I grab my cue and size up my next shot. “You’re slipping, motherfucker,” I taunt him. “You used to be able to beat me with one hand tied behind your back.”
“There ain’t enough competition around here,” he grouses. “No one challenging enough to play with. I’m losin’ my touch.”
Reed’s skills at pool are legendary. So much so that if he walks into most bars in the area, no one will play with him if there’s money involved. From what he says, he learned pool from his dad as a kid growing up in a place called Lupine, Colorado, before his dad was killed in a bar fight when Reed was a teenager. Reed doesn’t talk about his past much. Or his family. As far as I can tell, he’s mostly estranged from them all. I do know he’s got a younger brother who’s in an MC there, called the Stone Kings Motorcycle Club. I guess his sister is married to the president of that club, too. “It’s all in the fuckin’ family,” he told me, and then stopped talking completely, his jaw ticking with something that looked a hell of a lot like anger.
Reed left home at sixteen, moved up to Denver and went radio silent on his mom and siblings. In his early twenties, he got collared on an assault charge and did a stint in county. Once he was out, he moved north of Denver for a while, then decided to leave Colorado entirely once his parole was up. He bought a used Harley, loaded his few possessions onto it, and took off with no idea where he was going. He ended up here in Minnesota, and eventually found his way to our club. As far as I know, he hasn’t been back to Colorado since he left.
I manage to beat Reed at pool — much to Mack’s satisfaction — and he challenges me to another game.
Black came to watch us play during the last game, and caught the tail end of our conversation about Kat. “Why’d you let this Kat chick get away from you in the first place, anyway?” Black pipes up from the sidelines as Reed racks the balls.
“Her brother Quad was a Talon,” I growl. “Still is, actually. This was back when I was a Chrome Skull. Yates was prez at the time. He told me to dump her.”
Black takes this in. “Did Yates think she’d have a loyalty problem? Give her brother info on us?”
“Maybe. Mostly I think he just didn’t want any more aggravation from the Talon than necessary.”
“Shit. Talk about your unfortunate associations.”
“Yeah. It sucked,” I scowl. Taking aim, I break, sinking my two ball in the corner pocket. “I fucked it up with her good back then. I was a fucking idiot to let her go.”
I ain’t about to make that mistake again.
Even if Magnus asked me to.
The thought comes to me in a flash, and I realize it’s the truth.
Kat’s only been back in my life a few days, but I’m not the same stupid boy I was back then. My club is still my life. I take the oath I swore to the Royal Bastards very seriously. But Kat is the only woman I’ve ever loved. If you’d asked me a month ago if I ever thought about her, I’d have lied and told you no. But the truth would have been yes, I still thought about her every single damn day. I knew she was the one that got away. I tried not to dwell on it, because hell, the past is the past.
But she ain’t in the past anymore.
I’m not a praying man, or one who tends to believe in signs. But I do believe in not fucking up the same way twice. The years may not have taught me much, but they have taught me one thing: after so many years without her, I know deep in my gut there’ll never be another woman like Kat Bergland. I’d take off my cut, hand it to my prez, and walk away before I’d make the same mistake with Kat twice. And the realization hits me right in the gut.
This conversation puts me in a bad mood, though. Especially because of my encounter with Hooch. My brain keeps coming back to the fact that since I ain’t about to let Kat go, her connection to a rival club is something I need to come clean about to Magnus.
I don’t get a chance to talk to him about it right then, though. Because about an hour later, two Omaha Royal Bastards show up to our clubhouse with the gun parts we need for our run up to Canada.
Pony Boy, the Omaha chapter’s SAA, and Wreck, their Enforcer, come through the gates in a nondescript van filled with the ghost gun kits they put together for our Canadian clients. Magnus comes out to the van to take stock of the shipment. He nods his head in satisfaction as he checks it out, and calls Money over to make sure everything the Canadians ordered is here. When Money confirms it is, Magnus glances appreciatively at Wreck and Pony Boy. “Looks good. Tell Irishman we’re looking at needing another shipment about the same size in four weeks’ time.”
“Will do,” Wreck replies.
Magnus turns to me, Reed, and Black. “You guys ready to take off tomorrow morning?”
“Up and back, one stop overnight,” I confirm. “Be back in twenty-four hours at the most.” I don’t want to fuckin’ dawdle up there. It doesn’t feel good in my gut that I’m leaving Kat for even that long. But since I haven’t talked to the club about it, I can’t ask Magnus to put men on her to protect her.
