Chapter Four
Spencer
Deluca’s Auto Repair. I’d seen their tow truck around town before and occasionally a biker or two, but I’d never had a reason to look twice.
Now I was pulling into the lot in my five-year-old sedan, which was doing its humble best next to a row of motorcycles.
The passenger seat held three dozen strawberry cupcakes, a pan of banana bread, and two dozen blueberry muffins, the stack teetering dangerously sideways.
I’d gotten home after my shift, made sure Ken wasn’t lurking around, then executed a tactical extraction of baked goods and peeled out of the parking lot in under three minutes like I had committed a heist.
The garage held three bays. Two of the doors were down, but the third was open, revealing a concrete floor stained with oil. A fluorescent light buzzed inside, casting everything in that flat, industrial glow that made even healthy people look like they needed a transfusion.
No one was out front.
I sat in my car for a full thirty seconds, hands on the wheel, engine off, staring at the open bay like it might offer instructions.
The cupcakes were sliding. The banana bread had already tried to make a break for the floorboard during a left turn on County Road 21, and I’d had to slam my arm across the passenger seat to catch the container, which had sent a bolt of pain through my left side so sharp I’d nearly screamed.
The arm was getting worse, not better. I’d been icing it, taking ibuprofen like candy, and sleeping on my right side with a pillow barricade that would’ve impressed a military strategist.
Nothing helped. Every time I lifted something heavier than a coffee mug, the ache flared hot and deep, radiating from the spot where Ken’s fingers had dug in and wrenched.
I should’ve gone to urgent care. I knew that. But my budget said I was broke.
I hadn’t let him in. I’d opened the door. There was a difference, even if it didn’t feel like one at three in the morning when my arm throbbed and the deadbolt was the only thing between me and a man who thought love was a leash.
Enough. I grabbed the cupcakes with my right hand, stacked the muffins on top with a prayer everything didn’t slide free, and wedged the banana bread under my good arm. The car door required a hip check to open, which sent the muffin tower swaying like a drunk on a cruise ship.
“Don’t you dare,” I told the top container.
It obeyed.
I crossed the lot, and the smell hit me. Barbeque. Then I heard rock music coming from somewhere behind the building. Unsure where to go, I followed the smell, which led me around the side of the building.
My sneaker caught on something I couldn’t see with a tower of baked goods blocking my view. I stumbled, catching myself with the building. Pain exploded in my shoulder, but I bit back the shout, then waited for the throbbing to cease, before I continued walking.
A backyard opened up. I froze when I spotted close to a dozen men, some lounging in mismatched chairs, others standing around talking and laughing, beer bottles dangling from the fingertips. Two grills sat off to one side, smoke billowing from both of them.
I’d never seen so much bulk in my life. Inked muscle wearing leather cuts and, on the back, Howlers MC with claw marks in the middle.
Where was Crowbar in this sea of men?
A bark cut through the noise, and Noodles came tearing across the grass, a tiny missile with ears.
She was wearing the black collar, which looked even better in natural light, and she moved with a reckless abandon as if no one had explained gravity to her yet.
She hit my shin at full speed, bounced off, sat down hard on her butt, and then launched herself at my legs again.
“Hi, baby.” I crouched as best I could with an armful of baked goods, and she got her nose into the gap between the cupcake container and the muffins, tail whipping so hard her whole body swayed. “No. Those aren’t for you. You eat pee pads. You’ve lost treat privileges.”
Crowbar emerged from the cluster of men near the grill, beer in one hand, toothpick in place, and those storm-cloud eyes found me like I was the only thing in the yard worth looking at.
He was wearing the same leather cut, a black T-shirt underneath that did nothing to hide the architecture of his chest, and jeans that sat low on his hips, which I was not going to think about.
I was absolutely thinking about it.
“You’re lucky I didn’t bring the freezer.” I straightened, and Noodles jumped at my knee again.
“You made it,” he said with a smile.
“When you said ‘we,’ I thought you meant three or four guys.”
“Nobody can resist Drift’s cooking.”
I scanned the yard again, trying not to look as out of place as I felt. Every man here had muscles. I was holding cupcakes and wearing a polo shirt and khakis. “You could’ve warned me. I would’ve worn something less...”
“Tan?”
“I was going to say corporate, but tan works.”
He took the muffins and the banana bread from me in one smooth motion, barely shifting his beer to do it. His fingers brushed my right hand during the transfer, and the contact sent a current straight toward my cock.
“Come on.” He nodded toward the yard. “I’ll introduce you.”
“To all of them?” My voice pitched higher. I was never going to remember everyone’s name. I also didn’t want to be the center of attention. “At once? Like a presentation?”
“They don’t bite.” He paused. The toothpick rolled. “Most of ’em.”
“Can you put an orange sticker on the ones that do? That way I know to keep a healthy distance from teeth.”
I followed him anyway. Noodles was already trotting ahead like she’d been coming to these cookouts for years. I wasn’t about to let a dog with a pee pad problem have more social confidence than me.
The conversations didn’t stop when we approached, but they shifted. Eyes found me, tracked across the cupcakes, the polo, the general state of being me. A few of the men exchanged glances I couldn’t read.
One of them, wearing a stone-cold-killer expression, looked from me to Crowbar and grinned wide enough to split his face.
He still looked like a killer. Now he just looked like a happy one.
“This him?” Killer Eyes asked.
“Deadeye.” Crowbar’s voice carried a warning that could’ve etched glass.
A name had never fit someone so perfectly. He needed a dozen orange stickers. And a cowbell so I knew when to run.
