"Crazy shit," Dezi started, munching away. "Some people were fucking in the ladies' room," he told me, and it took a lot of self-control not to react to his words.
"Yeah?" I asked, glancing over before going back to making myself a to-go coffee.
"Yeah, interesting, don't you think?" Dezi asked, that strange, wise tone in his voice again, making me think I was right about him suspecting something with Danny and me.
"Not really. People fuck wherever they can. Probably some old, married couple trying to spice shit up."
"Yeah, that must be it," Dezi said, a brow raised.
"Sway," I called, snapping his attention away from the redhead. "We gotta roll," I added.
He waited to get the woman's number before following us out.
I waved Dezi and Sway ahead of me before pulling out, my gaze moving up toward the large windows, finding Danny watching me as well.
There was a foreign tightening sensation in my chest as I looked at her, something so unsettling that my gaze slid away fast.
I tried to convince myself the tripping of my pulse on the way home was about potentially being found out by Dezi.
A part of me knew I was lying to myself.
But I wouldn't end up having long to try to figure out what else it could mean.
Because a few days later, we got the phone call we never wanted to get.
The brothers who'd been off on a run were ambushed.
Chapter Nine
Danny
"Well, finally," I said, getting home after the diner, still feeling a little buzzy physically, and confused mentally by the interaction with Fallon.
Chewy, my Vice President, was finally back from our mother chapter, five days later than he'd told me he would be rolling into town.
"Well, you know how your old man can be," Chewy said, shrugging one of his big shoulders.
Chewy was in his early forties with a large frame that was both fit and also heavyset. A bear, if you will. He had a head full of long, unruly copper-red hair that he left free around his shoulders. His beard matched his hair, but he tended to keep it in this somewhat ridiculous, scraggly braid.
He was right.
I did know how my father could be.
Which meant Chewy probably spent the extra days giving my father a blow-by-blow of every single move I had made with my club since moving into Navesink Bank.
Neither of the two men were apt to give me a single millimeter of slack.
See, Chewy had been the only member of my club that I hadn't picked or approved of myself. He'd been my father's one concession. He got to pick my VP. So he got to have a spy inside my club. Because he didn't trust me. Because some sadistic part of him was rooting for me to fail. And he wanted all the gory details if or when it happened.
"Glad you got back alright," I said, clapping a hand on his shoulder, even if the last thing in the world I wanted to do was touch and show respect for the man tasked with tearing apart my entire operation if he saw a single crack in the foundations. "Have a drink for me, yeah? I need to go take a shower."
Because I could still smell Fallon on me.
It was likely pure paranoia, but I couldn't shake it.
So a cold shower was in my future.
To cool off my still white-hot desire for the last man on Earth I should have had anything to do with.
But it would also be bracing, something that would help me get through the conversation I was going to need to have with Chewy, explaining all the new developments the club had since he'd left.
I was hoping to take just a long enough shower for Chewy to get more than a few celebratory drinks in his system first. He was a lot more tolerable when he was drunk. And, bonus points, he would be a lot less likely to remember all the details, or to give me shit about not calling him to inform him while he was away.
Once that was all squared away, though, the club went back to normal. Or, at least, somewhat normal. We were on higher alert, but otherwise things were status quo.
Until word got back to us that the Henchmen had been ambushed on a run.
I'd like to lie and say that I'd only had a passing concern about the situation, wondering if it might happen to us as well the next time we had a drop to do.
But that wasn't true.
There had been panic—pure, undiluted panic—flooding my system at the news, making my heart feel like it was in some sort of vice grip, like there was a boulder on my chest, making it impossible to breathe.
Was Fallon on that run?
I shouldn't have cared.
It shouldn't have mattered.
We were only fucking.
That was it.