Chapter 28 #2
I darted backwards just as he came around the table, his hands out like he meant to throttle me, and I nearly crashed into Liam, who shoved me away on instinct and shouted, “Don’t touch me! You’re contaminated!”
“See?” I said, backing up further as Monster kept coming. “This is why I can’t do nice things.”
“You put your pubes in a sandwich!”
“Only one sandwich,” I corrected. “Maybe two. I got generous.”
“Maybe two?!” Monster bellowed.
Dante looked around the room like he was actively deciding whether arson was a viable leadership strategy. “What the actual fuck is wrong with all of you?”
“Mostly him,” Chris said, pointing directly at me.
“Agreed,” Riley added.
“Deeply agreed,” Trent muttered.
Monster jabbed a furious finger at me. “He poisoned me!”
“You’re not poisoned,” Doc said from the doorway, having apparently arrived just in time to catch the worst possible version of poker night.
He looked at the plate. Looked at my trousers.
Looked at Monster. Then sighed the sigh of a man who had seen it all, and nothing surprised him anymore. “Disgusted, yes. Poisoned, no.”
“Can I sue him?” Monster demanded.
“No.”
“Can I hit him with a chair?”
“Also no.”
“Can I at least make him eat one?”
I held up both hands. “Let’s not say things we can’t take back.”
“So, he just gets away with it?” he spluttered.
“I think this would be a nice time for you all to appreciate my suggestion box. Isn’t this a brilliant suggestion? Don’t you feel it’s a good use of the box?”
That was when the kitchen door slammed open upstairs. A second later, Rachel came storming down the stairs with a carrier bag in one hand, a pizza box balanced in the other, and a murderous expression on her face.
“What,” she demanded before she’d even fully entered the room, “is all that fucking shouting?”
No one answered.
Fucking cowards.
Rachel stopped dead in the doorway, taking in the scene. Her eyes scanned the overturned chairs, the mess on the poker table, my pride and joy in the form of sandwiches.
And then she looked at my trousers half undone.
“What the fuck is going on? And why does Vienna nearly have his cock out?”
“Nothing you haven’t almost seen before,” Liam said in an attempt to lighten the atmosphere. It only earned him a punch from Dante.
Then, because birds truly cannot help but sing, Rooster immediately pointed at me and said, “Vienna fed Monster his pubes.”
Chicken nodded furiously. “In a sandwich.”
Rachel just blinked as though she was trying to process what had just been said.
Then she very slowly turned her head and looked at me.
I smiled weakly. “In my defence—”
The pizza box hit me in the chest. It bounced off me and landed on the floor with a splat, chips spilling from the carrier bag as Rachel launched the rest of the takeaway at the table like she was feeding wild animals at a petting zoo.
“You absolute fucking feral bastards!” she shouted. “Do you know how easy it is to order a takeaway? It is not hard!”
“To be fair, we are banned—”
“Oh, don’t give me that, Riley! You’re banned from one takeaway. One! Notice how I managed to order this one perfectly fine?”
“You also destroyed it,” I said, ever so helpfully.
“So help me God, Vienna, I will—”
“God-Vienna, I like that. You can all call me that from now on.”
“You have a fucking death wish,” Dante muttered at me and then took a step back.
“Traitor,” I hissed at him.
“Do you know what, I’m done,” Rachel said. “You are all grown men! You are choosing to live like this!”
“Technically, we were trying to eat—” Sunshine started.
Rachel whipped round so fast he physically recoiled. “Do not test me right now, Sunny.”
He held up both hands. “Understood.”
Then she looked back at me.
And then she marched across the room and slapped me across the back of the head.
Hard.
“What the fuck, hair buddy?” I yelped, stumbling sideways.
“You know what you did!”
“I fed the needy! I’m basically Jesus!” I said, trying to dodge the next of her blows.
“You brought pubes into my house?!” she shrieked.
