Prologue #2
“Bullshit.” He mimics my words to him earlier back to me.
“Jack, honey,” Dream says, rubbing his boyfriend’s chest soothingly. “You can’t make him go against what’s best for him.”
He looks down at Dream. “If I thought running away from his past was best for him, I wouldn’t have shown up at his studio tonight.
He’s one of two men who’ve ever survived a culling.
” He shakes his head in amazement. “You don’t know what kind of strength and determination it takes to have survived what he did.
Hell, I’m not sure that I could have made it out if it had been me in that cage. ”
I shake my head. “The man you knew died in the cage that night. He was sick for a long time before that. You saw how I was before you left. I was barely holding it together. The last shootout we were in together, I got myself shot so I wouldn’t have to hurt anybody.”
“That shootout was with a bunch of twenty-year-old security guards who were way in over their heads trying to play hero and fight the Reivers. You saved their lives that night.” He turns to Dream. “I’m gonna take Luca into the private party room and talk for a bit.”
Dream pops over to the bar, fills a pitcher of beer and several shot glasses full of tequila, and puts them on a tray. He hands the tray to Grave. “Don’t let him bully you,” he tells me before kissing Grave on the cheek and returning to the bar to wait on a just-seated table.
I follow Grave to a small, private room obviously set up to host small events and meetings. He hands me a shot, and the night’s events have me downing it without even pausing to toast.
“If you think you can get me drunk enough to change my mind, you’re wrong.”
Grave lets out a low chuckle. “Luca, you know me well enough to know I’m never wrong.”
I shoot him the finger and take the second shot.
Not one to ever be left behind, Grave gulps his two shots like he’s drinking water and targets me with an intense stare that used to cause anyone he pinned it on to tremble and immediately scramble to follow his orders.
I stay silent and don’t break his gaze, but I’m not as immune to that look as I’d like. “Look, I’d be useless to you in this fight. I gave up fighting. It’s the only way I could corner up with my past.”
“That’s not quite true,” he says. “What about Vidor?”
“You’ve been keeping tabs on me?” I say, surprised he knows about what happened in Vidor. I’d been traveling through Texas on my way back from a yoga retreat in Austin when I came across a broken-down car with two scared kids who the local shitheads were hassling because they happened to be trans.
“Enough to know that you’re still good in a fight.”
“I didn’t have a choice. Those kids didn’t have anyone else to fight for them.”
“And neither does he,” Grave says, pulling out his phone and showing me a picture of a young, dark-haired guy with high cheekbones and startling amber eyes.
“The Reivers adding models to their hate list these days?”
“Probably, knowing them,” Grave says nodding at the pic. “But he’s a journalist who’s writing articles about the Reivers that’s really pissing them off.”
“Wait.” I look closer, suddenly way more curious. “Is that Evan Kelly?”
Grave’s eyebrows shoot up in surprise. “You’ve heard of him?”
“Hell, yes, I have.” I’ve been following his fiery, well-written articles, exposing the Reivers’ smuggling activities and their history of hate speech and crimes for the last few years in small press newspapers and online. Truth be told, I’m kind of a fanboy of the guy’s work.
I look at Evan’s pretty picture again. “I would have thought the guy writing those articles was an older, more seasoned journalist.”
“He’s only twenty-four, but Cash said he started writing those exposés because he has a legit axe to grind with the Reivers.” He taps the photo. “Look at him. Do you think this kid is prepared to protect himself from the kind of full-on hurt the Reivers are capable of dealing him?”
“Of course he’s not,” I agree, hating the panorama picture in my head of exactly what the Reivers would do to Evan Kelly if they catch up to him. “Who the hell is?”
Grave takes a long sip of his beer and leans toward me. “You are. You took everything the Reivers could throw at you and survived. You’re the perfect man to protect him.”
Fuck. I walked right into this one.
“Hold up,” I say, wishing there was another shot of tequila on the table—or hell, maybe the whole damned bottle. “That’s what this whole recruitment push is for. You want me to babysit some journalist?”
“Among other things. I just thought making sure Evan Kelly stays alive is right up your alley. You always were great at security.”
“The answer is still no,” I tell Grave, but the cocky half-smile that stays on his face through the rest of our reunion tells me he doesn’t believe me.
Hell, I can’t blame him. I don’t believe me.
I especially don’t believe myself this morning while driving to Adeline, Kentucky, to talk to Johnny Devon and Cash Mcree and join up with their fight.