Chapter Two
Smoke
God damn, I was going to be sore as hell tomorrow.
Every part of me felt like it had been put through a meat grinder and then set on fire for good measure. I leaned heavily on the bar and let my weight sink into the stool beneath me. It wasn’t much relief, but it beat standing.
“I think you need one of these or twenty.” Pirate set a beer in front of me with a grin.
I glanced at it and grunted, “Something stronger.”
Pirate chuckled and shook his head as he grabbed a shot glass. “That bad?” He filled the glass with whiskey and slid it over.
I grabbed the shot and tossed it back. The liquor burned a clean trail down my throat. “Right now? Not bad, but I know it’s going to get a hell of a lot worse.” I tapped the empty glass. “I plan on passing out before that happens.”
Pirate smirked and poured another shot. Before I could down it, Yarder dropped onto the stool next to me, his movements stiff but not nearly as wrecked as mine.
“How ya doing?” he asked, his voice heavy with shared misery.
I shrugged and tossed back the second shot. The burn didn’t feel as sharp this time, but it was a welcome distraction from the deep aches spreading through my body. “Been better.”
Yarder chuckled darkly and shook his head as he motioned for Pirate to bring him something. “Yeah, I hear that. You never forget what it’s like being blown up.”
Pirate slid a beer to him, and the cap had already popped. “So, I’m the bartender tonight?” he asked and raised an eyebrow at the two of us.
“Seems to be,” Yarder replied with a shrug and glanced around the room. “Though I think you’ll have it pretty easy. Just amaretto sours and popping beer tops. Not like we’re having some rager.”
“Did you say amaretto sour?” Sloane’s voice rang out from the corner, loud enough to catch everyone’s attention.
“Jesus,” Pirate muttered under his breath. “Now I’m never going to get out from behind this bar with the girls wanting drinks.”
“Oh!” Olive called, her voice sweet but insistent. “Can you stone mine?”
“What’s stone? Just amaretto on the rocks?” Fallon asked, lounging on the couch with Compass’ arm draped over her shoulders.
“Add orange juice!” Sloane and Dove shouted in unison from across the room, both of them looking far too entertained.
Pirate sighed and leaned against the counter. “All I’m doing is amaretto, sour, and ice. If you want something more than that, then you can get your asses back here and make it yourself.”
Yarder smirked and tipped his head to the side like he was considering something. “What if I want something more in an amaretto sour?”
Pirate shot him a look. “You’re kidding me, right? The only thing I’ve ever seen you drink is whiskey and beer. You’re telling me you suddenly have a taste for some sweet, weak-ass drink?”
“Oh boy,” Poppy giggled from her spot near the jukebox. “Seems like you might have poked the bear, Pirate.”
“Well,” Pirate said to Yarder, “you want a fancy drink, or are you gonna stick to your usual?”
Yarder chuckled and held up the beer Pirate had given him. “I’ll stick to this. No point messing with perfection. But you can get one of those Amaretto Stone Sours for each of the girls.”
“Jesus,” Pirate muttered, rolling his eyes as he grabbed the amaretto bottle and got to work on the drinks.
I shifted on the stool, and a groan slipped past my lips as a dull ache shot through my ribs.
Yarder glanced at me. “You either need another shot or just to lie down.”
“I’ll take four more shots, and you giving me the rundown of what’s going on.” Then, I planned to lie down.
Yarder shrugged. “Don’t know shit, man.”
“Kate still in the hospital?” I asked.
Yarder nodded. “Yup, but shit doesn’t look good for her.”
“That’s because she took the brunt of that explosion,” Pirate added, pouring the drinks. “Which I’m sure was not a coincidence. She was the bait to get us there, and they knew they would need to get rid of her.” He grabbed my empty shot glass and filled it before sliding it toward me.
“We thinking she was in on all of this?” I asked.
Yarder shook his head. “Nah. She was just a pawn.”
“Fucking Boone and Gibbs,” Pirate muttered.
“Boone and Gibbs, who we can’t get fucking close to, but they seem to be able to get to us whenever they want,” Yarder sighed.
I grabbed the shot and tossed it back, feeling the burn. At first, I was drinking to dull the pain, but now I was drinking because of Boone and Gibbs. Those two fuckers were gunning for the club, and every time they made a move, they got closer. “I think I’m just going to get drunk and not think about Boone and Gibbs. They’ve fucked up my day enough.”
