Chapter 7 #2
Behind them a prospect was losing a slow war with Colt and Lilac’s younger twins.
Graham and Danny were coming up on two, walking now and fast with it.
The prospect’s entire job seemed to be keeping them out of their older brothers’ soccer game, and away from anything they could break.
Colt drifted between the brothers and his sons, pretending he wasn’t hovering.
It was the most old-fashioned arrangement I’d seen in years — women in the kitchen, men in the yard — and the only person who didn’t seem to know which side he was supposed to be on was Handful who kept popping in to check on me.
Nobody put me to work. I’d half expected to be handed a spoon; instead Lilac waved me off the one time I reached for a board — guests don’t work the first time — so I leaned against the counter and let the kitchen move around me.
Lilac chopping, Betty folding, Indira sweeping through with Maya on her hip and one hand fending the baby off everything within reach.
This was what Handful had been trying to describe when he said family dinner.
Not the sanitized version. The real one, where the kids were loud, the dog was tired, and someone was always yelling from another room.
Eventually Lilac wiped her hands and called that it was done.
The kitchen door swung open and the men came in — Dutch first, then Handful and Colt and a pair of prospects, collecting pots, boards and the big foil trays, and carrying them out to the tables to be dished up.
Handful passed me with a dish in each hand, caught my eye, and grinned.
I counted seventeen people at the table, and that wasn’t including the kids who were eating standing up or the prospect who was still ferrying plates from the kitchen.
Dutch at the head, Indira beside him with Maya.
Colt across from Lilac. Betty at Lilac’s side, serene, eating slowly.
Holden and Bea across from each other — his hand on the table, hers covering it.
Glitch was at the far end with Wren. She was tucked under his arm the way Handful had described — small, blonde and quiet, her whole body oriented toward Glitch like he was the only person in the room.
He had his phone in one hand, showing her something on the screen, and she was leaning into his shoulder and smiling.
She caught me looking. She gave me a small, shy smile.
I smiled back. She looked down at her plate, but the smile stayed.
“Seb?” she said, quiet enough that I almost didn’t hear it under the table noise. “Can you pass the bread?”
“Yeah, sweetheart.” Glitch reached across with his free hand, not looking away from his phone, and set the bread basket in front of her.
The movement was automatic — he knew where she was without looking, knew what she needed, attended to it the way you attended to breathing. They were a cute couple.
Handful was beside me, his knee pressed against mine under the table. “Betty’s going to test you,” he murmured. “Wait for it.”
She did. It was a question about Prohibition and American cocktail history.
I watched Handful’s face while I answered. The amusement he was carefully not showing was almost better than the question itself.
“How did you know?” I said, when Betty had turned back.
“She does it to everyone. First dinner. If she asks, she’s already decided you’re worth talking to.” He reached for his water glass. “If she doesn’t ask, she’s already made up her mind about you.”
After that he was quiet — watching me take it in, letting me figure everything out at my own pace, not narrating or explaining. I appreciated that. He was learning when to be quiet, and it was one of the best things about the version of him I’d been getting to know.
Dutch stood. The table went still — not gradually, not the slow taper of conversation fading.
All at once. Like someone had pressed a button.
Even the kids stopped, Luca and Knox freezing mid-argument.
Maya banged her hand on the high chair tray once, then went quiet too, as if she’d received the memo.
Dutch looked around the table. He looked like what he was — the man who ran this family, all of it, the club and the people around the club and the ground they stood on.
“To the ones at this table,” he said quietly. “And the ones who aren’t.”
The table answered. All of them. Brothers, old ladies. One voice, different registers. To Danny.
I’d heard the story already. Handful had told me at Fir & Salt.
I’d thought I understood it. But being told was nothing like being in the room when it happened.
Every voice said the name at once, no one looking at anyone, no one needing the cue.
Colt came in a half-second early, the way you do on a song you’ve sung a hundred times.
Holden’s voice didn’t shake, though Handful had told me Danny died in his arms.
I put my hand on Handful’s thigh. He didn’t move. But his fingers found mine under the table.
