4. Violet
VIOLET
Two weeks came and went, and neither of us said a word about it.
I keep waiting for Duke to bring it up. To lean against the kitchen counter and ask when I’m leaving.
He doesn’t. He eats what I cook, puts Leo to bed when I’m too tired to stand, and leaves for the clubhouse at seven every morning with his boots on and his keys in his hand and nothing on his face that looks like a man who wants me gone.
I should bring it up. I should set the date, name the deadline, and pack the suitcase. That’s what a person with self-respect does. A person who isn’t sleeping in her ex-boyfriend’s house with her son. Their son. The son he doesn’t know is his.
I don’t bring up the living situation.
Instead, I pour beer at my new job.
Bones and Bucks on a Thursday lunch shift is different than Saturday night.
Saturdays, the bar fills wall to wall with patched members, hangarounds, sweetbutts, Old Ladies, and civilians who don’t ask questions.
The speakers rattle the bottles on the back shelf, and by midnight, the sweetbutts are draped across laps, and the pool table has a fifty-dollar game running, and I’m pulling drafts so fast my wrists ache.
But on Thursdays at noon, it’s just a few guys eating burgers at the bar and Trapper mopping a floor that doesn’t need mopping because he’s a prospect and prospects don’t sit down.
Duke got me this job. He didn’t ask if I wanted it. He came home from Church a day after I moved in and said Bones and Bucks needed a bartender. He said I’d make an hourly wage, plus tips.
I said no.
But my alternative was the billing office at the medical clinic in town, which paid nine dollars less per hour.
I took the job.
The money is absurd. More than I’ve ever made.
Weekend nights, the tips alone clear what I used to bring home in a week at the billing office.
The guys tip heavily, and they tip in cash, and nobody asks for a receipt.
By the beginning of the second week, I had enough saved to start looking at apartments.
I haven’t looked yet. Not seriously. I pulled up a couple of listings on my phone, and Duke walked past, glanced at the screen, and said, “Save your money.”
That was it. He kept walking. And I closed the browser.
“Order up.” I slide two drafts across the bar to a pair of guys I’ve seen at Saturday parties but whose names I don’t have. They nod, take the beers, and go back to their conversation.
The bartender before me was a sweetbutt named Crystal who watered down the pour and skimmed from the register. Duke caught the shortfall in the books because numbers are his department. Crash, the King’s Vice President and my boss, fired her on my second day.
Nobody misses Crystal.
The front door opens, and Shelby walks in with her bag on one shoulder, sunglasses pushed up into her brown hair, and a to-go cup of coffee from home, because she thinks coffee at Bones and Bucks is a hate crime against caffeine.
She drops her bag behind the bar and ties on an apron.
Shelby is Saber’s Old Lady, the President’s woman, and she does marketing for the bar.
She redesigned the sign out front, and she’s been working on a new menu.
She picks up serving shifts when they’re short-staffed, and today is one of those days.
I’ve known her for two weeks, and we are slowly becoming good friends.
“Your tables are the window booths.” I nod toward the occupied ones. “Burger guy has been nursing his Coke for forty minutes, and the couple by the door just sat down.”
“Got it.” She tucks a pen behind her ear. “Saber said Duke’s bringing Leo by later?”
I stack a clean pint glass on the shelf. “After his nap.”
Her mouth curves. “Good. I picked up a coloring book for him. Dinosaurs.”
“You didn’t have to do that.”
“I wanted to.” She tucks the pen tighter behind her ear. “Besides, I need someone to color with. Saber won’t do it. Says it’s beneath him.”
She heads for the window booths, and something loosens in my chest. Shelby didn’t have to buy my kid a coloring book.
She didn’t have to learn that he likes dinosaurs better than trucks, or that he won’t touch red crayons because he thinks they’re too spicy.
She did it anyway. And she’s not the only one.
Every member of this club has made room for my son like he belongs here, and the terrifying part is how natural it’s starting to feel.
The lunch rush picks up around one. Shelby works the floor while I handle the bar. She refills water glasses without being asked. I run food when her hands are full. Trapper mops a path between us like a golden retriever who wants to help but keeps getting in the way.
“Trapper.” Shelby points at the mop bucket. “You’re leaving a trail.”
He looks down. Soapy footprints across the floor he mopped ten minutes ago. “Shit.”
“Start from the back. Work forward. Walk out. Don’t walk through it.” Shelby ticks each step off on her fingers.
Trapper leans on the mop handle. “I know how mopping works.”
“Your footprints say otherwise.”
He grumbles and drags the bucket toward the back wall. Shelby catches my eye across the bar, and her chin drops, fighting a grin.
