Chapter Six
Spencer
My hand moved in slow motion when I waved it if front of my face. “Whoa,” I breathed, watching my fingers trail through the air like they were cutting through water. Each one left a ghost of itself behind. “That’s... that’s a lot of fingers.”
The pain pill hit somewhere between the parking lot and the plate of ribs Drift had shoved into my good hand. One minute I was sitting in a lawn chair trying to figure out how to eat with a sling, and the next the world had gone soft, like someone had wrapped reality in fleece.
Crowbar was next to me, close enough that our chairs touched. Noodles was asleep tucked against my side, a warm little furnace of fur and twitching paws. The fire pit crackled in front of us, and the smoke curled upward in patterns that were suddenly the most fascinating thing I’d ever witnessed.
“The smoke looks like a dragon,” I announced to no one in particular. “A tiny one. A baby dragon. A dragonlet.”
“Dragonlet isn’t a word,” Crowbar said.
“It is now. I just invented it. You’re welcome, English language.”
I took another bite of the ribs and groaned so loudly that two men across the fire pit turned to stare.
“Oh my god. Oh my god. Drift. Drift!” I pointed at the man with the spatula.
“These are the greatest ribs in the history of the entire planet. Every planet. If aliens came down and tasted these ribs, they would weep. They would abandon their superior technology and open a barbecue restaurant.”
Drift looked at Crowbar with raised eyebrows.
“Pain meds kicked in,” Crowbar said.
“No, no, no, no, no.” I waved a rib bone at him.
“This isn’t the drugs talking. This is my soul talking. My soul is having a religious experience. These ribs are better than sex. Well…”
I paused, tilting my head. “Most sex. Some sex is pretty good. Depends on the—anyway, the point is, Drift, you are a culinary genius and I would die for you.”
“Thanks, kid,” Drift said slowly. “That’s…intense.”
“I’m an intense person.” I licked sauce off my thumb, which took three attempts because my mouth and my hand weren’t communicating on the same frequency.
“I feel things deeply. Like, right now, I’m feeling this rib sauce in my bones. Is there brown sugar in this? There’s brown sugar. And something smoky. Paprika? Chipotle? Both. It’s both. You beautiful, beautiful man.”
Holler was recording me on his phone. I pointed at him with the rib bone. “You’d better get my good side.”
“Which one’s your good side?” he asked, grinning.
“All of them. Every side is my good side. I’m like a diamond. Multifaceted.”
The laughter that followed was warm, not cruel, and something in my medicated brain registered that distinction and filed it away as important.
These men were laughing with me. Not at me.
There was a difference, and I’d spent enough years learning that to recognize it even through a pharmaceutical haze.
I turned to Crowbar, who was watching me with an expression I couldn’t decode, mostly because his face kept pulsing gently, which I was pretty sure was the medication and not an actual feature of his bone structure.
“You,” I said, pointing the rib bone at his chest.
“You are unreasonably attractive. I want you to know that. It’s rude, actually. Walking around with that jaw and those eyes and that”—I gestured vaguely at his entire torso—“whole situation. In a pet store. Where I was vulnerable and surrounded by gerbils.”
The toothpick stilled.
A ruthless billionaire, a deal with strings attached, and one inconvenient attraction.
If that sounds like your kind of evening, browse Lokepub.
“Also, your arms.” I reached over and patted his bicep with my sauce-covered fingers. He looked down at the smear of barbecue on his sleeve and back at me. “These are good arms. Sturdy. Load-bearing. You could carry a refrigerator. Or me. Either one. Both at the same time, probably.”
“Spencer.”
“Hmm?”
“You got sauce on my cut.”
I looked at the barbecue smudge on his leather. “Oh no. Oh, that’s— I’m so sorry. I’ll clean it. I’ll clean it with my mouth if I have to.”
Deadeye choked on his beer across the fire pit.
“Eat your food,” Crowbar said, his voice rough.
“I am eating my food. I’m also complimenting you. I can multitask. I’m very talented. I would commit crimes for these ribs. Actual crimes. Not big ones. Jaywalking. Maybe light arson. But motivated arson.
“The mac and cheese…” I said around a mouthful. “Is that homemade? Because if it came from a box, I don’t want to know. Let me live in ignorance. Let me believe in magic.”
“Homemade,” Drift confirmed. “Three cheeses. Gruyère, sharp cheddar, and smoked gouda.”
“Three cheeses. Three.” I looked at Crowbar with an expression that I hoped conveyed the gravity of the situation. “Your people are feeding me three-cheese mac and cheese. I would die for these men. Every single one of them. Even Deadeye, and he scares me.”
