Page 3 of Prohibited

“To the commode, hell,” Lindsay said over his shoulder. “Can’t a man piss in peace?” The bathroom door snapped shut behind him.

“Got a mouth on him, tell you what,” Joey grumbled.

“Oh yes,” Alex said, looking directly at Ryan. “Yes, he does.”

Joey snorted, realizing the trap he’d walked into. Ryan studied his cards carefully, and tried not to swallow audibly, the double meaning not lost on him. Heat was creeping up his neck–shame and anger. Could Alex never leave well enough alone?

He wished it had never happened between them in the first place. He’d disliked Alex since they’d met as kids when Ryan's mom died and he was sent to live with Tommy, a half-brother his own age he didn’t know existed.

Both he and Tommy were fathered by the same bad tempered blue eyed rogue. Ryan remembered little of him except for the way his eyes flashed before his hand whipped through the air, and the ring he always wore on his little finger. Little did Ryan know, the man had another child with another woman just miles down the road who was Ryan’s age.

He left them all behind when Ryan was seven, never to be seen or heard from again.

When Ryan and Tommy met, they were both bad tempered twelve year olds on the cusp of becoming men, and they’d immediately taken a dislike to one another.

And then, as things went with kids, they became allies without question when Tommy’s drunken mother came after him with a two-by-four one hot night, and Ryan saved him by ripping it out of her hands and throwing it onto the roof of the little house. They ran through the oak trees for what felt like miles, until they stopped, panting in the dark.

They didn’t say anything to each other for a long time until Tommy finally asked, “Think she’s passed out yet?”

They were inseparable from then on.

Ryan had no other siblings, but Tommy had Alex, a kid brother two years younger than him with whom he shared his bitch of a mother. Alex was short like Tommy and handsome, too, but unlike Tommy, he inherited his mother’s meanness. It was hidden under cool charm and charisma, but Ryan had seen Alex do hideous things to people who crossed him. He had also inherited their mother’s fair beauty, pale hair and pale eyes.

Ryan’s mother had told him often, with wistful longing, that he had his father's brilliant blue eyes. Tommy didn’t inherit them, nor his own mother’s blue eyes. His were, mysteriously, hazel. Ryan had dark hair, cinnamon brown, and skin that was nearly golden, while Tommy had fair hair and a fair Irish complexion to match, turned ruddy and weathered by the fierce Oklahoma sun. In spite of the differences, however, the family resemblance was stillthere in the features of their faces. Both of their mothers had reminisced at various times and with varying degrees of bitterness about how their father was a handsome man.

A whole lot of good it did him, considering that he was shot to death in a brothel in Oklahoma City some years back.

“Fold,” Joey said with a sigh.

Ryan’s lips quirked into a smile around his cigarette as he pulled the pile of winnings across the table.

“Well.” Joey checked his watch, bright against his dark skin. “Better get home to the missus.”

“Bunch of sore losers around here,” Ryan said, taking his cigarette out of his mouth, and paused scooping up the poker chips. “I thought you weren’t married.”

“Not yet,” Joey said, swelling with pride. “Nearly got enough saved to finish paying down her ring. Got a cousin in Greenwood runs a jewelry shop and he’s set aside something nice for her that I’ve been paying on.”

Ryan gave a low whistle. “She’s caught hook, line, and sinker.”

“When you know, you know,” Joey said, pleased with himself.

“Well, good luck with that.” Ryan gathered up the cards on the table and began to shuffle them.

“Gin poker?” Alex said, an impious smile touching his lips.

Ryan’s stomach flipped and he narrowed his eyes at Alex. He opened his mouth to say something, anythingto shut him up. What happened between them was a mistake. A mistake they had agreed never to discuss with anyone.

But before he could say a thing, the front door of his house crashed open.

In the blink of an eye, he, Alex, and Joey were on their feet, pointing their revolvers at the source of the disturbance. Playing cards scattered everywhere and Ryan held his smoking cigarette between the fingers of his left hand while he took in what he was seeing.

Henry, gasping. Dark blood down the side of his face that looked sticky and unreal in the dim lamplight. He was hunched under the weight of a body draped over his shoulders.

“What the fuck!” Joey said.

Ryan moved at once, Alex his reflection as they both approached Henry.

“T-Tommy!” Henry said, voice shaking. “He’s hurt, bad. I didn’t know what to do, I– I’m sorry. Lindsay– I thought he would know what to do. I didn’t know what to do–”