Page 52 of Mischief Mayhem
“One less idiot to keep in line,” Doc said, hugging both Castor and me before nodding at Dad.
“There you are,” Ru said, walking up to throw an arm over my shoulder and guide me toward the bar. “I’ve been looking for you.”
Alba stood on the other side with her curly blond hair up in a bun, her glasses high on her nose. Ru had let her dark hair fall around her shoulders, but that didn’t lessen the intensity in her bright blue stare.
“I thought you’d be at the Beacon.” I furrowed my brows, looking for Saint and KC down at the other end of the clubhouse.
“We took off early to celebrate Pollux coming home.” Alba gave me one of her genuine smiles, radiating happiness and joy like KC’s nickname for her.
“Oh, great,” I said.
“So . . .” Ru leaned over the bar, balancing on her elbows, and crossed her hands in front of her, focusing her scrutinizing gaze on me. “You and Hollywood have been spending a lot of time together.”
I glanced up at her, refusing to neither confirm nor deny her allegations, and looked to Alba, who had an equally interested expression on her face.
I wasn’t ready to tell anyone, and I wasn’t sure when I would be. I was a secretive person, in general, but when it came to this whatever it was with Hollywood, I didn’t want anyone else’s judgment to taint it before it could even get off the ground. I didn’t want to see the pity in their eyes when he left me like everyone else did.
“And?” I raised my eyebrows as if to suggest there was nothing wrong with it. Because there wasn’t. “We’re just hanging out.”
“Are you two together?” Alba kept her tone polite and nonchalant, but I could hear the anticipation brewing at the edge of her words.
“How is that your business?” I dodged her question by asking my own.
“It’s not,” Ru cut in. “We’re just . . . curious.”
“He’s been helping babysit me while Wheels has the occasional off night. Is that a problem?” I looked between the two of them, waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“It’s just—” Alba started, scratching the back of her head before trailing off.
I waited to see what she planned to say. I didn’t want to get defensive with these two. I generally liked them, as far as having female friends went. But digging into my personal life was a hard line, one Ru should know all about. Hadn’t she kept her relationship with Saint a secret for like ten years or some shit?
“I think you two would be really good together,” Ru said in a matter-of-fact tone. “You’d make him more serious, and he’d loosen you up.”
I cleared my throat and rubbed the pain in the center of my chest, now throbbing with her accurate assessment. “Well, you don’t have to worry about that. I still hate him, and he still lives to annoy the hell out of me.”
It wasn’t necessarily a lie, and truthfully, if I dug a little deeper on why I didn’t want anyone else to know about it, I’d probably be able to fund a therapist’s bills for a year. Was it because it was Hollywood? And if it was, what did that say about me and my willingness to have this situationship with him in the first place? Hadn’t I avoided falling into his trap this past decade for a reason? Had he really changed that much in eight months of celibacy? There were too many unknowns, too many reasons to keep it to myself.
He would hurt me, and I wanted to shelter the fallout from that as much as possible.
Alba and Ru moved on to a different topic of conversation, but I caught Chelsea’s gaze from across the room where she’d been eavesdropping. She’d curled her lips into a grimace, her eyes burning with jealousy and perhaps a bit of hatred, too. She had probably made the same assumptions as Ru and Alba. But I didn’t give a shit.
Let her look.
I smirked at her and grabbed the shot glass Ru had placed in front of me, shooting it back and swallowing against the burn.
By the time we got to the Viper, the place was already packed with Madison County’s finest blue collar shitheads and drunken biker assholes. The run-down dive bar used to be a motorcycle hangout in the ’70s, but time had not been good to the ole girl. It reeked like rancid booze, stale cigarettes, and degraded leather, a homey patina that had taken over fifty years to accumulate.
“I wish the Beacon was reopened,” I groaned.
“You and me both,” Ru said, winking as she headed to the circular booth in the back. Some of the brothers had already arrived, KC, Bear, and Coins having taken up their spot on either side of the table. Alba sat on KC’s lap while Bear talked in a low voice to Coins, the seriousness on his face hinting at whatever had made my brother miss Pollux’s release.
Like my father, Bear had been stressed about the situation with the Caputis. I’d seen him at his worst, and this was more severe than that. He stabbed out a cigarette, only to immediately light another one. In the twenty-three years I’d been alive, Bear had never been a smoker, save for one or two when he’d been drinking. To see him chain-puffing like that meant this was bad.
Should I be worried?
Yeah. All of this should worry me.
I had a babysitter 24/7, someone on the internet was trying to scare the shit out of me, and my family belonged to a dangerous motorcycle club that had a decades long blood feud with the DC mob. Hadn’t this been why I’d gone to college four states away? Hadn’t I tried to remove myself from all this before?