4. Player
Chapter four
Player
When Taylor climbs into her car, Molly tugs my hand.
“Your father is waiting.”
As if I’m coming out of a daze, I look to find him and the guys standing at the bikes.
I trudge toward them, shoving my hands in my pockets, refusing to take Molly’s hand. That doesn’t stop her from clutching my arm and pressing against me.
“Let’s get some lunch,” my father says, throwing his leg over his bike and firing it up.
It’s not a suggestion. He’s decided we’re doing it, so we all follow.
I don’t even know where we’re going, but I don’t care enough to ask.
I’m riding on autopilot until we turn into a parking lot and I realize where he’s taken us.
He took the long way around to get here, and I already see the little red Mustang parked in the back.
The Rusty Pelican.
Jesus Christ. Did he do this just to rib me? Maybe I’m putting too much importance on his choice. Maybe it’s not about me. Maybe he’s trying to give Dozer’s family’s place some business. They need it, maybe now more than ever.
Whatever his reason, I don’t let it show that it affects me, even if it does. I’m already thinking of a way to get Taylor alone.
We have unfinished business.
Maybe she doesn’t think so, but I do.
We all troop inside and draw eyes. It’s the same anywhere we go, but most people are used to seeing us in town. We’re up and down these roads regularly.
The Rusty Pelican is located in Dewey Beach, across from the ocean on the bay side with a large deck that faces out over the pier where boats tie up for lunch.
Taylor’s sister is behind the bar, and her eyes widen when she spots us.
We take a table near the wall and settle in.
Taylor comes over with an order pad.
“Are you following me?” she murmurs, latching eyes on me.
“Coming here was my father’s idea.”
She rolls her eyes, then looks at the man and pastes on a smile. “What can I get you, Gage?”
She’s called my father by his first name since he told her to when we were all in high school. They were always close, especially after she lost her own father.
We lived near each other on a loop of houses that backed up to Red Mill Pond.
Our house was on a narrow canal, while hers was on a much wider and prettier area of the pond.
We were one street over and about six properties apart.
It was an easy walk, but I can still remember taking the canoe my father kept on shore behind our house and paddling to her house in less than ten minutes.
It was an easier way to go when I didn’t want to be seen walking over there.
For a time I was persona non grata around there by her father before he died.
Her place was always easy to spot from the water. They had a bright red umbrella over a table on their deck.
Sitting here, with her standing next to my chair and me breathing in her familiar perfume, it’s like just yesterday we snuck off together to fish from that canoe at night.
“Whatever you suggest, darlin’. Bring us all the same thing and a pitcher of beer.”
When she walks off, I catch Molly’s gaze following her, and there’s undisguised hatred there.
I’m pretty sure they don’t know each other, so that only leaves me as an explanation.
I lean on my elbows, and my father’s hawk-like eyes shift from me to Molly and back again. He misses nothing.
A few minutes later, another worker brings the beer, and Drae fills everyone a glass, then raises his own.
“To those we lost.”
We clink glasses and drink.
My eyes repeatedly stray to wherever Taylor is, keeping her in sight.
When she heads down a hall toward the kitchen with a bin of dirty dishes, I make my move. My chair scrapes across the wooden floor as I stand.
“Where are you goin’?” my little brother Pony asks.
“To take a piss. That all right with you?”
“Don’t forget to shake,” he jabs, and I flip him off as I walk away.
I know this place like the back of my hand, so I know the hallway to the bathrooms is the same Taylor took to the kitchen.
It’s a t-shaped hall with the men’s and women’s on opposite sides, and at the end of the hall a right turn leads to double doors into the kitchen and a left turn leads to a backdoor to another parking area and a path to the garbage dumpsters.
I glance through the small oval window set in the swinging doors and see the kitchen.
Taylor is unloading the bin, then she turns, talks to a busboy doing dishes, and heads toward the double doors.
I step away and when she comes through, she jolts to a stop.
“Player.”
I don’t give her time to think; I take her hand and pull her through the back door.
She yanks free once we’re outside.
“What the hell are you doing? I’m working,” she hisses.
“We need to talk.”
“We have nothing to talk about.”