“Truth,” Pirate grunted. He finished off the drinks for the girls and called out, “Come and get your girl drinks!” He refilled my shot, and I tossed it back.
Sloane, Poppy, and Fallon came up to the bar to grab their drinks.
“Thank you, Pirate,” Poppy cooed. Yarder grabbed her around the waist and pulled her into his lap.
“You can thank me too for having him make them,” Yarder growled.
Poppy reached up and patted his cheek. “Thank you for being the big bad president. There are other ways I can show you thanks later.”
“Oh, get it, girl!” Sloane called as she juggled two drinks in her hands.
Fallon grabbed the remaining glasses and passed them to Olive and Dove while Sloane handed the last one to Adalee.
“Let’s talk about The Cakery and not Boone and Gibbs,” Adalee suggested as she sipped her drink. “I know we didn’t get to see the space today before it got a hole blown in it, but from the pictures I saw, it would have been perfect.”
“I bet we could get that space for pennies on the dollar and have input on how it’s fixed,” Fallon added. “I mean, you gotta think the landlord is freaking out about having to make all of those repairs on a space they don’t even know who is going to rent.”
Sloane stretched out her arms like an airplane and soared around the room. “I think maybe the Iron Fiends could swoop on in and help them out.”
“Is that you swooping?” Aero laughed as Sloane landed in his lap. He wrapped his arm around her and pressed a kiss to her lips. “Perfect landing.”
“Uh, that sounds like a good plan, but how do we find out who the landlord is? Our connection was Kate O’Hara, and she’s laid up in a hospital bed,” Throttle pointed out.
“What about the wine chick?” Fade asked. “She might be able to help hook us up with the landlord.”
“Wine chick?” Adalee asked.
“Wine and Cheese Me,” I grunted. “She helped pick me up off the ground after I landed in front of her shop.”
“There’s a wine and cheese store in Mt. Pleasant?” Sloane asked. “That sounds like my kind of store.”
“Oh, please,” Dove laughed. “The only wine you like is Boone’s Farm or a wine cooler. I don’t think a snooty wine place is going to have either of those.”
“Chick wasn’t snooty from what I could tell,” Yarder shrugged.
“She did tell us she wasn’t a snitch when we were talking about the cops coming,” Fade laughed.
“I like her already,” Dove cackled.
“We’ll wait for shit to settle for a couple of days, and then we can hit her up,” Yarder said.
“Was her place damaged in the explosion?” Poppy asked.
“Didn’t seem like it, at least not from what we could see. I think she was far enough down from the explosion that it just rattled the hell out of her store.” Yarder pressed a kiss to the side of Poppy’s head. “We’ll check on that too when we talk to her.”
“We’re coming with!” Fallon, Adalee, Dove, and Sloane all called in unison.
Poppy perked up. “Me too.”
“Jesus,” Yarder grunted. “This isn’t some girls’ day out.”
“Uh, yeah it is. You really think you’re going to go to a wine and cheese place without us coming along? You get the information, and we can get some wine and cheese for girls’ night.”
Pirate poured four more shots and pushed two toward me. “I think we both need to get blackout drunk from the sound of the way that conversation is going.”
I grabbed the shot and tossed it back. The alcohol was finally working its magic, dulling the pain and fuzzing the edges of my thoughts. The room around me blurred into a comfortable haze, voices floating in and out without really sticking. I grabbed the other shot and knew I was just about ready to pass the hell out.
“It’s times like this we should be glad we don’t have ol’ ladies, Pirate. No one to tell us we can’t drink, and we don’t have to worry about no girls’ nights.”
Pirate saluted his drink to me and tossed it back. “A-fucking-men, brother.”
I felt the warmth of the booze spread through me, and the pain subsided to a distant throb. Laughter and conversation swirled around me, but I didn’t register much of it anymore. I pushed myself to my feet and swayed slightly. Yarder caught my gaze.
“You good?” he asked.
I nodded. “I will be in about two minutes when I pass out.”
Yarder chuckled and shook his head.
I stumbled my way down the hallway, stopped in front of my door, and fumbled with my key. After a few tries, I got the door open, stepped inside, and kicked it shut behind me. I barely managed to make it to the bed before flopping face-first onto it.
The drunken haze took over completely, and the day’s events floated around in my mind—the explosion, the goddamn cops, so much pain. But through it all, one face lingered longer than the rest.
Dani.
Her face was the last thing I saw before everything went black.