2. Diesel
DIESEL
Someone’s foot is in my ribs. Someone’s tit is in my face. I count three limbs pinning me to the couch cushions, none of them mine, and for one long, blissful second before my brain catches up, I don’t hate my life.
Then I try to move.
I peel a leg off my chest. Sherry’s, maybe.
Hard to tell the blondes apart when they’re all naked, asleep, and smell like tequila and my cologne.
I untangle myself one limb at a time, careful as a bomb tech.
Somebody groans when I shift. Not me. I wait until I’m vertical, then make a noise like a dying animal that’s also extremely disappointed in itself.
I hold my head in both hands and stagger toward the bar, boots crunching over God knows what. Bottle caps. I step over a bra that isn’t mine and never will be.
I tap the bar top twice. My rings click against the wood, and the prospect slumped on the other side jackknifes upright like he’s been shot.
Wyatt blinks at me, hair everywhere, mouth hanging open.
“Hair of the dog,” I tell him. “And whatever’s in the first aid kit that isn’t a Band-Aid.”
He scrambles for the whiskey and a bottle of aspirin like his life depends on it. This morning, it might. I down two pills dry and chase them with a mouthful of Jack, then turn to survey the clubhouse in full daylight.
Empty bottles three deep along the bar. The pool table’s felt torn clean through at one corner. Somebody’s cut hanging off the jukebox like a flag of surrender. Bodies on the couches and sprawled across the floor. One poor bastard looks to be asleep standing up against the wall.
Didn’t know that was possible. Learn something every day.
Right. Lucy had the baby. Stray’s been walking around for two days like he invented fatherhood, and none of us had the heart to tell him several men in this club have felt exactly that stupid and proud. We celebrated. We celebrated hard.
“Too old for this shit,” I mutter.
Wyatt’s wise enough to keep his mouth shut.
Truth is, I didn’t drink myself into a pile of blondes because Lucy popped out a kid. I get this wrecked maybe twice a year, usually over something I don’t intend to talk about.
I saw Penny last week.
Wasn’t even a conversation. Her cruiser was stopped at the lights by the feed store, my bike across the intersection. Three, four seconds with nothing between us but the road. Then the light changed, and she pulled away without so much as a nod.
I’ve been trying to decide whether she saw me ever since. Can’t decide which answer pisses me off more.
Not that I’ve been sober more than a couple of days at a stretch since I was eighteen. But there’s a difference between my usual drinking and waking up unable to account for all the women on top of me.
I press two fingers against the inside of my cut, over the hidden pocket by my ribs. The ring’s still there. Small stone, simple band. Best I could afford at eighteen. Back then, I worried the stone wasn’t big enough. Turned out that wasn’t why she said no.
Seventeen years, and I’ve never once considered getting rid of it. Probably says more about me than I want it to.
The door swings open, and Havoc walks in looking like he slept eight hours in a feather bed.
Not a hair out of place. Doesn’t even raise an eyebrow at the mess.
Man’s seen worse mornings than this. Seen worse everything than this.
Twelve years running the club and a decade in it before that—there can’t be much left that rattles him.
Except Sasha. She manages just fine.
“Rough night,” he says, taking in the bodies and the busted pool table with the mild interest of a man reading yesterday’s weather report.
“We celebrated Lucy’s baby.”
“I heard.” He grabs a glass and pours himself a whiskey. “Stray still walking around like he grew a new dick?”
“Something like that.”
Havoc only has eyes for one woman these days.
Sasha’s got him wrapped so tight around her finger it’d be embarrassing if it wasn’t the best thing that’s happened to this club in a decade.
And she’s not shy about enjoying him. Last party, half the room watched Havoc take her on the pool table like he owned her.
Fair enough. He does, and she likes it that way.
I shift on the stool. Between the smell of pussy and the memory of Havoc fucking Sasha’s ass, I’ve got plenty to blame my hard-on on without bringing Penny into it.
“We need church,” Havoc says, setting his glass down half-finished. “Got a tip.”
That gets my attention. “From who?”
“Jinx.” He says it easily. I’m still getting used to a Forsaken King volunteering anything we might want to hear. “Told Trigger there’s an evidence van full of confiscated weapons moving through the county next week. No security detail worth mentioning. Ripe for the taking.”
Trigger’s spent more time with the Kings’ road captain than any of us since we buried Switchback together.
Twelve years of bad blood and dead presidents between the clubs made for a fucking awkward start.
Nobody trusted the truce. But after months of small favors and information neither club had to share, we’re starting to believe it might hold.
“Wake the others,” Havoc tells Kade, who’s blinking himself awake in the corner.
By the time I take my seat in church, my head’s pounding again.
Riot comes in first, sharp-eyed even hungover.
Bone follows with his readers already on his nose, looking ready to do the club’s taxes at eight in the morning.
Ace and Ryder trade a look I don’t bother trying to interpret.
Bullet settles into his seat without a word.
Once we’re all in and the door’s shut, Havoc lays it out: the van, the route, the timing. Half the table still smells like last night’s party.
“Ryder, Ace, you’re on the grab. Riot, Trigger, you’re running security on the perimeter. Bullet’s got overwatch. I want the prospects on lookout duty half a mile out in either direction.”
“And me?” I ask.
“You’re with me. Front of the pack.” He glances my way. “Figured you could use the fresh air.”
I grunt, and we get through the rest of it—who’s driving the cage, who’s riding, what happens if the tip’s wrong or the Kings decide this is the week they remember they hate us.
I ask the questions I need to ask. Listen to the answers. But whenever there’s a pause, I’m back in Sasha’s kitchen, looking at a wedding invitation with Penny’s name written across the front in gold ink.
I invited Officer Carpenter. I thought it’d be nice.
Sasha said it like it was nothing. Like she’d told me we were having an extra person over for dinner.
Nice. Christ.
Seventeen years ago, I stood in a parking lot with that ring in my pocket and watched Penny drive away in a car packed with everything she owned. Now she might walk into that reception hall in a dress, and I’m supposed to make fucking small talk.
I don’t know if I’ll cross the room and kiss her or give her what some bitter part of me still thinks she deserves for leaving—my hands around that pretty throat, choking the memory of her out of my system.
Might be both. Wouldn’t be the first time those two urges felt exactly the same to me.
Havoc brings the gavel down. Chairs scrape back, and the room breaks into conversations as the others head out. I stay where I am, one hand resting against my cut.
I ought to be wondering whether she’ll come.
Instead, I’m wondering if the ring would fit.