Dutch sat back down. The table resumed. Luca and Knox grabbed bread rolls. Maya threw a piece of pasta at Colt, who caught it and kept eating.
I thought of Handful telling me, once, that Dutch had given him something to work toward — something he couldn’t tell me the shape of.
Watching Dutch now, the way the whole table had followed his voice into silence and come back out of it on his signal, I understood a little better what earning that meant.
?
After dinner, the tables stayed full but the formation loosened. People moved — inside for drinks, onto the porch, into the kitchen for seconds. The kids scattered. Gunner repositioned himself under the table where the most crumbs were, which was a strategic decision I respected.
I was on the porch with Indira when two women appeared from inside — one brunette, one blonde, both in the tight jeans and low-cut tops. They saw Handful and brightened, crossing to him without a second’s hesitation — easy with him, familiar.
“Handful!” The brunette reached for his arm.
Handful stepped back. Not dramatically, not rudely. Just a half-step that put space between them before the contact landed. Smooth enough that it could have been accidental, except it wasn’t.
“Hey, Tanya. You met Austen? My girlfriend.” He turned toward me, his hand opening in my direction. “Austen, this is Tanya and Sarah. They’ve been around the clubhouse a while.”
“Hi,” I said.
Tanya looked at me. Her smile held, but something behind it did the math — she’d just been introduced to the girlfriend of a man she was used to getting attention from. “So you’re Austen.”
I’d run a bar for years. I’d been sized up by drunks, by regulars, by women who could do more damage with one look than Tanya could manage with both hands, and I had never once been the one to glance away first. I didn’t now. Bitch, I thought — unfairly, probably — and smiled.
“That’s me.”
“He talks about you.”
“He’d better.”
She laughed. It was genuine enough. Sarah gave a small wave and they moved on, back into the common room, back into the world they lived in here.
Handful caught my eye. Held it for a second. Checking. “You okay?”
“Fine.”
I was fine. He’d handled it right. But I’d watched Tanya reach for that arm like she’d done it before and expected to do it again, easy and automatic, and I’d watched her react to the news that Handful had a girlfriend now.
I didn’t know how many women in this building had reached for that arm like it was theirs. A lot, probably.
Handful settled beside me on the porch rail, close enough that our arms touched.
“You’re doing the bartender thing,” he said.
“What bartender thing.”
“Watching us the way you watch customers at The Velvet Hour. Clocking everything, giving nothing away.”
I didn’t answer.
“She doesn’t mean anything to me,” he said. “Never has.”
I didn’t say anything. But I didn’t move away either. Holden, across from us, was watching. Quiet. I’d noticed that about him - he was always watching, saw everything, commented on almost nothing. Bea appeared at his side with two glasses of water.
“She’s doing well,” Bea said to Holden, looking through the window at someone inside.
I followed her gaze and found Wren, sitting on the couch with Knox.
He was showing her something on a tablet and she was leaning in, nodding, her face more animated than I’d seen it all evening.
Glitch was at the bar getting drinks, glancing back at them every few seconds.
“She’s getting braver,” Holden said.
“She’s more comfortable with us.”
I filed that. Comfortable, not just brave — there was a difference. I was still working out where I fitted in with this group.
The clubhouse emptied slowly. Families left first — Lilac herding Luca and Knox toward their house, Colt behind her with Graham and Danny, one under each arm. Betty with them.
Dutch and Indira next — Maya had fallen asleep in the high chair, and Indira had lifted her out like nitroglycerin - not breathing, not wanting to wake the sleeping baby. Dutch took the chair under one arm and they slipped out quietly, his hand at the small of her back.
Glitch stood, stretched, and looked down at Wren with a private smile. “Ready, sweetheart?” She nodded, stood, and tucked herself under his arm. “Good girl.” They said goodnight to the room — Wren’s goodnight was a wave, small and quick — and left.
Holden and Bea stayed longer. They left around ten, Holden’s hand finding Bea’s as they walked toward their house on the lane.
The common room went quiet. A few brothers at the pool table. The jukebox playing something slow. Handful and me on the couch, my legs tucked under me, his arm along the back behind my shoulders.
“So,” he said.
“So.”
“What do you think?”