The front door bangs open at two-fifteen, and Saber walks in with Viper behind him.
Saber is impossible to miss. Six-foot-three, president’s patch, a face built for intimidation.
He crosses the bar in four strides, drops a kiss on the top of Shelby’s head without breaking his conversation with Viper, and keeps walking toward the back hallway.
Shelby doesn’t pause. She keeps clearing plates, but her whole body shifts, orienting toward where he disappeared.
I know that pull. My body does the same thing with Duke. Every room, every doorway, every time a bike rumbles into the lot, my entire nervous system pings, and I know where he is before I turn around.
Viper stops at the bar. Quieter than the other guys. Dark hair, strong build, ENFORCER stitched on his cut. He leans against the bar with one elbow, scanning the room.
“Water.” He doesn’t look at me when he says it.
I set a glass in front of him. No ice, because he never asks for ice. He picks it up, drinks half of it, and sets it down.
“Duke is on his way. Twenty minutes.” He’s already pushing off the bar.
Crash comes down the back hallway a few minutes later. The VP is the opposite of Viper. Tall, dirty blond, and a grin that has gotten him out of and into trouble in equal parts. He drops onto a barstool and drums the bar top with both palms.
“Violet. My love. Light of the bar.” He spreads his hands wide. “Wings. Hot sauce. And don’t skimp on the ranch.”
“You run this place. You know where the ranch is.”
“Yeah, but it tastes better when you bring it to me.” He winks.
I grab a ramekin, fill it, and hand it to him.
“And she brings the ranch.” He takes it with both hands like I’ve handed him a stack of money. “Marry me.”
I toss a napkin at him. “You can’t afford me.”
I put in his wings order, pull him a draft, and set it down.
“You’re good for him, you know,” Crash says before taking a pull of his beer.
I set a coaster down in front of him. “Duke and I are not together.”
“Mm-hmm. Whatever you say.”
The door opens at two-forty. Duke.
I have really grown to love his road name. I didn’t always. His real name is Lennon. He earned Duke at a poker table his first month as a prospect, from what he told me. He cleaned out every patched member in one night, like royalty.
He’s got Leo on one hip and a diaper bag over the opposite shoulder. The combination of a six-foot-one tattooed outlaw in a leather cut carrying a toddler and a bag covered in cartoon dinosaurs is the most attractive thing I’ve ever seen.
My stomach does a full revolution, and I grab the edge of the bar. Duke has been kind enough to watch Leo, until I can find a reliable babysitter.
Leo spots me immediately. “Mama!” Both arms out, fingers grabbing at the air between us.
Duke sets him down. I come out from behind the bar. Leo runs to me on unsteady legs. I crouch and catch him, and he smashes his face into my neck and pats my back with both hands.
“Were you good for Duke?” I wipe a smear of something off his cheek with my thumb.
“Ice cream!” Leo announces to the entire bar.
Duke meets my eyes over the top of Leo’s head. “He had a spoonful.”
I rub the brown stain on Leo’s collar between two fingers. “He has chocolate on his shirt.”
“Maybe he had two spoonfuls.” Duke sets the diaper bag on the nearest stool, and the corner of his mouth twitches.
Crash spins his barstool toward Leo. “Hey, little man. Come here.”
Leo studies him. Toddlers are brutal judges of character. No social filter, no politeness. They like you, or they don’t, and you get about one second to pass the test.
Leo walks to him and holds up one hand. “High-five.”
It’s something that Trapper taught him the other day.
Crash gives him a high-five, gently, and Leo dissolves into giggles and grabs Crash’s knee. Crash scoops him up and sets him on the bar, and Leo reaches for his beer.
“No, sir.” Crash slides the glass out of range with one finger. “You have to be eighteen, buddy. Then we’ll talk.”
“Twenty-one,” I correct, walking back behind the bar.
He points at me without looking. “Right. Twenty-one. What she said.”
Duke pulls out a stool at the end of the bar, where he always sits. The seat has a clear line of sight to me and to every door in the building.
I pour him an iced tea without asking. He wraps his hand around the glass, and his fingers close over mine. Not a brush. Not an accident. He holds on, his thumb pressing into the back of my hand, and he doesn’t let go.
Two seconds. Three. My body responds. His touch on the back of my hand, and my mind is back in his bed, back under him, while he fucks me relentlessly. All of that from a glass of iced tea.
He lets go. I pull my hand back and grab a rag I don’t need.
Crash is watching us. He doesn’t say a word. The look on his face says everything, and he turns back to his Leo.
Shelby appears at the bar. “Leo! Get over here. I have dinosaurs.”