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“Drink for drink, anything I want to know?” I asked.
Deuce tilted his glass at me with a grin. “You hang with me, you deserve it.”
I glanced over my shoulder where Ryder was still nursing his beer. “You good with this? You’re my ride home.”
Ryder stepped closer so that I could just feel the heat of his body at my back. “I’m down.”
I clicked my glass against Deuce’s and shot back the H.
Deuce followed my lead.
“Where’d you get your nickname?” I asked.
“Born February second at twelve twenty-two. My mom gave it to me. It stuck.”
“That’s a lot of two’s,” I said.
Deuce grinned.
Blondie the bartender rolled her eyes and lifted the bottle to pour two more shots.
Ryder reached over, grabbed the bottle, and poured into our glasses. “We might be here a while,” he said.
Blondie breathed a sigh of relief and sidled down the bar.
Deuce and I threw back our shots at the same time.
“What brought you to the Dragons?” I asked.
“Brotherhood,” Deuce said, dropping his glass on the plywood.
“Oh, come on. I get more than one word,” I said, laughing.
Deuce’s expression blanked. “I watched my dad beat the fuck out of my mom from the time I can remember until I was fourteen and killed him.”
I sucked in a breath.Woah.
Deuce kept talking. “Police investigation ruled it self-defense, so I never did any time in juvie, but they took me and my younger sisters away from my mom. Unfit and all that shit. The girls got sent to a family who raised them. Nobody wanted a teenage boy who ate like a horse and was mad at the world. So I went into the system until I was seventeen.”
Deuce trailed off and stared across the lot.
“What happened after that?” I whispered.
“That’s another drink,” Deuce said, picking up the bottle and filling our glasses again.
Ryder slid closer, put his arm high on my chest, and pulled me back against him. His body felt solid against mine. He leaned in. “I’ve got you,” he said, his lips tickling my ear.
I couldn’t help the sappy grin that spread across my face. So I picked up my glass and toasted toward Deuce, “Your story is definitely worth getting hammered.”
The corner of Deuce’s mouth kicked up into a not-quite smile.
We drank.
And Deuce continued, “I was good with my hands. Quick with firearms, pretty much anything I could shoot or blow up. Explosives. Got the attention of one of the gangs down south. Heavy hitters. No fucking clue what I was getting into. But then I saw the Dragons ride through. I’d seen them before, but for some reason, that time I actually paid attention. They were tight. Colors. Cuts. Didn’t take shit off anybody. I watched from down the street while they handled some business. They had what I wanted. So I stole a car and followed them back to the compound. Been riding with them ever since.”
“That’s a great story,” I said. “Sorry part of it sucked, but it’s still a great story. Do you ever see your sisters?” I went on.
Deuce nodded toward the glasses. “I’m not talking if you’re not drinking.”
