Rome (Marked Men #3)(61)
Author: Jay Crownover

“Most of the time I’m straight. Had a few bad months, almost blew it with the best thing to ever happen to me, pre- or postwar. Brite made me feel like shit, gave me Neil’s number, and told me to go talk to him. When I can’t get out from under it on my own, I do. Otherwise that best thing takes all kinds of care of me and nothing in this world could matter more for me to keep an eye on my back.”

Torch laughed and nodded in agreement.

“I had one of those once. Was too much of a stubborn idiot to hold on to it. You got a girl that stays by you when you wake up in the middle of the night shaking, covered in sweat, and not knowing where you are, that’s a girl you don’t ever let go of.”

I could do him one better and say that I had a girl who not only stayed but generally put me back to bed by sucking me off or riding me until I couldn’t see straight, but I doubted Cora would appreciate the baddest-of-the-bad biker club in the union having that much info on our sex life.

“I have no intention of letting her go, or of letting some little punk with a grudge get anywhere near her, or me, for that matter. It all needs to be put to bed, and the sooner the better.”

“We are on the same page. Anything else comes up, you call me not the cops.”

I wasn’t sure how I felt about having his number in my phone, but I also didn’t think telling him that was a good idea. I programmed it in and pushed off the table, when he stopped me with a hand on my shoulder.

“We were all you at one point in time, kid. Dismissed, lost, and trying to figure out what was next. For some of us, what was next came out of the blue. The open road, the brotherhood, the family, it was like being back in but on our own terms and fighting for things that mattered here.” He thumped a hand over his chest where his biker heart was covered by a leather cut. “Some of us found it in the love of a good woman and making a family; others, like Brite, found what was next by helping the most lost of us onto a better path. Whatever your next is, kid, it’ll find you or you’ll find it. Don’t beat yourself up about it.”

With that profound bit of advice, he and all his seriously threatening and intimidating cohorts made their way back out of the bar. I took a minute to gather my thoughts, to ponder the dramatic ways my life had turned on its head in the last few months, and made my way back to where my brother was waiting nervously at the bar.

“Everything okay?”

Typically I would have just brushed it off, told him it was my problem and that I would handle it. I was the big brother, the protector, but I was starting to see that all the things I had used to define myself for so long needed to be tweaked, needed to be redefined, as life moved forward, as I wasn’t the same guy I had been when we were kids.

“Nobody seems to know where the punk with the grudge is at. Torch and the club said he has connections, could be armed, and he is good and pissed that picking that fight with me got him eighty-sixed. They want me to watch my back, and Torch was concerned that with all the stuff going on up here, I might not be able to give the situation the attention it deserves.” I tapped my temple with two fingers and he frowned at me.

“Are you? Okay to keep an eye on yourself, I mean?”

“I think so. Protecting myself and survival is second nature to me.”

“If you need anything from me, from the guys, you know all you have to do is ask, right?”

“I know. Just keep an eye on my girl. I don’t want her to worry, not with the baby and not with her acting all twisted up over that e-mail from her ex.”

I saw Rule’s pale eyes go diamond hard and his tattooed hands curled into fists on the top of the bar.

“That ass**le had the nerve to e-mail her after all this time?”

I dipped my chin in agreement and cocked my elbows to lean back against the bar. I didn’t want to appear too eager to hear what he had to say about Cora’s ex, but information was power, and the more I had the more I could break through that shroud of fear I saw in her multihued gaze every time I brought up the L-word.

“I guess his old lady was stepping out on him with another one of the artists at the shop. He apparently had a revelation that all the crap he shoveled Cora’s way might just have made him a douche bag, so now he’s all fired up to make amends. She says it’s all water under the bridge, but sometimes she shuts up and I can tell she’s somewhere else, but she doesn’t say anything to me about it.”

He let loose a litany of swearwords and his hands clenched and unclenched.

“That guy did a number on her, Rome.” He sighed and motioned for Asa to bring him another beer. “When Phil came back to the shop after going to New York and told us we were getting a new shop manager, none of us knew how to take it. But then Cora showed up and it was clear she needed someone to save her. She was wasting away. I mean she is tiny as it is, but she obviously wasn’t eating, wasn’t sleeping. She was quiet, withdrawn. We tried to joke with her, tried to shake her out of it, but nothing worked. She was heartbroken. I’ve never seen anything like it. She wasn’t just some chick that was sad because she got dumped … she was dying from it.” He blew out a breath and slowly shook his head from side to side.

“Rowdy always said she took it so hard because her dad was always gone and Jimmy was her only constant in life. I don’t know if that’s the case, but I do know that guy hurt her in a way I would like to skin him alive and let fire ants eat him from the inside out just to teach him a lesson. No man should do that to a woman that loves him, even if he isn’t in love with her anymore.”

I had a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach. I didn’t like the sound of any of that at all.

“What snapped her out of it? What kept her from just fading away?”

His mouth turned into a wry grin and he bit down on his lip ring. “Remy died.”

I blinked in surprise.

“Remy died and I went off the deep end and she waded in to save me. She was so focused on me and my mess I think she forgot that she was suffering herself. Day by day she got better and held on to me with both hands. I was operating from a really bad place, but I stayed just on this side of redeemable because of Cora. She’s more than a big-sister figure, she’s my voice of reason.”

I barked out a laugh. “Tinker Bell.”

“Definitely Tinker Bell, but a Tinker Bell that can flay you with her sharp-ass tongue and put you in your place with a simple look. Don’t let that guy get his hooks back into her, Rome. That’s bad news all around.”