“What? I’m being friendly.” Deadeye held up his hands, still grinning. “Hey, kid. Welcome to the weekend.”
“Thanks. I brought cupcakes to my own ambush.” I held up the container. “Strawberry. If anyone’s allergic, now’s the time to speak up so I know who to target.”
Silence. Then a bark of laughter from somewhere to my left, and the tension broke like a rubber band snapping. A guy with broad shoulders and a dark beard stepped forward and took the container from me.
“Drift,” he said by way of introduction. “I’m taking these before Holler eats them all.”
“Hey!” A guy by the grill turned, looking genuinely wounded. “I have self-control.”
“You ate an entire pie last week,” Drift said without looking back. “It was Trent’s pie. Prez almost killed you.”
“It was cooling on the counter,” he argued. “That’s an invitation.”
I was losing track of names already. Deadeye.
Drift. Holler. Crowbar had led me into an ecosystem with its own language and hierarchy, and I was standing in the middle of it in an accountant outfit, trying to act like my arm wasn’t screaming and my heart wasn’t hammering so loud I was sure every single one of them could hear it.
Noodles circled back and sat on my foot. I took a breath.
“So,” I said, looking up at Crowbar, “this is what, your family?”
Something shifted in his expression. “Brotherhood.”
“They’re terrifying.” I’d just admitted that out loud, but it was true.
“They grow on you.”
“So does mold. That stuff’ll kill you.”
Deadeye howled with laughter, and I felt the last of the tension in my shoulders loosen by a fraction. I could do this. Sarcasm was my native tongue, and if these men responded to it, I’d be fluent by dessert.
Crowbar steered me toward an empty chair near the fire pit with a hand on the small of my back.
The touch was light, but I felt every point of contact through the thin fabric of my shirt.
He set the muffins and banana bread on a table already overflowing with food then dropped into the chair beside mine, long legs stretched out, beer resting on his thigh.
Noodles scrambled into my lap, circled three times, and collapsed in a heap with a sigh like she’d had the longest day of anyone present.
“She missed you,” Crowbar said.
“She has excellent taste.” I scratched behind her ears, and her tail thumped against my leg. “Unlike her father, who names things like he’s filling out military paperwork.”
“Still on the name?”
“I will die on this hill. Noodles is a superior name, and history will vindicate me.”
The toothpick shifted. He was watching me with that look again, the one from the pet store, like he was memorizing details and filing them somewhere I couldn’t access. His eyes dropped to my left arm, which I’d tucked against my side without thinking, and lingered there for a beat too long.
“You want a beer?” he asked.
“I don’t drink.”
His eyebrow lifted, but he didn’t push. “Water? Soda?”
“Water would be great. If it’s not too much trouble.”
“Nothing about you is trouble.” He winked.
My throat tightened. I looked down at Noodles, who was chewing on a belt loop. “That’s a very nice thing to say to someone you’ve known for a combined total of maybe forty minutes.”
Unlike Ken, Crowbar sounded like he’d genuinely meant it. He wasn’t smooth-talking me or being manipulative. His tone was filled with too much sincerity to be fake.
“Thirty-seven.” He stood, and the chair creaked with relief. “I counted.”
He walked toward a cooler near the grills, leaving me speechless, which was probably for the best because my response would’ve been something stupid and revealing, like “I counted too” or “please don’t be kind to me right now because I’ll fall apart.”
A man settled into Crowbar’s empty chair.
Not one of the bikers, or rather, one of them, but different.
Smaller. Softer around the edges. Brown hair, warm green-gray eyes, and a bruise on his jaw that had faded to practically nothing.
He was wearing a leather jacket that was miles too big for him, and he held a mug of something steaming between both hands.
“You must be Spencer.” He smiled, and it reached his eyes. “I’m Trent.”
“Pet store guy,” I said. “The one who sold Noodles to Crowbar.”
He laughed. “I’m Preacher’s partner.” He pointed to a tall guy with short hair and silver rings who was talking to Deadeye. I might forget other names, but only someone who lacked self-preservation would forget his.
You opened the door to Ken. You have none.
Crowbar returned with a bottle of water and reclaimed his chair, which required Trent to vacate with a knowing look that I pretended not to see. Noodles had fallen asleep in my lap, her breathing slow and even, one paw twitching in whatever dream puppies had.
“You okay?” Crowbar asked, handing me the water.
I had a feeling he wasn’t asking about meeting so many people at once. That was a double-edged question. He’d noticed me favoring my left arm.
“Peachy.” I uncapped it with my right hand, took a long drink, and tried to arrange my face into something that didn’t broadcast every emotion I was feeling. “Your friends are loud.”
“They’re always loud.”
“Deadeye called me kid.”
“Just a name we use, not an insult. We’re well aware you’re an adult. He even called Prez kid, once. Got schooled real quick.”
“Prez being the tall scary one at the grill who looks at Trent like he invented oxygen?”
Crowbar’s mouth curved. “That’s the one.”
“They seem happy.” I took a drink of water, glancing around.
Crowbar didn’t respond right away. He sat there, beer on his thigh, toothpick moving in that slow roll across his lip, and watched the yard with an expression I couldn’t name. When he finally spoke, his voice was low enough that only I could hear it over the noise.
“How’d you hurt your arm?”
The water bottle froze halfway to my mouth. I slowly lowered it, every muscle in my body going tight.
“Stocking shelves.” Deb got the version where I’d fallen on the hallway steps leading up to my apartment.
“Shelves,” Crowbar grunted. “Those shelves come with hands?”
I gently picked Noodles up and placed her on his lap then stood and headed for my car.