“The hell we don’t.”
“Go back to your girl. I’m sure she’s wondering where you are.”
“Fuck Molly. She doesn’t mean what you think she does. She’s just someone I’m killing time with.”
“Don’t be an asshole. Like I give a damn who you’re fucking these days.”
I drag a hand through my hair. This wasn’t how I wanted this to go.
“Taylor, I just want to talk to you.”
“Well, I don’t want to talk to you. We’re nothing to each other anymore. You made sure of that.”
I step toward her, and she immediately retreats a step.
She may throw sass at me, but I’m still a patched member of the Kings of Anarchy, and that’s enough to have her mouth shutting and a look of uncertainty fill her eyes.
I back her to the wall and rest a palm on it, caging her in. “You sure about that?” I lift her chin and study her perfect porcelain skin and features—the strong bone structure, the cat-like arch to her pretty honey-colored eyes—the ones that could always suck me in. “You’re as pretty as ever, Tay.”
She bats my hand away. “Don’t call me that. You lost the right.”
I search the heat in her eyes. It’s not all anger, not by the way her breath has quickened. “You feel it, too. I know you do. This thing—whatever it is—it’s still there between us.”
“You’re wrong.” The words are soft, barely a hushed whisper.
“Am I?”
“Yes. You made your choice, and you chose the club. That’s all I need to know.”
I shake my head. “You don’t know why.”
Her eyes hit my VP patch. “I think it’s obvious why. And with my brother gone, you’ve moved right up, haven’t you?”
“It wasn’t what I wanted. I didn’t want Dozer dead.”
“Oh, please. You’ve wanted to be VP since you were sixteen.”
“Not like this. Not the way it happened.”
She shrugs. “Whatever. I have to get to work.” She pushes past me, and I let her go, but I vow this won’t be the end.
I haven’t felt this alive in four long years.
But even as I watch her go, I know she’s going to have me breaking every rule I’ve set for myself.
I promised myself I’d never put another woman I cared about in danger again.
And taking up with Taylor again would do exactly that.
Frustration surges through me, and I punch the wall.
Goddamn it.
When I return to the table, Molly gives me a lifted brow but doesn’t ask.
My plate of food is waiting, and everyone has started eating. Taylor ordered us crab cake sandwiches and homemade potato chips. Someone in the kitchen must have delivered them while I had her outside.
The aroma of the food is mouthwatering, and Beck moans around his first bite.
I dig in. Jumbo lump crabmeat seasoned and broiled to perfection served on a toasted bun. I remember them well. Her father always made the best anywhere around, hands down. It’s good to see the recipe hasn’t changed in all these years.
My father’s laser eyes don’t miss my cut knuckles when I reach for my beer.
His gaze shifts to the bar where Taylor is slamming the cooler with more force than necessary.
We eat, and the table is subdued by the date and the visit to the cemetery, but maybe more so because my brothers are pissed at my father. I can’t blame them. The news our father dropped on them today rocked their world.
There’s something about losing the home you grew up in. It’s like we can never go home again, even though I know in my brain it’s not the location as much as it is the family. Tell that to my heart.
This sucks, and we all know it.
After we eat, my father pays the tab and drops a hefty tip in cash on the table.
Out of the corner of my eye, I spot Taylor behind the bar. She watches us exit, a line of leather-clad men who walked out of her life after Dozer’s death as abruptly as we’d walked in.
I can still see the devastation on her face the day we buried him. After losing her father, losing her big brother was just too much for her. She left town before I had a chance to see her.
Although she and I had been over for a long time by then, it still tore my heart out to see her pain that day. When I heard she’d left town and I realized she’d really gone out of my life completely, it was sobering.
Somehow, I’d always felt our story wasn’t over, that somewhere down the line we’d mend our fences and at least be friends again.
She knew me better than anyone, and although she’d lost her brother, I’d lost my mother and wife that day, and I needed a friend. I’d longed to talk to her. She’d always been a good listener, but she wasn’t here for me when I needed her most.
I suppose I didn’t deserve her sympathy or empathy.
Payback’s a bitch, as they say, and I’d hurt her badly.