I picked up a piece of cornbread from my plate and bit into it. Another groan escaped me, loud enough to make Noodles lift her head and blink. “The cornbread too? The cornbread? Drift, are you single? Because if Crowbar doesn’t work out, I’m proposing to you over this cornbread.”
“You’re taken,” Crowbar said. There was an edge to it that made my stomach flip even through the medication fog.
“Possessive,” I murmured, grinning at him. “Noted. Filed. Appreciated. I can feel my hair growing. Can you feel your hair growing? You have nice hair. Has anyone told you that? Someone should tell you that. I’m telling you that. Right now. Your hair is… substantial.”
The toothpick shifted. “Substantial.”
“Like it has presence. It walks into a room and introduces itself separately from you. ‘Hello, I’m Crowbar’s hair, and I’ll be your brooding aesthetic for the evening.’” Noodles made a sound from beside me. “Noodles agrees. Don’t you, baby? Tell your dad his hair has main character energy.”
Noodles yawned.
“She’s speechless. That’s how good it is.”
Trent appeared at my side with a glass of water, smiling like someone watching a nature documentary unfold in real time. “You should drink this.”
“Trent!” I grabbed his wrist with my good hand. “Trent, have you had the ribs? The ribs are transcendent. They belong in a museum. They belong in the Louvre. Right next to the Mona Lisa, except the ribs are better because the Mona Lisa doesn’t even have eyebrows.”
“She doesn’t,” Trent agreed, pressing the water into my hand. “Drink.”
I drank. The water was cold and tasted like the purest glacier runoff, which was probably just regular water, but the pill had turned my taste buds into tiny poets.
“This water is incredible,” I said. “What brand is this?”
“It’s from the tap,” Crowbar said.
“Unbelievable. Tap water doesn’t taste this good. Your pipes must be blessed. Holy pipes. Is that a thing? Someone should make that a thing.”
I took another long drink and set the glass down with the precision of a surgeon, which was to say I missed the armrest entirely and Crowbar caught it before it hit the ground.
“Reflexes,” I said admiringly. “Like a cat. A big, muscular, tattooed cat. A panther. You’re a panther, pookie.”
The entire fire pit went silent.
Crowbar’s toothpick didn’t move. His eyes locked onto mine, and something in his expression went through about four different stages in the span of two seconds. Surprise. Confusion. Something warm and dangerous. And then, underneath all of it, a crack in the armor so brief I almost missed it.
“What did you just call me?” His voice was dangerously quiet.
“Pookie.” I beamed at him. “It suits you. Big scary biker with a tiny puppy and a toothpick addiction. That’s pookie energy. Own it.”
Deadeye had his face buried in his hands. His shoulders were shaking. Holler had stopped recording and was just staring at me with his mouth open.
“I’m keeping that,” Drift said from somewhere behind me. “For the rest of his life.”
Crowbar exhaled through his nose, slow and measured, like a man counting to ten in a language that only had words for violence. Then the corner of his mouth twitched. Just once. A single crack in the granite.
“You’re never living this down,” Trent whispered to Crowbar as he passed, and I could’ve sworn I heard Preacher’s low chuckle from somewhere in the dark.
“I don’t care,” I announced to the yard at large.
“He’s my pookie and Noodles is my baby and these ribs are my religion.”
I leaned sideways until my head found Crowbar’s shoulder, my cheek pressing against the leather of his cut.
He smelled like motor oil and sandalwood and smoke from the fire, and the combination was so warm and grounding that my eyelids went heavy immediately.
“Also, I think I’m dying. In a good way. A cozy way. Like a sunset.”
“You’re not dying. You’re high.”
“Same thing, different aesthetic.” I nuzzled deeper into his shoulder. Noodles adjusted on my side, pressing closer to my hip. “Hey, Crowbar?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you. For tonight. For the doctor. For not making me feel small about it.” My words were getting thick, running together at the edges like watercolors bleeding into each other. “People usually make me feel small.”
Crowbar’s hand came up and rested on the back of my head. Not pushing. Not pulling. Just there, fingers threading through my hair in a slow, absent motion that sent tingles cascading down my spine.
“You’re not small,” he said.
“I’m five-four.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
I smiled into his shoulder, and the warmth from the fire and the medication and the steady presence beside me pulled me under like a tide. The last thing I heard was Noodles snoring and the low rumble of Crowbar’s voice saying something to someone I couldn’t see.
“You’re staying here tonight. No condition to be alone.”
“Your shoulder is the best pillow I’d ever had.” My eyes were getting heavy. The fire popped and crackled, and the pain in my arm was a thousand miles away on someone else’s planet. “You’re really warm. Are all bikers this warm? Is it a requirement? Is there a thermostat test during initiation?”
“Go to sleep, Spencer.”
“Can’t. Too many compliments left to give.”