I stared at her in disbelief. “Rachel, hair buddy, love of my best friend’s life… I hate to break it to you, but everyone in this room brought pubes into your house.”
She blinked.
I spread my hands. “You, yourself, are a walking pube machine.”
The second of silence after that lasted maybe half a heartbeat before Dante physically bent over the table and covered his face with both hands.
Rachel made a sound I had previously only heard from rabid animals.
And then she came for me again.
I bolted.
Monster, perhaps deciding my attempted murder was now a community event, joined in immediately.
Sunshine shouted, “GET HIM!” like he was launching a siege.
Rooster and Chicken were both too busy laughing to be useful.
Liam moved his drink out of the way like this was all happening around a minor inconvenience.
Chris calmly picked up a slice of pizza and stepped to one side so he wouldn’t get caught in the stampede.
I made it halfway around the table before Rachel smacked me in the shoulder with a bag of chips and Monster nearly rugby tackled me into the fruit machine.
“I gave you lunch!” I shouted at him, the air wheezing out of my lungs.
“You gave me fucking trauma!”
“Same difference!”
“Sit the fuck down. All of you. Before I start swinging,” Dante said, reaching the end of his limit.
That, more than anything, was what got them under control.
Mostly because everyone knew Dante would absolutely start swinging.
Grumbling, laughing, still hurling abuse in my direction, the room gradually settled back into order.
Monster kept glaring at me like he was plotting my assassination.
Rachel muttered something about moving out and finding a convent.
Riley dealt the cards again. Ant opened the pizza like it was a sacred offering from the gods themselves.
And just like that, poker night resumed.
Sunshine and Chicken were arguing over whether folded crisps counted as double points if you found them in the packet.
Rooster was still retelling the pube reveal to anyone who hadn’t seen it properly the first time.
Chris and Trent were already bickering over the pot.
Tools had somehow ended up with three slices of pizza and no cards.
Greg was being accused of cheating even though he hadn’t actually done anything yet.
Monster still looked like he might cry every time he glanced at the sandwiches.
And at the head of the table, Dante sat with Rachel tucked into the chair beside him, muttering under his breath about how he was too old for this shit while she stole chips off his plate and occasionally kicked me under the table whenever she caught my eye.
“Are you going to deal me in?” Rachel asked, and then scowled when we all shouted protests. “Do you know what, you’re all so unfair.”
“Were you, or were you not, kicked out of here twice for cheating?” Monster asked her.
“You realise your old lady is one of my friends, right? Because I can make your life very, very difficult,” she warned him.
“My life is already difficult,” Ant piped up. “So let me ask you the same question.”
“I was kicked out once,” she muttered, realising she was beat. “Vienna, feed these dickheads more of your pubes. They don’t deserve mercy.”
The room erupted again after that.
And through it all, I just sat there and let it wash over me.
The noise.
The laughter.
The insults.
The warmth of too many bodies in one room and too many voices talking over one another. The kind of chaos that should have been unbearable and somehow had always felt like home.
These men had been there for every version of me.
The little shit with no direction. The reckless bastard with too much charm and not enough sense. The prospect. The patched member. The enforcer. The Vice President.
They had watched me grow up.
Watched me fuck up.
Watched me become who I was.
And once—just once—they had watched me fall in love.
My smile faltered before I could stop it.
Because there had been a night, years ago, where this room had sounded just as loud. Just as alive.
And for the first time in my life, Gabriella had been in the middle of it.
She had been here.
With me.
Safe in the arms of my club and wrapped up in the kind of acceptance we had both once been stupid enough to think meant we’d made it.
And Christ, I could still remember the look on her face that night.
Like she couldn’t quite believe she was allowed to belong here.
Like maybe, just maybe, the world had finally decided to stop being cruel to us.
I looked down at the cards in my hand, but I wasn’t seeing them anymore.
I was seeing her.
Drunk and smiling. Soft in my arms. Swaying to a song that had become ours before either of us realised it would one day ruin me.
And just like that, I was twenty-one again.